October 30, 2002 - Paul Wellstone’s son said of his father that whenever the going was the toughest his father was there to help. That was the measure of the man. That was the courage of the Senator. That was the essence of his spirit. That was the power of his legacy – a call to his party and his country to come home. And that was where his Green Bus was headed, to bring America home....click here for entire article

October 29, 2002 - When I was a child war was an honorable and heroic enterprise as we sent G I Joe off to Europe and the Pacific and Rosie riveted. We were all involved. We recycled with a vengeance. We saved and turned in every thing from our newspapers to the cans the peaches came in. to the fat that collected in the frying pan after breakfast. We saved our pennies to take to school and buy savings stamps to turn into victory bonds when we accumulated $25 worth at a quarter apiece. We dug up our backyards to plant victory gardens and collected our outgrown clothes for Bundles for Britain. We took our ration books to the grocery and to the filling station and we fought our backyard battles with cardboard toy guns. We collected unused metal to be melted and recast in to bullets and bombs. Even the civil war cannon, my perch on the courthouse lawn for the Saturday afternoon band concerts, went into the crucible of our war. We watched the Hollywood Heroes take Iwo Jima at every Saturday matinee. There were no protest songs. We were one nation, indivisible....click here for entire article

ON TRAINING HUMANS

October 25, 2002 - Every once in a while humans do something that reminds me how lucky Cleopatra and I are to be Shih Tzu. Take yesterday for example. All day yesterday their television was full of trying to decide what kind of person it was who went around for three weeks just killing people for no good reason. Then today those same talking heads kept talking about who was going to get to kill the killer. Then some prominent human by the name of Wellstone was killed in an airplane crash and the same talking heads kept on about that, speculating on whether his death would benefit the Republicans or the Democrats in their elections. I told you that humans aren’t really bright. They choose their pack leader on the bases of a popularity contest they call an election. And the next popularity contest will be held in just about 10 days....click here for entire article

October 24, 2002 - In the early morning hours of Thursday October 24, 2002 John Allen Muhammad and 17 year-old John Lee Malvo were taken into custody at a Interstate 70 rest stop outside of Frederick, Maryland and Montgomery County, Maryland officials announced that the reign of terror gripping the Beltway communities of Maryland and Virginia was over. But was it? The authorities need to connect the dots. Some of them have been made public but others are just dimly seen at the margins of the published reports of law enforcement’s activities in the afternoon hours of October 23. I am going to try to connect some of the dots and see what emerges.....click here for entire article

October 23, 2002 - The longer I hang around my people the more I am convinced that the human race has just barely evolved from the apes. They really aren’t too smart, you know. I have to tell them when it is time to go out and I have just now got the female trained to pick up the excreta so that the other humans in our neighborhood won’t step in it and track it back into their habitats. The male, well he is hopeless. He is overweight and has had one heart attack but I just can’t seem to get him to exercise. I get the female out on a half hour walk twice a day, but the male, well he is good for 10 minutes, tops. I am doing my best....click here for entire article.

STICKS AND STONES

October 17, 2002 - North Korea admits that it has pursued a nuclear weapons program in violation of its 1994 treaty. Nobody who has paid attention is surprised that North Korea has pursued nuclear weapons. It is a bit surprising that the North Korean government has admitted it. That seems out of character. They hint that they have even more devastating power ready to use as well.....click here for entire article

THERE IS A WAR GOING ON

October 2, 2002 - Someone tell the President that there is a war on. Oh, I know he knows that American troops are patrolling the Afghani mountains, jungle trails in the Philippines and are poised for battle on the Iraqi border. It isn’t that war I’m talking about. I know that he is watching carefully the running gun fight in the West Bank and Gaza. I know he is aware, if only dimly, of our continuing occupation in the Balkans. I’m not talking about those wars.....click here for entire article