Merry Christmas, Terrorists!

You will be happy to know that Mike Chertoff, head of Homeland Security, this week gave us our annual "Merry Christmas Scare-Ya". He reminded us that TERRORISM is still right there at our doors waiting to spring when we are not looking, tear out our throats and leave America dying in a huge pool of blood. Hey, Happy Holidays to you, too, Mikey!

According to the Homeland Security website, our official threat level for the holidays is YELLOW and the aviation threat level is ORANGE. You know and I know that we will never get down to GREEN or even BLUE, (which is really out of order, amplitudally speaking) nor will it ever be RED, because that will mean that there is not longer a threat, but an attack. I think this whole system is a bunch of colorful bull.

The truth is, all the terrorism in America this year has come from Americans.

Tell me, what are the most horrible, deadly things that have happened over the past year?

Just yesterday six students were shot at a schoolbus stop in Las Vegas in an altercation over a girl. Mikey is right, the holiday season IS a bad time for American terrorism: mall shootings in Nebraska, church shootings in Colorado, in April a shooter killed 32 people at Virginia Tech and these are only the BIG stories. Other school invasions and shootings occur leaving one or more student dead, sexually assaulted and/or held hostage. And that's just the schools. Americans never know when some nut is going to take a pot-shot at them: on the highway? At McDonalds? Going to a wedding? A funeral? Isn't there ANY place safe anymore?

I don't understand why President Bush and his Homeland Security have made such a bug-a-boo about foreign terrorists. More Americans have died from Bush starting the war with Iraq than in the 9-11 attacks. If we're fighting foreign terrorism, should we really be doing their job for them? I think they just got lucky because the Bush administration was full of dumbasses. The real threat to America is Americans, both at large and in the administration.

So, maybe it's time to quit teaching our kids that the way to solve problems is violence. Indiana Jones was funny when he pulled a gun and shot the guy he was fighting with a whip, but really, do you need to bring a gun to a fist fight? Isn't there another way to solve disagreements besides killing one another?

In the animal world, we don't fight to the death. We bluster and bite and hiss and claw, but when one of us beats the tar out of the other, the tarless one gives. Humans used to cry UNCLE! Now they yell EAT HOT LEAD! Sheesh, and you people are in charge of the planet.

I hear that guns don't kill people and that's true, I guess. Guns don't aim shoot on their own, cars don't get drunk and run over people, and knives don't throw themselves into people's ribs.

Mom knows a lady who was run over by a drunk driver. She was out looking for her cat one evening. When she crossed the road, the guy ran right into her. She went under the car and got smooshed down. Then he didn't stop and dragged her along for two blocks, smearing pieces of her all over the road the entire way. (the cat showed up home about the same time, all fine and dandy) That's bad enough.

But over in Amarillo, a high school student Brandon Camp killed Brian Deneke, another student, by running over him in his mother's Cadillac because the group of people Brian ran around with wore dark clothes, piercings and funny hair. Brandon drove over him yelling, "I'm a ninja in my Cadillac!"

Camp, a bloated jock, was given a suspended sentence and at graduation was applauded by the student body. Amarillo is a pretty sick place. Deneke was a pacifist, an artist and was planning to get his mohawk cut in the next few days for his family photo because it would make his parents happy. He died in his brother's arms.

As a cat, I can honestly say I abhor violence (except maybe against some nasty birdies, and then only if I can get through the screen). Homeland Security is rightly named. Most of our violent attacks start right here at home.

Merry Christmas, Mikey!

Mom's Got the Fever Again

Jeesh,

Mom's been really busy. I guess stuff is coming out of her brain like you-know-what coming out of a cat who ate castor oil! I think it's just falling right out.

First, mom does NOT like Martha Stewart. She yells THE FELON! every time she sees her on TV and wonders why everyone thinks she's just plain ol' innocent Martha peddling her wares when she's got a record that keeps her from buying a gun or voting. I think, hey, she paid her dues, leave the chick alone, right? But I guess mom holds grudges or something. She thinks that someone who held herself up as a model of American domesticity and profited so much from it, then went to prison because of her greed, should not just walk out of jail and be allowed to step into our homes as if she nothing ever happened. No one's learning a lesson here as far as she's concerned. Mom just can't stand her on those commercials with the Chicken-of-the-dirt-eating Jessica Simpson. So, she came up with this:



I swear, my mom is a nut.

Anyways, she's been working on these Mr. VooDoo Head dolls. Her friend back in NY was having trouble with a supervisor, so mom offered to make her a voodoo doll. So, she finally finished the first one, and it is a cuddly little thing with interchangeable face parts. That way you can use it again and again. It comes with a black candle, the parts and 13 pearl-headed pins, plus a genuine Spirit Feather (due to the dangers of obtaining the feathers of the endangered American Eagle, some feathers may be from a turkey). Let me show you:

MVH as a guy:


MVH as a girl:


MVH Kit:


I have to admit, the label and instruction sheet are hilarious. (It says they are hand-assembled by gay Haitian zombies)

Now she's getting ready to make candidate dolls for me to debate on video. I think that will be fun! I can't wait. (She says she'll put catnip in them! Come at me, Barak, BRING IT ON!)



Mom went to an art show yesterday because one of her paintings was hanging there. She said she wasn't happy with the way they hanged it (hung?) on the wall, kind of low and crooked in a back room, but at least it was up.


She said there were guitar players there, jugglers, carolers, AND- Mr and Mrs Claus were there, too. She got a pic on her phone, but we don't know how to transfer them yet, so you'll have to wait until we do in order to see it. She also said that there was lots of FREE FOOD, but Jenny Crack wouldn't let her eat any. Jeesh, she could at LEAST have brought some home for us.

Well, I have more to report on the home front, but I think this is plenty for now. Mom's brain is gurgling again, and she told me she's thinking about a new painting, one with handprints in it. It sounds interesting, but I hope it doesn't have to go to the FBI for approval. Mom's a little wild and crazy sometimes (mostly in her past, though) and who knows what fingerprints will tell us?

Talk to ya later, kitties

Perry

Approved by Perry Tenitiss
Perry Tenitiss for President in 2008 Campaign
K. Fairweather, Chairman

The New New Deal

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- There is "a high risk of a catastrophic runway collision occurring in the United States," congressional investigators concluded Wednesday."
Although this comment is alarming, the statistics that follow say that the chances of being hit in an airplane by another airplane are 6.05 out of every one million air traffic operations, or .0000605%. Long odds, I should say, since your chances of being T-boned at any given intersection in Texas by my mom's mom are about 30-1. Still, when a car hits a car, or even a van and a bus, there are not 100 people involved, nor are survivors likely to be falling thousands of feet to the ground. Still, the skies are crowded and it's not getting any better.

Alternative? The AmTrack system. This is an out-dated, inconvienient, overcrowded and under-maintained system of passenger railways that serves mainly the East Coast, but does have a few vines running dismally (and expensively) through the vast back-woods known as the rest of America. Stops are nearly arbitrary and although many, many places have rails running through them, almost none of them have passenger service.

Or, you could take a bus. Or you could hitchhike. Neither of these options are near as safe or clean as they were back in the glory days of the Great Depression, World War II or even those socially conscious days of the Great American Love Movement.

Or, you can drive. Or you could back when you didn't have to mortgage the children to take a trip over the river and through the woods to visit Grandma and Grandpa for the holidays. But, thanks to our benevolent and beneficial foreign policies and this administration's obsession with aiding "bidness", gasoline is now only a sweet nostalgia for many of us. We struggle to put enough into our tanks to go to work to pay for our rent and groceries.

So, what, you ask, is a person to do nowadays?

Well, I have an idea.

Many, or I dare say most of us don't remember the Great Depression first hand, but we know about it, Roosevelt and The New Deal. The Works Projects Administration (WPA) and the Civillian Conservation Corps (CCC) gave jobs to thousands out of work by creating public projects and putting funds out into the communities. Workers traveled all over the country following the programs to stay employed and sent money home to their starving families. And the country was given such wonderful advantages as the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Hoover Dam and beautiful and enduring works of art that can be seen in and on buildings built under these programs all around the nation. Right now we are blowing $12 billion dollars a month in Iraq. Why don't we just come home and put that money to good use here?

I propose that we recreate Franklin Delano Roosevelt's programs under the New Deal and go to work putting in a National Passenger Rail system. And I don't mean to put passenger trains on existing rail lines. Let me explain.



Why can't we map out a sensible web of routes with major traffic leading to a smaller set of webs leading to a yet smaller set? With this type of technology, trains could be elevated and stacked with smaller, low-passenger lines circling between larger trunk lines. That way a person from Mouskin, for example, could catch a train to, say Austin, then go to Kansas City Hub and from there go back down the mountain to where ever: Chicago to Cleveland to Solan or Los Angeles to El Mirage or Jacksonville to Crystal River, Florida? Let me show you an example:

And while we're at it, why should it take days to get across the country? The technology is available for high-speed, magnetic-levitation (mag-lev) bullet trains that can take passengers quick as a wink from one city to the next. The mag-lev trains actually travel without touching a rail, so the frictionless travel requires much less energy than a conventional train. And, with the need for electricity and not fuel, energy sources need not be combustible. Solar cells and microwave concentrators could be used to generate electricity both on the trains themselves and along the right of ways of the new routes. Other non-combustible sources of energy could also be used such as wind power, water power and even geothermal and tidal power. Think of it, high-speed, long-distance travel with no pollution and NO GASOLINE! And, since we are teetering on the brink of another depression, I think that a pre-emptive strike on American unemployment makes more sense than on non-existent weapons of mass destruction, don't you?

And think of the advantages: People could live farther out from their jobs, more people could commute to high-paying jobs, small, abandoned towns could become revitalized, education opportunities would become more readily available, cultural exchange would be facilitated, travel could become affordable again, commerce would cover a wider area, large health centers would become more available to the average citizen and Americans would have something to be proud of again. (Plus, cats could go ANYWHERE!) What's wrong with this picture?

Well, I'm sure there is a downside, but let me ask you, what do you think about the upside? Is it something worth exploring? I can tell you, it's something we can do! And how do I know?

Because there is nothing I have just mentioned that has not already been done. All we have to do is get it through our heads that we could use a safer, more efficient and effective way to travel across this country. And, that together, we can afford it. I mean, really, look at what we're paying for now. And remember, we've pulled together and done it before. Better transportation, increases in commerce and more jobs. Now, you tell me, hmmm?

Perry Tenitiss
Perry for President in 2007