Bush Is Wacked, and So Am I

President Bush is ruining my dating life.

. . .

Let's say I meet a guy. Kinda cute in an affable way, with a twinkle in his eye and an accent. He gets me with some sweet talk, and I agree on a date. The guy's charming, pulls out my chair, asks me about my job, and pays the tab. I call my friends and tell them I think I like him. They squeal with delight for me. After a few more dates, I elect to make him my boyfriend. Once he gets that title, things get odd.

He starts picking fights with random guys who check me out. There was this one night which was really terrifying, when these two guys started hitting on me when Affable Guy was in the bathroom. They were ruthless, pulling at my clothes and groping me. A third guy was coming at me until some of his friends headed him off at the pass and pulled the other two guys off me. When Affable Guy came back from the can, he looked dumbstruck as I explained the situation. After ten minutes, he dragged me out of the bar, fuming mad and eerily quiet.

At first, he started beating up Irish guys who hit on me. He'd catch one follicle of a hairy eyeball and then his fists would be flying. It was a couple of drunk Irish tourists who skeezed me out that night at the bar, so I guess it made sense. But shortly after that, he branched out. Italian guys. Latino guys. Middle-Eastern guys. He especially hated those Middle-Eastern guys. When he was calm at home, he'd tell me he was preemptively defending my honor. I told him he should maybe rethink this. He'd roll over and go to sleep and murmur things about his daddy.

Once the assault charges started rolling in, I told him he needed to stop hitting people. But he wouldn't ever say he would. He'd say he'd think about it, that he hoped he could some day stop hitting people preemptively, but while there are guys out there who want to ogle my ass, he can't stop his war on pervs. I said that I have a nice ass, and probably people would always want to look at it. But he said that he couldn't stand for that. I started leaving a diary of his craziness in my desk drawer at work in case I went missing.

Finally, my friends sat Affable Guy down and had an intervention.

"You've got to stop this. You're hurting so many people," my friend Nancy said.

"No sir. Can't let Amy's freedom be limited by the forces of lust."

"But Amy doesn't want you to keep defending her," Barack added. "She can fend for herself with some training. Maybe a self-defense class?"

"I can't leave her abandoned in a time of need. I have to stay the course."

"Maybe you can defend her when she goes to seedy bars until she knows how to knee a guy most efficiently in the groin? Trust me, women can learn that," my friend Bill said with a laugh.

"Stay the course. Not fair to her if I leave. She wants me here."

"No I don't," I interject.

"She needs me here."

"No, actually, I don't. All I need is a locksmith to keep your crazy ass away from me."

Affable Guy finally let out a sigh. "I hope we can reach a common ground, Amy. But I am not going to stop defending you. I can't leave you without financial and personnel support. But I'm open to compromise on how to deal with this impasse."

"You mean, aside from admitting you were wrong to hit all those people?"

"Right."

. . .
It's going to be a tough row for us to hoe, ladies.

Just For One Day

One day, a particularly gruesome indictment of the war is going to give me a heart attack as I get ready in the morning while listening to NPR. While not related to the war, I saw the first five minutes of a Frontline report on global warming and how the Bush administration pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, which, according to one expert, was the equivalent of "flipping the bird" to the international community. This morning, I was treated to audio clips of testimony given at a House committee about the death of Pat Tillman. One item of note, which I cannot for the life of me find online, is the tidbit that the Army held off on rescuing Jessica Lynch (who testified about the culture of lying that's rampant in this administration's war) because they needed to tape her rescue. Yes, the Army wanted to be viewed as the saviors of a cute blonde girl who shot bullets at everything that moved but was still caught, when in fact she didn't fire a shot. So they let this girl remain a POW for an extra day for some good PR? Nice.

I have said it a million times, but it remains true. The sacrifices that soldiers and their families make are worth more than this. People who volunteer to go to a foreign country and fight for some obscure goal deserve to keep their dignity. If he or she should die while serving, the government owes their families, as well as the rest of America, the truth. Especially if it was a case of friendly fire, which is what killed Pat Tillman.

I think Jessica Lynch summed it up quite nicely:

"The American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate lies."

Fuming

I just...

I can't...

We have two more years of this horse shit to deal with? Come on.

Recognizing Fox did not have the votes to obtain Senate confirmation in the Foreign Relations Committee, Bush withdrew the nomination last week. On Wednesday, with the Senate on a one-week break, the president used his power to make recess appointments to put Fox in the job without Senate confirmation.

But wait, there's more than Sam Fox! Check out Susan Dudley!

President Bush on Wednesday appointed as his top regulatory official a conservative academic who has written that markets do a better job of regulating than the government does and that it is more cost-effective for people who are sensitive to pollution to stay indoors on smoggy days than for government to order polluters to clean up their emissions.
As director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget, Susan E. Dudley will have an opportunity to change or block all regulations proposed by government agencies....

She opposed stricter limits on arsenic in drinking water, in part because she argued that the Environmental Protection Agency's calculations of the costs and benefits overvalued some lives, particularly those of older people with a small life expectancy.

She has argued that air bags should not be required by government regulation but requested by automobile consumers who are willing to pay extra for them.

Allergy sufferers! Get ready to spend much more time indoors! Old people? Fuck 'em! Safety requirements for automobiles? Bollocks!

This is what our government is doing. These are the people in charge of our country.

I just... I don't know what else George Bush could do wrong. Where is the rage? Why aren't people as pissed off at the utter disaster this administration has made of the world? Bush is within his rights to sneak some appointments in, but the man has done so more than 100 times. Wouldn't you think that maybe he'd get the hint that Congress doesn't like his appointments around the sixtieth rejection? Surely there is someone other than this loopy wingnut who could fill this slot.

What is it going to take before people finally get fed up with this idiot? I know I'm doing that blogger thing where I just spew forth angry words without any actual insight, but I'm tired of thinking. Clearly no one else is engaging their brains. What does Bush have to do? Get caught with a cigar and an intern on his desk before people get morally enraged? Bush has nominated a woman who thinks old people dying off early is a good thing to a regulatory position. This man has sent troops to die for a stupid reason. His unwillingness to admit that he made a grave mistake is costing even more lives. He's not willing to even discuss leaving, so, as Stealth said, we're in Iraq until 2009 at least. Can you imagine what the death toll for Americans is going to be like after another two years of insurgent attacks and ill-rested troops being sent back to a war zone? Can you imagine the Iraqi death toll? Can you imagine all the Iraqi children who are watching their parents die because of America's ill-planned invasion and how easy it will be to breed them into terrorists unless we start helping them get their country back? I know we can't close up and leave Iraq tomorrow. But it's time to start planning to extricate ourselves, which isn't happening.

The country isn't mad enough. I just don't get it. People are on hunger strikes because some kid on American Idol sucks but are cool with the President's actions?

...Just... man.

To the Right, To the Right

Last night, I elected to do the right thing and watch the President's speech. I was sensitive to the troops as I'd just watched Friday Night Lights and Matt Saracen's dad was going back to Iraq. (As an aside, please watch that show. It's really good and I don't want it canceled.) I also watched a report on NBC Nightly News about an anti-RPG device that could save the lives of our troops because it may conflict with the Army's own system that's in development by Raytheon. Read this article and see if your blood doesn't boil. Way to honor the sacrifices our troops have made by sucking the teat of defense contractors.

I'm sure you've all figured out my stance by now, so I'm sure I don't have to state that I'm against sending more troops to Iraq. However, you may not be aware that even the Herald thinks this is a bad idea. Even this nadir of class in our city knows this is stupid. I do hope that the Democrats can do something about this instead of dithering and passing non-binding resolutions only.

Me and Squinty McGee

Deciding whether or not to watch the President's speech tonight about the increase of troops in Iraq by 20,000 is hard for me. I want to be informed, but I enjoy owning a television and if I watch Squinty McGee stammer about how we'll really fix Iraq now for reals I may throw my beer through the set.

President Bush will tell the nation Wednesday night he will send more than 20,000 additional American forces to Iraq, acknowledging that it was a mistake earlier not to have more American and Iraqi troops fighting the war.

No, the mistake was GOING THERE IN THE FIRST DAMN PLACE. It was a stupid, short-sighted, ill-planned maneuver and I still don't exactly know how it happened. I don't have a security clearance, but I knew that Iraq was the least of our problems after 9/11. Instead of spending money to bolster our emergency preparedness or to completely deal with Afghanistan, we had a nice fireworks show in Iraq at the expense of over 3,000 Americans who died and the Iraqis who died as well. Bush made this mess and he should fix it. In a purely America-centric sense, I don't think sending more troops over is going to help us end this. I think it will lead to many more American deaths and only a marginal improvement in the situation in Iraq. My own theory is that we should get the Iraqis prepared to fight the insurgents themselves and start getting the hell out of there.

In any case, this declaration of troop escalation will be the first test for the new Democratic majority. Nancy Pelosi is making noise about blocking the funding for any additional troops, so we'll see how much the Democrats can shift the direction of the war. As Ms. Pelosi said, voters were pretty clear about not wanting to stay in Iraq any longer than necessary. Let's hope they can get the troops home soon and override Bush's misguided fix for a misguided war.