I am writing this as we climb towards 41,000 feet en route to DFW from Durango.
My whole body is beat up. When you’re 25 pounds overweight, and out of shape, a ski vacation at 11000 feet suddenly becomes an impertinent imposition on the workings of your body. In the past 72 hours, I have discovered muscle groups that I did not know I possessed. I also have a practical working understanding of what happens to your thumb when you wrap the ski pole retaining strap around it and then fall at 15 mph on the pole. More of that later...

Wednesday
Purgatory Village lies at 10800 feet in the San Juan Mountains about 35 miles North of Durango. To get there from Dallas we flew a SouthWest Airlines charter from Dallas Love Field to Durango, then took a charter bus from Durango Airport to Purgatory. The flight takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes; the bus ride takes about 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Factoid #1: SouthWest Airlines does not normally provide seat assignments on its flights, yet they assigned seats on this flight. This essentially involved the gate crew making up a seat assignment process, because the airline I.T. systems have no seat assignment capability. This, however, led to several people being assigned the same seats (in addition to Marsha and myself being assigned seats in tandem).
Purgatory Village is one component of a sprawling collection of hotels, condos, vacation rentals and other components known as Durango Mountain Resort. The components of the resort are spread out along a 15-mile zone, starting in Tamarron and ending north of Cascade.
The main lodge at Purgatory Village sits at the base of lifts 1,4,6, and 10. This was going to be our first ski-in ski-out vacation. The hotel sits at the corner of a shopping plaza next to the main complex of ski lifts.
We arrived at Purgatory at around 8.00 pm local time on Wednesday. This gave us time to unpack, find something to eat, and crash. The room was well-enough equipped, with a jacuzzi bath (although, in common with many US hotel rooms, the bath appeared to have been designed for a midget).

Thursday
Under clear blue San Juan Mountain weather, we arose, ate at the Deli in the shopping plaza, and then marched into the ski hire location on the second floor to get fitted for ski equipment. Within 45 minutes we were heading towards the lift, trying our best to look like grizzled veterans.
Now the adventure began…when you have not skied for 6 years, certain elements of the skills and craft of skiing disappear into back-up long-term memory. Like how to get on a 2-person chair lift. Marsha proceeded to get all crossed up on our first entry to the chair lift. Having failed to get far enough to the left side of the mounting point, she was sent sprawling when the center pole of the lift hit her in the posterior. Seeing that she was on the ground, I baled from the lift also. The lift attendants stopped the lift while we retrieved and re-attached skis. (Just as well there wasn’t much of a queue).
We then back-tracked to the entry point, and tried again. Success! We were headed up the mountainside.
That was just the beginning…at the top, lack of current skills intervened once again, as Marsha failed to stand up enough leaving the lift, fell over on her posterior, lost both skis and sent me falling on top of her. Once again, we had to sort order from chaos. Fortunately the only injuries were to our pride.
We re-attached and adjusted equipment, and set off down the nearest Green run, called, appropriately enough, Easy Way Down. Hmmm. Within 100 yards, it became apparent that although my brain was perfectly willing to ski, my body had not yet remembered all of the tricky stuff. Like how to get into a turn. For the next hour, my brain and my body held a full and frank exchange of views. A sample follows:

Brain: Left parallel turn please
Body: What is This?!!!!
Brain: I said left parallel turn
Body: ???????
Brain: Left parallel turn dammit. The trees are approaching!
Body: #$@%^&&!!!!!
(slow, shambolic left turn ensues)

We descended Easy Way Down, slowly re-educating our bodies in the basic arts of skiing. To my surprise, by the time I got to the bottom the second time, my body had remembered right and left parallel turns. The turns were somewhat inconsistent, but, hey, practice should cure that…
The morning was spent on several slow descents of Easy Way Down, most of which is actually a road. This is a good test of parallel turning, because the road is narrow enough that snowplough turns don’t work very well. You can snowplough but you will be very very slow…
After lunch we headed up to try Mercy, another Green run. Mercy is extremely wide, and is a very gentle Green run.
By the end of the first day, I had proved that between them, my brain and body had remembered enough of the rudiments of skiing. The main challenge was that it was already clear that I lacked the muscle conditioning to actually descend an entire Green run without stopping. Lactic acid burn was causing frequent stops for recovery. At an all-up weight of 230+ pounds with ski equipment, you pick up speed rapidly on a descent, which causes a lot of upper leg work as you try to scrub off speed. I can do that reasonably effectively, but it wears you out.

Friday
As I tried to get out of bed, I suddenly discovered that while my brain was all set to enjoy another day of skiing, my body was in full rebellion from Day 1. Just about every significant muscle group below my waist appeared to be protesting. The only cure was – 3 Advil at breakfast. Breakfast was the buffet option at Hoodys in the same building. This is where one of the realities of being a captive customers comes into play – you will pay a lot over the odds for eating out. With no transportation, other options (such as soaking in Trimble Hot Springs) were also next to impossible to arrange.
Skies were still clear blue, but it was a lot colder than on Thursday. In addition, a stiff wind was blowing at the bottom of the mountain. We set off up the mountain again, and as we neared the top, a stiff wind increased to something approaching gale force. We elected to return to the top via a different lift (Engineer) after a single descent of Mercy showed that, with that run pointing into the wind, it was like skiing in a wind tunnel. I had to carry a lot more speed just to avoid coming to a dead stop on parts of that run. The wind was removing loose powder snow from Northerly-facing runs, which was exposing hard crust and making life more interesting when turning.
As we left Engineer lift, I counted on a butt lift that never materialized. The result was a collapse, during which my right knee landed hard on a ski binding. During the rest of the day, the knee would become gradually more painful. There was no damage to the knee internals, but the bruise was on the inside of the knee, and seemed to make itself obvious on turns.
Skiing today was a lot less fun due to the ambient temperatures being 15-20 degrees cooler than Thursday. Temperatures in the high 40’s had been replaced by low 30’s with the howling Northerly wind adding a further wind-chill factor. After lunchtime, I realized that my legs were cold, which was causing me to become tight. My overall performance was abysmal. I returned to the hotel room and put on leggings under my ski pants. This helped somewhat. We were also encouraged to try some runs further North on the mountain after talking to one of the people that Durango Mountain Resort thoughtfully place around the base of the mountain. These are older more experienced workers who provide information and tips for neophytes like us. Our help came from a woman who told us to work our way further North on the mountain, because there were better runs there. This proved to be a smart move – those runs were much quieter, including a great series of Blue-Greens leading down to the Hermosa Park Express lift. However, as the sun moved lower in the West, ice patches began to appear on several runs, which made turns more of a lottery. A number of the runs further North are shielded by trees from the sun after about 2.30.
At this point, later in the afternoon, on the return down to the village, I committed one of the cardinal sins of ski equipment technique. In ski school, you are taught to hang a ski pole by its strap on your wrist, and have the pole dangle before you grasp it in your hand. That way, the strap is not wrapped around your thumb. Without noticing, my right pole strap was wrapped around my thumb. Breezing down the final section of Lower Demon en route to the base lift, my left ski hit a twig lying on the surface., and the ski went out to the left. The immediate result was an inelegant sprawl, which would have been innocuous except for the fact that the right ski pole was thrown under me at an angle, which twisted and sprained my right thumb. The sprain was not severe – the thumb still worked. However, this was an avoidable incident. I continued for one more run, but by this time my legs were tired, my right knee was sore and stiff, and my thumb was starting to get stiff as the injured base joint began to swell. We packed up at about 3.30.
We tried to arrange transportation to go to Trimble Hot Springs (our bodies needed it) but the resort transportation system seemed to be marginally organized – a call to the number resulted in an answering machine. Not a positive sign. We decided instead to ride the shuttle to Cascade (another DMR location 3 miles North) and eat dinner at the Cascade Grill.
We ate an excellent set meal for $20 a head watching the sun set on the Needles range in front of an open fire. However, every time I got up to go to the restroom, my lower body appeared to have stopped working.
When we went to leave, we found that the 7.15 pm return shuttle had mysteriously disappeared…eventually, after 40 minutes (and me having to prevent Marsha from pitching a major fit to the front desk), a min-van turned up, with a young guy who explained that he was the back-up shuttle. On the way back to the Village, he explained that the issues with transportation were mostly due to under-staffing (“they’re too cheap to hire enough people” was his blunt explanation).

Saturday
I got up in the night to go pee. I wish I hadn’t tried. I now have a preview of what life will be like when I am 85…I might have been able to crawl to the toilet almost as quickly. My right knee seemed to be in a brace, judging by the level of stiffness.
When I woke and started trying to move around, it seemed that just about every part of my lower body was protesting. My right knee hurt when bent at 90 degrees or straightened fully, and my right thumb was swollen all of the way from the first joint right across my hand, with blue bruising, and was stiff and sore. My initial reaction was that I would not be skiing again (ever?). Marsha and I discussed just watching everybody else on the slopes.
After much hobbling about the bedroom trying to persuade my lower extremities to practice the art of walking, we got changed and went down to Hoody’s for breakfast. The breakfast room was full of hard-core ski racers in town for a regional skiing competition. You can tell the hard-core skiers easily. For a start, they look wiry and fit. No paunches here. The girls all look like assertive women who could (and probably would) kick butt and take no prisoners. They are also totally unconcerned with fashion or color co-ordination – they simply wear what is comfortable and gets the job done, usually layers of high-quality clothing, some of which looks well-used and almost beat-up. They are not going to win any fashion competition. It’s about effectiveness, not posing.
At breakfast I was introduced to the wonder that is industrial-strength Advil (one massive 750 mg tablet). By the time we arrived back at the room…Ye Gods, a miracle had occurred. The creaking and protesting right knee was a mere twinge, the right thumb was operating almost normally, and as for the rest of my lower body….pain, what pain? Suddenly, I felt almost normal, and ready for more skiing. So…on went the equipment and we hit the slopes at around 10.00.
However, it was apparent that the Advil-fuelled pain relief was a false dawn. The blunt reality was that my body was worn out from 2 days of skiing. Nothing worked. Left turns, right turns, you name it, my body refused to co-operate. I was reduced to a peculiar all-body spasm-like twisting motion just to get my left ski to tuck in on a left turn, after a delay that seemed like an age. After a while, my own brain’s basic intolerance of poor execution began to manifest itself in the uttering of numerous curse-words and the rhythmic swatting of the ground with ski poles. This folks, was an epiphany. Putting it mathematically:

25 pounds overweight + poor aerobic fitness + abysmal muscle fitness = Lousy skiing performance

Marsha was undergoing a similar epiphany, with slightly different numbers, but an identical result. We decided to cease skiing at about 12.45. When you end up unable to sustain even a quarter-mile of gentle green skiing, you realize that it is time to cut your losses and look forward to the next time.
Factoid #2 – Durango Mountain Resort is probably not an “extreme” resort; a lot of hard-core skiers might find the run classification system a wee bit, well, benevolent. I skied several Blue run sections on the second day that would probably be classified as Green in some other locations. However, there are a lot of runs, and some of the runs are very long, even by US standards. The long set of Blue runs leading down to the Hermosa Park Express lift is a real delight, since it covers a wide area, with multiple paths through the zones of pines, and allows you to actually pick up some speed and (for a brief moment) imagine that you are Bode Miller. As is normal, the most extreme runs are to be found on the North and South periphery of the ski areas.
We spent the rest of the day eating lunch at Hoody’s, people-watching, and rating the snowboarders and skiers who were jumping off the snow ramp on Pandemonium. Some of the skiers were pretty impressive, performing both forward and backward 360 somersaults. The skiers seemed to be rather better at staying upright on landing than the snowboarders, many of whom seemed to wipe out on initial landing; however, once you wipe out on skis, the loss of one or more skis dooms you, whereas a number of the snowboarders would somehow recover, and continue, no doubt explaining “I planned that all along” when they arrived back at the bottom of the mountain.
At 4.00 pm we headed back to the Village to await ground transportation back to the airport. At this point, confusion reigned for some time, as we were first told that there would be 1 bus, then 2 buses, then 2 buses plus a baggage truck….it all got sorted out eventually and we left for the airport at 5.00. However, the bus driver was constantly talking on the radio to other DMR folks, and changes seemed to be occurring to the plan every 5 minutes.
Factoid #3 – IMHO Durango Mountain Resort has a surfeit of youthful enthusiasm and a deficit of management and organization. For at least part of the time, the staff at Purgatory Village seemed to be unsure of exactly what was supposed to be happening and when for our charter party. I suspect that DMR does not pay enough money to retain enough good managers.

Conclusions
1. The charter tour that we had hooked into is a good option for a short-duration ski vacation. For 2 days off of work, you get 3 full days of skiing.
2. There is no substitute for at least a basic level of physical fitness. Carrying 25 pounds of extra weight is also not a good idea, especially when operating at up to 12,000 feet.
4. Don’t wrap your ski pole strap around your thumb. Sooner or later it will bite you…

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-mooney/the-stories-behind-the-st_b_2356.html

...is outlined here. Some of the administration leaders need to go look up the words "scruples" and "integrity", understand their meaning, and then go back down the road and find those parts of their personalities.

Link: http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/13763761.htm

One of the more sinister aspects of the current administration is their consistent campaign to suppress unwelcome criticism or dissent. This takes many forms, from the reluctance to have the President answer unscripted questions, their not-at-all disguised contempt for the media in general, through to a number of incidents where electors and citizens were tossed from events because they were protesting government policies or wearing clothing with slogans perceived as protesting.
With such a wide-ranging series of policies in place to make dissent "disappear", it was inevitable that sooner or later somebody would make a mistake. Welcome to BushCo's State of the Union mistake. They tossed the wife of a Republican representative, seemingly because somebody in the security branch cannot read or understand the English language.
Whilst reading the account of this event is somewhat amusing...it still begs the question of why the authorities felt the need to even try to eject her in the first place. In my own opinion, an inability to accept dissent is the hallmark of either an insecure authority or an authoritarian authority. Both types of authorities are dysfunctional, and ultimately they usually turn into houses of cards and come crashing down, but not before a lot of damage has been done.
A project manager I worked with kept a plaque on his desk at work which read "if you don't get the facts, the facts will get you". Ignoring or suppressing dissent is merely another mechanism by which organizations ignore facts or opinions that they don't like and which they don't want to hear. I have seen numerous projects crash and burn when they create their own version of reality and then find to their dismay that it is not accurate.
BushCo are currently attempting the same approach. It will fail, but probably not before a lot of damage is done to the United States and its worldwide position.

Link: http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2006/01/please_dont_say.html

A widely-used meme for what I will call the Abramoff Affair is that it is a "lobbying scandal".
It is nothing of the sort. This blog entry explains why that frame is all too convenient for politicians, since it paints the lobbyists as the bad guys.
The reality is that lobbying is an expensive, painstaking activity requiring large sums of money, access to politicians, and time. Corporations and interest groups do not spend money and energy on lobbying politicians because it's fun. They do it because it gets results. Lobbyists exist as a profession because politicians listen to them and are influenced by them. If every politician in Washington refused to talk to lobbyists, you can be sure that the lobbying process as we currently know it would soon cease to exist. Nobody spends efforts on marketing when there are no consumers willing to be influenced.
Which means, folks, that this is a political scandal. The elected representatives of we (the people) are influenced by lobbying, thus making lobbying a rewarding activity for lobbying firms, and the clients who pay them. That means that lobbyists must have a significant amount of evidence that the politicians they lobby are influenced to change their behaviours.
Since the elected representatives are supposed to be representing their electorates, whenever they are influenced by lobbyists on any subject, there is a risk that the lobbyist may be persuading them to support actions and legislative changes that conflict with the desires of the electorate that voted them into office. Can anyone say "conflict of interest"?
A case could be made that lobbying allows organizations that normally have no direct voting input to have their voices heard in legislatures. Corporations, for instance, do not have votes, so how do they make their views known? I remain unconvinced by the veracity and usefulness of this argument, but I would observe that if we feel that non-personal organizations should have political influence, what we should be discussing and debating is a process for allowing them some limited rights of influence. We should then aim to make such a process a lot more transparent than the current lobbying processes, which take place largely out of the public eye (many lobbyists resembling vampires, for whom daylight is a Really Bad Thing).
At the moment lobbying resembles prostitution; everybody knows it is going on, but because it is frowned upon, most of the interested parties have a vested interest in pretending that (a) it doesn't exist, and/or (b) if it did exist it's OK because that golf vacation I took in Hawaii paid for by Acme Corporation had nothing to do with me changing my mind on voting for the Acme Corporation Boondoggle Bill...
Lobbying is nothing more than a form of corruption, where elected representatives are influenced in their behaviours by people who, in nearly all cases, did not vote for them. As ever, money doesn't so much talk as scream, since politics is an expensive business, and a classic lobbying technique is to make donations to a politician's election campaign funds.
The frame "lobbying scandal" is great for politicians since it implies that the scandal would not exist without all of these nasty, evil lobbyists running round, well, lobbying. Get rid of the lobbying and peace and perfection will return.
Horseshit.
Next time somebody calls the Abramoff affair a lobbying scandal, correct them. It is a political scandal, with the root cause being the willingness of politicians to accept flattery, largesse and sums of money from people other than the electors who voted for them, in return for favours. In other words, this is just another variation of corruption.

Almost invisible (as usual) amid the various dire scenarios and hand-wringing by Western and European politicians and media pundits has been any serious, informed, considered discussion of how long it might actually take Iran to construct, test and ready any sort of nuclear fission device.
Dire predictions have Iran testing a nuclear device in as little as 1 year. Most predictions talk in terms of 3-5 years.
While it is true that every nation that has built nuclear weapons has succeeded on the first try, most of these programs relied either on obtaining information via espionage (USSR), information transfer (USA -->Great Britain,Israel --> South Africa), or secret long-term scientific and engineering programs (France, Israel, Pakistan). In some cases, the programs ran for a long time before a device was tested.
It is not clear how much detail, implementable understanding Iran has captured concerning how to build a bomb. While the basic principles of a nuclear fission explosion are well-known to high-school physics students all over the world, the devil is in the details. This can be seen by the paucity of literature available about initiator design; much of that information is still classified. An initiator is the detonation device (and one of the few uses of the element polonium). Without a properly functioning initiator, the result is a "fizz bang" with a low explosive impact and local scattering of radioactive debris. There are also a host of issues to be solved in the creation of a delivery system. Once a program to build an atomic bomb gets beyond a certain point, it becomes impossible to conceal. Testing such a device tends to shake the planet (literally) and such shakes are easy to measure. Putting the bomb on a missile requires further visible testing.
As far as anybody is saying, none of the above has occurred yet, which suggests that Iran is a lot further away from building a device than 1 year. Given that apparently uranium concentration is not even in progress on a significant scale (no U-235 or plutonium, no bomb), I find the one year scenario unbelievable. 3-5 years looks to be more likely, and we will know well in advance of its readiness, unless Iran tries to use a device without any prior testing of the weapon and it's delivery system(unlikely, but not impossible).
From a geopolitical perspective, this sort of issue was always likely to arise. Countries who want to show that they have "arrived" on the world stage are going to see nuclear weapons as a calling card to show that they have the technology and the willpower to play with the "big boys".
The attempt to restrict the spread of nuclear weapns via the Non-Proliferation Treaty is one of the more amusingly one-sided documents in recent world history - a device by which the existing members of the nuclear club have tried to get the non-members to agree to not try to join (with the exception of Israel, which, although it is generally believed to have nuclear weapons, carefully refuses to confirm or deny whether it has them). Not surprisingly, the NPT increasingly looks to have more holes in it than a kitchen colander. How any nuclear power can seriously expect to make the NPT survive in the long-term is difficult to understand.
Some of the current impetus driving Iran to create a nuclear device might be diminished if a lasting peace can be facilitated between Israel and its neighbors. However, that currently looks to be about as likely as pigs flying. Even if a Middle East peace settlement eliminates part of the Iranian motive, they still have the means; as an oil-producing country, they can use their source of energy as a bargaining chip with which to obtain reciprocal deliveries of technology and other materials which, to use the old cliche, have a "dual use". In other words, Iran is unlikely to have trouble obtaining the materials and technology to build a nuclear device as long as its oil and gas fields are still active.
This saga is going to run and run. It is my conviction that if Iran looks to be close to building a bomb, Israel will attempt to destroy the program. That action in itself will be very damaging for the Middle East, but desparate nations, like desparate people, have a habit of doing desperately stupid things (a comment that could apply to most of the countries in the Middle East at one time or another in the last 59 years). I'm glad I'm watching this from the USA, but I remain somewhat pessimistic of a good outcome to the current situation.
What is clear is that there are no easy answers to this mess. Be very wary of anybody who suggests that there is an easy answer; they either came down from the hillside with the last rainstorm, just landed from Mars, or they are stupid.

...via the quaintly named "cloture" vote in the Senate. The result was 75-25 in favour. While forcing and winning a vote against cloture was always going to be a tall order, the surprise was the large number of Democrats voting Yes instead of No.
This, folks, is why I am not going to actively support the Democratic Party going forward. I may send money to individual Dems who I consider to be deserving, but as far as making a wider committment to the party for 2006 and beyond..forget it.
True leaders do not adopt policies because they are popular or expedient, or because they allow politicians to look "statesmanlike" or good on television. They adopt those policies because they believe them to be right. If the nomination of Samuel Alito was unacceptable when it was first announced, and nothing has emerged to change that view (I believe that, if anything, the evidence that emerged was that Alito is a conservative ideologue who places way too much trust in the Executive branch), then the Democrats should consistently opposed the nomination and voted No en masse.
This vote,with a number of leading Democratic senators voting Yes, is the worst possible outcome. It allows opponents to continue to repeat memes like "Dems have no spine", "Dems are split" etc. with little effective room for rebuttal.
Talk about publicly shooting yourself...what a trainwreck.

Link: http://socialcustomer.typepad.com/the_social_customer_manif/2004/10/the_social_cust.html

...which is why I am currently avoiding major music industry players and retailers. I would like to completely avoid the cellular service providers, since I have yet to be treated in an equitable and respectable way by any of them, but sadly I may have to swallow hard and deal with one of the representatives of that screwball industry sector for a little while longer..

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/01/17/uk.parrot/index.html

...in the UK, a woman's illicit affair was revealed when a pet parrot started repeating cries of endearment...
The only sad thing is that the parrot has also been given a new home...

Link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/1/25/19346/2081

The current administration famously remarked that the USA did not need a permission slip to invade Iraq.
So...building on that delightful concept, and in the interest of pre-authorizing the abridgement of rights supposedly conferred under the U.S. Constitution, here is your very own DIY permission slip that you can send off to the administration, courtesy of DailyKos:

I ___________________ (name/SS#), being of sound mind and of unquestioned loyalty to the leaders of my county, do hereby grant President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and any agent or representative of the Republican party, and any agent or representative of the Executive Branch of the United States of America any or all of the following powers without reservation, revocation, or notification:

a.) To record, monitor, and data-mine my personal communications at the discretion of the President or any agent or representative of the Executive Branch without any warrant, probable cause, or oversight from any court, judicial agency, or other legal authority. This includes any telephone calls, cell phone calls, emails, instant messages, web log entries, faxes, letters and packages whether sent by the US postal service or third party carriers, and any other form of transmitted, written, or recorded communication sent by me or received by me.

b.) To search and confiscate my personal property at the discretion of the President or any agent or representative of the Executive Branch without any warrant, probable cause, or oversight from any court, judicial agency, or other legal authority. This includes any and all property that may be in my place of residence, place of work, vehicles that I may own or be traveling in or any property that I have an ownership stake in or are renting or leasing from a third party.

c.) To record and monitor my activities, whereabouts, and what individuals and organizations I interact with at the discretion of the President or any agent or representative of the Executive Branch without any warrant, probable cause, or oversight from any court, judicial agency, or other legal authority. This includes any personal relations, sexual activities, family interaction, travel activities, religious services, group meetings, internet viewing, internet chat rooms, and all other activities that I might engage in.

d.) To question, detain, and sequester me without notice at the discretion of the President or any agent or representative of the Executive Branch without any warrant, probable cause, or oversight from any court, judicial agency, or other legal authority.

e.) To use any means necessary to find information that I may be in possession of that the President or any agent or representative of the Executive Branch deems vital. This includes allowing for my deportation, extraordinary rendition and any necessary methods of interrogation without any warrant, probable cause, or oversight from any court, judicial agency, or other legal authority as may be necessary to obtain information deemed vital.

f.) To arrest and prosecute me for the charge of 1st degree murder should I participate in any way in any act of prematurely ending a pregnancy. This would include receiving pregnancy ending services, administering pregnancy ending serves, being the father in the case of a prematurely ended pregnancy, of accompanying, transporting, or assisting someone who seeks pregnancy ending services, assisting or contributing in any way to any person who performs pregnancy ending services, or not reporting the knowledge of any of the previously stated offenses known to me committed by anyone known to me to an agent or representative of the Executive Branch.

g.) I hereby declare that I will engage in the monitoring of my family, associates, and neighbors and report fully and truthfully any and all activities that may contravene any of the above listed rights which I have irrevocably waived and report such activities to an agent or representative of the Executive Branch.

h.) I hereby waive all rights to seek any remedies in any court for any act that has been committed against me if the President or any agent or representative of the Executive Branch deems that I should not be eligible to such remedy. Such acts as noted include but are not limited to any act by the government of the United States, any corporation, or any individual that relate to negligence, malfeasance, dangerous products, defective products, poisons and toxins, environmental destruction, hazardous working conditions, fraud, invasion of privacy, breach of contract, theft, bribery, failure to provide any service, assistance, or guidance, whether contractually obligated to or not, and any violation of any law, ordinance, or treaty whether domestic, national or international.

g.) I hereby swear and affirm that I will not communicate anything to any person whether in public or in private, participate in any activity whether directly or coincidentally, or hold membership in any organization or group that would give cause to suspect my loyalty in President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and any agent or representative of the Republican party, and any agent or representative of the Executive Branch of the United States of America.

By this affirmation, I do hereby declare my complete and unwavering trust and loyalty in the Republican Party and in my leader, George Bush and to the nation for which he stands, so help me God.

___________________ (sign) _____________ (date)

_______________________ (name/SS#)

Link: http://www.indixie.com/indixie/Articles/Republic.htm

...with a focus on how the two have become confused in the modern-day USA. I paricularly liked the quotation from the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli:

If you establish a democracy, you must in due time reap the fruits of a democracy. You will in due season have great impatience of public burdens, combined in due season with great increase of public expenditures You will in due season have wars entered into from passion and not from reason; and you will in due season submit to peace ignominiously sought and ignominiously obtained, which will diminish your authority and perhaps endanger your independence. You will in due season find your property is less valuable, and your freedom less complete.

It is my firm belief that all of the predicted outcomes in his quotation are applicable in some form to modern-day America...