The Desolation Angel - An Idiot's Ravings at the Ragged Edge of the American Century

Aiieee! Nooooo! Not the exploding underwear!

2009-12-29T21:35:00.006-05:00

Wednesday December 30th, 2009

. . . .This is one in particular that I'm going to ask you to, if you're reading this on the Facebook Notes page, that you switch over to the external site, The Desolation Angel, and be able to catch the videos and embedded playlist.

. . . . .I wrote one here a while back about the 25th Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Anniversary concerts at Madison Square Garden back on Halloween weekend, and the 4 hour broadcast of the compiled nights, and absolute highlight of the two nights, the penultimate number of the second night, Gimme Shelter, as done by U2, Mick and the Black-Eyed Peas, 3 generations, 40 years worth of genre crossing musicians and how it tore the house down. Well kiddies, here it is. Go up to the uppermost left corner of the webpage, look for the podcast player. Look for the narrow horizontal bar with Podbean on it, go to the three buttons on the left edge of the bar, and push the middle one, that's the pause control for the podcast and playlist, then hit play on the video below, sit back and be in awe. Of all of them, it's Fergie that absolutely tears the shit out of the song. 5 minutes of what rock and roll is. Enjoy.

. . . . .And so, on we go. You know what we're good at in this country? We're great at knee-jerk reacting to symptoms. We're great at instant reactions that don't do a fucking thing for cause, and treat entirely the wrong thing. So now, thanks to an spoiled little rich kid, who ineptly burned his balls off and has gotten the strike-terror-into-your-soul nickname of "The Underpants Bomber", some middle-aged couple with two kids from Des Moines who are flying to Salt Lake City are going to have their underwear searched while waiting in a three hour long line at security. Yeah, makes me feel a lot goddam safer.

. . . From The Brad Blog:

Add this to our post yesterday calling for a 'War on Lightning', since the chances of being a victim of same in any given year (1:500,000) are so much higher than being a victim of terrorism on an airplane in the last ten years (1:10,408,947).

And yet it's those nasty terrorists the cowardly wingnuts are afraid of. Lack of health insurance? Salmonella? Firearms? Not so much.

Blue Texan at firedoglake has more...

. . . .Treating true causes? Understanding causal effect? Doing root cause analysis? We're fucking morons as a country, true mouth-breathing idiots. Understanding the real reasons behind things and complex system analysis, things on a geo-political and geo-economic scale? Nah, we're not so good at that.

. . . And why is the T.S.A. making such idiotic decisions? Could it be because they're overseen and administered by a governmental body almost as inept as The Underpants Bomber, they'd be called the United States Congress. Ezra Klein:

World's most embarrassing legislative body, cont'd

You know what would be good to have right now? Strong and seasoned leadership at the Transportation Security Administration. But the TSA hasn't had a director for about a year. Why? The dysfunctions of the Senate, that's why.

President Obama’s nominee to the post, Erroll G. Southers, has been blocked from confirmation by Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican. Mr. DeMint has asked Mr. Southers, a former F.B.I. agent, to clarify his position on whether T.S.A. workers have a right to be unionized. Mr. Southers is currently the assistant chief for homeland security and intelligence at Los Angeles International Airport and a well-known academic authority on terrorism risk analysis.

And did the attack mollify DeMint? Did it convince him of the error of his hold-happy ways? Not so much. The attempted attack, DeMint said, "is a perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the T.S.A." Sigh.

Photos of the Northwest Airlines Bomb

. . . .I realize full well that the above photos are pretty damn serious, but the more I look at them, the more I just can't stop laughing, and also sticking by what I said yesterday. That is definitely a trigger I won't pull, I like my dick too much to even think about asking it to make that kind of sacrifice.

. . . . . . And what is T.S.A. making these decisions in response to? Why the diabolical Underpants Bomber of course. Bob Cesca chief correspondent Elvis Dingledein:

THEY’RE TERRIFYING BECAUSE THEIR BALLS EXPLODE

By BCAB Chief Teh Terrors Analyst Elvis Dingeldein.

Let’s just take a minute to appreciate the magnificent progress our explodery friends at Al-Qaeda (“Making Terror Terrifying Since 1988”) have made since September 11™, 2001, shall we? While promised 24-style mushroom clouds and dirty bombs capable of reducing panicked Hollywood extras to mildly-glowing human uranium sacks by the Oh Noes, Terror! crew at Fox News, what we’ve uncovered instead is an organization so Wile-E.-Coyote-desperate that they’re mobilizing half-witted Yemeni supervillains whose primary means of inflicting Teh Terrors on us is an exploding nutsac. Faced with this new threat, I think it’s time we peopled 85% of Homeland Security (Motto: “Who Did The What Now?”) with Inspector Clouseauses.

But think about it, seriously: From ingeniously coordinated hijackery to a desperate goon with blasty bollocks. If nothing else, this latest round of Boo, Whitey! nonsense from our cave-dwelling arch enemies should at least—outside of Fox News, of course—remove the Dreaded Mastermind meme from our national discourse about terrorism. Since 9/11™ we’ve been all too happy to assign James Bond Secret Volcano Lair Master Villain status to those bearded Virgin-Lovers who are somehow capable of plotting plotty plots against us using a dirt floor, a few cave drawings and a bit of a stick. “Mastermind” sounds scary, assigns Diabolical Genius to events more driven by Sheer Luck, and gives the mainstream media its classic bogeyman. Post-Christmas-Ball-Bomber, we can finally shed the Mastermind Meme and—for the time being, at least—point and laugh at the guy who strapped some scary powder to his Scrotal Terror Delivery Apparatus and failed to make his plums go pow.
Merry Christmas, al-Qaeda! You’re doing great!

. . . .So, let's see. We had to start taking our shoes off after the failed Shoe Bomber incident. We had to start chucking our water bottles after the failed Liquid Explosive incident. I can hardly wait to see what the permanent response to the failed Underpants Bomber is, and what we'll have to take off before we get to the security checkpoint. Puts a whole new light on your Mom's harping on you to wear clean underwear before you travel now, doesn't it?

. . . .I won't forgive the Clinton and Bush Administrations for having prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and not acting on that intelligence (if you're a newer reader, go back to July in the archives where I detail what information they had). As I've begun saying about Obama, he's now SameAsTheOtherGuy, in other words, no different. The following, from The Political Carnival, speaks volumes, and needs no other intro:

U.S. Had Information Before Christmas of a Terror Plot

By GottaLaff

Via an e-mail alert from the New York Times:
Two officials said the United States government had intelligence from Yemen before Christmas that leaders of a branch of Al Qaeda there were talking about "a Nigerian" being prepared for a terrorist attack.

. . . .Like I said, we don't do shit in this country about going after true root causes, about attacking causal effect, about going after the true answers buried underneath the bullshit. Instead we want the Mcdonald's Drive-thru answer, we want the USA Today 30 second read answer. Christopher Hitchens has the best analysis put out yet in the last 96 hours, as picked up by Little Green Footballs:

Again, Christopher Hitchens cuts through the nonsense: The truth about airplane security measures.

Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can’t—or won’t. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to “feel safe.” The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens’ toothpaste. My impression as a frequent traveler is that intelligent Americans fail to protest at this inanity in case it is they who attract attention and end up on a no-fly list instead. Perfect.

It was reported over the weekend that in the aftermath of the Detroit fiasco, no official decision was made about whether to raise the designated “threat level” from orange. Orange! Could this possibly be because it would be panicky and ridiculous to change it to red and really, really absurd to lower it to yellow? But isn’t it just as preposterous (and revealing), immediately after a known Muslim extremist has waltzed through every flimsy barrier, to leave it just where it was the day before?

What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims. Our civil aviation is only the most psychologically frightening symbol of a plethora of potential targets.

Read the whole thing…

. . . .And again, it's because we want simplicity, fundamentalism in our answers. We want boogeman, bad guys, good guys in white hats. We don't want to think, we want our answers given to us, we want all the pictures to be color by number and we want the colors laid out simply for us. We only want 12 crayons in the box. And it stems from how we think and how we view the world. Frank Schaeffer, in his blog today picked up on it, and does a great analysis:

The media-labeled “New Atheists” such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have put forward what they regard as the answer to religion: grow up human race and abandon your myths!

Most Americans and maybe even most people around the world, have another answer to the extremes of religion that infect people like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who (allegedly) tried to blow up an airplane over Detroit: hunt down and kill the extremists.

I think just about everyone has missed the real point: religion won’t go away because – like it or not—people are spiritual beings.

Telling religious people to be moderate is not going to solve anything once they are convinced everyone not like them is the enemy of “truth.” Killing more people just makes martyrs. That being the case the way to confront religious poison is to change religion, not try to win by eliminating it. And that change means we have to try and get to the next generation before the fundamentalists do.

The only real solution to religious extremism is to change the conversation about religion altogether.

We urgently need to make that conversation center on embracing paradox rather than seeking – then trying to impose by force and or “reason” – our pet certainties on others.

How do we change the conversation about religion, roll back the violence done in the name of God (be that by gay-hating American “Christian” fundamentalists or world-fearing “Islamic” radicals -- and while we’re at it end the culture war here at home that divides us on everything from the existence of God to abortion and gay rights?

How do we live together in a world where some people fervently believe that the earth is 6000 years old, that gay men and women choose to be gay and can “change” if they want to, that Jesus will soon return (and thus that war in the Middle East is a good thing because it is a “sign” of the much-hoped-for “End Times”) while other people just as fervently believe that people who hold such views are dumb, evil and dangerous?.. . . . .
Does raising the volume help as we shout at each other, mock one another and ramp up our own self-fulfilling “prophecies” of doom? Or is there an alternative?
Would Bill Maher have been able to mock the would-be bomber into a change of heart by making fun of his belief in “imaginary friends?” What if our radicalized and hate-filled American gun-loving, Obama-hating evangelicals with their gay bashing rhetoric could also have once been reached? If so how?

Evangelical/fundamentalists, Islamic fundamentalists and for that matter atheist fundamentalists who stick with their program are forced to try to reconcile the irreconcilable. That tends to piss them off! That tends to make them look for simple solutions from one line Maher-style punch lines to suicide bombs that will once and for all “answer” people with another point of view and shut them up!

Evangelical/fundamentalists and fundamentalist atheists have bought into an idea that my evangelical missionary mother used to phrase as a dire warning: “If you pick and choose between verses in the Bible, the whole thing will unravel! If it’s not all true, none of it is!”

Because picking and choosing is what thinking is, thinking becomes a threat to people who are certain they are right. Who knows where asking questions might lead?

What Islamic, Christian and/or atheist fundamentalists won’t admit is that all fundamentalists do pick and choose, by necessity, when interpreting their beliefs.

Seen any adulterers stoned to death in a church lately? Somewhat less dramatically, but just as tellingly, if you are an evangelical/ fundamentalist churchgoer, have you recently heard that Bible verse in Genesis about how “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives” preached on? And if you are a Hitchens/Dawkins/Maher follower have you read any good essays by them on the weirdly symbiotic relationship between some bloodthirsty secular regimes (China anyone?) and atheist beliefs?
Is there another way to look at “truth” issues that might not lead to hate? Yes. It’s called apophatic theology and can be applied to both secular and religious ideas.

Evagrius Ponticus (a fourth century monk) summed up this view, saying “Do not define the Deity: for it is only of things which are made or are composite that there can be definitions.” In fact, a whole anti-theology came to be called apophatic theology, or the theology of not knowing, or negative theology. It speaks only about what may not be said about God. And this way of perceiving God is found not just in Christianity but in other religions too.

This theology takes a mystical approach related to individual experiences of the Divine beyond ordinary perception. It teaches that the Divine is ineffable, something that can be recognized only when it is felt, then remembered. And therefore all descriptions of this sense will be false, because by definition the experience of God eludes description.

Apophatic descriptions of God acknowledge (1) that neither the existence of God nor nonexistence, as we understand these words in the material world, applies to God, (2) that God is divinely simple and that one should never claim God is “one” or “three” or any “type” of being, (3) that we can’t say that God is “wise,” because that implies knowledge of what wisdom is on a divine scale, and (4) that to say that God is “good” also limits God to what that word means in the context of human behavior.

If we want to change the religion debate the same could and should be applied to all philosophy and even to science. There is a difference between opinion and changing/evolving information and absolute and changeless fact. If we’d divide the practical everyday “facts” from making huge and out-sized cosmological “conclusions” we’d all be better off.

We’d also be closer to the truth that we can’t know anything conclusively because we are evolving and not “there” yet (wherever there is!) and also we are part of the paradox we’re seeking to unravel. In other words rather than strapping bombs on ourselves to eliminate the other, we might instead “strap” on a bit of humility be that atheist humility in the face of tenacious spirituality or religious humility in the face of the very apparent contradiction of some of religion’s fondest beliefs by science.

Recognizing that paradox is the way things are is about more than theological conflicts.
The point is to agree on a better vision of where we want to evolve to, not just physically but also ethically.

That is a project that believers and agnostics and atheists can and should agree on. We don’t have to “fit” our ideas about how we perceive things together in order to work together. We can be the same “particle” but exist in two places at once.

. . . . .Sound oddly familiar to any regular readers of this column? Just think, that's all I'm asking anyone to do. Just stop, slow down, take a deep breath, and think.

. . . . Get the hint? Follow the money, it'll lead you to the truth everytime.
. . . . .Live every day out loud

. . . And that's how it is today, from the last, lonely outpost.
. . . .I miss you Mom and Dad, a lot. Thanks for watching over me and us.

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.

. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.

. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: 29.52N, 91.57W]
[where: Chelsea, MI]

There are no endings, only beginings

2009-12-27T22:45:00.008-05:00

Monday December 28, 2009

. . . . . .First up, I need to thank everyone for their kind notes on the last post I put up here in the column just before the Christmas break, most importantly, given that post, I need to say this. . . .

. . . .Best. Christmas. Ever.

. . . .with 2 exclamation points. !!

. . . .Seriously, I, at one point, earlier in the Fall, was ready to have one of my worst Christmases ever, but at some point in there, decided that it would be what I made it, and that I wouldn't let anything or anyone else dictate how I was going to spend this Christmas or how I was going to feel.

. . . .And that I would do everything I could do to rediscover Christmas.

. . . .I gave it up, and Christmas rediscovered me.

. . . The only way to receive is to give. No expectations, no one knowing you're doing it, or why, no even hinting to people about what you're doing, do it not to receive, but to make someone else feel good, and not let them know who did it.

. . . .My kitchen is complete. I have knives again, and matching silverware, and a new toaster, and real glasses, made from glass, not plastic, and a food processor, a coffee carousel for the Keurig, you name it, it is now complete.

. . . .First item made - homemade chicken noodle soup and sandwiches with a mayo-pesto spread.

. . . .I have Trans-Siberian Orchestra tickets for next weekend. Heavy-metal Christmas music, yup, that's me.

. . . . .I have a Kindle now, a dream come true for a reader like me, who travels so much and spends much of his life in airports and hotel rooms.

. . . .What did that get loaded up with right away?

. . . . .Now, in my world, there's always reality. Like I said, we'd fought weather for the previous 2 weeks out where I work, 40 mile an hour plus winds, 12 to 15 foot waves, 40 degree temperatures, 100 percent humidity, and sideways rain. We didn't fly at least 50% of the days, and the day I got in, that we got in, was dicey at best, and it was only a 24 hour window. On Christmas Eve, I got word that a helo had flipped on one of our platforms. I don't have any other details, it's been a holiday weekend, I'll find out more tomorrow.

. . . .We're a pretty tight bunch of rock and roll cowboys from Hell, fairly close knit outlaws, renegades, pirates and bikers. We know the hazards, we know the risks, and we know what we do each and every day to take care of our kids.

. . . .By the way, if you're reading this on the Facebook Notes page, switch over to the external site, The Desolation Angel, to pick up on the podcast. The music is brand new, and different as always, and most of it you can't hear anywhere else. There's a lot of unreleased stuff, some alternate takes, some demos, some live stuff off of soundboards in clubs.

. . . .The other part of it is my voice, I'm back doing the intro again. In my world, I stay silent from after Sundance until after Winter Solstice. I'm back.

. . . .Now, 3, not 2, but 3 things of huge import happened over the 4 day Christmas holiday.
(1) The Senate passed their version of the Health Care Reform bill, solidly cementing America as the United States of Corporate America, Inc.
(2) A spoiled little rich kid, (who by the way was also pathetically stupid and inept) tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight.
(3) The people of Iran have risen up, once again, and are dying in the streets trying to overthrow Ahmadenijad and the Mullahs

. . . .I'll tackle these in order.

. . . . . .Health Care Reform. If you don't have a clue that the guy you elected is SameAsTheOldGuy by now, you've got not a clue about anything period. What this bill will do, once the two versions are reconciled and signed is simple. It will not improve delivery or medical care, it will only make the insurers, the medical equipment manufacturers and the pharmaceutical manufacturers much, much richer. As in "Too big to fail" rich. It will mandate coverage, and the type of coverage you'll get. This "marketplace" (love that phrase), will not provide competitive pricing. In other words, what the Senate did was guarantee their lobbyists and campaign contributors everything they'd been told to do. By not removing the anti-trust exemption for health insurers, they've taken Godzilla and given him more radiation.

. . . .Oh yes, if you're a woman, get ready to write two checks per month for your coverage, as the one medical procedure that was controversial enough to need a Supreme Court decision on it to make it legal, isn't covered and can't have any money used for it by your mandated coverage that you'll pay for.

. . . . .If you're a Conservative or a Republican, you should be dancing in the streets. This is the ultimate triumph of capitalism and the "free market" (makes a little vomit come up in my mouth, this is the furthest thing from a free market, this is corporatism at it's finest). This is the members of the Senate not redistributing wealth in a manner of from those who have to those who don't, but redistributing from those who have a little to those who already had a shitload of cash, and further lining their wallets.

. . . .If you're a Leftie, or a Progressive, you should be dancing big circles too. It is a matter of Federal subsidies for those who can't afford this coverage, again, with the government acting as a redistributor of wealth from those who got some, passing through those who got nothing, to be passed to those who have a buttload of cash. That's what a subsidy is. From Yglesias, and Krugman, too:

Via Paul Krugman, a nice chart from the Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator showing federal subsidies as a percentage of premium costs for families at different income levels:

This is in some ways not as generous as maybe it should be to families in the 300-400 percent of federal poverty line range. But you’re looking at very large subsidies for poor and working class families in this legislation, financed by taxes whose incidence will fall overwhelmingly and those with more means than most.

. . . . .Now, on to what happened on that Northwest flight from Amsterdam that was landing in Detroit Metro, let's make a couple of points. The suspect is pathetically inept. He was instructed to set it off while the flight was over land. That's a shitload of land it covered from the time it crossed the East Coast to landing in Detroit, and he didn't do it until landing. He obviously wasn't wearing it properly, and had the detonator too far from the explosive, since due to the amount of explosive that it contained, had it gone off properly, would have blown the shit out of that airliner. The passenger that tackled him, now, that's a hero, folks, and someone needs to find him and buy him some fucking dinner, for a year.

. . . . .The suspect is not Iraqi, nor Afghani. He's a spoiled little banker's son from London who lived in a $2 million dollar a month flat in London and went to a very prestigious university. His Dad gave him up while he was on the way to the hospital . He obtained what he needed in Yemen. The system failed period. He was on a watch list, and was allowed to board an airliner. Just like 9/11, it's turning out that there were a tremendous number of disparate pieces of intelligence about him that were never collated, agencies did not talk to one another, the systemic problem of being unable to collate a picture and no one puts it all together.

. . . . This is what terrorism truly is, and why it's pathetic. It has altered, again, the way we travel in this country. (Youngest son is in Hawaii over Christmas break, same as the Prez, and is flying Northwest home, this oughta be a nightmare.). I travel for a living, on Northwest, what it's going to do is add another couple of hours to my travel days on each side. There a number of new travel restrictions that will make what is already the unpleasant experience of flying even more unbearable. The new travel restrictions being talked about? No blankets on your lap, no carry-ons at all period, and the most amazing one; no bathroom or rest room use. Everyone's underwear will be checked. So people from Des Moines, and Waukesha and Shreveport and Dallas will be put through even more torturous travel experiences, but no one will check a young man from Yemen or Saudi Arabia for fear of being accused of profiling. Get real.

. . . .From Little Green Footballs:

Bruce Schneier is exactly right — the new TSA rule about staying seated for the last hour of flight is completely silly.

And what sort of magical thinking is behind the rumored TSA rule about keeping passengers seated during the last hour of flight? Do we really think the terrorist won’t think of blowing up their improvised explosive devices during the first hour of flight?

For years I’ve been saying this:

Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.

This week, the second one worked over Detroit. Security succeeded.

. . . .Oh yeah, (extreme grossness alert here), expect your underwear to get checked, since that's how the explosive was fitted. I'm sorry, but I am NOT blowing my dick up for any reason, or any political cause, I have way too many issues around that, and way too many practical and fun uses for it.

. . . . .Al-Queada has metastized and mutated, and has now become the enemy it's impossible to fight. They are a virus that has spread, and now can sit in the background and make impossible to detect devices that disaffected little shits can go purchase and get instructions on how to use.

. . . . And if I hear Janet Napolitano say one more time that "the system worked" I'm gonna have a seizure in my chair like John Belushi used to on Saturday Night Live. It didn't work, the man boarded a plane wearing a plastic explosive and there were no air marshals on board. He didn't wear it right and didn't set it off right, and a passenger had to tackle him to save everyone. The system didn't work. Period.

. . . . .The students and young people of Iran have once again taken to the streets, unbowed and indefatigable, and desperately want to overthrow Ahmadenjad and the High Cleric, and we sit here, fat and happy, all filled with Christmas cheer and ignoring it. The populace of that country wants to overthrow the man who is going to nuclear capable within a year, and still we sit in Iraq, which we haven't left yet, and build up troops in Afghanistan and we sit and do nothing for the people dying in the streets in Iran desperately wanting a different form of government and different leaders, wanting to throw off the yoke of Shariiya law enforced by the mullahs. What has Mr. SameAsTheOldGuy have to say? Nothing.

. . . .Mousavi, the oppostion leader's nephew, was assasinated, but that may, according to Andrew Sullivan, have been a bad mistake:

The Assassination Of Ali Mousavi

More details emerge:

Unlike the other protesters reported killed on Sunday, Ali Moussavi appears to have been assassinated in a political gesture aimed at his uncle, according to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an opposition figure based in Paris with close ties to the Moussavi family. Mr. Moussavi was first run over by a sport utility vehicle outside his home, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote on his Web site. Five men then emerged from the car, and one of them shot Mr. Moussavi. Government officials took the body late Sunday and warned the family not to hold a funeral, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote.

Juan Cole adds some punch to what we already know about Ali:

Killing a sayyid is a blot on any Iranian government. Doing so on Ashura, the day of morning for the martyred grandson of the Prophet, Imam Husayn, borders on insanity.

. . . .Andrew goes on to make a couple of more salient points this morning as to why this is so important, and why we need to pay close attention to it. It goes far beyond the simple Muslim-Iran-Nuclear Proliferation equation, and draws close parallels to something that is entirely possible in this country, that is the embedding of a theocracy, in our case, a Christian theocracy, as a fundamental form of government, and how dangerous that is to the precepts of liberty, freedom and individual determinism:

There are two critical lines that were crossed yesterday. The first was widespread savagery and violence by the junta on the day of Ashura. This breaks a profound taboo, violates the integrity and core meaning of the religious festival, and places the regime symbolically as the enemy of Shia Islam. This has offended not just the urban elites but the pious poor and rural population. Unrest was all over the country yesterday:
The decision by the authorities to use deadly force on the Ashura holiday infuriated many Iranians, and some said the violence appeared to galvanize more traditional religious people who have not been part of the protests so far. Historically, Iranian rulers have honored Ashura’s prohibition of violence, even during wartime ... Protests and clashes also broke out in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh, opposition Web sites said.
The second was the calculated assassination of Ali Mousavi, the rightful president's nephew. This creates a martyr connected to the leader of the Green Movement, and provides a cycle of more mourning and potential for unrest. That may explain the following troubling news:

A relative of Iran's opposition leader says the body of the leader's nephew has been removed from a hospital without the family's permission, a day after he was slain in an anti-government protest. Reza Mousavi said Monday that the body of his brother, Ali Mousavi, was taken from a Tehran hospital, possibly by authorities seeking to deter mourners from organizing more protests around his funeral.
With each violation of basic Muslim norms, the regime is revealing itself as a military junta, using religion purely as a means to retain power. Which is what always happens in theocracy. Total power does not feed faith; it destroys it. And then that corrupted faith wages war on its enemies.
There is more at stake here than simply one country. We are seeing the two great forces of our time - fundamentalism and freedom - fight for humanity's soul.

. . . .So, a sampling from around the spectrum, of course, the lead for me, is always the economy. From the New York Times, Krugman, on the decade about to pass, and Thank the Creator it's finally leaving:

Maybe we knew, at some unconscious, instinctive level, that it would be an era best forgotten. Whatever the reason, we got through the first decade of the new millennium without ever agreeing on what to call it. The aughts? The naughties? Whatever. (Yes, I know that strictly speaking the millennium didn’t begin until 2001. Do we really care?)

But from an economic point of view, I’d suggest that we call the decade past the Big Zero. It was a decade in which nothing good happened, and none of the optimistic things we were supposed to believe turned out to be true.
It was a decade with basically zero job creation. O.K., the headline employment number for December 2009 will be slightly higher than that for December 1999, but only slightly. And private-sector employment has actually declined — the first decade on record in which that happened.
It was a decade with zero economic gains for the typical family. Actually, even at the height of the alleged “Bush boom,” in 2007, median household income adjusted for inflation was lower than it had been in 1999. And you know what happened next.
It was a decade of zero gains for homeowners, even if they bought early: right now housing prices, adjusted for inflation, are roughly back to where they were at the beginning of the decade. And for those who bought in the decade’s middle years — when all the serious people ridiculed warnings that housing prices made no sense, that we were in the middle of a gigantic bubble — well, I feel your pain. Almost a quarter of all mortgages in America, and 45 percent of mortgages in Florida, are underwater, with owners owing more than their houses are worth.
Last and least for most Americans — but a big deal for retirement accounts, not to mention the talking heads on financial TV — it was a decade of zero gains for stocks, even without taking inflation into account. Remember the excitement when the Dow first topped 10,000, and best-selling books like “Dow 36,000” predicted that the good times would just keep rolling? Well, that was back in 1999. Last week the market closed at 10,520.
So there was a whole lot of nothing going on in measures of economic progress or success. Funny how that happened.
For as the decade began, there was an overwhelming sense of economic triumphalism in America’s business and political establishments, a belief that we — more than anyone else in the world — knew what we were doing.
Let me quote from a speech that Lawrence Summers, then deputy Treasury secretary (and now the Obama administration’s top economist), gave in 1999. “If you ask why the American financial system succeeds,” he said, “at least my reading of the history would be that there is no innovation more important than that of generally accepted accounting principles: it means that every investor gets to see information presented on a comparable basis; that there is discipline on company managements in the way they report and monitor their activities.” And he went on to declare that there is “an ongoing process that really is what makes our capital market work and work as stably as it does.”
So here’s what Mr. Summers — and, to be fair, just about everyone in a policy-making position at the time — believed in 1999: America has honest corporate accounting; this lets investors make good decisions, and also forces management to behave responsibly; and the result is a stable, well-functioning financial system.
What percentage of all this turned out to be true? Zero.
What was truly impressive about the decade past, however, was our unwillingness, as a nation, to learn from our mistakes.
Even as the dot-com bubble deflated, credulous bankers and investors began inflating a new bubble in housing. Even after famous, admired companies like Enron and WorldCom were revealed to have been Potemkin corporations with facades built out of creative accounting, analysts and investors believed banks’ claims about their own financial strength and bought into the hype about investments they didn’t understand. Even after triggering a global economic collapse, and having to be rescued at taxpayers’ expense, bankers wasted no time going right back to the culture of giant bonuses and excessive leverage.
Then there are the politicians. Even now, it’s hard to get Democrats, President Obama included, to deliver a full-throated critique of the practices that got us into the mess we’re in. And as for the Republicans: now that their policies of tax cuts and deregulation have led us into an economic quagmire, their prescription for recovery is — tax cuts and deregulation.
So let’s bid a not at all fond farewell to the Big Zero — the decade in which we achieved nothing and learned nothing. Will the next decade be better? Stay tuned. Oh, and happy New Year.

. . . .I'm with Krugman, especially given some of the stats I see. From BuzzFlash, this little one that details how 1% of the population of the United States controls 42% of the wealth:

Many Americans are not buying the recent stock market rally. This is being reflected in multiple polls showing negative attitudes towards the economy and Wall Street. Wall Street is so disconnected from the average American that they fail to see the 27 million unemployed and underemployed Americans that now have a harder time believing the gospel of financial engineering prosperity. Americans have a reason to be dubious regarding the recovery because jobs are the main push for most Americans. A recent study shows that over 70 percent of Americans derive their monthly income from an actual W-2 job. In other words, working is the prime mover and source of their income. Yet the financial elite have very little understanding of this concept. Why? 42 percent of financial wealth is controlled by the top 1 percent. We would need to go back to the Great Depression to see such lopsided data.

Many Americans are still struggling at the depths of this recession. We have 37 million Americans on food stamps and many wait until midnight of the last day of the month so checks can clear to buy food at Wal-Mart. Do you think these people are starring at the stock market? The overall data is much worse:

Source: William Domhoff

If we break the data down further we will find that 93 percent of all financial wealth is controlled by the top 10 percent of the country. That is why these people are cheering their one cent share increase while layoffs keep on improving the bottom line. But what bottom line are we talking about here? The Wall Street crowd would like you to believe that all is now good that the stock market has rallied 60+ percent. Of course they are happy because they control most of this wealth. Yet the typical American still has negative views on the economy because they actually have to work to earn a living:

.. . . .And no day is complete without my daily shot at the wingnuts, the fever swamp dwellers over in their little Teabagging compound barricaded against the forces that have taken away "their America". Let me put this one simple. One of your masturbatory fantasy leaders, Michelle Bachmann, is a welfare queen. From Yasha Levine over at TruthDig:

Michele Bachmann has become well known for her anti-government tea-bagger antics, protesting health care reform and every other government “handout” as socialism. What her followers probably don’t know is that Rep. Bachmann is, to use that anti-government slur, something of a welfare queen. That’s right, the anti-government insurrectionist has taken more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts thanks to corrupt farming subsidies she has been collecting for at least a decade.

And she’s not the only one who has been padding her bank account with taxpayer money.

Bachmann, of Minnesota, has spent much of this year agitating against health care reform, whipping up the so-called tea-baggers with stories of death panels and rationed health care. She has called for a revolution against what she sees as Barack Obama’s attempted socialist takeover of America, saying presidential policy is “reaching down the throat and ripping the guts out of freedom.”

But data compiled from federal records by Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks the recipients of agricultural subsidies in the United States, shows that Bachmann has an inner Marxist that is perfectly at ease with profiting from taxpayer largesse. According to the organization’s records, Bachmann’s family farm received $251,973 in federal subsidies between 1995 and 2006. The farm had been managed by Bachmann’s recently deceased father-in-law and took in roughly $20,000 in 2006 and $28,000 in 2005, with the bulk of the subsidies going to dairy and corn. Both dairy and corn are heavily subsidized—or “socialized”—businesses in America (in 2005 alone, Washington spent $4.8 billion propping up corn prices) and are subject to strict government price controls. These subsidies are at the heart of America’s bizarre planned agricultural economy and as far away from Michele Bachmann’s free-market dream world as Cuba’s free medical system. If American farms such as hers were forced to compete in the global free market, they would collapse.

However, Bachmann doesn’t think other Americans should benefit from such protection and assistance. She voted against every foreclosure relief bill aimed at helping average homeowners (despite the fact that her district had the highest foreclosure rate in Minnesota), saying that bailing out homeowners would be “rewarding the irresponsible while punishing those who have been playing by the rules.” That’s right, the subsidy queen wants the rest of us to be responsible.
Bachmann’s financial disclosure forms indicate that her personal stake in the family farm is worth up to $250,000. They also show that she has been earning income from the farm business, and that the income grew in just a few years from $2,000 to as much as $50,000 for 2008. This has provided her with a second government-subsidized income to go with her job as a government-paid congresswoman who makes $174,000 per year (in addition to having top-notch government medical benefits). “If she has an interest in a farm getting federal subsidy payments, she is benefiting from them,” Sandra Schubert, director of government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, told Gannett News Service in 2007, when the subsidies to Bachmann were first publicly disclosed.

. . .So, it's back into the swing, talk to you all tomorrow.

. . . . Get the hint? Follow the money, it'll lead you to the truth everytime.
. . . . .Live every day out loud

. . . And that's how it is today, from the last, lonely outpost.
. . . .I miss you Mom and Dad, a lot. Thanks for watching over me and us.

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.

. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.

. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: 29.52N, 91.57W]
[where: Chelsea, MI]

Christmas 2009

2009-12-23T09:20:00.003-05:00

Christmas 2009

. . . ..You,ll forgive me, I work in remote places and getting home for Christmas this year was a nightmare, we hadn't flown for 6 days due to storms and high winds, and had a 24 hour opening and shot, and took it and got ourselves home.

. . . . .We got back on land, safely and after essentially only 10 days home in 3 months, and those 10 days split between my Mom's funeral and Thanksgiving, there wasn't a lot of time, oh yes, and I'd moved into a new place in a little village in all that too.

. . . ..So, since I last put something up here a lot has happened, and there will be plenty to talk about, . . . .but we'll talk about all that next week as we close the year and the decade out.

. . . .What we need to talk about today, and it is traditional in this column, is Christmas, and more importantly, how I discovered Christmas in my heart again this year.

. . . .I'm loud, opinionated, cynical and smart as hell, I know that. It reflects and shows through in this column daily. I use it to cover a big heart that wants to believe, badly needs to believe.

. . . . .I live alone in small village, in an old house, beautiful place. I didn't write another column right away when I got home, I didn't get myself busy with work.

. . . .I wanted to believe in Christmas again, needed to believe in it.

. . . .I went all Clark Griswold on the outside of not just this house, but another house as well, lights everywhere. Spent a Saturday night searching two Meijer's and a Target that were out of Christmas lights (Bastards! Unheard of!) Instead got saved on Sunday morning by the little hardware store in town that has everything.

. . . . .I was compelled to put up a tree, to open every box that came with me from the divorce, and finally, after many years, put all the Christmas up.

. . . . .Christmas is the day that holds all time together.

. . . .It is the day that pulls all the years past, all the years to come, together and symbolizes the bonds that we hold as family and friends.

. . . .I drove into town and sought out the tree lot that we'd used for years, Virgil and Jim's. It's still there, though old Virgil is 92 now, and his son-in-law said "can't remember what he can't remember", and it is a beautiful tree, a gorgeous tree, I don't care if no one else ever sees it, I see it, and it's up, and it's my symbol, my faith in renewal, in the years rolling on and meaning something.

. . . .As I put up the Nativity scene that had been in my folk's house forever, put up the Christmas mailbox that had come from my grandparent's house, pulled out the treetopper that had sat on top of our grandparents tree, as I pulled box after box after box out of my village and it's people (I've got a big damn village), I couldn't stop sobbing. I finally understood Jimmy Stewart rushing around his village like a madman, I finally got how the Grinch's heart could grow 3 sizes that day. I got it.

. . . .I believe again.

. . . .When my boys came over on Sunday night to put on the ornaments that were their's, I'm sure they were surprised to see that finally, after a lot of grim years, it was Christmas again, and I'd put the effort into putting things up they remembered.

. . . .So yes, I've got a bit to finish up this morning, and I'll get to that, there'll be time, and it'll all be good.

. . . . .So go be Santa for someone today. Buy someone who doesn't expect from you something, sign it Santa, leave it on their doorstep or on their car, never admit to it and give them a gift, help them to believe.

. . . .Pet a dog, hold a door, be patient, be kind, and believe in one another, and most importantly, believe in Christmas and Santa, it's real because it's what we hold in our hearts.

. . . .Tell your family and your kids that you love them, and believe in yourself, in your own ability to be an angel, to help someone, to carry it all forward.

Merry Christmas

The Desolation Angel