Gunsmoke: White House releases PDB

CW FISHER It was almost exactly as Condoleezza Rice said. The presidential daily briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the United States" did indeed summarize old news. As she insisted repeatedly, the PDB contained "historical information based on old reporting" about al-Qaeda. "It did not," she said, "... warn of any coming attacks inside the United States." But what about the part where it says the FBI had detected "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York." That sounds like a warning of a coming attack on the United States. And that was very new information. Rather specific too. This is what is called a bald-faced lie. Historical information -- would that include intelligence that was three months old, or is that considered history too? Because the memo did include information 3-month old information about al-Qaeda plans to enter the United States for an attack with explosives. It says here that the FBI was conducting "approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Laden-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group or Bin Laden supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives." Let's hear it for the commission. Let's hear it for truth. Let's pick these people off one by one, if that's how they want it.

Unwinnable Iraq

CW FISHER The concept of "winning peace" through force is an ancient paradox worth reexamination by somebody who knows what they're talking about. The only person qualified to broker this peace is Jesus, who speaks Arabic fluently, I saw the movie tonight. He's definitely the one and only. If he can't do it, nobody can. Because nobody can. Win the peace, that is. Certainly not America. The peace is not America's to win, since America brought war. We can only continue to steal the country at this point, because that's what George Bush has had us doing. We can keep acting like we're "still" doing the right thing, but to do that now is to aid and abet, since we now know America is in Iraq under false pretenses. We illegally invaded a peaceful sovereign nation, bombed its cities, deposed its leaders, destroyed its infrastructure, its phones, electricity, water, schools, hospitals -- schools and hospitals -- we killed tens of thousands of unarmed civilians, and then we found out, shucks. No weapons. No army, no police, no cooperation, no patience, and now, no mercy. Here's an interesting fact we knew before we invaded. Saddam had just put the finishing touches on his second novel, which was about to become a full-length motion picture, then a theatrical spectacular the likes of which Baghdad had never seen. Writing was Saddam's passion; there was no other mistress but the muse. Producing took a bit of time too! Let us pause to reflect. Men over 50 often write books in response to their sudden, but natural, cataclysmic drop in testosterone. This is a time of life when men begin to lose body hair and interest in normal things like impressing people. Absent this hormone they pad about the kitchen and look back over a lifetime of aggression and find themselves feeling feelings they can't quite place. They hide, they write, they apologize on paper, trial-size; they reproportion events, change names, dress it up, have a ball with it, or not have a ball, doesn't matter: most first-novelists will be last-novelists. But second novels are a different thing entirely. Second novels are written by writers and lunatics. This was Saddam. To write requires all. To write in the style of Saddam is to scratch dryly from a shriveled scrotum, but dude it's all he's got man. And that's why Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and no plans of harming the US or any other country. Anybody who knows anybody who's done anything similar to what Saddam Hussein was engaged in knows absolutely that he was not pursuing world domination! He wanted roses. Look what we've done. Look at it. America has done this thing and it's too late to undo it and, kids, it's time to go home, and send money and regrets. Be nice if we could take the initiative to do it before Easter so Japan can save face and three innocent people spared from being burned alive. It would be nice. It would be Christian. It could even save the world. Peace.

Rice Should Go

CW FISHER The pivotal question came from Richard Ben-Veniste, former Watergate prosecutor and current commissioner of the 9/11 hearings, who asked, "Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th (presidential daily briefing) warned against possible attacks in this country? (And do you) recall the title of that PDB?" Dr. Rice replied: "I believe the title was 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.' " "...the title was 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.' " "...attack inside the..." Smoky in here! August 6th, 2001 might be destined to become another one of those dates that sticks in the national datebook like June 17 (Watergate break-in) and December 7 (Pearl Harbor). If that sounds too radical, listen to this: on August 6, 2001 George Bush read that Bin Laden was determined to attack inside the United States. In order to ignore a headline like that, one would have to be extremely thick -- and to some degree we've come to expect our presidents to be thickish. But the help? That's their job! Honor insists on resignation. Hubris fights tooth and nail. I've studied the transcripts, I don't care what she said; it's the fact she's still saying it. Like so many others in the Bush cabinet, Rice has this strange inability to see or hear. I was baffled by Paul O'Neill's deaf/blind metaphor, but I'm getting it now. These people, like sentinels, stand beside whatever they said before, and defend it. What are they defending? And why? Who asked? All this is is an inquiry into an act of mass murder we witnessed. We were all there. Every last goddam one of us were there, whether we lived through it or not. You'd better believe we were all there. Yet Dr. Rice in words and demeanor seems to be saying we weren't there, not like she was. We didn't see or hear what she saw and heard. We didn't have the context she had, or the intelligence she had, or the focus. A very good friend of mine was a block away when the first plane hit. Listening to him puts me closer to ground zero than anything I've ever heard out of Dr. Rice's mouth, and now that I've heard her testimony, I'm absolutely certain that we as a nation saw nothing like what Condoleezza Rice saw that horrible day in New York City. For me, it's already over. I'm not wasting my time on it anymore. Rice's behavior is the kind that turns inquiries into investigations that become indictments and impeachments -- and this is not the kind of thing we need to be wasting our time on at the moment since there are more people every day who are more resolved than ever in their desire to kill us in the most horrible ways possible. We have blown the so-called "war on terror" from every conceivable direction. Caught now in the center of what has become a civil war, our enemy is no longer simply the "terrorist," because the term just can't stretch across a population. Today, as a direct result of the actions of our nation, our enemies are many, our allies are fewer; our coalition is in some ways just a ragtag collection of client states and contractors. And on Easter Sunday, because of the failure of the National Security Advisor to take seriously the threat of terrorism on our soil, a mistake she continues to make, three human beings will be burned alive.

Tax Revolt

CW FISHER Mailed your taxes yet? Eh, why bother -- you know where your money's going: down the rat hole, already spent, just interest on interest now. Hey, it's only money. The reason you're pissed is because it's your money. You think you're different because you work so hard for your money. News flash, jerk, we all do. Who doesn't pay taxes? You want to complain, go live in Uzbekistan. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be harsh. I pay taxes too. I do it because otherwise no refund. I'm not stupid. I'm just as dumb as you are. When I learned that 60% -- that number again -- SIXTY percent -- of American corporations paid NO TAXES whatsoever last year, it made me wonder: what's wrong with the other forty percent? What were they thinking? Now that it's okay to not pay taxes, ordinary Americans can't be far behind. I'm already on board. Just tell me where to not write a check and I'll do it immediately. The real April Fool's joke is on the 15th. Every year I get suckered. Yet isn't taxation a form of referendum? Our heritage indicates it: this country's independence began as a tax revolt. It was always about the money. The "certain unalienable rights" Jefferson mentioned in his letter to King George (among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) were euphemisms for money. It's all about property. Property is wealth. America itself is property that is owned by the American people, parcel by parcel, vote by vote, gun cabinet by gun cabinet. If an elected government lies to the people who placed it in power, it should be displaced by those people, as Jefferson proscribed. And it will be, of course, one way or another, or both. We like to pretend America was founded on religious freedom, but if that were true this country would be run by religious fundamentalists instead of faith-based word-replacers. We should call them dementalists because they've taken all the fun out. They are strange people with an extremely narrow agenda that represents not the pie but the knife that cuts the pie. To say this country was founded on religious freedom is like saying Australians descended from criminals. We're very fortunate that our pilgrims had a tendency to drown saucy women or there'd be more folks like David Koresh and Pat Robertson and al Sadr making our minds up. The anger, frustration and violence in Fallujah is a bit beyond Boston. It proves that people still don't like to have their country destroyed, invaded and occupied. It just makes them mad. Crazy. Now add the outrage of religious fundamentalists -- and you've got volatility on the scale described in the Book of Revelations, that apocalyptic document so fondly quoted by our own fundamentalists. The best way to fulfill a prophecy is to fulfill it. By now it should be obvious to everyone that this entire war is a product of extremely misguided thinking. This war was never about WMDs or terrorism or national security. This war has always been about property. Iraq's. "Our" intentions in Iraq are not good, but evil. Good can't come out of it, just as light can't be squeezed from darkness. The only way to finish what we've started is to stop what we started and start over. Perhaps when the last dime of the unpaid corporate taxes are paid, Americans could resume paying their personal taxes. That would be a way to insure the return of American troops.

Holy Shi-ite

CW FISHER As America's future unfolds on the streets of Fallujah and now of Najab, I think it's time we STOP, children, what's that sound, everybody look what's goin down. These street gatherings are not quite yielding up the long-promised rose petals, but neither do they represent a "quagmire," which requires jungles and mud. What's happening now in Iraq is much closer to what we used to call civil war. The Shi-ites, who were considered not friends but friendlier than the Sunnis, now hate us as much as the Sunnis, whom they also hate. Worse, the Shi-ites have split in two, and all three groups have taken to the streets, heavily armed, ready to kill each other just as soon as the coalition forces leave. Until then, the coalition forces are the targets, and not just Americans. Ukrainian forces, who lost one yesterday, are going home early. The next time someone tells you that things are almost back to where they were when Saddam was in power, take off your flip-flops and slap them on both cheeks. Things are not better. Things are worse and worsening. Democracy ain't happening in Iraq. Democracies don't close down newspapers -- which is what Paul Bremer did. Closing the paper was the flashpoint that brought the mutilations in Fallujah, followed by an insurgency in Najab that today overtook a police station and robbed the newly trained cops of their sophisticated weaponry, even their flak jackets and uniforms, paid for by your tax dollars. At the front of the frenzy is the charismatic young Mullah al Sadr, a man who was slated to share a great inheritance of power after June 1st. Sadr has now decided he wants nothing to do with America's power anymore. He says it's time to go. Now. This is only thing that all Iraqis agree on. They want us out. Curiously, nobody thinks this is a good idea except them and -- me -- apparently. I think it's a fabulous idea. We'd be heroes. Now they'd throw rose petals at us. If we leave now, they'll throw our old money at us too. Bush has no plans to leave, of course, not before June 1st and not after. Kerry thinks the deadline is a mistake and that we should stay and see it through. All the Americans I've spoken with are quick to own up to America's responsibility for seeing through what it started. Looks like sunny Iraq is ours to enjoy for years to come. The problem is that civil wars are complicated affairs, furiously fought, and cannot be "won" by outside forces -- ever -- because hearts and minds are homegrown, not imported. In "setting Iraq free," which was not why we went there, we have touched off civil war, and we dasn't act surprised for it is writ from antiquity that it be so. It is time to go. Yes, first we have to talk about some things, like how. Let us devote not five years to this thorny issue but rather let's give it the five minutes it requires. The best way to go is exactly the way we came, only going the opposite direction, toward home, where we have a great deal more to discuss, such as how we plan to rebuild our own democracy.

Flip-Flops a Flop

CW FISHER I despise everything about the word flip-flop and its buddy flip-flopper -- they're juvenile, crude, witless, simplistic, double-eff epitaphs that stain like beet juice when facts are involved. Hasn't Bush been bashed enough? Yet, there's Senator Kerry calling President Bush a flip-flopper of the first order. Bush, he says, was against nation building, but it turned out he was for nation building. All right, that's a little bit of a... flippy-flop there... ...something of a... motherflipping motherflopper when you think about it. Sadly, Senator Kerry's table-turning on the whole flip-flopping thing was not to be, for his dazzling Spring collection of bites was blown to bits by the clapping of flip-flops from hundreds of barefoot young Republicans. Clog whackin, as we called it back in our sister-bothering days, is just as irritating today, only grownups don't have to worry about their moms making them stop. Free speech is both priceless and worth every penny. But with free speech you don't necessarily get what you don't pay for. Poor John didn't figure on such brilliance, but finally the soccer moms and golfing dads have found a way to express their political convictions without having to be up on current events. Guerrilla politics Presbyterian-style. And so is born a new political tradition: flip-flopping, the event. Imagine the sound they'll make at the conventions. Drowning out speakers. Making some kind of point. Of course, flip-flop demonstrations almost seem irrelevant compared to the demonstrations now taking place on the streets of Fallujah and Najab. Within a few days their mischief has gone from simple street mutilations to the seizing of police stations and the looting of police weaponry. This stuff is a far cry from flip-flopping. And perhaps just a tad more relevant to the political discussion.

Pearl Is

CW FISHER I found a blog that goes well with hot chocolate, feety pajamas and a liberal arts degree. Pearl Pirie, creator of Humanyms, is now part of my bedtime regimen. This is what pulled me in: midnight bathroom trip Intruder noise! Popcorn? My own footbones! Ah! Poetry! I remember poetry! I'm accustomed to blogs full of politics, blogs that are messy, like a boy's room, with items and links strewn about like unput toys. Pearl slides open like a well-ordered sock drawer. Plus, she "goes naked," and posts her first drafts. How about this then, my first draft, of M-hmm Hm. M-hm nh-uhn, M-hmm Mmmm I live inside your sounds Press into the waves That don't make it past The cave's mouth May I be your constant forever inarticulate black angel on the ceiling of your mouth? May I hang by my soles, dig my toes in your alveolar ridge, Arch with your arch, quake, Cling to your every non-word? See, now, that I get. That I like. I can understand that, which, for me, is profound. People have been writing impossible-to-understand poetry for so long that I just finally gave up and assumed it was me. Reading Pearl makes me think: Maybe it's them. My own love of poetry began with Dr. Seuss (which ended recently with the help of Mike Meyers and Burger King -- thanks, fellas!). From Seuss it was Ogden Nash, the world's first unabashed good bad poet. I met my dark side in Poe, searched for years to find a better word than tintinnabulation, or just a way to use it in conversation. After a little bit of pot I discovered Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas and Donovan Leach but was too stoned to realize that only one was a poet and the other two idols. I ran aground on a ginsberg / met his merry band of furlengettis minor poets major addicts absent people typing typing goonatiks. Baudelaire got me drunk, Rimbaud made me suicidal, Sylvia Plath was like sinking into a deep tub of warm water while holding a live wire over my head. Quoting Pope never got me laid, but John Donne never fails. Not to say that Pearl's Donne. I'd say she's just beginning. Plus she's not above recycling old email humor. > > > > > >-- The man who fell into an upholstery machine has fully recovered. > > > > > >-- A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion. > > > > > >-- Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall. So Pearl wears the price tag, but what a hat. And I do appreciate the little goodies she leaves in the sock drawer.

Blossip globs

CW FISHER Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix recently described his bizarre first-and-only visit to the White House. Blix was struck by a strange breach of protocol in which he and his entourage were first brought to meet Vice President Dick Cheney, who "exceeded his reputation" as a most uninteresting man. Then they met with President Bush, whom Blix described as squirming and inarticulate. Note taking was forbidden. Blix, who has a good sense of humor and a great name, was once the only guy in the world who knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and said so, but apparently Bush wasn't taking notes. Speaking of Cheney and Bush, rumors persist there's an AA connection between them, specifically, that Dick Cheney is George Bush's AA sponsor. Both men have DUIs in their driving records. If it's true, it would explain a great deal about their strange relationship. Cheney, who once told us he was building a "shadow government" in the event of an attack, is today a teetotaler and a weirdo of the first order. "Teetotaler," by the way, is short for "capital T totaler," a phrase that once described a non-drinker but is now a euphemism for recovering alcoholic. Ironically, it is not capitalized. Journalist Bill Kurtis is something of a renaissance man: as he gradually retires from his khaki exploits in darkest Africa and other war-torn parts of the world, he returns now to his native Kansas to raise beef for McDonald's. On his ranch. He rides the horse. This is true. I first met Bill in 1978 when he was our local news guy on CBS. We both stepped out of different stalls at the same time in a men's room in Sears Tower back when it was Sears's tower. Naturally, having made eye contact, we washed our hands, then went across the hall to the booth where he narrated a film on which I was "intern," something about Kenmore innovation in action. You wouldn't have known it by watching the film but it was actually about how they were able to get one more refrigerator on the truck by making the door handles removable. I thought of those jerks every time I tightened my refrigerator. Kansas, by the way, is considered to be the best place in America to hear our true, best American accent. Apparently in Kansas they all talk like Bill Kurtis. Imagine dinner conversation. Today, in Topeka, down hot treeless streets dotted by sleeping dogs and stolen manhole covers, we hunted the elusive parking spot, eyes creased against the sun. I had the privilege of writing for Bill Kurtis many times through various charity events, especially Ronald McDonald House Charities, an event he emceed many times at no charge. I used the word indefatigable once in an introduction (as in "the indefatigable Ed Rensi" (who was fat). It was funny. But Bill was worried. Why? He didn't know. Was I positive it was a word? Absolutely. It means cannot be tired out, will not be fatigued. Maybe he thought it had overtones; he didn't believe me, something in my face; he went to a pay phone (the hotel blocked cell phones), he called his staff. But when he turned, of course, he was beaming. "Indefatigable it is!" I have told this story many times and I've gotten tired of it, which makes me defatigable, or fatigable? Fatigated?

The Tragedy of Comedy Writing

CW FISHER For years I had a nice little comedy business going, which is both harder and easier than it sounds. The easy part, usually, is coming up with the funny part. The hard part is convincing the client it's funny, and humor never works in this endeavor. This is why I rarely told my clients I was a humor writer. I liked to see if they noticed first, and if they did, I'd play it up. What is a comedy client, you wonder, and how can I get one? Mine were corporate. I found that corporations had a huge appetite for comedy and the budgets to back it up, and when I discovered that bosses like to be funny, their wallets fell open at my feet. All I had to do was make them funny, whether they were or not, without making them look stupid. I went through a period of hiring people -- what hubris -- but I did it. I had this enormous office in the basement of an apartment building, no great shakes, it flooded, but it was private and big enough for writing sessions with some truly funny people who had no problem taking cash for a few hours kicking jokes around. No doubt I got a better product. Listen to this, to what I did. I took a door mirror, a full length mirror for a door like you can get at Wal-Mart, and I turned it sideways, angled down, so everybody could face the screen and look into each other's eyes in the mirror! It was perfect. Then they'd all go home and I'd hang back, and of course the mirror still hung too. The mirror actually became a very important tool for me. I used it all the time, trying out jokes or lines for films or speeches or shows. License to look in the mirror all day. I would never do that now. You couldn't make me. No one even takes pictures of me; it is not allowed, not for reasons of vanity but interest. I often wonder if I actually exist. I have an embarrassingly small audience and no way to tell if they're loyal, but after a few months of blogging I seem to have topped out. In this time I've received the highest praise from strangers and the lowest condemnations from friends, family, enemies new and old. My blog has received hateful hate mail, inspired prose designed to flatten me, which it did, like a cartoon: not quite real pain, but close enough. I received a letter of such violence I felt like a stabbing victim at the end. I have been told in terms both uncertain and non that I'm a no good lazy bum who should die and have died as far as they're concerned. That someone would take the time or energy to focus on my destruction should be frightening, but this is where it comes in handy to call myself a comedy writer. I can always figure out a way to laugh it off. It's as easy to get flattened by criticism as it is by flattery. Control can be a very good thing. Haloscan, my comment service, allows me to edit or delete offensive comments, or even block someone entirely. Which I had the pleasure to do last week. I felt better immediately. But my detractors could be right, that I'll never make money from writing again, that I'm wasting their time and mine, that I'm ruining the world and wasting space. I've always known it. I think the web changed the world. Business should be brisk for a freelance writer, but writing is free now. Everybody does it. Or maybe I'm just no good. Maybe I just don't know how to get known. Comedy writers are like ball players maybe. At a certain point the old funny bone goes. Maybe I'm out of whack, maybe I was never in-whack in the first place. I've been told all my life I'm a whack-off, in between times of being successful, during which times people said the nicest gosh darn things you could imagine. Maybe I'm the only one. Funny, to me, is American Idol. Everything about it. Just the fact of these earnest young people competing to become "idols" based on material that was painfully middle-of-the-road when it was first written 2o years ago -- is funny. Since when has the world sought a new Jon Davidson? Who, besides no one, listens to this music? Why is it not named American Karaoke? Nothing funny about that. What's funny about that? See? Nothing. Isn't it funny when it all goes. Mr. Rogers, whom I met, promised me once: I'd never go down, never go down, I'd never go down the drain. Bastard! You know... the last time I read any of those old scripts from my "comedy writer" days I was sitting in a dumpster, picking up files, laughing and tossing, laughing and tossing. I was moving and determined I wouldn't be needing them anymore. Some of it was still funny, but all of it laughable. My career in a dumpster. Well. Maybe someday in the future there'll be pizza.

Because The Night

CW FISHER Have you ever seen a skyful of stars swept through by a milky way so thick it could have been painted on, stars so numerous they could be grains of sand, all moving in relatives of 186,000 miles per second from light years away in patterns as vivid and crazy as van Gogh? I haven't. You haven't either. Not the way van Gogh saw it. Few people alive today have experienced a true night sky, not since the proliferation of the electric light began erasing the stars layer by layer until all that's left is the occasional airplane. Not the same. I live in a small town 60 miles out of Chicago. We have no night sky. The country is two minutes away. There is no sky there either. I have driven up and down the long, wide state of Illinois and found nothing but the pale yellow glow of civilization that has slowly replaced our only clear evidence of God. What have we done? I want my stars back, dammit, and I need your help. I want a federal end to light pollution. I want illegal light spill to be a fineable offense that carries a penalty. I want open lights illegal; every existing light retrofit with a cowl that conceals the light source, thereby reducing glare to zero for those on the ground and preventing a significant portion of the light from spilling into the sky. This action would quickly restore a huge portion of our night sky, particularly in outlying areas. Tonight, this isn't happening. No one thinks there's anything wrong with an uncowled light. They're wrong. We're all responsible, but the fix isn't terribly complicated; it should be about as difficult as changing a bulb. It would create a new industry. Companies like Best Buy and Wal-Mart could take the lead or simply have it taken from them. Light can and does invade privacy and property. The sky belongs to all of us. We'd have it back if we just put a lid on it. Online petitions are the next new thing, but I don't know how to word a petition. Do you?

How to Shave

CW FISHER When Miss Vasey gave her 8th grade English class an assignment to give a "How To" speech on any topic in which they knew a great deal, several guys immediately made covert hand gestures to indicate their chosen topic, and while we snickered Miss Vasey continued, talking to the windows at the back of the room, face flushing purple. A few weeks went by and the parade of speeches began. Oh, the things we learned! How to change your plugs. How to change a diaper. How to care for an infected pierced ear. How to squeeze a zit and erase it with makeup. How to make pancakes. Mine was how to draw a face. I was the resident artist at Bryan Jr. High School, famous for caricatures and sign-making. But mostly I was famous for Miss O'Laney. Miss O'Laney was a pin-up character I created using an ordinary Sears catalog and tracing paper. Basically, I omitted the clothes of an underwear model, gave her a Mad Magazine type of name, and watched my friends go crazy over it while I stood back amused. She was rather fetching. They all wanted copies, and so Miss O'Laney improved, draft by draft, and I became the go-to guy for what lies beyond green doors. Sex was different back then. Many people weren't allowed to even know about it until they were too old to have it. That might sound impossible, but this was before the internet. The first time I ejaculated -- excuse me, I wouldn't normally mention this, but I'm trying to make a point -- I thought I was dying. Pus was shooting out of me, and it hurt like hell, or something, whatever it was there sure was a lot of it, so I tried to make it happen again and again, and it did, until I was so swollen I had to tell somebody, but who'd understand? So I told my older brother because I didn't know, it could have been apenisitis. My brother had a very loud, very high-pitched giggle, and he found this to be the funniest thing he'd ever heard, so he called up his pal Ricky and they depantsed me, threw my underwear out the window and onto the roof, forced me to go out and get them, then locked me out and laughed like chimpanzees. My point is, this never would have happened if somebody'd told me the facts of life. Today any grade school child with the ability to steer a mouse -- and enough curiosity -- can quickly develop more carnal knowledge than is contained in all the Kama Sutra. Not our children, of course. We wonder. But we know. So there is no more innocence, says yet another generation. But there is, of course, all about. I think innocence is like water; there's only so much of it in the world, and sometimes it's scarce. Guilt, then, would be like fire. This is not my most profound thought and it has nothing to do with how to shave. I was talking about sex. Our drive to have sex and our need to be loved are on parallel but separate tracks. The trains can run in either direction at various times of the day. And, like relationships, metaphors and bloggers, they can get off track. Human beings are generously smeared with sex and think about it day and night. Long ago, in an effort to eradicate public copulation, it was agreed that half the people would run away from all potential sex partners, and the other half would chase after them. Before the men had even unzipped, the women had scrammed. For centuries things went on this way, forcing the creation of art and music, architecture, poetry, philosophy, athletics -- these were all things that were done to impress chicks. Now come to today. Unlock your pop-ups for grins. Type sex in the web bar, see what happens. Sex at your fingertips, good thing or bad? Sometimes it comes down to how much tissue you've got. Love it or hate it, sex isn't going away. It's just like shaving. Once you start, you can never stop. I learned to shave from an 8th grader who's name escapes me, but whose advice I never forgot. Shave with the grain, he said. With the grain? I wondered. What's a grain? Eventually I found out, but it was too late. I shaved in the manner of my father, against the grain. But every time I shaved, every time, I've thought about this kid. Shave with the grain. A few weeks ago I shaved with the grain for the first time. It was not a close shave, but it also didn't remove the first two layers of my skin. I'd been shaving like a transvestite. What good are baby cheeks? What I am saying is that I've been doing something basic the wrong way all my life, and now that I realize it, I've stopped. Thanks for reading, and if you know how to spell "depantsed," please advise.

The Laws of Twoness

CW FISHER There are two types of people in this world: those who believe there are two types of people in this world, and those who don't. If, like me, you belong to one side or the other, you've probably noticed that people split rather easily down the center. There are two symmetrical halves to the body, to the face, to a leaf, a story, an issue, a person, a people. Two sides. It's a law. On the one hand, there's always the other hand. The assumption that there are two types of people is eminently supportable. The law of twoness says you can't have one without the other: Adam & Eve, Good & Evil, Rich & Poor, Either & Or, Darkness & Light, Republican & Democratic. These things need each other in order to be defined. It is said that deep awareness of the duality of Being brings oneness, and this is certainly reflected by the divorce rate, just one of the many ways America splits neatly in half. Oneness rarely lasts either, because the moment you reach it you want to run out and tell everybody. The idea that people will always divide neatly by two is jarring until one understands it is a function of math rather than magic. For those who suspect this is too simplistic, consider the famous twins, "0" and "1," which are the only numbers your computer needs to know in order to do everything it does. If one keeps playing with these opposites -- off/on, yes/no, 0/1 -- one can arrive at marvelously nuanced pictures of the world. The problem comes when we stop dividing things by two and accept as unified Truth a rudimentary black & white equation. To say, "There are two types of people: Republicans and Democrats," is factually correct but functionally conflictive because it forces us to take the sum of all that we are and jam it into one cartoon or the other. Are you with the Reds? Or the Blues? What are the real differences between Republicans and Democrats? Opinions vary, of course, but not by much. Roughly, it's Rich/Poor, White Collar/Blue Collar, Upwardly Mobile/Downwardly Mobile. From there things quickly degrade to Big Fat Loudmouth/Skinny Shrill Whiner. If you're a Democrat, you're either unemployed or worried you're about to be or know somebody who is, or you're a fabulously wealthy Hollywood star using politics to get on Entertainment Tonight. If you have a career job that involves riding a train to work, you're a Republican. This is because your boss is a Republican, and your boss's boss, and so on. It is career suicide to align yourself with Democrats within a business setting. Shortly after my father retired as a top executive with Sears, he, with my mother at his side, made an announcement. "We're Democrats," he said. "Yikes," said we. There are other differences. Republican women have thick necks, Democratic women have thick ankles. There are exceptions and even the inverse can be true: Condi Rice has a pencil neck and you won't find a skinnier pair of legs than the ones under Ginsberg's robe. The neck/ankle equation will serve you well until it hits you it's completely false. Clichés are cheap vessels but they can hold a lot of truth. The rich really do get richer and the poor get even poorer. The rich move up, the poor move down. This has always been true. John Kerry divides rich from poor at $200,000. Broadly put, if you're under the mark you would be gradually settling into a declining state; whereas if you're above the line, you're presumed to be in a state of ascension. At the very bottom of the jar is the sludge from which I write and spit, write and spit. The GOP, which stands for Grand Old Party, is actually still quite grand and still getting older all the time, but it's not much of a party these days -- ever since Richard Clarke began popping reputations like Macy's balloons, the GOP has beheld the incredible shrinking candidate, now the size of a prize, and no gumball. Instead of looking for differences, perhaps we should be looking at similarities. Republicans and Democrats share one thing in common: a hometown. We all live in one. We might not come from the same neighborhoods, but we're all neighbors, all Americans, all easy to recognize in foreign countries because we're either triple-sized or anorexic and stuck through with needles. Now in this town there roils a great seething unease, for its leaders have been winged and are scrambled, lo, see them duck and cover (quack!). In these confusing times, as we townspeople watch an administration burst into one spectacular lie after another, then flip the channel and see American bodies dragged by angry Iraqi mobs, it might do us well to realize our true twoness, because the reality is we have one leg in the Middle East. To me, this election is about what's hanging over the ocean. This election may require some to quietly switch parties in the privacy of a booth, a difficult act, but it can be done (I speak from experience). Even though most Democrats would rather commit adultery than switch parties, and vice versa, it can still be done. The truth, once you've unscrambled all the reds and blues, is always purple.

Feel Safe?

CW FISHER It's been 28 months since 9-11 and there still hasn't been another al-Qaeda attack in this country -- yet. For this I'm grateful but astonished. Perhaps the Bush administration has protected us after all. We'll never know. America's borders are long and unprotected, porous as tissue; our airspace is wild and blue and tempting with targets, our airports are spangled with security, but it all means nothing since a credit card torn in half can slit a throat as efficiently as a knife. Big deal, in a way. I have every confidence that any random planeload of people is today loaded with heroes who would willingly and immediately stand and fight. It happened over Pennsylvania on 9/11 and it's happened on every problem flight since. Sometimes this is helpful, othertimes not, such as that unruly drunk who was squashed to death by a well-meaning group of fellow passengers. Whoopsie. It has occurred to me several times that probably the best time to attack a country is when its military is on the other side of the world. I've often wondered whether the president's obsession with Iraq was coming at the expense of national security, of homeland security, social security and job security besides his own. Because these issues really need attention. I don't feel safe. I never really did. Those are my issues, and I own them. The rest of you I can't speak for. Now, after leafing through a pile of Richard Clarke's Polaroids, I don't trust these people anymore, not that I ever did, especially since their bar-the-door Nixonian response. Separation of powers they scream. Jesus! People died in this horrible event. It was our nightmare, our shared terror, that thing in the closet that took away our certainty of the way things would be; al Qaeda was the enemy and even worse still is, but the terror is in the fact that our country has been hijacked by a malign cabal of Reaganite extremists who have purchased their power by sharing what's not theirs to give with people who can install anything. The American people have become these people's installers. Trust this nest of bullies, this gang of thieves? These are way weird people. Rumsfeld? Rice? Ashcroft? Way weird. No confidence. The only people I trust in this country to save us from direct attack would be, first off, our military, if they were home, and if they weren't, well, maybe that's why the framers called for that second amendment. You put all those guns together, you got one hell of a civilian militia. There'd be no beating the home team, just like we learned in the American Revolution, and again in Vietnam, and if we're not careful, pretty soon in Iraq. Guns are not my specialty. I'm not a big advocate. I enjoy exploding into mist a 12-pack of Dr. Pepper with a .357 Magnum as much as any other American. It's just that, for me, having one around the house would be like having a new camera. I'd want to shoot everything. I would. I'm hoping, in the event that a civilian militia is ever required, that my shrugging shoulders and empty hands will convey to my passing neighbors that I'm unarmed and therefore unable to participate this time, but should anyone care to spare me, I'll have plenty of chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven along with several hot pots of coffee which, when thrown, explode into second- and third-degree burns over 60% of a typical victim's body. I don't know if the second amendment covers my coffee, but I do know this: I feel safer. And perkier. And curious. Where's John Ashcroft? He's been completely out of the news since March 5 when he went into the hospital for gallstone pancreatitis.

Cheney annihilates Kerry

CW FISHER AmericCo CEO Dick Cheney emerged from hiding today, saw his own shadow but stood his ground and spoke in a small voice not heard since the last campaign (in which he muttered only two words: "big time," in reference to a reporter's anus). This time he had talking points, each a Patriot missile that went to the heart of John Kerry's campaign. In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Cheney accused Kerry of being a classic tax-and-spend Democrat who is "one of the most reliable pro-tax" votes in the Senate, "opposed (to) tax relief as a matter of principle." He accused Kerry of plotting enormous tax hikes that will punish married couples and children. Young families across America burst into tears at the news. According to Cheney, Kerry plans to eliminate a number of expiring tax cuts. He then put pencil to paper and showed how Kerry's arithmetic was off by $1 trillion. A trillion is a thousand billion. That's a lot of arithmetic. How could John Kerry be such a little liar? "It takes little imagination to figure out just how he would fill that tax gap," explained Cheney, who predicted "a major new tax increase on the workers, entrepreneurs and inventors of this country." Even the inventors? You mean that nice old man down the street with the apparatus in his basement? The inventor of the pocket duckhunter? Yes, even him. Then he dropped the cluster bomb, signaling the finale and causing many in the chamber to gather their blankets and beers and begin the long trek to find their cars. Every burst was another Kerry NO vote on tax relief. NO to the 10% bracket! NO to cutting the marriage tax penalty! NO to reducing the tax rate on dividend income! NO to expanding the child tax credit! "All of these 'no' votes now form the basis of Senator Kerry's economic plan," Cheney lied. "This is the record of a senator who will speak out against higher taxes when it suits the political moment, but is one of the most reliable pro-tax votes in the United States Senate." John Kerry, in a stunning betrayal of class, admitted privately that he plans to "stick it" to "the rich," who he defines as a taxpayer making more than $200,000 per year! You try raising children on that! Kerry pledged to expand tax breaks for the middle class, or anyone who makes under $200,000. Who's that going to benefit? Some cab driver who doesn't even speak English? John Kerry, whose language is described as "dreadful" by self-respecting Republicans, like when he fell down on his snowboard -- a 60 year old man snowboarding! -- falls down of course: says, "I don't fall down" then mutters the F word! (You'll never find Dick Cheney doing that) -- said President Bush's economic policy had cost Americans 3 million jobs and was driving gasoline prices toward $3 a gallon. What a little liar that little liar is, not to mention his filthy mouth and his known philandering and alcoholic, first-husband-obsessed wife and his horrible children that he keeps hidden from the press and also his first wife whom he drove crazy with depression until she had to leave him and write a book about it, not about their marriage, but about depression, which the Republican party plans to put on the bestseller lists, even though it's quite complimentary about John; nobody has to know that. Kerry accused the Bush campaign of "running a campaign of untruths, of misleading America. They're running a campaign in March of mid-October desperation." Well, that's just a pile of crap is all that is. Desperate? A tax-and-spend Liberal, that's right, we're using the L word, is calling the Republicans desperate? Ha. We know we are but what are you?

Why I Switched Parties

CW FISHER Yesterday I listened to NPR all day, the hearings, you know -- all too much to absorb, plus I was in the car, I couldn't take notes, didn't have my recorder. Had the camera! No help. Multi-tasking is bullshit. My mom used to call it doing everything at once. So I sat back and drove through the country. Nice. Hit 60 today. Gray day, misty. Wasn't Clarke terrific? When I got back to the office I didn't feel like slogging through transcripts looking for applause lines, blogging on the big stuff. Besides, everybody else was doing it. So I decided to be a big picture guy. I took a nap. When I awoke, I checked Blogcritics to see if I had any new comments to my last post. Yes, a few. Attached to my 600-word essay was the entire Republican briefing book, annotated. I'd made the mistake of being equanimous in spreading guilt around the various presidents who have dragged our country through their many misadventures, and I guess fellow blogger David Flanagan thought it was a barn door through which they could all escape. It was wonderful! Like a party at my post! First time that's happened. And I really didn't have to do a thing, including participate. Man, it was nice to be popular. I don't normally get a lot of comments. I mean, what's to say about the "Don't-Buy-It" diet? Come on! So I walked around with a plate of cheeseballs and listened and wondered: What does one say to a Republican? "What kind of car you driving?" "Did your bonus come through?" "You ever played Oak Brook?" Eventually something made me angry. I wrote some turgid prose, deleted it, wrote some more and backspaced through it, played solitaire, got depressed. Napped. Got over it. Now I'm picking up where I left off. God, I love these hearings. It's such good clean fun to watch these big shot arrogant mothereffers get deloused by microwaves. This stuff is every bit as thrilling as the Watergate Hearings and seems to be following a similar pattern: testimony unfolds, leaving in its wake newly minted heroes and villains. Either's and Or's. Don Rumsfeld, cornered, retreats to his CEO roots and bizpeak, "healing the seams" between CIA and State, the phony, scared to death, only too happy to have Wolfowitz, who truly looks his name, step in and save the day, setting the record straight on some metaphor somebody used to describe him somewhere that nobody remembered but he wanted it on the record that he resented it. Twenty minutes of witlessness from Wolfowitz damn near ran me off the road. Narcissism is a word in desperate need of understanding. Even though Condoleezza Rice hasn't testified in public, it's clear that Dr. Rice (just the fact she enjoys being called "Dr." is telling), is nothing less than an Executive Secretary whose job it is to protect the president from incorrect facts, inappropriate people and manners unbecoming. She replaces Karen Hughes, who replaced his tutor, whom he depended on through junior high and much of high school, who replaced his mother, who gave up early. Sometimes I think maybe these hearings could help "heal the seam" between the two Americas. As our nation gradually radicalizes, slowly, the way a pot of pasta water gradually heats up, I see us heading for Lincoln's house divided. It's not just us. Other houses around the world are dividing rapidly: Iraq, Israel, Spain, Britain, Russia. What the hearings are exposing is the danger of radical ideology. The element that is creating the most dangerous radicals quickest is the compound created by three parts politics and one part religion. This compound creates a third thing much worse than the first two, and entirely different from either. It is malignant, not benign, and this is always true. It's true in every country and every religion: Islam, Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism. Radicals are nuts. They don't listen. They have crazy ideas that are wrong. They have it in mind that they're right, end of argument. And there is something appealing in that position, especially to people who have been sidelined or beaten up a lot. It's called "having enough." Now the other side is radicalized. No one will live through it. The problem with radicals is they kill without batting a lash. They won't say so but they enjoy it. They have given way to a raging id that literally sweeps them up and has its way with them. Radicals are dangerous people who believe to the bottoms of their socks they are absolutely doing the right thing. They cannot be dissuaded from strapping a bomb to their own waist even as their children cry mama don't. Vengeance will be theirs because they have crossed that point of no return and there is no turning back. And there is no stopping revenge killings, from Ireland to the Hatfield's and McCoy's, to George W. Bush and Arial Sharon, to Hamas, al Qaeda, Bill Clinton, or Harry S Truman. Truman was Man with a Good Idea who thought up Israel. Everybody thought it was a Good Idea too, except the people who lived there already, who weren't asked. After all the violence, I am personally so disgusted that I say enough. Everybody out. If you can't play nicely, you can't play at all anymore. You blew it. Get out of paradise. Get out of the Holy Land. This Promised Land wasn't promised to Israel by the United Nations; it was promised to Man by God. The three major religions who claim it holy defile it every day. The world, through the UN, should say as one: disperse. You blew it. Get out. And it should be turned into a World Park, owned by the unnamed God we all agree on, the one that smiles down like the man in the moon and acts just like a Canadian. The J-man tried to tell us. But the promised land, and all the problems that have flowed from it, was exactly what he promised. If we had taken care of it, things would be ducky. If we didn't, things would go like this. It's why he talked about forgiveness, because it's the only way to stop the domino effect. If you're a domino with legs, you take a step to the left, you save the world. Get out of the way. Don't add to it. Cheeseball?

Clarke Bomb Hits Clinton

CW FISHER Richard Clarke recently insisted on CBS's 60 Minutes that there never "ever" was a link between al Qaeda and Iraq, only to have a 1999 article surface in which he is quoted making that very assertion. Its sudden appearance has Roving reporter written all over it, especially with Clarke and Clinton up to testify. Damn fine entertainment. Does the 1999 bombing of the El Shifa Pharmaceutical plant in Sudan ring a bell? It probably won't, because it didn't get a lot of press five years ago. Of course, back then we lived in a pre-September 11 world. Things were different then, only because we didn't know what we know today, which is that we've been targets all along. Something else we know now too. US espionage is a joke. Let's take another look at the bullet hole in Clarke's chest. On January 23, 1999, Richard Clarke, who occupied the newly created post of national coordinator of counterterrorism and computer security programs under President Clinton, was interviewed by the Washington Post. The excerpt: "Clarke said U.S. intelligence does not know how much of the substance (nerve gas) was produced at El Shifa or what happened to it. But he said that intelligence exists linking bin Laden to El Shifa's current and past operators, the Iraqi nerve gas experts and the National Islamic Front in Sudan." What's funny is the irony. Clarke spinning the way the Bushies are spinning right now, for the same reasons. He got caught playing Espionage, International Game of Deceit and Subterfuge. The Clintonites put it on the Iraqis, same as the US had done for years. Bill Clinton, in retaliation for several bin Laden-sponsored acts of terror, launched his own series of terrorist attacks, missile style, under the premise that a bomb's a bomb. One of his seven targets was the El Shifa Pharmaceutical plant, which, US intelligence asserted, was producing nerve gas. Their evidence: the presence of the chemical Empta on the grounds surrounding the plant. Empta, when mixed with water and bleach, becomes V-X nerve gas, according to a 1999 article posted by web logger Scott Loughrey citing a pair of articles in Covert Action Quarterly (CAQ, Winter, 99). How could Clinton know the parking lot was rife with powdered nerve gas, but not know the facility produced half of Sudan's medicine and 90% of the most critically needed drugs? Turned out, he didn't. Well, their information might have been wrong. Well, the Empta turned out to be roundup. Roundup. Roundup is a weed killer that weekend warriors use too much of. This one, El Shifa, was Clinton's baby. El Shifa was what he should have been impeached for. As to Mr. Clarke, I would say his testimony is about as impugned as everybody else's. His impunity is just a lot more irrelevant now that he's retired. The truth will squeeze out the sides. One thing is becoming clear as a bigger picture puts itself together: this problem is bigger than George Bush. Unlike our Justice Department, our Intelligence is blind. Deaf and dumb too. We're in big trouble when our presidents -- note the plural -- are empowered to use American military power at their discretion and without the approval of Congress based on faulty or imagined intelligence. I was thinking it ought to be illegal when it hit me: it is. There appears to be enough dereliction of duty to go around.

Don't-Buy-It Diet -- Part 2

CW FISHER Life without a belly is different. I was tying my shoes when I noticed I was breathing normally. Getting into the car was suddenly easier. Walking was like skipping; my feet didn't hurt. There was a spring in my step and bounce in my knees. Even my face felt tighter when I was shaving. I fell on this diet by happy accident. I wasn't trying to lose weight. I didn't care what people thought about my pot belly. I was single mindedly pursuing something else: a book I was writing. I was trying to change my entire life all at once, something no expert would recommend. I'm unqualified to give advice. I don't know beans about nutrition. All I know is that I lost weight and kept it off, and the key to my weight loss was poverty. Wait! Don't go! You don't have to lose everything just to drop a few pounds. There's an easier route, and it takes you past Fast Food Row, then safely down the aisles of your grocery store. It's all about preventive dieting. About not putting yourself in a position to eat what makes you fat. We begin your diet with a trip to McDonald's. Order whatever you want, and get yourself a sundae. Please don't think of this as your last supper. The Don't-Buy-It Diet requires fast food before grocery shopping. Because it's true: if you shop hungry, you'll overbuy. You are now armed with energy from fat, carbs and sugar -- enough for up to two hours before you crash and burn, at which point you're completely worthless. Go directly to the grocery store. Walking in, I want you to notice something. You have no book, no guide, no notes, no calorie counters, no head full of crap, no theories about garlic. You have a nice full belly and an empty cart. Your new diet begins here in the grocery store. Your first trip will take you twice as long as usual and you'll be buying about half as much -- a major benefit, but beside the point. Still, I prefer for you to focus on things that are beside the point, because obsessing about fat makes you fat. Obsessing about fat makes you fail. Failure makes you hesitant to try again. Those of you who believe you can never change, change your mind. Because you're wrong. Change your mind and everything else will change behind you. The Don't-Buy-It Diet works because the decision not to buy something is easier than the decision not to eat something. Potato chips unbought will remain uneaten. Before the voice in your head has a chance to rebel at the thought of a chipless world, hear this: my diet is so permissive it's almost promiscuous. You will enjoy foods you like. You will lose weight eventually, but the moment you look for evidence, your diet is over. You will tell no one you're on a diet, because you're not. Your shopping is. When roommates or family members complain there's nothing to eat, just say, "Hm," and leave it to them to figure out that if they want something specific they can get it themselves. Next up: Dangerous Aisles.

September 12, 2001

CW FISHER I could tell you every detail of September 11, of what I was doing when I heard that an airliner hit the World Trade Center. But the day after? I have to think a bit, but I can come up with it. Mostly I remember how I felt: angry, hopeless, spilling over with grief, afraid, reactionary, prone to overstatement, given to tantrums over religious ideas that could justify murder. If on that day I'd seen Osama bin Laden at the White Hen I would have ripped his heart out and squished it on the floor. On that day, when I closed my eyes and saw bin Laden, I saw myself coming up behind him, I saw myself massage his shoulders and neck, I saw myself gently but firmly twist his head in a full circle, three times, followed by one decisive yank; I saw myself insert my thumb in his nose and two fingers through his eyes and roll his head like a bowling ball down a rocky mountain -- I heard a satisfying, hollow pop when it hit a rock. I was writing a show at the time and we were less than two weeks out. All the speeches had to change, the humor stripped out. We needed tributes to firefighters, a moment of silence, maybe a prayer. Definitely a rewrite. I remember resenting the do-over and feeling guilty about resenting it, knowing as I did how everyone's life had been interrupted, not just mine. I resented it anyway. The reason I'm sharing all this personal information, including a confession to a double murder on a single victim, is hard to explain. Like an itch just out of reach, or a star you can't see without looking away from it, or a drop of mercury you've been asked to pick up, I'm trying to say the unsayable. What was our aggregate feeling on September 11, 2001? How close did we come to feeling the same? I thought we shared one heart in the days and weeks following. There was twisted metal in every soul, but there was also unity, fearlessness and unbreakable resolve. It was our finest hour. At least that's how it seemed to me. I'm disturbed by revelations about our president's behavior on September 12, 2001, about his keen interest in seeing this horrible event tied to Saddam. The depth of a soul can be measured by a reasonable pair of human eyes. These people are dangerous.

CW's Don't-Buy-It Diet

Part One. Once there was a man who couldn't see his feet. For years he longed to see them again. He could hear them so he knew they were there. He tried everything. He cut out alcohol, lost a little but gained it back elsewhere; cut back on fat, ate more salad, exercised consistently off and on, cut out candy, ate only fruit, then only meat. Everything worked, but only in his imagination. Then one horrible day the fat man and his wife had a big fat fight, and the fat man exiled himself to a faraway land to sulk, living in an attic over a garage with no heat or plumbing so his wife, who was skinny, would feel real real bad. It was a dramatic time of the man's life. After many years of wanting to tell the whole world to go to hell, he was finally getting around to doing it. He began a novel, learned how to make do without plumbing, discovered that a rabbit hat with flaps makes a big difference when you can see your breath inside for longer than two weeks, and that it's possible to write fiction on a computer wearing gloves, but not mittens. When the man got the flu and couldn't get out of his blankets on the floor to get water or answer the phone, his wife broke into his hideaway, carried his fat ass down the stairs and took him to the hospital where he was revived from dehydration and sent home. Even then he was still too fat. He returned to his hideaway where his novel was screaming, "Write me!" and he did. He got a better heater and typed through spring and into summer, 6,000 words at a sitting with a 40-minute nap between, then back on it. His phone never rang because he never answered it anyway. Things got done. One day, passing a mirror in the mirror section of Wal-Mart, which was on the way to the public toilets he now favored, he noticed a man he'd never seen before: hair long and wild, beard a crazy gray, and no belly. Looking down he saw his feet and realized the miracle had happened. Whatever he'd done it had worked, and he had to tell America about it, because if it worked for him, it would work for America! Then he went poo. Those who expect me to cop to being this man can kiss my bony ass. Let's just say we're very close. Over the next month, I'll be blogging on the Don't-Buy-It Diet. It's a very simple concept with easy to understand guiding principles which I have managed to stretch out and expand and complicate beyond recognition for purposes of attracting a publisher or at least a few readers who appreciate the humor of trying to read yourself thin. Stick with me and I'll show you how to not only see your feet, but your ribs.

A Year After Shock and Awe

CW FISHER It's a windy day in DeKalb, Illinois, as it often is this time of year. It's the first anniversary of the bombing of Baghdad, and two planned demonstrations are underway: one for peace, and one for supporting the troops. Whatever they're chanting, the wind yanks away; their signs wrap them up like hot dogs. Driving through the middle I am right where I should be, since I am for peace, and I am for supporting the troops. I am for people shouting at the wind. I am against people pissing in it. It was windy too in Iraq a year ago when 100,000 American men and women left their lives behind, fought their way through sandstorms to deliberately put themselves in harm's way. A year ago we marveled at satellite phones and their ability to put us in the center of history as it was made. We stared for hours at roaring brown screens as the American moms and dads, sons and daughters pushed toward an unknown welcome in Baghdad. Back then when AmeriCo CEO Dick Cheney assured us the Iraqi people would give us "open arm welcome," our military was expecting Saddam Hussein to use chemical and biological weapons. We were primed for whatever he could dish out. First we had to destroy the country, in what was called "softening the target." We had to take out the power grid, the water supply, communications, airports, roads, hospitals, schools, some of which was not intentional, but that's war. If we had known then what we know now, we probably wouldn't have wrecked Iraq, because there was no military advantage to it, as it turned out. Neither Saddam nor his armies nor his people were prepared for the shock and awe of Shock and Awe. Now somebody has to rebuild the country, at a cost of billions of dollars to you and me. Freedom isn't cheap when Halliburton plans a war. Looking back through a lens of a year's worth of revelations, how different it all looks now. Nothing happened the way we expected. We found no air resistance; we bombed targets at will. Thousands of Iraqi people died. We don't know how many and we're not going to ask, but so far the minimum is 11,000 and the figure could be closer to 50,000. These are the costs of war to which we are wise to pay no heed, for if we did it would quickly bring any war to an end. But this was all before we knew that there wasn't much to know about Saddam Hussein. This was before we knew that Saddam was retired and hard at work on his second novel, which was set to become a musical, with Saddam himself as executive producer. He was deeply involved with the project, the way that writers get, and couldn't be interrupted. He'd been like this for years. We didn't know. Nor did we anticipate that his army would strip themselves of uniform and disappear. It could have been a brilliant trap or self preservation in the face of the inevitable. Or a brilliant trap. Many voices are now calling Americans to use the anniversary to honor our troops rather than protest the war. I think every day is a good day to honor our troops because they are giving their country everything they've got and if need be their lives. For us they never knew when they might meet sudden death. More than one of them died every day. The first of them are now coming home. Mental wounds are as serious as physical wounds. If we question this principle, we will dishonor our troops. If our senators voted for $87 billion to destroy a country, then they can't scream poor when the time comes to pay for the human toll. The only response to honor is honor. Parades can't pay them back, statues won't do it either. Honor shares a Latin root with honesty, and the truth is we've all been lied to by dishonorable men. The fault is not with the troops.

Who's trying to kill the Sierra Club?

CW FISHER America's most powerful environmental advocate, the Sierra Club, is in real danger of having its agenda hijacked and reversed. Somebody, right now, is in the process of trying to take it over. Three seats on the board are at risk of being filled by three anti-immigration candidates, and the club's membership knows nothing about these candidates, which was how the interlopers planned it. Why would three anti-immigration candidates want to serve on the board of an environmental group? In this case, to change the organization's direction. The environmental connection is that overpopulation is destroying America, and that sounds reasonable to me. But... ...anti-immigration people? I haven't heard the term. It sounds... loaded, fully loaded with divisive potential, sort of a dirty political bomb, gets everybody hopping mad and not gonna take it anymore. Damn if it doesn't sound like Rove. But it's not. Why would anti-immigration people who have no name, who share such a precise agenda, executed on an exacting timetable, not just infiltrating the Sierra Club but other social activist organizations, according to Groundswell Sierra, a club publication. Who are these guys? Their names are Dick Lamm, Frank Morris, and David Pimentel; they may have been advanced by a group called 'SUSPS.' It's unclear if this is an acronym or just coincidentally an extremely difficult word to say, and almost impossible to whisper. Say it. Got to be Karl... I just think it's funny. Three candidates have no Sierra Club experience but "hold interlocking roles on the governing Boards of outside anti-immigration organizations, some of whom are actively seeking to influence the Sierra Club's election," according to the club. Quick background -- and this has NOTHING to do with this story, okay? The Sierra Club is the same organization that brought a suit to the Supreme Court asking it to require Vice President Dick Cheney to make public all transcripts of his meetings with his energy advisory committee which included executives from Enron and Haliburton. This is the same lawsuit that just today provoked a 21-page tantrum from Justice Antonin Scalia in response to the Sierra Club's request that he recuse himself on the basis of his friendship with Cheney. All of which is probably beside the point and has nothing to do with the strange group of weirdos who are trying to shut down, yes, shut down, the Sierra Club (at least as we know it). Sounds like Karl Rove... but it's not. It is a quiet group of people without a name who came from nowhere. People who hate foreign people. Susps. Susps.

Impeach Scalia

A justice of the Supreme Court that appointed George Bush wants to know why his friendship with Dick Cheney should recuse him from judgment on a case before the court that involves the vice president. Antonin Scalia, who may or may not know a thing or two about the law, obviously has much learn about human nature. "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," Scalia wrote in a defiant 21-page memorandum, according to the New York Times. So cheap? "So cheap." Nino, what are you saying here? You can't be bought cheap? Then tell us how much. How many ducks, how many trips, how many male-bonding jokes and claps on the back to make you feel alive again, one of the boys, free for once of your robes and that Ginsberg bitch, finally hanging with the real men, shooting off real guns? So "cheap." Nino, Nino, Nino. Your judgment is way off. There is never, under any circumstances, cause for a 21-page memorandum on any subject, let alone ducks. All this exercise demonstrates is your emotional attachment to a buddy. Yes, you should be recused. Shame on you, moron. A 21-page rant. This is something I want to read in its entirety: it is sure to provide a fruit basket of delicious quotations. The case, which is being brought against the vice president by the Sierra Club,* involves the club's unsuccessful attempts to obtain information about what transpired in private meetings of the vice president's energy task force in 2001. You may remember this case. It involved "Kenny Boy" Lay and the Enron gang, among others, before the fall of Enron and the Iraq war. This information, if obtained, could easily contain smoking guns. Tony, who was one of the five American voters who elected George W. Bush President of the United States said that other justices have partied at Dick's house, in fact, just this last Christmas, a Christian holiday celebrating economic excess. "A rule that required members of this court to remove themselves from cases in which official actions of friends were at issue would be utterly disabling," Scalia wrote. Disabling? Meaning you couldn't do your job if you couldn't party with the same people you may have to judge one day? Disabling? There is a law against this sort of thing, correct? This justice needs to be disabled permanently. What's the procedure for impeachment of a Supreme Court Justice? I'm going to hunt for that 21-page salute to stupidity. Let's all go duck hunting. Hey, Nino. Duck.

Mars Too Cool

CW FISHER I'm no scientist, but when an apple hits my head, who knows? It could be gravity. I've got it in my head that we're all headed to Mars. I'm seeing underground everythings, and everything's the same as everywhere now, Wal-Marts and McDonald's, Jennifer Lopez movies at Multiplex theatres, all of it so vast you'd never even know you were underground. We're headed to Mars. I'm thinking about Mars these days, feisty little planet, always in the news. I often get the feeling it's just waiting for a Bugsy Siegel to see it for what it is: paradise, of some sort. If we could just get enough toys up there and enough cameras we could have a helluva robot war, take bets, big business, help pay for it and then some. Bush is so excited he wants to go there. We want him to go there too. But by the time the bus is ready, he'll be long gone anyway. I want to know where the water went. Last week we found a rock that proved the existence of water on Mars, not just snow, ice or vapor of some sort, but chemical evidence of what we know as water. So where is it? Come on! We know, man, I mean, we know that Mars was swirling with something and lots of it and we've known it for years. If it was water, which it probably was, then where in the name of Pete did it go? Nobody knows, yet, but the short version of current plausible theories combined is: 1) much of it may have been lost to the atmosphere and then to space because of low gravitational pull after some catastrophic event, and/or 2) much of the water is underground in a seasonal cycle of freezing and boiling. Maybe the seas come when the water boils. Maybe the season takes centuries to turn. It's enough to give any realtor the shivers. Still, there is the promise of water. And the boiling and freezing part sounds like energy to me, and a little Robert Frost. Water, doesn't that mean life? Oxygen? Hydrogen? Am I nuts or did Total Recall nail it? Except for that boiling part. And probably the eye-bugging part. And the three-breasted mutant part. The Johnny Cabs we'll see in Singapore this spring. I demand answers. I'm tired of these questions hanging right in front of us like a bigass moon. Even the origin of the moon is still in dispute. Let's not quibble over Mars. We know what it is. Mars is condemned by all known literature to be nothing but trouble. They don't call it the "red planet" for nothing. This essential "badness" is the very thing that will draw humans to it like a drug. We are going to Mars, people. Get used to the idea. I got in trouble recently for saying money would never be a problem for space exploration. Historically, money has always been the problem, but until recently the economic base of the space program was not quite capitalism as we know it. We're out of the Lewis & Clark phase and into the pioneer stage. As earthly boundaries are transcended, a new economy will be needed, with emoney issued by borderless banks. Cash stations without cash. Credits, in other words. Oh, my God, what's happening? And Arnold Scwartzenegger is governor! And all I can think of is Mars! Johnny Cab!

Open Letter to Kerry's Guy

CW FISHER John Kerry is coatless, circling a small stage like an inmate in solitary, talking to himself like Hamlet: "This administration... this president... this White House..." I am watching him on C-Span. I'm concerned. He looks haggard already. It's only March. David Wade, do your job. Your guy is all over the place. Execute a clean bitch slap and sit his ass down on a short chair. Add duct tape and a gag. Walk over to the VCR. Pop in a tape of his latest town meeting. "John," you say, "did Howard steal your coat? Because it'll be down to his knees. "Mr. Kerry, the American people don't want a shirtsleeve president. The last thing we want is a one-man band. We want a president who can lead. At a minimum that takes eye contact. You have got to stop talking to yourself, John. Lift up your head. The floor doesn't vote. "You've done a fine job bashing President Bush, but you're beginning to sound like my neighbor. People love to grouse, but they hate to listen to it. "If you want to be president, separate the issues from topics. Same sex marriage is a topic; civil rights, an issue. Address issues not with complaints, but solutions. Don't whine, don't blame: if you do it now, you'll do it when you're president. We don't want to hear about 'the congress' this and 'the republicans' that. Smite them. "In talking policy, never forget that Americans live on credit. If we don't like our bill, we go bankrupt, start over. We get by on good looks. If we don't like our looks, we have surgery. If we don't like our problems, we ignore them. If our leaders ignore them too, everything's peachy. "But we don't hire leaders who like to noodle out the giant problems in public -- deficits, tax hikes, social security, health care. You can't solve that stuff, you can only shake your head and fall asleep. Leaders like that are destined for subcommittees. "There is your dilemma, Mr. Kerry. While George Bush may have created many of these problems, it's not enough for you to simply point them out. You need to tell us what you propose. We don't need to be scared any more than we already are. Tell us your plan. Describe for us that shining city on the hill. Paint the picture. "Shut up about Nam; let others talk about it. Leave the past; we're in desperate search of a future. "Seize the menu and tell us what's on it. Talk about some things nobody else is talking about. Like mental health care. Put the argument in terms of the men and women returning home from war. Many will be depressed, some suicidal, others homicidal, some with drug addictions now, some with addictions to come. The truth is that war is hell for its warriors years after wars are 'over.' There's an example of a defining issue that spans multiple topics. "Here's another: China. The mainstream press has made it a story about all the jobs that China is sucking out of the U.S., but this is very old news. What's new is we've noticed there's no water in the tub. China is no longer a 'sleeping giant.' It's awake, and the exponential aspects of its economy are kicking in. China is already outsourcing jobs to South Korea. The China story is not about loss, but potentiality. Laws of nature dictate that the majority rules -- if they have the cash to back it up -- and China's getting richer. Good news? Bad news? Depends on how we dance. "See what I'm saying here, Mr. Kerry? Do you?" Mr. Kerry will nod enthusiastically here, but, David, before you rip off the tape you must make certain he won't scream or fire you. If it happens, have him contact me and my buddies. He needs jokes.

A Britney That Will Not Die

CW FISHER I spent 20 minutes with my head in the oven before I remembered: it's electric. I am not blaming Britney Spears for this bad idea on my part, not directly. She did the right thing today by promising not to shoot a music video depicting her suicide. MTV got their hands on the treatment, published it to their Web site, and soon the comments poured in. People whose brothers and sisters had killed themselves were particularly vocal. Moved by these letters Britney Spears decided against shooting the scenes. Sort of. According to Britney's handlers, Britney would have never approved that treatment. Britney herself said nothing and probably learned of it the way we did, by reading it, or by having it read to her. It's quite possible she's unaware of any of it. Britney rarely does any of her own thinking or speaking; I learned why when I saw her being interviewed. Under that blond hair is a really shallow dumb person with marginal talent who has captured the imagination of--me, actually. I do pause when she pops up, and I don't attribute it to the music. I don't know what it is about her. It's undeniable, unearned and unjust. That's not why I had my head in the oven either but it's getting closer. I googled the word "buzz" and it spat back Yahoo Buzz Index, which I thought was ironic. I was looking for blogging material. Of the top twenty subjects searched on Yahoo in the last 24 hours, week, month and year, Britney Spears is always on the list and very close to the top, followed by Jennifer Lopez but routinely bested (lately) by Paris Hilton. The Internal Revenue Service is also in the Top 20. Sadly, it was the only entry that interested me. That's why I had my head in the oven, that and a stew spill. You see, I don't want to live in a world that values Britney Spears. It's nothing against Britney. She'll only be around a few more years before she's Madonna, Annette, Cher, Marilyn or any other one-named chick except Oprah. Picture Britney at 40, a judge on American Idol. She'll be great. See? There is a future for her. But what about the rest of us? Stick your nose in this list for 20 seconds and see if it isn't curling. This is the stuff Yahoo's searchers are seeking -- and it's not just in America -- it's all around the world! Spain, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, Britney, Paris, J-Lo. No culture left untainted. And what's at the very top of the heap, worldwide? Failed American Idol contestent William Hung. Welcome to Bizarro World.

Hubble Twubble

CW FISHER Tonight on 60 Minutes Bill Bradley gives the story on Hubble. As you've probably heard, NASA is shutting it down. Never mind that Hubble just got a shot that features 10,000 galaxies and shows "the universe the way it looked near the dawn of time." It's work is done. It needs a new gyroscope, new plugs, rotor, water pump; it's due to crash and burn in a few years. It is essentially space debris, not worth fixing. I don't cry easily, but this made me cry. I teared up. I had to get philosophical. Why mourn the vessel when we've still got the pictures? I slept on that, woke up pissed, searched the net to see how much of this was George Bush's fault, and either forgot what I was searching for or got interested in something else. Now I'm pissed again. I remember Bush saying we're going to Mars. It didn't catch on, so he never mentioned it again. He might as well have said, "We're going to McDonald's!" But what if that's why they're killing Hubble? That'd be a bitch, huh? What happened to us? Where's our willingness to boldly go where no human being has ever gone before? Back in the day of Star Trek, when time could be traveled as easily as an infinitive could be split, no one ever dreamed that time travel could ever be possible. Yet here it is in the Hubble. Time travel is now a reality, but unfortunately it's space junk. If the Hubble were just a telescope with a camera, it might make sense to let it drop. But Hubble is a type of time machine and its work is far from finished. There is a quiet race for a better model of the universe, a way for the human mind to more clearly grasp our place in the universe. Hubble may fall but it will not die. Hubble will be to the space program what the Casio digital watch once was to the consumer. It will be an accessory of the space station or some other shared platform which any visionary American president would be thinking about, and adjusting his actions to accommodate a climate of cooperation. Hint to Mr. Kerry. People out my way, 60 miles out of Chicago, haven't seen real stars or experienced actual night darkness in years. Last summer we thought we had the Northern Lights, turned out to be a new Wal-Mart. If you're curious about Hubble's future and the universe's past, it's on 60 Minutes on CBS.

Stealth Election in Progress

CW FISHER You're still here? Shouldn't you be poking chad? You do realize it's Tuesday, right? It's mid-term election day, time to fill some vacants seats and exercise our most basic responsibility: bitching about turnout. If you've spent a lifetime defending your voting record, trying to explain away those very few times when you didn't vote because you couldn't vote because of some work thing or because you were out of town or some other excuse -- just stop it right now. Take your guilt, take your shame, take all your tired old stories and flush 'em. In Spain, they have their elections on Sunday. The skin peeled off my eyes. The world made sense again. It wasn't us. It never was. We always cared. It's just a little hard sometimes on a Tuesday to get to and from work and then get our butts back to our home county to stand in line and hope we're registered to vote. We shouldn't feel guilty. We should feel stupid. The framers made voting hard on purpose. Tuesdays were free for the idle rich, and they didn't want to ruin the weekends of the working folk, so they called it for Tuesday and put it in the constitution so nobody would mess with it. Significantly, voting day is not designated a holiday. Schools are in session. Places of business do not close down. This is useful only for those countries that seek the fewest possible votes. Since Americans seem to be gripped by the idea of amending the constitution these days, maybe Senator Kerry could propose an amendment with some actual merit and reschedule voting for the first Sunday of January. At the least, the move would provide a comparison between a useful amendment and a hateful amendment that will legalize bigotry. The amendment "protecting marriage" proposed by President Bush is a move to rejoin church and state that will have profound consequences on American culture by handing the Christian Right even more power to create their own Taliban, American-style. Bush, who doesn't believe in big government, who believes big government created most of the problems of society, wants to transform marriage into a sacrament of the state--not to get government too involved in our lives. (See, it's less government with a more intense focus on problem people and how best to marginalize them). What do you think? Am I off base here? Do you think a constitutional amendment to change voting day to the first Sunday of January is a good idea? Should it be declared a holiday?

Ken "Dahl" in talks

CW FISHER What do you tell a man who won't grow up, who's living in a dream that happened in the past, a dream that's over? And why should it fall to me? I barely know the guy -- he's all broke up inside: no kids, never married, no sex, she wants out. After 43 years! Ken and I go back a ways -- we were never friends. He was my sister's. Me and Ken on a rainy day might have a date or a series of horrible car accidents or cause an explosion at our very own wedding, but that's how it was when sisters trusted brothers to play Barbies. Someone must die, frequently and explosively until mom is gotten. This was the game as I understood it. For forty-three years those two were like this, and with one flick of a press release, Mattel released Ken from his contract, sending him back into the workforce at the age of 59, stripped of any further association with Barbie, who is seeking an order of protection. "I loved that woman," he said to me privately. "The Midge thing was a rumor. It happened when Barbie went Malibu." He stared off into space looking all his nearly 60 years. Ken is, in fact, a survivor of abuse at the hands of boys and teeth of dogs. He sees me staring. "Go ahead, stare, try to picture me when, everybody else does it; notice she still looks great, of course, she got all the new technologies, and me, well, I always said I don't need it." Here he breaks down. Today he learned he can no longer use his last name without a spelling change. Funny though. Through it all, the guy still looks sixteen. "So many surgeries she had!" I can barely understand him, but I let him go on. "By the time it was over she was a completely different person." I've seen what this guy can do when he gets worked up, so I put him back in the box where he couldn't do any damage. I had a few things to tell him. "In the first place," I said, "Barbie Mattel is a bitch. You think Britney Spears is bad?" Immediate argument. Ken's all over it. Barbie's smarter, Barbie's easier to talk to, Barbie's a better dancer, better singer, better lover, on and on. "Ken!" I had to shake him. "Wake up, little buddy, it's over, man, the end of the long free ride. Ken, you've been released. Mattel doesn't want you around. Nobody used the word discontinued. Nothing unusual happening on eBay -- yet." He perked up. "Kenny Boy," I said, "it seems to me that with Mattel putting you out to pasture and your rights worth about nothing... maybe we should snarf up those rights and work you over a bit, get rid of that accent, some new clothes, accessories like beards and bald tops and beer bellies, tattoos." He was like putty in my hands. "Then we put the whole thing on the stage. "Ken and Barbie, How It Was, What Happened, and Why Nothing Good Will Ever Happen Again: The Musical. Tom Hanks, Ken. Tom Hanks is Ken. And Barbie. Puh. She could be made out of plastic for all it matters, like Pamela Anderson." I'm holding him like an Oscar, thinking: it all goes in the screenplay, the Vietnam years, the day GI Joe showed up with all his cool action gear-- it broke Ken's heart. Ken, who'd never been allowed outside, was forced to remain the ideal of a little girl who'd forgotten all about him. Barbie, that whoring bitch. High tragedy and low comedy all mixed up in bad music and too much pink, yes, but if Ken can be had cheap, shouldn't he be grabbed?