red onion

I've been on vacation for the last several days in beautiful, laid-back Arkansas. Arkansas is the best-kept secret this side of the Rocky Mountains.

I've kept up by watching (ugh) the network news and C-Spann. Ummm, I understand several pages were deleted from the 9/11 report pertaining to Saudi Arabia.

I have an internet exercise suggestion for everyone. Do a search on the Bush family+Saudi connections. I came up with over 20,000 answers.

My mothers believes that the press isn't onto the story of Saudi Arabia and the Bush family connection because of their "blue" blood. The press doesn't pick on aristocrats. But people like the Clintons, who pulled themselves up from their boot straps, are instant targets. I don't know about this philosophy, as Gore is blue blood, and they sure picked on him.

Somehow, the press more closely identifies with the Bushies, and with the Bushies' rather simplistic view of life. Good versus evil, it's either black or white. The complexity underlying most issues, foreign and domestic, is simply ignored or not even seen or acknowledged. The fundamentalist view of the world has invaded our approach to solving issues on every level. Wether religious or not, most government and media takes a one-way approach to issues: and you are either wrong or you are right.

Usually, you are right if you are for hands-off capitalism. You are wrong if you want to limit the ability to make profits, and you are wrong if you want to help the less fortunate, because they ought to be helping themselves.

I am generalizing to a great extent, but in my view, the people in charge of American interests, wether economic or political, think like children. I don't know, maybe some children are capable of greater complexity in thinking. Everything seems to be based on a 'I want this, and you can't stop me from having it, or getting it'. Talk about entitlements. Its the ultimate, selfish form of capitalism, and a form that we as a nation have been practicing almost since the birth of our country. What is different now, is the stakes are so much higher, world war and everything.

And those are my thoughts, on two cups of coffee and a good night's sleep.