Hilarious Posting on Huffington!

Jeffrey Shaffer has an absolutely hilarious (and spot on) posting on his blog on The Huffington Post. I urge you to read it!! Thinking the Unthinkable

Kennedy Cowardice

Caroline Kennedy declares that Obama will resurrect Camelot. Ted Kennedy says Obama will resurrect Camelot. The infotainment media dreams that Obama will resurrect Camelot. Crap.

I was an Obama supporter until the weekend before the New Hampshire primary. I even donated money to his campaign, ($25- not a lot for most of you, but it was a significant contribution for me). However, as the sudden adoration among the Talking Heads for Obama exploded that Friday and Saturday, I began to realize that I had been a victim of the bandwagon effect. I had bought into the hype. So, I asked myself: Just What Has Barack Obama done that Qualifies Him to be President? Three years in the US Senate? Two years in the Illinois legislature? A member of the South Chicago political machine?

John Kennedy had fourteen years of experience in Congress before he ran for President. Robert Kennedy had a decade as counsel for various Congressional committees, four years as Attorney General, and three years in the Senate. Obama can make a rousing speech.

It was opportunistic cowardice for Ted Kennedy to endorse Obama at this stage and it is in the tradition of his brother Robert. In 1967, anti-war Democrats were begging Bobby Kennedy to enter the ‘68 race against Lyndon Johnson. He hesitated, refused, demurred. Finally, in frustration at Kennedy’s ambivalence, Eugene McCarthy entered the race as the anti-war candidate. It was not until McCarthy’s showing in the 68 New Hampshire primary that Bobby Kennedy entered the race, enraging those people who had put their political careers on the line to work for Gene McCarthy. Bobby didn’t enter the race until McCarthy had knocked LBJ out of the race. This was, of course, lost in all the Camolot-nostalgia mythologizing after Bobby’s murder, but it is exactly what Teddy did this week. He waited until Obama had a big win in South Carolina before endorsing him. It would have been courageous to do so weeks ago when Hilary was the undisputed leader. That would have meant something. Now, he’s just jumping on the band wagon and not risking anything. Teddy’s a coward.

Huckabush, Bestiality, and Reality

Governor Huckabush has done it again. In a speech declaring that the U.S. Constitution should be brought in line with Biblical law (stoning adulterers to death? not wearing mixed threads? selling disobedient daughters into slavery?), “I-Like-Mike” has declared, with a straight face, that permitting gay marriage will open the way to legalizing pedophilia, bestiality, and polygamy, (a nice swipe at Mitt Romney and underhanded way to pander to the backwoods evangelicals in the South who are prejudiced against Mormons), . This campaign didn’t work for Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania, but the collective IQ of South Carolina residents is probably quite a bit lower than that of Pennsylvanians. After all, South Carolina is the state where Huckabee’s supporters are promoting the Confederate flag (the symbol of the greatest treason in American history and a symbol comparable to the Swastika, the hammer and sickle, and anything Al-Qaeda might use). South Carolina is also where Huckabee’s supporters are accusing John McCain of collaborating with the North Vietnamese when he was being beaten and tortured in a North Vietnamese prison camp. It is also where Huckabee’s supporters are accusing Senator McCain of fathering a mixed-race daughter (an obvious lie, but one which carries great strength in the first state to secede from the Union in 1861).

I used to think Rudy Giuliani was the most dangerous candidate running for President. No one has profited from 9/11 more than Giuliani with the huge speaking fees he was charging, the huge book royalities he received, and the secret customers of his alleged consulting firm. However, now that he has made himself impotent in this campaign, I must say that Governor Huckabush has become the most dangerous man in the campaign. He can say the most heinous things with a disarming smile and a chuckle and make even the most moderate Southerner comfortable with his outrageously un-American pronouncements. He refuses to disavow the filthy tactics of his supporters, and he panders to the ugliest prejudices of people to gain votes.

 If there are any Republicans of conscience in the Confederacy, they MUST stop Huckabush from getting the nomination.

Faith-based Intelligence

How’s that for an oxymoron?

On his photo-op junket to the Middle East, President Bush has told the Israelis (and, apparently, anyone else who won’t laugh at him) to disregard the conclusions of the recent National Intelligence Estimate that declared, based on the work of SIXTEEN different American intelliegence entities, that Iran has suspended its nuclear weapons program. His intelliegence community has said Iran is no longer working toward a nuclear weapon, yet the President publicly rejects the conclusions of his own intelligence community because their pronouncements, based on actual facts, don’t agree with his preconceptions and opinions.

This is not the first time this has happened. We’ve been down this road before. Before the Iraq invasion, UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix found no evidence of WMD’s in Iraq. A typical insult by right-wing mouth-breathers in 2002 and 2003 was that Blix couldn’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground. Using the right-wing’s logic, apparently neither could the American military. There is a myth today that we went into Iraq based on faulty intelligence. It wasn’t the intelligence. It was the leadership. There were many in the intelligence community who were telling the President, through his gatekeeper Dick Cheney, that there were no WMD. In fact, Secretary of State Colin Powell was quoted by Newsweek as telling his aides the night before his notorious address to the Security Council that the evidence he was to present was, in his words, “Bullshit.” Bush’s minions finessed the intelligence, rejected that which did not back-up the conclusions that had already been made, and flat out fabricated intelligence. The only thing faulty before the Iraq War was the integrity of the President.

Now, as the President tries to slide the United States into a third war since becoming President, we are going through the very same process. The intelligence community is giving the President information that does not conform with what he has been saying. We know that the NIE was submitted to Vice-President Cheney more than a year ago, but publication was withheld at his order as he tried unsuccessfully to finesse changes in the report to reflect the official party line. All the while, he and Mr. Bush were making speeches declaring Iran’s continued development of nuclear weapons, knowing the NIE showed this was false. Of course, the White House says the President was unaware of the NIE conclusions. If this is true, which is almost impossible, then either the President is incompetent and should be removed from office and the aides who failed to tell him removed from office and prosecuted, or he is a liar and should be removed from office.

Then again, it is possible God has spoken to George W. Bush. He was fond of telling evangelicals in 2000 that God had told him to run for President. Perhaps, God has told him that the NIE is wrong.

Mirrian-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines faith as: “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” Apparently, this is how the United States is now running its foreign policy.

George W. Bush, Iran, and the Gulf of Tonkin

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, thwarted by the release of the National Intelligence Estimate in their mad, headlong rush into war with Iran, are desperate to find any excuse to attack Iran, which has been the ultimate goal of the neo-cons since the first Gulf War in 1991. It is the conclusion of the SIXTEEN intelligence agencies that prepare the National Intelligence Estimate that, despite the rhetoric to the contrary of the President and Vice-President that Iran was right on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon, assertions made long after the NIE was initially submitted to the White House a YEAR AGO, Iran stopped their nuclear weapons research in 2003! Yet, the rhetoric continues and the President’s cheerleader, Dana Perino, continues to insist that Americans will see a mushroom cloud over New York if something isn’t done soon to stop the Iranians, (from doing what?). It would seem now that, with their Administration facing it’s last twelve months in office, Bush and Cheney are desperately seeking their own Gulf of Tonkin incident.

In the decades since Lyndon Johnson took over the escalation of the war in Vietnam from John F. Kennedy, it has been revealed from tapes, transcripts, and documents that the entire Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fabrication. President Johnson and the military had been ratcheting up the rhetoric against North Vietnam, yet Johnson was facing increasing pressure from the Republican nominee for President in the 1964 election, to reveal his intentions for Vietnam. Johnson,n desiring re-election that November,  insisted he didn’t want a war with Vietnam, while all the time urging the military to find a provocation that the American people would accept to justify a full-scale American intervention in the civil war between the Communist butchers in Hanoi and the corrupt right-wing dictatorship in Saigon, a not very palatable choice for Americans. NSA documents released in 2005 show that two American ships, the Maddox and the Turner Joy had deliberately entered North Vietnamese waters as US Navy seals, operating in fast boats out of Da Nang, clandestinely attacked various targets on the North Vietnamese coast with the intention of drawing a North Vietnamese attack. Later, it was claimed that the ships were in international waters and that Hanoi’s attack was completely unjustified and premeditated. Johnson had his excuse and Congress immediately passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution granting the President authority to do whatever was necessary to stop Communist aggression anywhere in Indochina.

It is the Bush Administration’s claims, despite statements to the contrary by both Democratic AND Republican leaders on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees, that previous Congressonal resolutions grant then President authority to carry out any attacks deemed necessary against Iran. However, without the justification now that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, the President needs his own Gulf of Tonkin incident to provide the excuse he needs to fulfill the desires of Norman Podhoretz and the other neo-cons who have for years been desperate for an American attack on Iran and which the President has all but promised before he leaves office. It appears that he is about to get it and the Iranians may stupidly hand it to him.

Iranians in patrol boats repeatedly buzz American war ships which have been sent to the Persian Gulf. Of course, the lunatic fringe that runs Iran would like to provoke the United States and, of course, their childish and insane followers in the Iranian military would love nothing more than to be dispatched to their seventy-seven virgins in Paradise (has anyone figured out what happens after the followers of Allah have deflowered their seventy-seven virgins?).

When a person is attacked in a dangerous neighborhood, it can argued that if that person wasn’t in the neighborhood in the first place, he or she wouldn’t have been attacked. This does not remove the guilt of the attacker, but is a common sense realization of the situation. The American navel forces in the Persian Gulf, while ostensibly protecting the transport of oil through the Straits of Hormuz, serve as a target for the Iranian nutcases who dream of Paradise and the coming of the Twelfth Imam of Something or Other. If the Americans are patient enough, and their ships, which can easily blow away any Iranian swift boats that may, mosquito-like, taunt them, approach just close enough to provoke the Followers of Allah, one of these swift boats will, one of these days, get blown out of the water.

The President’s cheerleader, Dana Perino, continues to use the USS  Cole as an example of why such an incident would deserve a full-scale massive response by the entire United States military. The difference, however, is that the Cole was in port and the terrorists snuck in. In the Gulf, the ships can easily spot any approaching vessels and destroy them, as they should. It is not necessary, unless the Iranians truly provoke us with a true attack on Americans, to start a full-scale war against them. The consequences will be the disruption of oil production and exports in the Persian Gulf, a massive spike in oil prices, a world-wide economic recession, if not depression, a vast increase in the wealth and influence of China (which holds trillions of dollars in US debt) and Russia (which is enriching itself with oil production from Siberia and the Caspian Sea region), and many other consequences that are completely unforeseen.

Before Americans continue their testosterone-fed fantasies of “blowing away the Iranians,” we might want to look at the consequences of doing so (which Donald Rumsfeld apparently didn’t do before invading Iraq) and, given what even the most hard-core Republicans see as the Bush Administration’s rather ambivalent relationship with the truth, we might want to examine carefully anything they may decide to declare a provocation.

We’ve been down this road before, in 1964. George Bush wasn’t willing to fight in that conflict. Let’s tell him that we aren’t willing to fight in this one unless there is a genuine reason to.

Chris Matthews’ Meltdown

In one of the most pathetically emotional performances I have seen in fifty years of watching television news, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews gave up all pretense of objectivity during the last several days of covering the New Hampshire primary. In his near homoerotic infatuation with Barack Obama, he has smeared Hillary Clinton and the voters of New Hampshire in vicious and vile ways that deserve the same contempt and outrage poured out on Don Imus previously. In his dream of reliving the sixties and resurrecting John F. Kennedy through Senator Obama, he declared on “Morning Joe” that the only reason Hillary is running for President and sitting in the Senate is because Bill cheated on her. He then claimed that there was nothing wrong with the polls that suggested Obama would win, just that the voters of New Hampshire were racists and lied when polled. It took Tom Brokaw on Tuesday night, Keith Olbermann on “Countdown,” and Matthews’ boss Dan Abrams to put him down, though not by name.

Brokaw chided him by saying that the news media had allowed its enthusiasm for Obama to cloud its objectivity. Olbermann pointed out that the polls were correct in predicting the Obama vote but that the undecideds broke for Clinton. Abrams said the same thing and pointed out that the size of the Clinton rallies, despite the wildly exaggerated claims of Matthews and others, were the same size as Obama’s and that there are many people in the news media who dislike Senator Clinton, and not just the right-wing nuts on talk radio and False News.

Matthews and his Boomer compatriots need to get over the sixties. The decade of The Sixties is not coming back. John F. Kennedy is not coming back. Obama is not Kennedy. Get a life.

MSNBC’s Obamathon

(I was inclined to support Obama until this weekend). Multiple-choice: Barack Obama is the second incarnation of: a). JFK, b). MLK, c). Jesus Christ, d). all of the above. If you have watched MSNBC’s 24 hour coverage of Obama’s triumphant arrival in Jerusalem, you know that the answer is “all of the above.” Beginning this morning with Joe and Mika, continuing with Chuck Todd and Tim Russert and all the others who have “never seen anything like this,” we were told that there was a groundswell of support for Obama, that he was everything we were looking for, and that he represents the new as Hillary and Edwards represent the old. I was inclined to support Obama until the infotainment industry took it upon itself to anoint Obama the Savior of America.

Obama gives an inspiring speech. He is honest, articulate, and inspiring. But, I start getting nervous and suspicious when the chattering classes all of a sudden coalesce around one candidate and get carried away with their own enthusiasm.

I did not watch False News because any network that hires Steve Doucey has no credibility and Roger Ailes is the second incarnation of a). William Randolph Hearst, b). Father Coughlin, c). Satin, d). all of the above. I can’t stand CNN anymore because they have no one besides Wolfe Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour who doesn’t have puffy lips, big tits, and a complete inability to read a teleprompter (and that includes Anderson Cooper). So, I was stuck watching Chris Matthews declare that the reason New Hampshire broke his heart and voted against the candidate he’s been shamelessly promoting since the 2004 Democratic convention is because New Hampshire Democrats are racists who tell pollsters one thing and then vote another. Crap.

I find Barack Obama inspiring, honest, and articulate. But, I have concluded that he’s just what the news media wants: image and style. We need experience and he’s not ready yet. Yes, he’s African-American, but there are a number of African-Americans better qualified to be President, and I’m not talking about the White Man’s Favorite Black Man, Colin Powell. Harold Ford, Deval Patrick, and Julian Bond come to mind. But, Obama may be another Jimmy Carter: honest and inspirational, but unable to handle the world of Washington. The times are dangerous and require someone who has been there and done that.

For forty years, the boomer left has been fantasizing about the Resurrection of JFK, or rather the Resurrection of the Mythologized JFK, for the real JFK authorized wiretaps of Martin Luther King, fudged and procrastinated on civil rights legislation, outhawked Nixon in the 1960 campaign, and, Oliver Stone’s wet dream notwithstanding, was escalating the American presence in Vietnam before he died. Chris Matthews even waxed about how Barack and Michelle remind him of Jack and Jackie. Vomit. Give up the hyperbole and stick with reporting the facts, Chris. And, while you’re at it, shut up and let someone else talk occasionally.

The Democrats must nominate Hillary, John Edwards, or Bill Richardson. Obama can be Vice-President until he gets the experience and then I will happily vote for him. In the mean time, Chris Matthews and the rest of the gang at MSNBC will have to curb their enthusiasm and remind themselves they’re journalists.

Thoughts on Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Huckabush

I was a reluctant Republican until George W. Bush proved the truth of the adage that anyone in America can grow up to be President. I was so disgusted and outraged that Southern fundamentalists would gladly hand the party nomination to someone who was completely clueless about basic geography, basic economics, and basic science that I immediately changed my registration. Since then, having worked in the corporate world and been exposed to the political world, I know what conservatives really think underneath the rhetoric about freedom. Freedom is actually the last thing most Republicans, conservatives, and fundamentalist Christians want.

Therefore, Governor Huckabush is the last candidate running whom I would want to see in the White House. I would think even Southern fundamentalists would be bright enough to see what happened the first time we elected a Southern Governor who was completely clueless about foreign policy. Senator McCain is an honorable man who was trashed by Bush and his fundamentalist supporters in 2000. McCain was sitting in a North Vietnamese prison camp while W. was avoiding service in the National Guard and partying his a** of in Texas. McCain is someone who should be seriously considered.

The Democratic side is more difficult. Emotionally, I would like to go with Obama. He is articulate and inspiring. Yet, I haven’t seen him tested in the ways Clinton has been. I like Edwards rhetoric, but I wonder if he can get his program through a Senate that would need 60 Democrats to prevent Republican filibusters. Obama talks a good talk about bipartisanship, but could he simply be another Jimmy Carter, a good and decent man who fails in Washington because he doesn’t understand the system?

I am torn. My heart says Obama. My brain says Clinton or McCain. I’m afraid.

“Ruined”

I was thirty-five before I could tell anyone about the molestation I experienced at the age of ten. The incident, which I described here earlier, involved a stranger who threatened to kill my parents if I told anyone, just seven months before my father died. I kept this incident locked inside me for two and a half decades until I started going to therapy. My therapist suggested I tell my mother about it; she simply shook her head and asked me if I wanted chicken or pork chops for dinner.

This was not much different from the time she learned that my grandfather had been sexual with me. Occasionally, when I was younger, my grandfather would put his hand in my pants and fondle me. It was not a particularly traumatic experience for me; nor was it particularly pleasant. Mother was unhappy when I told her, but that was the last I heard of it- until later. Then, a year afterwards, she learned that my grandfather had also been fondling my youngest brother. The shit hit the fan with that revelation and my little brother has yet to recover from that, even though he insists he has. It was not that I wanted a big deal to be made about my incident, nor that I thought one should be made. I didn’t feel particularly angry with my grandfather for what he did. I understand the circumstances of emotional issues which led him to do such things. But, I never understood why it seemed so much worse to my family when it happened to my brother than it did to me.

The answer came to me after my grandfather’s death when my mother revealed to me that my grandparents had once asked her to let me live with them. Life at home was pretty chaotic and dysfunctional and my grandparents recognized I was pretty sensitive and would probably be happier with them. Mother, of course, refused, explaining to me that she felt my grandfather would have “ruined” me. I didn’t ask what she meant by that, but I knew. She felt he would have made me gay.

In fact, I realize now that she already felt he had “ruined” me. From the time I was eleven, I was teased and mocked at school and at home for being gay, even when I didn’t know what that meant. Mother believed that the reason I was gay was because of my grandfather. Of course, sexual orientation is far too complicated and fundamental an issue to be determined by simple occasional fondling. But, in her mind, because I was gay, I was “ruined.”

She would not say that to me today. I am fifty years-old, but looking back over these decades, I find that her reaction to the sexual abuse, indeed everyone’s reactions to both mine and my brother’s, hurt me far more than the actual abuse. I don’t write this to excuse what happened, merely to pout it into perspective and to suggest that parents and family members who discover this is happening should be very careful not to make the revelation and aftermath more traumatic for the child that the actual abuse.

Huckabush

So, the Republicans have a front-runner for the nomination who is a Southern Governor and a fundamentalist Christian who thinks Pakistan is in Central America and claims he has nothing to do with the followers and supporters of his who make anonymous phone calls and send out mailings trashing his opponents’ character and religion. Is this 2008 or 2000?

I have a frightening sense of Deja Vu. Mr. Huckabee’s ignorance of foreign policy and his pandering to the evangelical wing of the Republican Party are a repeat performance of Texas Governor George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, when Bush said he thought the leader of Pakistan was General General, couldn’t saywhere Iran was, and claimed he couldn’t control those organizations in South Carolina working for him that were spreading the lies that John McCain had illegitimate black children.

Some parties just never learn.

Will Bush Be Held Accountable?

Attorney General Michael Mukasey has begun a criminal investigation into the Bush Administration’s attempts to destroy evidence of torture and other violations of international and U.S. law in it’s so-called War on Terror. It has been learned that the CIA videotaped its torture of prisoners, but then destroyed the tapes to avoid becoming entangled in legal complications, refusing even to acknowledge their existence when various investigative bodies subpoenaed them, all with the knowledge and approval of the President, Vice-President, and Mr. Mukasey’s predecessor as Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales.

The Bush Administration’s flagrant disregard for international law, for the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the basic standards of human decency on which this country is based may finally becoming under legal scrutiny. David Addington’s memoes to Mr. Cheney supporting the concept of “the unitary Presidency,” under which the White House can choose, at its own discretion, whether to follow the law or not depending on whether IT decides the issue involves national security, cannot be allowed to stand. Such a precedent will undermine the very essence of what it means to be America and lead this country down a path already being blazed by Vladimir Putin. For those Americans who support and embrace torture and who consider the Constitution a nuisance in attacking anyone with whom they disagree, this legal investigation may serve as a well-deserved wake-up call. This isn’t Iran or Russia or China… or Texas. This is the United States of America and we are better than that.

Confirming My Atheism

It was just a year after my loss of faith that the first of two terrible incidents occurred that confirmed my atheism. It was the morning after Bobby Kennedy was shot. I was taking swimming lessons from the Red Cross at the local college. Just before noon that Wednesday, I was leaving the natatorium, walking to my bicycle in my swimming suit, tee-shirt, and blue canvas sneakers. A man approached me and asked if I were in the swimming program. When I answered that I was, he insisted I accompany him to his office to fill out extra forms. As this was 1968, boys had not become wary of strange adults making such demands. I did as I was told. When the man had satisfied his desires, he warned me not to tell anyone about what had just happened or he would kill my parents. I was terrified and believed him. Seven months later, my father died in the crash of a Piper Apache in an ice storm on the plains of the American Midwest. He was the foundation of my life, the only force of stability and encouragement I knew and though I intellectually knew I was not responsible for his death, emotionally, I was convinced the man thought I had told what happened and he had killed my father in retribution.  I never said anything about what happened until I was thirty-five.

There were adults who tried to tell me that God had a plan for Daddy and had taken him for a reason. I could think of no possible reason God would end the life of a good and decent man; nor, could I think why he would permit a ten year-old boy to be terrorized in such a vicious way. I still don’t. I still cannot accept that a loving and omnipotent God would allow the horrors and suffering that afflict our world. How barbarous and cruel that he should look at life as a test. How selfish and arrogant that he would demand worship or cast those who failed or refused into the fires of Hell for eternity. It made no sense. It was just not possible.

If I had any second thoughts about my atheism before, the events of June 1968 and of January 1969 ended them, and though there have been times in adolescence and adulthood when I wavered in my conviction, when desperation and hopelessness led me to the extreme of trying to believe, I have been reconfirmed in my certitude that there is no God and I now find more peace and serenity than I have known since my childhood. There are still challenges in my life, still pain and uncertainty; but, I am facing those challenges with more strength than ever and making the best of what time I have left.

Leaving Faith Behind

It was forty-one years ago, as a precocious nine-year-old, that I decided I was an atheist. I was reading a book on Greek and Roman mythology when I began to wonder about the similarities and differences between the religions of Greece and Rome and that of Christianity. The book I was reading made clear the author’s belief that Zeus and Jupiter and their families of gods and goddesses were simply fables created to explain the many phenomena of nature that the people of Greece and Rome could not explain. So, I asked myself, why should I not consider the “God” of the Bible to be simply the result of the same process? The adults around me were of little help, advising me that I simply had to have faith that God was God and Jesus was his son and my savior. When asked why I had to have faith, the answer was a simple, “Because, that’s the way it is.”

 

That was not enough for me and the memory of the revelation that Santa Claus was not real, a disillusionment experienced a few years before, led me to conclude that I was not going to be fooled again. I would not believe in something simply because the adults in my life told me to, nor because it made me feel better to do so. If I was going to believe in something, it was going to be because I knew it to be true. And, thus, in the spring of 1967, when I was a precocious nine year-old, I ceased to believe in God and became an atheist.

 

I have experienced a bumpy ride since then, without the benefit of the seat belt of faith, and there were times, in despair and depression, that I weakened and tried to believe out of fear and hope. When I attempted recovery from alcohol and chemical abuse, I was told to “fake it ’till I made it.” I tried, but it has not been until recently, when I no longer felt the need to remain in the closet to my family as an atheist and to stop trying to fake it, that I have achieved long-term sobriety. I became clean and sober without superstition.

 

I “celebrated” my fiftieth birthday a few months ago, an event which, like my fortieth, has inspired a great deal of soul searching and introspection. Life has been challenging and many of these challenges were self-inflicted. I am on a journey of self-discovery now, learning how I have made mistakes, how others rightly or wrongly influenced the poor decisions I made, and studying the abuse I survived as a child and adolescent to learn what behaviors in which I now engage have their roots in the pain and self-loathing of my youth. I hope to share this journey with those who find my blog and I hope you, as a reader, will return and also share your own thoughts with me and others. Thank you!