Did McCain just nominate Laura Roslin to be his VP?

Hail to the chief

The Olympics have been held in unpopular places before. They will be held in unpopular places in the future. Screaming, protesting, and boycotting (looks over that the Moscow games) does a hell of a lot less good than *going* to them and beating the pants off all comers. (looks at the Berlin games)

As for the games *now* (looks at China)…

I don’t know what the hell to say. Other than the sturm und drang und screaming seems to be doing *nothing* constructive.

I should be able to come up with something grand, angry, and/or witty. But all I can say…. is crap. Forget about the goddamed presidency - a majority of the american people believe that I and others like me are not deserving of the same basic rights they enjoy.

Fuck them all.

And yeah - I did vote. Not that NJ was much of a stretch

The full text of the Bush/Kerry debate, part 1. No big suprise who I think came off looking better. The kicker? The shrub comes of sounding even *worse* in print.

Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore - link credit goes to Doug.

Reagan is dead. And, in case you’ve been living under a rock for the last five years or so and missed the bi-yearly news updates about the ex-president slipping ever farther away… sheesh.

As when Nixon shuffled off this mortal coil, I’m torn between a complete blase “eh”, not wanting to speak terribly ill of the dead, and wanting to stand up and smack all the posthmous ass kissers.

The sainthood of the recently dead is a puzzlement to me. If I cared about them when they were alive, I am saddened by their demise. If I didn’t care one way or another when a person was alive; chances are, I won’t care one way or another when they kick off.

That all being said, I wouldn’t wish the the slow dissolution of a loved one one *anyone*, but that’s as far as it goes.

Amid all the voices shouting just what the president wanted to hear, why couldn’t someone have stood toe to toe with him, and said this?

Mr. President… don’t do it. You’re considering authorizing a massive commitment of troops and throwing in our lot with torturers and panderers. Leaders without principle and soldiers without conviction with no clear mission, and no end in sight.
- The war at home

“The most dishonest president since Nixon”

I’ve often had cause to be embarrassed about my country. America, the home of trailer park chic. Where we revere the myth of the founding fathers and preach the idea of the self made man, while teaching in every schoolyard and every boardroom the power of mob rule. Where we are loud, ignorant, arrogant, prideful, and xenophobic.

But until Abu Ghraib, I was never ashamed to be an american.

I have no words, no bile strong enough to condemn the soldiers who committed these acts. I have no punishment fitting for the commanders who ordered it, or their commanders who turned a blind eye, or *their* commanders who squinted long and hard at the Geneva conventions and decided that there was plenty of wiggle room here, and even if there wasn’t any room over there, well, it just meant that that part couldn’t possibly apply to *us*, now could it? We’re americans, we make the rules. Doesn’t mean we have to follow them.

I have no fitting words for anyone who would try to justify these actions. You never want to believe that someone who looks and sounds just like you could do something like this. Like a small child, you refuse to look at it, wiping it out from your own personal reality. And when there are no places left to look that are not crammed full with the images of ugly truth, well then - someone must’ve made ‘em do it! They *deserved* it, didn’t they? ‘Cause of those airplanes and those suicide bombers? ’cause they’re out to get us, an’ we gotta get them first!

It’s ugly, isn’t it? And now, it’s never going to end. They did to us, we did to them, and now they have to go and do to us again. And again. And again.

The last comfort some had was in the idea that even though the country was going to hell in a hand basket, even though our government was clinically insane, we could look at the next person, even some stranger who just happened to be passing by; and know there was an even chance that they were, at heart, a decent person.

No one wants to believe in that ugliness, believing opens the door for the awful question “If that person, who looks and talks just like me, could be party to these awful things, what does that say about me? Do I have that same ugliness buried inside me?”

Yes. You do. You feed it with every denial, every protest, every attempt to turn the blame or hide behind rules of procedure.