I’m not going to write much today. I’m too swamped with issues. My Dad’s health has been a serious distraction for a week. He had a pace maker installed and he is doing great. My Mother’s health is also a concern, I hope to spend some time on that as well in the next week.

The all-important political campaign we are in is rather calm these days. All the venom, lies, distortions, rumors against Obama are being saved for the fall. The war in Iraq is being ignored as much as possible so the idea that it is won can be sold to anyone waivering on whether we should get out or not. Even Obama and Clinton were not going to rush us out of Iraq. But it is interesting the the Iraqi government has passed a resolution asking us to leave in a timely manner and not plan on staying permanently as Bush/Cheney/McCain/Lieberman are proposing. Obama’s position is the position of the Iraqi government.

I am gradually going to write about something else. I’m trying to find a transition into other subjects for art. I honestly think our country is going to centralize or move left which will relieve me of my constant rantings against the fascist pig Republicans. I saw a poll yesterday that only something like 30% of voters considered themselves as Republicans anymore. That is good news. Republicans are torturers and invaders of sovereign nations that did not attack us first. Both those positions are similar to positions of the Nazi Party of Germany. The fewer Americans who embrace Republicanism with its torture-death-war position, the better chance we have of remaining a free nation based on high moral standards. The better chance we have–if we get away from Republicanism– to positively influence the rest of the world and deserve the rest of the world’s respect.

In 1967 I read a book called “Flying Saucers Serious Business.” I loved it. I have always been fascinated by the mysteries in our world. I grew up in a place that had a “Singing River.” The Singing River was a scientifically-verified fact. The theories for why the river sang (and it is past tense since overdevelopment has killed the songs in recent decades) are mostly mumbo-jumbo and sappy romanticism, but even the scientific theories for the music were never studied enough to get close to an answer.

The flying saucers–or UFOs as I prefer to call them–also defy scientific explanation. The best scientific explanations put forth are related to the effect of electro-magnetic fields on human brains in certain geographical areas where unusual magnetic fields consistently occur and on occasions when people happen to be nearby and subject to the hallucinatory effects.

I do believe rational people more often in groups than alone have experienced something that is either objectively real or could be explained by mass-hallucination that has a physical cause in the “real world.” I also believe it is possible that UFOs are the intersection of our shared “real” world and worlds just as “real” but which are normally invisible and only intuited by our limited mental capacity rather than objectively shared the way our “real” world is shared and verified with our rational minds.

The real world, the agreed-upon world that conforms to the laws of science might be smaller than reality. I point to the human mind’s capacity for conceiving of irrational and impossible events and abilities as evidence that the laws of science may actually only apply to our local shared reality. If a writer can create a world of witches–I’m referring here to the “Harry Potter” series–where the laws of science do not apply, is this possible if the universe has no place for the violation of physical laws?

Phrased another way, how can the human mind invent and conceive of impossible capabilities unless those capablilities operate somewhere in the universe? The universe of physics may not include everything. It may only include the physical universe that operates under the laws we have learned through our study of our shared reality. The human mind is not limited to a rational reality. So is it possible the human mind is bigger and reaches farther than the limits of the physical universe? If so, UFOs may be a tear in the reality fabric we all share.

I’m leading us into a discussion of a book I’m reading at the moment which is mostly disappointing in its lack of overall imagination, but which is very satisfying in its brilliant interconnections it makes across the entire spectrum of “New Age” thought.

I could not resist the title: NOTHING IN THIS BOOK IS TRUE, BUT IT’S EXACTLY HOW THINGS ARE. That’s a great title. What I like about the book–even as I don’t believe almost anything in it–is that every single new age position, belief, theory, possibility is strung up with every other rumor, theory position, belief to make a coherent, chronologically complete explanation for the world and our reality. This is religion as it has always been developed. I have to say that I have read enough material over the years (THE RELIGION OF THE NEW AGE, I presume this religion must be called) to find the stringing together and the blending and fusing of everything in this book quite creative and admirable. I certainly never tried to do this myself.

This book deals with Atlantis, Lemuria, Egypt as the inheritor of the lost knowledge from these advanced civilizations, the link to the face and monuments on Mars, why the poles haven’t flipped yet, the real purpose of the pyramids, on and on. It is wonderful to see creative recombination and explanation.

I need to pause here if not outright stop discussing this book to explain that I think Literature took an interesting turn since the 1960s which mainstream Literary criticism is mostly ignoring. I have had the pleasure of reading great literature which is dismissed as New Age mumbo-jumbo but which I believe will one day be taken as our great literature of our era. Among the best books I’ve read since the 1960s are the many books by the late Carlos Castaneda–one of the giants of what ought to be called “New Age Literature.” His riveting fictions are not taken seriously not because they are badly written, but because he presents them as fact. I don’t understand how he got a PHD for Anthropology when his field work was highly suspect. However, the English Department of the same university should have given him either an MFA for creative writing or a PHD for Creative Writing–depending on how the university classifies its highest degree for the pursuit of fiction.

I highly recommend Castaneda’s books as very absorbing, exciting, entertaining fiction–which might be true as some have believed over the years.

I think we have a genre of fiction since the 1960s which should have a name. As I said before, maybe it could be called “New Age Fiction” or “New Age Literature.” Or maybe if it includes the authors of recent years who have put out nonfiction books which were invented–biography of Hitler, or other such books discredited when found to be fraudulent–we might give the genre a name that encompasses all fiction passed as fact. I don’t have a suitable name to suggest here, but “Fiction Verite” or something like that might be appropriate if not puzzling and hopefully amusing.

I’ve said before one of the worst books I ever slogged through was “The Celestine Prophesy.” It proves that some very lousy fiction is being put out under the New Age category and might be an example why mainstream literary critics want to avoid the entire genre. That, in my opinion, is a mistake which will eventually be rectified as younger scholars pore over our recent past and recognize the unique literary period we have lived through as a new religion was formed and the literature that supported it reached peaks of brilliance on a regular basis.

I would think somehow we could get Jacques Vallee inserted into this genre of literature even though his works are always assuredly nonfiction, but nonfiction about incredible UFO events and incidents. Any chance you get to read some fascinating speculation about what people have believed they’ve seen and experienced I invite you to do this in Vallee’s very well-written books. His concept of the “Invisible College” and his book “Passage to Magonia” deliver us reasons to doubt the physical universe and its physical laws are entirely everything that is real in the universe.

Obama is finally nominated–or has what he needs to be nominated. Obama and McCain claim they want to run clean campaigns. Both probably will. The question is will the non-campaign-authorized campaigners stay clean? It looks not to be the case. The far right has continued to paint Obama as a muslim man. I received a very-well-crafted email from a far right source (so far right the source is not voting for McCain either) listing all the crimes of muslim males between a certain age range foisted on our country. At the end it lists Obama as a muslim male in the same age range. It also asserts that “Revelations” in the Bible plainly states that a “muslim” male in that age group is the antiChrist and will be handed all the power in the world and will subsequently destroy the world. It makes me think maybe Bush is muslim. Because his effect on our country and world is certainly dire.

It reminds me again of what a shame it is that some amorphous group of church leaders back around 1000 a.d. or whenever it was , assembled a Bible that included “Revelations.” “Revelations” should have been in the reject pile with the Book of Judas. Maybe the Book of Mary Magdelene should have taken its place. But it was rejected and “Revelations” was put in.

Thoughtful people can handle “Revelations.” But thoughtless people use it to interpret our times as though they are the endtimes and we don’t know if these are the endtimes. Even if every clue fits our time, we don’t know and we should not assume Obama is the antiChrist any more than I should assume Bush is the antiChrist. We might call either of them that for emotional effect and as evidence that we partake of “Revelations.” But it is embarassing how many consider themselves Christian solely because they fear the endtimes and their own immolation in Hell. I’m not aware that “muslims” are spelled out literally in the Bible. I’m not well-read. I’ve avoided “Revelations” because I am constantly seeing the damage around me “Revelations” does. I do like some of the movies about “Revelations.” At least it has given us that. But if screwy interpretations of “Revelations” end up giving us John W. McBush 4 to 8 years to keep up the demolition of our country and the world, once more its negative effects on our lives outweighs whatever uplift it has for whoever.

There definitely should be a wall of separation between Church and State.

This spring has been exceptionally busy. I was lucky enough to visit some swamps and do some exploring. I ran some roadsides in Louisiana where I found a promising new site for Copper Iris farther north than I have ever hunted before. In early April I was invited to participate on a panel discussion called “artist as activist” at the Mississippi Museum of Art. I sure enjoyed that experience.

The new Mississippi Museum of Art is exactly what it ought to be, in my opinion. While many museums in other places spends millions on millions hiring a fancy, big-name architect to build an edifice that is a magnet in itself, Mississippi is not rich enough to follow that course. Instead, whoever the architects are, I would like to commend them for building something that maximizes showing off art but minimizes letting the building get in the way of that endeavor.

The new building is big enough, it is impressive enough with its high ceilings and thoughtful appointments, but mostly it is functional enough to serve its purpose for many years while the Museum Board and staff don’t have to constantly raise funds to pay off construction debts or raise funds to pay for repairs needed when buildings become too fancy and convoluted.

The museum I have in mind in particular which is a wonderful museum and an architectural work of art but at the same time a god-awful nightmare for the museum staff and board to deal with: The Milwaukee Museum. I’m glad it was built, it will be a landmark and destination to brag about for years to come, but it is also a royal pain in the arse because of upkeep as well as decades of dealing with the initial cost of construction. I imagine a good blue state full of prosperous well-educated people like Wisonsin will enjoy this museum as an asset for centuries, hopefully; but the same kind of thing in Mississippi would have been an albatross around this state’s neck.

This spring I’m finally making some progress on getting my yard under control. I have a larger than average yard. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But it is still under fallen trees from Katrina. I’ve left a number of large pines standing after they died due to drought following the storm. They will come down more than likely in pieces and I will be dealing with those chunks over the next couple years independent of mowing, branch and trunk removal, vine and weed extraction that grew wild after I ignored the yard for two years.

My irises numbering in the low thousands, I suspect (1/4 acre of plants), need mostly to be repotted. I’m expanding my iris beds partly to obtain dirt for repotting irises and splitting irises. I’m probably 10% finished. I intend to work through the heat of summer on this outdoor fairly physical project partly to keep my heat tolerance up for outdoor summer and fall shows. I’m not as good in the heat as I used to be following my heat exhaustion episode in Denver, CO, in 1996. I have to keep taking electolytes in the heat and have found “emergen-C” packets maybe three per day help a lot.

I’m not ranting as much about politics right now. I think I’m somewhat exhausted by the Hillary-Obama fight. I am so afraid that people are going to be stupid enough to vote for anti-choice John McBush. Even if he is soft on the environment, remember he is going to pick two Supreme Court judges in the next four years. He plans to clone Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia and insure that we lose our right to choose, women will return to the kitchen and no chance of a woman president or even much opportunity for people of color will follow this shift in our highest court.

John W. McBush’s choices on the Supreme Court will insure that the U.S. establishes itself as an aristocracy above with a peasant class below constituting 99% of the population. That 99% will work for scraps of food and whatever coin the benevolent 1% is willing to drop at its feet for the leaf-rakers, security guards, kitchen help, prostitutes (mostly male prostitutes since most of the wealthy 1% will be Republican White Men), drivers, maintenance and mechanical people. We 99% will be relegated to the slums where we pay whatever rent the wealthy deem fit including offering our young boys as sex slaves to the Republican overlords.

This, of course, is the final repudiation of Franklin Roosevelt who created our modern United States out of its primitive agrarian beginnings. Roosevelt created programs to help elevate working people, the GI Bill alone (which followed WWII logically after all that Roosevelt did to bring up people for our future as leaders of the world) made this country the greatest country in the world.

Franklin Roosevelt could never ever win the presidency today because he is clearly an elitist. The Republicans have sold the idea successfully that if the average working man can’t have a beer with the president, the president is no good. So Roosevelt was from a millionaire family–similar to the Kennedys–and he certainy was aloof from the common man but was still capable of thinking about what it would take for our country to improve the plight of the common man. It is my experience to have found that usually it is elite and wealthy people who often have the best ideas for improving our country by spreading out the wealth.

And that is the issue. Repubicans–every white male gay one of them–want to get virtually all the wealth into the hands of preferably five or six cronies, and then let the rest of us live off the scraps. Contrast that with typical Democrats–men who love women, women, men and women of color, well-adjusted gays who generally feel no shame in their being different–believe our country is strongest when opportunities exist for virtually all people no matter where they came from or how poor they are.

It saddens me that the average American has been so stupified by Republican hatespeak and lies to believe than an elite American cannot do more for this country than oxygen-starved-at-birth latent homosexual white male Republicans.

Hillary is putting on an amazing campaign. She is looking tough, something Democrats haven’t been doing in campaigns and are losing because of it. Obama is looking a little weak right now, but mainly because she is so sharp, so on message, so powerful in comparison. I have every confidence Obama is going to go all the way to this nomination, but please, please, do not miss the opportunity to put Hillary as vice-president. If she turns it down, shame on her. She has proven she is worthy, she has proven her skills will be needed in the general election. Obama has to admit he will be stronger with her and handicapped without her.

This is exactly like the 1980 Republican Party Campaign where Reagan won but Bush Sr. represented another important faction of the party very different from Reagan and even representing the status quo Reagan was running against. To Reagan’s credit, he was smart enough to put Bush on as second in command. This is what Obama must do. No matter how much dislike exists between top Obama campaign officials–who used to work for Bill Clinton–and Hillary and her aides, this rivalry and bitterness must be overcome to make the ticket that takes us all the way.

We have a lot of fixing to do.

I am not much with cliff hangers. I’m sorry the Democratic nomination is continuing to be a cliff hanger. The Clintons represent the most efficient and most determined campaign, it seems to me. I am supporting Obama because I cannot ignore the “new” feeling, the hope for change in everything about him and his campaign. But the Clintons represent the campaign that is going to stop at nothing to win. That may be distasteful, but consider the Republicans. They win consistently because they will stop at nothing–no lie, no cheating, no low-down dirty trick is beneath their effort to win.

Hillary’s worst moment was when she recently said she and McBush were ready for office, but Obama wasn’t. That alone is enough for me to give her up and hope for her defeat in the primaries. She’s gotten a raw deal in this campaign. She definitely has been treated badly by the news media. But to elevate McBush to her level and put Obama below her level is very bad for the Democratic Party. I know if she were nominated she would name Obama vice-president. I know this. Therefore, I know she doesn’t think Obama is not qualified on day one. She should have said Obama and McBush weren’t ready on day one. That would have been acceptable.

Obama’s campaign has gotten away with attacks on Hillary and Bill. Obama has shown one clear lesson learned: he responds to attacks immediately. He’s doing a wonderful job in that department. I do fear, though, his claim that he won’t get dirty against McBush in the general election. He may not have to, but he better not over-apologize for Democratic attack dogs when they go after McBush. John W. McCain has yet to apologize for unfair or dirty attacks since he did apologize ineffectively, irrelvantly, and very quietly, for the swift boating of Kerry.

I believe if Obama’s general campaign is nice and we know McBush’s campaign will be dirty, John W. will win in the end. The American people respond to negativity and the squeaky wheel gets the attention. The general election is going to be ugly–even if Obama chooses to be nice and clean. The Republicans are going to shovel it by the trailer load and it will be piled nose-high on Obama. If he stands there and takes it without retaliation, he will look weak, he will not win the votes he needs to overcome McBush.

I completed a drawing of Don Siegelman yesterday. He is Alabama’s political prisoner. He seems to have been the most popular governor of recent decades and that got the attention of Karl Rove and got him deep-sixed and carted off to prison. I’d heard about his plight before “60 Minutes” made it widely aware to the public. The facts in the case are indisputable. It is another Republican dirty trick which kills our hopes of a democratic country where anyone has a chance to serve in high office.

Spitzer’s fall is also a political hatchet job. Yes, he stupidly brought it on himself. But the timing in the face of Spitzer’s new campaign to go after the Wall Street Bankers who caused so many–especially minorities–to lose their homes shows that he could have been caught a year or two ago. This exposure of Spitzer was saved for when it could do the most good for Wall Street–and Bush since Spitzer was going to tie Bush to the bubble.

In Mississippi we have a couple judges–both Democrats– in prison for receiving campaign money (our judges run for office) and then ruling in favor of lawyers who gave them money. If this is corruption, and in the big picture I think it is, these incarcerations could be a good thing. However, no Republican judges are ever going to go to prison in this state. Republicans ruling with big business after receiving campaign money from big business will be ignored.

Now, Dickie billionaire Scruggs has been convicted of bribing a judge. It seems our legal system has operated this way for decades if not forever. Scruggs is a Democrat and a big target to go after. He has confessed, good riddance. The Repulican judge who revealed this operation should be commended. I just hope he remembers to recognize a bribe when it comes from a fellow Republican. So far, we might say Mississippi has cleaned up its corrupt mess by incarcerating Democrats operating in this system. If that stops Republicans from continuing in the corruption, the effort is an all-round success. I doubt it will.

Our winter weather continues to deliver rain in doses more like the old days–the decade of the ’80s was probably the last decade that flooded us regularly. Since Hurricane Katrina we’ve seen dry more in keeping with the legendary “dust bowl” than anything Mississippi’s coastal area has ever endured. In the ’90s our droughts would be tempered by tropical storms or hurricanes, but these did little to alleviate the months of dryness except on paper. I know several years we were behind on rain and a three day period of tropical rain would dump enough to make our yearly total look normal. That should not count.

At last my yard is spongy and wet and standing water is available for the disappearing frogs and toads. Since Southern Toads and bronze frogs do not mind laying eggs in water already inhabited by fish, they have no population problem. The other frogs–green tree frog, squirrel frog, grey tree frog, leopard frog as well as narrow mouth toads, spring peepers and chorus frogs–need temporary water NOT occupied by fish or mosquito larvae, they are scarce in the vicinity of my home. I should say green tree frogs and squirrel frogs are doing OK, I think they beat mosquito larvae to puddles often enough and I water the yard to support my wetland plants enough to make puddles regularly available.

These are hard times. Politically we are in a drought for our country similar to the terrible drought of the Southeastern U.S. Whether or not global warming is caused by man, it seems that the normally lush, tropically rainy Southeastern U.S. is affected by higher-than-normal air temperatures that cause moisture from the Pacific and Gulf to carry on the winds farther inland and so they’re dumping a lot further north. Bush is dumping his lifelong course of failures on all of us–north and south.

The election so far has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that the reason African-American men were given the vote fifty years ahead of women of all colors is the inherent prejudice against women. Women are smarter. Women act dumb because they want to please their men who often are dumb.

Science has shown that men have X-Y chromosomes while women have X-X chromosomes. The X-X gives women a lot more genetic material than men have. It seems that the extra genetic material translates into greater mental potential. True, women often don’t use their extra capability. Republican women consistently do whatever men tell them to do. Republican women deliberately suppress their natural mental compatibilities to please the men in their lives. Republican men want women to be stupid. Republican women do that for their men.

The example I have seen in myself that shows that I am mentally inferior to my wife is her ability to talk on the telephone and also listen to me at the same time. She can hear and engage in more than one stream of thought and handle them simultaneously. I cannot do that–I can either hear the conversation on the phone or hear her comments told to me in the other ear, but not both. I’m sure most if not all men are similarly handicapped and most if not all women have my wife’s capability. They are mentally superior, not just mentally equal to men.

Men can do well for themselves by using their single stream of concentration to focus and achieve things worthy of a woman’s approval. But don’t tell me women can’t handle any job men can handle–mentally. They are weaker physically overall, although I’m sure there a lot of big strong women who could overpower me and work harder than I. It is just generally true women are physically weaker than the average man.

So why not Hillary? There is one simple reason for me. She is hated by Republicans and the news media to such an extent she will only beat McCain by 1/2% of the vote in the general election. I wonder if Obama were her vice-president if he could bring his masses of supporters on board to overwhelm the hate machine? I hope so if we come to that.

I support Obama because he is currently getting a free ride. Unfortunately, according to smarter analysts than myself, the only reason Obama is getting a free ride is because the press and Republicans are busy tearing down Hillary. If Hillary leaves the scene, Obama will be declared a terrorist and torn to shreds. Obama definitely doesn’t know how to handle the veonom and hate soon to come his way. He did a terrible job of handling the NAFTA gaff and that was not a hateful or particularly damaging attack. He has done a great job of becoming a better debater, he is the best speech-maker in the race so far–although Hillary is a close second to speech-making and number one at debates among all candidates–but he better figure out how to counter the attacks soon or he is doomed. He better hurry up and put that flag on his lapel, also, or else come up with a whithering put down to phony patriots. I don’t know if there is a sufficient put-down. He recently said he prays to Jesus every night. If he has to cow-tow to religious right-wing nuts, he might as well cow-tow to the phony patriots, too.

I can’t imagine having McCain as our next president. Though he is light years ahead of Bush, he is still a neocon war-monger. That is enough to sink our nation out of sight in the muck and mud of Republican failures to our future.

I have been a member of the Sierra Club for around twenty years. At times I’ve wished the club had better ways of raising money and thought myself that the club should endorse good projects. In a way we do endorse good projects by verbally supporting them–just as we support and lobby for good bills informed legislators propose. We lobby in legislatures and we endorse candidates for office. We write letters to the editor and spread favorable support for bills and projects among voters. However, we tend not to accept money and we stay away from getting involved in commercial ventures. We may compliment a commercial venture that does a good job, but we don’t get our logo up there. After all, sometimes the venture ends up going bad and often green-looking ventures are really polluting disasters in disguise.

When I first heard about Sierra Club endorsing Clorox’s new green line of products, I didn’t react one way or the other. Our coast leader for years, Becky Gillette, did react strongly negatively and I wondered if she was past forgiving what she considered Sierra Club’s endorsement to be: a huge mistake. Now, since seeing NATION Magazine’s cartoon, I have to agree with Becky. Endorsing and accepting money for that endorsement has tainted Sierra Club.

“In return for endorsing their new green line of products…
“…Clorox will give a royalty to the Sierra Club.
“Who says money doesn’t grow on trees?”

This excellent cartoon by R.O. Blechman puts Sierra Club’s grave mistake in capital letters for all to see. I think if Sierra Club wanted to recommend Clorox’s green products, it should have endorsed them but refused to accept any money for that endorsement. It’s really the way Sierra Club has always been with respect to industry. I don’t see any harm in accepting money for endorsing camping gear or special tour companies or anything that celebrates nature. But giant corporations should be kept at arm’s length.

Our state Sierra Club made a grave mistake with an endorsement also, in my opinion. It is bad enough we endorsed a Republican Senatorial candidate (I mean a state senator. We would NEVER endorse Thad Cochran or Trent Lott or his replacement chosen by Hailey Barbour). We had a great candidate in Ray Vecchio, a past legislator who lost his house seat a good many years ago to a Republican. He ran against a young Republican who seemed moderate and I guess our state Sierra Club leaders thought he would win and we might as well back a winner over Vecchio, who fights for the environment, goes to hearings, goes to our meetings and generally believes what we believe. I endorsed Ray Vecchio and was shocked to learn our club endorsed a Republican running against Ray only after the decision was made without my input.

Now this snotty-nosed Republican has voted for a bill that makes rate payers to electric companies pay for the planning and building of new power plants thus relieving the Southern Company of having to pay for them. Rate payers will have to pay for design even if the plant is not built. Ratepayers in Mississippi will also pay for the power plants built in Mississippi that supply electricity out of state. Something like 25% of our power generation is already going out of state and those states pay a lower rate than we do. We pay the highest electrical rate in the Southeast and the highest rate Southern Company charges to any customers, and now we will have another added hike to our electric bills because the corporation doesn’t want to charge its investors, but rather we home owners with this bill. Two of the plants we ratepayers will have to pay for–if this bill passes in the house–are nuclear power plants. Sierra Club does not support nuclear power.

Mississippi is a model of facism which hopefully won’t spread to other parts of our country. Our last election was highly suspect. The percentage voting Republican was so high it could only be caused by Democrats staying home and that is not likely to have happened. I think Diebold decided our election for us. It’s what we deserve.

Don’t try to convince me Republicans and Democrats are the same. Republicans are far far worse and they are what is dragging our country down.

I’m addicted to the chatter about the candidates. I really hate how the friction between the Clintons and Obama has persisted. I especially hate how the Clintons get all the blame and Obama’s side is sold as spotless. The race issue was never there. There was nothing racist about Hillary pointing out the obvious: Lyndon Johnson got the laws passed. Even Kennedy was unable to get those law passed. Johnson was an old, unpopular Washington insider. But he got the job done. Martin Luther King set the agenda. Maybe if Kennedy had lived, he could have gotten the voting rights act and other measures passed into law. The fact is Johnson got them passed. That’s one reason, when I’ve heard disgruntled Viet Nam Vets say Johnson was a worse president than Bush, I have always disagreed. Johnson’s foreign policy was bad, maybe worse. But Johnson did a lot of good domestically, while Bush is a complete failure in all aspects of being president.

The Clintons are fighting for their political life. Meanwhile, a great presidential candidate, John Edwards, saw the writing on the wall. This is not the year for a white male candidate even if his ideas are better than Obama’s or Hillary’s. Another great presidential candidate–one who combines ethnicity with capability–bowed out earlier: Bill Richardson. Frankly, he won me over first and I would be backing him today if he had a chance. He, like Hillary, can get the job done.

I think Obama is going to get it. If the rift between Obama and Hillary is great enough to keep him from asking her for help in running this country, we are the less for it. In fact, Obama’s attitude toward the Clintons is going to tell me if Obama is going to succeed and stand for change or not. If his idea for change is to compliment Ronald Reagan and repeat Republican propaganda that the Clintons are devisive (a Republican lie if there ever was one), then Obama will fail to lead this country toward higher ground and a better future.

Obama needs to recognize that Republicans spent millions attacking the Clintons and spreading lies about them. Bill Clinton never retaliated against any of his attackers. He plowed ahead and did more for this country and our optimism than anyone since Roosevelt. Hillary is smart, very smart. She can get the job done. Obama needs to call on her for help. If he is as smart as I hope he is, he will put aside his animosity toward Hillary and embrace both Clintons as great allies for our future.

One possibility for Obama’s success is for Democrats to install Hillary as the majority leader in the Senate. That way she can set the agenda. She can prepare bills and Obama can sign them into law. This depends, of course, on a six or so Democratic lead in the Senate. With only one Democrat ahead of the Republicans, Hillary or Obama can accomplish little to nothing.

I would like to see an Obama-Hillary ticket. I know Hillary wants to be president, but the two together if Obama will give her administrative power in his administration, would be a dream come true for our country. Obama can set an overall agenda; Hillary can pull the levers and jam the controls into high gear to get Obama’s agenda done.

Meanwhile, the photos of McCain hugging on Bush and McCain saying he can imagine us in Iraq 100 years or 10,000 years will help us mightily to keep him out of the White House. His begging for right wing support in his disgusting latent homosexual party drags him down even further as voters watch Obama rise and Republicans in general promise a proxy third term for Bush-Cheney.

Iraq withdrawal in 2108! Iraq withdrawal in 21,008!

My support for Obama comes from my belief that he can win at least 55% of the popular vote. Hillary can win only 50.5% of the vote. Republicans will steal an election within a percentage point either way. They won’t steal Obama’s margin of victory.

Obama is impressive in every way. His advisors, unfortunately are too centrist for my taste. However, he can lean left after getting into office. I just hope he does. We need a left lean to get us back on track after the right-wing homosexual pseudo-Christian torture-fascist war-monger nutcases ruled us for the last eight years.

I am obsessed by news coverage of the elections. I can barely stand to hear excerpts from Republican campaign speeches. I’m annoyed at McCain acting and speaking as though he cares about the environment, and then complaining about spending federal tax dollars on Grizzly Bear genetic research, as though that is wasteful spending. He ignores Haliburton waste and fraud because Haliburton is wasting tax dollars in McCain’s favorite war on terror site: Iraq. Republicans are liars and misleaders and do not face the fact that shrinking government can only happen if the military is shrunk–and industrial spending for the military is shrunk–something they will never do.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties were annoyed at Florida for moving its primary date, but only the Democratic party had the backbone to punish a state that could determine the outcome of the election. Supposedly, Democrats in Florida are threatening to vote Republican because they were denied a chance to pick delegates today, January 29. The same electorate that constantly accuses the Democrats of being weak and not standing for anything ought to think about the fact that only the Democrats stood up for trying to protect the primary process and the Republicans caved in to Florida trying to be earlier than previously approved in the primary sequencing this spring.

The primaries are broken and we will not get the best chance at the best candidates as a result. I could care less what Republicans do. They can go in the restroom and seek dates among themselves all they want. And they can choose the restroom pervert they prefer ten years ahead of the election if they want to. But the Democratic Pary is a diverse party with too many good options to be deciding the outcome by February 5.

I’m betting Obama gets it but the Clintons are ahead in the polls. I’m bothered at how much the race is down to Obama and Hillary picking on each other. This is how the news media has framed this race. First of all, Edwards is still a contender–at least I hope open-minded people keep paying attention to his message. He’s the change candidate who is supplying the other two campaigns with substance to talk about. I myself would like to see either a black man or a woman as president this time. But neither is as different in direction as Edwards is. He is pointing the way into territory we need to go in order to fix our broken country. Hillary is most wary of that change but she’ll do it. That’s what is so bad about the impression that the Democratic nomination is nothing more than two snipers taking shots at each other. It isn’t true and we somehow have to lift the campaign back toward issues if we can.

I tried to show art in New Orleans twice this month. The first Saturday I drove over it was raining cold cold rain and the wind gusts were significant. It would have been hell to set up. Thankfully, the show was cancelled at 6:30 in the morning. The following Saturday I went to Palmer Park and found it less cold but drizzly and misty. We 40 or so intrepid artists agreed to set up and we ended up with a day that brought few people or sales. Being the optimists that we were, and relying on an assurance from weather predictions that the rain would stop by noon, we actually thought the sun would come out in the afternoon. If that had happened the crowds we need would also have strolled our sidewalks and possibly bought something. Instead, the clouds remained and a pesky mist with temperatures around 45 to 50 kept everything uncomfortable and few people visiting.

We artists are like farmers, reliant on the weather. At least artists who aren’t connected to the moneyed art worlds of big cities.

My wife, Jeanne, has her birthday today. I sent her flowers–she teaches out of town. She recently completed an article for “Birdwatcher’s Digest” on the Painted Bunting. If you have any interest at all for birds, I recommend this magazine. It is arguably the best bird information periodical out there. The Painted Bunting is a seed-eating native of the southeast and Central America which rivals the colors of any parrot. The Gouldian Finch of Australia can compete while the Eclectus Parrot comes to mind as a parrot with the necessary screaming assortment of colors that compares to the Bunting. Even most parrots are uniformly colored, unlike the male painted bunting’s ultramarine blue, lime green, and cardinal red distributed in equal proportions on its body. The indigo bunting is a beautiful cousin to the painted bunting–much the same in shape–and its coloring calls to mind the Hyacinthine Macaw, though the macaw is so huge it truly is one of the most striking birds of the world.

Jeanne and I had the pleasure of enjoying painted buntings in our back yard one fall day when migrants were passing through. They were attracted to our weeds which had formed seed heads. We only saw one male bird but many females and possibly young birds with less defined coloration. The females have the coloring of typical parrots– mostly lime green. They are a beautiful sight to see even if the garrish male is not around.

Our yard has not accommodated seed eaters since it has been consumed by the nonnative “cogon” grass of Japan. I hope to beat it back and someday experiment with oat seed as a friend has done on a farm. The oat seed grows all summer and then produces seed heads in the fall they feed buntings and other seed feeders as they pass through to eventually cross the Gulf of Mexico for warm wintering grounds in Central America.

I would sure like to see Painted Buntings nesting on shell middens, if that is ever possible. All the times I visit shell middens I’ve never been there for nesting or even seen any hope that they would use the sites I have visited. I need to learn their call if I am to spy on them more successfully.

We are finally in the election year. I’m not at all certain we will end up with Democrats in the White House. Republicans are desperate to hold onto power. They have the military-industrial complex behind them. They also probably have Saudi Arabia ready willing and able to unleash jihadists against us in order to strengthen the Republican hand and the hand of the military-industrial complex. As long as keeping the jihadists at bay keeps the Republicans in power, and as long as the price of oil stays high, we have peace. If Democrats threaten to gain control, and Diebold ballot boxes can’t be rigged to insure Republican victory, we’ll have Bin Laden on our TVs and possibly some terrorist event to remind voters that Republicans protect us from terrorists.

My last trip to New Orleans days before Christmas I was visited by three separate Ron Paul supporters. Obviously, Ron Paul is the most acceptable Republican because Ron Paul is against the War in Iraq and all other unprovoked unnecessary wars and foreign interventions that eat up our tax dollars.

The one older Ron Paul supporter seemed more of a hard-line Republican and I had little to say to him. I think he and I agreed about Iraq and how stupid Bush was. He and I agreed that Bush has spent way too much tax money and wasted too much. But I wasn’t going to change his mind-set much.

One of the younger Ron Paul supporters–college age–didn’t stay long enough for me to work on him. Maybe he was closed-minded, but I couldn’t say from his brief campaign stop. The other college-age supporter wanted to convince me that Ron Paul was the best candidate. I admitted to him I thought he was the best Republican candidate.

However, I told him I couldn’t vote for Ron Paul unless Ron Paul said one single thing about the environment. I also told him that if Ron Paul wanted to shrink government by throwing out government wildlife biologists who I knew personally were doing some of our best work, I couldn’t vote for Ron Paul. I told him private corporations weren’t going to do research on wildlife and endangered species that could compare to that done by qualified, educated wildlife biologists who were on a government payroll and could look forward to government retirement and enjoyed good health care coverage. That kind of security our tax dollars paid for led to good sound management.

The student quickly conceded that Ron Paul should not be against scientific research and he didn’t think he would be. But government must get smaller.

Thanks to my right-wing friends over the years pounding me with small government diatribes I have formulated the best response possible: “How can the federal government get smaller when it is the only representative of the people that can consistently stand up to giant, multinational corporations?”

In Thomas Jefferson’s day, when we had the argument that that government governed best when it governed least–and all other small government notions, we had people and government only. Yes there were rich powerful individuals as well as yeoman farmers, but there were no multinational corporations. I told the Ron Paul supporter that I personally witnessed the knuckling under of local and state governments to giant corporations because state governments and smaller units of government could not stand up to and control the overwhelming power of corporations.

Do away with corporations, and you can have small government. Otherwise, we are slaves to giant corporations. Janet Reno stood up to Microsoft. Admittedly Microsoft won in the end, but there is no state that could have stood up better (well, I’ve heard that New Jersey and maybe California did better against Microsoft but let’s admit that a couple of our biggest, most powerful states can sometimes do as well as the federal government). It does take big strong governments to even enter the ring with giant corporations.

The Ron Paul supporter was not closed-minded. He said he would try to find out if Ron Paul cared about the environment. And, he admitted, he hadn’t thought about how hard it is for individuals to stand up to corporations.

Let’s face it–so-called tort reform is nothing but a capitulation to giant corporations. Giant corporations can afford any law-suit settlement in any state that has enacted tort reform and can see no need to change its practises. Here in Mississippi, a human life is worth no more than $250,000 thanks to tort reform. Dupont Corporation can kill 1000 Mississippians on any pretext and not be financially hurt. Dupont can’t be sent to prison. You can only strike at the heart of the giant corporate beast by extracting large amounts of money.

Our nation was second-rate until Roosevelt built the modern Federal Government. Part of that Federal Government was job creation for scientists, the GI bill which educated and improved the lives of most Americans in the 1950s. Government regulation kept private industry from killing off too many of its human cogs.

So in recent decades we’ve had a backlash. It has come because people were giving up too much money to taxes. The main problem was the military-industrialist complex, but there was room for improvement in the expense of most government programs. So Democrats actually caught on as a Republican Congress and our greatest recent president (based on his record of accomplishment), Bill Clinton, got government spending under control, government regulation eased a bit. Since Clinton, Bush has tried to starve and sicken poor people, eliminate regulation on industry so illegal cogs could be imported cheaply and so legal cogs would die out more easily and be denied pensions and benefits, and our spending has gone through the roof. However, the Republicans with Shrub at the top have not raised taxes. Instead they have run up our debt and counted on Saudi Arabia and China to prop up our economy. So far so good. They are doing it. Maybe they’ll drop their support the minute Barack Obama assumes office. I’m not as sure China will do that, but Saudi Arabia probably will.

I don’t know how this election will play out, but if Huckabee gets the Republican nomination and Obama gets the Democratic nomination, you can assume that the military industrial complex will feel left out in the cold. Certainly Ron Paul if nominated would be guaranteed to leave the Military-industrial complex out in the cold. I’ll learn if conspiracy theorists are right and our elections are controlled by powerful forces or if our elections are in the hands of the people. Obama is of the people. We’ll see if Huckabee sells out or not in the coming months. And we’ll see if the conventional powerful forces can steer the Republicans to McCAin, Guiliani or Romney–their choices for president on the Republican side.

Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article about the year 1908 written by Jim Rasenberger. I was not terribly surprised about how modern 1908 was–at least in the big cities. My grandmother, who was born in 1909, told me she rode the subway to school in New York when she was a girl and also saw firewood delivered in horse-drawn wagons while most tranportation was horseless.

Still, I need reminding about how the whole first half of the 20th century was modern, while we seem to have entered a “post-modern” time period starting as early as the early 1950s with the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Our lifestyles aren’t that different from city people of 1908.

It is interesting that Rasenberger chose 1908 to read about. He studied the daily news of 1908 in order to grasp the conditions of that time. It is a few years post-flight, so we have people flying, electic lights, gas heat, subways running, the automobile just beginning to be mass-produced. A look back to 1808 gives us a country a few years after the Louisiana Purchase, virtually all founding fathers alive (save Washington for sure), and the year Lincoln was born.

The United States grew leaps and bounds between 1808 and 1908. By 2008 we are looking at 300-plus-million people. In 1908 the “New York World” predicted 472 million people in the U.S. by 2008, according to Rasberger’s research in that publication. Thank God that prediction was wrong.

This article addresses positive things, so war is left out. A few years after 1908 the First World War begins. Just prior and after that, revolutions. The Spanish Revolution stands out between World Wars, then WWII. The human race’s greatest failures are all these wars and fratrocides which continue today. We have advanced technologically–and pursuit of war is one of the ways we’ve come to develop many useful and positive technologies. I doubt our space race would have ever occurred if there were not a fear of one nation using space to destroy another nation. And out of the space race came many innovations and peaceful applications here on earth.

I’m willing to compromise when it comes to s0-called National Defense. As much as I’ve speculated that we would be better off to disarm and let the world try to hurt us through threats and domination we could not respond to, I’m willing to concede that we ought to be militarily strong and militarily ready. That includes a pursuit of specialized weaponry superior to any other nation’s technology for war. This could be as much as 1/3 of our nation’s expenditures. But on the other hand, we should have politicians elected to be in control of our terribly powerful forces who are absolutely committed to avoiding using them until the last awful moment when no other course is open to us. And we need to pay as we go and not accumulate debt.

And we should never use our force unilaterally overseas. We should absolutely surrender our force to alliances (not meaning I support putting our troops under foreign command) whenever we think some poor nation is being abused or controlled for the ill purposes of its people. We cannot afford to be a d0-gooder alone out there when using weapons.

Of course, if we want to unilaterally supply food to unfortunates, or send in technological help to improve lives–that can be done unilaterally. But war is a terrible tool for change and it always causes a backlash. Bin Laden is our war-based do-gooder tendency applied to Afghanistan years ago. We thought it would be good to break the will of the Soviet Union. Bin Laden was our tool on the ground supplied and trained by our superior forces who hid out of sight. Bin Laden has gifted us with his holy jihad against Us. War is a terrible tool for change.

Looking back on the very dark years of the cold war–which I lived through from 1955 to around 1990 (whatever exact year is given for the end to that time)–I have to admire the leaders of both parties for keeping us out of a “hot” war. I worried often if not every single day about the bombs raining down on us and also about the bombs we would rain down on the Soviet Union. I worried very much about the destruction of the natural world.

Our schools often held meetings to discuss how to survive a nuclear attack. I honestly believe if we had had neocons running our country in those days, we would have blown the Soviet Union to smithereens. If Bush Jr were in control I have no doubt he would have been talked into Armageddon–a real Armageddon.

I’ll say something here I know most don’t confront about the Cold War. We, the United States, were far and away militarily superior to the Soviet Union. Also, the Soviet Union really didn’t want to have another World War.

The Soviets were run by an oligarchy that perfectly fits our Republicans in this country. They were elite, wealthy and had no sympathy for their peasants. Their peasants were cogs in the machine of industry meant to serve in squalid conditions until they died. If they were exceptionally talented and could serve a higher purpose in their oligarchy, those few peasants were promoted to be in the elite oligarchy. That’s how Republicans view the world here. The Soviet oligarchy experienced a terrible war–WWII. They wanted to gain as much power as they could around the world, but would not have started a nuclear war against the U.S. (That’s a different attitude from our Republican oligarchy here. War is good to Republicans.)

In the Soviet Union as here among our Republicans, the children of the elite were promoted and held in high positions unfairly. Just as little Bush is a failure of a human being but by birth ascended to the presidency, so in the Soviet Union failures in leadership abounded among their peasants who ascended due to talent.

Again, though, the myth that we could have lost to the Soviet Union or that we would have annihilated that country while the Soviets would have knocked out half our cities is maintained because the Republican leaders during the Cold War sustained their power by rewarding our military-industrial complex with huge amounts of our taxes and our prosperity. The ultimate welfare state is that flood of tax dollars going to Haliburton and Northrup-Grummond and Lockheed Martin. Our poor people are a pittance when they hold out their hungry hands for help while Haliburton is a huge burden of greed. Apparently we give our tax dollars to Haliburton to advance group rape of women, too, if recent news reports are accurate. I’m not surprised.

The military-industrial complex is intimately tied in with the latent homosexual Republican Party. Greed, depravity and sexual perversion all benefit from this disastrous failure of democracy. We drown in debt. Almost half the people in this country believe that Bin Laden and his malcontents represent as big a threat as a Soviet Union armed to the teeth with hydrogen bombs and an organized military inferior to ours but nontheless able to reach around the world by land air and sea. We were militarily superior to the Soviet Union. We have more than enough capability to stand up to a few jihadists with hand-held and garage-made weapons. If we keep the public informed about threats informants reveal to us coming from terrorist communications, we can prevent the dirty bombs or the far-fetched possibility of a nuclear attack from these maladjusted vagabonds.

We have more to fear from right-wing nutcase so-called Christian militants in this country setting off a nuclear bomb from our own locally available stock piles than from middle-easterners getting bombs and smuggling them over to use on us. After all, too many so-called Christians are living for the end times with some actively trying to make the end times come true.