This just in...

...I'm not dead. Whatever virus invaded my bio-systems is currently being routed into my lympatic system for a good old fashioned ass-whuppin by my white cells.

Hmmm...

Awful quiet around here.

In other news, is it just me, or am I some kind of freako?

The last few posts here have wandered all over the left-right spectrum... hard-core fundy 'famulee VAILyews', tree-hugging greenie, more hard-core fundy Bible thumping, then some leftist Rush-bashing, titled in a manner reminiscent of my Moore-bashing thread earlier...

Am I schizophrenic? Multiple-personality-enabled? On the dope?

Well, none of the above, really. I consider myself to be a moderate extremist. Maybe a better term would be radical centrist. A hard-right left-winger? Leftist conservative? Fundie Libber? Neocon tree-hugger?

Elena the Revelator

10 And the third angel blew his trumpet. And a great star burning as a lamp fell from heaven, and it fell upon a third of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters. 11 And the name of the star is called Wormwood. And a third of the waters turned into wormwood, and many of the men died from the waters, because these had been made bitter.

Do any of you happen to know the Ukranian word for 'Wormwood'? This lady knows it well. I cannot strongly enough suggest that you spend hours perusing her site, and thoroughly re-educate yourself about the greatest ecological disaster the world has ever seen, and remind yourself that it is still going on, as we go about our lives.

It will be 600 years before what's already been poisoned is safe enough to live on again, minimum. And that assumes that the hastily-constructed, now-deteriorating 'sarcophagus', or radiation shroud that shields the core remains intact throught those six long centuries. Part of it was temporarily removed for a few hours to make repairs, and the radiation levels in Kiev, on the good side, the side upwind from the core, rose by 100%.

The word? The Ukranian word for 'Wormwood'?

Chernobyl. Can it really only be a coincidence? Or are we to believe the official death toll of 56, and scoff at the idea that 'a third' of the men died of drinking those bitter waters?

Don't you dare forget. 21 years this April 26th. The kids in this country (USA) that will legally be able to drink this year have a lot of catching up to do, if they mean to put away as much vodka as the bitter, sad, men, women, and children of Ukraine and Belorus.

"What sort of light is that?" -- unnamed Soviet government official, in a helicopter over the site hours after the explosion.

"That... is the light of death." -- Valery Legasov

Kiev is 155 miles south of Chernobyl. 100% increase. A few hours.

How the Dems can win my vote, and why it will never happen

Right now, as better men than I have stated, the Democratic Party stands upon the edge of a knife. On the one side, they could go forward and dismantle the engine of war profiteering and death and sacrificing of America's national reputation for dollars, or, as seems their intent, they can take the controls of that machine, and drive us into war with Iran, a war that seems all too likely to include the use of 'tactical' nuclear weapons.

I hereby add my voice to the chorus begun by my betters. I call on (this Democratic majority)Congress to:

1) Rescind the following dictatorial powers granted to the president:
a) 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force
b) Military Commissions Act (AKA the 'Torture Bill')
c) War Authorization Resolution of 2002

2) Immediately pass a resolution in strongest possible language making an unsanctioned attack upon Iran a clear violation of the War Powers Act, and thereby an immediately impeachable offense...

3) ...and draft articles of impeachment for said impeachment immediately, and make them public, so there is no ambiguity in anyone's eyes that it is Congress' actual intent to dismantle this engine of war and death and greed, rather than merely control it themselves after the 2008 elections.

Congress: I implore you, for once, pull your greedy snouts out of the trough and look around you. Yes, you can take up the controls of that machine, and you can line your pockets with the gold it conjures from the blood of young American men and the bodies of foreign civilians. But it is wrong to do so, and the wrongness has gone on too long while you wrung your hands, not with compassion for the machine's victims, but envy for the gold it produced that you were not getting.

You are the Democrats. You're the ones that are supposed to be above all this. Prove it. My vote is low-hanging fruit. Take it in exchange for the ill-gotten blood money that a decent man would eschew.

Or, you know, prove yourselves to be not even the flip-side of the Republican's coin, but rather, the exact same image, stamped upon the exact same mettle.