Oh, good Christ, can they say anything at all? Do they actually believe, in some warped way, that we will believe whatever it is?

I offer Exhibit One for the prosecution:

United States Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WVa) is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Last week, he was the key player in fashioning the “compromise” proposal legalizing domestic eavesdropping with retroactive immunity for the telecom giants, thus purporting to shield them from lawsuits.

The telecoms, as you may know, turned over phone records and everything else on tap to the feds in order to facilitate the massive illegal spying the NSA, CIA, and everyone else is up to. When AT&T says “Your world, delivered,” they’re not kidding.

The reason the proposal Rockefeller made possible was a “compromise” is, apparently, that the government agrees, for the time being, that it will not break into your house unless it feels the need. It also does not cancel the 2008 Presidential elections, however the door is still open on that one.

This year, Senator Rockefeller has been the grateful recipient of $42,000.00 from more than fifty of the very top executives and lawyers at AT&T and Verizon, which held fund-raising dinners in, respectively, in Texas and New York.

Rockefeller denies that the money had anything to do with his Herculean labors on behalf of these crooks.

As we used to say in law school, res ipsa loquitur, which means: the thing speaks for itself, you lying sack of shit.

His office released this statement: "Any suggestion that Senator Rockefeller would make policy decisions based on campaign contributions is patently false. He made his decision to support limited immunity based on the Intelligence Committee's careful review of the situation and our national security interests."

I repeat. Rockefeller is the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

During the Nazi occupation of France, there were French government officials who aided them. These were called Quislings. Some were naturally interested in fascism; others just liked the money. In the end, reasons didn’t matter.

There is a reason that the public opinion of congress is at 11% The nation’s going to hell and the Democratic majorities are doing absolutely nothing about it beyond “positioning” themselves for the next election. If there is one.

Tonight is game 7 of the American League Championship series between the Boston Red Sox and Cleveland Indians, and the winner will face the Colorado Rockies in the World Series beginning Wednesday.

Since I’ve been a fan since early childhood, I usually watch these contests even when neither team especially interests me, and even when the television announcers include morons such as Tim McCarver.

The drama of this evening’s game, such as there is, has been slightly disrupted by a story on the front page of today’s San Francisco Chronicle. The headline reads, “Drug scandal hits the playoffs.”

The story, by reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, who previously wrote a series – and a best-selling book – accusing Barry Bonds of all sorts of drug-related misdeeds based on alleged grand jury testimony which the public still hasn’t seen, names Cleveland pitcher Paul Byrd. The opening paragraph reads:

“Paul Byrd, the veteran pitcher who has helped the Cleveland Indians reach the brink of the World Series, bough nearly $25,000 worth of human growth hormone and syringes from a Florida anti-aging clinic that was targeted by law enforcement for illegally distributing performance-enhacing drugs, business records show.”

The second paragraph details “13 purchases” between August, 2002, and January of 2005. The Chron story goes on to dramatically reveal that records its intrepid reporters “reviewed...included Byrd’s purchase and shipping orders, payment data and other information including his birth date and Social Security number. “The records were provided by a confidential news source...”

Now tell me: what does this look like? It looks like dark, infamous, illegal deeds, that’s what. But it turns out that the dark and infamous deed here is the bullshit journalism engaged in by these Chronicle assholes and the newspaper which runs their junk on the front page.

See, here’s the thing. What Byrd did in taking human growth hormone over a two-year span was legal. It was prescribed by his doctor. It was not hidden. It was paid for using his credit card, not a bagful of cash. It was delivered to the facilities of the teams he pitched for. It was not proscribed by major league baseball.

There is no story. There are only a couple of jokes who think they’re reporters and a newspaper whose relevance has devolved to the level of birdcage liner.

In a news conference before tonight’s game, Byrd, whose previous interest to me had been mostly his weird resemblance to actor Michael J. Pollard, noted that what he took was not a steroid, had been prescribed by a reputable doctor, and was legal. He also said that he had loved baseball his whole life, honored it, and respected its rules. The accusations were troubling, he said, because people who didn’t bother to get the whole story were going to think he’d done wrong.

Meanwhile, the Chronicle ran another storyinside and of much less importance, I guess, regarding the FBI’s being recruited by the Defense Department to try to locate some evidence which might be used against those “terrorist” suspects being held without trial in various hellholes around the world. It seems that the CIA’s widespread use of torture had rendered much of what “information” had been extracted thusfar as of questionable legal utility and factual value.

“Those guys were using techniques that we didn’t even want to be in the room for,”one senior federal law enforcement official said. “The CIA determined they were going to torture people, and we made the decision not to be involved.”

Okay, I think I get it. There’s no reason to be surprised that the American people have no clue what their government is doing. The mass media believe that the big stories are about the drug problems of spoiled, brainless jerkoffs like Brittany Spears and Paris Hilton. Their star reporters write about inflated or sometimes completely made-up sports scandals. They bury any real news the remaining real journalists write about.

Thirty years from now, when survivors exhume the ruins of the American Empire, the remaining cronies and sycophants of the Murdoch/F*x era will say Gosh, we didn’t know.

The greatest danger any putatively free society faces arises not when crazy fools and thugs run the government – this happens fairly often – but when the opposition caves in, worried about appearing ‘moderate’ instead of simply telling the truth.

That is the real lesson of ‘appeasement’. The development of fascism and mass murder in Germany, circa 1930-45, occurred because democratic leadership kissed Hitler’s ass instead of kicking it. Evidently, that lesson has been entirely missed by America’s “liberal” political leadership, specifically House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

This scary reality has been clear for some time. There is a Democratic House majority, as well as a virtual two-party stand-off in the Senate. Yet not only does the war against Iraq and its people continue essentially unchallenged, the domestic war against civil liberties and the very foundation of America carried out by the Bush regime rolls on with the barest objection in the Congress.

The implementation – and now codification – of a flatly illegal domestic spy operation used against American citizens has been approved by Pelosi and Reid in their pathetic willingness to legalize a permanent shredding of the Fourth Amendment, and their support for protecting the telecom giants against lawsuits based on their complicity in warrantless wiretapping.

Now, it seems, it is regarded as “inappropriate” for anyone in the Congress to speak the truth about Bush and his sick policies.

Yesterday, we were treated to the spectacle of Pelosi actually reprimanding congressman Fortney “Pete” Stark, a Bay Area Democrat, who had the nerve to call killing what it is.

Stark, addressing Bush’s blocking of a $35 billion expansion of a children’s health insurance program, only noted in public what anyone with an ounce of sense or more brains than God gave geese knows to be true:

“First of all, I’m just amazed that the Republicans are worried that we can’t pay for insuring...ten million children. They sure don’t care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? You are going to tell us lies like you’re telling us today? Is that how you’re going to fund the war? You don’t have money to fund the war or children, but you’re going to spend it (the $35 billion) to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement... The truth is that Bush likes to blow things up in Iraq, in the United States, and in Congress.”

Well, thank God someone’s still willing to say it.

But Pelosi, worried as always about how something might play with the media or the voters – which is a hell of a lot more than she seems worried about dead people in Iraq or in the military (more than 3,800 American soldiers killed to date, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis) – had this to say:

“While members of Congress are passionate about their views, what Congressman Stark said during the debate was inappropriate and distracted from the seriousness of the subject at hand.”

Yes, let’s not let reality get in the way of our “serious” business, Madam Speaker.

Republicans, meanwhile, called Stark “despicable” (Kevin Brady, R-Texas), “hateful” (Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas), and tried to have his remarks stricken from the record. Well, folks, if you want to talk about what’s hateful and despicable, you can start with this war based on lies, the mass murder that it represents, and various tortures engaged in as a matter of policy by this administration.

As a lifelong Democrat, I am ashamed of my party and of the cowards running it. It is people like Pelosi who make Bush and his sick policies possible. It is people like Pete Stark who offer some small measure of hope that not everyone in this Congress has sold their souls.

I’ve been traveling through time a little bit lately. I hesitate to talk about this since in some circles I’m already regarded as somewhat daft and although I’ve never cared overly much about the opinion of the general public it can be problematic if one’s friends think one has misplaced one’s marbles.

Going to talk about it anyhow.

As some of you may know I’ve spent a large chunk of my recent life in writing and revising, endlessly it feels like, a novel whose central premise is that a person may go back in time, at least into some form of parallel universe. There are scientists who believe this to be possible, theoretically, given inferences drawn from quantum physics, and there are various writings on the subject.

What not many people know is that twice – about eight or nine years ago – I had deeply convincing personal experiences of something very like it. Each was a moment only, a very small fraction of a second probably, but in which there was no question, none, that I had actually gone there. It was not dream, nor fantasy, nor memory. It was being there.

Since there would no doubt be physical repercussions were one to make a habit of this sort of thing, these jaunts scared me. On the other hand, the possibility was absolutely thrilling and I’d sign up for another one, longer than a moment, much longer, were that possible.

Well, I have not had another one. However I have had something which seems related to it, something which lasts longer and visits fairly often. It is a sense of another time, not a complete experience but a sense. This is not a memory, I am certain. It is also not a hallucination. It is something else, something very much else.

There is a clear sense that I am somewhere else and in a specific time past. I can tell where and when. However, it is not as though I have actually gone there; it is as though IT has come here.

See, there is this small joke. The reason we on earth and in these bodies divide our experiences – and lives – into segments of time is to prevent everything from happening all at once. Of course, it appears this may be not quite a joke.

Last week there was this piece in the news.

“'We have broken speed of light'

“A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time.

“Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921 According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.

“However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.

“The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled "instantaneously" between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.

“Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences.

“For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving. The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.

“Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of."”

All right. This piece is already esoteric enough to trouble my vast readership, it’s late at night, and I’ve been wrestling with a stubborn cold. No point in taking this much further. Just a couple of points more.

One, we are all comprised of subatomic particles, the same as photons. Two, it has become fairly accepted among a growing number of reputable scientists that reality is inseparable from expectation. Three, if you think you know what’s real and what’s not, you will certainly be proven wrong eventually.

And another thing. For those among you who suspect that we are spirit, that we exist as souls incarnated in these cool spaceships called bodies, there is the fact that we get into them, whether at conception or at some other moment prior to or at the very instant of birth, unobserved, which necessarily means that we routinely travel at speeds faster than that of light.

So I may not be crazy after all.

Let’s talk about drugs.

They are, depending upon whose profit motives matter in this country, dangerous or essential, taboo or requisite. In a culture which is now so degenerate and near collapse as to inspire a sort of sick, endless fascination, the matter of drugs – and how they and their users and purveyors are treated – is deeply meaningful.

In a more innocent time, not very long ago, there were two sorts of drugs. Legal ones were like penicillin or aspirin, the product of scientific research whose purpose was to heal or otherwise provide relief. Anything which was regarded as potentially dangerous required a doctor’s prescription. There was a Food and Drug Administration which reviewed new discoveries for their safety and efficacy. Doctors read professional journals to learn about them. Illegal drugs were, of course, harmful to users and/or to the society at large. These were sometimes banned for political reasons, as was the case with marijuana in the early part of the 20th century, and also, some would say, with cocaine and even heroin, both of which were once legal and recommended by physicians for various maladies.

Until very recently, the only drugs you saw advertised on television or in other media were designed to treat headaches, digestive complaints, or uncooperative bowels. Everything else entered the market by way of salespeople passing out samples and explanatory brochures to doctors.

But it all changed. Simultaneous with the much-proclaimed “war on drugs” came the development and sales of vast quantities and types of pharmaceuticals, new and better shit for everything imaginable, and sold not through promotion to MDs but directly to you and me.

Now you cannot turn on your television without being inundated. Many of these drugs have purposes which the ads barely mention; we are told, essentially, that their consumption will fix pretty much everything wrong with us. Unhappy? The ads tell us that this is needlessly ruining our families and relationships; all we need are happy pills. The side effects, we are told in voices so gentle and melodic as to indicate they might even be desirable, include things like heart attack or stroke, but never mind. Ask your doctor about it. On the screen a brooding, miserable person, very often female, is transformed into a happy, pleasing personality.

Women, it seems, need something to help them cope with the harsh demands of modern life, with stressful jobs or relationships and the demands of their families. They need something to help them sleep at night or wake in the morning, or both.

Men, it turns out, need something to help them achieve erections. Look, I don’t want to make light of this problem. It may, for all I know, be an epidemic. If all of those fairly young fellows in the ads are otherwise limp we may be looking at a national crisis. But something tells me that not all viagra and cialis are being sold to guys who can’t get hard. It’s only a guess. With side effects mostly confined to headaches and things appearing to be blue for reasons they do not articulate, the prospect of manly erections has certainly ballooned the profits of a couple of corporate giants, and who can argue with that?

It’s a great picture: millions of beer-swilling studs and hordes of Stepford wives too drugged-out to differentiate among them.

Meanwhile, the FDA, long-since captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate, keeps approving anything which doesn’t seem to actually kill its customers outright, at least not in large numbers.

And the federal government keeps prosecuting people who provide marijuana to those who need it to reduce the nausea of chemotherapy or reduce the pain of debilitating illness. Recently, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that a California woman with a brain disease, who could gain some physical relief only through pot, was not to be protected from prosecution. You see, they don’t want to “send the wrong message.”

America doesn’t have to worry about that. Our values are evident. The message is very clear.

The last time I was at the Fillmore Auditorium was not long after Janis Joplin died, which will give you an idea, and I wasn’t sure how well I’d remember it. Of course, every time I’d gone to a show I’d been stoned to a fare-thee-well, and memories are tricky anyhow. Plus you’ve got to figure with the management changes, the passage of several eras, and the whacked-out reality of modern American life, it wouldn’t be the same even if Janis made a surprise appearance.

The invitation was from a special friend from those days now living in L.A., which was nice, and there was the band, a couple of guys named John along with a complement of very good musicians, known as They Might Be Giants.

Maybe you don’t know about this band. There’re a couple of videos out, a documentary of sorts called “A Tale Of Two Johns” – their brains work along those lines – and plenty of great stuff easily located on iTunes (you can check out their podcasts).

I first heard them probably in 1999. Bush The Younger had yet to claim the presidency via massive vote fraud. A gentler time. I was riding shotgun on a car trip up the coast to Washington State and my companion popped the CD into the dashboard system and what emerged was “They call me Dr. Worm. Good morning, how are you, I’m Dr. Worm. I’m interested in things. I’m not a real doctor but I am a real worm, I am an actual worm... I like to play the drums. I think I’m getting good but I can handle criticism...”

The album was called “Severe Tire Damage.” Naturally, I was hooked.

On Sunday night it all came back, the stairway up to the landing, the free apples (Bill Graham lives), posters, the chandeliers, the balcony. Also coming back: the bass lines pounding right through my bones. There is no longer any smoking of tobacco, of course, a very good thing considering breathing is no longer quite as easy at my age and in my condition, however there were the welcome small clouds of what my friend Bill calls ‘wacky tobaccy’ and joints were going around.

We hung around the balcony with the older folks, and my friend’s daughter was on the main floor pogo-ing with a thousand of her tribe. It was a pretty cool evening.

The news is mostly ghastly in America these days. We’re living amidst a rather obvious corporate takeover of the whole fucking world, and that’s dispiriting enough, and then there’s Bush and those other fools, and the culture itself sliding over the edge. They want us to be afraid, of course. It suits the agenda. A fearful people will let the powers-that-be do anything so long as we’re promised “security.”

One thing about “security”: it’s not what you think it is. It’s not something which can be arranged no matter how much bread you’ve got or how big your stock portfolio is, or who you marry (or if). It’s sure as shit not anything a government is going to give you.

I came back home Sunday night feeling a lot more optimistic and a little more secure. I may belong to a generation which has misplaced its deepest, most heart-felt dreams, but mine is not the last generation to find theirs. There’s music here, and a very large number of young people who are very smart and who are onto the joke. This constitutes resistence. What form it will ultimately take is outside my imagination right now but maybe not outside yours.

Next posting, I’ll be back to my usual rants. Peace.