It was a spectacular weekend for me. My best friend, Steven, who is one of my favorite people in the whole world, arrived Saturday for a weekend visit. At the same time, a bevy of friends and acquaintances from England and Ireland began arriving for a few days of winter revelry and entertainment.
I was invited to a Brits-only cocktail party being held at the Jet Silver Hangar in the Travis Section of Staten Island. As an American, I was quite hono(u)red to be included. Steven and I gathered up about ten blokes and birds, took the Seventh Avenue Local to South Ferry, got the Ferry across to Staten Island, and caught some cabs from there. It made no sense to try and get out of Manhattan in a car or cab at that hour, and the Ferry was the perfect choice, especially because it offered some of the first time visitors a view of the Statue of Liberty.
I have learned a great life lesson: one of God's greatest gifts to humanity is the drunk English girl! (Did I just say that, or did I just think it?) We partied until far too late, and I was not in bed until close to dawn!
I awoke to a remarkable snowstorm, a second-hand smoke headache, and the news that another guilty party had been captured in Iraq. They got the big one. The pictures actually showed him to look like an elderly political science professor with a soft-spot for communism. Dress him in a tweed jacket with patched elbows and he could have been a tenured faculty member at a University.
Now they are proclaiming that America is safe! Each morning I walk by the CNN studios and they have one of those Times Square-style news tickers. It dismays me that the christian fundamentalists controlling the United States deem CNN to be liberal media. Very sad for both liberalism and freedom of the press. Today the CNN ticker was proclaiming that Sunday's capture would lead to the capture in Afghanistan of the guy whose financial interests are represented by Henry Kissinger and whose hobbies include convincing others to fly jets into American skyscrapers. It's sad to watch the media manipulate the hearts of Americans by linking those two tyrants. Anyway, the former Iraqi dictator looked better in capture than he ever did as a dictator in faux-military drag.
I think it is time for American liberals, no all liberals around the world, to force Senator Joseph Lieberman to switch to the Republican Party. I know he is a politician, and therefore a megalomaniac, so his remarks are always rooted in a psychopathic need to acquire more power and money for himself at the expense of anyone around him; but his statement on Meet The Press yesterday went beyond the pale. He said: "If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would be in power today."
This remark is so inappropriate as to be offensive. Lieberman would do anything to maintain the status quo, including the continued lying about homeland security (which sounds more Soviet by the day), support for irresponsible military policy in the Middle East, continued corporate deregulation, and turning a blind eye to the fundamentalist take-over of America's cultural institutions. This man is a conservative of the worst sort, because he is a man who knows better. He is a man who knows that conservatism is dangerous, but as long as he gets more money and power, he will let it continue.
Lieberman is such a horrible man that I can't believe liberals do not speak out against him more often. Can it really be possible that this man would be even remotely considered a Democratic presidential candidate by anyone outside of Connecticut?
If this remark is the sort of thing a pig like Lieberman says about Howard Dean, then Dean looks better and better by the minute!
Have a drink, capture a deposed dictator, and vote Dean!
Peace!
The rantings of an unrepentant old leftist, and his friends.
