eric's talk show interview - to be continued

i'm driving around salinas, kansas looking for diesel gas that doesn't cost $2.69 a gallon - no biodiesel close to i70 that i can find! the light has come on, indicating i have a gallon of fuel left - i've been getting better gas mileage since i've been going biodiesel whenever i can (like close to 12 miles per gallon) - but the gas station i've just pulled into is closed still. i'm heading back to nyc for my aunt's services.

it's 7:00a.m. california time. before i can pull out & decide where to go, i get a call from a conservative talk show producer - did i want to talk w/eric hoague about the california national guard and their spying on our mother's day event! do i ever!

he begins to ask me about the surveillance - it is his position, that he states quite clearly, that the national guard has the right to look into what we're doing. the guard is innocent of all wrong doing - he compares their surveillance w/the political campaign actions of opposing parties that want to know what the other is doing.

i get to talk about the origin of mother's day, the national guard as weekend warriors, not replacements for combat troops; i get to talk about the misguided guard, first by their deployment to iraq as such combat troops, then as their role spying on civilians. i ask eric if he really approves of tax payer monies being spent to spy on civilians? i get to talk about the difference between a democracy and a facist government.

he brings up the bombing in london, trying to get me to place blame - i place blame on all of us as human beings - we have failed to take care of our fellow humans. i get to mention bush & his policies, our corporations that exploit in our name, our having 5% of the worlds population as we consume 30-60% of the worlds resources.

a caller blames the fundamentalist muslems - i tell him i agree w/half of his opinion - the other half is the fundamentalist christians. eric has a fit - me blaming christians. i assure him, not all christians, only those fanatical that sound just like fanatical muslims - the people that believe, regardless of their religious affiliations, that it is acceptable to kill, torture, rape human beings in order to get what they want & use their god to make it okay.

eric indignantly asks who we have killed! i get to mention the 110,000 iraqi's, not to mention the 1750 u.s. soldiers - he pulls the sadam card 0- he killed his own people. i get to say, so it is wrong for hussein to kill iraqis, but right for us to kill iraqi's? he has no comment but goes to another caller.