I know some of you are probably horrified by my handwriting. It crossed my mind to ask someone else at the library to rewrite what Id jotted down, but, in the spirit of honesty and full disclosure, I decided to just put it out there for you to see.

I know what you must be thinking: This makes everything that hes written in the past exponentially more disturbing.

For what its worth, Im neither a trained ape or a drooling lunatic. I just write like that because I have dyslexia. Or at least thats what Ive been told. (I was also born in Kentucky, but that probably has less to do with it.) Please dont hold it against me. You were good enough to accept the depression, the OCD, the political ranting and the profanity whats a little learning disability?

OK, Linettes coming to pick me up in a minute, so I have to go. Were heading out to a benefit for Gallery 555. Ill be back with more tomorrow.

Oh, if youre looking for something to read, check out this article on the dangers of eating ape meat. Apparently, it can lead to Simian Foamy Virus, the newest species-hopping cluster fuck to come down the pike Or, check out this negative piece on the Bush administration from The Wall Street Journal! Thats right, the fucking Wall Street Journal is publishing articles about the inconsistencies in their 9/11 story now. That’s how bad things are getting. This is truly an “Et tu, Brute” moment… Heres a quote from the section on Bushs immediate response to the attacks:

But uncut videotape of the classroom visit obtained from the local cable-TV station director who shot it, and interviews with the teacher and principal, show that Mr. Bush remained in the classroom not for mere seconds, but for at least seven additional minutes. He followed along for five minutes as children read aloud a story about a pet goat. Then he stayed for at least another two minutes, asking the children questions and explaining to Ms. Rigell that he would have to leave more quickly than planned.

OK, I think I hear Linette pulling up in front. Bye.

Again, Im sorry about the handwriting. Really. Ill work on it.

Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism chief of the national-security staff under Bush, was on 60 Minutes last night, promoting his new book about the Bush administration and its prosecution of the war on terrorism. Its nothing new, but I thought that you might find it of interest. Heres a clip from the 60 Minutes website:

“Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq,” Clarke said to Stahl. “And we all said … no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren’t any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, ‘Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.

“Initially, I thought when he said, ‘There aren’t enough targets in– in Afghanistan,’ I thought he was joking.

“I think they wanted to believe that there was a connection, but the CIA was sitting there, the FBI was sitting there, I was sitting there saying we’ve looked at this issue for years. For years we’ve looked and there’s just no connection.”

Clarke says he and CIA Director George Tenet told that to Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Clarke then tells Stahl of being pressured by Mr. Bush.

“The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, ‘I want you to find whether Iraq did this.’ Now he never said, ‘Make it up.’ But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

“I said, ‘Mr. President. We’ve done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There’s no connection.’

“He came back at me and said, “Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there’s a connection.’ And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report.”

Later in the piece, Clarke goes on to state that the Bush administration might very well have prevented 9/11, had they acted on the intelligence reports that were available to them. Heres a quote:

“There’s a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too. But on January 24th, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently — underlined urgently — a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo– wasn’t acted on.

“I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back. They wanted to work on the same issues right away: Iraq, Star Wars. Not new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years.

As you might expect, the Bush people are out in force saying that this just is a case of sour grapes. I might be inclined to believe them, if not for the fact that Clarke is pretty much saying the same thing that former Treasury secretary Paul ONeil said in his insider account of events. You might be able to dismiss one of these accounts as sour grapes, but that explanation holds less water as the instances multiply.

Heres my political advice, in case anyone is listening… Kerry needs to run a series of ads in which ONeil, Clarke and others, if theyll come forward, state what was going on inside the Bush White House in the run-up to the war. Both of these men worked for previous Republican presidents. They have credibility. Their words, at least to me, would be 100% more effective than anything Kerry could say Just a 30 second TV spot with a close up on ONeil saying, Im a Republican. Here are my credentials. This is what I saw. This is why I will not be voting for Bush. Simple. Effective.

Here, in case youre interested, is the transcript from Clarkes 60 Minutes appearance.

Last week I posted something about a few friends of mine who were considering a permanent move to Mexico. At the end of the post, I asked if any of you knew how to say, “Do you have any work for a day laborer?” in Spanish. Well, I heard back this evening from a reader by the name of Kathleen. Heres what she had to say:

Tiene Usted algun trabajo diario?

I havent checked it out yet, so use it at your own risk, but thats what she tells me it says. You might want to print it out and put it in your pocket. You never know when you might have to make a run for the border.

On the subject of American emigration, I found some pretty useful information at this womans site. She also had a link to another page that reprints a 1994 story from Money Magazine. I know its old but I found the information interesting.

Growing evidence from a five-month investigation by MONEY suggests that record numbers of Americans are pulling up stakes each year and moving abroad to seek economic opportunity and better lives. Even more disturbing, the people who are leaving the U.S. include some of the country’ s wealthiest and best-educated native-born citizens. Consider:

— As many as 250,000 people emigrate from the U.S. each year, up from approximately 160,000 a decade ago, according to estimates by Census Bureau officials and experts at the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).

— These days, as many as half of those who emigrate are native-born Americans, say government officials, while an estimated 80% of those who left for good between 1900 and 1980 were former immigrants returning home.

— Among college-educated Americans and those who earn $50,000 a year or more, an astounding one in four reports that he or she has considered moving to another country,according to an exclusive MONEY poll taken this spring (margin of error: plus or minus 3.1%).

There’s evidence that more skills are draining from the country than are entering it. For example, a 1990 U.S.-Canadian Government study of migration shows that American immigrants to Canada were nearly 50% more likely to hold college degrees than the general U.S. population or than Canadian immigrants moving here.

If you know of any articles on this same subject written in the last two years, please send me a link. Im curious to know more about the American ex-pat movement.

I actually like the fact that qualified, bright, young people are leaving the US in droves. It means theres less competition for jobs like this one at the Department of Homeland Security – Hollywood Office. Heres what theyre looking for:

1. Ability to assist filmmakers in the development of scripts and/or
concepts that depict people, missions or functions of DHS.

2. Ability to plan, develop, and implement a broad range of communication and information projects and serve as the Departments liaison with the television and film industries.

3. Ability to negotiate with filmmakers to resolve inaccuracies and other
problems associated with the portrayal of DHS people, missions and functions.

You wont find jobs like that in Canada or Mexico.