A brief poem from the Women of the Weather Underground, circa 1974:

They call it terror

if you are few and have no B-52s


if you are not a head of state


with an army and police


if you have neither napalm


nor tanks nor electronic battlefields


terror is if you are dispossessed


and have only your own two hands


each other


and your rage


It is not terror


if you are New York’s Finest


and you shoot a ten-year old Black child in the back


because you think Black people


all look like


they’ve just committed a robbery


It is not terror if you are ITT


and buy the men


who line Chilean doctors up in their hospital


corridors


and shoot them for supporting the late


democratic government of their country


It is not terror but heroism


if you were captured by the Vietnamese


for dropping fragmentation bombs


on their schools and hospitals


Only those who have nothing


can be terrorists

Wow...

I was researching the Weathermen and learned that Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn helped found Prairie Fire after splitting formally from the Weathermen in the late 1970s. If anyone has a copy of the 1974 book (or complete text of) "Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-Imperialism", I'd be very interested in reading it. It would be highly educational to read their words from that time, and to try to relate their ideas and emotions into today's terms, in today's world.

My brief thoughts on the Weathermen are that they were young, energetic, and motivated people seeking to change this country and this world for the better, but they were wholly unsure of how to do that. When you're frustrated with the enormity of fighting an entire government and all it's institutions, it's easy to lash out. I've been there myself, although to a much lessor degree. This government does need change, although in the words of the Pairie Fire Organizing Committee:

"This
system cannot be reformed or voted out of office because reforms and
elections do not challenge the fundamental causes of injustice."

This is an incredibly obvious truth to me, and one at the heart of my mistrust for the honesty of the "change" so many hope Obama can bring. It's tough to change a system from the inside unless you have a lot of help, and even more courage and strength to do so.

I can so easily identify with the incredible rage felt by these people. I've been in the streets protesting the Iraq war. I've carried the signs and sung the songs, but nothing changed. It's just not that easy to change the course of a nation, but the very strong sense of wanting to do something fueled the actions of the Weathermen as surely as the ultimate realization that they were powerless to affect the change they so fervently believed in led to their retirement. Abject frustration is a powerful demotivator.

Not shockingly, the US has launched more missiles from drone planes in Pakistan. Pakistan says the strikes violate its sovereignty. They are right, it does. But the US knows it's the biggest, baddest bully on the block and does what it wants. We're right, they're wrong, that's the US government mantra.

Of course if Mexico were to start lobbing artillery shells over the border because they didn't think the US was doing a good enough job for anything they thought was important, Mexico City would be turned into a smoldering wasteland. You just don't mess with the US.

The US claims, naturally, that such strikes are justified because Pakistan  isn't doing enough to crack down on terrorists using the area as a safe haven. You know what? It doesn't matter. It's their country, not ours, and they can do whatever they damn well please with policing their own land. It's their right.

I certainly hope that once Obama is president, crap like this stops, but I suspect highly that it won't. It's not the US people that elect a president, after all, it's not that simple. No one can be in a position to be elected without knowing how the game is played, and who must be catered to. After all, Obama has said that bin Laden must be killed, and that he's likely in Pakistan. I'm sure he'll make some high profile visits to the leadership of Pakistan to discuss what should be done, and that's certainly a fine place to start. But it's their country, and if any US president doesn't respect a nation's right to rule itself within international law, then that president should be impeached.

Too bad it hasn't happened yet, and that it never would. As I often say, if Nixon were president today, he would not have been impeached. Bush has done so much worse than Nixon it's shocking, but impeachment has never been seriously on the table, it's a shame. Would McCain be better? Hell no. Would Obama? I think not better enough.

This last Friday was the last day to register to vote in Nebraska, and Melanie and I waited in line with Nick so he could register. All of Douglas county only had one registration office open for this last day, and the line was long. We waited in line for about three hours, and if it weren't for the great people we happened to be near in line, it would have seemed to be an eternity.

The gentlemen right in front of us in line was a tall, quiet fellow dressed in his UPS uniform. We didn't talk much, he just kept to himself while we made friends with others near us in the line. After nearly an hour of waiting, he went to talk to one of the people who worked at the county office, and from what I could hear of their conversation he was needing to get back to work soon and wanted to know if he could jump ahead. Of course he was denied, and he soon left the line.

The one bit of conversation we did have together earlier convinced me of how he was going to vote. Given my position as a skeptic and cynic of all politicians, I seldom vote for a mainstream candidate. But since "Joe" the UPS guy won't get the chance, I'm going to cast my vote in his place.

I won't tell you who I think he was going to vote for, and I won't divulge his age or ethnicity either. But he was in that line and going out of his way at the last minute so that he could vote, for what he believes in. I can't just let that pass by, and come November 4th, "Joe" the UPS guy will have his vote counted.

Cuba just reported finding 20 billion barrels of oil in their waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Somewhere in the shadowed halls of the US government there are talks going on of our options - invasion or extreme-slant drilling....

While at World of Fun with Rissy, I witnessed a couple of things that were pretty disturbing. When we were in line for Fury of the Nile, a bit behind us in line were a group of guys that looked to be about 30. One had his son with him, who was about 5 or 6. These guys were crude, making comments on the various attributes of the women who were coming off the ride. More than once I'd peer back when the dad holding his son would be making some comment as well, in addition to their liberal use of vulgar language. Dads, this is how sons grow up to be as crude, unintelligent, and insensitive as you. Ever hear the song "Cats in the Cradle" by Harry Chapin? Same thing without the vulgarities.

We stupidly waited in line for about 2.5 hours for Asylum Island, part of their Halloween Haunt. We'd never done that at Worlds of Fun, and given the ridiculously huge lines for all the Halloween Haunt attractions, this one in particular, we thought it surely must be just amazing. It wasn't. But while we waited in line, there was a dad there with his small boys (about 5 or 6 and maybe 7 or 8). Asylum Island was made to be an insane asylum where the patients had taken over. Some of the patients were wandering the grounds and would interact a bit with the people in line. These two boys were taunting them mercilessly and completely inappropriately, while their dad just watched and laughed. I understood that the boys were doing this to cope with their fear, and when one of the actors bolted across the 20 yards or so that separated him from the taunting boys, they of course freaked out. Now I don't mean that the actor just ran - he was clearly an athlete, and he covered that 20 years in about 2 seconds down on all fours, including jumping up to a picnic table and down again in that position. The boys ran to their dad and asked him if the guys could touch them "no matter what we do", to which their dad assured them that they couldn't, and that no matter what his sons did or said the people would get into trouble if they touched them in any way. This of course emboldened them further to then go out into the fog-machine haze and seek the actors out. Of course they once again came running scared back to their dad after a minute or so. Model parenting this was not.

Of less surprising note was the late teen/early twenties guys making nearly-nonstop sexual observations about various girls. I realized later that this was just their own coping mechanism to deal with their fears and insecurities when it comes to women - just like the boys did to cope with their fears. It's a sad reflection of parenting and growing up in our society, and I once again weep for our future.

Rissy's birthday was great! She had a chocolate ice-cream cake, which was a first for her, and she got the game she's been begging for - Sims City 4. Be sure the check out the photos from Worlds of Fun, where we rode:

•  Flying Dutchman - once
• Viking Voyager - once
• Fury of the Nile - once
• Train - once
• Asylum Island - once
• Sea Dragon - once
• Spinning Dragons - once
• Zulu - once
• Cyclone Sams - twice
• Thunderhawk - twice
• Bamboozler - twice
• Patriot - twice
• Boomerang - three times
• Mamba - three times
• Timber Wolf - four times

 UPDATE - I realized there were a couple of things I tried to make mental notes to include when I blogged about our trip, and of course I forgot. Rissy and I are HUGE Weird Al fans, so we brought the DVD of all his music videos to play on our portable DVD player in the car. I couldn't watch, but Rissy cranked it up and we both sang along, with much enthusiasm. I'm sure some people likely saw us and got a chuckle.

Another of our road-trip tradition DVDs is Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I've not actually seen this one more than a few times, but I've heard it plenty. Rissy knows all the lines and recites, RHPS-style, right along with much of the movie, it is so cute. I hope I get a couple more years of my "little" girl before she turns into a big girl that won't do these wonderful things with her dad.

On the trip back home, we stopped at an Arby's drive through before leaving Kansas City - Arby's is by far her favorite. She promptly passed out soon after, and I knew she was really out of it when I noticed the condensation from her drink dripping down from the window cup holder of our non-air-conditioned car onto her bare leg - and she didn't so much as twitch a muscle.

 Nebraska initiative 424 is coming up for a vote next month. It's called, ironically and deceptively, the "civil rights initiative". What it is really, however, is the means to end affirmative action in the guise of "ending" reverse discrimination. I guess the point is that enslaving blacks for a couple hundred years is now made up for by the 40 years of the progress made by the real civil rights movement.

I don't buy it. When you were a free man in Africa in 1700, that came to an abrupt end when you were captured and sold into slavery. No such sudden reversal has ever happened, not now, not in the 1960, and not even when Lincoln "freed" U.S. slaves. It's a lot more complicated than just "Ok, now you're free, and there is nothing in your way to success." I say that if we enslaved a race for 200+ years, then concrete measures like affirmative action should stay in place just as long.

I discovered the following piece by Tim Wise posted as a comment on an article about the hatred of the mobs against Obama at McCain rallies.

White privilege needs to be replaced with Human privilege.

THIS IS YOUR NATION ON WHITE PRIVILEGE

By Tim Wise

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain…

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

With all the rampant vitriol being spewed at recent McCain rallies, we have to face the very real possibility that Obama will be assassinated prior to the election. Audience members shout out that Obama is a terrorist, that he is treasonous, and in some cases even that he should be killed. The ludicrousness of all these viewpoints is disheartening for the future of our country, to say the least, outright frightening to say a bit more.

Obama is not the terrorist - after all, war is just terrorism with a bigger budget, making our current government and George W. Bush the real terrorists.

If Obama manages to make it to election day without assassination and then gets elected, I would think he's safe. He's not the candidate of change so many wish him to be, and once that is demonstrated then his chance of survival improves greatly.

I weep for the future of this country, when in 2008 so many people can hate a man for something as meaningless as his name. Have we learned so little as a nation from our dark past that we are condemned to repeat it?

Rissy turns into a teenager Saturday, the big 13. I'm taking her to Worlds of Fun in Kansas City, just the two of us. We've never done that before, and I know it's going to be a blast! It's going to be a long day, too, since we're going for Halloween Haunt and the park is open until 1:00 a.m. We'll also be spending the night at a hotel, something Rissy just loves to do, so this will be a birthday to remember, I'm sure.

I remember going to Worlds of Fun at the same age with my twin brother Kevin and our friend Donnie Dunn. His family invited us to go with them, which for two extra guests wasn't inexpensive. We had the best time I ever remember having there, literally running from ride to ride as fast as we could. I wish I had pictures of my geeky, skinny, 7th grade self from that trip. Three young pals, not a care in the world, having one fantastic day together.

I'll be sure to get lots of pictures of this trip with Rissy. Soon she won't want to do this sort of thing with her dad.

I've been reading a lot on the bailout lately, and it still amazes me how off the mark all the pundits seem to be - on both sides of the political divide. Those on the left say the mortgage lenders have to "take a haircut" and write down the principal. Some on the right - McCain in the forefront - just want the government to buy up the loans at 100% value, on the premise that the mortgage companies are in bad enough shape as it is.

Let's examine the amount of this supposed "haircut". Assume that the bulk of these bad loans have had only 2 years of payments on them before they went bad - that seems like a reasonable guess given how long this crisis has been in the making. Assume further that the average of these mortgages is $85,000 for 30 years at 8.5% yielding a monthly payment of $654. In the first 2 years of a mortgage, especially a higher interest rate one like most of the ones that are in default, about 98% of the payment is interest, that's $641/month of that $654. Multiply that by 24 months and you get $15,384 of pure interest payments.

The bailout bill analysts say that mortgage companies should write down the principals to about 90% of their value. For our example $85,000 loan, that writes down the principal to about $76,500, a reduction of $8,500. THE MORTAGE COMPANIES HAVE ALREADY MADE MORE THAN THAT!

So where exactly is this economy-ending financial haircut McCain is so afraid of?

I'm watching the debate - these town hall formats are great, except for the fact that the candidates don't answer the questions. Here's an idea - after the candidates speak, the person that asked the question then points out if the candidate actually addressed the question, and the candidates then have to try again. Of course they'd likely not even get through two questions, but it's better than the charade I'm watching.

Last night was our school's homecoming dance, and Marissa invited her cousin Vika to go with her. For those who don't know, Vika is from Russia and has only been in this country about 6 months. The theme was Thriller, so before we left to take the girls to the dance Marissa looked up the Thriller video on YouTube. As Vika watched, she suddenly recognized the main character and exclaimed, "Michael Jackson is black!" 

Marissa took our smaller digital camera with her for pictures will be up soon. 

The house just joined the senate is passing the $700 billion bailout bill, as I predicted they would after failing to earlier this week. This shouldn't surprise anyone because we don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic. In a republic, the government doesn't think the people should elect the highest office in the land directly, but rather indirectly. The reason is that people are just too gullible, too stupid. Given the election of Bush 1 1/2 times, I'd have to agree.

So the house members get calls 100 to 1 telling them not to pass it, and shockingly they don't pass it. But then some meaningless changes get shoved in, and they do pass it. After all, they know better than we do - they get paid to know better, not by their salaries but by lobbyists, once again proving that all is right in the great republic we live in.

I'm just so glad we don't have this sort of power directly, just being the stupid tax-payers that we are. We just have to pay for it, that's all. As I recall, once upon a time some people in the country didn't like the fact that they were being forced to pay for something without representation. Did the house members suddenly get calls 100 to 1 telling them they should vote for this bill? Not that I can tell, so they just did it anyway despite what their constituents were telling them.

Anyone in Boston have some excess tea they aren't using?

I came across some information on a young Japanese pilot in WWII named Yukio Araki. I've got nothing to add about him, except maybe that if you don't cry while reading this, read it again with your heart.