You sir, are the one who is an affront to the Lord. I trust He is attuned to you at this very moment, His fists clenched in anger for how you have represented His word. With that, I take leave of your clergy, and can only pray that you will see the ills of your ways. It is you who have given the unbeliever a more firm leg to stand upon.

— Jules Vernon-Renquist

I think this properly defines our current preznit.

pugnacious (pug·na·cious): / puhg NEY shuhs /
adjective

(1) combative; quarrelsome; belligerent; inclined to be aggressive or fight readily

[From Latin pugnax meaning “combative or to fight,” from Latin pugnus meaning “fist.”]

Usage: Imagine the state of America and the world today if our president was a respectful conciliator instead of a pugnacious rabble-rouser.

Beautiful picture of a moonrise in Manhattan.

This administration literally makes me weep.  “A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has rejected staff scientists’ recommendations to protect imperiled animals and plants under the Endangered Species Act at least six times in the past three years, documents show. In addition, staff complaints that their scientific findings were frequently overruled or disparaged at the behest of landowners or industry have led the agency’s inspector general to look into the role of Julie MacDonald, who has been deputy assistant secretary of the interior for fish and wildlife and parks since 2004, in decisions on protecting endangered species. The documents show that MacDonald has repeatedly refused to go along with staff reports concluding that species such as the white-tailed prairie dog and the Gunnison sage grouse are at risk of extinction. Career officials and scientists urged the department to identify the species as either threatened or endangered.”  Add their handling of the global warming crisis to the list and you can honestly say they are killing flora and fauna, the environment as a whole, and humans.  Oh, and you’ll love this.  MacDonald is a civil engineer.  Can someone tell me how she was placed in a position to control the protection of the environment, the listing of endangered species, the identification of protected habitats, and the general release of scientific information from the federal government?

And yet another non-surprise: “RELIGIOUS fundamentalists in the US and the Vatican are damaging attempts to reduce sexually transmitted diseases and improve reproductive health, according to a new study. Right-wing religious leaders and their political allies are hampering the work of experts treating people for diseases such as gonorrhoea and syphilis, the report says.”  Given their fight against the cervical cancer vaccine for women, it’s not just STDs they’re promoting and supporting; it’s death and suffering and all manner of physical anguish.  This is the superior morality these religious assholes are promoting.  All of their gods are weeping at the horrors being perpetrated in their various names.

How’s this for safety?  “A diabetic man fell into a coma because airport staff refused to let him take his insulin on board a flight from Auckland to Christchurch. Qantas yesterday apologised to Tui Peter Russell, who had a severe attack on the plane and was in hospital for two weeks. Mr Russell said check-in staff at Auckland Airport told him he could not take his medication on board because it was dangerous.”  Gosh, I feel safer.  If he was a terrorist, everyone was safer while he was in a coma, right?  Bah.

I really can’t believe how invasive this administration is with all their efforts to invade the bedrooms of American citizens.  If it’s not telling women to be treated as “pre-pregnant” and to act accordingly, it’s telling gays they don’t deserve to be treated as humans and should be arrested for their sexual activities, telling women the cervical cancer vaccine promotes extramarital sex and shouldn’t be approved, telling women they can’t control their own bodies and that the uterus is a state interest, and telling women the Plan B contraceptive should be outlawed like abortion.  Now it’s telling everyone they shouldn’t have sex until they’re 30.  Essentially: “If you’re single and in your 20s, the federal government wants you to steer clear of sex.”  Jesus Fucking Christ on a crutch!  Can these people tend to matters of state interest and get the hell out of everyone’s private lives and activities?  You’d think they’d have more important things to focus on given the mess they’ve made of international affairs, the budget, the military, terrorism, and everything else.

I just found out PETA doesn’t like no-kill animal shelters and thinks all unwanted pets should be euthanized instead of put up for adoption and given care while waiting for a home.  Yet another reason to hate that horde of nitwits.  By the way, there’s no online version but that information came from the November 6 edition of People Magazine (look for an article by Bill Hewitt called “Should Strays Be Killed?”).

And let me finish with this.  You undoubtedly heard we pulled our troops out of an area in Iraq where we’re convinced a kidnapped American soldier is being held.  Why did we drop our checkpoints and stop looking for him?  Because the Iraqi government told us to.  Now let’s be clear about this.  It’s their country.  We’re not doing a very good job with any of our efforts (reliable electricity is still a distant dream, oil production is crippled and stumbling along on one shaky peg-leg, people are in danger no matter who they are or where they are, ethnic cleansing and sectarian genocide are now real facts of life, civil war is ongoing despite America being in denial, and the list goes on).  Andrew Sullivanget it right when it comes to the non-response to leaving our soldiers behind, something our country has never supported:

The U.S. military does not have a tradition of abandoning its own soldiers to foreign militias, or of taking orders from foreign governments. No commander-in-chief who actually walks the walk, rather than swaggering the swagger, would acquiesce to such a thing. The soldier appears to be of Iraqi descent who is married to an Iraqi woman. Who authorized abandoning him to the enemy? Who is really giving the orders to the U.S. military in Iraq? These are real questions about honor and sacrifice and a war that is now careening out of any control. They are not phony questions drummed up by a partisan media machine to appeal to emotions to maintain power.

And where, by the way, is McCain on this? Silent on Cheney’s “no-brainer” on waterboarding. Silent recently on Iraq. But vocal – oh, how vocal – on Kerry. It tells you something about what has happened to him. And to America.

I won’t finish this story but will leave it just as I left it when I first jotted down these thoughts.

I just spent a glorious afternoon with Rick.  It was so relaxing and enjoyable.

He called just before noon to see if I wanted to go to lunch.  The question was rhetorical since we have a standing lunch every Sunday.  That’s in addition to sushi night on Tuesdays and yet-to-be-labeled times that cover everything in between.

We got together around noon and went to a local Thai restaurant (BYOB, so we had a six-pack of TsingTao in tow).  We had dumplings, fried tofu and pad-ka-pow tofu.  It was delightful to put it in not so uncertain gay terms.

We enjoyed talking to the owner while we ate.  She’s such a great example of someone who came to this country some 20-and-change years ago, put together a good business idea — food from home — and found a very comfortable existence.  Certainly there is hard work involved.  I imagine owning your own business is always difficult.

But I digress.

We had a great visit with her.  We enjoyed a delicious meal that was in many ways healthy (not all of it, but most of it).  We sipped our beer.  We eventually paid our tab and left.

We opened the moonroof on the car and enjoyed a leisurely drive home in ideal weather.  A cool breeze blew from the north, sun fell through a cloudless sky, and temperatures hovered just above cold.

After parking the car in his driveway, we went inside.  Rick headed off to the bedroom and I went to the back door to let the dog out.  We played Frisbee for several minutes before Rick asked if I wanted him to cut my hair.

Of course I did.

Rick has been cutting my hair for about two years.  I don’t do anything fancy with it — I wear it short.  Generally sheared with a number 4, IIRC.

Sometimes it gets away from me before I know it and is quite long.  Well, quite long compared to what a number 4 looks like.  That means it’s not terribly long but, for what I’m accustomed to, I think it’s too long.

So I grabbed a chair and went outside.

I sat in the chair backwards with my arms crossed on the back of it in front of me.  With sunshine caressing my skin on a glorious just-right afternoon, I closed my eyes and drifted to a different world as his hands danced over my head with the shears.  I need not explain the wonders of having someone else touching your scalp, the soft yet massaging impulses of sensation that run throughout the body at such times.