Eight Feet Deep

“I smell a rat,” said the Weasel.

The Bush Boys finally reversed course on their secret, warrantless wiretapping practices as an equally secret court will oversee the program.

Of course, the White House denies that this about face had anything to do with the testimony today of Attorney General Al “The Weasel” Gonzales before the now-Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee.

While the reversal may (or just as well may not) be good news for those who like the little nicities of the U.S. Constitution, bear in mind these traits of weasels as outlined by The Free Dictionary:

“Weasels are very active and chiefly terrestrial but are able to climb trees. They prey on small animals by night, often more than they eat, and spend the day in dens made in holes in the ground, rock piles, or hollow stumps. Although they are notorious for destruction of poultry, the damage they do is far outweighed by their value as destroyers of rodents.”

So folks should watch out at night for our friend the AG, not to mention looking up for him in the trees or in holes and stumps. By all means, keep your hens away from this destroyer of chickens and be sure to harbor any pet squirrels or other pet rats which you might fancy. Oh, and also keep your copy of the Constitution away from the likes of the Weasel lest he decides to feast upon it again rather than poultry or rodents.

No, the picture is not of conditions here in Beaumont, on the upper Texas Gulf Coast. I don’t even know where this picture was taken. All I know is somewhere in Texas sometime by someone and it was a National Weather Service photo.

I have been in Southeast Texas since Friday. The temp was in the 70s all weekend. Conditions have plunged downhill since. Luckily, I’ve not encountered any icy roads although the wind, humid air and freezing temperature sort of takes your breath away. I feel fortunate to have missed the really treacherous conditions but I suppose I should not count my chickens, the reason being is that I have no chickens. Or no eggs for that matter.

At any rate, I have work to do so au Revlon.

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?