Worst Head of State Ever

Since last November's election, I've noticed more people calling Bush the "Worst. President. Ever." (One-word sentences for emphasis in original).

I can't imagine what took them so long. As far as I'm concerned, he was W.P.E. at least from the moment the troops entered Iraq, if not from when the budget surplus disappeared. These days, he's in the running for Worst Head of State in Recorded History.

So, I'm compiling a Top Ten List, and I'd like to ask all of you reading this to contribute. Who do you thing were the worst ever?

A lot of people would include leaders like Porfirio Diaz or James Buchanan who lost a great deal, maybe everything, but I'm trying to be fair about it. The song claims Louis XVI was "the worst since Louis the First", but it's hard to see how any executive could have done much to salvage the Ancien Regime. Louis XIV, on the other hand, too a prosperous country with a strong army and left it bankrupt and defeated in a series of wars that need not have been fought.

So, here's my first draft of a list:

1) Adolf Hitler. Any good he accomplished (the autobahnen, for instance) was swamped many times over by the harm he did to the world, and most especially to Germany. Millions dead, infrastructure destroyed, the country occupied by its ancient enemies, it's hard to see how he could have done worse by his people.

2) Caligula. If the Roman Empire had been any further past its peak when he came to power, he might have brought about the Fall of Rome all by himself.

3)Pol Pot. He killed 'em like nobody but Hitler and Stalin, and with so very little to show for it.

4) Artabaxas. Dude, the oracle said "If you invade Greece, a great empire will fall." Yes, it's ambiguous, but the threat is obvious, and you didn't have to take such a big chance.

5) Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Eventually, even the U.S. government was unwilling to stand by the worst-ever dictator of first and worst of the classic banana republics.

6) Idi Amin Dada. When it comes to destroying your own country's infrastructure, expelling your entire professional class can't be beat.

7) Louis XIV. Besides losing all those wars, he also invented inflation. What a chump.

8) Josef Stalin. This was a hard call. His crimes were nearly as great as Hitler's, but on the other hand he accomplished a lot more that was positive, especially from the perspective of his own constituents. He defeated Hitler (let's face it, everyone else played a secondary role in that war), thereby saving civilization. He took the remnants of the Russian Empire and created a state that was capable of defeating Hitler, which was sort of like making Mexico capable of taking back California. Still, the price for his accomplishments was so terribly high. And most of what he built disintegrated in less than a generation after his death. So, he goes in the Top Ten.

9) Ivan the Terrible. Terrifying, but also just plain terrible.

10) George W. Bush. This is a tentative ranking, but I figure he belongs somewhere on the Top Ten. No, he's not "worse than Hitler".

//The magic Eight-Ball says, "Not yet, anyway."\\

School Tomorrow

I enrolled in the Linn-Benton Community College Nursing program in Fall of 2005, passed the Fall and Winter 2006 terms, failed the Spring 2006 term. Now, I'm going to audit the Winter 2007 term and, if I do well in it, will apply to re-enter the program for the Spring 2007 term.

So, with tuition support from my parents and a well-timed pep talk from Kathe, I'm plunging back in. Here goes.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Dare great things."\\

Mainstreet Moms and Others

Mainstreet Moms (aka the MMOB) sound like a promising bunch.

And they have friends:

20/20 Vision
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities
Center for International Policy (CIP)
Conference of Major Superiors of Men
Council for a Livable World
Families USA
Feminist Majority
Fourth Freedom Forum
Friends of the Earth
Global Exchange
Greenpeace
Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR)
MMOB (Mainstreet Moms Organize or Bust)
MoveOn
NAACP
National Council of Churches
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
National Organization for Women (NOW)
NETWORK A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
Pax Christi USA
Peace Action
Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR)
Psychologists for Social Responsibility
Rainbow/Push Coalition
Shalom Center
Sierra Club
Sojourners
Soulforce
The Tikkun Community
TrueMajority
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
United Church of Christ
United Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society
Us Foundation
USAction
War Resisters League
Veterans for Peace
Women's Action for New Directions (WAND)
Working Assets
Artists United to Win Without War
Musicians United to Win Without War

Maybe America is still too young to die.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Maybe".\\

Four Days, Plus Before Lunch on Friday

That's all one hundred hours lasts.

But the new, honestly-elected Congress could do a lot in one hundred hours.

Tell them they ought to: http://ga3.org/campaign/100Hours.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Couldn't hurt."\\

Walk For Peace, Wednesday and Thursday

Walk the halls of Congress, that is.

With Gold Star families, including Cindy Sheehan.

Sounds good to me. Especially now that veterans and their families no longer have to think of the Capitol as "enemy territory."

Wish I could be there.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "It would make you late for school, John."\\

Heavy Use of Cell Phones

Let's see: our daughter Michu flew into Portland from Dallas, Texas, to visit us. Staying with her sister Biftu at Biftu's Portland apartment, either one of both of them were to come to Corvallis, either before or after Christmas.

Finally, Michu came to Corvallis on Friday -- just after Kathe left to visit a friend for the weekend in Forest Grove, near Portland. I was running errands all afternoon, and arrived home just before I had to leave for work (night shift) to find Michu there, displeased that she would only see me for a few minutes, and even more distressed that she wouldn't see Kathe at all (Waldy and Tes, both living with us, hadn't heard that Kathe was going out of town, because neither Kathe nor I had seen them all day).

Yesterday, I spent a little more time with Michu and Tes, and then they took a bus to Portland together. There they will spend a couple of days with Biftu and at least some time with Kathe, and then Kathe will pick up Tes on her way out of town and bring him home to Corvallis.

And the cell phones? We've been using them a lot: mine, Kathe's, Michu's, calling one another with the latest updates.

We could have done pretty much everything we did over the last few days with ordinary stationary phones, but contacts which were immediate would have taken hours to make. All of us were spared a lot of anxiety thanks to being able to talk whenever we wished, wherever we were.

I could learn to love these little things.

TV Commercials Are Better Than Ever

These are mostly from a thread at Making Light. Others are ones I found myself, either by hunting around with half-remembered keywords or just stumbled across at YouTube.

There's some real creativity going into the things these days. Sometimes even for a [WARNING: Intense] worthwhile cause.

And there are also some real treasures from the old days out there.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Beauty is where you find it."\\

The Ford Solution

The recent death of former President Gerald Ford remind sme that I never did offer to the public my solution to the looming political crisis of George W. Bush's impeachment.

Obviously, Bush has committed high crimes and misdemeanors sufficient to be impeached and removed from office. Just as obviously, Vice President Cheney has been involved in modst of them, as well as offenses of his own. But impeaching both of them would make Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi President, and many would view this as simply a Democratic power grab.

We will pass over in silence the irony of Republicans accusing anyone of stealing the Presidency.

Seriously, though, there is an alternative scenario for replacing a corrupt and incompetent President and Vice President. Let us call it the Ford Solution:

1) Cheney resigns.

2) Bush nominates a new Vice President, who is approved by Congress. This needs to be a person who has not been a member of the Administration, nor an advisor to it, but who is of sufficient public stature as to be acceptable as President. This person should be a Republican, so that there be no accusations of Bush being removed for purely political reasons. It should be a person who is not seen as likely to run for another term as President, to avoid the appearance of seeking an unfair advantage for either party in the 2008 election.

3) Bush resigns, and the appointed Vice President becomes President. The new President might or might not pardon Bush and Cheney. We could argue for decades over whether that would be the right thing to do, but what's most important is that we get rid of Bush and his entire crew and replace them with someone who is minimally acceptable in the job.

Aside from persuading the pigheaded, reality-denying Bush crew to go along with this scheme, the hardest part of it would be finding an acceptable new President to hold the office until 2009. To my way of thinking, there is really only one person, flawed though he is, who is really auited to this role:

Former President George Herbert Walker Bush.

I never thought I would endorse the gun-running, drug-running, dogleg-crooked CIA-spook bastard for another day in the Oval Office, but let's face it: he's smarter and more honest than Junior, he can't run in 2008 even if he wanted to, he's a prominent Republican who has never been so much as consulted by Bush or his people...he's the best possible choice.

God help us.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "The best is often enemy of the good."\\

Forest Fires, Ocean Temperatures, and Kathe

Kathe sent me this:http://www.newsday.com/news/science/wire/sns-ap-wildfires-climate,0,4582282.story?coll=sns-ap-science-headlines


"This article seems to say that ocean temperatures drive fires, while the one in the GT seems to sy the opposite. I'm with Newsday; the oceans are a lot larger than the forests. But I admit, that's a superficial opinion."

On the other hand, the oceans are only a little bit cooler or warmer than the atmosphere, while a forest fire is a LOT warmer. Dunno.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Time will tell -- but are you sure you want it to?"\\

Contact Light, 2006

Contact Light, 2006 Year-End Edition, from John M. Burt and the Burt Family
960 SW Jefferson Avenue, Corvallis, Oregon 97333 USA (541) 753-6094 john_m_burt@hotmail.com // katheburt@hotmail.com
This is a Blackberry House publication


Note: The first words spoken from the Lunar surface, even before "The Eagle has landed", were "Contact light," meaning that a light in the cockpit indicated that the legs of the lander had touched down. This publication exists to maintain contact, and hopes to spread light.


Well, that was different. No two years are alike, of course, that's part of their charm. This one could have been more charming, though.

Last things first, the December windstorms that left literally millions without electricity across the Pacific Northwest did indeed take out our power, but only for a few hours. Kathe was visiting a friend in Portland that night, and their power was out for longer. but they were only inconvenienced, not harmed.

By the way: Also left without electricity for at least part of the time were: daughter Biftu (Asnakech) in Portland, daughter Sarah in Portland, son Jake and daughter-in-law Claire in Lakewood (Washington), brother David in Seattle, brother Tom in Corvallis, John's parents in Monroe (Oregon), aunt Anne and uncle Wes in Corvallis, cousins Mike and Jen in Corvallis, and a couple million other folks.

Some brittle ailanthus branches broke off, as they usually do, but none of our trees blew down. Altogether it was a minor incident., not worthy of mentioning in this letter, except that it happened so recently. As for the rest of the year....

John's grandfather died. He was John's mother's father (John’s father's parents died a long time ago), 92 years old and married 73 years to Grandma. It wasn't unexpected, it wasn't untimely, and there isn't a lot to regret at the end of a life like his. On the other hand . . . Grandpa died.

Waldy turned 18 this year, and has worked at his first job. Interestingly, it's the same as John's first job: washing dishes at Darrell's Fine Food on North 9th Street. Same location, too. Late update: he has just traded up to washing dishes at a classier place.

After years of ill-health, Tesfaye has had a major improvement in his condition and we have every reason to expect that he will do well in the future.

Biftu continues to live and work in Portland. Michu (aka Mestowet) continues to live and work in Dallas, Texas. We’re looking forward to seeing them both this Christmas.


John flunked out of nursing school but is taking steps to get back in the program and/or back on the horse. Unfortunately, the nursing school program is fairly inflexible: Nursing 101 in Fall term, Nursing 102 in Winter, Nursing 103 in Spring, so he has to wait until Spring term of 2007 to re-take Nursing 103. On the advice of the faculty, he'll audit Nursing 102 to help get up to speed, and then make his plea to be allowed to take Nursing 103 for credit. In the immortal words of Bullwinkle J. Moose, "This time for sure!"

When the kids were little, we referred to prostheses as "robot" parts, as in, "he has no arm, so the doctor gave him a robot arm." They were greatly amused when I referred to Kathe's numerous gold crowns and gold-framed tooth as "robot teeth". A few years ago she acquired new hip joints which set off metal detectors, and in November she added "robot eyes" when her lenses, impaired by cataracts and light-refracting wrinkles, were replaced. She'll still need glasses, but her new lenses are a definite improvement over the old ones. When they put the new lens in her left eye, she was greatly impressed by how much more light it let in, but she was accustomed to it by the time she'd recovered enough for surgery on the right. As of this writing, she still doesn't have a new eyeglass prescription because her eyes have not yet completely healed and thus her vision is still improving slowly, but she can already see well enough, using an old pair of glasses, to read and drive and otherwise carry out what nurses call "the ADLs" (Activities of Daily Life).

And speaking of hip joints, John's father didn't have a very good time with his broken hip, but he continues to recover, literally one step at a time.

On the bright side, also seen recently at John's parents' place is a new baby. John's cousin Mike and his wife Jen, who have lived in an apartment in the barn off and on, are by all reports really enjoying parenthood, as well they should.

Last year, much of the roof was replaced with a new set of shingles that ought to last for decades. This summer, much of what remained was replaced. Once again, Kathe's son Jake did most of the work. It's such a pleasure and a comfort to hear the rain falling and not having to worry (much) about where it might be leaking.

I reckon those are the highlights of the year. For more details, try John's blog: http://john_m_burt.blogspot.com


//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "God bless us all -- no exceptions."\\

The Corporal's Boots

They're empty.

Thousands of empty boots.

More every day.

Anyone you know?

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Speak up."\\

No Rats Left

A family member left his rats with us, and they lived for years in a cage on our coffee table. It was a nice enough home, I hope, with enough room for four rats, and they had one another for company, which is good for rats. And eventually the began to die of old age.

First Ratzilla,
then Bob,
then Chewbacca (who was going to get a post called "One Rat Left", but I didn't want to write such a post on the same day that my grandfather died),
and last of all, Horatio (who was named on account of a truly bizarre botched quote, when his previous owner saw him diving into a yogurt tub and cried, "Once more into the yogurt, Horatio!").

So, now we don't have any rats, and the cage is empty, sitting in a back corner until we decide what to do with it (probably store it in anticipation of more rats one of these days).

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Rats live on no evil star."\\

This is Inconveniently True

"The new Congress must take real action to solve the climate crisis immediately."

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "The veracity of a statement does not depend on its being convenient."\\

Save the Internet!

Or anyway, save Net Neutrality.

Or anyway, watch this cute video, "Independence Day", on YouTube.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "[message delayed because Eight-Ball didn't pay for premium delivery]"\\

Most communicable diseases can be prevented, but the resources to do this aren't available in much of the world. UNICEF does what it can, but they could do more if the U.S. Congress would be good enough to fulfill its obligations to the organization. Petition here for the new Congress to show more gumption than the last one.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "He who saves his neighbor from a communicable disease saves himself. That's why they're called 'communicable', duh."\\

No Trees Fell On Us

during last night's storm, although one big tree did fall on the utility wires next door. Power was out in most of Corvallis for several hours, but it did come back eventually. I was going to make this post last night, actually, but Internet access and cable TV were not restored as quickly as power.

I use incense in my massage prtactice, and some people bring their own incense, usually in the form of scented candles. So, that was what we used for light last night. Tesfaye liked the Christmassy smell his room acquired from a big red potted candle, so he's keeping it for now.

The most unusual part of the evening, actually, for me personally, was that I went to bed at eleven. I haven't been to bed so early in years. But not only did I find myself going splah onto the bed at 2300 hours, but I didn't wake up until a full eight hours had passed. Amazing.

Seriously, I used to absolutely have to have six hours or I was no use the next day. And then one day I noticed that I was routinely getting only three or four. Working night shifts, I sometimes didn't bother trying to get any sleep during the day. Only last night it was eight. Guess a deficit finally caught up with me. Or maybe it was those scented candles.

The only casualty was the rat Horatio, and I doubt if that had anything to do with the storm. He was very old.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Where were you when the lights went out?"\\

Dear Rabbi Bogomilsky

Instead of asking for a menorah to "balance" the Christmas trees displayed at Sea-Tac Airport, why not do what the Christians did centuries ago: embrace the Yule tree.

After all, the tree is pure Nordic paganism, without the slightest Christian element except when Christian families go out of their way to make it so.

The "Hanukkah bush" doesn't have to be just a dumb joke: make the Yule tree a Jewish symbol.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Why the Sheol not?"\\

The Iraq War Memorial

Here's an idea: put it on the White House Lawn

It's close to my own idea, which is that the Iraq War Memorial should be a bullet-pocked wall in the Rose Garden, and the wooden post erected in front of it.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "John, I thought you were against capital punishment."\\

Sign the Save Darfur Petition

It's not much, but it's more than you were going to do about it today otherwise:

http://action.savedarfur.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6099

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "Every little bit...is more than none."\\

No More Crooked Florida Elections

Haven't we had enough of those?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15883.htm

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "I know I have."\\