President Cliff Notes

After spending the best part of the day cleaning out closets and cleaning, tossing stuff out and rearranging the storage shelves in the laundry room, I don’t have much left over in the way of original thought tonight. They say that the new year is a good time to lighten the load, and I’m taking it to heart. Now, I’m just whupped.

But Keith Olberman seems never to be at a loss for words or razor-sharp eloquence. Here’s the transcript from his broadcast last night on MSNBC regarding The Decider’s war escalation speech:

And lastly, as promised, a Special Comment about the President's address last night.

Only this President, only in this time, only with this dangerous, even Messianic certitude, could answer a country demanding an exit strategy from Iraq, by offering an entrance strategy for Iran.

Only this President, could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say "where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me" — only to follow that, by proposing to repeat the identical mistake in Iran.

Only this President could extol the "thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group," and then take its most far-sighted recommendation — "engage Syria and Iran" - and transform it into "threaten Syria and Iran" — when Al-Qaeda would like nothing better than for us to threaten Syria, and when President Ahmmadinejad would like nothing better than to be threatened by us.

This is diplomacy by skimming; it is internationalism by drawing pictures of Superman in the margins of the text books; it is a presidency of Cliff Notes.

And to Iran and Syria — and, yes, also to the insurgents in Iraq — we must look like a country, run by the equivalent of the drunken pest, who gets battered to the floor of the saloon by one punch, then staggers to his feet, and shouts at the other guy's friends, "ok, which one of you is next?"

Mr. Bush, the question is no longer "what are you thinking?," but rather "are you thinking at all?"

"I have made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended," you said last night.

And yet — without any authorization from the public who spoke so loudly and clearly to you in November's elections; without any consultation with a Congress (in which key members of your own party like Senator Brownback and Senator Coleman and Senator Hagel are fleeing for higher ground); without any awareness that you are doing exactly the opposite of what Baker-Hamilton urged you to do, you seem to be ready to make an open-ended commitment (on America's behalf) to do whatever you want, in Iran.

Our military, Mr. Bush, is already stretched so thin by this bogus adventure in Iraq, that even a majority of serving personnel are willing to tell pollsters that they are dissatisfied with your prosecution of the war.

It is so weary, that many of the troops you have just consigned to Iraq, will be on their second tours, or their third tours, or their fourth tours — and now you're going to make them take on Iran and Syria as well?

Who is left to go and fight, sir?

Who are you going to send to "interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria"? Laura and Barney?

The line is from the movie "Chinatown" and I quote it often. "Middle of a drought," the mortician chuckles, "and the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.!"

'Middle of a debate over the lives and deaths of another 21,500 of our citizens in Iraq… and the President wants to saddle up against Iran and Syria.'

Maybe that's the point: to shift the attention away from just how absurd and childish, is this latest war strategy (strategy, that is, for the war already under way, and not the one, on deck).

We are to put 17,500 more troops into Baghdad and 4,000 more into Anbar Province to give the Iraqi government "breathing space."

In and of itself, that is an awful and insulting term.

The lives of 21,500 more Americans endangered, to give "breathing space" to a government that just turned the first and perhaps the most sober act of any Democracy — the capitol punishment of an ousted dictator — into a vengeance lynching so barbaric, and so lacking in the solemnities necessary for credible authority, that it might have offended the Ku Klux Klan of the 19th Century.

And what will our men and women in Iraq do?

The ones who will truly live — and die — during what Mr. Bush said last night will be a "year ahead" which "will demand more patience, sacrifice, and resolve"?

They will try to seal up Sadr City and other parts of Baghdad, in which the civil war is worst.

Mr. Bush did not mention that while our people are trying to do that, the factions in the civil war will no longer have to focus on killing each other but rather, they can focus anew on killing our people.

Because last night the President foolishly all but announced that we will be sending these 21,500 poor souls over — but, no more after that — and if the whole thing fizzles out, we're going home.

The plan fails militarily.

The plan fails symbolically.

The plan fails politically.

Most importantly, perhaps, Mr. Bush, the plan fails because it still depends on your credibility.

You speak of mistakes, and of the responsibility "resting" with you. But you do not admit to making those mistakes.

And you offer us nothing to justify this clenched fist towards Iran and Syria.

In fact, when you briefed news correspondents off-the-record before the speech, they were told, once again, "if you knew what we knew… if you saw what we saw…"

"If you knew what we knew," was how we got into this morass in Iraq, in the first place.

The problem arose, when it turned out that the question wasn't whether or not we knew what you knew but whether you knew what you knew.

You, sir, have become the President who cried wolf.

All that you say about Iraq now, could be gospel. All that you say about Iran and Syria now, could be prescient and essential.

We no longer have a clue, sir. We have heard too many stories.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just shuffled the Director of National Intelligence over to the State Department, because he thought you were wrong about Iran.

Many of us are as inclined to believe you just put a pilot in charge of ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because he would be truly useful in an air war next door in Iran.

Your assurances, sir, and your demands that we trust you, have lost all shape and texture.

They are now merely fertilizer for conspiracy theories.

They are now fertilizer indeed.

The pile has been built slowly and with seeming care.

I read this list last night, before the President's speech, and it bears repetition, because its shape and texture are perceptible only in such a context.

Before Mr. Bush was elected, he said nation-building was wrong for America. Now he says it is vital.

He said he would never put U.S. troops under foreign control. Last night he promised to embed them, in Iraqi units.

He told us about WMD. Mobile labs. Secret sources. Aluminum tubes. Yellow-cake.

He has told us the war is necessary because Saddam was a material threat. Because of 9/11. Because of Osama Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda. Terrorism in General. To liberate Iraq. To spread freedom. To spread Democracy. To prevent terrorism by gas price increases. Because this was a guy who tried to kill his Dad.

Because 439 words in to the speech last night, he trotted out 9/11 again.

In advocating and prosecuting this war he passed on a chance to get Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. To get Muqtada Al-Sadr.
To get Bin Laden.

He sent in fewer troops than the Generals told him to.

He ordered the Iraqi army disbanded and the Iraqi government "De-Baathified."

He short-changed Iraqi training. He neglected to plan for widespread looting. He did not anticipate sectarian violence.

He sent in troops without life-saving equipment. Gave jobs to foreign contractors, and not Iraqis. He staffed U.S. positions there, based on partisanship, not professionalism.

He and his government told us "America had prevailed", "Mission Accomplished", the resistance was in its "last throes".

He has insisted more troops were not necessary. He has now insisted more troops are necessary.

He has insisted it's up to the generals, and then removed some of the generals who said more troops would not be necessary.

He has trumpeted the turning points: The fall of Baghdad; the death of Uday and Qusay; the capture of Saddam; A provisional government; a charter; a constitution; the trial of Saddam; elections; purple fingers; another government; the death of Saddam.

He has assured us: we would be greeted as liberators with flowers; as they stood up, we would stand down. We would stay the course; we were never about "stay the course." We would never have to go door-to-door in Baghdad. And last night, that to gain Iraqis' trust, we would go door-to-door in Baghdad.

He told us the enemy was Al-Qaeda, foreign fighters, terrorists, Baathists, and now Iran and Syria.

The war would pay for itself. It would cost 1.7 billion dollars. 100 billion. 400 billion. Half a trillion. Last night's speech alone cost another six billion.

And after all of that, now it is his credibility versus that of generals, diplomats, allies, Democrats, Republicans, the Iraq Study Group, past presidents, voters last November, and the majority of the American people.

Oh, and one more to add, tonight: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Mr. Bush, this is madness.

You have lost the military.

You have lost the Congress to the Democrats.

You have lost most of the Iraqis.

You have lost many of the Republicans.

You have lost our Allies.

You are losing the credibility, not just of your Presidency, but more importantly of the office itself.

And most imperatively, you are guaranteeing that more American troops will be losing their lives, and more families their loved ones. You are guaranteeing it!

This becomes your legacy, sir: How many of those you addressed last night as your "fellow citizens" you just sent to their deaths?

And for what, Mr. Bush?

So the next President has to pull the survivors out of Iraq instead of you?

Good night and good luck.

Hat tip: Crooks and Liars

Warm thoughts

Heating a home with just a wood stove and good intentions can be an adventure.

Late last night, just before he came to bed, Mr. Wren kindly stacked logs of fragrant almond into our fireplace wood stove insert, closed the stove door, switched off the lights and turned in.

The idea is that the wood burns all night, leaving me with a nice, hot, glowing bed of coals in the very early morning. Then I repeat the process throughout the day. We stay warm.

Simple enough.

But as I write this, I’m wearing a jacket, have a down quilt over my lap and a tiny, office-type personal heater blowing on my flannel-clad legs. My outdoors cap is on my head, pulled down over my ears. The cat keeps trying to work his way between me and my jacket, which makes typing interesting. I grip my coffee cup in both hands for a minute, take a sip, put it down and type, quick, before my fingers stiffen up.

On Tuesday night a storm all the way from Alaska slid down the Pacific Northwest and into California, bringing us the coldest temperatures we’ve had this winter so far, but very little in the way of rain or snow. I’m wondering why the National Weather Service called it a “storm” at all – the all-caps severe weather warnings on my Yahoo weather feature started last Friday.

When I think of storms and severe weather, I think of dark skies and blowing rain or snow, the kind of weather that makes me glad I have shelter and a warm fire. But nothing much happened with this storm, except the mercury in the thermometer dropped dramatically. Yesterday was sunny most of the day, then it clouded up for a little while. Miniscule, dry snowflakes fell. It was pretty. I entertained thoughts of a white winter wonderland.

Then the lonely snow cloud moved on and the sun came back out, dashing my hopes.

This morning it’s clear and sunny – and 18 degrees outside. It’s 52 degrees in my kitchen, which is better than 32, of course. The reason it’s so cold indoors? Mr. Wren turned off the powerful little fan under the stove while he loaded it full of wood – and forgot to turn it back on. So overnight, the stove warmed an area of about six feet around it, and nothing else.

As you might have surmised from previous posts, I do love winter. I enjoy the cold, as long as I can stay warm. Snow makes me smile with its pristine beauty and silence, and I don’t mind gray skies and rain in the least. Rain on the roof is a peaceful sound. I even like the sound of my windshield wipers in the car and the shoosh of the tires on the wet pavement.

Yes, I’m a little odd.

But this wood stove business does have its drawbacks, even as I enjoy the delicious heat it produces when we’ve done everything right. One thing is for sure – I never know what I’ll wake up to on winter mornings.

Happiness 101

Top ten e-mailed New York Times stories at 7 a.m., PST, today:

1. Appreciations: Mr. Noodle [about the death of the inventor of ramen instant noodles];

2. Happiness 101 [about a class at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, which, by using psychological building blocks, teaches students the difference between feeling good and doing good];

3. Questions Couples Should Ask (Or Wish They Had) Before Marrying [obvious];

4. Hot Stuff [all about those cool silicon kitchen tools, like pot holders and squishy, reusable cupcake cups];

5. Agency Affirms Human Influence on Climate [the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under the Bush White House says “unequivocally” that a buildup of greenhouse gases is helping warm the climate. Really?? Whoulda thunk it??];

6. The Breakfast Wars [Starbucks’ new breakfast sandwich or McMuffin? You decide];

7. Apple Introduces Innovative Cellphone [Steve Jobs unveils the new iPhone, which does everything but babysit at only about $450 per phone,but it won’t be on the market until June. Sure, I’ve got the throwaway cash for that];

8. Fitness: When It’s OK to Run Hurt [orthopedist says exercise is good even if you’re hurt. Sometimes.];

9. State of the Art: Apple Waves It’s Wand at the Phone [more iPhone. Woohoo.];

10. S.M.U. Faculty Complains About Bush Library [Can’t blame them]

At 6 p.m. PST last night, George W. Bush appeared on TV to tell America that, in spite of its strong antipathy for his vanity war in Iraq, he’s going to escalate it. Again. He might as well have flipped America the bird, because in reality, that’s what he did.

Instead of “listening to his constituents,” like he told us just last month he always does, he listened to no one but those in his inner circle who agreed with him. In fact, while he told us he was working hard, coming up with a “new way forward” in Iraq (this took nearly three months), he was lying through his teeth. Again.

George W. Bush already had a plan to escalate and prolong his war long enough to see him out of office in 2009. It’s already underway. According to ABC News, 90 advance troops from the 82d Airborne Division arrived in Baghdad yesterday, before he gave his speech. Eight hundred more are expected to arrive there today.

Five additional brigades, or about 16,000 soldiers, will descend into the hellish meatgrinder of Iraq between now and April. He said nothing of what happens if this latest “change” in tactics doesn’t work. There are no timetables, no milestones, no benchmarks. America’s occupation forces in Iraq are there indefinitely.

George W. Bush isn’t going to bring our troops home, no way no-how. Doing that would be admitting that he lost his vanity war. That he misjudged. That he blew it. That he’s responsible for the injury, maiming and deaths of thousands and thousands of people, Americans and Iraqis alike. Him. Dubya. Alone.

If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably one of the few Americans who’ve taken the time and effort to understand what Bush and his administration have done to America, her Constitution, the rights of her citizens, and her standing in the world since he was gifted by a stunningly partisan Supreme Court with the presidency in 2000. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably as dismayed and disgusted as I am over this latest “fuck off” from the President of the United States to the people of his country – and to the world.

But it appears that many Americans haven’t even noticed. The most interesting news to them today is Mr. Noodle’s passing and Apple’s whiz-bang iPhone.

Oh -- and how to be happy. America is so screwed.

Photo hugs to W. R.

Deadly flim-flam

It seems that as far as George W. Bush is concerned, the answer to the nation’s deep unhappiness with his war in Iraq is to send more of its sons and daughters over there to be maimed for life or to die.

Let’s not pussyfoot around. This is George W. Bush’s war. America is fighting in Iraq not because that country posed any threat, but because he wanted revenge on Saddam, and saw his death and the destruction of his country and its people as a notch on his gun. To get Congress and the people to go along with him, he lied to us. Fed us a huge, stinking crock of shit. And when his lies started unraveling, almost from the start, he came up with new lies.

Shame on America, that we were so fearful after Sept. 11 that we closed our eyes, hid under our beds and told him to do what he wanted to do. Anything to keep the boogy-man away.

Bush sees our children, our brothers and sisters, husbands and wives who wear the uniform as dispensable. Their injuries and deaths as they fight his war for him do not concern him. Since he started the war in March 2003, he hasn’t attended a single soldier’s funeral, instead mouthing insincere platitudes about how their deaths grieve him. Nor do the deaths and maimings of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens bother him.

By his own admission, he doesn’t have any trouble sleeping at night.

What bothers George W. Bush is that he might leave office in 2009 with a black stain on his presidency, a lost war that’s been a bloody fiasco from the start.

Someone needs to take him aside and say, “George, dear, your very presidency is a black stain."

It was a sham from the moment he was sworn in as president, when the highest office in the land was handed to him by a disgustingly partisan Supreme Court even after he’d lost the popular vote. The presidency of George Bush the Younger has been the biggest, most malevolent and deadliest flim-flam in America’s history. We called Richard Nixon a crook, but Tricky Dick merely lit the match that ignited George W. Bush’s flamethrower.

And now, even though only 27 percent of the population approves of his handling of the war in Iraq, he’s escalating it. To hell with coy, meaningless words like “surge” – this is an escalation. And it has already started, even though he’s only going to tell us about it tonight. Since the elections, while he told us he was working hard on a plan – three months of deep thinking – he already had a plan, and he was getting it rolling without benefit of support from Congress or the people. On January 30, the first 3,700 of tens of thousands more troops are headed for the abattoir.

This is, of course, exactly what we should have expected him to do. Bush has shown the American people over and over again that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass what they want. It’s all about George and his cronies, all about fattening the coffers of the big corporations he’s fond of. About oil. About money.

About power.

From everything I’ve read so far, even the new, Democratically controlled Congress can’t stop this latest, doomed escalation. America has a madman at the helm – and there’s not a damned thing we can do about it. Congress can conduct “symbolic” hearings. They can threaten to cut off the money supply, but Bush will just take the money from other places – or simply ignore them. They tell us they won’t impeach him, either, fearing a “Constitutional crisis.”

Kids, that crisis is already upon us. Open your eyes.

I don’t want another two or three thousand American soldiers to lose their lives and many thousands more to be injured horribly just so George W. Bush can leave office in 2009 without the loss of a war as part of his legacy. This horror is his legacy. I don’t want him to mosey back to his brush-farm in Texas, leaving the horror of what he’s done in the lap of a new president. I don’t want him to live out his remaining years in wealthy, comfortable ease. I want him in a bare prison cell just like the ones he's condemned his detainees to.

I want our uniformed loved ones out of the slaughterhouse that George W. Bush created in Iraq. Immediately. And I want him and his enablers impeached and tried for their crimes against their country and their people, also immediately. Once that’s done, I want them turned over to the World Court to be tried for their war crimes and their crimes against humanity. Nothing else will even start to heal the wounds they’ve inflicted on America and the world.

George W. Bush must be stopped. There must be justice.

Fellow Travelers

During the last few weeks I’ve added some Fellow Travelers to the list at the right. They’re all excellent blogs and deserve more than one visit.

The Calm Before the Sand is a thoughtful and beautifully written blog by a young soldier who is stationed in Iraq. He posts as often as he can, covering such diverse topics as tower duty, bigotry within and without his unit, and his longing for his young wife and home back in “the world.” Army Spc. Milo Freeman will take your breath away with his observations. Sometimes melancholy, sometimes angry, sometimes stunningly beautiful, they’re worth your time.

Inside Iraq is a brand new blog “updated by Iraqi and U.S. journalists based in Baghdad and outlying provinces. These are firsthand accounts of their experiences,” reads the blurb in the sidebar. Published for the first time just today, you can read posts from Dulaimy, Zaineb, Mohammed, Laith and Shatha, as of this posting. They’re raw, unedited, real voices telling what it’s like to be Iraqi in Iraq right now. Dulaimy cries, with all-caps shouts of anger and frustration, that Iraqis don’t need a government, because

“we have MILITIAS
”we have TERRORISTS
”we have RESISTANCE
”we have enough CLERICS
”we have GUN DEALERS
”we have SMUGGLERS
”we have bad NEIGHBORS
”we have trained CRIMINALS
”and even more all the above have many ways to make money THEY CAN KIDNAP any time they want and WHO EVER they want (for example more than 147 employee from a ministry that is no more than 3 miles away from the government and the MNFI head quarters) ...”

Spend a little time with this new blog. It will get your attention and break your heart.

The Official Site of Grant Miller is understated, droll and whimsical. An example? One of today’s posts is titled, “The Best Things That Ever Happened To Me, Vol. LX,” in which Grant says that his mother-in-law thought he was generous in December of 2003, then gives us a paragraph explaining why she thought that. You can’t help but grin. It’s black-and-blue humor on the soft-shoe.

Jon Swift is a “reasonable conservative who likes to write about politics and culture. Since the media is biased I get all my news from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Jay Leno monologues.” Be careful with this one. The writing is clever, pertinent, and satirical, and boy, is it good. He’s a finalist for the Weblog Awards and nominated for several other web-based awards, as well. Read him and you’ll see why.

Blowing Shit Up With Gas, written by Patrick Hillman, is an absorbing and entertaining read, filled with observations about life as we know it. Check out his take on possible future nanotechnology advances to extend the human lifespan to, say, 1,000 years. Or how about the evening he almost turned into a “road warrior” while jogging?

Patrick is an excellent writer – and he’s also a fellow moderator with me at the Chumps of Choice blog, in which we and a large group of like-minded and hardy souls are reading Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, “Against the Day.” It’s not too late to get started – drop by and take a look. Patrick’s turn at moderating started today and he hit the ground running with 4,000 words about his section from the book. The bar has been raised; I’m doing my exercises, beefing up for my turn next Monday.

Go figure

For those of you who read the last post and winced in real pain at my appalling mathematical skills – I said a quarter of 300,000,000 was 250,000, not the correct and much more impressive number of 25 million – I must apologize and admit a real handicap.

First, though, let me say I was humbly delighted when Patrick at Blowing Shit Up With Gas kindly pointed out my boo-boo in the comments. My handy talent for instantly visualizing concepts went into near-overload as I imagined 25 million (!) Christers rising suddenly to heaven buck-naked.

I was grinning like a fool, imagining a sky full of shrieking, mortified Jesus freaks. Thanks, Patrick.

Now, back to that handicap. I am, and always have been, a total loss when it comes to the murky smoke-and-mirrors of numbers. The section of my brain that’s supposed to cogitate algorithms with alacrity is smooth as a baby’s bottom, I’m sure of it. The above flub is a perfect example – and knowing I have this, ah, issue, I used my laptop’s handy-dandy calculator to arrive at the number and still got it wrong.

My Dad was a very successful CPA. He could add and subtract, multiply and divide long lists of numbers in his head and get it right every time. His mastery of algebraic whatever-they-ares was incredible. His disappointment when he realized that his first-born child was completely deficient in this area must have been huge.

I know mine was.

It was in fourth grade that the problem really presented. I lost my way in the math portion of the class very early in the school year, and because I was a shy kid and embarrassed that I couldn’t understand the lessons, I stopped doing the homework. Or rather, I did do some of it, since my poor Dad asked most evenings what kind of homework I had and whether I’d done it. I was, with a few exceptions, an honest child. But rather than turn those papers in and have them come back all covered with humiliating red check marks, indicating that I’d gotten most of the problems wrong (inexplicably, to me), I sat on them. Literally.

Our little desks in the classroom had cubbies under the seats, and that’s where all those laboriously penciled math papers ended up.

This worked amazingly well. My teacher, Mr. M, who was really handsome and so nice and funny, was the first teacher I ever had a crush on. To my relief, he never inquired about all that missing math homework. And while I’m sure I was failing tests all over the place, the results never reached my parents, who thought I was doing famously in school that year.

They were probably relieved, too, since it was my second stab at fourth grade. But that’s another story.

I was doing very well in most other aspects of the fourth-grade curriculum, you see. English and spelling were a breeze – ask me to deconstruct a sentence or write a story and I did it with joy and without any problem at all. Mr. M praised my stories, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Even then, my imagination was bigger than I was.

I was a great reader, too. My comprehension skills were good and I was always checking out books at the library that were far above my grade level. I loved science – photosynthesis in plants and the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies completely intrigued me. History bored me, but I did well, usually acing tests. And, since I could draw almost anything from the moment I was old enough to hold a crayon, I was the best artist in my class.

I doodled all over my math papers. Then I sat on them.

My memory is a little vague about it, but I think it all came to a head at the end of the third quarter, when Mr. M finally noticed I hadn’t turned in most of my math homework – for months! – and my test scores were abysmal. I came home one sunny Friday afternoon to find my Dad home from work early. I was delighted – it was always fun when Dad was home. He was such a great guy. But that day, I wasn’t greeted with smiles and laughter and hugs. It was one serious Daddy sitting at the kitchen table with his Tarryton and coffee cup.

It turned out that Mr. M had called my Mom to tell her there was a little problem. Her daughter hadn’t turned in most of her math homework for the school year to date, her math skills were almost non-existent and if something didn’t happen to fix it, and fast, I’d fail fourth grade. Again. She’d called Dad in a panic and he left the office early. When he got home, she went over to the school to talk with Mr. M and the principal. When she came home, it was with a huge armload of papers. My math papers, which had been smooshed into that cubby under my seat for months. They’d discovered my stash.

I was busted.

Dad, bless his heart, didn’t yell at me. Instead, he asked why I’d done my homework but not turned it in? Why had only done some of it, but not all of it? Why hadn’t I shown him my red-ink-covered tests? He’d have been happy to help me with my math homework, if only he’d known I was having such trouble with it.

I’m afraid my answer was typical of a kid. “I don’t know,” I said, but I meant it. I really didn’t know, then, why I couldn’t own up to the problem. I do now, many, many years later and after much thought about it. I couldn’t articulate my humiliation at not being able to do something that everyone else in my class could do. I didn’t want to disappoint Dad or endure Mom’s cutting criticism, and I wanted Mr. M to like me. I knew, even then, that my inability to comprehend mathematical equations was serious. I was flawed and I knew it.

Dad was one of the kindest and most patient fathers on the face of the Earth. After some discussion, during which he did most of the talking and I sat there, mortified, he told me we were going to spend the entire weekend re-doing the year’s homework. All of it. I was going to do the actual work myself, but he would sit right there at the table with me so he could help me whenever I ran into trouble. I could ask him to explain the problem and he’d explain it. Then he’d check every single paper. And on Monday, I’d turn them all in to Mr. M, who’d be expecting them.

I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me, right then and there.

Dad dragged the old maple kitchen table, which had been in storage in the garage, into the living room so we could spread out with my math book and all those papers without messing up Mom’s kitchen and forcing her to serve meals elsewhere. Then we did exactly what Dad said – he and I spent the rest of that day, until fairly late into the evening, doing my math homework. The next day he woke me up early by tickling me, had a bowl of Wheaties with me, and we got back to it, again working past my bedtime. Ditto for Sunday. There was no TV – he even sacrificed his games, which he loved to watch all weekend – and we broke only for the bathroom and meals. A couple of times he let me go outside and run off a little energy, but those were recess-like breaks only. Fifteen minutes, and Dad would call me back inside and to that table.

Somehow, that sweet, patient man compressed three full quarters worth of fourth-grade math into my protesting brain. By Monday morning, I’d redone every single homework paper and he’d checked them all for accuracy – and explained the way to arrive at solutions to the problems again, if I got anything wrong. I turned those papers in to Mr. M, dying inside, and went on to turn in everything expected of me for the final quarter, but only because Dad asked me every night to show him all my homework. There were further instructional evenings. I got a C- in math – my test scores still sucked and I’m sure Mr. M was giving me a break – but I graduated fourth grade this go-round. Whew.

Math never got easier, though. The procedures for computing numbers on paper or in my head just slipped right off that smooth place in my brain, even after all of Dad’s hard work with me. Math continued to be my bugaboo in school. When I reached junior high, my math teacher tutored me after school to get me through his class with a barely passing grade. My freshman year in high school, I was already failing algebra by the end of the first quarter – how can you do algebra when you can’t comprehend decimals or fractions, and even multiplication and division remain mysteries? I was moved into a remedial math class. Managed a C in it and took algebra again as a sophomore. And again, I spent a great deal of time with the teacher after class and after school. The sweet woman passed me with a C+, and I know she was fudging it.

I did better in geometry as a junior. For some reason, I could comprehend math as shapes. Got a B in that class. But man, I had to work at it.

Any math higher than Geometry 1 was beyond me – we all knew it – so that year ended my official struggle with numbers. I’d completed the math requirements for graduation, and man, was I relieved.

I was an art student in junior college and put off taking any math classes until, at the end of the third semester of my second year, I dropped out to go to work. I was sick and tired of school and of being broke. And to be honest, I never went back because I knew, someday, they’d make me take another bonehead math class so I could take the required algebra class. I simply couldn’t face it.

To this day I have to count on my fingers if I have to do multiplication in my head past the 4-timeses. I can do simple division, up to three digits, but I have to work at it, and if it’s more than three digits, I break out the calculator. (The hand-held calculator was the greatest invention ever, bar none, as far as I’m concerned).

And yet I can still, even with a calculator, divide 3 million by 4 and come up with 750,000. I’ll admit the number seemed less, somehow, than it should have been, but I didn’t know why. When I start thinking about numbers, my brain simply goes slow and sluggish, like it’s hip-deep in thick, sticky mud.

Go figure.

The illustration is by Sam Dunlop, learnenglish.org

Update: I'm hopeless. Up there in the first graf, that's supposed to be 75 million, not 250,000 and 25 million. I can't believe I did that.

Well, yes I can.

Good riddance

Associated Press-AOL recently asked 1,000 Americans for their predictions for 2007 in a telephone poll.

The respondents have a pretty gloomy outlook.

Majorities predicted another terrorist attack on U.S. soil; that a nuclear or biological weapon will be used by nefarious folks somewhere in the world (no info on whether one of the bad guys will be George W. Bush, which seems most likely, given his posturing over Iran); plenty think there will be another national disaster on a scale with Katrina and that global warming will get worse. They also think the military draft will be reinstated.

Their worries are not surprising, given the experiences of the last six years and Bush’s inexplicable twisting of the November elections from “Baaaaad boy! Stop!” to “Pretend you’re nice, but win!”

But there’s a bright, warm spot in the poll. One in four Americans believes that 2007 will bring the Second Coming of Christ.

One in four.

I have a vivid imagination. When I read that, I saw myself in a grocery store, standing in line with three other people. One of those people could, at any moment, simply vanish. Her suddenly empty clothes would collapse in a heap – panties, bra, socks, jeans, shirt and shoes -- and her jewelry would patter to the floor. Personally, I’m sure that God has pristine, flowing white robes and wings for these people up in heaven with which to modestly clothe their pretty new bodies. And since the “things of the earth” are frowned upon Up There, they surely won’t need those diamond rings and little gold cross necklaces. Among other things.

The U.S. Census Bureau says there are about 300 million people in the U.S. That means roughly 750,000 could poof into thin air sometime this year, if Jesus comes for the born-again among us. A full quarter of the population, gone, just like that.

Granted, this could be a shock. I do hope that God will give them a little bit of warning so they can at least pull off the road if they’re driving when Rapture comes. I sorta doubt that, though, since once they’re gone, God has terrible things planned for the rest of us.

I can live with it. Here in my county, that means that most if not all the realtors will disappear, which will leave it rather more sparsely populated. Nice. Real estate agents and brokers around here are great churchgoers – it’s all about face-time and networking, you know.

Think of the cars just sitting around, suddenly, with keys in the ignition! The empty houses! All that stuff they can’t take with them! Suddenly, there will be a lot of job openings, including one for the presidency, though I imagine that since Cheney will still be here with the rest of us, we’ll have to do something about him. But wow – no more Jerry Falwell! We’ll probably have to find a couple of new Supreme Court justices, too. Things will be a little chaotic for a while.

But once we get it all sorted out, I think a world without born-again Christers will be pretty decent. With 750,000 less cars on the roads, pollution levels will drop a little. Maybe there will be a positive effect on global warming, and the bears will be able to hibernate again in 2008.

If the silly Christers are right, there will be a lot less people in the world, period. In Ireland, there won’t be any reason any more to keep the North and South separate. Heaven’s gonna be real crowded, though. I wonder if they’ve thought of that. Who gets the best clouds?

Roe vs. Wade? Relax. They won’t be around to take our rights away from the rest of us. Patriarchal society? Whoa, sudden change. The rest of the religions, which will suddenly find their dogmas in ashes, will collapse. Nice. People can be rational again, and with most of their problems solved because the Christers are no longer around to keep things in an uproar, world peace might even be achievable.

Of course, those one in four who think they’ll be transported off to live with Jesus in the clouds also think that he has some really nasty plans for the rest of us. Pestilence, fires, floods, misery. We’ll suffer while they watch and strum their harps.

Whadda load.

It’s worrisome, even scary, that there are so many Americans living lives of complete and total fantasy while they do their best to make ours miserable. People who honestly and faithfully believe in a crock like Rapture are working with a few bricks short of a load. Unfortunately, one of them is the Leader of the Free World.

That scares me a lot more than the idea of some amorphous Second Coming. People who believe crap like that don’t care who they hurt because they believe their places in heaven are already guaranteed. Kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims? No problem – God likes that. Make women into silent chattels, slaves and baby machines? Ditto. The list of things that Christers do and get away with in the name of their God are endless and have caused the world endless strife ever since they thought him up.

Good riddance, I say.

Hat-tip to the Carpetbagger Report.

Update: Patrick, who writes the fine blog Blowing Shit Up With Gas, points out gently in the comments that it won't be 750,000 Christers floating up into the sky naked when Rapture comes, but 75 MILLION. YeeeeeHAW! That's even better!

Hope for all Americans

Sometimes, when I read about women who’ve sold their souls for men, making themselves into human Barbie dolls by starving themselves, having their breasts enlarged and their faces whittled; when I hear that women today still don’t make the same wage a man makes for the same jobs; when I see the women I know struggling to raise small children without the benefit of child support from their fathers; when I hear about self-righteous Christers condemning a woman’s right to her own body, to keep or abort a child, to speak her mind ... I wonder whether all that hard-won progress the feminists of my generation and the generations before mine achieved had any effect at all on the world.

Sometimes, it doesn’t seem like it.

And then something happens to make me understand that while there are those who would chip away at the rights of women and girls, they haven’t won yet. And as long as there are women who will stand up, work hard for their rights and fight, those ignorant troglodytes never will.

Today’s a red-letter day in the long history of equal rights in the United States of America. Today, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California became Speaker of the House of Representatives, the first woman in the history of this country to achieve such a high office.

“This is an historic moment - for the Congress, and for the women of this country. It is a moment for which we have waited more than 200 years. Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights. But women weren't just waiting; women were working. Never losing faith, we worked to redeem the promise of America, that all men and women are created equal. For our daughters and granddaughters, today we have broken the marble ceiling.”

-- Nancy Pelosi

America faces a dire future after so many years of Republican dominance in government and after six years of a rubber-stamp Congress that gave George W. Bush carte blanche to run roughshod over the Constitution and the rights of all Americans. I find Pelosi’s rise to a position of power and influence in America’s government a great hope and comfort at the beginning of this somber new year.

Cozy up

Snow is coming.

It’s been in the forecast since Monday, but I didn’t really believe it. The winter has been toothless so far, with only a few brief snow showers that didn’t stick around for snowballs. Since the beginning of November, the daytime temperature has hovered in the mid- to high 50s and at night, the 40s. We’ve had one night of hard frost.

Tell me again there’s no such thing as global warming.

My little abode is at 3,200 feet, right at the snowline. But snow doesn’t like temperatures that high.

Sure, and there’s been some rain. It starts every year right around the end of October, which also ends the long, tinder-dry fire season in California. But there have only been a couple of really drenching storms, the kind that make the roof gutters gurgle and bubble like miniature streams and, if it’s quiet and late at night, creates its own soft thunder on the roof.

But the prognosticators say snow is coming. They’re saying there’s a cold front headed in with a load of arctic air and predicting several feet of snow in the mountains up-hill from us and perhaps 6 inches or more here. Yet it was a beautiful, clear day today, the sky blue as all get-out, temp up nearly to 60. I’m out feeding the chickens without a jacket, wearing nothing warmer than an old T-shirt and slippers on my feet, thinking, “Oh, sure. Tease me. Tell me snow is coming. Uh-huh.” I could have used sunglasses.

And then, right before sunset, clouds started rolling in. The world outside went from sparkling clear to completely overcast, covered with a heavy, dark, gray blanket.

I noticed about an hour later that there was only enough wood in the hearth-ring for the night. If it snowed – really, IF – I’d be growling at myself in the morning, having to do the snow-covered tarp wrench-and-shove at the woodstack, and tramping snow into the house on my boots. Little things, yes. But at 6 a.m., with a cold house, that’s just no fun.

So out I went, pulling on work gloves, wondering if there are awards in the afterlife for middle-aged women who heave loads of wood into the house to keep the family warm. I’d like a certificate in hand-drawn calligraphy, personally, and in an ornate frame thick with several layers of gold leaf. Maybe a fanfare or two.

I filled up the sling with logs of almond, a little surprised because already there was a fine rain falling. It smelled wonderful, scented with suddenly wet evergreens, duff, dense black soil and woodsmoke. Four trips back and forth later, I’d almost filled the wood-ring on the hearth. Good enough.

Now the rain is steady. It’s about 40 degrees outside – the temp still has to come down quite a bit to turn that pattering rain to snow, but I’m hopeful. I want to wake up to a world transformed, everything covered with a soft, white blanket.

See, this year when the snow comes, it will be a treat. Since I’m not doing the daily commute down the mountain right now, I can just cozy up and enjoy it, not worrying about slipping and sliding or having to chain up the car, or shoveling the driveway at 5 a.m. I’ve got everything I need – a warm fire, a good book or 10, a purring cat who’s delighted I’m willing to donate a lap, and the lovely, unexpected and longed for gift of time to write. It won’t last forever – soon enough, I’ll be taking some kind of job, whether it’s in my realm of expertise or flipping burgers at McDonalds.

But for now, let it snow.

Mockery

An Iraqi guard has been arrested for capturing Saddam Hussein’s hanging on cellphone video and releasing it to the world via the Internet. There is some confusion as to whether he was the one who actually shot the video, or some other Iraqi official.

The difference between the Iraq government’s tidy, soundless video of the hanging and the guard’s unedited cellphone version are the recorded sounds of chaos and mocking, abusive sectarian taunts thrown at the condemned man by Shiite witnesses and guards – and Saddam’s defiant responses -- in the moments before the trapdoor opened beneath his feet, he fell and the rope snapped his neck.

The Shiite mocking was left out of the sanitized version. The unofficial video resembled nothing more than the horrors released earlier in the war in Iraq that showed insurgents beheading their captives.

Shouts of “Go to hell!” and “Moktada! Moktada! Moktada!” are recorded on the video, referring to the Shiite cleric Moktada al Sadr.

The cellphone video, now available internationally online and viewed by millions – including the Iraqi people – has understandably incited outrage among not only Saddam’s Sunni brethren but among most right-thinking people. The hanging was a travesty – hurried even as Saddam faced other charges. And it was carried out in such a way that, while it can be argued that justice was served in that a killer met his end, it also appeared to be Shiite – and American – revenge.

Instead of carrying out the execution with solemnity and dignity, this was more like a lynching.

What I want to know is why the maker of the cellphone video was arrested.

Was it for showing the world the truth? If so, what does that say about the “democracy” the U.S. has imposed upon Iraq at gunpoint?

In the days since the unofficial video hit the Internet, the American government has come out with statements saying that America had nothing to do with the timing or manner of Saddam’s lynching.

In fact, George W. Bush slept through it, though he surely knew that Saddam’s hanging was going forward. That, at the very least, showed a total lack of respect for his enemy or his enemy’s people. It said far more than words.

Heck of a job, Bushie.

Days after the cellphone video was released – and dismay and the world over the chaos at the hanging began to grow -- Major General William Caldwell, a U. S. military spokesman, said at a Baghdad press conference that “Had we been physically in charge at that point we would have done things differently.”

Sure.

Unidentified (of course) American officials now say they tried to get Iraqi President Nuri Kamal al-Malaki, a Shiite in the Iran-backed Dawa Party, to delay Saddam’s execution until after the Islamic festival of Id, which began the same morning that he was hanged. They also said there were constitutional and legal questions which threw the execution into doubt.

They said Mr. Maliki would not listen and went ahead with the execution, his only stated reason a fear that insurgents might try to free Hussein through a mass kidnapping if procedural wrangling were protracted. Now, with the deed done and thousands of Iraqis protesting, he has launched an “enquiry” into the events at the hanging.

Not incidentally, Mr. Maliki recently told the Wall Street Journal that he wishes he could leave office before his four years are up.

Saddam Hussein, after he was captured by U.S. forces, should have been turned over the World Court for trial. It might have taken longer, and it’s sure that Saddam would have been allowed to defend himself – and perhaps indict his U.S. and British supporters during his long and brutal reign. But it would have been a fair trail which removed any taint of sectarian revenge from the proceedings, and rather than capital punishment, which most civilized countries in the world abhor, he would have been punished justly.

His victims – not only those who were Shiite -- would also have been given a voice.

But with his kangaroo court trial and hurried lynching in a room filled with mocking, Shiite enemies, supported by the U.S. government, Saddam’s death has only further inflamed the sectarian violence and civil war in Iraq.

Could America have stopped this travesty? Of course it could have. But the man who had the real power and authority to say “no” slept through the whole thing, tucked snugly into his presidential bed in the White House.

How very convenient.