War In Iraq. Anybody see the excellent The Minority Report? There it is. Catch 'em before they've committed the crime, and crime rate goes down. Easy math. Did Saddam Hussein commit other crimes? Crimes that could be considered by the sane as atrocities, even? Of course. But where were we then, with the swift sword of Bushian justice? Hearing the formerly sane Mr. Blair exclaim that, even if those darned elusive weapons of mass destruction are never found, Saddam got what was coming to him because he's a big old meany who did some other bad things worthy of a foreign invasion undermines every last principle of U.S. and probably even British criminal justice. We didn't catch you for murder, but we caught you for shoplifting, so make yourself comfortable in this wooden chair while these nice fellas strap you down and shave your temples.
Another American Family that Supports President Bush and Our Troops. Nick and I (that's my aforementioned two-year-old son, for those not familiar) took the back way to and from the pool this summer, which meant driving frequently past a sign in front of a neighbor's house more often than I cared to that claimed that the occupants of said house are "Another American Family that Supports President Bush and Our Troops." Every last one of the dozen-odd times we went past, I was so sorely tempted to head directly down to the basement to make my own sign: "Another American Family that Thinks President Bush and His Insane Foreign Policy and Neglect of the Economy is Driving America Into the Ground." But I didn't.
The whole "Support Our Troops" bag that started back in the first Gulf War (full disclosure: a war I much more actively protested to the point of being spattered with someone else's blood in an unfortunate billy club incident) really puzzles me: What better way to support our troops than to insist that they be KEPT OUT OF HARM'S WAY UNLESS NATIONAL SECURITY FACES A LEGITIMATE THREAT?
I am not so foolish as to think that the definition of "legitimate" is anything more than as fluid as the whim of whoever holds the trigger over on Pennsylvania Avenue, but the idea that to be AGAINST THIS WAR is somehow tantamount to being AGAINST OUR TROOPS is fully implied by these silly, boorish, anti-intellectual, jingoistic stickers/signs/t-shirts. I am FOR our troops. Be as namby-pamby liberal as you want, but face the facts: we need a military to protect as against the aforementioned legitimate threats. What I am AGAINST: having our troops killed in a power play by a guy who has one goal in life: to be re-elected.
Iraq is a quagmire. White House apologists claim that all we need is more time, as if a country whose infrastructure, both physical and political, has been completely and violently upended by a foreign force with dubious motives will suddenly heal itself. The administration, in a hilariously ironic turnabout, admits that we do need more troops, as long as they aren't American! Imagine the nerve - ignoring world opinion (non-UK western Europe, the UN, all of our non-Israel Middle Eastern allies) to launch the war, then demanding help to clean up the mess we made from the same! How do Rumsfeld and the formerly respectable Colin Powell keep their jobs? Oh I know, their boss is a bigger moron than they are!
Is anyone besides me livid at the fact that this quagmire is currently costing us some $87 billion dollars more than we have to pay for it, and that every last penny many of us paid in federal taxes last year is going to pay to rebuild a country that every last penny of our federal taxes from the year before went to destroy?!?!?! I simply cannot stop vomiting every time I make out that check to the IRS (I pay my taxes quarterly, so there's a lot of puking going on around here).
Anyway, next time you see a "Support Our Troops" sticker (locater hint: look for a little cartoonish pirate-like guy pissing on either a Ford or Chevy logo, scan left over the large, slanted "3", and you'll probably find it thereabouts), consider asking the driver to support our troops by getting them the hell out of the quagmire that is Iraq.
Here, Have One Fifth of a Pizza. From the Shift Gears Entirely department: On vacation in the lovely Rehoboth Beach (yes, this is my way of apologizing to anyone from Delaware who may have been annoyed by my "humorist"-style jabs at Delaware a few months back - see below. Rehoboth Beach is lovely, and even during high season, more diverse, and leaps and bounds more livable, cosmopolitan, interesting, and clean than DC), I bought and prepared a "Freschetta" rising crust pizza for Kim and myself (Nick had already eaten something substantially more healthy, so no, I was not starving him). Delicious as it was, I couldn't help but read the label (more disclosure: I am a compulsive label reader; making sure you don't get hidden meat products in your apparently vegetarian meals painfully opens your eyes to all the other crap mass-market food companies are foisting on the American public - pray, what in jah's name is disodium inosinate and what is it doing in my Morningstar Farms veggie sausages?), and learn that:
1. The pizza serves five; 2. Each serving contains about 14 grams of fat.
Fair enough. But ... hey, wait a minute! A pizza serves five? That makes each serving ... one fifth of a pizza!
My "I'm being raped by shysters" alarm started going off. What special pizza wheel must the marketing wizards over at Freschetta have that can evenly slice a pizza into fifths? The answer: there is none (unless you are so talented with the wheel that, upon reaching center, you are uncannily able to take an exact 72-degree turn, in which case you should be on That's Incredible, not eating pizza). So, the nub of my gist: If you're in marketing, just be honest about how much fat, calories, sugar, heroin, whatever, there is in your product. Do not base your product labeling on absolutely fictional assumptions about how much of your product people are going to eat: tell us what's in it and stop BULLSHITTING US.
Last piece of advice before I bid you goodnight: avoid Burger King's Triple Cheeseburger. Just don't do it. Someone much smarter than all of us has a grand scheme all worked out to make a trillion dollars out of Americans all dying from fat pains. Don't give them your money. Give it instead to the Fed, so the powers that be in the White House can spend your hard-earned money blowing some other unsavory little third-world bully into the bronze age.
Soundtrack provided by Stereolab's The Groop Played Space Age Bachelor Pad Music
- posted by Bill @ 9:35 PM, Saturday, September 06, 2003
Arggg and you war-mongering hot heads wanting to make every country just like the USA. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps the Middle East wants no part of The Mcdonald's and Walmart way of life we are attempting to push on them. Keep speaking your mind Bill. I hear every word you say and to those who disagree the truth always hurts
Agreed, Bill. And I feel we should turn that towards current events. Something that all of us should be participating in.
Yes, kids. It's that time again. Election. I normally try to refrain from getting all political-activist-like on message boards (lest I risk comparisons to Zack de la Rocha), but I feel it's high time we depose an evil administration. One that has broken more trusts and national/international laws than any other in history.
I know any of you who lean to the right will fight me vehemetly on my arguments, but I present them to you as a plea to common sense, not as a challenge to your intelligence.
Consider this... With all of the noise Republicans made in a desperate attempt to remove Clinton from office because of his personal relations with a member of the opposite sex (which, I might add, is absolutely none of your damn business), please explain to me why I hear no argument against Bush now that he has proceeded to invade a country under false pretense and murder innocent civilians.
Is a lie concerning someone's sex life more of a reason for impeachment than murder?
This president stood in front of THE WORLD in an attempt to convince everyone of his falsities. More than a year has passed and what is the result? The United States has lost the respect, trust and rapport of other nations. This administration represents the people of this country. The way third world counties view our White House is exactly how the world views ALL Americans. You have to understand that foreign governments throw just as much propaganda at their people as ours does to us. Have you ever heard someone say "Screw 'em! Nuke 'em! Kill 'em all!"? Do you still wonder why planes are crashing into buildings?
The future is now in your hands. You can show the world that all Americans are greedy, power hungry, murdering liars... or you can show the world that our people care enough about the rest of the world to depose an election-thieving, self-imposed paper president who sends his own country's people to slaughter the villagers and die in the foreign sands for his own ulterior motives. So, you make the choice. Just remember that history will not be so kind. Your president has blood on his hands... will you?
Hi! Christmas Day falls on December 25. It is preceded by Christmas Eve on December 24, and in some countries is followed by Boxing Day on December 26. Some Eastern Orthodox Churches celebrate Christmas on January 7, which corresponds to December 25 on the Julian calendar. December 25 as a birthdate for Jesus is merely traditional, and is not thought to be his actual date of birth.Sincerely
