When your armed forces are seen more as an illegitimate arm of a neo-fascists regime it is hard to celebrate.

But we Americans find a way. To quote my local Israeli, “You celebrate your war heros by running huge sales on cars and crap you don’t need, then go on vacation, BBQ something and sit in the car for 6 hours?”

Yup, we are The Americans.

One can only remotely ponder what it would be like if we, The Americans, were faced with continual existential crisis and have compulsory military service. Perhaps we would have a few less deadbeats and be a little more gun-shy.

The funny part is, I don’t know if we have ever faced such an insidious threat as we are up against now: ourselves.

This from CNN.com:

Seventy percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey say things are going badly in the United States. The last time the public gave the country’s condition such a bad rating was January 1992 in the last year in office of the last president named Bush.  

Really? Huh. I would have never thought something like this could happen. I hope every single one of you remember this next time you want to vote for a dip shit for president.This is also what happens when you put good leadership well behind, hmm, where do I start? “Who do I want to have a beer with?”,  evangelical pagan worship, excessive right wing hate, oh and you have your administration working hard to figure out every possible way to legitimize illegal behavior INSTEAD of taking care of business. Don’t make me list the woes, just read the article or look outside.

WAKE UP PEOPLE! Watch Frontline

Iran, Iraq, Global Warming, Technology Gap, Drugs for Kids, Suburban Despair, Lawlessness of USA, Katrina, White House as THE SEAT OF ALL EVIL, WHO WILL WE VOTE FOR? WHAT KIND OF NATION WILL BE?

As you might be reading about our President’s recent speech in which he continues to show his detachment from reality.

From the Wash Post:

Historian Robert Dallek, who has written about the comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam, accused Bush of twisting history. ‘It just boggles my mind, the distortions I feel are perpetrated here by the president,’ he said in a telephone interview.

‘We were in Vietnam for 10 years. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than we did in all of World War II in every theater. We lost 58,700 American lives, the second-greatest loss of lives in a foreign conflict. And we couldn’t work our will,’ he said.

‘What is Bush suggesting? That we didn’t fight hard enough, stay long enough? That’s nonsense. It’s a distortion,’ he continued. ‘We’ve been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It’s a disaster, and this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting out.‘ (em added)

Bingo. Once again. We on the left were correct. ‘Nuf said.

Today is a bad day for Jews. Traditionally we are all sad because we lost our Temple. In general, the more, well, modern amongst us, see this as a time to be insightful and think about the big plan as manifested through events then, now and in the middle - we are talking about 2000+ years of history.

Today I would like to talk about how we are all doomed.

While we Jews cannot get along with our cousins the Arabs, I have real faith that we will figure out how to be friends someday - by we I don’t mean Americans I mean Jews.

But, the real enemy hates us both and that is what we should come to terms with. We both should fear the Christians. Yes, the Christians hate us both, my Arab cousin.

These are the people who brought us the original terrorism in the form of forced conversions, holocausts, inquisitions, crusades, etc… all because they hate true-blue monotheists like the Jews and the Muslims.

I am not certain exactly why they hate us both, cousin, but I think it has to do with the Trinity. Can you think of a larger pile of shit than saying, oh there are three g-ds, but really one, they are just parts of the same, equal parts, one the g-d part, one some kind of ghost part, and one a earthly man part. Um, what? That is a pantheon if I have ever seen one.

This isn’t even respectable Zoroastrian dualism, which is arguably monotheistic (well I will say I don’t know enough to argue either way). This is POLYTHEISM.

We, cousin, simply know how many times we are told by our prophets and by our historical rejection of adulteration by the Romans and Greeks that we are told to not only to eschew this notion, but to completely reject, dispel, and run away from this notion.

This is what I am thinking about on my 9th of Av. How come my cousin, who I share so much with, and I cannot get along, but my best friend is only waiting to off me in the name of his eternal salvation at the hand of his g-ds.

And the icing? I tell a tale:

Sunday morning I was at a local NJ diner having my eggs and toast. I was there with my friend Patrick. As I munched away I started to overhear the neighbor at the next table. Oh be warned, Tablemans are ever constant eavesdroppers! She was talking about how this lady she works with had perpetrated a series of unspeakable acts against her in the workforce as well as in their intersecting social lives. The issue at hand seemed to be that both parties were about to be fired for their inability to work together. The coup-de-christ? My neighbor diner lady made the following statement:

She acted in the most un-Christian way possible and I can never forgive that. I will never forgive that. I will make her life miserable for what she’s done.

*sigh* and I mean it, I almost said something to her. I almost did. But instead I thought about how so far her attitude is from the teachings of her lord and redeemer. About how much redemption she must need right now. About how probably no one has ever shown her what it really meant or felt like to act in a truly Christian, eg forgiving, way.

I realized just how fucked we are cousin.

Short and direct:

Fossil fuels are bad for us, bad for the fish, bad for the GWOT.

We need to reduce our dependency on them.

We also have a labor/farm/immigration issue here in the US of A.

How are these related?

Well, as we need more grains and crops to make alternative fuels, we increase demand. When demand goes up you can see a rise in prices. And we are:

Bioenergies have become a key factor in the functioning of agriculture markets.

This is really perfect how well they fit together.

We will see a resurgence of farming activity in the USA as a result of a higher demand for biofuels. This means farmers can make more $ and support families and communities from farming again. Then it means we will see the labor correction which will solve immigration: wages will go up and Americans will be able to work on farms and make a living.

We simply need to keep illegals out & not make them legal out of guilt or some misplaced pandering. By letting laborers into the USA to do farm work, we remove all wage pressures and thereby hand jobs to foreigners and not our next door neighbors.

We need to stop screwing up our economy at the expense of the “little man” and let this happen.

HAHAHAHA - Do a little dance, we were right:

After offering a bleak assessment of the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said today that he was urging lawmakers and President Bush to change course quickly to protect a further erosion of America’s standing in the world.

It was only a matter of time before the cripple wounded made this just like Viet Nam. Thank you modern medicine, because of you Americas mistakes are even more numerous and walking into our grocery stores, churches, and right in the faces of the people who supported this boondoggle.

Now if we can only feel the backlash in middle America. If only. Who dares to call themselves a neo-con now? Creative destruction anyone? What a freakin’ mess.

All done on Jesus’ watch too. Thank you religious zealots in Alabama. Thank you for this chance to once again prove intellegence and education will win out over you backwards ways. What was that about “them uppity northerns bettah stop comings downs here ands treatins us like some kind of anthramapology experiment?” What way my reply? “Stop acting like protohumans and there will be nothing to study!”

I guess that “I’d rather have a beer with Bush” sentiment now includes a beer with Bush and an artificial leg and PTSD.

And before you think I am not sympathetic to people who are hurt in war, this is not personal, this is politics. I feel really badly for these people, they were consumed by a machine that doesn’t give a fuck about them and to make it more onerous (entailing obligations that exceed advantages) the machine duped them into thinking this was their patriotic duty.

Listening to the verdict made me laugh, G-d Bless America, please we need every blessing we can get.

Libby obstructed justice, committed perjury and made false statements when he told FBI agents and the grand jury investigating the leak that he had possessed no official knowledge

I appears that Libby is the fall guy for the corrupt ways of the Vice President. Is anyone shocked? I am not even a little shocked. We will find out slowly but certainly, over many years, the level of corruption of this White House.

Ambassador Wilson stated it best

…it’s a very sad day when a senior public servant is convicted of crimes, particularly the crime of obstructing justice because, after all, defending the Constitution of the United States is one of the obligations of a public servant.

Ah, ambassadors, they know how to say it like it is…

G-d Bless Rand:

President George W. Bush’s most recent address to the American people on Iraq may be the scariest presidential message since Ronald Reagan announced that he had launched a nuclear strike against the Soviet Union. Reagan was just kidding. Bush is not.

Immediate reaction to the president’s speech has focused on the intended increase in the U.S. troop commitment to Baghdad. However, the greatest danger posed by the Bush plan is not that of horizontal escalation in Iraq, but of vertical escalation throughout the surrounding region.

This is going to be fun to watch unfold. Add these comments to those of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The terrible and still unprecedented destructive power of nuclear weapons led Albert Einstein to observe, “With nuclear weapons, everything has changed, save our way of thinking.” As we stand at the brink of a second nuclear age and at the onset of an era of unprecedented climate change, our way of thinking about the uses and control of technologies must change to prevent unspeakable destruction and future human suffering.

and

[Scientists] warn that the consequences could drastically alter both the planet and human life. Already, ice packs in Greenland are rapidly disappearing, which, in turn, threatens the existence of hundreds of species such as polar bears and the traditions of whole societies such as the Inuit. The future looks even bleaker, as scientists continue to observe cascading effects on Earth’s complex ecosystems.

Nothing to say on this, I just wonder who is listening and what can I do?

We win. America Wins. The World Wins. Thank G-d we finally showed the world we are not all idiots. Democrats are on the way back.

Now!!!! No blow jobs, keep the curruption down, and fight for America. The America we all want, open, free, equitable, Christian right wing bullshit free, and a better world citizen.

One more though: DON’T FUCK IT UP!

This is great from The Times:

”The Democratic Party … will protect the interests of small and medium American enterprises and labor and that could produce an impact on China-U.S. trade relations,”

One can only hope. Can you imagine a day when jobs come back to America? A day when you can actually shop without sending $$ to China? A day when we force them to raise the value of their commie currency, slowing our economy down and returning us to normal instead of this bloated Wal*Mart/Target binge we are on now.
The nightmare is almost over, I might just cry.