There IS no valid argument for keeping innocent people locked up, especially in the legal never-never land of "Gitmo". This is starkly un-American.

CLEAN HOUSE. Tell the hardest truths first. Turn over the rock and let the sunlight bleach it clean. Bush43 and Cheney (and Yoo, and the PNACers, and the rest of them) made BAD MISTAKES.

If someone went insane and smeared their shit on your walls, you wouldn't be talking about changing your upholstery to match the stains, would you? No, you'd clean it up, every bit of it, and thoroughly. That is what needs to happen here.

"Oh," they said, "We MUST begin chemotherapy!"

Why is that, exactly? Would that not be a decision made by the kid and his family? Rather than the f'ing AMA?

And the courts got involved? INSISTING that the witch doctors apply whatever the leech du jour might be? In our FREE country? This sounds like US military strategy in Iraq applied to some kid with a disease.

"Oh, my." They said, "We INSIST upon chemotherapy!"

What was that saying? Live free or die? Probably unimportant. The point is that I sure wouldn't want any AMA-sanctioned doctor or the miserable bastards that inhabit every courthouse on this planet telling me what I "had" to do in the name of corporate medicine. I don't want ANYONE from ANY government telling me what I "have" to do.

Yes to both questions. Remember "2001" when the ape decides to pick up a bone and use it as a club? Psychiatry reminds me of that scene -- it's been used to control people since it was a new idea.

How about: "Are psychiatrists mentally ill?" Most of the mental health care professionals I've met have been... a bit off. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." Right, it only LOOKS like a huge black dick... psychiatrists ought to be required to dress like witch doctors out of 1940s Tarzan movies.

A fact that's difficult to ignore.

Not. Who in their right mind would even consider driving a GM vehicle? Their trucks were legendary shit, their union-busting Saturn marque was a non-starter (I mean, the minute you heard that GM had anything to do with Saturn you knew that you would never, ever consider driving a Saturn, yes?)... You make shit vehicles for long enough and eventually even the die-hards in the flyover states will figure out that they can do better elsewhere.

Because "Al Qaida" is a child's Arabic slang expression for "going to the toilet" -- would YOU name your Terrorist Organization(tm) after such a phrase? There *IS NO* "Al Qaida," it's another boogey man brought to you by your friendly omnipresent Federal government.

So we TORTURED people to extract information linking a fictional organization to Iraq, to Hussein (why is he referred to by his first name?)? Hussein HATED the religious-psychos in the Middle East. But he was sitting on all that lovely oil, and the US and British oil corporations were still pissed off that he had the temerity to nationalize Iraq's oil back when he rose to power...

Why isn't Cheney behind bars? While it is tempting to visualize Dick being tortured -- oh, excuse me, "interrogated with enhanced methods" -- torture is flatly, starkly illegal and the law explicitly details that there are NO loopholes for such an atrocity.

"Mr. Cheney, could you please tell me what you know about September 11th, 2001?"

"I --" ZAP

"I shocked you because I sensed you were about to lie to me, Mr. Cheney. Shall we try again?"

Entertainment value, yes. But even an evil, plotting scumbag like Dick Cheney deserves to be dealt with within the law, not in a nameless prison strapped to some stainless steel pillory having his genitals lacerated.

Cheney is a war criminal. His attempts to expand the powers of the Vice Presidency were obscenely wrong. Remember his assertion that the office of the Vice President was not part of the Executive Branch? You can't make stuff like that up. Cheney deserves, RICHLY deserves, a full and complete criminal investigation. He's spinning the story like mad. He knows what he did was terribly wrong.

His passport ought to be confiscated to prevent flight to some country without a strong extradition treaty.

So the Republic ends.

Buy a Mac. Live happily.

Buy and prepare food than buy lousy fast food. Save up your dollars and go out to a real restaurant once in a while, even if it's just for lunch. Even a bean and cheese burrito can be profound if you find decent tortillas and make real beans.

A few years back both McDonald's coffee and orange juice were remarkable bargains. Not any more.

Seriously, I'd rather eat a few of the dried apricots or some of the Trader Joe's trail mix I have in my vehicle than eat a McBurger. We get lulled into eating lousy food because somebody's made it for us, but it's NEVER particularly good. It's like some weird kind of hypnosis.

I'm adding this to my Netflix queue immediately -- cannot wait to see it.

Has the best, the BEST hot mustard I've run across in my meager travels. Hope 'Bama will get a chance to try it on one of Phillipe's incredible French dip sandwiches when he's in LA.

It's down by Union Station and it's really worth finding.

But you can smell the graft in DC. Similarly, those hydrogen fuel cell cars will be designed to run on hydrogen provided by (drumroll) big oil corporations.

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, climate change is laughable. It's a scam. The solar cycle has far more to do with our climate than mankind's combined efforts to pollute the planet as fast as possible. A new slab of bureaucracy will not help matters.