Author: Dick

I have decided to take this show (mainly me) on the road. Once again I am going to try to make it in Southeast Texas, Beaumont in particular. I might have to get in the crawfish industry to survive, who knows? It may be awhile before I have my own Internet connection. Thus, I will post whenever I have time and a Wi-Fi signal. Have blog will travel. Talk to you soon.

It appears Prez Gee Dubya will deliver his new strategy for Iraq on Wednesday evening. The latest news seems to indicate that Bush will opt for a “plus-up” of tens of thousands of troops rather than a “surge.” Just whatever the hell is the difference may be left up to confused lexicologists for centuries to come.

While most everything that the Bush administration has touched has turned into crap, one might say that this bunch does have a penchant for putting lipstick on a pig. Take, for instance, the new Iraq strategy which is being unveiled as the “New Way Forward.”

The zippy little slogan oozes with positivity. It’s new (supposedly). It’s a way (well, one way at least). And, it’s forward, at least that is how it will be spun.

No matter how much the plan to plus-up-surge-flood Iraq with tens of thousands of troops might work, or not, a problem exists that must have been overlooked by the normally detail-oriented young Republicans in the Bush bunker. The name New Way Forward, you see, sounds painfully similar to the “Great Leap Forward” program launched during the late 1950s-early 1960s in Communist China by Mao Tse-tung.

Chairman Mao’s plan was simple enough. They would transform a backwards agrarian economy into one that would befit a major Communist industrial nation. According to Wikipedia’s passage in the link above:

“Mao believed that progress and its resulting abundance of goods, if implemented fearlessly, could come in great leaps and bounds. The plan is generally agreed to have failed in its intentions, leading to millions of deaths plus widespread economic dislocation, and is widely regarded both in and out of China as an unmitigated policy disaster.”

Ooh. One would suppose that it wasn’t that great after all. We should all hope and pray, if you do that sort of thing, that the New Way Forward will not result in the unmitigated disaster that was the Great Leap Forward. But then, maybe the philosophies of Chairman Mao and Chairman Gee Dubya aren’t all that far apart. In parting, ponder this quotation of Chairman Mao:

“Every Communist must grasp the truth, ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.'” — “Problems of War and Strategy” (November 6, 1938), Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 224.

Any similarities between yesterday and today are purely coincidental. Right?

Some of my favorite Texas political bloggers such as Vince’s Capitol Annex and Eileen’s side-splitting In the Pink Texas are wound up over the House speaker’s race. But EFD — not so much.

In fact, other than what state legislative matters I have to watch for in the course of my work as a writer, I could care less than little about the new Texas Lege session.

In times past I would be excited, jazzed, etc., over the start of a new session and all the political intrigue that went along with it. Now, not so much.

My prodigious apathy over the Texas Legislature dates back to the 2003 session when the Republicans took over. Since the body of the Lege had historically been GOPs in a Dem’s clothing for as long as I can remember, I was hoping that the rabid partisanship that defined politics during the late 20th and early 21st centuries would somehow miss the Texas Legislature. But miss it, it didn’t. And the trifling matters such as school finance, water issues and highways all had to wait in order for puppet-master Republican congressional whip Tom DeLay to engineer redrawing congressional districts. Then came the Democrats leaving for Oklahoma and I would have been just as happy had the Republicans followed suit.

The Texas Legislature has thus seemed like a wretched case of body lice during the last few years except for the fact that one may sometime get rid of lice. I do not relish the stupid legislation and the silly political maneuvering that may come from this or any future Texas Legislatures until it can be shown that they are doing at least a smidgen of work in the best interest of the state rather than in the best self-interest or best special interest.

Of course, I will follow what’s going on with the Lege in the news and on the blogs of my favorite bloggers. But until the Lege shows me something in the way of governing, I will continue my orgy of apathy.

A teen in my adopted hometown of Beaumont, Texas, obviously did not stay awake in Joyriding 101 class. At least he forgot the part that says if you are going to steal an automobile and go joyriding, make sure that you are able to drive it.

This kid stole the Beaumont Fire Department’s most expensive truck, a quint with an aerial ladder, and took it for a joyride before flipping it on its side.

The theft happened at an apartment fire on what was the very last day for retiring Fire Chief Mickey Bertrand. After this incident, the recent tumultuous contract negotiations between the city and Beaumont’s firefighters union, and the outgoing chief’s suspension for condoning an assistant chief’s purchase of tobacco products for overworked firefighters during the aftermath of Hurricane Rita, it wouldn’t be surprising if Bertrand is breathing a sigh of relief to be leaving.