Been away for awhile. Mostly became of the stupidity coming from the GOP hegemony. Anyway, roll up your sleeves and let's dive into the muck.
Spying has come up lately. A lot. Bush thinks he has carte blanche to spy on American citizens. Indeed, he seems to enjoy doing it. A lot. Enough to threaten The New York Times not to print it. You know, acting like the despot he is.
But hey, he isn't alone. The FBI is busy secretly spying on activist groups. And the Pentagon is illegally spying on peace activists and counter-campus military recruiting groups. I mean, how serious of a military threat are Quakers for God's sake?
Bush is also trying to save his precious PATRIOT Act, aka the Ignorance is Strength Law, from those misguided souls who worry about civil liberties disappearing.
Bush is actually taking responsibility for the Iraq war. Sort of. He blames the poor intelligence he was given. You know, the stuff he actually had read to him as opposed to all the warning memos that said "THERE ARE NO NUKES IN IRAQ,!" for instance. As for the war, it is costing us half a TRILLION dollars and the lives of over 2,100 American soldiers (not to mention the 30,000 Iraqi civilians killed by even the most conservative of guesses).
Bush almost gets points for finally backing down and agreeing not to veto an anti-torture bill. Then again, he got McCain to bend over again and water the bill down, plus was able to ram through some pet budget crap. Score this round: -1 for democracy.
In sports, we are banning Cuba from play in the World Baseball Classic because, well, they're Cuba. Which is a horrible political ploy and the only way to take out the team best able to beat our's. The flip side of this is FIFA's spineless decision to let Iran play in the World Cup next year. This is the country whose president recently declared that Israel shouldn't exist, calling for all but the extermination of the Jews. But, though FIFA once banned South Africa from play for decades over apartheid, it apparently finds anti-Semitic genocide statement to be just fine. Idiots.
Let's talk about the "War on Christmas" for a moment. Here's a blog story related to the whole sordid issue, plus some of the recent history of Scrooge impersonator Bill O'Reilly's connection.
Let's face it, Christmas should be about celebrating the birth of Christ. More importantly, it should be about setting an example of how to live every day of the year. Instead, we have loudmouth, angry, mean-spirited, phone sex crazed adulterer "defending" Christmas on a white-washed conservative news network.
I mean, we have a supposed (warmongering) evangelical in the White House. We have a GOP-controlled Congress and the most conservative Supreme Court and Federal court system in the nation's history. If these asshats are incapable of pushing their fanatical agenda on us, i.e. if they are truly "at war" with those of us who just mean well by wishing others "Happy Holidays", then why the hell are they even in power? They have all the cards, you'd think that would give them an advantage. If not, I really urge them to go back to what they are good at doing, which apparently is draft dodging and driving companies into bankruptcy.
And if that doesn't depress you enough, here's somewhere where religious fanatics actually are getting an advantage. Early returns show that religious groups are gaining ground as the ballots from the Iraqi elections are being counted. Oh joy. We invaded and created a democracy theocracy. We are exporting our values abroad. Just not those of the Founding Fathers.
Just to be weird, I've added my ThinkGeek wish list to the sidebar. If you have extra disposable income, you know, send some of it my way. Not that I'm expecting anyway, but, hey, why not try?
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