informant38
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...But of these sophisms and elenchs of merchandise I skill not...
Milton, Areopagitica

Except he had found the
standing sea-rock that even this last
Temptation breaks on; quieter than death but lovelier; peace
that quiets the desire even of praising it.

Jeffers, Meditation On Saviors


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20.12.05

Better than strong coffee is the surge of adrenaline and outrage the television provides nearly free of charge each morning.
Lisa Murkowski on C-SPAN - Lisa who managed through some means or other to become a U.S. Senator from Alaska, explaining to the American citizenry that it's appropriate that the ANWR drilling provision be attached to the Defense Appropriations bill because we will send that oil, those millions of barrels and gallons every single day that we get from drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, that we will send those millions of barrels right straight to the front lines on the War on Terror to our men and women fighting overseas specifically in Iraq.
We're going to send the oil we get from violating our own wildlife refuge to Iraq, a country that sits on one of the largest oil reserves left in the world, a country whose invasion and occupation, now amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars we were told would be paid for by the oil we'd get access to once we had pacified the confused and freedom-hungry Arab population and got things back running shipshape. Possibly the oil underneath Iraq is needed for other, more important things than American domestic use.
Instead we have to send oil to Iraq. Though that's a little facetious, of course what Murkowski meant was we'd have lots extra so it would be more easy to take care of the daily fuel needs of our troops.
Maybe they could find a source for Kevlar in Alaska too. Or a way to make prosthetic limbs from reprocessed tundra and caribou sinew.
Lisa Murkowski threw up some figures about oil consumption - though she never mentioned the absolutely taboo subject of amount, it is not allowed to suggest that the burning of 380 million gallons of gasoline every day might be substantially reduced except in the context of a wistful "someday" - 58% of domestic needs comes from foreign sources, including the unstable Middle... and there she caught herself and went back to Mid-East instead. Evidently there's been a glossary reformat back at hive center. No more Middle East now, only Mid-East. I wonder what that's about.
20 years from now said Lisa Murkowski we expect to be getting or needing to get 2/3 of our domestic oil needs from foreign sources. Said that with a straight face in a sincere tone of voice.
She pointed to Venezuela as an example of how dangerous it is to rely on other countries for our fuel needs.
Venezuela, whose President the alien and demonic Pat Robertson called for then retracted his call for the assassination of, whose state-owned oil company CITGO has struck a deal with aid agencies in Massachusetts to deliver low-cost heating oil to the poor this winter against a backdrop of chuckling silence on the part of American oil companies, who somehow managed to enjoy record profits thanks to the Gulf Coast hurricanes this year.
Social Darwinism is not incompatible with the practice of Christianity, not anymore.
Lisa Murkowski is a smart woman and should know better than to lie like that.
Then over to Scott McLellan. Who in his own words is "not a lawyer". He's the White House Press Secretary. What that means is he's the unelected representative of the Federal government. He explains things to the press who ask him questions and who are thus in that sense representing the people. Ideally.
A brave young woman asked him, quoting the President in 2004 as to his saying the necessity of obtaining warrants or court orders to instigate wiretaps on American citizens was still in place and would remain so, if in fact the President had been not entirely forthcoming when he said that, given what we now know about the government spying on us and having been spying on us for some time.
McLellan recovered quickly because he's a pro, but was stuttering and desperate when he replied that within the context of the Patriot Act specifically the President was being truthful. Context being everything now. And then like a frightened cephalopod he began scooting around and squirting the black clouds of inky 9/11 darkness - "a dangerous and deadly enemy" "sophisticated and deadly enemy that moves with great speed" "a different kind of war", the actual four syllable magic spell "9/11" was uttered at least three times in the few minutes I saw him.
McLellan has the perfect cover for an evil man. He's soft-looking, with the face of a side-kick, he has a harmless, secondary voice, an attitude of junior-varsity willingness and dedication, an ingratiating nice-guy tone with that air of being immensely patient shot through with irritation at being put-upon by the obstinate wrong-headedness of his opponents, and he's absolutely non-threatening - in an immediate and superficial, but ultimately camouflaged way. Camouflaged, because what he is, and what he does, is powerful enough, and harmful enough, to qualify him for the inner circle of those men who could be held personally responsible for destroying the world.
But that's the riddle - after they've wrecked it there won't be any place to stand and make those accusations, and there won't be anyone there to make them.
Unless you believe in that great pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die.
Like the President does, and like his enemies do. So that after all this you could still make a complaint, except that the narrative is that it won't matter in that peace of perfecrt understanding, and what will matter is only the intentions of everyone, and since the intentions of the President and Scott McLellan and Lisa Murkowski and all the other active participants are toward the good - that's okay! Hey!
Burn it down, blow it up, tear the living flesh off the bones of terrified children crouched in their family homes, with bombs that are right out of the hell-visions of the prophets.
What counts is you meant well. Nothing else matters.
Good intentions!
We're on our way!

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