Happy Valentine's Day!

Did you get laid this morning? Me neither.

I am hoping for tonight, but I know how it will go. We'll head out for a cocktail and appie at this great place we know with a great view, talk about the day, watch the people and then we'll mosey over to dinner (Italian I think, that's her favorite) and have a nice meal, bottle of wine and then walk back to our place, hand-in-hand like always, spend a few minutes surfing any late breaking news and then head into the bedroom.

And fall asleep almost immediately.

Have you ever thought about why folks love to use Valentine's Day to massacre others?

"I guess my reaction to all the noise about, you know, 'he wants to go to war,' is -- first of all I don't understand the tactics, and I guess I would say it's political," Bush told CSPAN television in an interview Tuesday...

..."I don't think there's a change of tone on our part," said spokesman Tony Snow. "I think that there have been attempts, with all due respect, in the press to try to whip this up -- 'is the administration going after Iran?'"

"I'm glad you raised it again, because we're not," said Snow...

It's the old double negative reverse psychology blame it on your support of terrorists - look out al Qaeda is creepy crawling into every nook and cranny synaptic sinew of your lack of patriotism!

Excuse me, but the next noise you hear is likely to be the concussion of my exploding head.

Don't read any further. Turn your backs, close your eyes and forget you ever ventured this way.

Abandon all hope, you who enter here.

All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are rich and well-born and the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct permanent share in the government... Can a democratic assembly who annually revolve in the mass of the people be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.

Alexander Hamilton

Hamilton wanted a President and Senate chosen for life to counter-balance the "imprudence of democracy."

The myth of America is that it's all about the inalienable rights of the common man for the common good. This couldn't be further from the truth. From the beginning, America was conceived in liberty for the land baron and wealthy merchant class.

How's it working for you so far?

So Congress can deny Bush the money he wants to escalate the war or even continue it, through either of the two legislative routes described above. I doubt the resistance in Iraq is counting on it. They no doubt think it's up to them to get the troops out, and that's probably a realistic assessment.

This is our choice. Either Congress does the job they were elected to do and end this illegal, irresponsible and immoral war of aggression in Iraq by cutting war-funds as was done in Vietnam or we lose, militarily, to a bunch of rag-tag, low-tech, impoverished third-worlders on a mission from God. (A mission I do not begrudge one iota. Jihadists may not believe in inalienable rights, but they know a crusader when they see one.)

There is no third way. It is either or. Either the Democrats assert their power of the purse under the Constitution or, like Lady Macbeth, go around in the middle of the night, in delirium, with steel-wool Brillo pads, in a mad effort to wash the blood from their hands.

Hugo is getting the power of the presidential decree, don't you know, his word is your command. At least Hugo has his rubber-stamp Chavista Congress 'grant' him the power for eighteen months. George W. Bush, when he granted himself the power of presidential decree, didn't tell a soul and now fights to keep and expand his unconstitutional "rights" with the support of a good-old-boy judge-club filled with Bushista loyalists.

At least Hugo is honest.

And what is Hugo planning to do with his new power of the unitary executive?

He wants to transform his country into a communal utopia brimming with justice, equality and celebrate the human dignity of the little guy.

What has George W. Bush done with his unilateral power of the imperial presidency?

He's made a wasteland in the name of peace.

If the world, miraculously, does not go down in flames, led to perdition by madmen corrupted absolutely by the lunatic ravings of their own private Idahoes, and there are historians left to ponder the WTF, what will they eventually say about the United States of America?

We know, those of us with even a modicum of sense and self-awareness, we are in a period of epochal history-making. We, the players, are too close to the situation to understand and appreciate how our tale will end. It could go either way. Will we save our skins or hang, together, from the gallows of our fear to try?

Did you hear about the Mannequin Man, Ronald Dotson, 39, of Detroit, sentenced to up to 30 years in prison because his sexual obsession with female mannequins drove him to repeatedly break store-front windows and steal the hard-plastic girls for his fetish fun? (Not the man pictured above.)

His latest arrest came after police found him near a smashed window with a comely mannequin dressed in a French maid's outfit. According to the AP and other sources I have checked, it is unclear what the police found Mr. Dotson doing with the fake lady, but I would hazard a rough guess he wasn't practicing his French.

So why does this sad (but entertaining) case merit a diary, instead of letting it drift off into the realm of American Quirkiness? It's not about serial killers or 'postal' human time bombs.

It's because Dotson's judge stated that although Ronald never in his life assaulted another person, his behavior "strikes fear in the community."

PHOENIX - U.S. immigration police have rounded up hundreds of criminal aliens in southern California, as part of one of their largest ever roundups...

...the week-long sweep identified 423 criminal aliens...

..."It is one of the largest crackdowns on criminal aliens ever carried out in the United States," Kice told Reuters in a telephone interview...

...The sweep came as part of "Operation Return to Sender," a nationwide initiative targeting criminal aliens...

Well, it's about time.

Hola amigos! Como estan?

Tambien, gracias.

As you know, I am expert at talking for hours on end about anything and everything. I have always loved the sound of my own voice. It's natural, like not being bothered by your own stink as you are the stink of others. To this day, the farts of my brother Raul drive me over the edge.

But, as I travel to God, I want to say something to you, America, I want to say something to you.

It did not have to be this way.

Do you find yourself enthralled with Lou Dobbs's shining soliloquies in defense of America's middle class? I do. (Who says we don't have a class driven society?)

While I find Lou's xenophobia and racism reprehensible as regards the immigration issue, I find myself nodding my head and yupping ol' Lou when he waxes poetic about our jobs sent over seas for cheap labor and the corporate 'money power's' willful neglect of America's working class to the point of ruin.

Lou Dobbs is no prairie populist, though he sings that song. Lou Dobbs is as elite as they come. Frankly, Lou Dobbs is a snob. So why his heartfelt lamentations over the dire straits of America's middle class? You don't hear a breath about the billions of folks who face death and dying everyday through poverty, disease and oppression by tyrants with Swiss bank accounts on the payroll of 'free trading' transnational corporations.

So what's up with Lou and his ilk? They don't give a damn about people.

"The search of the young today is more specific than the ancient search for the Holy Grail. The search of the youth today is for ways and means to make the machine - and the vast bureaucracy of the corporation state and of government that runs that machine - the servant of man. That is the revolution that is coming. It could be a revolution in the nature of an explosive political regeneration. It depends on how wise the Establishment is. If, with its stockpile of arms, it resolves to suppress the dissenters, America will face, I fear, an awful ordeal."

William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion, 1969, p96

Did the revolution Justice Douglas bespoke come and go or is it about to begin?

RICHMOND - A resolution to have Virginia apologize for slavery will encounter some opposition in the House of Delegates this month, according to legislators.

... "Are we going to force the Jews to apologize for killing Christ?"

Uh, oh.

Some 64 percent of the British public believe that their government should back an international agreement banning all nuclear weapons, according to a new poll released Monday.

Damn hippie Brits.

Only 18 percent disagreed when asked about the following: "International conventions are in force banning chemical and biological weapons. The UK government should support a similar convention to ban nuclear weapons."

A weapon of mass destruction by any other name... So, this got me to thinking.

The only way to excise the madness of King George is rebellion. No, not me and you in streets with pitchforks to chase the monster from our midst.

I mean rebellion through the legal provisions as provided by our Constitution.

I was fine to let the process take its course and let the Democrats do their thing with thorough investigations, hearings and then, if the evidence showed, articles of impeachment. I was content - as long as George Walker Bush was brought to heel and his administration rode into irrelevance - to uncover the truth for posterity and punish our embarrassment in due process.

Justice is important, but truth is imperative.

Prisoners held at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba are being driven insane by a tightening of conditions and the situation of their indefinite detention without trial, according to lawyers and rights activists involved with the US camp.

Which just goes to show you don't have to be a prisoner of war in a fake war to be driven insane by the wit and wisdom of George Walker Bush.

The killer question: Do Democrats stick with comfortable Washington routines or make a new alliance with the people who just elected them? Progressives can play an influential role as ankle-biting enforcers. They then have to get up close and personal with Democrats. Explain that evasive, empty gestures won't cut it anymore. Remind the party that it is vulnerable to similar retribution from voters as long as most Americans don't have a clue about what Democrats stand for.

William Greider, The Nation Magazine

Now the Democrats have assumed command and run the show, which Democrats will we get? The egg-shell, don't-say-anything-to-offend-the-almighty-dollar Democrats, or ass-kicking prairie populists out to take the racket out of war and the hot-air out of the people's business?

Is it me, or is it a daily mind boggle how primitive human beings are juxtaposed against computers, moon landings and stem-cell research?

It is so easy for human beings to lose their minds in the heat of passion, it makes logic and reason appear fanciful or trivial. In spite of the sophistry, rhetoric and clever machinations of manipulation we contrive with our forked tongues and hot agendas, when all else fails to achieve our goal; kill someone.

Don't get me wrong, I would have knocked the Michael Dukakis question out of the park; if New York wants to send jay-walkers to the chair, that's their business, as long as there is some well stated due process that guarantees fairness, justice and appeal.

What I am talking about is this lynch mob mentality that permeates the atmosphere these days like sulfur farms in hell.