i visited chicago last weekend, i miss the city dearly...a beautiful symphony of light and sound.

thursday i was walking along the lake front when the blue angels were practicing for the upcoming air and water show...it was a rather impressive sight, but became deeply troubling when i realized that were i brown skinned and spoke arabic while worshiping according to the koran the sights and sounds of the united states air force would inevitably be followed by earth-rocking explosions in the city behind me, the air becoming choked with black smoke and the stentch of burning flesh whilst a vast fire engulfed entire blocks and the symphony of the city turned to agonizing cries of innocent women, children and elderly being incinerated or crying over their mangled, burned loved ones. suddenly i was not so impressed with acrobatic feets.

also, i realized how incredibly idiotic it was for these pilots to be putting on an display of their prowess for onlookers over lake michigan on a thursday afternoon. afterall, aren't the blue angels supposed to be some of the navy's best pilots? and don't the neocon fuckheads like to tell us we are in a battle against pure evil? if that is true, why the fuck are we wasting the talents of some of our best pilots showboating for chicagoans whilst the ultimate war between good and evil rages? but then again, these are the same folks that did not think it necessary to send in enough troops to get the job done and did not think it necessary to adequately supply those it did send in.

read a comment by someone claiming the iraq war has been intelligently handled because there haven't been too many american deaths. slight problem with that...if the purpose of this war is to save the lives of american service men and women, then keeping them home and out of combat is the most intelligent way to approach that. about the only way one can legitimately claim this war has been handled properly and intelligently is if the purpose was to create a failed state for global terror to grow in, drop a crucial nation into civil war, slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocents, and destroy the promise of america once and for all.

"we do not defend our freedoms by giving up our freedoms. at bush's directive, intelligence agencies have been spying on our citizens without warrants. we have been jailing people without charges or due process. this must end. the defense and spread of conservative freedom is the death of progressive, traditional american freedom." - george lakoff (every liberal/progressive in america must read his books)

awhile back i tried to explain to a friend that people do not vote on issues in this country. it is a mistake the left has made for far too long, actually believing that truth will set the electorate free and they will vote in accordance with how a candidate lines up with them on issues...as if people actually made a checklist and compared in that way. no, the vast majority of people have never voted on issues, but on their value systems. afterall, if people voted on issues, modern anti-american conservatism would not be a threat to freedom.

the good news is that even though people vote on their moral makeup and their value systems, the vast majority of people have a progressive value system...afterall, that is what america is all about, progressive expansion of freedom, of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. that is why people are proud to be american, because for all the flaws of this country, past, present and future, it has managed to maintain a steady course towards more expansive freedom, expanding the freedom to vote, expanding the rights of women and minorities, expanding the freedom of workers to make a living by working for a living...this is why the modern anti-american conservative freedom cuts are so dangerous, and so incredibly un-american...it goes against the overall progressive history of america and tries to turn back these advances of freedom in favor of a literal interpretation of a document that was based on limited freedom with the hope that it would expand, a document that enshrined the enslavement of an entire people and implicitly authorized genocide of another, a document that left women, children, and the less-fortunate without the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

i have rather unfortunate news for the conservative christians out there...your fundamentalist views are no less evil or dangerous than those of islamic fundamentalists.

i have more unfortunate news for the conservative christians out there...jesus was a progressive, even by today's standards...and the vast majority of christians follow his example in progressive thought and action.

modern anti-american conservatism bases its foreign policy on a belief that the united states is the supreme moral authority in the world, and that it must teach other nations how to act in accordance with the proper morality. unfortunately, it then proceeds to teach these nations that superior might makes right, and that force is an acceptable means of getting your point across, especially when you are inept at articulating it because you were too busy snorting lines to develop your language abilities during your developing years (not that that would apply to any world leaders we know). so in the end, daddy america teaches baby iraq and north korea and iran that violence should be a first choice, and that nobody will listen to you if you don't back up your talk with violence of horrific magnitudes. yea...democracy is on the march...right behind the angel of death.

so i was sitting in the houston airport that carries the name of several criminals and caught some cnn...a 20 minute report on somebody being arrested in the ramsey murder, now a decade old (interesting how a rich, exploited little white girl is murdered and it is a story for a decade...thousands and thousands of impoverished, brown arabic girls are killed by american weaponry and the radioactivity of its remains and it is never a story). nevermind that the nation and the state of colorado blew a shitload of tax payer money on bringing back a guy from overseas that is clearly just a nut case and did not commit the murder...what pissed me off was the story that followed, that the media wasn't paying enough attention to iraq because of the crimes being commited by israel in lebanon. 20 minutes on a decade old murder...and then complaining that the war isn't getting enough coverage. apparently the editors missed the irony.

speaking of the war...is it a war within a war now? like a civil war within our war? bush likes to call hezbollah a state within a state, that is why i ask. (and does anyone else find it amusing that we are supposed to be appalled by a "state within a state" when our nation includes 50 of them...without including counties and municipalities?)

i was sitting in the airport in houston, the fattest city in america, waiting to catch a ride to chicago, the second fattest city...and everyone at the gate was overweight. i am amazed that the companies that manufacture trans fat and the companies that then sell it to americans get away with poisoning our population in this way...and then even get the fda to agree that 0 grams of trans fat doesn't have to mean 0 grams of trans fat.

score one for the freedom-expanding judiciary...the same folks that brought you intergrated water fountains, schools, buses and the like. a judge in detroit told the anti-american/anti-freedom conservative white house its wiretap program was incredibly illegal. (and as a double-whammy, the judge is a female, that doesn't go over well with fundamentalist assholes). this case will go up on appeal, and then the higher courts will have a decision to make...do they continue to support expanded freedom as has been the american way for centuries, or do they support the contraction of freedom through right-wing activism?

"i have seen this movie. it was called vietnam." - general anthony zinni on iraq in 2004. funny how the military spent decades trying to unlearn vietnam and perfected it just in time to need the lessons from vietnam which had been hidden.

i don't wanna talk about those things anymore...