MuffinBlog

The last couple of weeks have been eventful. We vacationed for just under a week in San Diego…right when the wildfires started wreaking havoc. Luckily we were able to visit all of the attractions in our itinerary before some of them were closed. It was bizarre coming back from the downtown area where the air was clear to just north of the city where the smoke choked everyone who found him or herself outside. We were under a voluntary evacuation at our hotel and decided to cut our visit short by a day. The air quality would have prevented us from doing much outside, and the extra hotel room was probably useful for somebody displaced by a mandatory evacuation. And of course we were worried that they’d have to kick us out anyway to prevent us from burning to death. It worked out well because we had a lot more work preparing to move back to Illinois than we thought.

This past Saturday the movers came. Anna had been worried that they wouldn’t be expecting to pack our stuff for us, but I kept insisting that everybody who hires movers expects their stuff to get packed for them. So of course the guys do a walk through and immediately call their boss. They weren’t expecting to pack our stuff, and didn’t have any supplies. Luckily we had saved a bunch of boxes from the move out to Arizona. Unluckily the U-Haul place in Gallup doesn’t sell packing supplies, and cleaning out Wal-Mart and Home Depot amounted to only 24 small boxes. Somehow we made due, though, and after an unexpected delay we left town Sunday (today) for Albuquerque. We’re sort of dreading how much extra they’re going to charge us beyond the estimate because of the flub.

Tomorrow we get to drive 11 hours to San Antonio to visit my sister. Given that Jaidee has been sick and whiny lately, it should be an interesting road trip. Still, we’re glad to finally be on the road. The Navajo Reservation was a very worthwhile experience for both Anna and me. That said, we’re glad to be going back to family and the familiar. As Judy Garland famously said, “There’s no place like home.”

I was just thinking over the weekend that there is an amusing pattern in the way Bush feels about people at different ages. He absolutely loves non-viable precursors of human life that could be used to save other lives (i.e. banning stem cell research using discarded embryos). He wants to prevent kids from being healthy (i.e. he vetoed SCHIP). He sends young adults off to die for inappropriate reasons (i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran(?)). He more directly likes to kill adults (i.e. record executions in his term as governor of Texas). And finally, he’s just plain sadistic in his attempts to confuse the elderly to death (i.e. his insanely complicated modifications to Medicare).

Of course he thinks of these things in more grandiose terms: religion, complete privatization of government, world domination, black & white justice (metaphorically and literally). But it’s kind of interesting how such “higher” views can lead to such a pattern of hatred for one’s own species. Maybe I should write a book called “A People’s History of the Bush Administration’s Policies”.

I added an October 2007 page for Jaidee photos. I moved some photos from September 2007 to October 2007 that weren’t supposed to be there.

Just put up a few more Jaidee photos.

I just finished the chapter in A People’s History of the United States on the Spanish-American war. I have to admit that the only thing I knew about this conflict was that it was between the U.S. and Spain. I thought maybe it had to do with Mexico since that is the only country repopulated by Spain I knew that had fought large battles with the U.S. Not only did I enlighten myself to how Cuba came to hate the U.S. government, but also how the U.S. annexed Puerto Rico and Guam as commonwealths, and Hawaii as a state (eventually). I also didn’t realize that we briefly ran a bloody occupation of the Philippines.

Around the turn of the century, William McKinley was president. He was an out right imperialist (along with his successor, Theodore Roosevelt). He wanted war to get rid of the extras resulting in our overproducing industries since U.S. citizens weren’t buying enough (it being a depression and all). There were also the wealthy business people who didn’t want war if the government could simply “open up markets” in those countries that were ripe for exploitation, but they easily capitulated (i.e. completely reversed their stance) to war whenever “peaceful” means didn’t work.

Spain controlled Cuba, and the Cuban citizens didn’t like that. They started to revolt like we did during our war of independence. But McKinley and others realized that a) the rebels were primarily black, and b) if the rebels succeeded in kicking out Spain, there was no guarantee that the new black government would “open their markets” to us (i.e. allow us to come in and exploit their resources). So we sent a warship down their to make our “freedom loving” presence known, and it got attacked and sunk. This helped rile up American sentiment for the “freedom” of the Cubans.

Eventually we declared war on Spain and invaded Cuba, but refused to acknowledge the rebels. We kept the white government that was installed by Spain, but refused to give them sovereignty until they passed the Platt Amendment to their new constitution. The Platt Amendment allowed the U.S. to intervene militarily in Cuba whenever it wanted, and opened up their markets to U.S. business men. We eventually won and also annexed Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Hawaii as side trophies (Hawaii was already overrun by pineapple business interests, but wasn’t controlled by Spain). We then slaughtered people in the Philippines to keep it under control. Is it any wonder that Cuba went socialist? Who the hell would want capitalism after having your independence revolt undermined and your country exploited by a capitalist invader? The Cuban missile crisis was basically our fault because we wouldn’t leave the Cubans the hell alone after we scared them out of capitalism!

A very similar thing is happening in Iraq. The oil companies want control of Iraq’s resources and markets, so the government trumps up some story about liberating Iraq and WMD as an excuse to invade with a disaster (i.e. 9/11) to rile up the population and the corporate press to spread the propaganda. We then setup a puppet government and–this is a recent development–push the puppet government to “open the market” (basically we’re trying to get Iraqi politicians to give the oil companies control of Iraq’s oil resources).

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just history repeating itself.

I subscribe to the National Center for Science Education’s news letter, and finally read the latest issue (September 28). One of the articles described how Sen. David Vitter (R-La) is trying to earmark $100,000 to fund a creationist group to degrade the science curriculum in Louisiana. I don’t live in Louisiana, but I am a U.S. citizen. As such, Sen. Vitter is in fact spending my tax money. I decided to write Sen. Vitter to get an idea of why he feels it necessary to hurt our country’s standing in the world in such troubling times as this. Here is the message I submitted via his web site:

First of all, I should say that I am not one of your constituents. That said, you are spending my tax money, so I figured contacting you is appropriate.

I have read that you are trying to give a Christian group $100,000 dollars “to develop a plan to promote better science education.”

To quote you further:

“This program helps supplement and support educators and school systems that would like to offer all of the explanations in the study of controversial science topics such as global warming and the life sciences.”

I wanted to let you know that there is no controversy in the science community about these topics. All you are doing is helping in the demise of U.S. technical leadership by supporting groups who don’t like science.

If that is what promoting better science education is to you, I think you need more than a better explanation of what you are doing with this $100,000. You need to explain why you feel that it is necessary to waste tax payer money on activities that clearly violate U.S. citizens’ right to freedom of religion and hurt our national competitiveness while we have record deficits, declining enrollment in science and engineering education, and are engaged in two costly wars abroad.

I will be posting this message to my blog at www.muffinspawn.com/blog. Feel free to respond there or through my email address. Thank you.

If he doesn’t respond directly here, I will be sure to post any response I get via email.

Earlier in “The 9th Step to Fascism” I alluded to Naomi Wolf’s 10 step program every government that has come to head a fascist state follows. Many of the steps have already been taken in this country. In an email to my mother on September, 11th of this year I predicted how the Bush administration will complete the program:

Bush will use Iran’s supposed interference in Iraq as an excuse to bomb them, people will protest in large numbers, Bush will use his new powers under the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 to declare martial law, he will arrest and detain without due process thousands of people under the auspices of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 by declaring protesters as “enemy combatants”, and then will call off the 2008 presidential elections on account of the internal disorder.

Unfortunately it looks like the first of my steps to fascism are well in the works:

http://tinyurl.com/2msrb7

By shifting his reasons for bombing Iran to preventing interference in Iraq (never mind that Saudis are purported to be interfering much more), Bush can easily justify attacking Iran on the basis that Congress already gave him all their war powers by both authorizing him to deal with Iraq as he sees fit, and by refunding the war. At least with the nuclear weapons excuse, professional analysts openly admit that Iran was years away from developing such weapons. This gave credibility to the stance that action was not immediately necessary (assuming you believe military action is necessary if they do possess nukes). I’m not hopeful, but let’s just hope protests can halt the bombings before they start. If not, step two of my prediction will most certainly come to pass. After that, as frightening as it may be, it will be entirely up to the president whether the country stays a democracy or not.