Swine, Water heads, insane people and Blake.

More politics here than I care for but things need to be said.

This last week Senator Lieberman managed to get worse that I thought he could - which took some doing. During the debate on the Senate’s non-binding resolution on Iraq which says, in essence, “W this is a shitty idea and you shouldn’t do it” Lieberman said the following:

“I fear that while this resolution is non-binding and, therefore, will not affect the implementation of the plan, it will do two things that can be harmful, which is that it will discourage our troops, who we’re asking to carry out this new plan, and it will encourage the enemy, because as General Petraeus said to our committee, war is a test of wills, and you don’t want your enemy to be given any hope.”

God in heaven what a bastard – not only just completely without scruples (willing to let better men than him die to support the miserably failed policy) he is also an totally evil un-American creep in his desire to squelch any critics of der dear leaders latest plans.

Let’s look at this in a bit of detail

1) “our troops” – as the people being asked to do this are going in for their third and in some cases 4th tour of duty in Iraq – I can’t imagine them being that gung-ho about the damn thing in the first place – even in World War II push men enough and the their morale dropped – especially in the winter of 44-45 in Italy where it became one more river one mountain. They’ll try and do the job because that’s who they are but sweet lord – haven’t we asked enough of them? Already? Do they all have to get killed or wounded? And even if everything works the way W and his cronies (a dwindling number) imagine – is that going to end the civil war or the attacks on US troops? Not very likely.

2) War may be a test of wills but as Gen Custer could tell you, there are other factors as well. But the important thing is that this isn’t a fucking war – not a bit, this is an occupation – the war ended years ago. It’s their damn country – they aren’t going anywhere – no matter how many pronouncements of a test of will you make, the fact that they have nowhere else to go kind of trumps whatever will we can muster (and in light of miserable execution of a miserable idea you have to wonder how much we really can).

There is a larger issue here – the right wing noise machine is cracking up the idea that any criticism W and his plan is somehow well treasonous since we are at war.

If we are fighting a war (and let’s just let that go for a second) aren’t we fighting a war to protect America values? And isn’t’ one of them free speech? The right of an elected assembly to debate policy is at the heart of democracy - to suggest this is encourages the enemy is poison. And really how much more encouragement do they need – they already see that the commander is chief is a codpiece without a brain, the vice president is hostile and delusional and the folks in charge of this clusterfuck probably have to have their shoes tied for them.
I hope all of those Democratic heavy hitters The Clintons, Chris Dodd, the Senator from Louisiana, and the rest who either supported Lieberman during the Primary and then sat on their hands during the general election or worse yet supported him over the democratic party candidate in the general election (Dodd and the Senator from Louisiana – who Lieberman wasted no time knifing right in the back) are happy with themselves. One can only hope something – a change in parties by a sitting senator, a need for an election or something happens that means they don’t have to deal with this little creep anymore.

Well enough of that.

Meantime – W, in a weird moment, has defended his boss, sorry , the Vice President’s odd and hostile interview with Wolf Blitzer as saying Cheney is an optimist who sees the glass as half full – which I supposed is a polite way of saying a raving lunatic without even a nodding relationship with reality.

Meanwhile meanwhile – file under You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows – both Sen Biden and Sen Clinton have either come out against the war and in the case of Sen Clinton – admitted she had a part in making the disaster in the first place. To the both I say welcome to the real world.

Reading Blake a bit – one of the editions I have is The Portable Blake that includes an introduction by Alfred Kazin a very well respected critic – indeed the essay is in general laudatory of Blake with some strange bits however – one are the casual slaps at D.H. Lawrence, now while I suppose they were gratifying – I’m not quite sure just how relevant they are to the task at hand – there, in the early part of the essay is a celebration of Naturalism as a great and tragic way of looking at human existence. Every time I read this bit I keep thinking “what the hell is this? And what the hell does it have to do with Blake?” Very little I suspect. Kazin probably (I say that cause I don’t know for sure) found that view of life more commiserate with own views than Blake’s.

I’ve always thought that Naturalism as a world view has one great trap, the idea of impartiality – that we can stand outside and observe without either effecting or being affected by the events we observe. This deriving from the scientific method has some problems – one nobody is fucking objective, we all have baggage and hobby horses and limitations yes even me – two as we found out, and still haven’t quite come to terms with, in quantum mechanics the very act of observation changes what the hell is going on.

On bad days I suspect that there is a chaos deep at the heart of things that if we see it we will go mad. On other days not so much. And on good days I think the universe is goofy.

Tomorrow back with the silly essays on rubber monsters and music –

Peace, Love, Arrows of desire