I am sitting here, feeling completely down. Work is boring, and it is humiliating to have nothing useful to do. I am on staff for scout leader training this weekend, but it is clear that I am not part of the “core” team, and though my contributions are valued, I’m really not part of the main group. Personally I feel useless and unneeded. I continue to worry about my mother, as well as my brother’s family in Florida as they struggle to deal with my disturbed sister in law. In addition, I am never out of the cloud of despair over what is the state of my country. While we have the potential to be the greatest good on earth, we wallow in the paranoia and insecurities of an incompetent administration.

As I sit here, I am watching the end of a movie I have seen perhaps a dozen times, Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks. With it, I am forced to acknowledge not only the inner strength that we as Americans have to get us through troubles, but also the inner strength we as a country have, and the miracles that our grasp of technology can work.

While I am never not moved to tears by this film, for some reason this time it is almost uplifiting. In spite of my despairs, I am reminded that we have resources within us for ultimate good and success, and our technological superiority is an integral part of our resources, not a detraction from them. I’m sure no one who did not live through the Apollo 13 experience can understand the immediacy it has for me, and people of my age.

There is hope. NASA needs our support, for no other reason than to give a solid form to that hope.

From CNN:

Remember Patrick Buchanan, that ultra-conservative who ran for the republican nomination for president twice? Surely he supports the President and his foreign policies.

umm, maybe not….

If the price weren’t so high for this country, this would almost all be funny.
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From an article in the NY Times:

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So, Condoleezza Rice will testify under oath before the 9/11 commission. Perhaps they relented after the NY Times reported:

Had a great time on Saturday – Kitty and I went to see a play called “Wintertime” at the Wilma Theater, and then to dinner at Morimoto’s.

The play was by Charles Mee who is rapidly becoming my favorite current playwright (as though I know any at all…) and has been described as a “surreal romantic tragicomedy” which is about as close a description as you can get. Morimoto’s is the extremely upscale restaurant by one of the “Iron Chefs” of TV fame, and was perhaps the best restaurant meal I’ve ever had. (Warning, you’ve got to love Japanese cuisine with lots of raw or lightly cooked fish, but I do).

Sunday I was up at seven to meet the troop at a weekend campout. Unfortunately when I got there, they were off at a firehouse breakfast. That sounds like fun, but I was a little perturbed as it kind of defeated the purpose of the trip, which was to get everyone up to speed on camping skills. It also meant there was a lot of fresh food left over, paid for but not used. As a leader I don’t really approve, but I didn’t want to say anything at the time. After that, home, quick change, and off to the homebrew store, where we were swamped, very busy. Home, collapse, and watch Xavier lose, unfortunately.

On the national front, I see where the bush-league wants to declassify portions of Richard Clarke’s earlier testimoney before a congressional panel investigating the September 11 attacks in 2002 to prove he lied under oath. Fascinating. They are willing to hide behind executive privilege to keep Rice from testifying (and weren’t they blistering when Clinton tried to use that tactic?), but want to declassify other testimony for political gain. Even better is the response from Clarke. He told them fine, as long as you declassify all of it and not just a line here or there, and that that would prove he was not lying. I bet that shuts them up if they can’t just pick and chose a few sentences for political purposes. I find it amazing how the whitehouse attack machine can try to paint a 20 year veteran, known as a policy hawk, and who was extremely supportive of the current Bush’s father, as just a hack trying to cash in on a book.

Richard Clarke was a career member of the Senior Executive Service, having begun his federal service in 1973 in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In other words, about the same time the current president was hiding out in Alabama, dodging his national guard service.

In the sidebar to the right is an updating counter of the dead and wounded from the illegal Iraq war. As I write this, it stands at 588 dead and 3355 wounded.

I wonder how many of their families feel, as President Bush obviously does, that after his administration hammered on these weapons as a justification for attacking Iraq, that not finding them is a big Yuck?

Does anyone but me find it interesting that Condoleezza Rice can spend hours attacking Richard Clarke, quoting reams of internal memos and emails to supposedly rebutt him, but can’t be bothered to testify herself before the 9/11 commission?

Richard Clarke was apparently respected enough to serve in four consecutive administrations, including the conservative Reagan and Bush I years. One explanation being put forward is that Clarke is just disgruntled because he was ignored, and Rice has said that he was not always “in the loop.” According to her official government biography Rice during that time:

From the interview with Richard Clarke on 60 minutes: