Blog Of A Cowboy

Blog Of A Cowboy: Kill Hippie, Kill

2009-10-20T13:29:00.000-07:00

Kill Hippie, Kill

2009-10-20T12:24:00.012-07:00

...may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

I despise people who go to the gutter on either the right or the left and hurl rocks at those in the center.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Are Democrats really violent Nazi-esque Extremists?
The Corporate Republican “Sin to Win” philosophy has reached a nadir this summer.

The Republicans willingly allowed health insurance profiteers to lather them into such a frenzy of fear about becoming the new Soviet Union, that they grabbed up their lusty assault rifles and turned America into Somalia instead.

The talking points argument coming out of the GOP airspace last month - that the LEFT is violent, racist and bullying - is a new level of sycophantic mis-reality even for the post Bush GOP. As a line of reasoning it enjoys the same problem as many of their previous and failed versions of make-your-own reality that doomed the GOP: It won't play well in the long view with moderates who can read. The health insurance and services companies are almost certainly behind much of the town hall meeting anger. They don’t want either side to deliver an alternative to the current success of their Clinton-Bush era deregulated profiteering.

The only industry in American history that promises a more dangerous, corruption-driven meltdown for our economy than the banking industry of 2008, is the health care industry of 2009. So, by all means lets allow the extremists to prevent us from slowing a financial and health care disaster that we can already see approaching like four hundred Hurricane Katrinas.

Jesus Was a Door Gunner
We've seen several stories this month about Republican white churches continuing to pray for Obama to fail, or die, or, well whatever. The left has almost never approached the fever of hate-preaching, gun-totting, religious ranting that the right has decided to partake of. Smearing the left as violent is a classic and typical Rovian trick - falsely accusing the left of being as mean and un-Christian as the right. Right wing "Christians" won't even break with party loyalty long enough to pray for the health of the 30 million +/- Americans without any significant access to modern medical science. They'd rather celebrate Jesus the healer's life by praying for Obama and the hippies to die.

.... Yes, Yes Jed, we know... all the liberal hippie-girls, gay people, dopers and college history professors are just chomping at the bit to go to Idaho and Arizona and start killing skin-heads with the piles of Ak-47s and monogrammed K-Bar knives they have behind the Grateful Dead posters in their basements....

The left was totally disenfranchised during the Cheney - Bush - Rove Presidency, yet the closest they came to gun waving, town hall outbursts was to create “The West Wing”, give Al Gore an Oscar and let a disgusting and banal film maker pretend to be their spokesman for a few years.

In their reaction to the Bush years, the left never came close to the level of nutty, armed, violence-espousing racist hate we see every day from the right. There is a simple reason for this – the moderate left would never allow it to continue.

Here’s an idea from the middle for the Great White Hopefuls: Instead of worrying that President Obama might not have been born in the United States, they might start to worry that their most visible members act like they weren’t born on planet Earth. You know, the same earth that Jesus walked on before they killed Him for healing the sick and comforting the destitute.

Teach a Man to Fish Shoot
The new American right hasn’t accepted a moderate voice into their big bloodstained tent since Dwight Eisenhower. Until they change that trend, they will remain the ones who stay behind. The right uses assault rifles the way the left uses bumper stickers - and then they act like it's the same form of "loyal opposition".

The left is visibly represented by comedians while the right is joyously represented by armed violence-espousing militants. There really is a difference kids. This summer the Republican base crossed a threshold between loyal opposition and agency of provocation.

Torch and pitchfork lynch-mobbery might keep the GOP's new illiterati from ever watching a news show that is made by an American owned media company again, but it will never earn this new party of faithless complainers a congressional majority or a Presidency either.

The only people who buy into the new extremist right’s kill-em-all-and-let-Jesus-sort-em-out fervor are the ones already on board the crazy train. (And, certainly not Bush's Homeland Security Republicans who first penned that controversial warning about violent right wing extremism becoming the next Al Qaeda level threat for the United States.)

Accusing the left of orchestrating this new wave of town hall anger is about as logical as blaming Spielberg for Auschwitz. But if being dumbed down, sexed-up and armed to the teeth is all the GOP has to cling to, by all means get it out of the system now. Because in 2016 the GOP’s entire existence will hinge on an ability to get people like your humble (Ex) Cowboy - a western born, christian minded, college-educated, moderate - back to a voting inclination anywhere near the extremist war dance of doom and hate you now call worthy moral leadership.

Thanks for putting up with me,

Ride For the High Country

The New Rant Form

2009-10-05T20:48:00.013-07:00

(Circle one option only from each parenthetical bracket.)

I am a (Republican, Democrat, Steven Colbert).

I am (angry, irate, psychotically broken).

I attribute my joyless worldview to extremist (Republicans, Liberals) and (The Liberal New York Times Media, The Republican Fox-News Media, that Jon Stewart prick).
You people all need to (wake-up, turn the channel, take English 101 at community college)!

For sure, if you disagree with my (opinion, rant, 10,000 word manifesto) then you are a (fag-traitor, godless-miscreant, zealot-bastard) and, you should be (jailed, beaten, taxed) without benefit of a (fair trial, mortgage bailout).

The world is full of problems that I can't solve, because I am not actually a (economist, college graduate, trustee here at the prison). I am however a naturally gifted analyst - despite the fact that I only get world news from (Fox, New York Times, Al Jazeera).

I am (particularly gifted, the Chosen One, delusional) when it comes to assessing who else is to blame for my manic joylessness. Further, I genuinely believe that I can become as popular as ( George Washington, Jesus, that Stewart prick) just by (writing un-edited 10,000 word manifestos, writing obsessed incendiary hate-blogs, a mall massacre).

There is just no (joy, hope, chance of getting laid) in my world. This (crisis, disaster, apocalyptic orgy of doom) is clearly and obviously the fault of (George W. Bush, Michelle Obama, The Illuminati). I think that (real Americans, true patriots, Steven Colbert) are justified in fighting this (tyranny, socialism, Mossad conspiracy) using (full-auto war rifles, barrels of ANFO, gerrymandered re-districting).

We will only enjoy (liberty, lower taxes, getting some hootchi-kootchie) after we restore my beloved country to the former greatness of the sentimental past, as captured by such films as (The Sons of Katie Elder, Saving Private Ryan, Star Wars IV –A New Hope).

In the mean time, we have been historically (short-johned, gin-poled, electric banjo-pronged) by the inability of (Congress, ) to provide ethical, non-partisan leadership in these (dark times, strange days, early weeks of the revolution). Yes, until (congress, ) can provide some selfless political sacrifice I am keeping my (gun loaded, bunker stocked, money in oil stocks).

If you are not (with us, against us, half-in-the-bag by noon) then you are obviously (with us, against us, half-in-the-bag by noon) and you really need to WAKE UP.

Ride for the High Country

Jesus Has Left The Building

2009-03-08T12:34:00.008-07:00

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. 
--1 Timothy 6:10,11

America’s future now depends on nothing more complicated than our ability to treat each other with the kind of compassion that Jesus preached, and to see the world with the quiet and humble optimism that we used to call Christianity.

These are times when democracy has a chance to prove itself to the world.

The economic crisis is the greatest opportunity in a generation for Republican leaders to prove that the U.S. is a "christian nation". Saving the world will only require a few years of what the GOP has long claimed to stand for: strength of patriotic sacrifice, rigor against fear and a largess of Christian charity. It is sad and surprising that the Republicans now stand with srange zealotry against Christian charity, public humility or economic moral sacrifice.

Childish Things in Their Hands

The Democrats march forward with those faithful goals in their hearts, their deeds and their wallets. They are wildly, wildly and even still wildly imperfect, but they are moving decidedly with the moral river of our better human destiny.

The Republicans are obstructing in the same path forward. They are suddenly crying like frightened children, unwilling to accept a dose of tough reality. In their hands are loud and boisterous things.

The Party of Dog

The Republican party's faith parted ways with their religion a few election cycle’s back. There is one overriding thing about their new hate-radio hosted grandstanding. It is a sick and twisted irony that the Republicans are so openly disavowing the patriotic legitimacy of anything that is even in the same dictionary as the word faith.

Neither party is particularly gifted in achieving their goals. But here’s the rub: When Republicans pass an accident on the road, they call on a cell phone for aid, without slowing, just like they call for a waiter. Democrats (and Party-Non-Declared) pull over to render assistance and they insert themselves in a strangers' tribulations.

On the Road with an American Dream worth failing for.

There has been a terrible accident in America and everyone knows this. The Democrats have pulled over, rolled up their sleeves and gotten out of the car to render assistance. The Republicans have driven by and they know it. Their snobbish abandonment of Christ’s path in these historically difficult hours is the last nail in a cross of their own manufacture.

The Democrats have been condemned by the right for being a lot less religious. Suddenly however they are a much more faithful party. They can see an American dream worth failing for.

The GOP is caught up in a “Spanish Inquisition” style of Christianity. The Democrats look, and act more like long haired guys in worn-out sandals. One party works for a future for all Americans, the other just complains bitterly and throws tantrums. The Republicans are dragging the same great cross of the ages through our streets. They are just making sure someone else is riding it, this time up the hill.

This time up the hill.

Manifest Destiny is going to roll over the powdered bones of the newly virulent Republican spit-wagon. These shockingly hateful others are not men of relevance to mankind’s common moral journey any more. They have become just another footnote sect of history’s fearful deniers who choose to stay behind. And stay behind.

They are not coming with us.

Which leads to your humble (ex) Cowboy’s question of the moment:

Did Jesus leave the Republican Party, or was he pushed?

Ride For The High Country

Requiem For A Year

2009-02-06T07:28:00.007-07:00

"If thou hast taken the common clay,
And thy hands be not free  
From the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil 
The greater shame to thee."
--- Kipling

About Last year: What do want to hear first?

Mean was the new black.

A trillion-idea Socratic deficit, defended by the most overpowered regime in modern world history, was laid waist by 99 cents worth of hope on a stick.

It was the kind of Democratic moment that makes gambling a duty, and not a pleasurable one at that. There is no payout for these victors, save a punched ticket you'll wish you had down the road, when you ponder the last step towards the grave and little Sally breaks the code of death-bed etiquette to ask you: "What did you do during the war Grand-Daddy?"

Somehow the heroes who can't stop talking got blown off the map by the cowards who are afraid to speak up. Go get Peggy, and she can write it down the wind, but in the meantime make room for the meat-wagons, to haul off the scattered silk brocades of another laughless army of broken clowns and self-soiled priests.

2008 delivered the most important American political moment since 1876; the most divisive since '68 and the most fringe driven since the Salem witch trials. An aged white Republican billionaire on the right and, a young Black academic protege' of the Chicago Machine on the left battled equally against ferverous raspings from their own people that they were too moderate. The headlines still read "We are all victims."

And no one who believes a word of that sentence will ever, ever stand any better ground than they did on the last day of October, 2008.

Not victims, and not heroes either. Just the ones who chose to survive. Sully got his name in the paper, sure. When the smoke wafts in you and I will be lucky if we are even on the same vessel as Skiles or Peltz or Brittany Catanzaro. The plane is landing early, this ferry runs on time, but your old baggage is never coming back.

Memo to "Them": Stop telling me to "Wake Up". I know that This is next. I love facing it more than you love blaming other people for it's imperfections.

My Country - 'Twas of Thee

Poe's great black nightbird crashed through the cupola, to roost and cackle with a mad glee above the theatrical greatlights of our monumental Americanism. Or was it our American monumentalism? Claws grasped now a shredded sheave of bent-shaft arrows, and now a greed-stripped band of fruitless olive branches. Sticks, the same and all. A nation mourned its lost honest verbiage. The difference between our most graven and most grave symbolic images became indistinguishable.

Where have you gone
Joe Dimaggio
Muhammad Ali ?

In the beggining there was the word, and the word was occasionally OK and, rarely even brilliant, but the word was boiled by an age of wildly failed symbolic marketing tongues. Extremism was our worst enemy and we were the worst perpetrators.
See the promise of this ... new... same-ness.

See the street called main, and the house called home, and the man called dad. Dust off the morning news, it is all electric now but the coffee is still second rate. The truth is always a battered bastard. Arianna Huffington is no H.L. Mencken for these kids, but neither is H.L. Mencken.

.. Join the Vine, share a little vainglorious blame-and-attack prose with your fellow humans. Those rats were never my peers. Yelling and Singing are not even different countries that my river flows through.

Write it hot and let them howl.

We were beaten down by our own addiction to symbolic patriotism, by a white-noise stream of nothing verbiage and zampolit filtration. Every rambling man Jack fancied by his own looking glass a new bard for a new day, a remade Shakespeare. Ladies and gentlemen THAT bard wrote for the crowd and played to the King. It's a subtle difference, like Old Portrero Whiskey and grape Kool-Aid.

That trade should have been simple, a little face, for a little lower spine. Bring something new to make them laugh, or just hire a blind man to throw eggs at you from behind the cameras. "Blog-o-Sphere" my tailbone, well, history can adjust the lexicon, but a hundred thousand muskets trailed the great white column as it marched. A nick here and there, the odd man hanged. What did you do during the war old man?

They commanded us to be courageous and we pulled down the palace gates in our cowardly fear of submission.

Ask the true patriots this: Are we so addicted to painted freedoms that we'll never feel the heat of the fire itself again? Will the girl never sing the song live? All of that melodic chiaroscuro? A flawed song to be sure, and why we chose it as our own, unique, to begin with. But now thusly preserved in ether and served cold and joyless. Did you join in a national day of prayer, for touchdown passes, and bottled flames? Or did you pray a true hope for something else... something less... comfortable maybe?

Dance in your heart for that greatest wonder of life, the self-whispered notion. Ahh yes my darlings, so this is next. And this is next.

And this is next.

See a rotted bird misshapen and stuffed with paper, where blood once flowed. A beauty less winged. Let's face it, mean was the new new black.

There is only one revolution that matters for the kids now. Content is king, and The King must die. Pull the breakers, kill the noise and whisper the secret. The data stream flows both ways now Mr. President. It was a time to knock down extremists and joyless victims. The ones right here, and on all the content-addicted profitless advertising mash-houses.

The joy of my heart is that it is not yours, and I welcome one and all who can agree.

Pushed aside, these caustic balmers. A tree was planted here in faith, and one there yonder, seeds of something worth struggling to be a part of. A fruit some of us will never hold. Something flawed and scarred of face. Let us write a character driven script, one that is real because the characters are you and I and then we will burn the script.

Imperfection was the only wager to lay last season. Being wrong about anything was more honorable than being right about everything. Imperfection is the only freedom man can never misappropriate from his brother man.

Call in the kids and show them something hard and gritty and crusted with mud. At great risk of personal humility and a thousand stomp-kicks to the gut, we have to seize the flow. Here we are called but not chosen. Come back to the shadows of an American Dream worth failing for.

It was a season in a strange land. The Vox Machine blew a tube and the greasy smoke chased the novitiates away from the Americanist theocracy of the airways.

Welcome to a last slow sip of hot whiskey from a bottle without a label, before a snowy, cold and dark of night walk home. Laughing all the way. Extremism was for Seal Teams, Motorcylists and guys named Buckley. The rest of us had a thousand generations of desperate bungling to live up to, as we sought to abandon extremism, in everything but art and perhaps the design of machines that go fast.

A lot of people didn't vent for spite or glory. A lot of us had another, more careful intent. People who looked through the blasting electronica, and simply craved a tree-lined path through the din, back to the street called main and the house called home, and the raw and biting honesty of a child's sinless smile.

It was the Year of the Rat.

Ride For The High Country

Letter From America

2008-11-08T10:24:00.004-07:00

Dear former ambassador of Nigeria for petroleum export excise revenue Mbuoto-wigan,

I am hoping this missive finds you and your battered family in good spirits . I am not writing you (this time) to inquire about the $875.00 which was unfortunately and accidently withdrawn from my wife’s checking account during those troublesome days of the confusing oil tariff revenue transfers last year.
I am seeking kindly now your assistance to save my family and my small humble town from the onset of privations and desperate poverty. Thank you for reading my request which will certainly be profitable to you for your compassionate assistance to the nature of 18,000,000 dollars you will receive for reading this email.

I am a simple Internet developer from Scottsdale Arizona, USA. My uncle , Samuel Clemens, was formerly the overnight funds telegram and wire auditor for Lehman USA. As a result of my technical internets experience I was able to see an opportunity to help Samuel remove a legal, fee based percentage of these large quantities of monies from each transfer he made. During the run-up to the collapse of this storied financial institution my office secretary, Mable-Ann and I were able to secretly divert 173,000,000 dollars from these international wire transfers between banks and governments. It was required that this money be placed in a non-us controlled offshore Cuban bank because they do not have relations that allow United States Homeland Security tracking of our transfers.

My Uncle Sam was indicted on false national security charges as a personal vendetta by his corporate overlords who, having seen this money go absent would very much like to steal it from us. He is sequestered without counsel at guano military base in North Dakota awaiting secret tribunal. Mabel-Ann was also killed in an obviously murderous pedestrian light-rail accident as these evil greedy men attempted to use terror to force my beloved Sam to return his own deserved and rightfully acquired money.

My only hope in all of this is to clear my good familie’s name and possibly restore some small amount of services to our impoverished Scottsdale. I am not known to the government or the murderous executives who are involved in the grievous battle for these monies. So I will be safe if I can regain control of them. The problem we have, and what we pray earnestly for your almost trivial assistance with, is that the US is not allowed commercial exchange with Cuba as you well know Minister Mutou. We need a non USA account in a country that will allow wired exchanges with CUBA and the USA for to rescuing this money. In exchange for allowing us to use as many as twenty or thirty five of your family’s private accounts to break up the transfers into less suspicious quantities we will joyously leave for you 10% of these moneys or close to 18,000,000 dollars in acceptable international grade money. All I am asking you to do is provide the accounts numbers for as may of your family’s accounts as possible.

I know that Nigeria has these international wire transfer ability because of the previous arrangements which your murderous foes have still interrupted our good business activities, to our mutual temporary loss. I am thinking this 18,000,000 dollars which will be placed successfully into your accounts by next weekend will be a great aid in helping your own small village as you await the future completion of your own cousin’s oil revenues transfers.

Please I am being so serious you cannot believe it , in good graces help me as I struggle against venomous conspiracy to free my great Uncle Sam and restore basic shopping services to my fellow villagers here in Scottsdale.
If would just send me the accounts numbers and routing for as many accounts as you are able to find trust worthy family members to include in our transfers of this 173,000,000 dollars today we will assuredly be celebrating in great joy and wealth by one week’s time.

Sincereley your previous financial partner
James Tiberius Kirk.

Ride for the High Country

Defending A Pro Obama Media

2008-10-29T17:34:00.005-07:00

All the rasping noise about the media being biased for Obama is annoying the (ex) Cowboy's whiskey-ringing ears. Listen, they do like the guy more, um we all do. And no one should have to apologize for that. But here is the reason why for the frustrated and pundificatory amongst us. Maybe if we write this down now we can save a few million trees from the op/ed pages next week, and just start the drinking early:

Obama is more liked because he is more likeable.

Those hundred thousand people cheering Obama? They don't think he's Jesus, but they know that he is nicer, smarter, calmer, happier, more optimistic, younger, happier nicer and calmer than anyone who has been in power in their young lives.

The GOP guys are bullying, mean, loud, dramatic, frightening, anger-instilling, fear-raising, pessimistic, terrorizing, judgmental, angry, mean and pessimistic. Did I mention angry and mean?

If the GOP had one persona right now it would be a mean old grandpa who has fought a lot of honorable battles but lost most of them really. Old man GOP says the "n" word purposely loud in the store and then pretends he is just to old know better. He grabs the waitress's boob at Outback Steakhouse and he smells funny, in a bad way. If we misspeak he lashes out at us with hurting words of venom and bile. He compels us to act less intelligent than we actually are and he forces us to accept his dogmatic will at every turn. He makes us sit at the kids table. The GOP persona is old crusty and outdated.

The Democrats? They have this actual person who is like a nice younger sibling of our dad. He doesn't brag about battles he has fought - he gets us excited about the battles we are going to fight in the future. He is calm and smart and sophisticated and an optimistic "winner". He listens to us kids and he doesn't talk down to us from his mysterious and enviable place of power. He seems like he will help us be happier.

In fact, he already has.

He's like a more sophisticated version of our parents when they were young. He smiles a lot. At the store he pays for a less fortunate out-of-towner's groceries when they don't have as much as they thought. He welcomes the server at Outback into our conversation. If we say something we didn't think through, he waits for us to clarify our voice. He compells us to be more intelligent than we thought we could be. He insists we all sit at one gloriously awkward table, even the old man and the waitress.

The Republicans have Grandpa Sydney.

The Democrats have Uncle Sam.

Ride For The High Country
The (ex) Cowboy

The Biggest GOP Defection to Obama yet?

2008-10-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

In a mildly surprising turn of events last night Barack Obama received another endorsement from a defecting Republican.

“I am afraid for the country if we don’t elect this guy as soon as possible..” offered the lifetime GOP Stalwart.

“I can’t see any way past the, really the almost stupid reality at this point. The latest increase in venomous negativism from the Palin McCain Campaign has started to break apart whatever remains of America’s ability to be seen as an ethical center for the world and for main street here at home. I mean, look; the race card? Scmidt and Palin and those guys are just about shoving the race baseball bat straight up America's anus at his point. My friends, well, all of my friends are stunned that we have to face any kind of reality here in the GOP. However, it has just gotten to be un-American, un-christian and un-dignified, the way this campaign is being run by the GOP campaign leadership. ”

“Sure, it’s a bit awkward, but let’s face it, our elephant has become an ass and Obama’s inspiration has turned the Democrat’s donkey into this great, sort of national inspirational elephant in the room. So it’s almost, to paraphrse the bible here lightly, it’s like the elephants have become asses and the asses have become elephants”

“I will be handing out these stickers to show my support for the guy. I really hope he wins, it will just provide us, me and my friends a chance to get out from under our fear.”

The Word on the Street

2008-10-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

Apre's le Deluge, Tois (Revising Down Bush)

2008-10-13T16:18:00.002-07:00

(What did you see at the empire, oh Peggy dear?)

Uber neo-con "statesman" John R. Bolton just came out (on the pages of the Murdoch's WSJ, of course) as the first, in a very long line, of Righties waiting for the freedom to flay George W. Bush.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385733887027383.html

Once the term is over the great Bush Cheney loyalty-of-message gag order will no longer apply to the average Republican's free speech. They will scatter in the night, like wounded coyotes, cackling and darting about, nipping now at each other and now at the flames of media spotlight, as they sort through their own bones and ash to seek a new leader for their pack. (More on that later - it is not Newt but he might be from Arizona.)

The moment W. leaves office a new mass movement of revisionism will flood the Republican message machinery. Culpa W., Culpa W., Culpa W., will be the new slogan.

"He was the decider" they will chant,

"He was the blue-urined fool named George. Lead him astray? Mais Non, Monsieur! T'was him, and him alone who dragged us all off this guano-laden sea-cliff.

"We tried." They will claim:

"I tried, don't you see? I tried to warn them to change their course; to proclaim a less certain victory, to reign in the greed. "

"It was him, not us and certainly not me." They will rise again chanting. " W. and the others, they alone attain that terrible tragedy of our failed promise to America.

"Oh yes," They will start wailing soon enough: "HE was flawed and destructive, but THE IDEOLOGY was perfect in every way. It was just misinterpreted, and mis-directed."

A parade of has-beens desperate to stay in the relevancy game are about to start begging off ethical responsibility and establishing political distance from their once proud king. They will say that they were noble but W. was the sole cause of their burn-it-to-rubble failure. The most arrogant among them (and Bolton is number two on that list) will actually argue that they failed because there was not enough zeal, not enough power-taking, not enough elitist manipulation and not enough force in their empirical agenda.

"I was there, yes," they will say, "... but it was not my fault. Neo-Conservative ideology was not to blame it was just ... somehow ... that man, and ... his hypnotic fiddle playing... as the smoke wafted in. "

I can hear it already, a pathos-driven army of weepy eyed false repentants, crying the devil's inexhaustible excuse for failed humanism:

"We didn't know, we didn't know, we didn't know and we couldn't have stopped that madman if we wanted to anyways."

That's all well and good, but drinks are double priced and you'll be buying a LOT of rounds for the house here at the No Name Saloon if you want to become an expatriot Bush loyalist, after-the-fact. Spare me the blah -blah - blah, there's work to be done and whiskey for the survivors, which is you, and you, and you and me together now bub. We were all victims then, and we are all survivors now...

Ride for the High Country

A Day That Will Live in Ignominy

2008-10-01T09:24:00.000-07:00

A Day That Will Live in Ignominy
Sin to Win becomes Pray to Stay
The Old Man and the Sea
The Green Flash

The Sound of train not running
Has been keeping me awake…
- Chris Knight w/ Del McCoury: Moneyland

Yesterday, September 29th, 2008 was a day that will live in ignominy.

It was a barrel of bad whiskey for the American soul, a bonfire of the “vanitas”, a rebellion without applause. It was a double-armada of “Big-Bopper” plane crashes hard into the spotted liver of the American Dream. Like all good plane crashes it was caused by a 500 mile an hour mixture of bad weather and deranged addiction.

The addicts are still stumbling through the smoldering ashes like zombies, many are headless or limbless but they all retained a single finger to point. As with all hard-core junkies their words fail to mask their obvious, light of day desperation for another fix. One party in particular, but both to degrees, have burned down main street as they over dosed on that powerful re-election heroin.

It is about the economy, stupid. Mark the (ex) Cowboy’s words, they were wrong and YOU were wrong. We are all in the smoke now. An army of rusted bagpipes are firing up dirges, but this time the flag may well ride down main street inside the pine box.

Nancy Pelosi is getting (justified) blame for bad leadership but let’s be realistic. The Republican Sin-To-Win machine hit is nadir yesterday. They deployed the Vietnam strategy and are stuck now crying that they had to destroy America in order to save it. The complaint that Nancy Pelosi threw gas on a fire cannot escape a greater truth. The fire in question was a dirty nuclear bomb. 65% of the GOP did not hesitate to place their partisan and personal re-election greed so far ahead of our nation’s security that our future stability is not even visible behind them on the horizon.

The Republicans also managed to destroy their core, and I mean really deepest core, ideology. Which is where you complaining GOP voters get to share some blame. Most Americans remain skeptical that the bailout crisis is real. Most voters, conservatives especially, are unable to process the desperate, massive, terrible downside to the Paulson Plan’s failure. The real intel, as they say, is as bad as bad gets, and no average joe can comprehend it in a day or a week.

I heard a GOP guy at the gym say that we should allow the economy to collapse to teach the other party a lesson. That’s everything you need to hear about Republican patriotism in one sentence. This crisis is not about avoiding a few bad years, kids. The BEST CASE scenario is now that we have the hardest decade in any of our lives ahead.

(Consider this: After recent meetings with Paulson the White House confirmed orders that place forward elements of the 4th Infantry Division on alert for “training” under a Northern Command program to control civil unrest inside the united States.)

This is not a celebrity re-enactment of the great depression, with bottled water and fresh sushi to help us stay the course. This is worse than that, this is the civil war; this is Washington drowning in the Delaware River on that fateful Christmas eve. That hard to accept reality is why the Republicans failed so ominously.

They are the party of representative government. All campaign balderdash about Elitists in the DNC aside, Republicans, by historical definition believe that an elite, educated, informed and upper crust layer of society should control the critical power and leadership. They hold that the masses, the temperamental and emotionally charged mob of the citizenry is not qualified to make life-or-death decisions.

In this case, the GOP abandoned that premise like a wounded dog on a rain swept highway. Congressional Republicans bowed, in slavish election year desperation, before an archetypical case study of a shocked, ill-informed, prejudiced, angry and fearful mob. Everyone who voted “no” yesterday was unpatriotic. This regardless of what Nancy Pelosi said to hurt their little feelings; regardless of what your and my main street sentiment is; Regardless of whether they would get re-elected next month.

The sun also sets tough guy.

Yesterday was the end of the Post 9/11 primacy for the Republican Party. Even if they bring the head of Bin laden home as their “October Surprise”, even if they bomb Natanz, Iran. The (ex) Cowboy watched closely yesterday and saw the great burning orb of Republican fire fall down below the horizon. There was a piercing Green Flash and then only an ear-ringing silence remained.

Ignominy:
(n.) Public disgrace or dishonor; reproach; infamy.
(n.) An act deserving disgrace; an infamous act.

Thanks for letting me Share
Ride for the High Country

A Party Non- Declarative

2008-09-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

The (Ex) Cowboy finds solace in the wind swept prairies of America's less travelled ideological wilderness. There are lonesome nights and cold hard blizzards, but on occasion the (ex) Cowboy remembers why he came out here.

Yesterday, September 29th 2008 was a barrel of bad whiskey for the soul. But it reminded your humble commentator that he chose his political affiliation for a reason. Neither side has lock on being right, or righteous and, neither side is less dangerous when cornered by the ephemeral and ever present greed for election-year success. One side has broken more things lately, yes that us undeniable. But arguing with a sinner, does not make you a saint. Each side is enslaved by the same elective temptations.

Your party is not my church.

Your church is not my religion.

Your religion is not my country.

My country is my Mistress.

My Mistress is not your whore.

My Party is Not Declared.

Thanks for letting me share..

What Would Goldwater Do?

2008-09-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

Charles V ascended his throne after a monumental religious comprimise. He famously intoned:

"Paris is worth a Mass"

The price for Republicans to continue pilfering marginal electoral victories, under Karl Rove's "Thousand Year Campaign", looks like the exact same sell-out. McCain ignored twenty or thirty million Republican primary voters and succumbed to a blackmail deal. Sarah Palin would join his ticket in exchange for getting Megachurch evangelicals to support his candidacy. McCain has been driven to be the President his entire life. He determined that the only way he could win his election was to sell theirPresidency.

(As if the hard-right christians would have voted for Obama..)

The modern conservative movement began with Barry Goldwater fifty years ago. The guy who took over Goldwater's Senate chair just ended it. The White House Republicans will still use the Goldwater brand, but their claim to Goldater's ideological conservatism went out the window with baby Palin's bath-water.

What would Barry say about Palin's religious end-run around 20 million Republican primary voters?

Barry Goldwater went out of his way to have this entered into the public record:

"However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly.

The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate.

I am warning them today:

I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.' "

Senator Barry Goldwater
Congressional Record, September 16, 1981

The (ex) Cowboy knew Barry Golodwater and Sarah Palin is no Barry Goldwater!

Ride for the High Country

Why Sarah Palin #27 ?

2008-09-14T11:37:00.000-07:00

Among the 250 million or so citizens that the secretive power-elite of the Republican machine seeks to manipulate?

Sarah Palin is the easiest for them to control.

Ride For The High Country

Questioning The Media

2008-09-14T11:02:00.000-07:00

Karl Rove's "J'accusism" belligerence is cheap bully-tactic intended to oppress free discussion.

There's only seven words that are out of bounds for political media:

If George Carlin could say it, or ask it, so can journalists.

Sin To Win

2008-09-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

Well I went to church on Sunday, I was feelin’ blue.
Saturday night sat down beside me, in the very last pew.
- The Ambulance Brothers, 2003

(Cowboy's note: This one was written and published during the 2004 election cycle. Apparently American Christian voters have suddenly had their "philosophical" - hunger and lust satiated. A fulfillment was delivered unto them in the form of a speaking-in-tongues, college drop-out with pretend eye glasses named Sarah "barracuda" Palin. You know, "barracuda", like the little fish embalm on the cars?)

Bush and the Republicans rose to power on a platform of religious fervor. The "values" message has been extremist in it’s zeal, but there is a confusing contradiction between their words and their actions. Almost any unchristian act is acceptable, provided it furthers their power and is backed up by properly coded words extolling "family values". The Reagan Revolution has devolved into a surreal pendulum between Sunday Morning Christianity and Saturday Night Sinfulness.

The Sunday Morning Christians of the GOP go to church once a week and say they believe in Christ’s Path. They refresh their dented faith for an hour, set an example for the kids and show the voters they are “clean”. Once they leave the church, however, they carry their political flag forward using acts and deeds that are the very definition of what Christ died to protest.

Rove’s Republicans take the Jesuit doctrine that “The Ends Justify the Means” one step further into the American Democratic experience: They made it heroic to push the limits of Christian behavior in pursuit of more power, more money and more glory. If the ethos of the Republican Party can be boiled down into one of their own simpleton-minded talking points it would be this:

SIN TO WIN.

It worked well for a time, mostly because nothing unifies like prejudice. Being judgemental against other population groups is as easy as it is unsophisticated. It drives the fearful masses like a blizzard drives cattle across the prairie. Now, however, the Republicans face serious election year blowback from the faithful. They built a national chorus of judgmental speaking but it was to polished. The reality of their actions could never match their promise of perfection. Christians are more than mildly concerned. It is suddenly late in the evening of W.'s Presidency and the date that brought him would like to dance.

… Lest ye be Judged

Under the current leadership Republicans openly proclaimed themselves to be the Party of Christ. But lately they are acting like the Party of Caesar. On Sundays they gleefully rouse the pitchfork and torch crowd, under the guise of Christ’s Path. But on Saturday night they trade, sell, conspire, deal, abuse power and ignore truths in a way that would make even the Romans bow in awe. (See "The Party of Dog" entry below.) They define themselves at every issue and every contrived moral crisis by what they are against. They proudly destroy any people (christian or otherwise) who disagree with them or any idea that threatens their power.

I have enormous faith in my heart. I believe Christ walked the earth. I have only ever wanted to ask him one thing: How can so many intelligent people be so loyal to you with their words and yet so sadly faithless to the key details of behavior that you died to espouse? I see the fish icons and the W. bumper stickers on rows of SUVs at the churches in our neighborhood each Sunday. I see them on the road on Monday and I wonder:

Why don’t you drive like a Christian?

I was raised to believe that Christian ethics are very, very simple: You determine what is right and what is easy. You do what is right and not what is easy. You suffer the discomfort, or rewards, of your choice as God has chosen for you. You move on down the path.

I was a Reagan independent. (I also recall that Reagan defeated a devote Christian.) I am sad that the GOP has grown away from Reagan's gentle but resolute faith in all Americans. They turned the party into a vitriolic marketing machine that brands faith in Christ like pro sports brand cheap beer. The Republicans of this era carry the same great cross of the ages before them in their march. They wave the same large, crisp flag of patriotism. But the only devotion they show in their deeds and works is to make sure that someone else is riding the cross this time up the hill.

Thanks for playing.

Ride for the High Country

America's Palin Problem

2008-09-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

Senator McCain suddenly looks like he has ten weeks to live eight weeks before the election. That gives American Democracy a bigger Palin problem than anyone has yet figured out how to address without a Karl Rove "J'accusism" attack.

The problem Palin gives America is that she has not ever received a single national vote for any federal office and she has never served in any sworn (military) or Senate confirmed command chain position. If McCain is elected, Palin will have no legitimate claim to having earned any of their ticket's votes specific for her candidacy for the Presidency.

Of all the VPOTUS names in contention now, or nearly every other historical contest since Washington was elected it is un-paralleled for such an inexperienced person to be considered without having a single federal vote or previous peer-reviewed, confirmed or promoted-under-oath command service. The "experience question" people are dealing with in comparing her to Obama is pretty simple, even for an ex Republican to do the math. He has 25 or 35 million votes in his column and she has zero.

That's right I am saying it out loud and Karl Rove be damned. McCain looks like he won't live through his first year, let alone the next eight.

The GOP/ Rove machine has all but admitted that she's dumber than a fish. They announced today that she will not do ANY unscripted media interviews before the election. She's going to be an unelected, unselected, un-vetted, untrained, un-stable, barely educated President from dim-wit Idaho. Her ascendancy would probably be the 4th or 5th most delicate and critical moment in American Presidential history. She would be an unelected President without a single pre-September loyalist in Washington. Not a single Vote. Never been background checked for a basic federal security clearance.

There's outside the beltway, there's outside Democracy itself and there's outside rational balance. McCain's impulsive, age-addled Palin nomination choice is beyond the perimeter fences on all counts.

Thanks for letting me try and share my thoughts...

RIde for the High Country

Hurricane G. and the Pregnant Pause

2008-09-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

suspiscious minds are talking
they're tryin' to tear us apart
they don't believe in this love of mine
they don't know what love is
I know what love is, and baby?
you can leave your hat on.
--Randy Newman (Sung by Joe Cocker)
(On iTunes)

Regarding the Hurricane, McCain was quoted in Phoenix as saying:

"We need to take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats"

The Cowboy invites them to stay under their American hats for a while.

Indeed, perhaps if Republicans could put their "American hats" on, for something, anything less political than an election-year, convention-week, post Katrina hurricane hitting Texas and Louisiana, they would not be the most distrusted, unsupported and despised political machine in United States History.

Well, and they might get some down-time to consider this advice, for the next four years or so. Now that their surprising VPOTUS choice has a surprising choice of her own to make by Wednesday:

Does she stay home to help her 17 year old daughter raise the child she is pregnant with. (Said pregnancy Mrs. Palin hid from the GOP investigators.) Or, does Mrs. Palin continue campaigning for VPOTUS and thus demonstrate that her moral high ground is an island. One which doesn't have room for her kids when the dirt hits. It is a tough choice that affects many, many families.

The good christian ones don't hide an underage pregnancy from a front-running POTUS candidate and then pretend it's just another day for a zealous pro-famiy campaigner.

Ride for the High Country

The Price of Tea in St. Paul

2008-08-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/30/rnc.protest/index.html
police temporarily detained and photographed at least 50 people who were inside the building.
St. Paul Police spokesman Tom Walsh said they were executing a search warrant.
"The cause for the search warrant is not public at this time," Walsh said.
As many as 30 police officers entered with guns drawn, according to witnesses in the building

What young people stand for is generally ill-informed, misguided and meaningless in these affairs, yet no greater threat to our freedom exists than telling them they are not allowed to stand for it.

Freedom of speech used to be real in the United States. It is just a campaign metaphor now, a faded dream of misty plateaus with one horned rainbow goats and Ronald Reagan standing fifty feet tall. Secret terror raid? Guns up, against teenage dissenters?

For freedom to be real, the young must be able to throw the odd egg or two, break a window, yell across the street and then run back home to rejoin their more timid young peers. Indeed, that egg is the vessel in which we deliver liberty to our descendants. When we bar the egg, we trumpet for the musket...

Those peers are the ones who will eventually be judges and scholars, and Reagan-esque leaders. They will know in their maturity, that freedom can only ever be guided by people who have worn an egg on their lapel. Those leaders will never admit how much it empowered their future, when they saw that the geeky little Jones boy, from the back of the class, had a carton of eggs hidden in his locker. And one was missing.

Democracy is born anew, and only sees light during that dangerous, adrenaline-surged moment when the egg cannot be recalled to the hand; when the smoke bomb sizzles; when the miss-spelled banner unfurls before live cameras. Speeches are just poems about freedom - freedom itself is the electric moment when a trembling young man watches as the crates of tea turn, and roll and drift slowly out on the pre-dawn tide.

Ride for the High Country

The Cowboy Gets One Right!

2008-08-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

Your humble ex-Cowboy blasts his analytical six-guns across the political landscape many times each day, without piercing the beer can so to speak. So when he even nicks a target he is tempted to exaggerate the accomplishment:

There is one prominent idea that has been repeated over and over in these articles for the past two years. This is the analysis that that the candidate who wins the next election will probably have a Western, Red State, Moderate or conservative, Female Governor on the ticket in order to prevail.

McCain has one now. Obama does not. It's a lot less of a gamble than the first wave of punditronic reaction is suggesting it is. It is really one of the most calculated decisions either side has yet made.

Ride for the High Country

The Cowboy Moved

2008-08-27T16:14:00.004-07:00

Your Humble (ex) Cowboy moved to Elect-O-Rama for the 2008 general election season//

http://www.electorama.blogspot.com/

Ride for the High Country

The Platform You Wish You Could Vote for

2008-08-26T10:27:00.000-07:00

Let's face it tough guy, partisan America is no intellect's wet dream for human freedom. On the one hand, The average Republican wouldn't cross party lines even if Hitler was their candidate (and he may have been recently.) On the other hand, Organizing Democrats is like using landfill trash to build a skyscraper: All the material is there, and for half the price, but you'll never bring it together into anything that actually works.

Everybody talks about sacrifice, but nobody shows up early with an empty backpack to haul rocks. Here is a platform that won't please everyone, but everyone will see that it builds something better for America's future. Are you so patriotic that you want to prove it with a gun? Maybe you should prove it with a compromise instead...

The Ten Essentials of True American non-partisan value-Voting.

1) Let's Stop The Killing and Stop Killing.

Let's ban public support for abortion AND the death penalty and get on with anything else that matters. They are both a kill job. And no, sorry, but it is NOT more complicated than that (for now). Texas will become overpopulated from both ends in nine months but so what? Catholics can live by their sword, so to speak, for a change and everyone else can go to Canada or Mexico until we elect a female President. The later event sure to be in the next cycle, since American elections will no longer be enslaved by the 5% of the country and 1% of the voters who actually care about this "hot button" issue.

2) Let's Save the Planet AND Drill for Oil.

We'll Mandate a 100% smokestack scrubbing and pollution filtering implementation on EVERY coal and Fossil Fuel burning power plant in America AND allow drilling in the arctic, or the sands of Yuma, or under the Fresh Kills landfill or anywhere else T. Boone Pickens can get a derrick built.

We are a few busloads of crying indian chiefs * past saving the caribou at this point, kids. It's come down to saving the humans (and maybe some soylent green for food.) Scrubbing our coal fired generating stations' carbon and sulphur and nitrogen etc... exhaust will deliver the most significant reversal of the GCC causing pollution possible from America. The scrubbing requirement will also raise the price of energy so much that we won't be able to afford to buy gas. This will eliminate the demand for arctic oil anyways.

Maybe we can move on this before moderates, like your humble (ex)-Cowboy, start eyeing the pitchfork and torches and wondering at what point George Washington would want to change greenpeace to greenwar if he were alive today.

3)Let's run destructive lenders out of town on a rail.

We'll cap credit card and all other legal lending charges, interest and fees combined, at 4 times the Federal Rate (apr) for the total duration of the loan.

There's no trade-off here. What could you trade for ending the most institutionally corrupt and destabilizing blanket that Wall Street (and Ohio) has ever pulled over America's eyes? Predacious loan charges cost consumers more money than three hurricane Katrinas a year. We borrow from the bank, the bank borrows from the fed and the fed borrows from China and Suadi Arabia. Do you think American foreign policy might be affected by the fact that Saudi Arabia is our 4th largest debtor? We owe them one Katrina a year, just in interest.

4) Let's ban deviance and allow love.

We'll ban internet pornography and allow gay marriage. Internet Sex is a hell of a lot more deviant than Gay Love. There's no forced morality conflict with employer benefits, either; because of number 8 below.

State supported interstate infrastructure carries the internet, so we can regulate it just like we can tv, trucking and whiskey. We don't allow sewage in our tax funded drinking water lines - let's ban the display of erect penises, and Hot Milf Action on the little screens we replaced tv with. Then we can all go back to work and get some @!$%# done in America. Not to mention we will stop creating sex addicts who commit savage crimes of depravity every other day or so. If we can ban smoking in the workplace we can ban Beating-Off there as well. And if it makes Ellen funny again, like she used to be, that'll just be a bonus.

5) Let's defeat the illiterate savages AND teach our own kids how to read.

Let's institute a 6 year Military Draft in exchange for allowing parents to deduct ALL of their kid's college tuition and fees from their taxes. And if the CEO, or corporation in number 8 wants a tax break - they can write off 100% of their tuition paying grant (not loan) contributions. But let's roll this out yesterday, 'cause the savagery is already dire.

We need the draft. It sucks but we do. It's a simple priority. The Russians will be in Damascus by next Easter unless we get another quarter-million Kill Generation boys onto the playground. Right now, an entirely new and additional, Marine Division (Heavy) is more important for our security than making sure that no one sneaks a pocket knife on a Jet Blue flight to Kingston, Jamaica.

Look at it this way: We are all gonna die sometime. A few of us when an over-worked Air Marshal shoots out a window at 29,000 feet over Nebraska, a few of us crouched behind an Army-rejected Humvee on the road to Khandahar. Let's "Embrace the Suck".

If we really want Freedom itself to live on after us, we need more guys who can pierce a foot-mobile target from 250 yards, off-hand, while wearing 75 pounds of combat schwag and getting yelled at through the earpiece by a limp-dicked college-boy Lieutenant.

Being the strongest tribe is meaningless if you are also the smallest one. We need more shooters in the game, and, since we also could use more American born employees who can learn to program in Fortran or that " C++" gibberish, or even, god forbid HTML, this is what we have to do.

We can pay for these two activities, and then some, by reducing the Air Force budget by 25%. The entire Marine Corps costs the same as a single wing of Joint Tactical Fighters. Guess which one is actually fighting the war on terror? The swing-state Air National Guards from Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan can probably defend us against a simultaneous attack by every foreign tactical aviation threat that currently exits. it is a chance worth taking - because only a Marine division can pacify Fallujha.

6) Let's lower corporate tax rates AND collect more corporate taxes.

A five year moratorium on ALL Corporate tax breaks in exchange for a reduction to a 12% flat rate for all companies of any size. Really, this idea cannot possibly be worse than the criminally disfunctional corporate-industrial-congressional love fest of fiscal corruption we have now inside our failed GDP.

Let's try it for a few fiscal years and see what happens. My guess - more real money for Congress to waste, less accounting costs for tax evasion and an end to one of the "thousand points of @!$%#e" of corrupted congressional tax-break gridlock. It will cost Wall Street far less to pay the massively simplified and reduced, one page, flat-rate than what they currently spend to lobby, lie, cheat and steal their way through the existing five thousand page corporate tax code.

7) Let's eat better AND exercise more.

We'll Place a 5 cent per-serving non-negotiable tax on anything containing partially hydrogenated oil OR high fructose corn syrup AND use the proceeds exclusively to fund a reinstatement of public school Physical Education programs. We are stupidly fat and it is embarrassing. We eat food made in refineries. Do you enjoy knowing in your teens that you will definitely have cancer in your forties? The prisoners of Russia's gulag were provided healthier food than middle class America is, (and they exercised more.)

8) Let's pay higher wages and spend less on payroll.

Raise the Minimum Wage 4 dollars in exchange for terminating all mandated benefits that employers are required to provide. While we are beating down corporations, let's do allow them a fighting chance to create some new jobs where it matters - in small and mid sized entrepreneurial companies.

Let's make payroll taxes flat rate, payable quarterly and, allow companies to pay more in real wages instead of having to manage complicated benefit, pension and other commie bull-crap safety nets for their employees. Most pension and benefit money is eaten by corrupt unions, ponzi-scheme brokerage houses and management expenses before we retire anyways.

You wanna a good retirement plan? Stop betting on rigged American sports every weekend, or buying Internet-order shoes if you are woman. Get an E-trade account, set up an automatic 100 dollar a month deposit into a index fund. You'll be a millionaire in 25 years.

Unless you are a coal miner, a cop or a lettuce picker, your union is a macro-economic wrench in the gears of American productivity. Stop whining, buy a coffee can and a shovel to manage your own benefits plan, and go back to work. And you corporate big shots - you want to get paid in stock options? Fine but the company has to expense them and you have to pay that same 14% tax every year, no exceptions.

9) That planet thing. Again.

Lets save the planet AND re-build our lost global power AND create a new, generation-long economic expansion. The currrent plan to spend 10 % of our (borrowed) national budget to go back to the moon is the dumbest public science alchemy in the entire history of knowing stuff. Climate change is real, and if you don't believe fossil fuel use is bad for us, you can spend an hour in your garage with the engine running and call us back. Let's get off the dime on this thing in a way we all know we are good at, and that we all know will be good for the economy.

Let's subsidize the biggest pork-barrel jelly roll in American history, in order to save the Planet!

We will re-name NASA the National Aerospace and Science Administration. Put them in charge of all the public science agencies and task them with "Ensuring the highest probability of habitable environmental stability for the next 5 generations of the Human Race". Let's order up an economic stimulus that drives technology, capital wealth, national security and international status on the scale of the Marshall Plan. But this one's for us, baby!

Even Dick Cheney can understand that seizing technological control of the planet's entire oxygen supply will go a long way towards returning our lost great power status. We can even make Haliburton the prime contractor.

10) That's it, actually.

We need to do more with less and our platform is no exception. We need to stop paying for ten things when we only need nine.

*someone please say you remember the crying indian commercials...: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1QQWJK_OUk

2008-06-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

Obama's Seal of Approval

2008-06-25T14:37:00.004-07:00

The (ex) Cowboy studiously avoids American news television. So I missed this hullaballo about Obama's Seal. There is one unanswered question about the Great Seal fiasco that I am surprised no one is asking.

The whole thing came out of left field, like a car accident in the night rain. It was all to weird for immediate comment.

Was it a twisted and nerve-brushing portent of the same kind of reckless delusion of POTUS ascendancy that sunk HIllary like a lazy mule off a swift-water ferry?

Was it merely a human moment of bad humor and even worse graphic design prowess?

Your humble (ex) Cowboy went after the WHOLE STORY , the INSIDE SCOOP with the discipline and work ethic of a, well of a noon-drunk, knee-strained ex mountaineer. I started looking in every nook, and speaking with inside sources ..and ...and

WHAT THE HELL?

WHO MISSED THIS?

Someone at NYT should be FIRED BEFORE DARK!

(Ex) Cowboy has it:

THE POLITICAL SCOOP OF THE SUMMER BLOODING SEASON:

Excuse me, um, sorry for that outburst. I'm alright now. I just get freaked when two thousand self-appointed political hack pundits all miss the most obvious, important and interesting election story of the week.

I Know that TR suddenly fled the earthly realm, and it was a distraction from the remaining few outposts of serious whiskey-and-truth journalism left standing; but, um really. Did you guys ALL miss this nutkicking bombshell?

Anyway, Thusly. Allow your humble (ex) Cowboy to be the first to ask the only question that matters regarding The Obama Seal Story:

WHY WAS VPOTUS LONG-SHOT JANET NAPOLITANO SEATED AT OBAMA'S RIGHT HAND DURING THE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR"S MEETING!?!

Ha.

Ride for the High Country!
The (Ex) Cowboy

The long Road Home From Birmingham

2008-06-06T09:54:00.004-07:00

The primaries showed that the U.S. is actually the nation we had believed it to be.
• Minoru Morita, Japanese analyst.

… the choice is between the right change and the wrong change; between going forward and going backward….The right change recognizes that many of the policies and institutions of our government have failed. …
• John McCain

These words are the starting gun for the long homestretch to November. If you believe in the Idea of America, without prejudice or cranky- political bias, well, then something your humble (ex) Cowboy told an aggressive salesman last December seems clear: We already know who the next POTUS will be. This campaign is about nothing other than getting used to it.

That is not an opinion based on personal desire or partisanship. Though many will assume it is. This is simple observation. It comes from humble commentator who sees Obama as an unoriginal, paraprahsing tent-show preacher. Who thinks the entire Obama campaign is nothing more than exactingly paraphrased and concisely rendered “cover song” presentations of Martin Luther King Jr. speeches. Who hears intonations and deliveries that are specifically, meticulously crafted to follow the rhythm of MLK with a bit of JFK’s brain trust speech-writing thrown in and Ronald Reagan’s precisely positioned photographers just down and left of the "Obama chin".

We’ve heard this Idea of America stuff before. It is kind of annoying to the (Ex) Cowboy how unoriginal it is. In the end however, it is undeniable how powerful and good this preaching is for the Reality of Americans and America's place in the world.

We have all heard this emo-speak dreaming nonsense about the Idea of America before. We heard it from equaly inexperienced politicians and less-proven leaders than Obama. We heard it from the first Muslim-named President: Abraham. We heard it from the “October Surprise” consiprator: Ronald. We heard these very words from an activist now known to have plagiarized most of his Doctoral thesis: The Reverand (Dr.) Martin Luther King Junior.

The Rhetorical link between MLK, (or for that matter; Reagan, or Lincoln) and Barack Obama is a real as we want it to be. Believers in the Idea of America, coming from both parties, should want that link to be direct, strong and openly discussed. The Idea of America’s Promise took a midnight flight to Birmingham 45 years ago. Reagan sheltered the idea with great honor but he did not bring it back home. Barak Obama can bring it back home.

Thanks for Playing

The (Ex) Cowboy

The Coming Doom (Part II)

2008-05-31T08:31:00.002-07:00

When the Levee Breaks (I’ll have no place to stay)

I guess the point of these two shabby essays, is for your humble (Ex) Cowboy to explore the thin line between realistic concern and angry fearful complaining. There is no shortage of either in America. A recent article about how people in Idaho are grabbing their guns and heading for their bunkers hit a nerve. Sure, let’s be weary - but let’s have some perspective as well.

Someone commented on Part I (The Dirty Bomb Martini) that my optimism and faith in humanity must make me a Bush supporter. That is typical behavior for a “sayer”. Sayers know what is right, or more typically, what is wrong with America. They think talking about great big things excuses them from doing good little things. It is an epidemic, and neither party has a monopoly on sayers.

As far as the Bush thing, you will have to dig around here in my blog for the truth about my leanings. Until you have done so, please don’t waste time by blathering your assumptions about the Cowboy's views.

The sayers are all about greatness. They are full of spittle about the greatness of their America, the greatness of their church, the greatness of their political leaders, the greatness of their home places. Then, of course, they are obsessed with the wrongness, the stupidity and the sinfulness of everyone who disagrees with them when it comes to any specific concern. Everything is either Greatness or Doom for the sayers.

Before you develop certainty about what I am so wrongheaded about, let’s agree that there really is frightening change in the fabric of our entire socio-economic stability now. Let’s reconsider a few well known recent circumstances:

• Malfeasance by The Corps of Engineers facilitated a flood event that displaced 700,000 - 1,000,000 people. Most of the hardest hit were impoverished African Americans who were abandoned during the flood in survival conditions by a moral and practical collapse of government response.

• Mideast conflicts and fears of wider war and terrorism centered in Iran and Iraq, along with greed-driven speculation, caused a major spike in oil and gas prices. The price of oil doubled in a few short months causing a great shock of inflation, and contributing to an ongoing real estate downturn.

• No other administration in history has faded in such paralysis and discredit. The President is without credible policy impetus at home or abroad, openly shunned by the international community, and stymied by loss of majority control of the congress. Popular support for a sitting President has never been worse. In the upcoming election the incumbent party can only appeal for votes on the implicit ground that the next administration will be totally unlike the one in office. In a year of deepening economic downturn the nation suffers a crisis of confidence unmatched in our history.

• Pushing against the barriers of prejudice, a woman and a Black Man share the liberal party’s nomination for Presidency to run against the Republican. The tensions caused by moral prejudice have never been more delicate.

Are times worse for us, or are we softer as we face them? The (Ex) Cowboy just doesn’t claim to know. The (ex) Cowboy is not certain about very much. We do know that twenty million people live in a world where a plastic sheet between their children and the sun, or rain is a luxury. So this (Ex)-cowboy is just gonna keep trying to do good things, instead of say great ones. We are not doomed, but we are going to have some long days.

The center is strong, quiet and mighty in America. The center is not great - but it is very good. America is good, churches are good, political discussion is good, our home place is good, our faith in ourselves is good. The center is doing good little things, instead of arguing about great big ones. In this (Ex) Cowboy’s humble view, America is no more, (or less) great then ever, and no more (or less) doomed. The opportunity to choose between saying great and doing good has never been larger.

While you are seething at my shortcomings you can go over to wikipedia and look up the events I listed above. By and large they are forgotten stories, but the people involved seem fascinating. They must have wondered if the country would survive. After each of these cycles a new wave of entrepreneurs, respected political leaders and self made doers raised human goodness from the dust of failed greatness. Good triumphed over great.

The Great Mississippi flood of 1927.
The second Great Oil Crisis (1978)
President Grant (1869-1877)
Victoria Woodhull and Frederick Douglass (1872)

Thanks for Playing

The (Ex) Cowboy

The Coming Doom Part I

2008-05-28T12:18:00.007-07:00

The Wake Up Call

There is this swelling sentiment in America that we almost need a little Armageddon times – just to prove Armageddon times are really coming. There are a few variations, but they all contain the phrase “Wake Up”. As in: we need to “wake up” to the coming doom. The specific peril itself is usually terrorism, but it can also be economic ruin, political collapse, race war, something vague about Mexico. Bird flu is in there occasionally.

My favorite variation is what I have come to call the Dirty Martini Bomb…

This is when you give an otherwise reasonable, sane wealthy white American man two Martinis and let the conversation drift towards politics. This eventually slips out: “Well, We need another attack to wake us up.” Or, as Rumsfeld was quoted just last week:

“This President's pretty much a victim of success….The correction.., I suppose, is an attack."

Yes Professor, I think a modest dose of terror just now would do wonders for us.

I’ve personally heard at least four millionaires ape this same line after a martini or two in the past six months. Always Martinis and always a dirty nuke. It is tempting righteousness, but it just doesn’t pass this Ex-Cowboy’s offal-detector.

You wanna talk Armageddon times? Let’s go back to our roots, and our religious lore. Let’s talk floods Jed. Whatever tribulating doom-blast you favor is easy to prepare for. Just replace the word “flood” below, with your disaster of choice, and you will be among those who survive to re-populate a more righteous democratic utopia.

America might not need anything really, but if we do it is something like a “Go Right Now Bag” for the soul. This is what should be in it:

• A Prescribed Dose of reality, Jack. The Dirty Martini Bomb premise is as brain-fouled as you could ever hope to become, and still have a college degree. I mean think about it: Do we need another flood to prepare us for the next big flood?

• A sense of driving hope and optimism that life has enough value to justify half an hour a year to awkwardly discuss with your family and plan realistic options for the flood that will probably never happen. Teach your kids the science of weather, so they know what a flood is. (And plan on the phones not working at all.)

• Swimming Lessons. Seriously, you live in New Orleans? It’s sixteen feet below sea level, the ocean is rising, and you don’t know how to swim? Your Armageddon experience will be easier on you and your overworked rescuers if you spend a few hours a week shaping up your body and getting some basic awareness of the surroundings you will be hunkered in. Nobody shot their way through their roof after New Orleans: Sell the pistol - buy an axe.

• A Hero Story. Ex-cowboy grandfather-in-law was everything good about an American man, in one shirt. He dammed a western river, shot it out with cowboys, even played minor league ball with Jackie Robinson. He was elected sheriff and got a killer to surrender, confess and ask him to walk him to the chair. (I never knew of him to drink a martini.) He often said; “you can tell a hero story or you can tell a victim story.” Are you a millionaire who worries about the coming flood? Maybe you could put something else where your mouth is. Some carefully thought-out advertising for flood awareness might help more than a "wake-up" flood. Look what that skinny bicycle guy did for cancer...

• Love for thy Neighbor. Seriously now, who are you going to shoot with that pistol? An anonymous black man who manages to swim from fifty blocks away, or the gangly Shimfield boy whose parents never made it home from work? Put the things on this list in your “go “ bag and then make sure the neighbors see it as often as possible. Don't talk small about big things - act big about small ones. Can you cook for the neighborhood, perform emergency medicine, build a shelter from busted stuff, or grow food in a hurry? Any two of these skills will get you appointed the first new mayor rubbleville. That pistol will only make you the lonely dictator of your own attic.

This ran long, so I’ll break it up. Stay tuned for another way to think about how bad it could get before it’s as bad as it could get….

Thanks for playing

The (Ex) Cowboy
www.blogspot.blogofacowboy.com

Word of the Day at the Addictionary!

2008-05-23T11:10:00.003-07:00

The Cowboy is pleased to announce that his entry was chosen as a prestigious "Word of The Day"
at the Political Addictionary:

Read all about it:

Pissenfranchised:

(noun)Democratic voters who threaten to cross party lines to cast their ballot if the candidate they support does not win the nomination

http://political.addictionary.org/

Debatcle

2008-04-17T13:33:00.013-07:00

A Vox On Your House
The Ghost of Peter Jennings
ABC Political Unit presents: "The Not"
Checkers has left the building

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Emergency byline note to Any Editor:
The top three concerns rattling the Citizenry are listed here in order:
Global Pollution/GCC/Climate Disaster
The Economy
The Economy
(Tie pins and angry black gospel preachers didn't make the list)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

An Open Letter To ABC News,

cc: Clinton Campaign

Dear ABC News,

Regarding the recent debate you hosted:

REALLY?

We "get" that George Stephanopoulos is one of the last, bunker dwelling heavy Clinton Loyalists. We assumed he will be blatantly supportive of the Clinton Campaign's desperate win or-burn-the-nation-down strategy. We accept this, in moderation, for giving us something other than Fox News to read and watch.

We "get" that the media handed Obama the nomination in November and December. You failed to see the rise of a vast and powerful wave until it crested. You fell into a role last fall as pansy-soft adulators of the Movement instead of journalistic investigators of the Man. We watched it in fact, so we "get" what went down.

We "get" that ABC is flummoxed by the new media world. Journalism is (still) dead and an Australian zealot runs the media business table in the U.S. Peter Jennings death was a personal and an American Tragedy to us much as you. Apparently, our love and respect of his honorable efforts were greater than yours all along. His passing has marked the end of Journalism in the U.S. It confuses you editorially, and we understand, we remain flexible on it. For a while...

We "get" that the ABC political Unit and specifically; "The Note", WAS the best political media center in American History. That was last time around though. M.H. is gone to a better gig. We "get" that in Mark's shadow you are bit lost, and confused. Even if you ARE less objective or less substantive than the average false-science blog from global warming deniers or Pharmaceutical P.R. campaign, we give you some slack.

We "Get" the backstory context more than you seem to realize. Our "intel" is actually better than yours most days (hint, we read "the wires" online). So, we "get" the nuances of the New Media; your "news" editor's motivations; the pressures you face; economic, political and even from verbally abusive individual superpower egos. We understand these things make you nervous and mistake prone. We are patient and forgiving, after all we are pretty much on the same side, and it is important we ALL start getting some of the big stuff right again, A.S.A.P.

But that "debate" thing last night?

OMG, WTF, AYFKM?

Really?

Is this really how you wanted to manage the last debate between Barack "The Rock" Obama and Hillary "Going Down The Road Feeling Bad" Clinton? Wow. This is hard to tell you but, um, the thing is, er, to paraphrase The Captain:

We Can't Get Behind That!

We might be able to arrange a "do over" but we should talk about some things first, in private, you dig? We will start with general things, like what color the sky is here on the home planet, and the scientifically observed phenomena of a chicken running in circles and dancing in apparent glee in April long after it's head was been chopped off by the farmer, back in December.

We invite you to join us at the Adult Table. Come on over and face the realities with more, um, sanity and stuff. You know, the way WE have to. Just leave the red and blue colored cool-aid over there with the scary clowns, and edible glue, and join us for a minute. That's it, just sit quetly here with us, and if you must interrupt, please, we insist, use your words.

We think it is childish and dangerous for our future as a quasi-free empire that you have abandoned reality with this outburst. We are disturbed by the depth of your witless shock as you wake up to the new political landscape. It is pretty chaotic, sure but here's our concern: You put us in this position with your painfull absence from the campaign trail last fall. You failed in November and December to do YOUR JOB. If we may we be so bold, from out here in the greylands of Middle America, you failed in your sacred editorial DUTY. We let it slide. But we have to hold you accountable now, going forward.

You will be getting a lot, like maybe 100,000, emails for this "Debatcle". They are symbolic, you only have to read this one. Put it on the damned bulletin board above the pretty rainbow crayon pictures, please. Here is the important stuff:

You can't go back in time and change it now. We have to face this weird shit and we sort of need you to face it with us.

Your Christmas list said "Anybody But Bush" (as it has for the last eight years) and Santa brought a Black Man for POTUS. We understand this makes you uncomfortable from a certain pro Clinton P.O.V. It freaks us out to, but it is done and we are gonna be good with it. We are the people, we have to be good with it.

You have simply got to stop going cry-baby freak-out in public like this. And we aren't asking. This latest public display of affectations scared the children, or scarred them, or both. Now wet-himself grandpa is even talking about taking over again. So we just want to say one thing as clearly as humanly possible to your childish ears:

KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF!

Thanks, sorry.

Obama DID win it all in November and December and nothing any of (us) who wanted HIllary to win can change that now. It is strange, weird and painful, but undeniable. Supporting Hillary today, the way ABC blatantly allowed George S. to do in this recent debate is the same dis-service to reality that you profer by allowing voice to science-deniers in the Global Climate discussions. Editorially, your oddball bias is, well professionally suspect, as H. herself is of late with her Clinton-At-Any Cost psycho endgame...

The only story here is the sad, dangerous and dishonorable fall of MY OWN PREFERRED POTUS candidate: Hillary Clinton.

And the end of all journalism, if that matters to you.

Go back to the kids' table now, and try to hold it together for us in public. Remember, were are strong or weak as a family!

Thanks for playing,

blogofacowboy.blogspot.com

The Lost Art of Taking One For The Team

2008-03-10T10:42:00.004-07:00

The Ones Who Show Up
Drunks at the Wheel
The Silence of The Hams
Taking one For The team

Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great.
Cher

A few weeks ago, the Democrats had a “Clinton Problem”.

The American media is like a mad party bus driven by a whiskey crazed deaf-mute. This half-drunk chauffeur, who leads public perception, had swerved slowly into incoming traffic since the beginning of this primary cycle. Hillary was in the headlights coming the other way. There has been a great sudden lurching now, drinks have been spilled, celebratory song has been interrupted. As is so often the case, history is being made while assumptive victors are weakend by their own vanity.

Until just a week or so ago, it was obvious that Hillary had a choice between smashing her political career, head-on into the Obama-hypno-media bus, or doing everyone the favor of withdrawing and thus plowing her own wagon off the road, into the dark snowy forest beyond the headlines. Guess who decided to stand her ground?

Recently, the media woke up to something critical: There may be some truth to Clinton’s ongoing complaints that Obama is just a glorified “idea man”, without any meaningful experiential education in matters of delicate politics and forceful moves. The Clinton campaign has, by chance or by design, forced Democrats and the media to test Obama’s personal (not his team’s) abilities under fire. He appears to be hiding behind the sandbags of his 100 delegate lead.

THE MATH is important, and Obama is not counting. Hillary knows she cannot win the delegates required to secure the nomination. Everyone has known this since last month. In seeking a path to victory she has realized the greater truth of this situation. As long as she is campaigning hard for her predictable 45 – 55% of the primary voters, Obama might not secure enough delegates to win either.

In the fog of this recent battle, Clinton herself responded to her flagging campaign’s direction. SHE seized the Message and by doing so SHE seized the media as well. She is risen, as they say, to challenge Obama directly for control of the contest. She is challenging Obama by being more Presidential than he is: She is suddenly more sophisticated, more aggressive, more effective and far more willing to accept strategic defeats towards a tactical victory.

What no one knows how to admit yet, is that Hillary is the only Democrat with a solution to the self-destructive end game of this locked primary. She has tried to offer it up as delicately and as professionally as any President has ever offered any international or domestic political deal in history. The Obama camp, by it’s silence and non-response, has failed to show that the big man can stand alone and above his staff of adulators, to be a decider under fire.

Sure, the background is full of the sound of breaking glass and crunching metal. The drunk chauffeur called “the media” has started to wail in ecstatic embrace of it’s own deconstructive ability. But battles are loud by nature. The great leaders separate the giant sounds from the little pieces of iron flying around. Hillary is on the battlefield herself now. Like so much of Hal Moore in the Ira Drang, Hillary has moved beyond that awful emotional inconvenience of being surrounded and outnumbered by a robust enemy. She is commanding her forces.

Obama is deep in his bunker. He seems resigned to that uninspired tradition of depending on repeated tactical assaults, with no strategic endgame vision. He has to close the deal now in order to achieve true victory. Hillary is giving him a choice, as clear and obvious as the sky is blue:

COMMIT TO MAKING ME YOUR VICE PRESIDENT OR I WILL SACRIFICE MY CAREER TO DESTROY YOUR ADVANTAGE OVER McCAIN!

The pressure Obama faces now, is nothing compared to the shrug-off treatment Hillary received during November, December and January. Still, he is running out of time to emerge from his eroding shelter and make a deal to be the Strategic Victor. Sure, he wants to make Napolitano as his VP. She is smarter and a better leader than either Obama or Hillary after all. But this contest might result in another white male POTUS unless someone takes one for The Team, and soon.

It is time for someone to show some metal. Maybe Janet has to step forward and throw herself on the line by convincing Obama to agree to Hillary’s childishly obvious but as yet unheard offer. Hillary has decided the battle: Make me your confirmed VPOTUS now or we are all going to get wiped out

A supposedly great leader as Barack Obama shouldn't need his underlings to sell him on this tough but obvious decision. It is so simple an (ex) Cowboy can figure it out. The truth is, if he is half the man he claims to be with his MLK borrowed rhetoric, he MUST prove it by standing above his staff’s reluctance to concede anything to Hillary. And if Janet figures this out soon enough, she can thrust herself into a favorable national presence by being the one who makes the deal work.

The Democrats suddenly have an "Obama Problem". Janet N. might be the only one who can resolve it. Obama himself doesn't seem to understand it.

Thanks for Playing

Girl In The War

2008-03-05T12:14:00.006-07:00

Peter said to Paul: “you know all those words we wrote,
Are just the rules of the game,
And the rules are the first to go."
But now talking to God is Laurel begging Hardy for a gun.
I got a girl in the war man - I wonder what it is we done.

Josh Ritter
http://www.joshritter.com/
Girl In Ther War (iTunes)

Can Hillary stay in the game?

Tuesday was a great day for America and the world we still influence. We are officially caught up in a close Presidential election contest between a Woman and a Non White Man. The last time the world looked like this the (ex) Cowboy was two, and even Doonesbury had to wear a helmet to the Democratic National convention.

McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton about that time. He is officially irrelevant now. A token white man in the new blended soul of America's great dream. The rich white guys have shown themselves to be a failure at protecting the emotional security of anyone who is not white, or male, or stupidly rich. Unless Wall Street makes a raging comeback in the next few months, we will have a black man and a woman in the White House before Martin Luther King Junior’s next birthday (celebrated or actual). Hillary Clinton is fighting tooth and nail to be that woman.

But will she be?

Clinton just threw down with a very strong comeback in Ohio and, a survivor’s victory in Texas. The media buzz today is all over her new statement that she would consider a Clinton-Obama Ticket if she wins.

People suggest she is offering to allow him to be her Vice POTUS. Your humble (ex) Cowboy sees another meaning in her words:

Hillary just offered the biggest olive branch possible in this contest. How Barrack Obama (not the campaign, but the man himself) responds is nothing short of THE STORY OF THE ELECTION OF 2008. And maybe the most important moment in American Political history since the man called “Throat” met the Washington Post kids in the underground parking lot at 1401 Wilson Blvd in Roslyn VA.

Your humble Cowboy thinks Hillary’s comments are not at all an offer to put Obama on the "Hillary for President" Stickers. They are a last ditch plea agreement, that she will concede the nomination fight if Obama agrees to put an H. on His signage.

Obama may have pressure to put Hillary on his ticket, due to the votes she has gotten, but it is not a rule that he must. Barack has a much better woman for his ticket. She is strong; confident; experienced; a Washington outsider; a conservative Democrat; and, a popular Western governor to top it off. She is waiting in the wings to stand next to him for a few months on stage and then be the first woman elected to the White House. (And then, in 8 years be elected the first woman President). She is removed from the contest enough to actually serve under his authority. Yet she also has the ability to excel independently in overseeing whatever portfolio the next VPOTUS is responsible for.

The Cowboy thinks Obama may have answered Hillary’s proposal on Monday, in West Texas. That being a region deeply loyal to Hillary on the Democrat side and considered critical for yesterday’s Texas primary. It was important enough that the Clinton campaign sent former POTUS Bill himself to make last minute appearances. Obama’s surrogate to oppose the Great Bill Clnton? A woman you've never even heard of. Who recently enjoyed a landslide re-election. To her second term. As Governor. Of a heavily Republican state. A Western State. That happens to be represented in the Senate by John McCain……

Thanks for playing....

Your Humble Cowboy Approves This Message

2008-03-04T13:19:00.007-07:00

One outfit recently published a book consisting of other people's six word autobiographies. Said lazy-man’s haiku assemblage was not, therefore, even written by the “authors”. One wishes any story was really simple enough to be axe-chipped down to a six word story line. Even if the minds who conceived the words aren't getting credit or money.

The Cowboy celebrates this kind of intellectual discipline and hard work. It makes America Great. Well, lately it makes us a global melting pot of lazy and greedy creative plagiarism. William F. Buckley is dead, so we must embrace the new style.

In a way though, The Cowboy sees a beauty in the form and format. Our current media era is defined by unsophisticated ticker-scrolled headlines. From Presidential candidates to smash-mouth athletes, America is being drowned by precisely packaged, creatively recycled, overly sober and woefully un-original voices.

Here are a few current headlines, all in 6 words or less. In tribute to the hero of your (ex) Cowboy: She is a 45+ divorced, stay-at-home mother of four from the frozen heartland. She struggles each Monday to reach out to the world of her former dreams in staccato e-mail missives. Her freak flag flies tattered, bloody and unbowed.

1)Jack Nicholson Ad: “I Approved this.”
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7276796.stm

2)Four More Murders, This Time Memphis.
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7276651.stm

3) Chavez Ally Killed, Probably The Teams.
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7277313.stm

4) CDC: “Hepatitis Outbreak Tip of Iceberg.”
• http://www.ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i8B3EkgPbRHRxqB6l6BG6ZL1bn9QD8V69MQG0

5) 17, 275, 442, 5,377, 61,655; Favre
• http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/04/sports/football4.php

6) Warren Buffet says: This is Recession.
• http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/03/business/buffett.php

7) N. B. A. : All About Kobe
• http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/23440749/

8) Experience Vs Dreams, Texas and Ohio.
• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23463159/

9) Man in Ricin Investigation A Loner
•http://www.ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iKTvbgBD4wAvysJWCK0LFWjV9VwwD8V6GBA00/

10) First Ever Images: Avalanche on Mars
• http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4381763

The Cowboy Thanks You For Playing

Watch the Green Witch Melt

2008-02-28T12:31:00.005-07:00

Ghost Woman of the Hotel Del Coronado
Pretty Much Gone

The Cowboy wants to be honest for a few sentences. Well get back to the truth later…

Your Humble Cowboy spent a strange grey week hunting for the fabled ghost of the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. There was off-season foul weather, a double conference of lawyers and a mild case of this years’ inoculation (and alcohol) resistant flu strain to set the tone. The sky was yellow and the sun was blue, as the old man said. The ghost proved elusive, but those dayless hours made it clear why this wooden wonder of beachside Americana was the inspiration for Frank Baum to write the Wizard of OZ.

While ghost-hunting, it became clear that, like the green witch, Hillary is suddenly done. (Apparently she also melts under exposure to something as innocuous as fresh water to the face.) It is a strange and twisted experience, like watching a hanging.

We appear to be a country obsessed with watching fools perish at the gibbet of modern media humiliation. Our media, like so much more of Salem’s puritans, delivers a steady viewing of doomed young dreamers and damaged souls alike. Lead by the likes of “American Idol” or that anger-loving Trump show whateverthehell it is called. However, in the real reality, we don’t like to see that stuff. It is uncomfortable, and it reveals us all to be a bit diseased.

We don’t mind a small dose of “yeah but for the grace of God go I..”. The genre ages fast, however, when the poor bastard being wrongfully humiliated, eating bugs or wetting themselves purposely, all towards an obviously losing effort, bears so much resemblance to, well, to us.

Even the Foxwatchers are uncomfortable watching the end of Hillary.

Admit it now, you felt shocked and disturbed when the suffering green witch got melted by that brat farm girl in blue gingham. Sure, the damned flying monkeys were an order of magnitude of terror never seen on the screen before. But still that chemical warfare was extreme. During those terrible final seconds we saw a witch that was somehow less wicked and more vulnerable, more mature. Dorothy looked like she actually savored the sight of her grieving, widowed, dust bowl surviving Aunt getting dissolved away in agony.

Maybe in hind sight, OZ would have been better off with the Wicked Witch. She was experienced, thick-skinned and strong enough to keep the damned terror monkeys from grabbing up all the funny little people and dropping them to their deaths on the dark cliffs above the far off sunless sea. We will never know.

The little farm kid followed a brainless, gutless, soulless trio down to the place of dead roads, only to see the kingdom’s fragile economy and territorial security collapse drunkenly because of one compelling child's’ fantasy. (In the old days that kind of hopeful innocence was called "being naive".) The bratty child escaped back from dreamland. But the little guys were left to fend off flesh eating winged monkeys while watching the technological “grid” of their society collapse into anarchy while the previous wizard stole away with a balloon basket full of looted gold paving stones.

Sound familiar?

Barack Obama may be the best thing to happen to America. There is no doubt that his ability to give young Americans hope and faith in the country may be the exact turn we need to survive. The Cowboy really hopes this is the case. Yet it is alarming how little we really know about the guy.

We don’t know anything about his real intentions, his true values and his actual opinions about things like climate change, the Supreme Court, the Chinese, The FISA Act, Internet regulation, management of our vast and dwindling public lands and many other issues that remain unexplored by Obama's "I Have A Dream" speechwriters. He has a wonderfully brief history of words, but no history of deeds to engender our confidence. The ideas he espouses are stellar (because they come directly from MLK and other great minds). But in his practical abilities there is no proof of life.

The media is a straw man, afraid of pushing, afraid of probing into what he really intends to do as President. Journalism is (still) dead and getting deader. The media would rather hoist Hillary to her demise, as difficult as that is turning out even for them to handle, than confront Obama about his real values and prejudices. It is a sad repetition of history, by good men who do nothing. Like when W. first ran for office, or later when American journalism failed to question his path to War.

Your naive Cowboy wonders if there might even be a connection between the fact that Presidential campaigns shovel several billion dollars of advertising money into the hands of our corporatized media, and their unwillingness to ask tough questions...

It may be fine to once again trust a charismatic young politician with blind faith. But let's not call it change because it is nothing new. It would nice to hear some of this Man’s real ideas, presented with his own words in a legitimate journalistic interview. The inspiring, but intellectually plagiarised speeches of Obama may well lead to a new Camelot, for a new generation. But Camelot was short lived.

And then there are those damned flying monkeys to be dealt with.

Thanks for playing.

Quote of the Week (2.27)

2008-02-28T10:55:00.001-07:00

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

Scott Adams

Quote of the Week

2008-02-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat.

-George Carlin

Take The Long Odds

2008-02-04T21:01:00.000-07:00

The key … is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.
Casey Stengel

The Super Bowl just pulled out. It was the grandest sports event in recent history. The circus is gone but there remains a strange aftertaste of something like diet sweetener for the soul. The whole experience reflected a new joyless but safe American Dream we share. Yeah, it was fun, but nothing reckless occurred. Maybe the YOUNG PEOPLE are right. Maybe change in any direction is better for our souls than our current obsession with safety from every peril.

It doesn’t matter. The Cowboy always bets the underdog. I took the Giants over the Pats, not because I follow the game, or even care. It was the principal of the thing. I hold with a sort of sinners prayer of American sports: “Grant me the serenity to accept that all sports are fixed some of the time, that some sports are fixed all of the time, and the wisdom to pick the spread.” That is why I like Obama tomorrow, on Super-Tuesday.

Obama’s campaign is a street-fighting machine that can swing on a dime. They left Carolina behind and embraced a new slogan, “Yes We Can”. (Which means “Si, Se Puede” in Spanish.) In case you have been asleep or east of Albany for the past ten months, you know this slogan was used by Caesar Chavez. It is THE rallying cry for Hispanic voters. They will swing with the wind tomorrow and bury Hillary under the stale sheaves of her own outdated campaign speeches.

Barrack is rolling in 2008. He stole the stoner vote from Ron Paul, he got an endorsement from every Kennedy sober enough to show up for the photo op and he raised $30 million. His face is the favorite of news editors nationwide. He is, to put it bluntly, the new Reagan everyone on the other team has been looking for. He brings fun back to the game.

Tomorrow he will beat Hillary just like the underdog Giants beat the over-hyped Patriots

Hillary campaigned like a deer in the headlights after South Carolina. Maybe it was the hubris of her failure to control Bill’s addiction to celebrity. Maybe she is just trapped in a bubble, run by the two least capable political activist demographics in U.S. history: Women and Gays. I any case, she was Nixon the conqueror for a while, but now she is just McGovern the crybaby. She will be lucky to get a VP slot on Obama’s ticket. The odds are changing. Old is new and new is old.

Hillary outpolled McCain by a 100,000 votes in the Florida primary and that fact should have been her public message ever since. She never mentioned it though, and now it is too late. After Carolina, Hillary just flittered around with a worn out stump speech and a bright yellow jacket.

Obama will run the Democrats’ table after Super Tuesday, but he remains a hard underdog against McCain. An absolute long shot, like Giacomo in the derby last year - a laughingstock entry at fifty–to-one.

Unless she reclaims a commanding lead by midnight on Super Tuesday, Hillary will be gone to the dustbin of POTUS campaign history. McCain is the man to beat and the place to beat him will be on his own turf, right here in Arizona. The person who can beat McCain is a woman, but she is not from New York.

Governor Napolitano is the woman you will want to watch now. Napolitano beat a Mormon Republican to become a western Democrat Governor. That trick might come in handy before the year is out. It is defintely a long shot that Janet Napolitano will second Obama's ticket. Fifty-to-one is about right. Still, it is an easy bet for The Cowboy. And free money at twice the odds.

Thanks for playing.

The Man Who Won The War

2008-01-31T10:58:00.000-07:00

Captain Travis Patriquin,

We hardly knew ye ...

Capt. Patriquin devised a cartoon solution to our challenging and, up to then, failing presence in Iraq. He was killed by an IED in December of 2006, but his ideas, his solutions and his “dumb it down for the politicians” attitude, are uniformly responsible for our national survival and the new trend of undeniable success in “The Sandbox”.

His stick figure presentation, titled “How To Win In Al Anbar” is something no one in the command chain, least of all at The W. House, wants us to celebrate. Your humble Cowboy, long tired of politicians abusing the label “hero”, offers this humble reminder of who the greatest hero of the W. Bush years is. Without him we would not be winning.

Mission accomplished Captain Patriquin.

Thanks for playing

A Poll To End All Polls

2008-01-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

An AP poll, January 23rd, determined the following (as quoted):

McCain is the favored candidate of women, men and voters who classify themselves as non-conservative
Clinton still leads among women and men, and non-liberals.

This game is FUN for the first time, in many, many years.

Quote Of The Week

2008-01-19T22:39:00.001-07:00

The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and coal products of the present time."

-Rudolph Diesel (Inventor of the Diesel engine, of course)

1895

The Enemy of A Nut-Job is My Friend

2008-01-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

I have started a collection of illegally placed "Ron Paul" signage from the neighborhood.

I have it, from my usually accurate sources, that the local high school stoners have joined the 'Bong Paul' crusade due to his "Legalize Marijuana" platform.

These promising young dissidents obviously enjoy hanging illegal political signage. Your humble host enjoys good political sport. The stoner kids giveth and The Cowboy taketh away....

This my top ten R.P.-inciting list. It was composed while waiting for a red light to turn green adjacent to an illegal campaign sign:

Top Ten Reasons why I love the 9/11 conspiring, vote stealing bastards that Ron Paul's paranoid supporters are always ranting against:

10) The send The Teams to kill savages before the reach our shore.

9) They fight about wether 2 or 4 parts per billion is the acceptable limit for toxins in my bath water.

8) My stocks are still up for the 12 months ended January 18th 2008

7) We make planes that don't blow up now, even when crashed so hard the wings are torn apart.

6) Our Doctors still cure more diseases than all the others on the planet combined.

5) Why obsess with Ron when we have TED ?

4) They Killed Elvis, but let Dave Alvin Live

3) Even you paranoid R. P. freaks would be shocked at how close they watch you.

2) They already have iodine tablets stocked for my family, in case one gets through.

1) One doesn't get through.

Thanks for playing..

After New Hampshire

2008-01-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

3:10 To Yorba Linda

The Republican/Fox News machine has made seeding national hatred against Hillary a number one priority for the past decade. Suddenly now the Democratchiks are not far behind in the hunt. On the road to New Hampshire no one considered a comparison between Hillary and the other most hated candidate in American history. In so doing, they have made the campaign fun again.

The whole wagon train of POTUS campaign sluttery, on both sides, has a lust for some lovable new Reaganesque candidate. The desire is stronger than the hunger of the undead for flesh. The sentimental Reagan seekers form zombie packs as they wander the streets of primary states. While many on the left think he has been found. Many on the right cry that he has not.

The one truth both sides embrace is that HILLARY IS THE NEW NIXON, and it is true, but not necessarily, as they hope, because we won't have her to kick around much longer. Any journalist who hasn't tried to understand how she has survived the attacks and why she is still in the game at all, should be punished. Their flaming credentials should be shot off the suberbowl halftime stage, from the same canon that fired Hunter S. Thompson's ashes over the Maroon Bells. Because the answer to that little question is the key to the entire current election cycle. Reagan may have been clothed in a thin cover of teflon, but Hillary is Up-Armored, sandbox heavy.

Speaking of The Good Doctor: You might recall 1968. (When you were two). In that fateful year, coming back from a long decade of nearly unanimous, bi-partisan public hatred, Richard Nixon kicked ass American style. In less than a year he painted the battlefield with the blood of his enemies. His enemies being absolutely every public person from both parties and a small naive parade of horehound independents.

It wasn't these sissy preacher boys we have today, either....

He kicked George H.W. Bush's ass before Easter; He kicked George Romney's Ass; He beat Wallace and Humphrey senseless, simultaneously, in one day. Richard Nixon, the most hated man in American politics, beat Ronald Reagan, the most beloved, like a baby harp seal on an ice floe. Hillary is a lot like him, and people should pay attention before they get knocked down.

Nixon was dark, strange and universally loathed. He never slept and he ate raw meat each day for breakfast. He never forgot that every public and private political figure in America was his sworn enemy. He knew, as a result, that the only people he owed political favors to were the voters who had listened to their survival-seeking hearts when they defied the polls to elect him.

He ended up doing what had to be done, for the most part, regardless of partisan arrogance and corporate influence. He ran a mean White House, and regardless of what your party loyalty forces you to believe about the most hated candidate prior to Hillary, he saved America. He saved your ass before you turned six.

A Place Called Hopeless

We are almost perfectly hypnotized by the bland timidity and paper bag packaging of POTUS campaign "journalism". So much so that any instance of ACTUAL HUMANITY causes media dick-heads nationwide to blow their gaskets and spew special alarmist reports about their own ongoing lack of sophistication as observers.

The New Media is a weak and joyless reflector of the aforementioned generic packaging. So when Senator Clinton cried on the eve of the New Hampshire primary it sent shockwaves through the entire system. It was like she used a word that neither O'Reilly nor Blitzer could find in their partisan dictionaries. That curious national feeling in the news after New Hampshire was actually a stiff blast of Oxygen sneaking into the broadband. The early feeds were wrong across the board - the story happened first and was written after.

Actually, what sparked the voters' reaction was the modus delecto of Hillary's near-tears moment. That little lapse exposed a small truth that is too complicated to ever be captured by a mainstream American journalist. But voters sensed the themes.

Clinton was upset for the same reason Nixon was when he gave his famous "checkers" speech. Runaway punditry has aided everyone in the fight to break Hillary down. Her enemies, like Nixon's, need the help, because no one can beat her in a fair fight. Her enemies have sliced a thousand cuts into her American "legitimacy" and political media hacks have provided the razors by allowing her to be the only allowable punching bag. The result is a passive national accusation that the Good Senator is too political to be President.

Yeah - wait, what?

She is not only perfectly attackable, she is the only one who is attackable at all without accusations of severe political-incorrectness, such as racism, religious prejudice or anti-Americanism. Enough voters will continue to knee-jerk to her because of those very attacks and the distinction of toughness they create between her and the other candidates.

Likability Is Overrated In The Smoke

Zogby's polls "failed" infamously in New Hampshire because they consisted of a person talking to another person. Polls happen on the phone, live, in clean well-lighted places. They were conducted in the open, in front of Internet and TV screens. The media grossly forgets, that their screens are not windows to the real world. The New Ballot - boxes may have wifi for ease-of-fix, but as long as they still have the old fashioned curtains, we are gonna be o.k.

The polls "failed" because when the curtains slide shut, a human heart beats alone, one time, with no media and no screens. In that instant enough voters look through the real window. Outside it is a dark and stormy night. Outside the toughest ten years of all of our lives started last week. The markets are trembling and this is no game. Outside, the savages are coming.

That Woman won, behind the curtains, and she will continue to win, because she has an un-nuanced, un-speechified reality of character that only the ancient mariner McCain can possibly try and equal. Senator Hillary R. Clinton is the toughest, meanest, most politically hated mutherfucker since Nixon. She will not apologize for being too political to be President. YOU my new friend should be grateful for it, because unless you have twenty million in the Cayman Islands - YOU and I are Checkers. We are the dog. She will destroy every comer when the curtains are closed. And then?

She Will Save The Dog.

And I, for one, will be at her inauguration. I am the only moderate American who publicly supported her from the beginning, (which was a long, long time ago...in a galaxy far, far away...) There will be plenty of room for me on the stand. It will be an unnaturally warm winter's day. I will have a small flask of whiskey but I will only share pulls with Bill.

Even the rat Carville will be buying me drinks, come the day. You all will. I will become the Innaugaural's proxy celebratory drunk. A lone revelor, breaking down the stiff and weird new decorum of America for all the world to see. I will have my flak jacket on under my 'respectable moderate cloth coat', upon which I will proudly wear the American flag pin I stole fair and square from Ronald Reagan's oval office. Beneath it I will have a tiny banner, made just for the occassion. That one will be a picture of Nixon and it will say:

Save the Dog. Save the World.

Thanks for playing.

Election Times

2008-01-12T09:43:00.000-07:00

Election Times is Come!

Here, at the barn, iTunes is on permanent dedicated access standby, for background music support. The three young 'uns are sent off to the big State College; a dowager's long day theater group; and some kind of secular kiddie care with the new double learnin' and every-day-all-day option. Pure Hawaiian Coffee, by the kilo, is cached in the cupboards. Anchor Steam beer and Old Portero Whiskey are stacked like cordwood in the halls.

It's the New Weather now, if'n you believe it or not. Spring come early this year, so if your corn ain't in, you best be dragging you Rose-o-Sharron for that great western Garden of Eden or you'll be croppin tubers afore the bowl day comes.

The official BOAC election watch season has begun....

An Open Letter to Iowa

2008-01-02T18:33:00.000-07:00

There is sad absence of candidate voices that offer any real connection to a nervous America this season. Regardless of party loyalties or economic demographics, we share a common tension this week as we watch the early polling.

Publicly we smile and show confidence in our chosen party or candidate, while privately we all mourn a light that has dimmed considerably. Iowans alone may determine who is the next President. This circumstance is a wonder to the remaining 298 million of us. You will choose based on a campaign media onslaught the likes of which the rest of America has never seen.

But we know.

We know and we grow quiet this week as we watch and we wonder. We wonder if you even live in the same America as we do.

We wonder: Do you see through the posed Life Magazine style head-shots? We wonder, can you sacrifice a vote defined by faith in your religion, to cast a vote for a leader more likely to understand and thus protect the best interests of all Americans of all faiths? Do you parse out the shallow moments of smiling likability to see the rough insolence of effective warfighting global leadership? Do you have the integrity to cross a line of loyalty, because you know in your heart that what is right is so distant from what is easy ? Can you look through the needle eye and distinguish a wealthy egoist from a humble honorable patriot? Will you in end vote for someone, or will you remain caught up in the storm of allegiance to party clique, and vote against those you are now so well trained to despise?

We offer you Iowans our hope this new year. Hope we cannot find in the embarrassment of dissemination our party machinery has become. We drive through cities that have more cars than your entire state; more jobs; more criminals; more unemployed; more wounded veterans; more advertising signage; more poluution; more arts; more corruption; more greed; more steel; more churches and more sin than all of Iowa (and New Hampshire) combined.

We walk seashores you only see in fleeting visits and from them we watch the sun turn across a horizon shared with our allies, our rivals and our savage foes. We look across the empty place where the World Trade Center was, over a polluted bay to see Liberty's maternal host standing in darkness, shuttered by politicized fear. We watch over the parched borderlands and witness daily a human wave of (almost entirely christian) refugees from failed and failing nations to the south.

We close our eyes, and we feel sad, and we are nervous. It will be a tough year for America. It will be a tough decade. We hope you know that. We want to make certain you do know that we believe in Iowan's ability to choose, and choose well, because, for just this moment, you are all we can believe in.

Thanks for your consideration.

THE RACE CARD

2007-11-16T07:37:00.000-07:00

The best comparison for yesterdays' indictment of Barry Bonds may be to Brittany Spears' evasion of jail for repeated drug use convictions etc etc...

Let's be realistic: Barry Bonds committed the crime of earning while black. There is no doubt that not a few well-liked white athletes used (and some still use) steroids: Gonzo, A-Rod, The Governator, everyone in Pro Wrestling and almost every college athlete in the big three sports have likely lined up at the pharmacists window. Every one of them has lied about it at some point publicly, and most will continue to do so.

This mess should have been about the war on drugs, and it should have been a soft slow rising puff-pitch, hanging out over the smash zone for an easy grand slam.

The white millionaires who managed this as a "bad press" event have missed every opportunity to further the "War on Drugs". They made it instead about personalities, and that made it about prejudice. The real impact of steroids is in our high schools, where a vast sea of trans-pubescent boys from every economic class seek the little edge that might get them into the heroic athlete game. This should have been about that. It is an enormous problem at that level.

Racism is a bigger problem and at a higher level. Racism has seen a nasty resurgence in recent years in the Homeland. American christianity and the white moralists in power have allowed this most unchristian value to creep back into casual acceptance. They have embraced it in many situations, such as this Bonds controversy, with the devil's tired old excuse that it is a minor and marginal occurrence.

The truth is: We embrace prejudice at these fringe moments not because it is too hard to stand against it for such a small gain, but because it is so easy to get away with it at such a broad level.

In related news, the courts are getting ready to free about 20,000 inmates early. They are almost entirely blacks and hispanics, who have been convicted of holding user (not dealer) quantities of crack or free base cocaine. They have all been sentenced to terms ten times as long as the white men caught with similar quantities of regular powder cocaine.

Sure, crack is much more severe than regular nose candy, (the Cowboy could tell you stories...) but there is something to the theory that we have established two justice systems in America: One to protect whites and wealthy folk from crime; and another "dark side" system to keep blacks and hispanics from rising up into the middle class. In the case of Bonds he faces the dark side not because HE deserves it, but because WE can get away with it.

Barry's crime is being almost as unlikeable as Brittany Spears, almost as wealthy and not nearly as white. The Cowboy doesn't gamble but if he did he would take 3 years in a federal prison with half off at the end as the over and under. Mr. Bonds will soon join the other 20% of young blacks who spend time in a white man's cage.

Someone in white conservative America seems to have decided that institutional Prejudice is no longer a Christian Sin and an American Crime. On main street U.S.A. people have gone back to the view that it is o.k. to be a passive witness to racism up until the point boxcars, machetes and crematoriums are involved.

As long as wealthy white partisan lawyers control the freedom of marginally criminal blacks and whites alike, Barry Bonds will face the Dark Side system, do real time and pay maximum"fines" despite being a hero to millions of father-starved children. Meanwhile Brittany Spears will face the Light Side. She will stay free to help news editors embarrass themselves, and she will remain a dangerous, confirmed drug using menace to her children and those around her.

America, you have a lot on your plate right now. A lot to pray for in the enclaves of fervent whiteness come to be called "Post 911 America", or as some call it, Das Homeland.

Every week Americans denigrate Jesus by praying, nationwide, for victory in games that are spiritually meaningless compared to the struggle against true darkness. Perhaps this week some of you might find time to Pray for one of those "activist" judges, or, as much of a long-shot as it sounds, pray for a white federal prosecutor who will sacrifice his rising status in the white man's party for a chance to be a gunless hero against institutional prejudice.

This matter is a foul, foul ball, and it will haunt us for many years to come.

Thanks for letting me try and express my concerns.

The Cowboy

The Truth Will See You Imprisoned

2007-10-25T20:33:00.001-07:00

The following unaltered excerpts represent the bulk of the testimony prepared by the United States Centers for Disease Control and then censored from delivery to Congress and the American People this week by Dick Cheney on behalf of the "Oil Lobby".

These censured words, in your humble Cowboy's opinion, represent the gravest and most vile conspiracy to effect a nationalistic lie upon a population since Adolf Hitler shut down the German legislature for the good of the fatherland.

It is treason against man's journey of discovery, knowledge and scientific discourse that the White House has deemed it illegal for a specifically qualified and tasked member of the United States Government to read the first sentence below out load:

>>>>

Scientific evidence supports the view that the earth’s climate is changing.

CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern.

In the United States, climate change is likely to have a significant impact on health, through links with the following outcomes:

·      Direct effects of heat,
·      Health effects related to extreme weather events,
·      Air pollution-related health effects,
·      Allergic diseases,
·      Water- and food-borne infectious diseases,
·      Vector-borne and zoonotic diseases,
·      Food and water scarcity at least for some populations,
·      Mental health problems, and
·      Long-term impacts of chronic diseases and other health effects

Catastrophic weather events such as heat waves and hurricanes are expected to become more frequent, severe, and costly…

… climate change is likely to alter the current geographic distribution of some vector-borne and zoonotic diseases; some may become more frequent, widespread, and outbreaks could last longer…

One of the most likely climate change projections is an increase in frequency of hot days, hot nights, and heat waves.

The health effects of these extreme weather events range from loss of life and acute trauma, to indirect effects such as loss of home, large- scale population displacement, damage to sanitation infrastructure (drinking water and sewage systems), interruption of food production, damage to the health-care infrastructure, and psychological problems such as post traumatic stress disorder.

Future climate projections also show likely increases in the frequency of heavy rainfall events, posing an increased risk of flooding events and overwhelming of sanitation infrastructure.

Climate change can affect air quality by modifying local weather patterns and pollutant concentrations, affecting natural sources of air pollution, and promoting the formation of secondary pollutants. Of particular concern is the impact of increased temperature and UV radiation on ozone formation. Some studies have shown that higher surface temperatures, especially in urban areas, encourage the formation of ground-level ozone. As a primary ingredient of smog, ground-level ozone is a public health concern. Ozone can irritate the respiratory system, reduce lung function, aggravate asthma, and inflame and damage cells that line the lungs. In addition, it may cause permanent lung damage and aggravate chronic lung diseases.

Studies have shown that some plants, such as ragweed and poison ivy, grow faster and produce
more allergens under conditions of high carbon dioxide and warm weather. As a result, allergic diseases and symptoms could worsen with climate change. Climate change is predicted to alter agricultural production, both directly and indirectly. This may lead to scarcity of some foods, increase food prices, and threaten access to food for Americans who experience food insecurity. The west coast of the United States is expected to
experience significant strains on water supplies as regional precipitation declines and mountain snowpacks are depleted.

Forest fires are expected to increase in frequency, severity, distribution, and duration.

>>>>>>>>

A Bright Shining Truth

2007-10-23T13:02:00.001-07:00

These California firestorms are a major national-scale disaster that may or may not be organized terror. The W. House is in a position where the country needs them to demonstrate that they have developed the ability to take meaningful, urgent, large scale action in exactly this kind of event.

It looks like they have.

The lion's share of the credit goes to the least partisan Governor in America, (who was at one time an illegal immigrant.)

Somebody get Arnold a cot and a free massage before he falls down. We are gonna need him healthy for a while.

BOAC

Flora Non Gratta

2007-10-03T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Blight That Failed

2007-10-03T12:08:00.001-07:00

The Republicans have become addicted to using the Russian term for dictator – Czar - on a regular basis. Every complicated problem makes them want to empower an unelected American Czar. We have a Drug Czar, a Terror Czar, A War Czar, an Immigration Czar, etc..

Ever since Reagan appointed a Drug Czar, your Cowboy has thought that Democracy and Tsars go together like ice cream and dog poop. There are too many Czars in America.

The Republicans should patriot-up and embrace another Russian term. This one enjoys the same despicable un-American origins as Czar, or Tsar or however you choose to spell "tyranical despot" in your dialect.

The Cowboy calls for a purge.

Thanks for playing

Headlines of the Day

2007-08-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

Most online news editors, in the U.S. anyways, decided a dogfighting millionaire athelete was more important than the embattled Attorney General's resignation. ABC wins the award for the "least effort in pretending to write their own content" award for not even adding a headline to their cut-and-past byline.

cnn.com:
"Vick's: 'Disappointed in Myself' "

msnbc.com:
"FULL RESPONSIBILITY"
Michael Vick pleads guilty, apologizes in dogfighting case."

abcnews.com:
"Angry Bush Says Gonzales Name 'Dragged Through the Mud' "
(This was the "push" quote fed to the media by the White House. It appears verbatim as the second line for almost every US published version of the story. ABC didn't even bother to check that the capitalizations were incorrect, or write their own headline they just cut, pasted and published.)

csmonitor.com
"Gonzales makes his exit
Farewell: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gave his resignation on Monday and leaves his position Sept. 17.

latimes.com
"Atty. Gen. Gonzales is stepping down
Angry Bush says Gonzales critics dragged him 'through the mud' "
(Only in L.A. would they use abbreviations in a headline.)

nytimes.com
Embattled Attorney General Resigns
Gonzales Received ‘Unfair Treatment,’ President Says"
(The Grey Lady pulls her own quotes, kind of.)

bbc.com
Bush ally Gonzales resigns post
US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, embroiled in a row over sacked prosecutors, has resigned."
(The Queen is not a push-quote whore, apparently.)

denverpost.com
Vick asks for forgiveness
Michael Vick apologized to the NFL and his Atlanta Falcons teammates today for "using bad judgment."

usatoday.com
Embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigns

http://news.xinhuanet.com (China State news org.)
U.S. attorney general resigns
(Dogfighter not mentioned)

yahoonews.com
US Attorney General Gonzales resigns

washingtonpost.com
U.S. Attorney General Gonzales Resigns

bloomberg.com
Gonzales Quits After Months of Turmoil Over Firings
(byline - Bloomberg: One of the few outlets that still writes their own stories!)

Viet - Sand

2007-08-26T13:25:00.001-07:00

People deeply concerned that America elected a man of suspect mental health and obviously inferior management and descision making skills are overjoyed this week.

W ( The President) has finally decided that the billion word historical legacy of Vietnam might be worth considering when making great power foreign policy descisions.

He thinks we should have stayed, even though he was so afraid of going himself (not to mention afraid of flying) that he became a drunk.

But it is a start.

2007-08-26T13:15:00.001-07:00

Quote of The Day

2007-08-26T13:14:00.001-07:00

"We taped him up in an 'X' pattern," ..

Bobby Vigil, Describing what happened when his seat mate's mental health failed at 30,000 feet and he tried to open the doors to the airbus.

The Boor War (I)

2007-08-06T07:27:00.001-07:00

A little honesty would help us all feel better about America.

While doing your coffee juggling hate-radio listening, morning anti-yoga commute this week repeate the following mantra.

(The truth will make you a better American:)

It was a Crime to go in, then.
It is a Sin to withdraw, now.

How can a compasionate American think otherwise?

A.

Global Dumbing

2007-08-04T15:16:00.000-07:00

Recently I watched some of "Nova" on PBS. A piece about the global, undeniable and obvious change (downward) in moisture evaporation rates; caused by solar penetration reductions near 20%; caused by atmospheric particulate pollution levels (increased).

This circumstance is an important sideshow to the overwhelming GCC trends that are being talked about these days. But it shows a simplicity, both in the hobbyist observers who documented the trend, and the proof-of-solution that brought their separate research together.

The keynote of the show was broad documentation that weather really was milder - because the skies really were markedly cleaner all over North America and the world - in the three flightless days from September 11th - 14th 2001.

The greatest proof of global climate damage is in the simplicity of the solution.

Stopping.

The solutions to the problems we face are not complicated – The great challenges such as this are often just ethical questions. The answer to ethical issues tend to be very simple. It is the perceived and known discomforts of living with the outcome of those choices that is complicated. We know what is right and we know what is easy. The two are almost never the same. Strong men choose early and deal with it.

In my college decades I took every undergrad science class at two colleges: paleoclimatology, paleogeology, palenology (pollen), oceanography, Srat/Sed (the infamous), every kind of geology, dendrochronology, I counted pine trees (poorly), I sifted bison bones in the basement. I studied reports from underwater archaeologists who discovered fire rings thirty feet below mean sea level near the arctic circle. I heard lectures about mastodons found flash frozen in the tundra. I summarized the iridium layer that proves out the asteroid impact theory.

The teachers all said pretty much the same thing - "This climate change is real and it will happen to you: We don't think this. This is not opinion based: We know.

Now you know too."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming
www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

Loyalty Up Loyalty Down

2007-07-02T18:09:00.001-07:00

It is a pretty good call for Bush to commute Libby's prison sentence without pardoning him. It keeps in place the tiny vestige of acknowledgment that a crime (and maybe more important for W, a Sin) was committed. Even a shadow of honesty carries great weight with the self righteous and the power drunk.

That Scooter perjured himself to protect Rove and Cheney (mostly Rove) was de riguer. That's what people do in those positions - they fall on their swords for their king. I do wish W. had a similar inkling to show some support for Secretary Powell when he sword-dived before the UN, but I digress...

The commutation also allows Bush to split hairs in a manner that he can think of as philosophical and sophisticated. It is undeniably, loyalty down and that should mean something for both sides of the aisle. Any action that caries even a glimmer of humility for either the President or the Vice President serves to extend our survival as a Democratic Republic for a few more ethereal hours.

So I am good with it , and I think you should be to.

The fun question is: Will Cheney or W. pay Libby's quarter of a million dollar fine from their massive (and massively under reported) portfolio of personal wealth?

Well, there's loyalty and there's money, and there's always another day to hammer on the keypad...

Thanks for playing.

A

Hidden City

2007-06-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

CLINTON COMES TO TOWN

2007-06-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

Gravitas Rainbow
The Light That Dimmed.

I had to pay my daughter 500 dollars to baby-sit last night so I could go se Ex POTUS Clinton give the keynote at the AZ Democratic party’s annual dinner. It was a private arrangement with her, something about an iPhone, but it did set a certain edgy tone for the night. Your devotedly non-partisan Cowboy observer offers this account of the evening.

IT WAS A BROWN TIE AFFAIR, at best. A giant bar filled the center of the reception hall, thus ensuring it appeared to be a massive crowded event. Men who wear neckties less often that your humble Cowboy, and women who wear them more, were in abundance. Mild confusion hummed through the room regarding the table assignments while young party leadership homosexuals gloated before middle-age female party patrons. The only well dressed mature men were cagey, almost afraid to be seen. Grown men openly defended their presence as “just curious what he will say”. It was like a high school re-union of geologists mashed into the largest girls night out in Arizona history. It was cool.

I did the only thing worth doing at these gigs: Hung out in the stage left wings with the obvious “Detail” guys and listened in on passing conversations of the assistant dignitaries as they rushed around with sheaves of speech notes. This is what I got out of it:

WE GIG ECONO, and it’s why the Democratic Party will never win the employed heterosexual male vote. The disorganization was not extreme but let’s face it – Republicans run a tight ship on all decks and that includes laying in extra effort at the cocktail-hour-of-the-year. Artsy brown rainbow backdrops are a fine celebration of diversity but they are very un-Potus like when the handshake photos come out.

You guys wanna win an election? Buy better tuxedos than the amnesty craving buffet staff wears and spend like horse thieves to make the event memorable. Little gifts of embossed mint boxes or engraved memorabilia place cards are the swag that donors come back for. Lastly, when a man meets an EXPOTUS of any stripe, he wants to be in a room full of other men all dressed like James Bond on casino night, not slackers who bought their only necktie at Goodwill.

HANG OUT NEAR THE “DETAIL” GUYS AND YOU GET GOOD INTEL at these gigs. (Remember, your dealing with the Blog of A COWBOY here.) It is a habit from years backstage in the concert business. Protection detail people are about the same age as your humble journalist and they tend to be the only interesting people in the room. As long as you don’t look like John Malkovich they can be very friendly. In this case I shared table space with one of the Navajo Nation Secret Service members. The first thing I got from him was confirmation that filming has secretly begun on the new Indiana Jones film up in Monument Valley Tribal Park.

The Navajo secret service protects the Tribal President (now Joe Shirley), against all threats, and they are not kidding or just posing. This guy was a Navy demolitions expert and a ground war veteran from the first Viet-Sand. You don’t meet a lot of Navy guys who conduct their war fighting MOS on the dry sandy earth, hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean. When you do meet them, they are usually flattered that you noticed the distinction. When I suggested he obtained his explosives training at the infamous Navy SEAL BUDs course he just looked me in the eye and smirked and his head nodded very slowly one time.

The Navajo are renowned for a deeply ironic sense of humor. I wondered what kind of threats they look out for as I failed to win a staring contest with him. When Shirley's grandfather was alive, the President of the United States and the (military) Governor of Arizona sent Kit Carson and the Army cavalry to Window Rock where Mr. Carson perpetrated one of the more lethal ethnic cleansing campaigns in the history of the New World, against the Navajo people. (Navajo men and woman have a modern legacy of warrior service, almost entirely in the Navy and their Marine Corps. Lori Piestewa was a Hopi serving in the Army)

The current Arizona Governor and the recent EXPOTUS were at the head table with his protectee 30 feet away. We bantered generally about the nature of his job and the NSS relation with other similar agencies and such. I may have mentioned something about Carson's "Long Walk" affecting the Navajo view of US Presidents . A few minutes later, just before Clinton took the podium, he excused himself from the table with a private comment in my ear: “We accompany our leaders whenever they meet with yours.”

LOOK MA, NO TELEPROMPTER. Bill Clinton turned out to be a slighter, more humbled presence than he once was, but he is still the slickest man south of George Clooney. His “mojo” may be on idle and his half-in-the-bag swagger has been replaced by a green tea mellowness, but his intellectually gifted oratorical skills remain unmatched by a living politician. It doesn’t matter if you think Willie is the modern Obie Wan Ken-Obie or the Dark Lord Emperor Palpatane. The force is strong with this guy.

Wanna-be POTUS Monkeys should study the master and learn. These days The Cowboy hears many Republicans yapping up a storm about digging up a new Reagan-esque candidate. The Democrats should take the term “Clinton-esque” out for a test drive and see what the cat drags in.

EXPOTUS DECORUM mandates that Clinton cannot specifically endorse a rising current candidate. This of course plays easily into his subtle joking support for the Wife-in-Chief. Still, it was surprising how many times Bill did NOT mention Hillary. But your Humble Cowboy thought the most interesting tidbit of the evening was when Bill mentioned that he had breakfast with Steve Jobs earlier this week. He pitched the iPhone tastefully and then segued into a segment about the environment.

Why does breakfast with Steve Jobs lead into Kyoto Accord reminiscing and ten minutes on the environment? What does the iPhone have to do with the Environment? A conspiratorial observer might wonder if breakfast-with-Steve was really cover for a meeting between Bill Clinton and planet protecting Apple board member Al Gore. Maybe party Loyalty to a possible Gore campaign would make it even more important for Clinton to keep his comments about Hillary to a minimum.

The Cowboy came away with a new understanding of Bill Clinton’s role in the next election. Slick Willie is the deciding factor in who gets to be the next decider.

When he hits the campaign trail colors are brighter and air is fresher. Everyone is more confident. The next election hinges on the choice Bill Clinton offers American Voters when the curtain closes: Have the Republicans programmed enough voters to hate him like the devil incarnate so that they will vote for ANY alternative to allowing him to live in W’s House in any capacity? OR, Will people vote for Hillary in the impulsive hope that enough of Bill’s magic mojo will rub off onto her to make her tolerable as the new POTUS.

Either way, A Vote for (or against) Hillary is a Vote for (or against) Bill.

Thanks for listening.

Why Jesus Watches Fox

2007-06-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

(Plagiarized by the Pope: Part II)

I was in the gym recently, where there are myriad televisions almost all tuned to Fox News. I turned the one in front of my excer-bike to another channel. The conservative white male business type behind me, on the tread-mill, said "Turn that back right now!" and I apologized and turned it back. He replied something along the lines of .."If you believe in Jesus and America, you watch Fox. This is a conservative health club."

Wow, well what the hell.

It is writ that we take Jesus everywhere with us, unto depravity and unto good works. I guess that means he watches television. As I watched the Jesus approved News channel. I saw a constant live-helicopter show of a famous, damaged celebrity driving herself to the LA county lock-up. I hoped the Son of Man turned the channel and I wondered; What Would Jesus Watch on TV?

The mass of POTUS Picking Christians don’t need to ask what Jesus would watch on TV because they KNOW already. They seek a lot of answers, but how their Savior would react after watching TV with them all day is rarely one of them. The religious right of America knows that FOX News provides the talking points of Jesus. Hopefully with a few judgmental code-words against the non-believers over at MacNeil Lehrer thrown in. Let’s face it, Jesus stopped watching MASH after McLean Stevenson and Larry Linville left the show and American Christianity has been on a roll ever since.

After MASH, Jesus mostly caught a movie here and there on weekends. There was Apocalypse Now, Star Wars, Alien and the Schwarzenegger stuff, followed by the cool breeze of Spielberg’s arrival. The Son of Man got most of his worldview from a few minutes of Jennings and Brokaw in the evening during the 80’s and 90s.

Now, after September 11th and with the Internet, America is defined by mass media interfaces that flood us with simplified bursts of content, news, action, advertising and art all mixed up on purpose. An incessant spray of overlapping shock events large and small raises our adrenaline. Once it is drawn out, our subconscious fear is then soothed, and rewarded by hypnotic punditry and the comfort of repeated background effects. An old friend we’ve never met allows us feel we have an involved relationship with issues and events around us. Fox news is masterful in their manipulation of these senses.

Don’t you Liberals get to righteous about this commentary though. Murdoch founded his empire to counter an American giant that specifically manipulates a community of belonging to create a conformity of ideology. National Public Radio has been centrally managed around a political leaning for decades. NPR is much less corrupted by the hundreds of millions of right wing campaign dollars that fuel the Fox, but they are in the same game.

The truth is that all of the Capt. Father Francis J. Mulcahys in Hollywood can’t heal America’s bi-partisan lust for polarizing media experiences in which other people are victims and other people are to blame.

I remember one exercise in a college drawing class. We covered a huge piece of drawing paper entirely with charcoal. Then we erased back down to create an image. The negative space exercise is an important way of looking at things. Good citizens, good Christians and even Ex-Cowboys have to erase down, chip away the crap and work, dammit, work to get a fair or balanced grip on reality from the media these days.

Young people should be taught to handle the media the same same way, and for God’s sake, let’s start by teaching Iowans.

Iowans get to pick the next President and all they can do right now, according to the early polls, is pick the guy with the shiniest gospel-gazing Life magazine pose and the best pro-corn, pro Jesus stump speech. You want to campaign with Jesus? Here’s a clue: Jesus has unwashed hair and wears sandals, and he takes every question, from every audience.

But, Does Jesus Watch Fox?

Jesus watches everything on TV and he does so with an erasure and a hammer. Jesus is lost to America, among a million glittering fragments of media, seeking to control our vote, manipulate or home life and teach us what kind of consumers to be. Jesus is a product and a slogan and a vital endorsement for every candidate. Jesus does watch FOX but he also listens to NPR. HE chisels away the forlorn chaff, and He sees Maggie Simpson fall and He hears Yo Yo Ma pull his bow across the strings and he says these are the things worth digging for, these are the things I could die for again.

Thanks for putting up with me again.

PLAGIARIZED BY THE POPE (intro)

2007-06-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

The Cowboy just got plagiarized by the Pope (Actually a lower ranking Bishop in the Vatican did it) and it makes the Cowboy indulge in the sin of Pride. I feel relevant!

Yipee.

In a posting from last October called “Sin To Win” I posed the following question to the 3 or 4 Christians whom I could trick into reading my blog:

“Why don’t you DRIVE like a Christian?”

I invited a slew of news editors to critique my post, and just about anyone interesting whose public email address I could find online. I also sent unsolicited Blog Of A Cowboy invitations to a few theologians at the Vatican whose public emails were easy to find.

This week the Vatican issued: “Ten Commandments for Drivers”.

I am genuinely grateful to the frocked journeymen who handle the Big Guy’s PR. Let’s face it, The Cowboy is too afraid of appearing foolish to try and change the world, but if I can change the minds of the pink shod men who can, that’s worth a little private time with one of the seven deadlys.

I feel obliged to reach out again towards that Great Unknowable and those who know all about it. So I’ll try another hack-job session with variations on the favorite question of America’s collective conservative intellect.

What Would Jesus Do?

The Shape of Things Already Here

2007-05-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

It is an old routine, casual, undocumented in my own self evaluations. A few times a year. Often around the changing of the seasons. It is not yoga, nor a fad diet. There is no algae or quack-job rare earth supplemental pill. Even Republicans can do it.

Go to Google news and read (for free) about the new Apple product.

Buy it. Get it. Use it.

Go to Etrade.

Buy more Apple Stock.

I am writing this because the new iTunes plus online music store is crazy-jammed with new customers.

I just bought and I am listening to the Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb". Again. (but in a long overdue high quality format)

I am watching my stock value increase 2%. Again. (2% of todays' value is also much "higher quality" than 2% of last years' value).

neener, neener, neener.

A.

THE GREAT RACE XLIV (Part II)

2007-04-27T23:10:00.000-07:00

The Heart

BOAC recently outlined the list of people who want to be elected, and whose campaigns define them by their skin deep qualifications. These include, for example, being a woman; a black man; a religious zealot, a governor (preferably of a Western state); a war veteran, a charismatic bachelor, a senator, a 9/11 Hero. We are all, clearly, desperate for leaders who will place their country above their party. We want to propose some capable leaders who meet those packaging needs but who also have enough ethical, philosophical or ideological humility that 49% of the population won’t wish them dead as soon as they take the oath of office.

Here are four names that Americans would see on the ballot if we were half as American as our bumper stickers say we are. These are people who are far, far more honorable and competent than any of the current slate.

1) The Reluctant Warrior.

Four Star General, (youngest ever) Chairman of the JCS, Secretary of Sate, Moderate Republican. Black Man.

In an era that has tested military loyalty more than any time since the civil war, the most loyal soldier in America stands bloody, but unbowed on a pillar above the rest.Colin Powell is a moderate but confirmed Republican who opposed both of our military interventions into Iraq. Make no mistake; when he testified at the U.N. on February 5th 2003, Secretary Powell was impaling himself on his own sword, in loyal support of a foreign policy he detested.

Only a black soldier could have risen from Mai-Lai (that was in Vietnam kids), through Panama, Grenada, Libya and Beirut to preside over the largest combined arms combat operation in American history in the first Gulf War. His career milestones mark a path, not so much of a soldier gifted at leading warriors into combat, but as a warrior destined to lead politicians out of it. They broke it and Colin can fix it.

On his first day Powell would be the most accomplished foreign policy practitioner to ever sit in the White House. He would be one of the only Presidents to have previously served in more than one un-elected position in the chain of command. But that’s not even close to the main reason he should be at the top of every wish list to be the next Republican candidate for President of the United States.

America is long overdue for a President who is not a white male. Colin Powell would ensure that the first African American President would both merit and win an undeniable electoral majority. Unless he were to run against Barack Obama, in which case he would probably win the largest landslide in history.

2) Southern Man

Almost everyone finally understands that runaway industrial pollution can, and is causing Global Climate Change (for the worse). However, if you are still a global warming denier try this home test: Sit in your Chevy Suburban or F-250 truck, in the garage with the windows down and your thumped-up bible in your lap. Turn on the car, close the garage doors and then pray for the souls of us fools who think cars can pollute enough to damage our quality of life. In the morning you can ask God for His opinion. Directly.

In 50 years it will be history’s pronouncement that George Bush destroyed America’s respect in the world, and Al Gore won it back and saved much, but not all, of the planet for human habitation. The downside to Al running would be that he will only win by a few percent more votes than he won last time. The upside is that he would embarrass the Democrat's field by raising more money on the day he announced than Hillary has raised in her past ten years of pre-campaigning.

The Blog only has one question about Al: Since he has already won a presidential election could he run for a second term?

3) The Woman is Smarter

Without question the very best way to get elected to the Presidency, in our generation, is to be a conservative two-term, western, red state governor. The best Republican man for the job may be a female Democrat. Arizona is a staunchly Republican, heavily Mormon state. Republicans have always taken the state for granite. They have an overwhelming conservative majority, a significant (to say the least) population of Mormon voters, very few non-white voters and carefully gerrymandered pro Republican districting.

Arizona also made history in each of the last two gubernatorial elections. They became the first state in history to elect a woman governor to replace a sitting woman governor. Then without bating an eye, Arizona voters re-elected her in a landslide against an established Mormon Republican. A former attorney general, she is at the head of the class for intelligence, competence and honesty. She is one of the only governors in America who is uniformly respected by her opposing party.

Governor Napolitano is everything Hillary is not. Including electable.

4) The Ethical Conservative

We go straight to the source to find an honest, open Conservative.

In our hearts, we know the Republicans are going to steal the next election, somehow. The BOAC thought long and hard about this problem and tried to come up with one respectable Republican who can save American Conservatism (and America) from the bizzaro-world party of Godless Christianity that the Republican side has become.

Behind door number 4 we have the chairman for the 2006-07 year of the Pulitzer Prize Board. He is also the chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to promote press freedom by working for the rights of journalists’ worldwide. He was honored with the "Decade of Excellence" award from the World Leadership Forum in 2005. The John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA honored him with the 2002 Gerald Loeb Award for lifetime achievement. Also in 2002, he was awarded the highest honor awarded by the Columbia University School of Journalism. He was named a 2001-2002 Poynter Fellow by Yale University. The National Press Foundation awarded him the 2001 George Beveridge Editor of the Year Award for qualities that produce excellence in media. In March 1999, he was elected to the Pulitzer Prize Board. He personally won three Gerald Loeb Awards and two John Hancock awards for his economics and business coverage.

Please give a warm “49% and a prayer” welcome to managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, vice president of Dow Jones & Company and the next President of the United States of America: Paul E. Steiger.

Virgina Tech Media Day

2007-04-20T11:17:00.001-07:00

Boy is it strange when The Cowboy finds that Fox News is the voice of reason about something.

But The Cowboy praises where praise is due.

After the recent murder spree in Virginia, every major national and, most minor local media outlets broadcast the insane self-glorifying media kit prepared by the lunatic Cho. Except one. Fox News limited their re-broadcast of these sick you-tube memoirs from the first moments and FoxNews.com is the ONLY major internet player that shielded them further by placing them behind a second tier of links and headlines.

The aftermath of the V.A. tech massacre has been a train wreck for America's vaunted free-press and high-tech information society. The same quasi-editorial powers who refused to re-broadcast or even re-print transcripts of Don Imus' recent offensive rant, sprayed this psycho’s you-tube clip across the frontal lobes of America with orgasmic delight. The media, our media, was thrilled to the bone to have details of his weapons and pictures of his PST inducing video.

Cho was insane, but not stupid. He knew the American Press would grant him his posthumous fifteen minutes of fame. Just like all terrorists know they will win glorifying assistance from American news hawkers. Cho knew he was right about the media culture of America. He knew it would inspire more killing. He knew ABC News would lead the charge and make HIM more of an icon than his victims ever will be. He knew the American press would give his act meaning and, in his mind, that was all the justification he needed.

Followers of The Cowboy know that we find no joy in critiquing the loss of deep ethos in American "journalism". However if the editors of America have lost their collective reason (and credibility guys, if that maters) we want to help them get it back. The Cowboy helpfully suggests that there is only one question Ed Murrow would want to answer about this madman and his weapons of choice:

"Play Station; X-box; or Wii".

It is unlikely any of the 2.5 readers of Blog of A Cowboy are V.A. Tech Survivors, but if you are one, we offer our condolences - knowing full-well it makes no difference for your loss.

The Great Race XLIV

2007-04-05T12:34:00.000-07:00

Part I: Meet the New Boss

Thanks for nothing grand-pa Brokaw.

As a member of “The Greatest Living American Marketing Demographic Database ” I want to share my early thoughts on the next field of Presidential candidates bequeathed upon us by “The Greatest Living American Generation”. In part two I’ll suggest a few alternative, noble and qualified leaders from Left and Right to replace them.

Early campaign donation reports are on the front page this week and so the next round of “American Idyll” is underway. The rumbling you hear is the media, firing a live-loaded starter’s pistol for the next presidential race – straight into the crowd. The only reportable fact of note is that most Americans from the left and right, would prefer to see ANY OTHER CANDIDATES than the ones now in the hunt to be the next POTUS. None of them are worth a damn. A leader with, well, leadership skills, would be a breath of fresh air in the “49% and a prayer” partisan fart-sack we call a Democracy these days.

The media’s job is to hypnotize us (with a brick) into accepting the less dangerous option of two campaigns. They lead us all, left and right alike, as vanquished champions, down to a sunless sea. 49% of America hates (and I mean watch-them-die-in-the-desert hatred) the other 49% of Americans, and vis-a-versa. That leaves me among the lonely 2% of freak-flag waiving cowboys. Left to watch the soul of American Democracy sail off into the polluted sunset, somewhere over towards China.

After W. the GOP faces a new bar for maturity or humanity that is higher than Abe Lincoln’s top hat. Not even The Ghost of Ronald Reagan can re-warm the chilled heart of American Conservatives. How anyone can still pretend it is even remotely ethical to belong to Karl Rove's Republican Party is beyond me.

There is only one scenario in which the Republicans' “Party of Hate” should even be allowed by honest, pitch-fork wielding Americans to field a serious candidate for the next election: The Democrats would have to vainly assume that the recent election’s mandate to get the Republicans out of power was the same thing as a mandate to put Democrats in.

Oops.

… Same as the Olde Boss

McCain was destroyed beyond ethics, worse than any Democrat ever has been or ever will be, by the Rove/Cheney/Bush Juggernaut of his own team. The modern Republican Party treated John McCain less honorably than the Viet Cong did. He took it, and that is his problem. The Senator’s failing health, wounded pride and (understandably) nasty temper have alienated everyone in both parties. He has exactly a 2% percent chance of regaining the stolen independent affection and credibility of statesmanship, that he spent his lifetime earning. Straight Talk for McCain can only begin with an admission that Republican Party did more damage to America after 9/11 than the illiterate savages did on 9/11.

Hillary was once the dancing Goldwater Girl who invented “fixing health care” but she spent the past 8 years re-making herself as a steel grimaced, uber-woman, talking-points candidate for the new left (circa 1975). In the process she showed a willingness to sacrifice reason, leadership, and dignity to become the most frighteningly narcissistic candidate on the slate. Her draw as a punching bag for McCain and Giuliani puts her high in the polls; but as a human heart called to carry forward the arts and letters legacy of American leadership during times of peril, she ties with McCain for desperately fighting the next (campaign) war using the failed strategies and momentum of the last one.

Obama has all of the polished upward gazing promise of a life magazine cover. Life magazine is closing this year. Those of us who curse like sailors when we smash our hangover-trembling fingers with a hammer, while trying to squeeze a Starbucks lifestyle out of a Wal-Mart economy won’t notice the absence of either one. The Senator raises a lot of Hollywood anti-Hillary cash, but don’t be fooled by it. It is politically incorect to publically criticize a person of such distinguished minority diversity, too bad for the wunder-kind that voting booths have privacy curtains. His electrifying presence as a Non-White, Non-Woman, Non-Black, Non-Hispanic, Non-Male, Non-southern, Non-Eastern, Non-Gay, Non-Straight, Non-Western, Non-Catholic, Non-Jewish, Non-Muslim, Melting Pot poster child only ensures he will carry a majority of Non-Voters.

Guliani, ( That’s “Mr. Nine-Eleven, SIR” to you) said his wife will attend cabinet meetings, defended his lifelong partnership with an alleged mob-style criminal and appeared to suggest that The Fed would pay for abortions in the future. And that was just this week. It would be unprecedented for a President’s wife to have that kind of access. It would be even more unprecedented if his third marriage lasts long enough for it to be possible. His life-long friend, Bernard Kerik embarrassed the W. House when R.G. tried to force him down their gullet as senior law enforcer, Director of Homeland Security. Turned out Rudy's Rove is into homeland organized crime. Rudolph’s greatest asset is, of course, his public presence on 9/11; too bad he hosed the NYFD so bad politically that they won’t even invite him to speak at the memorial rallies.

Romney stands at the fore of America’s fastest growing Church, the Mormons. They should own the only un-flooded spit of moral high ground left in America. Sadly, for Romney, his brethren also own the un-prosecuted child sexing polygamist cults of Arizona City, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona. Two LDS towns named specifically to confuse federal law enforcement agencies and tax collectors. Mit, (or Mitch or, whatever) has taken flip-floppery to a new level with his family-values pandering in previous campaigns. Don’t assume Mit will even carry the home temple vote: The not-so-greatest living generation at BYU just voted to un-invite Dick Cheney as their featured graduation speaker because he fails to live up to LDS ethical dogma (and he started too many wars for oil). Still, Elder Mit could be the first American President from a religion founded by a snake-oil salesman who spoke to GOD via a magic bean he kept in his hat.

……

End Part I

Think Tank vs Gas Tank

2007-02-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

Open Letter
Drew Johnson
President
Tennessee Center for Policy Research

RE: Al Gore Abuse of Power Exposed

Dear Drew,

Commendations on your national press today regarding the Gore's Abuse of Power.

Your attack presence in the political campaign cycle is a breath of fresh air for those of us who seek relief from the almost daily show of sophisticated, compassionate and philosophical discourse that has come to threaten America's public policy community. The simple efficiency and pride with which you have joined into a public policy debate, outside of your stated core mission, set just the kind of example I seek in raising conservative, intellectually disciplined children of faith. You have helped assure that a proud and honorable tradition of anti-intellectual, verbal scapegoat terrorism continues for another great American election cycle.

You were additionally helpful for me in evaluating your foundation's place as an American political entity, (as opposed to a philosophical birth place for inconvenient questions about the human journey of faith, truth and humility). The organizational acumen you implemented by plowing through a prominent American's trash was only superseded by the media savvy you demonstrated in passing someone else's utility bill off as a unique entry into the USA-led discourse of ideas on this monumental issue.

You are sure to enter the proud roll call as a blessed little "Point of Light" in our new American Century.

As a minor philanthropist I also apreciate your assistance in helping me see a worthy cause for this coming year. I do try and help those who have been bumped off the moral path return to a life of faith. I will be donating a significant carbon offset to the Gore facility you exposed, and if it is not a problem I will make sure they are aware of the source of my inspiration (to help them see the error of their ways.)

Thank you again for the brave stand you have taken on your little soapbox.

Sincerely,

Blog of A Cowboy

N.B.Gay.

2007-01-29T16:28:00.000-07:00

(This was written in October, 2006)

Tonight I had a rare night free from household obligations. Since I am a life-long fan of basketball, and of my hometown Phoenix Suns, I thought it would be fun to go see a basketball game in person. Upon review it was a Bad Call.

I came away wondering when the NBA became a Gay Night Club.

I don't hate gays or anything like that. It's just that I paid to see some old school roundball up close, and maybe sip a cold american beer. Instead I endured a hammering, flashing, distracting dance club experience. With the constant flow of "hawkers" I would have seen the game better at an old Scottsdale bar with a dusty TV up in the corner.

I sat a few rows behind a locally famous retired player. I won’t name him, because he still works for the team, but everyone knows him. Knowing ----- ----- is right after knowing what a Ladmo Bag is on the list of things that allows one to claim status as a native Phoenician. He is one of those Colangello era, clean cut players. Conservatively dressed, always polite and never emotional.

He seems very representative of most of the fans in Phoenix. We are modest but involved. Our kids are quiet during home free throws and our grandmothers lean forward during the nuanced moments of the contest. I watched ---- off and on throughout the game. He looked like a frog that just realized the water is about to boil. Everyone did. Where was basketball amid the red blinding lights, thum-a-thumpa music and screaming junk sellers?

Loud vendors made more view-blocking trips down the aisle in the critical third quarter than the players made up and down the court all night. It might not have been so maddening if someone wanted those oversized “treats” they offered while blocking my view of the game. Besides, Isn’t that what half-time is for? Indeed, fans were able to replenish their mini-kegs of beer and their brick-sized rice cereal treats well before the third period honked open. ----, (who still looks like he could step out onto the hardwood and work inside with Steve Nash for a few minutes if needed) did not indulge in the giant sugar bars.

Every minute or two the lights dimmed randomly and a liver thumping dance beat echoed through the venue. Blinding graphics pulled my eyes repeatedly to giant electro banners which covered every flat wall of the facility. During game-breaks the dancers and the Gorilla tried fruitlessly to get our attention back down onto the court, but it was a lost cause. Short of full-blown porno escapades between the mascots and dance team members, nothing could keep our eyes from the intentional distractions of the interstitial advertisements. Our focus, as a crowd, was battle-hounded in all directions by loud music, blinking graphics and flashing lights. The Game of Basketball had nothing to do with my game night.

Very few fans looked happy and none danced to the throbbing beat. Even the players were regularly distracted by the disco gimmicks of this new NBA experience. The Suns are earning rights as one the most fun teams to watch in the history of the game. They are a team of internationally sophisticated players lead by a humble Canadian point guard and a Midwestern coach. Our most decorated and renowned fan is not a hard-partying mega star, she is a 60+ year old catholic Nun.

This season it is the playoffs every night in Phoenix. These Suns could sell 15,000 tickets three nights a week if they played outside at the Window Rock Navajo High School. So why do they make fans attend a gay dance party in order to watch a sublime Basketball game?

I (used to) love this game.

A.

Got Terror?

2006-12-12T11:12:00.000-07:00

Terrorism in other places is complicated but we can grasp the basics. When we look at ourselves, here at home, our ability to understand what fuels it, and thus our ability to defend against it, is hampered by domestic interests of the marketplace and the political arena. This chllenge has been dangerously compounded by the fact that somewhere in the Cheney/Rove era we replaced our acting ethics with a merely spoken morality. It was a very dangerous sleight of hand.

Here is a litle example of why that is:

Somewhere near Salinas there is a pissed-off (illegal) immigrant from our failed (due to market-driven corruption) nation-state neighbor to the south. His wife (women learn new languages first, so she can read English) read him this Washington Post story. It details the dairy industry’s willingness to spend millions of dollars on efforts to collude, with abandoned ethics, against one individual entrepreneur.

Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control System

(Or the original AZ Republic story:)
Maverick Dairyman Fights Lobbyists and Lawmakers

The article made our immigrant friend realize that the Agriculture industry will pay a pro-corruption lobbyist more in an hour than they will pay a whole busload of his border-crossing, hard working, refugee, band-of-brothers in a year. Maybe it made him angry, because he understands that every wealthy nation has an immigrant low-wage labor resource and that the United States is the only wealthy nation in history whose immigrant labor class has never bread terrorism. He noticed that, as a reward for this good behavior we recently gave them 3 miles of worthless actual fencing and a 300 mile wall of state-sponsored rhetorical prejudice.

So he took a poop on the Organic Spinach last month.

Now his drinking buddy heard about that, and sees it the same way, and so he took a dump on the onions last week.

And if they have a buddy who works in a dairy, the lobbying/legal expense detailed in those articles will all be for naught.

I am willing to bet very few people outside of the dairy industry read both of these articles. But when the headline of this same paper says "GOT E-COLI?" every family in America, will promptly trade their $5 a week milk budget line for a gallon of free tap water, $1.75 increase to the Starbucks "soy latte' " budget line, and one more gallon of gas. The cash flow of a 30 Billion dollar a year marketplace could be shut down without a single explosion. Simply because we won't trade our spoken Morals, for our acted Ethics.

We can, and we should do all of the dark things we do to fight terror. We should spy on ourselves, steal elections and kill innocents. But if our morality remains only rhetorical (and wildly prejudiced), and our ethics further abandoned for widening greed and corruption, then America will fail in our lifetime.

Regardless of what the Mullahs do next.

Thanks for letting me try and express my thoughts.

A.

A Book Worth Burning

2006-11-17T16:11:00.000-07:00

How far down will the American business community sink before the spreading stain of failed ethics consumes our remaining freedom of ideas?

The publication of OJ Simpson’s confessional book is the darkest moment in the History of American Arts and Letters.

I could not have imagined believing this, but I feel America has finally produced a book worth burning.

The Goldman's website.

The Blue State Kool-Aid Acid Test

2006-11-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

It’s the economy AND the last 48 Hours, stupid.
Why is Karl Smiling?

Every pollster, pundit and commentator is buzzing with the story. Republicans are so afraid they are eating their own. Democrats are already picking out new curtains for their take-over of the Congress, and possibly the Senate. It’s a dramatic media moment of Pre-History.

Don’t get your hopes up America.

The prevailing wisdom is flawed to the bone and no honorable pundit worth his salt should be saying otherwise. The media are crying so hard at the funeral that they are forgetting to see if there is really a body in the ground. Every relevant article written about this election starts out: “The Democrats are poised to take over the House and make gains in the Senate”. Then follows, inevitably, the most under-reported word in American polling.

“Unless”

Here are the two reasons why the Democrats might not make significant gains on Tuesday.

“Democrats are poised to take over the House and make gains in the Senate unless an unforeseen dramatic event takes place. The next three days is an important test of America’s free press and, despite some appearances of valiant effort, the test may well be failed to Karl Rove’s history-making advantage.

Has a single public pollster asked: “Are you aware that Saddam Hussein will be sentenced to death on Sunday?” The (we presume death) sentence will appear as Monday morning’s headline in 100% of the news outlets. And it will make all the difference.

“Democrats are poised to take over the House and make gains in the Senate unless Rove can influence the undecided votes in key districts. The most ignored election factor in the past three cycles is the combined success of Republican gerrymandering and 72 hour action plans. The polls may be accurate when they report that 70% of Americans want a fresh start in Congress. What they don’t reflect is that 70% of the country does not readily equate with 51% of the voters who matter. Everyone thinks the Christians will stay home and the disunited non-voting Democrats will show up. That seems naïve to me.

The media polls are usually off by a margin of plus or minus 3-5%. Karl Rove lives in that margin. Karl can keep his job if he: A: Gets 1 or 2% of those polled to change their vote to Republican. (Most likely with a big scary headline, like Saddam being sentenced to death.) B: Quietly controls that 3-5% margin of error. (With his proven 72 hour plan, gerrymandered districts and Sin-to-Win campaign tactics.) This will get him 5-8% more votes per race than the national polls indicate he has. That will keep the Senate and maybe even the House in Republican control.

I hope your vote proves me wrong.

Thanks for your time,

A.

In Arcadium Est

2006-10-26T00:10:00.000-07:00

Stay The Farce

2006-10-25T23:36:00.000-07:00

In a desperate acknowledgment that the Neo-Conservative occupations of both the US and Iraq are in Clear and Present Danger of simultaneous collapse this election cycle, The White House has held a series of High Level Meetings about Iraq. The impression one gets is that The Best and The Brightest have been called in to try and convince George W. Bush that the war in Iraq and the Republican majority can be lost.

The best they have come up with is to state publicly that America needs a new slogan in order to accomplish whatever our goals actually are in Iraq.

Three words (Stay The Course) have been the sole strategic and tactical guidance implemented by the Neo-Conservatives for almost 3 years. These words were fine for the early stages of the Iraq occupation but the conflict has evolved.

I am just a cowboy, so I don’t have our leader’s sophisticated framework of comprehensive situational awareness in the war on terror. Sometimes I think it is all just A Great Game. I can’t really call up the ironic historic timeline of Iraq. To me there is just a blur starting with a woman and man eating a Pomegranate, through some motorcycle guy named T.E. Lawrence and some kind of Arab League and a bunch of Young Turks, and then something called ARAMCO and on and on, all ending up with forward elements of the 3rd I.D., a Marine Expeditionary Force and a sand grounded 101st Air Assault Division overthrowing a savage dictator originally empowered by the CIA.

No, I am obviously not qualified to have a strong opinion about U.S. adventurism in a place that my children already call:

“Viet-Sand”.

But I do think the Time Is Now for us to Up the Ante and use four or even five words to fight the Iraq war. I realize it sounds radical, but I am frustrated by our stagnated cycle of dysfunctional leadership.

I say we need a complete sentence.

Thanks,

A.

SIN TO WIN

2006-10-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

Well I went to church on Sunday, I was feelin’ blue.
Saturday night sat down beside me, in the very last pew.
- Ambulance Brothers

Bush and the Republicans rose to power on a platform of religious fervor. The "values" message has been extremist in it’s zeal, but there is a confusing contradiction between their words and their actions. Almost any unchristian act is acceptable, provided it furthers their power and is backed up by properly coded words extolling "family values". The Reagan Revolution has devolved into a surreal pendulum between Sunday Morning Christianity and Saturday Night Sinfulness.

The Sunday Morning Christians of the GOP go to church once a week and say they believe in Christ’s Path. They refresh their dented faith for an hour, set an example for the kids and show the voters they are “clean”. Once they leave the church, however, they carry their political flag forward using acts and deeds that are the very definition of what Christ died to protest.

Rove’s Republicans take the Jesuit doctrine that “The Ends Justify the Means” one step further into the American Democratic experience: They made it heroic to push the limits of Christian behavior in pursuit of more power, more money and more glory. If the ethos of the Republican Party can be boiled down into one of their own simpleton-minded talking points it would be this:

SIN TO WIN.

It worked well for a time, mostly because nothing unifies like prejudice. Being judgemental against other population groups is as easy as it is unsophisticated. It drives the fearful masses like a blizzard drives cattle across the prairie. Now, however, the Republicans face serious election year blowback from the faithful. They built a national chorus of judgmental speaking but it was to polished. The reality of their actions could never match their promise of perfection. Christians are more than mildly concerned. It is suddenly late in the evening of W.'s Presidency and the date that brought him would like to dance.

… Lest ye be Judged

Under the current leadership Republicans openly proclaimed themselves to be the Party of Christ. But lately they are acting like the Party of Caesar. On Sundays they gleefully rouse the pitchfork and torch crowd, under the guise of Christ’s Path. But on Saturday night they trade, sell, conspire, deal, abuse power and ignore truths in a way that would make even the Romans bow in awe. (See "The Party of Dog" entry below.) They define themselves at every issue and every contrived moral crisis by what they are against. They proudly destroy any people (christian or otherwise) who disagree with them or any idea that threatens their power.

I have enormous faith in my heart. I believe Christ walked the earth. I have only ever wanted to ask him one thing: How can so many intelligent people be so loyal to you with their words and yet so sadly faithless to the key details of behavior that you died to espouse? I see the fish icons and the W. bumper stickers on rows of SUVs at the churches in our neighborhood each Sunday. I see them on the road on Monday and I wonder:

Why don’t you drive like a Christian?

I was raised to believe that Christian ethics are very, very simple: You determine what is right and what is easy. You do what is right and not what is easy. You suffer the discomfort, or rewards, of your choice as God has chosen for you. You move on down the path.

I was a Reagan independent. (I also recall that Reagan defeated a devote Christian.) I am sad that the GOP has grown away from Reagan's gentle but resolute faith in Americans. They turned the party into a vitriolic marketing machine that brands faith in Christ like pro sports brand cheap beer. The Republicans of this era carry the same great cross of the ages before them in their march. They wave the same large, crisp flag of patriotism. But the only devotion they show in their deeds is to make sure that someone else is riding the cross this time up the hill.

Thanks for letting me try and share my thoughts.

A.

The Party Of Dog

2006-10-16T16:14:00.000-07:00

This week's Roll Call for Republican Patriots (choose your favorite):

1) Drunken, Spouse-Abusing, Sex Maniac Porn Addict.

2) FBI investigating Senior Republican Sentator’s office for illegal $50,000,000.00 Pentagon spending fraud.

3) FBI Raids Congressman’s Daughter in probe of illegal $1,000,000.00 foreign lobby contract.

4) Congressman admits guilt in Abramoff corruption, bribery. Doesn't resign (yet).

5) Congressman in charge of protecting America's children from sex predators flees Washington as sex predator.

After the Equinox

2006-10-13T14:35:00.000-07:00

Ney's Resolution

2006-10-13T14:21:00.000-07:00

Congressman, until proven guilty.

A.

Foley's Paradox

2006-10-11T17:33:00.000-07:00

Being a Gay Republican is like being a Jewish Nazi:

(Your people won't forgive you in this world, and your God won't forgive you in the next.)

A.

My First Blog Post

2006-07-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

Wow,

This is my first Blog Post.

I am really glad that it is over now.

A.

Blank Test

2006-07-11T12:39:00.000-07:00

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