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FRIDAY? GOOD? THANK GOD IT’S SATURDAY

Good Friday, and first I read a note from kaymo –

Been down in Virginia for a bit. They're mad down there, completely taken over by the right wing looniness. It's a wee bit frightening, mate.

And then I turn to the NY Times and find two Op Ed pieces, one by Bob Herbert and the other by some Princeton oil academic who’s name I don’t recognize. All a bit depressing, what with all the fucking crosses on TV.

First Bob Herbert
While the press and the public are distracted by one sensational news story after another - Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson, steroids in baseball, etc. - the president and his party have continued their extraordinary campaign to undermine the programs that were designed to fend off destitution and provide a reasonable foundation of economic security for those not blessed with great wealth. Figures in the budget show that child-care assistance would be ended for 300,000 low-income children by 2009. The food stamp cut would terminate food stamp aid for approximately 300,000 low-income people, most of whom are low-income working families with children. Reduced Medicaid funding most certainly would cause many states to cut their Medicaid programs, increasing the ranks of the uninsured. Education funding would be cut beginning next year, and the cuts would grow larger in succeeding years. Food assistance for pregnant women, infants and children would be cut. Funding for H.I.V. and AIDS treatment would be cut by more than half a billion dollars over five years. Support for environmental protection programs would be sharply curtailed. And so on. Conservatives insist the cuts are necessary to get the roaring federal budget deficit under control. But they have trouble keeping a straight face when they tell that story. Laden with tax cuts, the president's proposal will result in an increase, not a decrease, in the deficit. Shared sacrifice is anathema to the big-money crowd.

Now the oil prof...
I used to work with Mr. Hubbert at Shell Oil, and my own independent research places the peak of world oil production late this year or early in 2006. Even a prompt and successful drilling operation in the Arctic refuge would not start pumping oil into the pipeline before 2008 or 2009.A permanent drop in world oil production will have serious consequences. In addition to the economic blow, there will be the psychological effect of accepting that there are limits to an important energy resource.

Which I guess brings me to my own...
EASTER MESSAGE

I’ve never been a great supporter of B.F. Skinner and behaviorism, but I feel a rat-cage instinct taking over. Even without figures and projections, humanity starts senses that it’s overcrowded and stuff will shortly be in very short supply. The neo-con response is to put a wall around the remaining stuff and hold it for themselves at any price. The real problem is who gets to be inside the wall and who is locked out. It’s the Capitalist Rapture. Those with stuff with are in an uneasy material paradise, those without get a John Shirley/Soylent Green, increasing-scarcity dystopia. No shit, shamus. Unfortunately too many Bush-supporting Americans believe that the simple act of voting in the current gang of fools, psychotics and grifters guarantees them a divine laminate that reads Access All Areas. They think, when the wall turns overt, and the gates quickly close, they will be safe on the inside with their SUV, their Bible, and their riding-mower. Bad fucking error, neighbours. Compounded by the fact that, in your fear, you are turning on all of those who should be your logical allies in the only concerted action that will save us – the concerted tearing down of these walls before they are fully built and manned with armed guards.

Fascism, my dears, has never been, and never will be, the friend of human beings. So why not take this weird ass spring weekend, while you’re celebrating executions, eggs, and rabbits, to wise up and join the human race? It is damned nearly too late.

The secret word is Joshua

QUOTE – "I have had my fun if I never get well no more." – Howling Wolf