WAY OUT OF TOUCH


Yes, four loyal readers, we already knew this one, but seeing the story in print as you can here reinforces your faith that you were right all along, and maybe that faith boost will spur us all to lobby, arm twist, speak out a little more to move the leaders we elected to lead on this issue, and stop emboldening the idiots

A unique survey question posed by the Gallup organization reveals just how far the president and Congress -- and most newspaper editorial pages -- appear to stand from the wishes of the American public on getting out of Iraq.

Gallup, in a report today, said it posed the question: If you had 15 minutes with President Bush in Oval Office what would you tell him to do about Iraq?

The majority (56%) said they would urgently urge him to focus on getting out of Iraq, with the highest number (nearly 4 in 10) agreeing with the wish to simply "pull the troops out/end it" and others backing other exit ideas . . .

. . Gallup concludes: "The majority of Americans, as measured in a number of Gallup Poll surveys this year, believe the initial decision for the United States to become involved in Iraq was [sic] mistake. Research also shows a majority of Americans favor a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq . . .

. . . "The president maintains the loyalty of a smaller group of Americans -- one in four -- who are supportive of his current actions or would even want him to be more aggressive."

And 65% of those "one in four" have AM radio talk shows and/or work at Fox News Channel . . .

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEAR 'LOST THROES'.

Couldn't let today pass without acknowledging the two year anniversary of SatanDick's proclamation,
"I think we're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency. Yet another reason why there'll be no 2009 late nite infomercials for the "Cheney Psychic Friends network." The DICK is constantly off the mark (ask Harry Whittington), and has no friends, only well heeled co-conspirators.

SUNDAY STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
No politics today. LOST simply needs a break from it, after last week's cave-and-spin.
So, driving up the hill from our little Stepfordesque enclave, LOST saw one. One of those makeshift memorial/monuments to . . . . something, LOST supposes. This one was affixed to a stainless steel k-rail, and consisted of a hand lettered sign and boquet. Yes, it was in the approximate location of a fatal auto accident from sometime in the last twelve months. But is this how the departed would prefer to be remembered? At the place of their last, desperate moments on the planet? Aren't there more fitting ways to enshrine the memory of a loved one? Carrying this out to the extreme, for pete's sake, people in Memphis would be dumping flowers around the Graceland commode where Elvis purportedly pinched off - er, breathed his last. Surely, there's a better way . . .at the supermarket today, an overheard conversation between a checker and a bagger. Okay, it wasn't overheard - it was being spoken loudly and clearly for all of the grocer's patrons to hear. And it was about the joys of social drinking - entire bottles of olive oil, vinegar, or Italian salad dressing. Good heavens, this was disgusting in a "Jackass" sort of way, and no, LOST hasn't seen either of those stupid celluloid monuments to human stupidity. Perhaps the grossest thing about being a choice-less spectator to the exchange was the fact that the checker extolling the pleasures of downing a whole bottle of Pompeii Extra Virgin was about 400 lbs and so amorphous that it was not feasible to determine whether this was a "he" or a "she", ICK! . . . but in the restoring faith category came the sermon at today's installment of Sunday Mass. Our long time deacon reminded us all that God is not necessarily a Lee Greenwood fan, and may not be particularly exercised about having to "Press 1 for English," or for that matter may not even care to. No, our Deacon spoke out loudly and clearly that God does, in His or Her infinite wisdom, care about all inhabitants of creation equally, and answers prayers of all without regard to efforts to create a national language. How refreshing in this land of the rednecks - where "fear and loathing of illegals" is not a Spiritual shortcoming, its the first two planks in a campaign platform for local public office. Thanks, Michael, you made LOST's day for that much appreciated blast of common sense from the pulpit.

VOTING THEMSELVES OFF THE ISLAND

Two Sundays back, another edition of the reality show that wouldn't die - fittingly named "Survivo,r" came to a close, with an odd, "oooohh that was bad, REALLY bad" moment near the end. It seems that two of the final four contestants made a pact, where the one who had won the obligatory car prize giveaway agreed to give the car to the other contestant, in exchange for the other's promise to give the car winner immunity going into the final 3. The edited show still made out - in agonizing detail the hemming and hawing by the immunity promisor which culminated in his selfish-beyond-description decision to welsh on his promise - which he swore before God on television in the previous weeks, and kept the immunity for himself. Needless to say, this contestant -"Dreemz" turned his entire world into Nitemarez for the rest of his forseeable existence. He will forever be known as the guy who cheated his way to a free car - and he cost the other contestant the win in the game, too. Losers all around.

So it is with the Democratic leadership in Congress. They accomplished the unthinkable six months ago. They won all but one of the contested Senate races, and swamped their way in the House and returned both Houses of Congress to the Democratic side for the first time in twelve years. Unquestionably this was aided by the perception that too much dominance by the Republican party had opened the floodgates of sleaze and corruption; but equally above the fray of secondguesses is the notion that the American voters were fed up to here with Iraq, and wanted out. Wasn't that clear? Wasn't that obvious? How could that be misread?

So last month, when Commander Guy petulantly carried out his threat to veto funding legislation with concrete time tables for withdrawal, demanding that a blank check be sent to him or the "troops may suffer," no cohesive group of Dems stood up and said, "Blackmail, extortion and kidnapping are felonies, here's the same bill - I dare you to veto it again. Go ahead, make my day." Nope, instead they cowed themselves in the face of the only thing this President and his band of deferment wonks excel at: name calling. They sat by and hung their heads when Bush labeled their bill as "a political stunt." No one said, "no, dipstick, declaring the Mission Accomplished on an aircraft carrier is a political Stunt. Posing in front of an old church with artificial kleig lights and making recovery promises you have no intention of keeping - that's a political stunt. Oh, and making sure that every doggone public appearance you make is either propped up by military personnel or hand picked civilian sycophants, THAT's a political stunt. Sending you the bill we sent your Sorriness, that was leadership, that was doing what our constituents asked us to do."

So it really doesn't matter that some riders were attached, and that the minimum wage is gonna go up 2 bucks or that some of the uninsured children are now going to have money for coverage. That's right up there with telling the double amputee in the semi-private room to be happy, cause the patient in the next bed wants to buy your shoes. And to go through the very public agony over the last several days - this "oh no we better do as he says, or he'll make the troops suffer and we'll get in trouble" means that the Dem leadership is having its own "Dreemz moment." LOST doubts the public are gonna be in a forgiving mode on this one, which means that the only thing the party leaders have left is faith in the flaws of Americans' short term memory. I'd rather bet the farm on a pair of threes.

WELL, AT LEAST IT'S NOT ANOTHER BEST-SELLING CONFESSION

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was interviewed recently by Wingnut Network - er Fox News Channel. An excerpt from an article about the interview follows

O'Connor, a swing vote in favor of abortion rights and affirmative action, said she was seeing an unprecedented level of public criticism in recent months of state and federal court decisions.

The vast majority of the criticism, she said, is unjustified and borders on harassment of judges, especially in cases where lawmakers threaten impeachment of judges for decisions they disagreed with.

But federal courts, too, play a role in fostering public credibility by generally adhering to "stare decisis," or settled precedent, O'Connor said.

"Obviously, that is a concern," said the Reagan appointee who retired early last year. She responded to a question in a broadcast interview about the public's perception that the Supreme Court based its decisions more on politics than principle and whether that belief undermined the court's credibility.

Her comments come a month after the high court changed course on abortion, upholding a national ban on a midterm method of ending pregnancies known as "partial-birth abortion." It was a 5-4 decision that opened the door for states to pass additional abortion restrictions.

Liberal and some conservative legal experts have criticized the decision as disturbing and inconsistent because it seemed to defy a virtually similar 5-4 high court case in 2000.

In the 2000 case, O'Connor was the key vote in striking down an abortion ban that placed an "undue burden" on a woman's right to choose. O'Connor has since been replaced by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who voted last month for the ban.

In the interview, O'Connor said she is working to put together a Web site aimed at junior high and high school students that will seek to instill respect for the judicial process, including "stare decisis" and the court's power to overturn actions by the legislative or executive branch that impinge on individual freedoms such as speech, religion and due process of law.

The goal, in part, is to counter recent attempts by Congress and state legislatures to unduly restrict the authority of judges simply on the grounds that they disagree with the outcome of a decision, O'Connor said.

"Now, when I was a youngster I do remember seeing on the highway out by the Lazy B Ranch a big billboard saying, 'Impeach Earl Warren,' and that was in the years when there were some cases like Miranda and some criminal cases, and people got all excited," O'Connor said.

Warren was a liberal chief justice who presided over court rulings that expanded rights for criminal defendants.

"But what we're seeing now is a more broadly based range of criticisms of the nation's courts, both state and federal," she said. O'Connor cited in part a failed South Dakota measure to jail judges for "erroneous decisions" and unsuccessful efforts by Congress to punish judges who cited foreign judgments in Supreme Court rulings.

O'Connor, 77, indicated earlier this year that she would have preferred to stay on the Supreme Court for several more years until she was ill but that she stepped down because of her ailing husband, John, who has Alzheimer's.

You gotta love the last line - you hear it so often lately. Stepped down to spend more time with her "family/ailing husband/blah blah blah." Not making light of Alzheimers. Going out slowly and in ever increasing dementia is horrific, and wouldn't wish that on anyone. Okay, maybe Rove or Cheney. Seriously, though, we have been bombarded in the past three plus years by one after the fact tell all after another from people who could have spoken up when they were close to the seat of power, but kept silently compliant, kept in their jobs, only to come out later and express remorse for not standing up to the Commander Guy of Crawford and his old Apprentice Darth Heinous. Here, O'Connor's recognition - tardily of course, is that partisan political expediency is creeping into and choking the vibrance out of our system of jurisprudence. And hers was one of five votes counted upon to set this whole partisan sycophantasia in motion. Sandy, get out your sackcloth robe and your ashes. But please, don't add to the pile of 35-bucks-a-throw, 400 page "mea culpas" such as Tenet's, or Woodward's last one, or any of the rest of those in the works by dozens of others now striving to cash in on their weakness or unwillingness to speak up and out when it would have mattered. We're up to here with the tardy tell alls. Speak up in your circle. Help shut down those who are trying to re-cast this as some courageous step in a new hundred years war against Islamic extremism. . That's what atonement is all about.

WHO SAID IT HAD TO MAKE SENSE?

Sometimes things don't make any sense at all. Take for an innocuous example, the sign LOST observed on a video verbiage "crawler" display sign yesterday in Point Loma. The crawler tease marched out "8 oz brown and serve Sausage 3 for $3.00." Cheap? Sure. But the story ain't the price. The Story is that the sign was in front of a retail chain pharmacy. Now, LOST doesn't know about the rest of you, but LOST doesn't ask his chiropractor to do his taxes, or buy his personal hygeine products at Auto Zone, or chat with friendly neighborhood realtor about the latest thing in pharmaceutical sleep aids. So who the hell is gonna buy bloody sausage at Rite Aid, or Walgreens? It's just a dumb, icky idea.

Speaking of dumb, icky ideas, let's talk about "Surge the Course." That is the real name of the Bush policy in Iraq - because its what he's doing there. We've all heard the rhetoric about "fightin' 'em over there so we don't have to . . . ," or "when they stand up, we'll stand down," and any number of other poster slogans, behind which there is nothing - no strategy, no contingency planning, no long term planning, bupkis. At the other end of the political spectrum, and demonized by righties all, are those who say that our continued, surged presence in Iraq fuels the growth of both anti-U.S. sentiment in Iraq, as well as the growth of destabilizing influences like Al-Qaeda. Which side's take on the war/occupation is accurate? Consider the following from this mornings Los Angeles Times

A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaeda operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation.

In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.

The influx of money has bolstered Al Qaeda's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping and reasserting influence over its far-flung network. The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of Al Qaeda funds, with the network's leadership surviving to a large extent on money coming in from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells.

Al Qaeda's efforts were aided, intelligence officials said, by Pakistan's withdrawal in September of tens of thousands of troops from the tribal areas along the Afghanistan border where Bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, are believed to be hiding.

Little more than a year ago, Al Qaeda's core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But U.S. officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles.

"Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," said a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official.

The evolving picture of Al Qaeda's finances is based in part on intelligence from an aggressive effort launched last year to intensify the pressure on Bin Laden and his senior deputies.

Yep, and once again, the President is weekending in Crawford, continuing to extend his record of vacation days set as president beyond the reach of any competent successor. Why does LOST suspect that, while he's there he's stockin' up on some of that good ol' Walgreen's sausage?

THE SPEW THEORY

Okay, you're in. Part of that exclusive club or organization you so wanted to be part of, for years. Their first big gala of the year is coming up, and its at the nicest facility in the county - and the next one. You've bought that new outfit you couldn't quite afford, and you've even thought about renting a car - no, a limo. You arrive at the event, having counted the slow plodding days leading up to it with intense, almost childlike anticipation. You get inside, and almost immediately, despite the huge crowd of the elegantly coiffed and impeccably dressed, something seems - or rather smells, amiss. As you approach the buffet table you stumble upon, hell let's be honest, you nearly fall into it, the largest pile of animal (you hope it's animal anyway) excrement you've ever seen. Its there in the room, if it didn't fill your nostrils with densely packed waves of nauseating putresences you'd expect carver/sculpters in there, making some artistic creation out of it, like a sand castle, or a bust of the guest of honor. Strangely, no one else at the party is looking at it, or for that matter even seemingly smelling it. How can this be?

You back away, and turn your back, start to recognize friends, and be recognized by others, and slowly, deliberately try to put the pile out of your mind. You know that you gotta eat, so you'll be having to contend with it again at some point, but for now, you can nonchalantly act like the dunghill is not really there. But then you begin noticing something else. Never in large numbers, but guests seem to float out of the ballroom, stay gone for awhile, and then come back in a bit more disheveled. In fact, some appear to have taken ill outside - damn that looks like they hurled out there - and still come back into the room to work the crowd, orthotic-perfect smile ablaze, eager to pump the arms and press the flesh, but damn, they're kind of reeking now, too, with a different olfactory assault, courtesy of their own in house digestery. is THIS the club you really wanted to join? What a choice, stay here and act like its all good, enjoy the music and the company and enjoy those pulsating whiffs of stench that are swirling about the ballroom - the surreality of it all seems crazy. Yet there is the alternative - make a bee line for the exit, wiser perhaps, but certainly possessed of a cleaner, more pristine source of air to breathe far from the barfing crowd?

This, gentle readers, is the plight of today's Republican party. Ignore the big steaming turd in the room. When it gets really bad, go outside the party and spew bile - preferably on the first prominent non-Republican you can find. If you miss and gerb a little of it on yourself, no worries, come back into the ballroom. Nobody'll say anything to you about it. It'll be as if it's not even there, and your friends will still smile, pat your back and tell you how great you look. Pretty soon, the poo-stank will dissipate, and boy, doesn't that carving station look terrific!! And somebody else will clean up the cascading mess you and your guests have created outside.

IF YOU CAN'T SAY SOMETHING NICE, DON'T SAY ANYTHING

LOST's mom was always fond of that saying, and it is of particular importance today. There's great temptation to speculate - in a uniquely "Soprano's-style" way: Was he whacked, and was it Robertson, or Dobson, or both? Or there's the semi - reverent, "will he lie in state at the Crystal Cathedral - or at the Reagan Library?" The grassy knoller approach: "I'll bet he's really just having drinks with the not dead Ken Lay and Cheney at the latter's "undisclosed location;" the bluntly vengeful: "hope he enjoys the smell of sulfur, and the enduring warmth of brimstone:" The flamboyantly funny, "if Saint Peter greets him at the Gate dressed like Liberace, he's in for a long, bad hearing;"

The bottom line is that Jerry Falwell professed faith in the archetype of Compassion, yet displayed so very little compassion in his own public life. May God have abundant mercy on his contorted soul.

ARE YOU PAYING ATTENTION G-DUB?

From the Stockton Record's editorial pages today, Mother's Day, 2007:

"They have served their county. They have personified patriotism. They have given their lives. They are heroes who have left loved ones who cherish prideful memories but mourn the loss of their son, daughter, spouse, father or mother. We salute their dedication but are left to wonder:

"Who will be next? And how many more?"

The note for this piece, which can be found here, notes that in 2000 and 2004, the "Record" endorsed Bush for President. This is a first step toward sanity. THe delicate, perceived political sensibilities of its readership should be set aside again, and the paper should apologize for its myopic endorsement of a bumbler-and his evil, money-grubbing bandit running mate, for the most difficult job in the world. Many of us had these two pegged in 2000, and entities with a lot of reach, like the Record in Northern California, put the word out, in a process repeated all over the country, giving shelter and comfort to millions of people who made that poor voting choice.

WAITING FOR RATZINGER'S RAIDERS TO ATTACK . . . STILL WAITING . . . ANYTIME NOW . . . . NOT


You can find this in today's New York Times: HOUSTON, May 11 – Rudolph W. Giuliani directly challenged Republican Party orthodoxy on Friday, asserting that his support for abortion rights, gun control and gay rights should not disqualify him from winning the party’s presidential nomination and that Republicans need to be tolerant of dissenting views on those issues if they want to hold the White House.

In a forceful summation of the substantive and political case for his candidacy, delivered to a conservative audience at Houston Baptist College, Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, acknowledged that his views on social issues were out of line with many Republican primary voters.

LOST has been subject to bouts of failed and flawed memory of late, but it seems to me that this kind of stance was deemed deserving of condemnation by many in the ranks of the few, the proud, the (outwardly) pious, the (ahem) celibate crozier carriers just a few years - no, I remember, when John Kerry ran as a Catholic Democrat with the same views. In fact, Kerry supporting Catholics in many diocesan jurisdictions were threatened with sacramental exile if they dared vote for him. Abortion was, after all, one of the FIVE NON NEGOTIABLE ISSUES - the five most important stances that EVERY CATHOLIC had to uphold or he/she was no longer . . . Catholic. The funny thing was back then that even the unspoken favorite of that Shiite Catholic crowd, President McFlightsuit, had views on abortion ("acceptable in cases of rape, incest, and to save a mother's life") that were at odds with the "Official" Church person of no, never, whenever.

So, now that the mothers in Mother Church got what they pushed for and a whole lot more - as in more Iraq death and dismemberment, more poverty, more greed fueled income disparity and, of course no repeal - legislatively, judically or otherwise of Roe v. Wade where is the condemnation of GOP frontrunner Giuliani, and the corresponding admonition to faithful everywhere in the U.S to not vote for him on penalty of near total excommunication if not damnation? LOST is calling you out, Charles Chaput, you too Raymond Burks, and MIchael Sheridan. Prove that you were acting by your professed principles, and not merely as shill/enablers for Bush and Cheney. LOST ain't holding his breath, but sure will continue to raise this point, until you stand up and be counted. If its universally true, then say so, your weekly collection receipts be damned.