War Profiteer or Victim?

Is going to Iraq as a private contractor or an employee of one patriotic, opportunistic, or just a business decision? This fellow seems to think the US Army needs to kick ass and take names on his behalf. After all, aren't we meddling with this country in the name of profits? Doesn't this Army officer know how to bow and scrape to cowboys who are making five to ten times what he is? Disgraceful!

Army Cooks, the Good Old Days

Remember when soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and sailors bitched and bitched about food prepared by fellow servicemen? God, I bet they wish they had those cooks back. KBR is evidently not providing the gourmet experience. This might make you think we're feeding the guests at Gitmo better, judging by the claims from Cheney and the nutty Senator last week who kept talking about the great food the prisoners were getting.

Grover Norquist, Apostle of Privilege

It is with humility that I accept the commission from Admiral Jackleg to coordinate nominees to the elite twelve Apostles of Privilege. I hereby nominate Grover Norquist and submit that the estimable Grover is eminently qualified under the seven currently identified criteria. Although there is a dearth of information about his elementary and secondary schooling, he received his undergraduate and graduate education at Hahvahd, and therefore has in his history private education and elitism. I can find no record of his having served in any branch of the military and his resume seems to indicate that he gave no years of his life in service of his country. I find in his biography no reference to hourly employment or union membership. It is particularly appropriate to nominate Grover today since he has gone to the meeting of College Republicans, not to exhort them to join up and serve their country (see Operation Yellow Elephant posts here), but to attack two sane and conscientious female US Senators and a Vietnam War hero and POW. One has to wonder if there is a connection in Grover's mind between McCain's POW years and his status, in Grover's rhetoric, as "the nut-job from Arizona." Shameful, but typical. I not only nominate Grover as an Apostle of Privilege, but as Chairman of the Board!

Sanity from Patrick Buchanan???

So, now we have a conservative from the Nixon days excoriating these sanctimonious occupants of the executive branch. Can we possibly be seeing glimmerings of logical thought in the discourse about Iraq? The intellectually nude Cheney is trying to convince us that questioning Iraq, as Chuck Hagel did, is tantamount to doubting Afghanistan. That logic must equate Hagel's patriotism to the people Rove excoriated by discussing therapy for terrorists. Want to get slimed? Question the administration.

Bringing Democracy to the World

Would it be cynical to think that the 2004 coup in Haiti is an example of the Democracy and Freedom we are trying to bring to the Middle East? Will the lot of Haitians be improved with their secret police persecuting and punishing anyone who questions or opposes this new regime WE helped install? What is different about Haiti and Iraq and Chili and Iran and Guatamala and Vietnam? One could also ask these same questions about Nicaragua, Yemen, Greece, Laos, Algeria, Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Sudan, Panama, and Grenada. All those coups, plus the failed one in Cuba, sought to depose leaders we, or rather our business leaders, didn't like. The more pertinent question is whether our meddling has made life better in ANY of these countries. I'd hate to defend the assertion that our meddling in the internal affairs of other countries has redounded to our best interest. I would argue confidently that it has not made the world a safer or better place. Someone might have the gall to argue that it has made life better for captains of the oil and banking industries as well as others. In the words of a famous hothead, "Bring it on!

Late update!! I forgot Venezuela! Are we trying to bring them "democracy" right now?

We Don't Negotiate with Terrorists

That hardline, stiff upper lip Republican line has been repeated so many times that most folks believe it. There is some evidence to the contrary going back to the godfather of neo-conservatives. The corporate media and Congress found out more about Iran-Contra and negotiating with terrorists left and right than will ever be disclosed about the shenanigans of the current gang. Of course, that mess was the result of our arrogant tinkering with the governments of other countries fifty years ago.

After defeating Kerry with the innuendo that he might negotiate with the terrorists, Our Glorious Leader now may be desperate enough to negotiate. Shazam!

Taking the Fifth for Conservative Values

Two well-dressed, polite, young, white males last week went before Senator McCain's committee and invoked their fifth amendment privilege against giving self-incriminating testimony a couple dozen times. Shawn Vasell evidently looks more all-American than he is. He has some history of disrespect for the law, so his demeanor at the committee belied the apparent arrogance of his behavior. Kevin Ring, who may or may not be the author of a paean to Supreme Court member Scalia, also respectfully resorted to the Fifth Amendment. His appearance before the committee was anything but "Brilliant. Colorful. Visionary. Tenacious. Witty." The Senate Indian Affairs Committee Oversight Hearing on Indian Lobbying video is currently located on page 4 of the C-Span directory. Although other information about these two young men might lead one to label them as smug, wealthy members of the Republican elite, they certainly gave a virtuoso rendition of contrition Wednesday. Mr. Grosh, the lifeguard who was the figurehead for a fake thinktank and who appeared at the hearing without a lawyer, was, on the other hand, refreshingly honest and courageous. Needless to say, he is not an elite Republican. In the words of Delay's buddy, Abramoff, "Give me five!"

Foxes on Guard

Mr. Philip Cooney, formerly a lobbyist for the energy industries, has resigned as Chief of Staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and taken a position with ExxonMobile. This is immediately after the New York Times, those Commies, reported that he edited climate research reports to minimize causal links between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. A White House spokesperson denied that the editing and resignation were related. Poor Mr. Cooney! After working as a lobbyist/whore for energy polluters, he achieves the higher ground of protecting environmental quality, and is forced to resign and go back to work for one of the polluters just because he could not or would not distinguish between science and public relations. Is this what those Values Voters want?

The Brilliance of George Bush

Osama Bin Laden, born to a wealthy family in Saudi Arabia. Fifteen of the nineteen September 11, 2001 hijackers Saudi Arabia citizens. Logic says Saudi Arabia might be our enemy. Why didn't we attack them? George W. Bush had a prickly dilemma. We are dependent on Saudi Arabia for oil but, more importantly, the Bush and Walker families have ties to the Saudis that go back to the 1920s. How can you attack your friends and benefactors? What to do? Divert attention by attacking . . . Iraq!

Now, this week the corporate media carries a story that 40% of the "insurgents" in Iraq are Saudis. Finally, I understand the genius of George Bush. If you cannot go into your friends' country and kill terrorists, just go next door and invite them over, tell them to "Bring it on!" What genius! Now, if he could just get those College Republicans meeting in DC this weekend to join the service and fight. . . Hell, he ain't that bright!

True Believers and Con Men

Some of my friends are saying that Karl Rove truly believes that liberals reacted to 9/11 by blaming America first and wanting to cure the terrorists and some of my friends believe it is just another dose of propaganda, the old Wingnut Noise Machine. I agree with my friends. Just because they're spinning to beat the band doesn't mean they don't believe that crap and just because they believe that crap doesn't mean they're not spinning to beat the band. Either way or both, it serves their interests better than discussing:
1. Whether there are more or fewer terrorists set on hurting US than before 9/11/2001.
2. How many non-terrorists we've alienated, maimed, or killed trying to kill terrorists.
3. How many people we've alienated with our prisoner abuse scandals.
4. How much money we're giving to Halliburton, KBR, et. al. to foul things up even more.
5. The fact that there are no Army, Marine, Air Force, or Navy recruiters at the College Republicans convention going on right now.
6. The fact that no speaker at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention exhorted Southern Baptist youth to do join the Army.
7. The vast and growing gap between the haves and have-nots in this country.
8. The military's choice between sending more of our children to Iraq to be IED targets versus killing more innocent Iraqis in order to make sure we get the guilty ones.
9. All the legislation to protect banks, drug companies, polluters from US.
10. The gutting of our armed services and reserves by the cavalier deployment of soldiers by people who were "too busy" to serve themselves.
People this crass NEED to denigrate the patriotism of others.

Tweaking the Voucher System

As a retired educator, I've always had a cynical view of the voucher proposals. I've seen it variously as an avenue to avoid integrated schools, to afford education in a religious setting, or to escape going to schools with children from poorer neighborhoods. Now, with the Bushcovites just past the halfway point of their reign and No Child Left Behind (a perfect example of the Big Lie) implemented, it is time to replace principle with pragmatism.

Vouchers and NCLB are premised on the notion of the school as the accountability unit, not the child, not the teacher, but the school. That is a fallacious premise, but it matters not at this point. That this is a gratuitous insult to dedicated educators in schools that serve impoverished neighborhoods matters not at this point. Let's accept the notion of a school failing students, but let us look at those all important test scores further. There must be a score that would indicate whether or not a school had failed an individual student, perhaps the 50th percentile. Clearly, the school has failed the student scoring at the 10th percentile. If a student has a 99th percentile score, the school must be succeeding admirably with that student.

Thus my proposal: Let's modify NCLB so that any child scoring below the 50th percentile (or 60th, whatever) would have the right to attend another school, but students scoring above that benchmark would be unable to transfer. Now that would be a winning formula. The school might not mind losing its lower-performing students and really shouldn't lose those with whom it is succeeding. Those deserving children left in the school would not have their lives disrupted by moving to a new school and might even experience an improved school climate as a result of the departure of the students who have been failed by the school. The geniuses who came up with the notion of schools as the unit of comparison would have great opportunities to study the performance of currently high-performing schools who experience an influx of students who were failed by their previous schools.

This suggestion will surely find merit if voucher proponents truly believe that schools are legitimately units of accountability.

Outsourcing Economic Fairness

Good article. With this current set of foxes guarding the chicken coop--Oil company lobbyists staffing the EPA, etc.--, the things that are being done in the name of free enterprise and American capitalism are resulting in shifting the risks of the economy to the poorer and working classes and shifting the profit to the richer and leisure classes. Bankruptcy protection for banks, tax breaks for going offshore, protecting drug and oil companies from competition, and every other significant initiative of the Bushcovites results in more insulation (money) for the wealthy and less for the poor. When the Wall Street Journal and Alan Greenspan start wringing their hands over the widening chasm between the haves and the rest of us, it is indeed time to look out for a new Depression.

Invoking Hitler

Granted that Dick Durbin's comments were overly dramatic, this only begins to put them in perspective. The Right Wingnut Yappers have almost cornered the market in hysterical hyperbole. That's why they're so angry at Durbin; he tiptoed into their arena.

Who is Mickey Herskowitz and . . .

Why is he saying those terrible things about Our Glorious Leader? If you believe Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq and wonder when and why he first wanted to do that, these are his own words: He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz.

"It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.

In his own words!

ADT, Keeping America Safe

ADT ran a commercial on CNN this morning with warm pictures and smarmy thoughts about its mission to keep Americans feeling safe. Is this the same ADT that belongs to Tyco, the company that moved offshore to avoid paying US taxes, the same company that was run by Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz, convicted last week of giving themselves huge bonuses for helping Americans feel safe? The same Tyco that avoids US taxes, but sponsors Bowl games so they can advertise how American they are?

The Two Republican Parties

There is common stock and there is preferred stock. . . There is general admission and there are private boxes. . . There are members of the Republican Party and there are the owners of the Republican Party. Most likely, the membership category of the party was invented by the New Nixon, the one who realized that the number of people who believed Republican principles was dwindling. The Southern Strategy, using race disguised as "states' rights" and "law and order," elected Nixon. Reagan followed the blueprint, making a states rights speech in a Mississippi county where three civil rights workers had been killed and then praising Jefferson Davis at Stone Mountain, Georgia. George H. W. Bush got great mileage out of the Willie Horton ads. Using race, homophobia, religion, and anti-abortion positions as market tactics for Republican members, the owner Republicans have gained control of the executive and legislative branches and are following an agenda that reduces the role of government, empowers and enriches multinational corporations, and enlarges the chasm between the rich and the rest of us.

The effect of this year's bankruptcy legislation enriches the rich at the expense of the rest of us, many of whom are member Republicans. Privatization of Social Security is about money in the pockets of the rich and less retirement security for the rest of us, including member Republicans. Repeal of estate taxes, styled "death taxes" by the propaganda corps of the party, ensure that the rich can pass their wealth on to the next generation and continue avoiding taxes on their huge wealth while the rest of us, including member Republicans, must rely on our own ingenuity, energy, hard work, and luck to defeat the stacked deck owner Republicans deal from.

The owners and operators of the Republican party have never had to work for a wage or a salary. Republicans like Ken Mehlman are employees, perhaps members but certainly not owners. Owners are Richard Mellon Scaife, George H. W, Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, . . .

Is this What Privatization Will be Like?

Corporate media don't seem interested in how the United Airlines bankruptcy and pension default affects Americans, including the widow of a 9/11 pilot, who worked for a retirement, who contributed to a penson plan, and who were betrayed by a corporation that will pay $4.5 million in pension guarantees to Chairman Glenn Tilton. UA was allowed to shuck their pension obligations to the government and how many other corporations are watching?

Liberal Media

The right wingnut yappers from Oh Really to Pilonodal Limberger to Highfannity rant on about the "liberal media." As we say in the south, that dog won't hunt! This link comes much closer to the truth. The mainstream media are for-profit corporations and therefore very sensitive to the wants and needs of major corporations and powerful populations. Shame on ABC. Want the truth? Think Rolling Stone, think Salon.com, think Vanity Fair. They are not doing news on the mainstream media; they are doing corporate propaganda and stacked-deck debates.

Yellow Elephant Operation

I posted the following comment on one of my favorite blogs:

What a patriotic initiative! General, you are a General because of your great creativity and deep love for the truth. This campaign must succeed. There seems to be a vast right wingnut conspiracy to prevent our privileged young learning about their opportunity so SERVE. Thank you for caring enough to reveal their opportunity for self-sacrifice.

The supporters of the Iraq adventure have put neither their money or the lives of their children where their loud mouths are. A few things we would see if these talking heads were for real:
1. An appeal for their own young members to enlist from every pulpit that denounced John Kerry.
2. Enlistments, encouragements to their relatives to enlist, and public service announcements for recruiters from the country music industry. Until they are in uniform or have their children in uniform, they should stop singing those flag waving, macho ditties.
3. A campaign by Focus on the Family to encourage the religious young to become warriors in Iraq.
4. Scholarships to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for anyone who volunteers to serve in the United states Army.
5. Offices for military recruiters in all fundamentalist Christian schools.

Surely my readers could come up with more ways the verbally patriotic, who can be most readily identified by Bush bumper stickers on their vehicles, can prove they are ready to sacrifice for the Iraqi adventure. The hallmarks of true patriotism, in my humble opinion, include expenditure of one's own wealth, one's own blood, and one's own freedom to the extent that freedom is curtailed by serving in the military.

What if . . .

What if you lost a loved one in an effort that was based on lies?
This man did. It is time for our national conversation to turn to the public relations campaign engineered by the Bushcovites and the corporate media to induce Congress to provide political cover for an attack on Iraq. ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, and Faux News will not be shedding any light on the Downing Street Memo. We will have to rely on internet bloggers and free outlets like C-Span for undoctored news. Regrettably NPR and PBS used to be free, but Our Glorious Leader has managed to muzzle them. Sorry, that's another story.

Defense Spending

This is eye-opening. The idea that we, the most powerful nation on earth with one of the most defensible borders, spend two-thirds of our budget on defense is startling. Are we paranoid or are we convinced that we've offended that many nations in the world or do we think there are that many bad guys? What could we do with all that money spent on housing, environmental cleanup, alternative sources of energy, American PEOPLE?

Prisoner Abuse

When I heard the news some three years ago that the USA was setting up a detention center in Guantanamo, my thought processes activated the fact/myth from WWII stories of how our German POWs were so well-treated and became very pro-American as a result. So, my pictures of our detention processes included a frame in which our treatment of prisoners revealed us as humane, tolerant, ethical, and kind human beings who loved freedom and human rights. I thought we were going to win friends and influence thinking in the Middle East.

Now that things have proven different, I am being forced to question my apparently naive beliefs. Did the German POWs really love us that much? How about the Japanese POWs? If they didn't learn, like the Germans, to love us and democracy, why not? Did we have so much more in common with Nazis than emperor-worshippers?

If we are now much more hated and resented in the rest of the world, it is not because of bad public relations; it is because of bad actions. Someone is responsible for the treatment of the prisoners who, unlike the Germans, happened to NOT be white Christian Europeans. Could that be at least part of the reason for the numerous cases of mistreatment? Do we feel so superior as the bastion of freedom and Christianity that we unthinkingly set lower standards of treatment for captives who happen not to be white or Christian?

White Christian Party

Howard Dean didn't get it quite right, regardless of whether his comments were offensive. He could have made an irrefutable argument that the Republican Party has a history going back at least to Nixon's "southern strategy" of adjusting its message to capture the votes of whites agitated by the civil rights movement. There are numerous bits of evidence to cite. Remember Willie Horton? What about "faith-based initiatives?" The best and most sophisticated appeal to the fears of white Christians may be Dobson and Frist's accusation that trying to block neanderthal judicial appointments amounted to an attack on people of faith. Todays Republican party resorts to racial fear, homophobia, objection to women and their physicians making decisions without government regulation, religious paranoia, and several other cynical tactics that have nothing to do with anything positive the Republicans offer.

You might think Bush would have touted his first four years in the election last year. What really happened was that he put all his resources into trivial attacks on Kerry. Disappointingly, the corporate media must not have noticed. The Republican party does not behave in any Christian way I recognize, but clearly is where it is today because of its romance with conservative Christians.

A Slogan for the Democrats

The Democrats need to reclaim their natural constituency. I think it was on dailykos.com a couple months ago I saw a suggestion that Democrats market themselves as "the party for people who work for a living." Certainly, many people who work for a living voted for the other party and it is not difficult to prove the other party is not FOR people who work for a living. In recent days, the Republican-controlled Congress passed legislation to protect banks (the rich!) from working people (the poor). Last year, Congress passed legislation to protect pharmaceutical companies (the rich!) by preventing Americans from buying prescription drugs at prices the drug companies charge across the border in Canada. The privatization scheme for Social Security is clearly designed and advocated by people who, for the most part, never worked for an hourly wage and have only a theoretical undersanding of the minimum wage. Clearly, the Republicans are Robin Hood Reversed!

Stars and Bars: Why?

I was driving behind a new Chevy pickup this morning and saw one of those see-thru graphics on the rear window that looked, at first, like the American flag. As I examined it more closely, I saw that the graphic morphed as I scanned from the upper left to the lower right into the confederate flag.

I am not particularly offended, but very curious. Why would someone find such a graphic satisfying and feel the need to display it. The following are just speculation, but my guesses why a person would proudly display this "Flag:"

1. He (Surely this was a guy!) has a romanticized view of the Old South and the Confederate Cause.
2. He sees himself as a rebel and thus identifies with those historical Rebels.
3. He resents the real or imagined negative impact of Affirmative Action on him.
4. He is defiantly racists and is issuing a dare to any person of color who might want to take issue with his display.

I've run out of possibilities. If anyone can think of more reasons anyone would flaunt the Confederate Flag, please add them in the comments section.

Flying the Confederate Flag: The Point is ??

We read about this from time to time. A politician, in this case Republican Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri, orders that a Confederate Flag be flown. An NAACP official is outraged and calls for boycotts and all manner of consequences. It is easier to understand why the Confederate Flag is such a noxious symbol for African Americans than why flying it means so much to those who want it flown. The set piece played out this weekend in Missouri was entirely predictable, even scripted. Who was governor Blunt playing to, ancestor worshippers or racists? Wait, are there ancestor worshippers in Missouri? I wonder why those who observe Confederate Memorial Day couldn't honor their dead ancestors on May 30 when the rest of us honor our relatives who gave their life for their country? Maybe display of the "Stars and Bars" really does boil down to romantic, but stupid, notions of the chivalric South. More likely, it is a pointed expression of hostility to African Americans. Will we outgrow it in another 140 years?

Eloquence on Todays Deep Throats

I wish I could write like this. Of course, I don't plan to, in Bill O'Reilly's argot, "SHUT UP!" until I'm able to.

Rumsfeld and China

Don Rumsfeld has noticed China! Cowboy Don observed, "Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases?" A Chinese official mentioned that China has the number three military in the world behind number two Russia and number one United States. He did not wonder what nation threatens us. Strange! If Don and Our Glorious Leader truly wanted to have a safer world, they would immediately engage China and Russia in negotiations about reducing military expenditures and arms sales. At least, Don has at least recognized who might pose a greater threat to us than Iraq. Maybe we could hope the braintrust would start figuring out how to extricate our resources from the Middle East and conserve them for the time when China feels froggy.

Watergate Punditry

On fair and balanced Faux News, we have commentary by Chuck Colson; somewhere else in the liberal media, we have G. Gordon Liddy, Henry Kissinger, and Pat Buchanan denouncing Mark Felt/Deep Throat. The delicious irony is that all four are former nefarious Nixon neanderthals, only fifty percent of whom escaped indictment, conviction, and jail time for their government activities. Now they, without any reminders of their burglary/conspiracy activities, are allowed to defame and denigrate a man who helped expose those cynical, power-drunk excesses of term II Nixonites (Get ready for the Bush II escapades, which will probably make the Watergate pranksters look like pikers!).

To whom might Felt have reported his inside knowledge? Maybe John Mitchell, who later served 19 months for his role in the Watergate cover-up! Who was the acting FBI director at the time? L. Patrick Grey, III, who had worked in the Nixon campaign in 1960. These were the people who designed, executed, and tried to conceal Watergate! How predictable that today the Nixon survivor/pundits would think of Felts as not a nice person! On the other hand, where would we be today without Deep Throat? Two full terms of Nixon? Much of what the Bushcovites are trying to accomplish might already be in place! Thank you, Mark Felt!

Where are our fair and balanced newshounds? Shouldn't they be reminding us about Colson, Liddy, and company and their obvious motives instead of just letting them defame Felt/Deep Throat?

Riding Shotgun for KBR

This seems ironic. Halliburton, Dick Cheney's last employer, is making money hands over fist in Iraq. They are the food service, laundry service, waste disposal, and many other things to our servicemen in Iraq. This is their expectation that our guys place their lives at risk for civilians and foreign making three to five times what their own pay and for the Halliburton bottom line. How many must die for Halliburton?

Walmart Sophistry

This is "spin" directly lifted from www.walmartfacts.com:

Health Care Coverage
Fact: Our health care plan insures full-time and part-time associates once eligible. Last year, this was more than 500,000 associates, including many family members. Currently, 86 percent of Wal-Mart hourly store associates surveyed have medical insurance - 56 percent of those with coverage received health care insurance from Wal-Mart and the remainder receive health care through another source such as another employer, a family member, the military or Medicare.

Now, let's see. That means that 14% of Walmart "associates" have NO health insurance at all. How does that compare with employers like Ford, Delta, or Dell Computer? The whitewash then admits that only 56% of the 86% receive insurance through Walmart. Now why do they refer to the 88% number at all if not to take credit for the efforts of other employers or Medicare? Did they forget to mention Medicaid? Does Walmart or does Walmart NOT have an "associate" in Georgia who assists Walmart "associates" in applying for Medicaid? Another minor difference glossed over by this Walmart mouthpiece is the fact that "associates" pay for part, most, or all their healthcare coverage? How does that compare with employees of IBM, Southwest Airlines, or General Motors?

Fierce Invalid How-tos

I just finished listening to the book on tape of Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins. This is what I learned:
1. Ignore all advertising. Advertising is designed to induce you to do that which you would not otherwise do and, therefore cannot be in your best interest.
2. Be suspicious of conservatives—and liberals. People with political agendas have only their own power--actual, vicarious, or imagined--in mind.
3. Ride nowhere you could walk. This may or may not be from Robbins. It just seems like it takes money out of the pockets of our power-mad oil barons and improves our health by the exercise and the more leisurely pace.
4. Be jealous of your freedom. There are Republicans, Islamists, Baptists, Catholics, economists, and secular humanists with plans to impinge, reduce, limit or end it.
5. “Keep moving; otherwise you’re a target.” -Robbins
6. If you’re going to be cheerful, be a cynic. If you’re going to be cynical, be cheerful. This not only makes you more attractive and intriguing in the eyes of others, it is the simplest formula for self-improvement. Think your way to a new way of acting; act your way to a new way of thinking?
7. And, in the immortal words of Sailor Boy, the parrot: "People of zee wurl, relax."