Anger Management and George Tenant, Kansas Tornado Warns of More Katrinas, Stewart, Colbert, Matthews, and The Threat-Down!!

I don't have an anger management problem, and for the most part I am not an especially angry person, except for a few hormonal days per month when I suddenly become acutely aware of my desire to rip off the head of whoever is standing in front of me...But I don't act on it and I'm pretty balanced about those feelings...feelings pass, you know? (Just ask William how much I yell at him...Ha!)
The thing is that I was watching Tenant on hardball the other evening after receiving calls saying to be sure to catch the 7 PM rerun because Chris Matthews takes Tenant apart and how I shouldn't miss it...and I usually tune in while I putter around anyway, so....I found myself getting more and more angry at Tenant's seeming inability to reflect on his part in the deaths of so many, many people. All I see is explanation upon explanation, too little too late, and dead bodies.
Of course I'm somehow endlessly fascinated in the inside glimpse into the loony bin that was and is the Bush White House, but how could any human being have the knowledge that this guy had, or even the dawning realization of something being amiss, and not immediately stand up and yell about it?
So many people have said to me that, of course he would keep quiet because he has kids and a family, and back then the atmosphere was so tense that no one could stand up. My answer to that is that usually no one stands up until SOMEONE DOES! And that person is usually a person who is courageous and who sets themselves and their interests aside in the interest of something greater than the self. Last I heard, humans still had the ability to reason, and that we were still trying to overcome our basest instinct of complete self interest, especially when so much is on the line.
If this guy, a supposed expert, can't project ahead from a historical standpoint, maybe he could've at least worried about his grandkids...his own seed going forward...? Or was it all just immediate self interest?
I know that hes not the first or last American who has kept his mouth shut on this, but I find it completely reprehensible that, not only has he has made this book deal and profited greatly from the deaths of so many people, but that he so vehemently hangs onto his medal of freedom, which he views as an award for fighting terrorism in general as opposed to the mess in Iraq. I would say that its not deserved for fighting terrorism OR for the Iraq debacle!...and I would also say that not only does he not deserve it but that as a human being he shouldn't want it.
The one thing that these clowns have managed to do is to make sure that no one trusts the government...not to protect sensitive information unless it benefits someone in there personally or to protect us...and forget trusting the government to stand by their side of any deal such as enlistment papers that usually are laden with small print beyond what most kids can understand...If the point was to serve the higher power of the sensitivity of covert agents and actions and secret information, then Tenant is a huge failure because he is picking and choosing what was and is important to HIM in a situation where an agent was outed and...well, worse...much worse...and he stood by taking notes for a book!

So, the democrats and republicans apparently have found themselves united on one thing: we all hate Tenant...and its only leading to more book sales, better shows for everyone from Matthews to Stewart, and soldiers, civilians, and children are still dying and being horribly injured.
I haven't read the book, and I doubt I will unless I come across it in the cutout bin, because from what I can tell, its not an honest assessment of anyone who is able to admit to personal fault in any of this.... I just think that in matters that are this important on every level, at some point he should have walked away.
To say that, you know, of course he has a family and he was worried about what would become of him if he spoke up...or who knows if the information would even have been received, is the same as saying that the people who bravely powered the civil rights movement, the suffrage movement, and everyone in the world who hid a Jew during the holocaust should have just kept quiet and done nothing...at times when the stakes were certainly higher considering that people were getting shot and lynched ...actually killed.
Its not like Tenant was in the Jack Bauer world where upon his first dissent he would be dealt a quick, clean bullet to the head, (or a torn out jugular, torn by teeth!...pick your poison.)

The strange thing about this Tenant thing is that he is an extremely odd bird who seems to jovially take the flagellation and somehow remain grounded in his own certainty. People like that make me nervous. If everyone attacked me like that I would be dead just from the stress hormones alone!

Tenant, on Jon Stewart's show last night, stated his reason for writing this book now as being a "historical obligation" towards young people; that he had to tell what we got right and what we got wrong...Jon Stewart asked if Tenant might not be suffering from accessibility, in that he is the only person that we can yell at (chuckle.) The Thing about Tenant is that he doesn't answer alot. He sort of chuckles in answer and moves on to what we need to do now.
Tenant said that he feels that we may have been wrong on WMD but is right on post-war Iraq and terrorism in general (hang on to that medal George, it may be all you have left!)
He goes on and on about the fact that he doesn't make policy, and that his analysts never changed their stances, but he seemingly feels that it was RIGHT to stay in his job back then and to just offer his point of view...or so he says...and his attitude is so flippant about the whole thing that...there is almost a disconnect in his affect and what is going on. Like, doesn't he feel BAD in the least.
hell, I had nothing to do with any of it besides my little corner of the universe here with bumper stickers, signs and calls to my representatives, and I feel so bad that I didn't do more...
So, Tenant is reflecting...supposedly telling the truth (chuckle,) but I'm thinking that the real truth must be SO MUCH WORSE THAN THIS...and he seems really disingenuous about the whole thing (chuckle...)
Y'know, I'm not gonna go off on cognitive dissonance again, but I really think that this guy has a major screw loose and that if he feels like NOW is the time to sit back and muse on all of this, then...Jesus!...share it with us? Do I want to be part of this guy's mental illness? I think he is full of shit, and I also think that in throwing us a bone that seems all so bad about the inside workings of the government, he is covering up what is going ot be alot worse than we can imagine!
Ultimately, I'm really surprised that Jon Stewart, of all people, didn't stand up and say, "What the fuck is the matter with you?" Maybe that would have ended the interview...but it seems like even Jay Leno would have dropped a "what the hell were you thinking?" sort of line....and if its press that Stewart is looking for, I don't think a Fresca is gonna do it.




So, who did Oprah endorse for president? What a no-brainer!...and especially for Jill the Brilliant Threat # 1 according to Steven Colbert...Its KNUT!! Here is The Threat-down....a little levity in an otherwise grim situation:










Back in the angry reality about where our resources are concentrated these days, I wonder what would happen if the press besides Huffpo and limited small bits here and there, actually picked up on the story of the Kansas tornadoes and whats happened there, or not happened there as the case may be. This should be a front page screaming story because its a WARNING that Katrina lives and is coming our way!
How many people died under the rubble because all of the area's resources are in Iraq and the nearest help was 2 days away? (floaty and drownie, indeed!)
This is just the beginning, folks....and we have to wait till after the summer to even revisit the SURGE! What has to happen for people to look at this?
Our infrastructure is crumbling, people are dying, and Joe Scarborough is actually OK in Imus' place on MSNBC mornings...These are signs of the end times!

On the home front, Ive apparently got 6 eggs in the nest! The birds so seldom come out that its really hard to check them, hence my ongoing counting. The other night I got a good look and feel and from what I can tell, there are 6 and they are warm and...hopefully alive! Day 25 for egg#1 is on Friday, so I will be closely watching and I will have to start officially checking soon to make sure that no one is stuck in an egg...though it can take a chick 2 days to get out of an egg and during the hatching process they absorb the rest of the yolk, so its important not to panic and "help" them too soon....passing the time, meantime, watching movies that I missed this year and...
my new Midnight Special DVDs arrived, and the frequency with which Olivia Newton John shows up on these things reminds me of the depth of my alienation when I was a teen. I often watch these and send them back but Ive kept a few...and these may be keepers...but then, probably not...Hall and Oates-Kiss On My List...nah...Olivia N-J-Magic...ick....Syreeta & Billy Preston-With you I'm Born Again...that's it...the thing goes back.
No amount of America's Sister Golden Hair or Willie Nelson's Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain can make up for any of this...back they go!
Remember kids, this was the late night show that broke through the nothingness after the late shows and the ultimate loneliness of the anthem playing over a waving flag and then...snow....
But there was something good about the fact that TV went off at a point. It didn't run our lives back then...it was finite. Yes its true...and we only had 3 or 4 channels...and some of us even had only black and white till we were teens! For the longest time, we actually had one little TV for sound and one for b&w picture...and then the one for picture would only work on its back so we would stand above it and look down to watch it. Ah, the simple old days....what was left back then except to read a book...smoke pot...wander the neighborhood aimlessly.... waiting to grow up.

Cognitive Dissonance Rules!! Durbin, Tenant, and Kieth Olbermann on Rudy...

Yeah, what she said!! Jill the Brilliant has been watching Moyers on the selling of the war and how the press has been complicit in the execution of what is turning out to be a crapload of worse, worser, worst lies than we could ever have imagined. Needless to say, She is as disgusted as I am about this whole thing.


What is it that Janeane Garafolo goes on about all the time?...oh yeah, cognitive dissonance! Thats when conflicting thoughts or beliefs cause mental tension that is so intense that one has to adjust what might just be the truth in order to release tension between opposing sides. With the release of tension also comes the adjustment of what the mind knows is truth; if one set of beliefs starts to become untrue, the mind then goes into overdrive trying to rejustify by actually altering the original belief or explaining it away in some convenient fashion that isn't really all that far from the original belief. So, when asked to lie about something, without even a profit motive, if a subject can be persuaded for whatever reason to begin the lie, the internal cognitive dissonance caused by the truth vs. fiction causes the lie to become internalized and embraced as some sort of truth. What other explanation is there in the face of our entire press corps laying down? This is probably the answer to my years old question of how do they sleep at night?... Its all been justified somehow and the evident truth to them, while not actually the real and scientific truth, seems just close enough...








The other troubling thing, which I knew already, but its worth repeating again and again, is that people who watch Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert have a much better knowledge and understanding of what is going in in this country than those who watch Faux news....Maybe its easier to embrace the comedy of the truth than the tragic lies that might make us complicit in the silence that has made the deaths of thousands of people and the physical destruction of a country possible...?
The frightened woman in the gym (up from her winter home in Florida, no less,) was just telling me how her husband tells her, and she believes it, that she must ONLY watch Fox because all the rest are full of propaganda. But why the fear of hearing what everyone else is saying? Why would you want to protect yourself, if you know its all lies? Because the dawning truth is just too hard for most people to deal with, and so they have to embrace the lie harder and harder, closing their eyes tight and humming loudly so as not to have to face the fucking truth of this thing.
Look, I love America, and I am a patriot just the same as any of these people, but patriotism isn't about blindness. Its about knowing what we've done and what has been done in our names, because we are a democratic society and responsible for what these guys do out there in the world! Its is our responsibility to know what is happening, good or bad...and to try to fix what has gone wrong. The longer we put this off, the worse it gets...and its bad.

Then, in the category of "And you're just saying this now??" comes leaked parts of George Tenant's book, in which he finally speaks up about all the lies...now...rather than when it would have made a difference...Apparently, it was OK to be "At the center of the storm" and complicit in all of this crap when it was happening, but as soon as he realized that he was gonna be the one who gets thrown under the bus, and with a multimillion dollar book deal, he found his voice.

And the Senate Intelligence Committee's Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)agonized this week on the senate floor about how the committee KNEW that the American people were being lied to all along but that they were sworn to secrecy. Not one of them would take a chance to break protocol and go public or at least leak something?...As Keith Olbermann said in response to this, not one of those "patriots" could see that this was going to be a disaster of epic proportions and considered that fact more important than their careers or their "oath?" I'm sorry but I don't buy this "oath" nonsense, because obviously, as has been shown over and over by their actions, almost every single one of those guys, on both sides put together, have about maybe 1/10th of the amount of ethical and moral sense as any normal person on the street. So, does that mean they they have now been suddenly released from their oath? Or are they just able to judge the line when the public knows enough that the oath doesn't make a difference anymore? I'm disgusted.






















I love the snowball rolling down the hill behind Cheney and Bush as much as anyone, but I cant imagine that these people were so cowardly as to stay in the pack until it was perfectly safe for them to step forward.












And then in the arena of bald faced liars in the first degree we have Rudy Guilliani, liar extraoridinaire and just plan old nasty guy. Now there is a guy that we really cant have for president...he is on who would literally get us all killed! Here is Kieth's brilliant and angry comment on Guilliani...Its long but well worth it.



**Thanks, as always, to Suzanne Camejo for the nature images...