Please Pray for a Marine member of our Blue Inkblots Family

Guys, I have terrible news to report and I'm asking every prayer warrior who reads this, everyone who shares with a church group, every spiritual person who doesn't go to church but talks to God in the quiet places, to go down on your knees at this time for a member of our Blue Inkblots family.

In the comment section, many of you may have read remarks made by Jamie Woodard. Her son Ben served with my nephew Michael with a Marine Corps unit just returning from their third deployment to Iraq. Yesterday, Jamie posted that Ben and his unit were safely arrived in the United States, which was also wonderful news for the Mills family as well, because it meant that my beloved nephew Michael is also safely returned from his THIRD deployment without injury, thank God.

Last night, while out with friends, Ben was struck by a car and very critically injured. He is in the ICU at the Desert Springs Hospital in Palm Springs, California, with severe head injuries, broken ribs, arms, legs, and a collapsed lung. Jamie and her other older son are en route from Texas.

She has not even had a chance to hug Ben yet.

(The way the Marine Corps works, the guys are given their first night in the States out, then they have to report for light duty before being released for a 96-hour leave. After that, they must wait for two weeks to get their 30-day post-deployment leave to go home. )

Some families fly out for the Homecoming celebration, but Jamie has five other children at home, including a 4-month old infant and two toddlers. My sister-in-law, Kay, who was out there to greet Michael, is staying in the hospital with Ben until his mother can arrive.

At this point, we do not know if Ben is going to live or not, and I am doing the only thing I know to help: Begging each one of my readers to get out the word and to pray for this brave Marine who served his country with honor, dignity, and courage. Two weeks before coming home, Ben's humvee took a direct hit. Two of his fellow Marines were killed outright and one was seriously injured.

Jamie just wanted her boy home safe. Please pray that he will be able to stay with us, and fully recover. Thank you for your prayers. I will pass them on to Jamie, and I will keep you posted on Ben's progress over the next few critical days.

All my best, and semper fi,
Deanie Mills

Political(izing) Science

Growing numbers of researchers, both in and out of government, say their findings--on pollution, climate change, reproductive health, stem-cell research and other areas in which science often finds itself at odds with religious ideological or corporate interests--are being discounted, distorted, or quashed by Bush administration appointees.
--"The Political Science Test," TIME Magazine, February 13, 2006

The administration has sought to influence the policy debate by muzzling the people who disagree with it or--as was the case with two major reports from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 and 2003--editing out inconvenient truths or censoring them entirely.
--"Censoring Truth," New York Times editorial, February 9, 2006


As I recall, when former Vice President Al Gore was running for president back in 2000, his Republican opponents made many condescending sneers at the book he had written back in the early 90's, called Earth in the Balance, about the dangerous and growing menace of global warming.

Global warming doesn't exist, Republican pundits insisted. It's a liberal myth. Many scientists don't even agree on the matter. The earth may be getting warmer, but this is cyclical. When you measure climate by centuries rather than years, you will see that such cycles are normal. It'll cool off again eventually.

So certain of this was the Bush administration that they refused to even discuss it for the first term of his presidency. When scientists working for government agencies attempted to publish their legitimate findings on global warming, based on deep-core research of the polar ice-caps (which DOES measure temperatures by the century) and other methods, certain segments of their reports were literally BLACKED OUT before being released to the media.

Though privately-funded scientists from all over the globe who were not in jeopardy of getting fired by the Bush administration continued to howl loud and long, they were ignored.

And it wasn't just global warming science that the Bush administration attempted to manipulate for political gains. During the past two years, the Union of Concerned Scientists has collected the signatures of more than 8,000 scientists, including 40 Nobel laureates, 63 National Medal of Science recipients, and 171 members of the National Academies--all of whom accuse the Bush administration of an unprecedented political intrusion into their world.

At the Food and Drug Administration, for example, the director of the Office of Women's Health recently resigned because she believed that the administration was twisting science to stall approval of over-the-counter emergency contraception. Scientists, some who've worked for the government through numerous presidents and from such diverse areas as the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Agriculture Department have complained that Bush administration public affairs officers screen their appearances, published papers, and utterances more carefully than ever before.

(White House appointed public affairs officer) George C. Deutsch…tried to prevent senior NASA career scientists from speaking and writing freely, especially when their views on the realities of climate change differed from those of the White House. Mr. Deutsch prevented reporters from interviewing James E. Hansen, the leading climate scientist at NASA, telling colleagues he was doing so because his job was to "make the president look good."
--"The Politics of Science," Washington Post, February 9, 2006. (Mr. Deutsch was later revealed by a blogger to have lied on his resume about having received a degree from Texas A&M University and was subsequently fired. Apparently, his appointment to the space agency did not require a basic resume check.)

At one point during his tenure at NASA, George C. Deutsch insisted that scientists use the word "theory" after every written mention of the Big Bang, on the grounds that the accepted scientific explanation of the origins of the universe "is an opinion" and that NASA should not discount the possibility of "intelligent design by a creator"--in spite of the fact that several county and state school boards across the nation have come to just the opposite conclusion.

I'm just waiting for a Bush administration official to make a public statement, to the effect that "nobody could have seen it coming"--you know, like they said about terrorists flying commercial airliners into skyscrapers, Hurricane Katrina, and the bloody insurgency and civil war in Iraq.

It seems that while President Bush was giving all kinds of lip-service to scientific endeavor in his speeches and State of the Union addresses, his administration was gagging the very scientists he claimed to respect, trying to force them to stick to the political talking points of THEIR (un)scientific vision.

This reminds me of what happened to Medieval map-makers who took information given by returning explorers and drew maps that did not depict the Garden of Eden as being in the center of the world, as the reigning church fathers and political rulers believed the Bible taught. It's similar to what they did to scientists such as Galileo, whose scientific findings did not match church and state teachings. He was locked up under house arrest for years and prevented from publishing his findings.

It's nice to know that, here in the 21st century, we have come so far.

At any rate, it appears that the nonexistent global warming which is not happening, is melting the polar ice caps at a much faster and more accelerated pace than even un-gagged scientists thought. Glacier shelves are dropping off into the sea, icebergs are vanishing, mountain-spring thaws are coming too fast to replenish streams in time for killer summer droughts in the plains below, severe weather extremes are punishing the planet from Indonesia to Australia to to Europe to North America--even the famed Iditerod dogsled race in Alaska had to change its historic route because the temperatures were too warm.

Nobody can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crises is upon us.
--"Global Warming Heats Up," TIME cover story, March 26, 2006

So, you've got a little public affairs PIPSQUEAK who lied on his resume but boy did he support George Bush--telling NASA scientists what they can and cannot say about global warming, until one 29-year veteran, well-respected scientist, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, went to the NY Times and said, "Enough."

This happened a month ago, and since the unmuzzling, a virtual avalanche of scientific data proving the growing ecological and environmental and economic crises has surfaced.

Meanwhile, a news media who's beginning to awaken from their hypnotic stupor of simply repeating administration talking points and calling it journalism, are starting to take camera crews way north and way south, and they're filming huge chunks of polar ice disappearing at a rate that increases by the minute.

A consensus of scientists worldwide now agree that if something isn't done, and done quickly, to suppress CO2 emissions over the next few years, that by the end of the century, sea levels will have risen by 20 feet.

In fact, so many scientists concur that it's no longer even being debated. This planet is sick, fighting a high fever, and if we don't call an ambulance, it will eventually convulse, choke on its own vomit and die--and we'll all die with it, or if not us, then our children or our children's children.

And if you think I'm being pessimistic or alarmist or a tree-hugging liberal, well, just picture a room with no windows, doors, or drain pipes for sewage. A room packed with people. How long do you think it would be before they would suffocate on their own CO2 exhales of breath and their own waste?

Although the United States is not the only emitter of CO2 gasses from such things as automobile transmissions and factory emissions--China's a growing contender--we are, so far, responsible for a whopping 25% of all those emissions, worldwide.

We did not so much march toward the environmental precipice as drunkenly reel there, snapping at the scientific scolds who told us we had a problem. The scolds, however, knew what they were talking about…we're finally coming to appreciate the knife-blade margins within which life can thrive.
--"Global Warming Heats Up," TIME Magazine cover story March 26, 2006

So…in the meantime, here in this country anyway, we have in place, running just about every government agency, Bush political cronies who are poorly qualified for their jobs, ("You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie") overseeing scientific research and telling scientists what the administration's "talking points" are for that week. (I'm not making this up. See the Washington Post, "The Politics of Science," February 9, 2006.)

But while we wait for drugs to be approved or climate extremes to be studied or environmental concerns cleaned up or pollution levels controlled, the White House worries about their image and their agenda.

In the lead-up to the Iraq war, on-the-ground generals who objected to the administration's course or pointed out growing problems such as the insurgency, were either forced into early retirement, re-assigned, or simply ignored. Soon, those who wanted to keep their jobs learned to keep their mouths shut.

Three years later, Iraq careens toward chaos.

Government scientists and meteorologists warned this administration that a hurricane with the strength and power of Katrina could cause a disaster of Biblical proportions on the Gulf coast, but on the day the storm hit and the levees were giving way, Bush was out in Arizona, cutting a birthday cake with Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Warnings are sounded before preventable disasters, time and time again, but they are ignored by this inept president and his useless colleagues.

It's not that I'm blaming the Bush administration for global warming. But this ongoing and repetitive PATTERN of UNIMAGINABLE INCOMPETENCE from the TOP DOWN in this administration in every single thing they attempt to handle, from war to disaster relief to scientific inquiry…this chronic disabling addiction to putting POLITICAL CRONIES in positions of serious importance so that this administration can continue to lie to the American people on everything from why we started the Iraq war in the first place to whether global warming even exists, and to manipulate public opinion to their fawning favor…has plunged us into a quagmire in Iraq, squandered a surplus and bankrupted the economy, and left thousands bogged down in a hopeless morass down on the Gulf coast, among other disasters.

This latest demonstration of the damage they are continuing to put this country through WILL LEAVE SUBSEQUENT ADMINISTRATIONS STAGGERING UNDER PROBLEMS THAT WILL TAKE GENERATIONS TO REPAIR.

It took only ONE brave scientist to talk back against Bush administration morons and to do it loudly. Let's hope more scientists with guts and honor will speak out, risking losing their grants or worse…and let's hope and pray that somebody, somewhere, will be listening.

Are you listening?

Sunday Stillpoint: Surrendering Fear

"…Ultimate faith is not in or upon anything at all. It is complete letting go…such letting go cannot be attained. It cannot be acquired or developed through perseverance and exercises…Letting go comes only through desperation. When you know that it is beyond you--beyond your powers of action as beyond your powers of relaxation…THAT is the mighty self-abandonment which gives birth to stars."
--Alan Watts, "Beyond Theology"

These are scary times we are living in, but for me, having a child fighting in a war is absolutely the most terrifying thing I have ever experienced. I don't know any other service mother who doesn't feel the same way, but I do know some who actually feel GUILTY for being afraid, because they think they should have more faith somehow. They think they should be able to entrust their child into God's hands and not think about it anymore--and they try, they really do--but they just can't help but be afraid.

I have one Marine mom friend whose husband is always telling her, "God will take care of him," as if that answers everything, and his tone, as much as he loves her, is gently scolding, as if somehow she is doing something wrong by worrying.

But the thing is, all service mamas pray for their babies overseas, and not all of their children come home, or at least, come home in one piece. Some come home in flag-draped caskets and some come home onboard hospital flights, and that's the cold terrifying truth of it.

Was God not listening to the prayers of THOSE MOTHERS? Did they pray the wrong way, or read the wrong Bible, or not have STRONG ENOUGH faith? Did they go to the wrong church, or no church at all, or did they not go often enough?

These are the thoughts that go through a service mother's mind in the depths of night, or when the phone rings at a weird hour, or when they glimpse a strange car coming slowly down the street.

Being afraid for your child does not mean you have a weak faith. It merely means you are HUMAN. The truth is that almost everyone in this situation--unless they reside in some powerful place called "denial"--most everyone is afraid.

Most of the time, fear is a gift in the human being. Healthy fear can help us avoid danger or heed sensible doubts or sidestep trouble. Fear can save our life. If we feel a lump in our breast and our blood chills in fear, it is the healthy thing to do to schedule a doctor's appointment immediately and make sure everything is all right. Does that mean we don't pray that everything will be all right anyway? Of course we do. But we don't just pray and go on about our daily lives, not if we are blessed with common sense. We pray and then we ACT on our fears, and in so doing, many lives are saved.

This is why God gave us fear. We should be grateful for it, and not punish ourselves for feeling it.

The problem comes when fear crosses over the line into obsession or addiction. The problem comes when we allow our fears to paralyze us. An example would be agorophobics, who never step foot outside their house because they are afraid, or obsessive-compulsives who fear germs so much they wash their hands until they bleed. The problem comes when we feed our fears, like adding kindling to a fire, until they consume us and keep us from living healthy lives.

This, I am quite certain, was not the good Lord's intent when He gave us what security expert Gavin de Becker calls "the gift of fear."

My son often says, "I don't want you to worry. Worrying is my job." He means that, when he's on patrol with his team, it's his job to be vigilant for any lurking danger and do what he can to protect his team and get them back to their post safely. That's his job; it's what he has trained for, and he's very good at what he does.

But I haven't been trained, so it's not my job, he's saying, to fret and worry that he might encounter some terrible danger while out on that patrol. It's not my job.

Unfortunately, my son doesn't quite GET that, as mothers, it WAS our job for many years to protect our children. Just because they cross the threshold into adulthood doesn't mean that the powerful protective instinct we relied on all those years to get them to that point, suddenly cuts itself off in our heads. We still want to protect them, and that may be unreasonable, but there you have it.

We're moms, and for many years, that was OUR job.

So here we are, we service moms, living phone call to phone call, avoiding the news if that's our coping strategy, obsessing over it if it's not, putting together care packages and writing letters and praying, oh God, praying that our child will come home safely to us.

How do we protect OURSELVES from OUR OWN FEAR?

I'm afraid they don't manufacture any Kevlar vests for that purpose. There is no armor you can order online to protect you from that fear.

There are little things we can do, steps we can take. In her book, Positive Energy: Ten Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress, and Fear into Vibrance, Strength, and Love, Judith Orloff, M.D., gives a number of common-sense strategies for dealing with fear, like taking a moment to think on something that you find soothing and calming, or finding something you can laugh at, or watching a movie or other distraction, or giving to others in an active way--taking yourself out of yourself, so to speak. She also suggests spending time in nature, and practicing what she calls, "self-compassion," which is simply not being too hard on yourself. Meditation, of course.

I've tried and used all of these strategies at one time or another and they are all effective, but none of them is particularly permanent. When the movie ends or your day in the soup kitchen is over…the fear comes seeping back in like a silent stain.

It could be something on the news that triggers the fear, or hearing about the death of another service-person, or simply not hearing from them for several weeks while they are "out in the field."

And it's times like that, when none of the little tactics you've tried seem to help, and "meditation" consists of nothing much but scattered thoughts chasing themselves round and round in your head…that there is only one thing to do, and that is SURRENDER.

There are times that, weeping, I'll just pray, "Please, take my fear."

I picture it in my mind like a big heavy backpack. Sometimes I'll play little mind-games where I visualize doing things like, putting the backpack into a hot-air balloon and watching it rise up into the sky.

You just have to hand it over.

I confess that, on bad days, even that sometimes doesn't seem to work for very long, but if there is one thing I have learned about living with fear, it is this: There are bad days and there are good days.

Tomorrow will be bound to be better, and if it's not, then I do know one thing: the God who will be with my child in his dark shadowy places, is the same One who will be with his mama through hers.

Friday Funnies

This is for you gals out there, but since a guy with a great sense of humor sent it to me, I think the guys might enjoy it too. It's funny no matter how you look at it:

***One day my housework-challenged husband decided to wash his sweatshirt. Seconds after stepping into the laundry room, he shouted out to me, "What setting do I use?"

"It depends," I replied, "What does it say on the shirt?"

And he yelled, "UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS."

And they say blondes are dumb.

***A couple is lying in bed. The man says, "I'm going to make you the happiest woman in the world." And the woman replies, "I'm sure gonna miss you…"

***"It's just too hot to wear clothes today," says the husband as he steps out of the shower. "Honey, what do you think the neighbors would think if I mowed the lawn like this?"

"Probably that I married you for your money."

***"What do you say we change positions tonight?" whispers the husband.

"Great idea," says the wife. "You stand by the ironing board and I'll sit on the sofa and fart."

***Q: What do you call an intelligent, sensitive, good-looking man?
A: A rumor.

***A man and his wife, now in their 60's, were about to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. On their special day, a fairy came to them and said that, because they had been so good, they were each to be granted a special wish.

The wife wished to go on a cruise with her husband, and instantly, she had airline/cruise ship tickets in her hand.

The husband wished to be with someone 30 years younger and VOILA!--he was 90 years old!

Gotta love that fairy!

***A PRAYER:

"Dear Lord, I pray for wisdom to understand my man,
Love to forgive him,
And patience to handle his moods,
Because Lord,
If I pray for strength,
I'll beat him to death."

***Q: What do you call a handcuffed man?
A: Trustworthy.

***Q: What does it mean when a man is in your bed and gasping for breath?
A: You did not hold the pillow down long enough.

***Q: Why do female black widow spiders kill their males after mating?
A: To stop the snoring before it starts.

***Q: What is the difference between men and women?
A: A woman wants one man to satisfy her every need. A man wants every woman to satisfy his one need.

***Q: How do you keep your husband from reading your e-mails?
A: Re-name the file, "Instruction Manuals."

If You Only Read One of My Posts, Please Make It This One

"I understand people being disheartened when they turn on their TV screen."
--President George W. Bush, in a press conference Tuesday, March 21, 2006

From the moment I started Blue Inkblots, I understood that I lived in a conservative area and that a large number of my readers would be conservatives, or at the very least, moderate Republicans. I knew that a lot of what I said would be considered controversial for that reason, and this is why I have insisted on putting information in my blog that was based on FACT, so that if I did express an emotional opinion, I could explain WHY. I thought my readers deserved that much.

I have also encouraged a free exchange of ideas, inviting stinging commentary from some readers who disagree with just about everything I say. That has not changed, and it will not change. As of today, I do not pre-screen any comments that are posted on this blog, although I was forced to put in a "word verification" device in order to protect my readers from unwanted spam. And I am proud that, so far, even heated exchanges have always been courteous, and that no one has resorted to name-calling or other bullying techniques, although I have been called a "Bush-basher" from time to time.

I have tried to lay to rest what I consider mythology, particularly about Democrats. For instance, not all Democrats are LIBERALS, just as not all Republicans are necessarily conservatives. There are many of us who straddle the line, leaning to the left on some things and the right on others. I think it squelches intelligent discourse to label people, and I try not to do it. There are plenty of left-wing and right-wing blogs out there who do all sorts of labeling. If anybody wants to read that stuff, they can hang out over there.

When I post a multi-part series on a current issue, you can be sure that I've spent several DAYS on that post, that it is fact-based, and that I have triple-sourced those facts from publications that run the gamut from conservative think-tanks to foreign newspapers to mainstream press.

Many of my posts have centered on the war in Iraq. It is natural that I would have an overriding interest in this subject, since I currently have five family members in active-duty military service, including a nephew and my son, both with the Marines, serving in Iraq. My nephew is there for his third deployment, my son for his second. Both young men have served in infantry units, both have been posted in very dangerous parts of the country, and both have seen combat.

My readers know that I did not support the run-up to this war, and that when my son first deployed, I wrestled mightily with whether or not you could support the warrior but not the war. My son and I, and my nephew and I, have had numerous long talks about not just that, but about their opinions, based on what they have seen and done in that bloody war.

They understand how I feel and not only do they not condemn me for it, but as this war has dragged on and they have been sent over again and again, I've seen a change in their own opinions--even though I have kept most of what I feel to myself around them. I figure they've got enough on their minds without listening to me spout off. I've been honest about my doubts to them, but I have not ranted or raved and have bitten my tongue many a time, for their sakes. At the same time, no aunt or mom has ever been more supportive of those boys, their mission, and their buddies, through cards, letters, and care packages, not to mention uncountable tearful prayers and fierce hugs.

They are on my mind, quite simply, every moment of every day. Every night, after I go to sleep, I wake up screaming. (Ask my husband.) In the mornings, my neck muscles are as rigid as an iron pipe, headaches are a daily occurrence, and unless I write it down on a post-it note somewhere, I can't hold a thought for five seconds.

Those who have not been through this in one form or another cannot begin to imagine the exquisite agony of just getting through one day. For those military loved ones who live in the city, even just the mere sound of a car door slamming in the driveway can bring on a heart-pounding blood-rushing spurt of almost overwhelming terror. For me, it's the ringing of the telephone, because I fear that the Marines would not be able to find my house. I've googled the satellite map and even I can't find it. I'm afraid they'll have to call me in order to get directions to my house so they can tell me my son is dead.

My hands are shaking, just typing this.

This is the REALITY of war.

So it is with acute anxiety that I have been watching what newspaper reporters have been referring to as the "campaign" coming out of the White House, starting with Vice President Cheney's Sunday-morning talk-show route, to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's op-ed piece in the Washington Post, to the president's speeches and congenial, charming press conference of yesterday.

The message is this:

Things in Iraq are much better than the American people have been led to believe by the news media, which stresses only violence and bloodshed and does not give adequate coverage to all the progress being made over there. We at the White House are being "realistic" when we tell you that things are getting better all the time, and if the media just covered all the good things that are happening, the American people would see that we are right, and they would support our efforts toward "victory."

Implied, and subtly suggested, is the idea that if you do NOT support those efforts, that you are, in effect, giving aid and comfort to the enemy and supporting terrorism.

This is the steady drumbeat that is coming out of the White House now, and will continue over the next few weeks as the president gives speeches designed to assuage people's anxiety and doubt about the war, and offer encouragement and a sense that our leaders are in charge, that they know what is best for us, and that even though we can't see it now, it will all be for the best someday.

And if you never read another one of my posts, I beg of you, read this:

As a Marine mother, I search every single DAY for any good news I can FIND that could ease my own considerable anxiety and make me believe that my son's sacrifices, and those of the buddies he's lost, and my nephew has lost, have not been in vain. I don't just hang out on liberal hate-Bush blogs and spout off what I've heard. I read things published by English-speaking Iraqis friendly to the United States. I read English-language foreign newspapers. I read Defense Department bulletins of successful missions and progress being made. I've spent hours discussing the war with my nephew and son and the other Marine parents I know, asking what they've seen, or what their children have seen, and what they think.

I actually asked my son if he would like for me to send him a box of candies and small toys to hand out to Iraqi children, and he said, "Don't bother. It's too late to win any hearts and minds."

I'm saying this now, and I'm saying it in BOLD-FACE, because I am BEGGING you to please not swallow whole this latest political "campaign" from the White House. I've noticed some conservative talking-heads already taking up the gauntlet--Bill O'Reilly, for instance, claiming that things look much worse because of the media coverage.

I must point out here that Bill O'Reilly has never once visited Iraq. Liberal radio commentator Al Franken, on the other hand, has visited Iraq to entertain the troops at least a dozen times, traveling to out-of-the-way places like the Abu Ghraib prison where, as he puts it, "It's not their fault, what happened before they got there. They deserve the chance to laugh as much as anybody else."

Al Franken claims he once challenged Bill O'Reilly to visit Iraq, and O'Reilly told him that he was too busy putting on a TV show. Where, apparently, he accuses the American news media of distorting the truth on the ground about a place he's never actually seen.

I have spent the past three years, and a considerable chunk of my sanity, trying to find somewhere, a reason to be convinced that my own doubts are WRONG and that there IS progress being made in Iraq. I not only followed such events as the elections over there closely, but I saved up encouraging facts about them to tell my son when he called home, so he would feel that they'd made a tangible difference with their service.

In the lives of military families, this is a LIFE OR DEATH issue.

So when my son's commander-in-chief gets up in front of the nation and blames the MEDIA for the mess HIS ADMINISTRATION has made of this entire, bloody, deadly debacle, and does it with convincing charm, or his vice-president does it with macho persuasiveness, and then I see that same media pick up the baton and dutifully run with it…I feel a despair in me so great that I can hardly bear it.

It is, quite simply, not true.

When the president repeats that we will be relying on Iraqi security forces to quell the violence, he is completely ignoring the fact that many of those same security forces are COMMITTING THE VIOLENCE THEMSELVES.

When the White House complains about media coverage of spectacular events like car bombings, it ignores the daily, ongoing, gruesome litany of assassinations, kidnappings, executions, and mass murders of Iraqi people being committed under cover of darkness where no cameras lurk.

When the "media" is criticized, nobody mentions the fact that almost 100 reporters have been murdered since this war began, almost 50 have been kidnapped, and untold others less visible than Bob Woodruff of ABC News have been horribly wounded covering daily life in Iraq.

Nobody ever mentions that most of the footage aired on American television was taken on the ground by IRAQI cameramen, because it is simply too dangerous for American journalists to travel very far from secure locations. Those who do tend to disappear, and the Iraqi journalists have to hide the fact that they work for the Americans to avoid death-threats and the kidnapping or torture of family members.

The administration's ongoing efforts to paint this war with a wide brush that is black on one side and white on the other COMPLETELY ignores the truth of the matter--that when you rip off the scab covering a deep wound of sectarian rivalries and hatreds going back thousands of years, and scabbed over by decades of sectarian repression under a dictatorship, then the blood is not going to ooze from that wound--it's going to gush, and it could bleed so badly as to cause the death of any so-called "progress" that the White House wants to claim.

Not only that, but American troops can't stop the bleeding. Like my son said, it's just too late.

In an earlier, multi-part post, I gave extensive suggestions made by moderates in both parties as to what can be done now to keep this from developing into a Holocaust. I'm not going to go back over those suggestions here.

I am going to point out one thing:

It's not those moderates, or others like them, who are in charge of Iraqi policy. It's George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld who will be in control of treating the wound THEY THEMSELVES CAUSED. For three more years.

There are mid-term elections coming up, and for the press to refer to this public-relations blitzkrieg by the White House to drum up support and soothe anxieties about the war as a "campaign" is exactly right. The White House knows they are losing even loyal members of their base on this critical issue, and they know that their own party is facing serious opposition in the upcoming elections for that reason, among others. This whole thing is designed to appeal to that base and to win back support that has bled off, and to staunch the bleeding before the Republicans lose their majority in Congress, and maybe the White House in '08.

And I am telling you, even if you never read another post of mine, that THIS IS A WAR, NOT A POLITICAL CAMPAIGN. People are dying every day, troops are spending their third and fourth years away from their families, and it's getting WORSE AND WORSE, NOT BETTER.

And THAT is "the reality," no matter what the puppet-masters say.

I have seen this kind of coordinated campaign from the White House before. As now, they did this same sort of thing in the days leading up to mid-term elections. The year was 2002, and all we were hearing then was that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction and we had to destroy him before he destroyed us.

It worked.

Don't let yourself be mesmerized by constant repetition, by charm, by forcefulness, by bombast.

Not again.

Face the facts.

And pray for my son, and all our sons and daughters over there, that they can someday see an end to the endless round of deployments to this quicksand that has so far sucked up more than 2300 lives and half a trillion dollars and untold, unimagined suffering.

I have one more quote for you:

"In the midst of the horrors of war…we have had elections…To think that here in the midst of war when the grenades are popping like firecrackers all around you, that two-thirds of the people would register and vote--and through the democratic process select people…that is encouraging. It is a very encouraging sign."
--President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968, just before the Tet Offensive that ultimately cost him his bid for re-election.

I Just Have One Quick Question for you, Mr. Cheney

"I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think are accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad."
--Vice President Dick Cheney, on CBS's Face the Nation, with Bob Schieffer, March 19, 2006

It's just a real quick question, Mr. Vice President. I'm just a lowly Marine mom with several loved ones fighting in your war, out here in the heartland of Texas. I know you're a busy man, so I just have one quick question.

If, as you say, it's true that things are going very, very well in Iraq and that the only reason we dumb Americans can't get it through our thick skulls is because of the big bad liberal news media which persists in showing only bad news, only a daily litany of bombings and beheadings and assassinations and American troop death counts and so forth…If the big bad liberal news media would just COOPERATE with the administration and show all the great nation-building that's going on over in Iraq, all the GOOD NEWS, and all the terrific things that are happening over there, and all the happy Iraqi people so proud of the Americans for liberating them…

(By the way...This IS the same media that couldn't wait to televise, with orgiastic enthusiasm, the "shock and awe" of the early days of the war? The same media who made a media god out of Donald Rumsfeld? The same media that flooded the air waves and op-ed pages with pro-war editorials in the days leading up to and into the war...isn't it? I just want to make sure we're talking about the VERY SAME MEDIA.)

Anyway, my question is…If things are really so good over there now, then why don't YOU go visit?

I mean, REALLY visit. You know. Something...more substantive...than a five-hour fly-by, where you only had time for a quick photo-op and a fast interview with a friendly American journalist before hurrying back to the nice safe White House.

I'm talking about a state visit. One which is actually ANNOUNCED beforehand. One with all the pomp and circumstance your administration is so proud of. One with LOTS AND LOTS OF FLAGS FLYING IN THE BACKGROUND.

Perhaps something, oh, out of doors? Something on a GRANDSTAND, maybe, since you're so good at well, grandstanding. Something where you don't have to wear a FLAK JACKET to walk down the street. If, of course, you actually DID walk down the street.

Or if you are too busy, then how about the president? He's real good at this sort of showy show of foreign diplomacy. He just loved India. How about a big state visit from the president, where he can travel all over the great nation of Iraq that he helped to liberate? Go down a rope line in Baghdad shaking hands with all the grateful, happy Iraqis?

Or Condoleeza Rice? Something where she could do Secretary of State-y kinds of things like, oh, maybe tour a famous mosque.

Or shop at a public marketplace.

Or even, our esteemed Secretary of Defense? He's good at visiting the troops for flashy 24-hour unannounced visits, where he stops in at heavily fortified and well-established bases with huge chow halls that make real good photo ops.

How about if, instead, maybe he accompanied some of the Marines, like my son, who go on daily, deadly patrols in some of the insurgent-infested neighborhoods in the Sunni triangle? He could see for himself what a REAL war is like. Think what great media coverage THAT would be!

I just want to know that if things are so peachy-keen over there in Iraq right now, and we would know this if only the American media was doing its job and reporting it correctly, like Bob Woodruff did, then why don't you set us straight, there, Mr. Vice President?

Take us on a nice walk down Iraqi city streets and let us see for ourselves what you're so dead-level certain of. Guaranteed, there would be media coverage for THAT, wouldn't there?

Because, see, the fact that nobody in the administration will spend more than one quick day in only heavily-fortified areas, and are so careful never to announce their arrival, NOT EVEN TO THE IRAQI GOVERNMENT…it gives the impression that the security situation over there is absolutely as bad as the media has been reporting all along.

I know impressions are important to you. You want us to think the right things about your war. So why don't you just SHOW US the war you know and love?

I'm just asking.

Sunday Stillpoint: The Spirit of Place

"Different places in nature have different vital effluence, different vibrations, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars…But the spirit of place is a great reality."
--D.H. Lawrence

"Lost in awe at the beauty around me, I must have slipped into a state of heightened awareness…brief flashes of spiritual ecstasy…the self was utterly absent: I and the chimpanzees, the earth and trees and air, seemed to merge, to become one with the spirit power of life itself."
--Jane Goodall, "A Reason for Hope; A Spiritual Journey"

"After dinner we walked to Salisbury Plain. On the broad downs, under the gray sky, not a house was visible, nothing but Stonehenge, which looked like a group of brown dwarfs in the wide expanse…On top of the mountain, the old temple would not be more impressive."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson, upon visiting Stonehenge for the first time with his friend, Thomas Carlyle

"I remember, it was very cold, with the sharp wind fanning out across the plain, but when we got to the rocks, and entered the circle, it seemed as if a hush closed over us, a feeling of peace that I can't describe, and it was at least ten degrees warmer."
--My daughter, Jessica Mills, describing a winter sunrise visit to Stonehenge


Just about anybody can describe a special place in their lives, a place they once visited, or a favorite place, or even a place they chose to call home, that holds a quality almost magical to them. Maybe it's a place in nature so beautiful that they can lose themselves in the quiet and peace. Maybe it's a famous landmark that holds legendary spiritual qualities of power or soul-sustenance--a Machu Pichu or a Stonehenge. Maybe it's a house or a holy place, like a cathedral, that captivates us. It can even be a country.

Sometimes we are drawn to these places for reasons we can't describe. Or, upon visiting for the first time, feel such an uncanny sense of "home" that everything else, the rest of our lives, feels slightly "off."

When I was graduating high school, no one in my family offered me any encouragement to go to college. It was expected that I would find a husband to "take care of me," and, failing that, move into an apartment with girlfriends and work until I could find that elusive male savior.

But I had this idea in my head that I was meant to go, and I didn't even know why because I knew there wasn't any money for it. I knew I'd have to do all the applying and inquiring--and paying for--on my own.

A sympathetic high school English teacher told me that she'd gone to Stephen F. Austin University, down in Nacogdoches, Texas. They had an excellent liberal arts program, she said, since I knew even then I wanted to be an author and I would be majoring in English.

She said, her voice wistful, "It's so beautiful there."

And that was that. For reasons I can't explain to this day, I did not submit any other applications to any other colleges or universities. Nor did I visit the campus--I couldn't, really. I didn't have a car, for one thing, and my parents never offered to take me or cared whether I went or not.

When the acceptance letter came, I was thrilled, but I did not see the campus until freshman orientation. Three of my girlfriends were going down that week; one had a car and we were all riding with her on the first big adventure of our lives. I set the whole thing up, sent in the deposit from my own earnings, and packed without ever even asking my parents' permission.

So we four giggling gals crammed into Pam's old Corvair and headed from Dallas down into the deep east Piney woods of Texas. The campus was located smack in the middle of the Davy Crockett National Forest, and we drove up and down wooded hills and cooled our heels behind lumber trucks. Straight into Nacogdoches, down Highway 59, up to Dorm 15, and into the parking lot. Everybody piled out of the car.

For the rest of my life, I will not forget what came over me in that moment. As I stepped out onto the pavement, I tilted my head, gazing up into the tops of towering pines, and the excited chatter and laughter of my girlfriends faded away, like someone had put cotton over my ears.

I was home.

Just like that. All the years I'd felt "different," both in my parents' home and definitely all through school, simply fell away. All the loneliness and frustration and nail-biting anxiety of trying to fit in, trying to belong, vanished.

I was home.

It was that simple. For the remainder of my four years on that campus, I never once--not ever--felt "homesick." Rather, whenever I'd go home to work in the summers or over Christmas or spring break, I would feel what I came to call, "schoolsickness," because I missed that place so much.

When I married and moved to west Texas, the hardest thing about it was not that I was 500 miles away from my mother. It was that I was a good nine-hour drive from Nac. I did not get to see my old college campus again for almost twenty years.

Then a notice came in the mail of a college day for high school seniors. My son was about to be a senior. I looked at my husband and said, "We're going. I don't care if you have business. I don’t care how long the drive is. I don’t care what anybody says. I am going to take my children to see Stephen F."

After all, we'd gone to Texas A&M just about every year of their lives.

My son became an Aggie, just as he'd always dreamed. But when my daughter told me that she had fallen in love with the campus too, and that she wanted to go to school there, I cried.

Every visit to see her on-campus was a double delight for me, and I always set aside time to go off by myself and wander the pine-needle carpeted trails through the trees and sit awhile, just to drink in the presence of home. When she graduated, I cried doubly hard, knowing that not only were those glorious days over for her and our family, but that it might be many more years before I sat under those trees again.

Not that the experience has not ever happened again. When we bought our place out in the country, this old rock house perched atop a windy hill was nearly 100 years old and a series of renters had trashed the place. There was one tree, an old half-dead mesquite, out back. The pens and barn were falling down. It was 20 miles from town. Not much except the price seemed appealing.

The realtor took us on a hike through the acreage, and down in a hollow, tucked away behind a silent spring, was a grove of Chinaberry trees. They arched gracefully overhead, whispering in the wind, and the birdsong echoed. Somewhere in the distance came the plaintive cry of a lonesome coyote, and I knew, in that moment, that I had found a new home.

There are many reasons why one place might speak to us and another not. Or why some people crave the arid desert while others feel suffocated if they're not near the ocean. Some need the mountains or the forest, whereas city-dwellers have their favorite rooftops or stained-glass serenity they seek when troubled.

Ancient peoples charted something called "lei lines," which are magnetic courses that traverse the globe, and chose to erect temples in such places because of qualities that seemed magical. Magnetic power has proven healing properties, and a place like Stonehenge carries a strong magnetic power field--which accounts, in part, for the warmth my daughter felt within its sheltering circle.

But in his book, The Rebirth of Nature, naturalist and author Rupert Sheldrake, proposed another theory he calls, morphic resonance:

"Memory also plays a part in the response of animals and people to the particular place. Obviously, when people enter the place, their memory of their previous experience in the place or in similar places will tend to effect their present experience. But in addition to individual memory, through morphic resonance there will also be a component of collective memory through which a person can tune in to the past experiences of other people in the same place."

(Sheldrake goes on to explain that not all those experiences are good, pointing out that places in which people have been murdered often carry qualities that give them the reputation of being "haunted.")

I don't know if there's such a thing as collective memory of place, but I do know that people who visit our home often speak about a sense they get of peace and sanctuary, of homey welcome and happiness. Granted, I try to make the place a welcoming one where people can prop up their feet or snack in front of the TV without concern for fancy furnishings, but it's more than that.

Through the years, we've often received unexpected company, people whose faces have grown wrinkled and weathered, their eyes shining as they've told how they grew up here, at the turn of the century, or during the Depression, and all of them seemed to feel such joy at being back here. Does it mean their childhoods were routinely happy? Or that they have joyful memories of growing up here, of playing in the Chinaberry Grove just as my children did, of laughter and love?

I do know that many times, as I've puttered around alone while the kids were at school and Kent away, I have felt a spirit--for lack of a better word--of contentment and quiet joy. Did it mean we didn't have any problems? I laugh at the question! But the sense this house gives, that somehow, everything is going to be all right, is one I can't describe.

When my son got back from his first deployment to Iraq, as per the Marine Corps custom, he wasn't allowed to take his leave home for a couple weeks. So he had some time to adjust to being back in the States and to getting caught up on rest. We picked him up at DFW and spent a weekend visiting family in the metroplex, then started the long drive home. He spoke animatedly to us for several hours, then grew quiet, then dozed off.

When we got home, he walked in, said how good it felt to be home, then stretched out on the living room sofa.

He did not move again for more than 24 hours. My husband, who'd been pretty stoic during Dustin's war service, grew teary-eyed as he watched Dustin sleep.

"He finally feels safe," he said.

And that is, in the long run I think, what spiritual places give to us: a feeling of safety.

Safety, and, especially in powerful places in nature, a sense of incredible spiritual connection.

Biologist Jane Goodall spent many years in the African jungle, studying chimpanzees. She would often pack a meager lunch of fruit and cheese and spend an entire day alone, deep in the jungle, watching the animals and writing down her observations. In her book, Reason for Hope, A Spiritual Journey, she tells one amazing story of getting so close to one male that she was able to share some berries with him. Before leaving her, he reached out, took her hand, and squeezed it, as if to say, thank you.

The natural beauty of the rain forests where she watched the chimps cast a spell over her, and gave her a depth of spiritual understanding that can elude even those formally trained in seminary:

"In a flash of 'outsight' I had known timelessness and quiet ecstasy, sensed a truth of which mainstream science is merely a small fraction. And I knew that the revelation would be with me for the rest of my life, imperfectly remembered yet always within. A source of strength on which I could draw when life seemed harsh or cruel or desperate."

Those flashes of awareness come like quicksilver, but they stay forever. Anyone who has ever felt it can describe in detail where they were and what they were doing as if it were yesterday. All we know for sure is that God's creation has a voice, and it speaks to us.

"The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor…What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows."
--Thomas Merton, "Raids on the Unspeakable"

Friday Funnies

Guys, you know how you're always getting those sweety-sweet forwarded e-mails all about how, well, GOOD, good friends can be? And how, at the end, you're always told to do something like, "Forward this to your favorite five friends, and get a real blessing! Include yourself in the list!" Some of them even act like, if you DON'T forward them, something awful will befall you, so of course, I always delete those.

Well, the following highly irreverent "True Friendship" list was sent to me by a fellow Marine mom from my son's unit. Like I've been saying, we military moms, family members, spouses and girlfriend-boyfriends are all in kind of a bad mood until our beloveds return to us safely, and we just don't have the patience to be nice these days.

She sent me this list and I laughed so hard I KNEW it had to go into my Friday Funnies...but I warn you! There's nothin' SWEET about it!

True Friendship

1. When you get sad...I'll help you get drunk and plot revenge against the sorry bastard who made you sad.

2. When you are blue...I will try to dislodge what is choking you.

3. When you smile...I will know you finally had sex.

4. When you are scared...I will rag on you every chance I get.

5. When you are worried...I will tell you horrible stories about how much worse it could be and tell you to quit whining.

6. When you are confused...I will use little words.

7. When you are sick...Stay the hell away from me until you are well again.

8.When you fall...I will point and laugh at your clumsy ass.

9. Remember: A good friend will help you move. A REALLY good friend will help you move a body...Let me know if I need to bring a shovel.

This is my oath, I pledge it to the end.

Why, you ask? Because you are my friend.

(And, I really don't care if you forward this to anybody or not.)

Getting Rid of Comment Spam

Okay, guys, here's what we're gonna do about unwelcome spam-links in the comment section of Blue Inkblots.

I'd like to thank my good friend, Drew Bullard, owner of Computer Solutions in Snyder, Texas, who runs the Snydertexas.net website that holds a link to my blog, for explaining to me, the computer moron, how to fix this problem.

I have two choices to avoid unwanted comments. One thing I can do is moderate all comments before they appear and delete what I consider unwelcome. However, at this time, I see no need to do this, because my readers are a classy bunch, and so far, our discourse has been wonderfully civilized and courteous, even when tempers flare. For that, I am most grateful.

I don't always get to check my e-mail or my blog every single day, and I'd hate for someone's comment to be held up so long that they feared it had been deleted. So for now, as they say on Saturday Night Live, "Talk amongst yourselves."

The other choice I have, and the one I have made, is to install a feature called, "word verification." This is a minor pain to those of us wanting to post comments, but it will protect all of us from these infuriating spam-messages.

When you get ready to post a comment, you will be shown a goofy word-symbol combination, and you'll be asked to re-type it. Once you do that, you can post anything you like as long as it's, well, you know, classy, like you've been.

This feature requires a human being to get past it. Someone who puts this blogger address on a computer spamming system will try to post one of their annoying little messages but will be unable to because computers aren't as smart as they think they are.

So we should all be protected from that particular hassle. And as long as we can agree to disagree, or raucously agree, in a vigorous, courteous, wild and crazy way, then I see no need to read your comments before they are posted, nor do I see any reason to insist you become a "member" before you can post.

We'll see how it goes, and bear with me, your host computer idiot-savant, while I grope my way through cyberspace.

Deanie

Warning to my Readers

Until I become more computer-savvy at blocking unwanted posts, I must warn my readers not to click onto any links that have been provided in the comment section following one of my posts.

I have not been consulted about the link which appears on one of the comments and did not give my approval. It is clearly an unwanted advertisement, which amounts to a con job on my readers.

Blue Inkblots is a blog created for the free exchange of ideas on current events and other matters that affect all our lives. If I want any advertising on this blog, I will provide the links, and I will explain to my readers why I think they might be interested in the link.

As of yet, I have not done so.

I strongly urge you not to click on the link provided in one of the comments on my blog; it has nothing to do whatsoever with Blue Inkblots and everything to do with taking your money.

Thank you for continuing to read and post your comments as you see fit, and together, let's shun any attempt to take advantage of our welcome.

Thank you.

Deanie Francis Mills
Blue Inkblots

The Stigma of Just Surviving

"In America, to be poor is a stigma. In a country which celebrates individuality and the goal of giving everyone an equal opportunity to make it big, those in poverty are often blamed for their own situation. Experience on the ground does little to bear that out. When people are working two jobs at a time and still failing to earn enough to feed their families, it seems impossible to call them lazy or selfish. There seems to be a failure in the system, not the poor themselves…The economy does not seem to be allowing people to make a decent living. It condemns the poor to stay put, fighting against seemingly impossible odds…"
--"37 Million Poor Hidden in the Land of Plenty," by Paul Harris reporting from the U.S., in the British newspaper, the UK Observer-Guardian, February 19, 2006.


Here are some dry statistics for you:

*Wage and salary income of Americans in the top 10% of income distribution rose 34% in recent years.
*Income in the top 1% (average income $402,306/year) rose 87%.
*Income in the top .1% (average income $1,672,726/year) rose 181%.
*Income in the top .01% (average income over $6 million/year) rose 497%.
Source: Ian Dew-Becker & Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, in their paper, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?"

*"Average incomes for American families, after adjusting for inflation, actually fell from 2001 to 2004, and the growth in net worth was the weakest in a decade…since net worth declined by 9.9% in the 1989-92 period…the Federal Reserve reported…"

*"This is the continuing story of the rich getting richer," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York, "Clearly, the gains in wealth are going to the top end."
Source: "Average American Family Income Declines," reported by AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger February 23, 2006

*The real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5% between 2000 and 2004.
Source: 2006 Economics Report of the President

*37 million Americans live below the poverty line; 12.7% of the population.
*Under President George W. Bush, an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line.
*The minimum wage of $5.15 an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956.
*45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance.
*The top 20% of wage earners take over half the national income.
*The bottom 20% took home just 3.4%.
*The United States has 269 billionaires, the highest number in the world.
Source:"37 Million Poor Hidden in the Land of Plenty," the UK Observer-Guardian, February 19, 2006

*"There's an asset gap. It particularly has a racial component: Black families' net worth is $6,000 on average; Latino families $8,000; white families $80,000…I think New Orleans is just a microcosm for what exists all across the country."
Source: Interview with John Edwards, former Democratic presidential candidate who now heads an anti-poverty program affiliated with the University of North Carolina and travels the country working on the problem.


Although this president likes to boast about how strong our economy is, time and again, when the American people are polled, they report feeling a great deal of anxiety, even dread, about the economy, and lackluster retail sales over the recent Christmas holiday season reflect that general insecurity.

The reason for this discomfort and worry is that for the vast majority of Americans who earn what would even be considered a median or average income of around $43,000/year, things are NOT getting stronger for them financially. And if you fall below that line or, heaven help you, into that level of our society who is trying to support a family on minimum wage (without health insurance, to boot), your situation can be downright grim. You are one medical crises or death in the family away from catastrophe, even homelessness.

Republicans are supposed to be fiscal conservatives, but the outright squandering of a $100 billion surplus left by the outgoing Clinton administration and the massive borrowing to fund extravagant tax cuts in time of war (which they started), has left us, five years later, almost half a trillion dollars in debt.

And the only people who are laughing all the way to the bank are those whose earnings put them in the top ten percent of wage earners or higher.

For the other 90% of us, things have gotten quite a bit tougher. Even many of those who have managed to build up some home equity in their mortgages have borrowed against that equity just so they can break even with their own debts.

The conventional wisdom USED TO be that Democrats were all about tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend, but it was a Democratic president who balanced the budget and left a surplus. Under a Republican president, a Republican congress has spent money at a level so obscene that party conservatives are beginning to speak out rather loudly--not that it makes any difference.

In fact, here's how the Treasury Secretary, John Snow, proposed our government deal with the fact that it has borrowed so much money to cover it's expenses: that we simply raise the debt ceiling, and, in order to cover our borrowing until then, that we tap government retirement funds such as Civil Service Retirement and Disability to cover the spending, since we're only allowed to borrow, oh, $8.2 trillion AND WE'VE ALREADY REACHED THAT LIMIT.

We owe our soul to countries such as China, while many of our jobs are outsourced to India and our cars are made in Japan.

The recently-proposed budget for 2007 calls, yet again, for massive tax cuts to the wealthy to be made permanent, and many of the Republicans on Capitol hill want to do just that.

Claims that the tax cuts can be offset by budget cuts on programs that effect those who need it the most: Medicaid, student loans, and others, such as veterans' benefits, simply do not bear up under any KIND of close scrutiny.

Here are a few dry budget stats:

The Vanishing Future

*The 2007 budget submitted by President Bush ASSUMES NO MILITARY EXPENDITURES IN IRAQ OR AFGHANISTAN beyond 2007, for which the budget requests a mere $50 billion--far less than the $120 billion requested for 2006.
*Clinton-era budgets offered 10-year projections of spending and revenues. But the Bush administration slashed the budget horizon to five years…thus hiding the costs from revenue losses due to the tax cuts.
*The administration's own estimate of extending the tax cuts would cost an average of $235 BILLION each year, or $1.4 TRILLION over the next 10 years.

So, to recap, what that means is that in his first five years in office, President Bush never used his veto--oh, I forgot. He did try to veto a bill that would prohibit torture.

But he never once vetoed a single "earmark," which is pork-barrel spending cobbled onto any other measure the Republican congress wanted to pass. The transportation bill had more than 14,000 earmarks, not one of which apparently raised a Bush eyebrow.

However, not only does this president and his congressional cronies want to make the tax cuts--oh, let's just call 'em what they really are, shall we? TAX GIVEAWAYS. So, not only do they want to make these tax giveaways permanent for the richest segment of our society, but they claim that these massive gift-breaks to the rich and powerful can be paid for by cutting the following programs:

Are You in this Group? Better check. Under the current budget, the following programs will be cut:

*Veteran's benefits: 13%
*National parks: 22%
*Housing, fuel, child care, nutrition programs for poor & elderly: 13%
*Education & job programs: 13%

Okay, let's get a little perspective. If you're still with me here, let's see who else will benefit from Republican budget policies, and who will be hurt:

*"Just the portion of tax cuts going to the top 1% of American households, whose average income is about $1 million a year, is almost equal to all federal spending on education or veterans."
Source: "House of Cards Budget," editorial, Boston Globe, February 7, 2006.

"The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history …Buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and gas from federal territory WITHOUT PAYING ROYALTIES TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT…The government said it would lose a total of nearly $35 billion in royalties to tax payers by 2011--ABOUT THE SAME AMOUNT THAT MR. BUSH IS PROPOSING TO CUT FROM MEDICARE, MEDICAID, AND CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT PROGRAMS OVER THE SAME PERIOD."
Source: "U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies," by Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times, February 14, 2006.

But it's far more insidious than many such buried gems as windfall giveaways to oil companies--(not counting the out-of-control spending, graft, and corruption over in Iraq, resulting from the no-bid reconstruction contract to the Vice President's former company, Halliburton, which still pads his stock portfolio; can anybody say WAR PROFITEER?)--It's not just hidden slashes in programs the worst-off of us need so much.

It's hiding what those cuts will do, in real terms, to the men, women, and children who will be thrown out of the programs due to the budget cuts that will be made in order to provide tax giveaways to the top 1% of our society.

According to the New York Times, the Census Bureau, back in 1984, started a survey called the Survey of Income and Program Participation. This survey questions thousands of the same people every four months for two to four years and gathers details about their lives, including their use of government aid.

This survey is particularly valuable for the way it uncovers the actual effects of government programs and the way people move in and out of them, rather than simply capturing data at a certain point in time.

In this way, researchers are able to isolate such factors--social, economic, and personal--that have allowed some men and women to SUCCESSFULLY leave welfare for work, as well as the factors that seemed to cause others to fall deeper into poverty.

This survey clearly measures the true, human fallout from cuts in food stamps, child care, Medicaid, and other programs. It also gives Congress the information it needs to make informed and useful policy decisions.

At least, it used to.

In the 2007 budget submitted by President Bush, the survey was eliminated.

That seems to be this administration's pattern, doesn't it? Not only do we not want to think about the suffering our grand ideas have caused, but we've found ways to hide it from the rest of the world, and, in so doing, not have to be held accountable for our own morally poor, socially inept, and fiscally irresponsible policies.

"Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project…Alan Greenspan…has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a 'threat to democratic society.'"
New York Times Op-ed, "Graduates Versus Oligarchs," by Paul Krugman, February 27, 2006.

In this country, it's not just the very poor who are struggling to survive; it's just about all of us who do not benefit from the Bush and Republican Congress tax giveaways.

We raise our children to believe that they can do anything, be anything they want in this great big gorgeous country of ours, but the truth is that it's pretty much not true. Not anymore. Not as long as the present policies in Washington continue.

They say that, in this election year, many Republicans in Congress are rebelling against Bush policies and say that they will not pass this budget as it is.

So they say.

Well, since they are the ones who got us into this mess in the first place, I say, too little, too late.

Sunday Stillpoint: Learning to Sail

"We can use the pressure of a problem…to propel us through it, just as a sailor can position a sail to make best use of the pressure of the wind to propel the boat. You can't sail straight into the wind, and if you know only how to sail with the wind at your back, you will only go where the wind blows you. But if you know how to use the wind's energy and are patient, you can sometimes get where you want to go. You can still be in control."
--Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, in his book: FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING: Using the Wisdom of Your Body & Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness


When you are a control freak and a fighter by nature, like me, learning to use a problem to help solve that problem is a concept as foreign as figuring out how to use chopsticks to eat rice. (The trick, I'm told, is sticky rice--the stickier, the better. Clumps are easy to pick up with sticks, you see. There's a metaphor in that too, but not as good as the one about sailing.)

Confronted with life's challenges, what most of us tend to do, first of all, is react emotionally. We get angry, or we get upset, or we panic. We cry or rage or pace or slam doors or pound on our computers or yell at people or animals or drive dangerously. We bite our nails or grab a drink or simply sit and fret, chasing the problem round and round until we are dizzy with it but nowhere near solving it. We get headaches and backaches and stomach aches, and we develop more serious health problems like heart trouble or other diseases.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn is a pioneer in something called "mindfulness." Mindfulness is a user-friendly term for a Western form of meditation, but his New England clinic has gained national medical attention for the health benefits his training provides, which has been adopted by many hospitals in conjunction with traditional medicine, with impressive, documented results.

The brilliance in Dr. Kabat-Zinn's approach is the way he teaches us to deal with those powerful emotions. He doesn't tell us to talk them out, or stuff them down, or bury them in vigorous exercise. He doesn't scold us for having them in the first place, and he doesn't insist that we learn to control them.

Instead, he shows us how to USE our emotional reactions to stress, in much the same way a good sailor uses the force and power of the wind to take his (or her) boat where they want it to go.

His metaphor is an extremely easy one to grasp and understand. If I want to sail across the lake, and strong west Texas winds are blowing against me, what do I do? Wait for the winds to die down? (Not in west Texas.) Hope they'll change direction? Set sail against them and fight them all the way? Or just give up altogether and sit on the dock, wondering hopelessly what the other side is like?

Or, I could just lower the sails and try and row under my own steam across that lake. Don't think I'd get very far that way, either. I'd probably wind up getting caught in the undercurrents and dragged someplace I didn't even want to go.

"If you hope to make use of the force of your own problems to propel you in this way, you will have to be TUNED IN," Kabat-Zinn explains, "just as the sailor is tuned in to the feel of the boat, the water, the wind, and his or her own course…"

We have a friend, Ken, who was an avid sailor until a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed from the chest down. Undaunted, he spent several years designing a sailboat--a trimarand, I think it's called--and a sheepskin harness that would enable him to fold up his wheelchair, hoist himself aboard, and set sail. He also put himself through law school, and when he's not lawyering, he's island-hopping in the Caribbean with a bevy of beautiful young ladies always in tow.

It is essential, of course, that Ken knows how to read the wind and the water, because, should his boat ever capsize, well, he would have an even bigger challenge getting to shore, to say the least, especially if he were caught in a storm.

"No one controls the weather," Kabat-Zinn points out, "Good sailors learn to read it carefully and respect its power. They will avoid storms if possible, but when caught in one, they know when to take down the sails, batten down the hatches, drop anchor, and ride things out, CONTROLLING WHAT IS CONTROLLABLE AND LETTING GO OF ALL THE REST." (emphasis mine) "Training, practice, and a whole lot of firsthand experience are required to develop such skills so that they work when you need them."

The thing is, we all have stresses in life. Some stressors are chronic in nature, such as caring for an ailing relative or a challenging child, financial problems, health issues, marital difficulties. Some stressors are acute but temporary, a crises that must be dealt with immediately, such as an accident or sudden surgery or illness. Others have long-term consequences, such as a death in the family or a divorce or a natural disaster or fire.

It is how we REACT to that stress that makes all the difference in the world with the effect that it has on us.

We can be completely crippled by an event, such as our friend's motorcycle accident--and I'm not talking about the PHYSICAL. When Ken realized that he would never walk again, he could have given up on life altogether. Since he was in the military at the time of the accident, his medical bills were covered and he was provided a disability pension for life. He could have spent that life huddled in an apartment somewhere, watching television, growing bitter and mean.

Instead, he designed a sailboat. He became an attorney. He bought a convertible. He decided to live life at full-tilt boogie.

Does that mean that Ken didn't feel the same rage and hopelessness after the accident that other paraplegics go through? Of course not. He just decided to use those emotions creatively. He even helped found a group, called POINT (Paraplegics on Independent Nature Trips), that provides adventures to other paraplegics--sailing, mountain climbing, skydiving--the only limits are their imaginations and willingness to go for it.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn says that we often allow our first emotional reactions to the stressors in our lives TRYRANNIZE us. Our fear, panic, and anxiety get out of control, like waves in an ocean storm, and soon, we get swamped. We begin to sink, which brings on more panic, so that the emotions themselves actually become the problem--while, all along, we're nowhere near finding a solution to the situation that provoked the emotional reaction in the first place.

To avoid getting overcome by our own emotional reactions to life's challenges, Dr. Kabat-Zinn suggests a very simple response. We should, "Stop. SIT WITH THE HEART, breathe with it, feel it, not trying to explain it or change it or make it go away," he says.

In other words, we should observe what is happening--the stressor itself--as if it is a problem that is happening to someone else. How would we help a loved one deal with this problem? Would we panic and cry and rage, or would we attempt to inject calm into the emotional whirlwind, for their sake? Shouldn't we at least be as compassionate with ourselves?

Using the catch-phrase, WATCH AND LET GO. WATCH AND LET GO, Dr. Kabat-Zinn teaches us to, first of all, NOTICE OUR OWN EMOTIONAL REACTIONS.

For example, sometimes war news will upset me or frighten me or enrage me, because my son and my nephew are in Iraq right now and I'm worried about them. I can give in to that fear and panic and rage, or I can CATCH MYSELF--realize that, Deanie, you're getting upset again, and take a moment just to BREATHE.

Sometimes, I actually place the palm of my hand right over my heart and take several deep breaths. My hand spreads warmth to my chest, and the deep breathing slows the racing heart and panting breaths. I think about the love I feel for those boys, and I am soothed.

When I do get upset, I have deep respect for those reactionary emotions that I feel--they are legitimate and I have every right to feel them.

I just don't let those emotional reactions bully me or tell me what to do.

What mindfulness does is, it either reduces your physiological arousal AT THE TIME IT IS OCCURING, or it helps the body RECOVER from it more quickly.

"By definition, stress reaction happens automatically and unconsciously," explains the good doctor, "As soon as you bring awareness to what is going on…YOU HAVE ALREADY CHANGED THE SITUATION DRAMATICALLY."

This is a very important point. By being mindful to our own emotional reactions to stress--just by noticing when it is happening and taking a moment to calm ourselves--we are already changing the nature of that stress.

We are tacking our sails.

"The stressors now become like the wind, here for you to use to propel you where you want to go."

There are other benefits to this approach than just lowering our blood pressure. We also clear our minds from the clouds of emotions that have been fogging our thinking, and this enables us to work at finding a true solution to the problem itself--not just a new way to cope with the stress reaction to that problem.

And that's how we get from one side of the lake to the other in record time.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn continues the sailing metaphor: "We come to see (our emotions) as individual waves on the ocean…each one rises up to our awareness for a moment, and then falls back…"

The waves are there. They're just not washing over the boat and drowning us.

The longer we practice mindfulness, and if we can train ourselves to do it every day, for more than just a few breaths, "As we practice watching our thoughts come and go, we are cultivating an ability to dwell in the silence and stillness behind the stream of thought itself, in a timeless present."

In this way, we do not become VICTIMS of our own emotions--or of the situations that provoked those emotions. Behind every powerful emotion, there is powerful energy. We learn to harness that energy like a sail. Our friend Ken harnessed his own rage and frustration after the accident to accomplish things in his lifetime that would astonish most able-bodied people, and to have a damn good time doing it.

I found a way to channel my own fear and rage over the war right here, using my voice and what talents I have to make people think and perhaps, to change a few minds in the process. It doesn't change the reality of the situation--my son's still in Iraq, still in danger, and my nephew too, but it changes my REACTION to it. It helps me feel less helpless--and that is the true nature of all real stress.

We may not be able to control what happens to us, but by controlling our response, we can change the nature of what happens to us, make it more manageable. We don't become part of the problem. We don’t make things worse.

We don't sink, and we don't drown. We sail.

"We find our own way, sailing with the winds of change, the winds of stress and pain and suffering, the winds of joy and love, until we realize that we have also never left port, that we are never far from our real selves."

Friday Funnies

Some of you may have seen this before, but it's wonderful, and I still have my good buddy Lee to thank for sending it to me.

"Why God Made Moms"- -(Answers given by 2nd grade school children.)

Why did God make mothers?
1. She's the only one who knows where the scotch tape is.
2. Mostly to clean the house.
3. To help us out of there when we were getting born.

How did God make mothers?
1. He used dirt, just like for the rest of us.
2. Magic plus super powers and a lot of stirring.
3. God made my Mom just the same like he made me. He Just used bigger parts.

What ingredients are mothers made of?
1. God makes mothers out of clouds and angel hair and everything nice
in the world and one dab of mean.
2. They had to get their start from men's bones. Then they mostly use string, I think.

Why did God give you your mother and not some other mom?
1. We're related.
2. God knew she likes me a lot more than other people's moms like me.

What kind of little girl was your mom?
1. My mom has always been my mom and none of that other stuff.
2. I don't know because I wasn't there, but my guess would be pretty bossy.
3. They say she used to be nice.

What did mom need to know about dad before she married him?
1. His last name.
2. She had to know his background. Like is he a crook? Does he make at least $800 a year? Did he say NO to drugs and YES to chores?

Why did your mom marry your dad?
1. My dad makes the best spaghetti in the world. And my Mom eats a lot.
2. She got too old to do anything else with him.
3. My grandma says that Mom didn't have her thinking cap on.

Who's the boss at your house?
1. Mom doesn't want to be boss, but she has to because dad's such a goof ball.
2. Mom. You can tell by room inspection. She sees the stuff under the bed.
3. I guess Mom is, but only because she has a lot more to do than dad.

What's the difference between moms and dads?
1. Moms work at work and work at home, & dads just go to work at work.
2. Moms know how to talk to teachers without scaring them.
3. Dads are taller & stronger, but moms have all the real power 'cause that's who you got to ask if you want to sleep over at your friend's.
4. Moms have magic, they make you feel better without medicine.

What does your Mom do in her spare time?
1. Mothers don't do spare time.
2. To hear her tell it, she pays bills all day long.

What would it take to make your mom perfect?
1. On the inside she's already perfect. Outside, I think some kind of plastic surgery.
2. Diet. You know, her hair. I'd diet, maybe blue.

If you could change one thing about your Mom, what would it be?
1. She has this weird thing about me keeping my room clean. I'd get rid of that.
2. I'd make my Mom smarter. Then she would know it was my sister who did it and not me.
3. I would like for her to get rid of those invisible eyes on her back of her head.

Don't Believe What You Hear & Half of What You See

"They're afraid," the official said.
--"Official Says Shi'ite Party Suppressed Body Count," Washington Post, March 9, 2006

Okay, I know some of you reading this are probablay rolling your eyes and saying, Mills, what's up with you? You're still writing about the war in Iraq when there are so many other things that affect our lives here in this country that should be taking up our attention. You did a seven-part series on the civil war in Iraq. WE GET IT ALREADY, so leave us alone! Write about something that actually INTERESTS us!

Yes, it's true that I do have a stack of research material at my elbow as we speak on all kinds of issues that directly touch our lives, both things that we can and should do something about, to things we need to be thinking about, to things that are just plain good to know. And yes, I will be writing about some of those things in the coming days and weeks.

I don't mean to draw you into my magnificent obsession with this war, since I know most of you are not directly affected by it the way my family is.

Still. There are some things that I do think we all need to know, in order not just to make informed decisions about which information we can trust, but to learn to think critically and analyze objectively, so that our emotions do not cloud our judgement when we make these decisions.

The correct figure for the amount of Iraqi civilians who have died in the days of violence and bloodshed following the bombing of the Golden Mosque does not have any bearing on yours or my daily life. Frankly, most Americans really don't care. Let them kill each other off and bring our boys and girls home is pretty much the given attitude in this country.

But it is important that we take a closer look at this issue, not just because, as Christians, we should feel compassion for those anywhere on this globe who meet violent ends for whatever reasons, but because it is crucial that we understand how information is packaged and presented to us by those who want to manipulate our opinions on issues of life and death.

Body count-manipulation in times of war is nothing new. Many of you may remember, back during the Vietnam war, that on the evening news every single Friday, the war's body count was listed. And every single week, there were thousands more Viet Cong announced as having been killed than the amount of American soldiers and Marines. This was to give us the clear indication that the war was going well and that our troops were winning. Those figures may or may not have been accurate.

But the war was not going well and our troops--who were winning decidedly on the ground--proved unable, in the end, to claim victory in the war itself. Blame politicians, blame whoever, but the fact remains that Vietnam is still a communist country, through no fault of our military troops.

Still, the military and the politicians in charge of running that war had a vested interest in manipulating public opinion in such a way that would validate their (poor) decisions and thus prolong their commitment--which dragged on a total of twenty years, ten of which resulted in a significant loss of American life and tore this country damn near in half.

As I pointed out in Part II of my series on the civil war in Iraq, Sects & Violence: Death Squads & Militias, in the days following the bombing that were marked by massive civil unrest, the Iraqi Interior Ministry insisted on announcing a death toll that never went any higher than 379.

The American military reported the same figures, and as recently as just this past Sunday, on NBC's Face the Nation, the top U.S. commander in Iraq , Gen. George Casey, repeated those figures and added that the media had exaggerated the numbers.

The television news broadcasts continued to report the Iraqi civilian deaths as in the range of 350. They took the numbers that had been reported by the Interior Ministry and echoed by the American military and reported those numbers as fact on evening news broadcasts. I saw it myself, on all three major networks, and read those numbers reiterated in both Time and Newsweek.

Recently, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari, (a Shi'ite), flat-out denied that the numbers were any higher and accused the media of over-reporting.

It is important to note here, that when the Iraqi government and the American military complained about "exaggerations" in the media--they were complaining that the figures were higher than 200.

But of all the media outlets reporting these figures, only the Washington Post, who has reporters on the ground in Baghdad, actually took the step of visiting the morgue.

The reporters were horrified and shocked to discover literally hundreds and hundreds of unclaimed corpses, "blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted, or apparently suffocated with plastic bags still over their heads."

Many of the bodies witnessed by the reporters, which overflowed into hallways and onto floors, still had their hands tied behind their backs. And it was a morgue official who gave them a far more likely toll of the violently dead: 1300.

For several days, the Post was the only news source reporting this figure, and then gradually, other news sources began to report "more than 1,000."

The reason this misrepresentation is important is that the Iraqi Interior ministry, as I reported in my series on the civil war in Iraq, has been taken over by Shi'ite militias loyal to several American-hating imams, including Moqtada al Sadr. Over the past few months there have been hundreds of firings, assassinations, and murders nation-wide of security forces NOT loyal to Sadr and the others--especially Sunnis--and they have been REPLACED by black-clad commandoes who have been on a death squad orgy since last April, rounding up hundreds of Sunni men and families and executing them, often by torture.

So the Interior Ministry has a vested interest in lying about the amount of people who have died at the hands of the militias who run, well, the Interior Ministry.

The American military has a vested interest in backing up the Interior Ministry because if they don't, they will be admitting that civil war has already broken out in Iraq and that it is impossible to put the genie back in the bottle once you've let him out.

And that, furthermore, our troops are caught right in the crossfire, and therein lies the rub.

According to an article in today's Washington Post, leading Shi'ite government officials in the Health Ministry, Interior Ministry, and Defense Ministry have ordered officials to stop tabulating execution-style shootings and other acts of militia violence. They are to report deaths in only two categories: "military operations" and "terrorist attacks."

"Terrorist attacks," you see, would fall under the category of Sunni violence. Everybody knows that the ranking terrorist Sunni, Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, routinely orders bombings on Shi'ite and even some Sunni civilians, if they appear to the working with the Americans or other Coalition forces. Those deaths can be reported. But towering stacks of Sunni bodies found outside remote villages and trucked into the morgue in Baghdad can no longer be tabulated, since they were probably killed by Shi'ite militias.

In fact, at the time the Post reporters visited the Baghdad morgue in the days following the bombing, family members were allowed to come into the morgue and identify their loved one's bodies through computer photographs projected on a screen. Once identified, those deaths were then reported.

Now, NO ONE is allowed access to the morgue, according to the Post, and names of the dead are merely posted on a wall for family members to read. They are not reported. Officials do not report them now because they fear reprisals. They fear winding up in the morgue where they work.

The Post has confirmed its report with three separate sources, and other news organizations as well as the Post can confirm that at least three Thermo King refrigerated trailers have been parked outside the morgue to handle the overflow of corpses.

Meanwhile, American military brass continues to echo the reports made by the Interior Ministry of Iraq, and repeated attempts to garner more accurate death tolls from military sources go unanswered, according to the Post.

"This is part of the campaign that the enemies of Iraq and the Iraqi people are still trying to lead to confuse the situation," stated an Iraqi government spokesperson.

"Now, it appears that the crises has passed," said Gen. Casey on news programs.

I must point out here that, to the Iraqi way of thinking, militia violence is only payback, not only for the Sunni acts of terrorism against Iraqis for the past three years, but the many years of Sunni oppression under Saddam before it. And, to the Iraqi way of thinking, the militia "protection" is necessary because the American and Coalition forces did not protect the Iraqi civilians from those acts of violence.

Since my son is over there risking his life, I most certainly do not mean to imply that they are RIGHT. Our Marines and soldiers have fought bravely to get rid of the terrorists over there--YOU know it and *I* know it, but to the people trying to raise families in a violent land, it's hard to see it.

Furthermore, we could have done a far better job of providing that necessary protection if only the politicians and their henchmen over here in the U.S. had paid attention to the requests by the people on the ground in Iraq for more troops. But Rumsfeld wanted a lean war and this is the lean war he got.

The bottom line is this: If thousands of people are being tortured and mutilated by militias sanctioned by the Iraqi government and supplied by American tax dollars, then the American people would have good reason to grow increasingly upset with what is happening in Iraq, to the tune of almost one billion dollars a week and more than 2300 American dead.

If, however, the OFFICIAL COUNT is much, much less, then it would seem there IS no civil unrest over there and all is well. We can eat our Wheaties and watch sports and not think about it any more.

After all, Gen. Casey SAID that things were going "very very well" in Iraq.