You Can Fool All of the People...

Day off. The whole day. No school, no work, no responsibility. Sleeping in, watching TV, making a few calls, and nothing to distract yours truly from a purely vegetative state.

Haven�t written a damn thing until this very moment. That be for two whole days now. Haven�t done a lick of school work either, not read a page or started on term papers. Teachers love term papers, but I wonder if they ever really read them. They come due on the last day of class and prof X only shows up to hand out final exam papers. Maybe he lines his bird cage with our efforts. Dunno.

Pop is gone for the entire day until late tonight. Showered twice to get rid of the putrid odor of dishwashing, garbage, and cook odors from the kitchen down at DOS COJONES. Got a raise this week: 50 centavos over minimum wage. Not much, but they seem to like me so far, even my wet back jokes�usually. The head cook on the evening shift has threatened to perform obscene acts on my body with his cleaver. He�s a real kidder, I think. Those things are kept very sharp.

Bunch of crappy old movies on the tube. Nothing much enlightening. Don�t watch those nauseating News-Entertainment shows anymore. Gone are Foxy Sunday Windbags, Press the Meat, and Face The Music. What do I mean by �old movies�. You know, the Classics like LETHAL WEAPON, all the RAMBOS and ROCKIES, BEVERLY HILLS COP. Oh, I know there are movies older than that, and some of them are better than the dog ration they shovel at us these days, but cinema is not my thing anyway.

Was going to the rifle range to sight in Pop�s new 9mm. But what if he had sighted it in already and I messed the aim up for him? We all shoot a little differently. So I didn�t. Tore off a chunk of ham and made a sandwich, washed down with a cold one. Milk. Pop doesn�t keep beer around. And I turned into a vegetable.

A vegetable sprouting roots and shoots and flowers in the delightfully warm Georgia spring sun. Simple pleasures are the best. Vegetables are our friends. Take a vegetable to church.

THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH MS GORELICK (Not pronounced as it might appear) sitting as a member of the 9/11 Committee after serving as the number two woman to the number one bitch of bitches, AG J. Reno, she who accepted full responsibility for the Waco fiasco, then denied it. Yeah, that Reno, not the one in Nevada, but the frumpster in the ever-blue dress. Unlike the meaning of �is�, there is pretty broad agreement about what the meaning of �number two�. Way to go Jamie.

Republican legislators are suggesting that she step down. Some of them are getting downright insistent about it. But nobody ever listens much to Republicans in Congress, especially in the Senate where their main function seems to be to roll over and play dead chicken to the more flinty loyal opposition. Most Republicans come to the Senate thinking they are in a kind of good old boys� club where only an occasional maverick disturbs the eternal tranquility of their perpetual proximity to presidential power. By comparison Dems are street wise and fight dirty. But for two years the minority has been able to bottle up the majority through threats and fracas and a little, just a little, congenial back stabbing. If the GOP outnumbered the Democrats two or three to one in this august body, the sum total of achievement and important gain would continue to be a virtual zero.

Way to go GOP. We suggest a little backbone might be in order.

Back to Ms Gorelick (still think that should be pronounced �gore lick��two syllables, kind of wicked sounding.) She will remain where she is, she will never testify, and the commission will continue its partisan, almost useless meandering through the web and woof of Washington spookdom and law enforcement. It would be to our advantage that the FBI and the CIA cooperate, but they never really will. It is not in their bureaucratic, circle the wagons, protect our own culture. The blustering FBI that came out of prohibition owes as much of its reputation to J. Edgar Hoover�s perpetual PR campaign as it does to all the bad guys it has thrown into some slammer. The CIA? Who knows? It is a super spy organization set deep inside the mentality of the Old Cold War and its secrets will never see the light of day. Sorry. The only way we can ever get our intelligence agencies to cooperate is to start all over with a blank slate, a bad thing to do in wartime. And, please, this is wartime. Don�t ever forget that.

PAT TILLMAN�S DEATH IN BATTLE has exacerbated the philosophical and moral rift that continues to fracture this nation. To many, myself included, he is a genuine hero who eschewed the �modern American values� of money, fame, and endorsements to go off to war in the service of his country after the horrors brought to our shores on 9/11. To a vocal few, he was just a dumb jock who grandstanded and got killed in the process. He must have had, it is reasoned, an ulterior motive.

Sadly many on the left do not understand what patriotism is all about. These very same people are thrown into an emotional tizzy when confronted by the basic elements of religion, the Christian Religion most especially. Because they do not understand such things, they tend to fear and reject them as not in keeping with a liberal, one world philosophy. Patriotism, of course, implies Nationalism. And nationalism, in this mindset, is the root cause of most war and conflict.

Conservatives are less critical. In fact, they tend to embrace both religion and patriotism wholeheartedly, often blindly.

That being said the death of the brave footballer turned soldier-patriot is both a tragedy and an example of the finest the world has to offer. Patriotism often involves personal sacrifice. Been this way long before Nate Hale regretted that he had but a single life to give for his country. Sadly too many of us are so self-centered and self-absorbed that we don�t have time for our own children, let alone the nation of our birth or choice.

But patriotism has long been an integral part of our national fabric. If that promotes �nationalism�, so be it. Few of us would ever consider pledging allegiance to the United Nations. Does the U.N. have an �international anthem�? My country may be right, it may be wrong, it may be both. But it is my country and I feel it deserves to be protected and defended with our blood if necessary.

The death of Pat Tillman has got me thinking once again. Giving hard thought to enlisting. I kid about it sometimes, even in writing, but it has been a nagging tug at the back of my mind for almost a year since graduation. College is going pretty well, work continues to be fun, even dating some wild and willing women, but deep in my gut is a feeling that I have to do something more, something tangible for my country. News at Eleven.

CAN KERRY WIN? This is a nagging subject that seems to be coming home to the DNC from the fringes where it has existed for months. Yesterday it hit the editorial pages of the VILLAGE VOICE, which claims that he is unelectable and urges the party to choose another bride, Hillary Clinton this time.

Our dear friend Neal Boortz picked up the theme this morning (it is already Wednesday�.tempus sure does fugit, doesn�t it�?) and hammered it all through my drive to class.

The thesis is that Kerry, whose recent gaffes, misstatements, lapses of memory, and growing temper does not resonate with the American People as a national political candidate and cannot win in November. He is, therefore, in the convoluted mind of Terry MacAuliffe, simply a �stalking horse�, doing the dirty work, for Ms Clinton who can now glide into the nomination without having to expose her vast left-wing flank to the public in preliminary debate and electioneering.

Neal did not address the question of those deligates theoretically pledged to Kerry in the first ballot. Looks like the Democrats might be bringing back the glory days of the smoke filled room.

They had better put plenty of mirrors in that room.

You can fool all of the people much of the time.

KEEP CHECKING OUR PHOTO ALBUM There will be a major revision of the thing and some truly amazing pictures coming on line within two or three weeks. I can say in all humility that some of these shots will be world-shaking. I have my Pop�s ancient Nikon and have been hard at work on taking pictures specifically for this web site.

And remember, you can keep up the insanity that is my own web site by clicking http://members.aol.com/luciusson/contents.html. You will find the last five submissions now moved to near the top of the page.

Until next time,

Ciao,

Luke Angelo
Macon, Georgia
Deep Up The Butt Of Dixie

Send this article to a friend Printer-Friendly Version

More articles by this author, Luke Angelo

Luke Angelo, Cyberbrat Out Of Hell, lives in Macon, GA, where he regularly causes trouble and proves that the pen is far mightier than the Mayor