Twelfth Month

The grinding mendacity of the Republicans has become boring and absurd, and, I keep hoping, so obvious to my fellow Americans that they will start to react negatively to all of it. Last night I watched an hilarious bit of the Dobbs show on Fox. He was talking to two "experts" concerning the effort to reduce tensions with Iran, prefacing the segment with critical quotes from Henry Kissinger and George Schultz (remember them?--you're more or less as old as me then). His experts were Judith Miller, disgraced shill of the Bush Administration and Scooter Libby, and Professor Walid Phares. Dobbs quoted the Schultz/Kissinger remarks, expecting Miller and Phares to jump in with hobbed nailed boots.

They didn't, even when Dobbs paraphrased the Kissinger comments as "two adults correcting rash and not too intelligent adolescents at play in the White House." Here's the segment:

http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/lou-dobbs-tonight/index.html#/v/2890839022001

As you can see for yourself, Dobbs was unable to brow-beat his own "experts" into a full-on attack of what is clearly a very circumscribed and modest effort by the United States State Department to make some headway with Iran on the issue of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Even when he resorts to what must be his nuclear rhetorical weapon: "bloody hell!" Ms Miller remains firm. "Let's wait and see," she responds. That is exactly the Administration's modest position.

Later, of course, we found Mr. O'Reilly brow-beating Alan Colmes on the health care reform issue. Nothing's changed over there. Out of a group including O'Reilly, Krauthammer, and one of the many blonde newsreaders of Fox (who might as well wear Hooters teeshirts to work, since this is exactly their function in the Fox system), only Colmes opined that it was too early to know how the health insurance reform was going to play out. O'Reilly even invoked numbers: "but you're in the minority here, four to one." Colmes refrained from pointing out that this was exactly his horrible function at Fox--a Washington General along with Juan Williams, forever being dribbled into the opposite basket by louts and girls with Hooter teeshirts.

Maybe Ms. Miller feels the same way. She once, after all, was an esteemed member of the press corps of the New York Times. But in that moment with Dobbs, she stood her ground, and was articulate. It was a small, hopeful sign, and I looked out into the darkness at the Cone, lit once again in our now-annual Xmas Rite. So what if we can't have an indoor Christmas Tree with 5 cats living here. We have the Cone.

Cone 5

Christmas of course continues its approach, possibly at its petty pace, or possibly with the velocity of a Japanese bullet train. As Einstein proved, these things are most definitely relative (and Einstein even used the metaphor of a train I believe--what rarified company I travel). This morning the sky is turning milky. Yesterday it was a blue often encountered (as Libby noted) just after a snow storm. There is not much chance of snow on Christmas day around these parts, and I hope it stays thataways.

This morning, perhaps due to the crispness in the cabin, seeping in from outside, the Houdanhenians were racing around at pretty much the speed of the bullet train Christmas, and now and then would leap four paws on us snug in our bed, then off again down the stairs, or out on the window ledge over the stone floor. The idea was for me to get the hell up and into the kitchen, rip open those food packets, make 'em some breakfast dammit. Which of course I eventually did, and pretty quickly, to keep them from waking Libby up too. Momma was out on the porch too, and the yaller Tom peeking out from under the cabin. I got the boys eating on one side of the room, took food out to the outside cats, bits for the Tom so's he wouldn't so quickly try to bums rush Momma out of her food. I had to walk back around through the slider because coming back through the kitchen door scares Momma off the porch and away from her bowl, when then offers an opening for Tom, which is exactly how it works in the NFL for that matter, the pulling guard takes out the inside linebacker and voila there's a nice hole for a good runner to scoot through.

In short, while we work towards some rendezvous with Xmas Destiny in a couple of days, in the universe of the Houdahenians things circle more simply around eat, sleep, poop, play, catch stuff to eat or play with, eat some more, and when tired out, find a nice human lap because the boys did learn as kittens, at just the right moment, that people actually like cats. We might get them another bed for Christmas, as they're also finding out about how nice it is back behind the wood stove. Cats worship wood stoves, allus have, allus will.

Here in our world, we've let skilled rhetoricians working in the employ of businesses with profitable but dangerous products to ply hypnotize us into a dream state where chimeras lurk around every shadow, and illusions protect us from nothing, real or imagined. This business of hypnotism has gone on so long that possibly a majority in even our legislative bodies, state and federal suffer from a profound loss of simple common sense. Thus, to give but one sad example, the gun-good-guy v gun-bad-guy deal is asymmetric. This means, as any simple Houdahenian surely knows, that, e.g., the gun-bad-guy has any target, while the gun-good-guy has only one. We met the idea of "friendly fire" long, long ago, probably during the Trojan War if truth be known. Jesus, People!

But meanwhile, the cone moved to it's next resting place, out past the slider where I'm working on a space to build a free-standing deck, which I'm hoping the cone itself will one day decorate, and which now stands as a harbinger of the coming 2013, a New Year with hopefully more music and joy. And comfort.

Amen.

Cone, 3

As predicted, Saturday was warmer. The cone warmed in the morning sun, and the condensation on its cold steel surface evaporated. I liked looking at the geometry of it, against the field and the woods. In the morning we watched the ongoing Connecticut story unfolding. The mother was not a teacher at all, but perhaps a shooting enthusiast. Her younger son came to the range with her, and was reclusive but very smart. Her husband and their older son had moved out a few years back. She would go to a local bar of an evening and have a drink. The boy had tried to buy his own rifle and been turned down by the store. Teachers performed acts of remarkable heroism. The principal died heroically, as did the school psychologist. Newtown was described as the safest place in America. Some jerk "preacher" from Alabama said this is what happens when "god is not wanted" in a school, while his very words illustrated what happens when God is not welcomed in a heart.

In the early afternoon the cone was ready.

There is possibly some Christmas about this, and something older.

The Anasazi dreams remain, a great wind behind a red-rock canyon wall.

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There is a great deal of thoughtful writing at Digby's joint right now. The following link is outstanding:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/sacrificing-thousands-of-kids-on-altar.html

The deeply muddled American comprehension of its place in the world is reflected in the facts reported by Juan Cole:

http://www.juancole.com/2012/12/lets-also-remember-the-176-children-killed-by-us-drones.html

Cone, Part One

Here at the ranch things were pretty quiet. The boys were stacking firewood, and eating. The dogies had plenty of hay. There were rumors of coyotes, but none had been spotted. It was so warm that in the mornings there was fog, and the roads were shiny.

One morning the cone arrived.

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Link of the day: http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-truth-revealed-you-heard-that-obama.html