When I watch the television and our elected officials these days, I often feel like I am in Alice in Wonderland. It is truly a surreal experience for me. All of the ideals that I was raised on and with seem to be so far from where we are as a country and a nation today.  I hear statistics that say 70+% of Americans are opposed to sending any more troops into Iraq, yet that is all our President and his team of repeaters can say.  The tactic of today’s politician is to repeat themselves so many times that they believe it as true and you get Jedi mindtricked into the same.

Well, I am sick of it. Here is the short and skinny. IF creating a democracy in Iraq (since that is what they have seemed to have settled on as the reason we went there) is something that is vital to OUR nation’s security (forget the nonsense about what the Iraqi people “want” supposedly), then let’s do what every general, the Baker-Hamilton commission, and sensible person thinks and let’s have a draft and get the other 250,000 troops we need to do that thing right into Iraq. Otherwise, congress needs to do one of the two things that they are able to do here. One, cut the funding allowing the President to use the power they gave him/give him to wage war.  Two, impeach him AND Cheney.  There is nothing else they have power to do. Clearly the President doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone else in this country thinks. I am not sure why that doesn’t incense people like it does me.

This is a Republic…a representative form of government. It would be nice to see some goddamned representation already.

tags: bush, cheney, congress, impeach, iraq, policy, politics, powers, war

Here is a pretty funny article I read this morning. It caught my eye as it was the first link on the Google News site.  It is entitled, “Dumb and Dumber.”

For all of you citizens out there who are unaware, the President will be addressing you and your fellow compatriots at 6pm PST on the channel of your choosing.

tags: links, news, president, state of the union

So, I try to read a few different online news outlets and Op-Ed pieces each day to hear what the “two sides” (since that is apparently all we are allowed to have here now) have to say and I soon realized that the Neo-Conservatives are truly crazy fanatics. Not that I did not think that they were before, but I really believe that many of them are really crazy. I was reading Frank Gaffney’s Op-Ed piece in the Washington Times just now and was pretty taken back. In his open letter to President Bush, Gaffney suggests that the President let the country and the world know that we are not engaged in a “War on Terror” against “terrorists” but, we are engaged in the “War for the Free World” against, at the moment, those adherent to “Islamofacism.”

What scares me most is that this is the group of people that are creating our policies these days and it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that they don’t want to listen to what anyone has to say. That is fine, just do it in your own little shack in the woods, ala Montana Ted, and have a day…just don’t do it when you supposedly represent the 290MM+ people in the US of A. Has anyone on this team of geinuses ever spoken to any of the people that we are supposedly helping in the muslim world? There was an interesting article about Pushtunwali in the Economist last week and I think it is something that everyone in this country should read. Basically, it talks about some of the predominant cultures in the Middle East and their heritage. Bottom line, I don’t think any of these people want to be “liberated” by the US or anyone else. They just want to live like they have been for thousands of years.

If we want to go to war to stake a claim to the world’s great oil reserves, ok. Let’s just call it what it is, I am down with that. We have the muscle and we want a piece. Just don’t make up 10 different names for something until one sticks. Bottom line, if there was no oil in Iraq, we would not be there. I am sure there are millions of other people in the world that need to be liberated as well, don’t see us running to save them.

Bush, Muslims, Neo Con, Neo Conservatives, Pushtunwali, State of the Union, USA

I am just plain tired of the trash talking.  It never seems to end, especially from the ultra-conservative side of the park.  I lean more to the conservative/libertarian side (not liberal folks) of things most of the time, but one thing that irritates me most about the super conservative types is that they always appear to be driving some kind of wedge.  I am not sure why that is, maybe because they learned as children that they could get a rise out of someone and that it made them feel good. I really don’t know. But, this commentary by Larry Kudlow this morning in the Washington Times got under my skin…I suspect that was his goal.

Kudlow jumps all over John Edwards for his percieved views on mega-disasters like the Katrina/New Orleans mess and on Iraq policy.  I think that it is pretty lame (for lack of a better, family friendly term) for someone as intelligent as Larry Kudlow to do that. Why? Pretty simple, I don’t think anyone, anywhere can say they have the goods when it comes to the end-all, fix-all of these two debacles.  If Larry Kudlow is so on top of his game, then we would all be better off by him using his vast resources (montetary, political and commercial) to promote solutions for these and other items he has all of the answers for. Instead, he chose to write an inflamatory piece in the WT.  In my mind, that is on par with the rest of the lip service that we are now accustomed to from our political “leaders”.

One thing I did find interesting was his biography on Wikipedia.  I am sure that whomever contributed/wrote that bio has their own bias, but I can’t wait until Larry decides to use the “flip-flopper” term.  He could be the King Trash Talker and King Flip Flopper.

tags: flip flop, iraq, john edwards, katrina, larry kudlow, lawrence kudlow, trash talk