Rule Brittania?

As someone who has spent alot of time in the UK, I have to say that I am dismayed by the capture of the Royal Navy sailors by the Iranians while on a anti-smuggling patrol. This is a stunt that the Iranians have done to embarass the Brits and to take attention away from the growing nuclear crisis there. The British have always been Euro skeptics and have preferred to usually go along with the US on foreign policy, the current debacle in Iraq has proven to perhaps be the straw that broke the Atlantic Alliances back. More and more Britons are wanting to become more integrated in the EU. This would be a shame for this country to lose our oldest and best ally, but it may be inevitable if we pursue our current neocolonial foreign policy, pretty ironic if our former colonial masters split with us because of our imperial ways in the mideast.

A Little Easter Humor

My childhood Easters always revolved around two things, chocolate Easter bunnies and those awful jellybeans that tasted of wax. My family wasn't particularly religious so sometimes we would skip Easter services and just look for eggs that we all hated to eat in the backyard, still in retrospect it was fun.

Four Years On

The four year anniversary of the war in Iraq has come and gone, and I can't help but wonder how we let our President get us into this shit. For the love of God WWII and the Korean War didn't last as long as this mess. What has been accomplished other than the erosion of American influence around the globe? The leadership role that we had in the war against Islamic terrorism after 9-11 has been squandered with American and Iraqi lives and massive amounts of our tax dollars. I feel like most Americans were asleep at the wheel when the ramp up to this war was going on, and thats what the administration was banking on. I, and I'm sure many of the regular readers of this blog yelled and screamed and wrote letters and made calls and sent emails and attended protests, but back then we were in the minority, not so anymore, its just sad that it took so many lives and so much treasure to arrive here today.

New Wilco

My favorite band is Wilco, and they are releasing a new record on May 15th. When the last record, A Ghost is Born came out, my friend Matt gave me a leaked copy of the record a month before it came out. Now I have already heard three tracks from this new record at a great used bookstore, I'm sure the guy that owns the shop would burn me a copy if I asked, after all I buy a shitload of books from him, but I'm thinking I will wait until the release date. The three tracks I heard where great, but maybe I'll wait. I always buy the actual record for the art, liner notes etc., maybe I shouldn't wait, oh hell I'm going to get me a leaked copy.

Tourney Time

I haven't been posting much because I am a complete March Madness addict. This year my alma mater VCU made the NCAA, and they beat Duke! Hell yeah, they now play Pitt on Saturday. For the first time in a long time Virginia has three teams that advanced past the first round, VCU, UVA, and Virginia Tech. I'm pulling for all of them, but especially VCU. I love when a mid-major school upsets a team like Duke. March is the best time of year for collegiate athletics.

Ancient History?

It dawned on me this week while talking to some employees at a wine store that I frequent, that current college students have no recollection of life before the Berlin Wall fell, no Cold War frame of reference. A kid born the year the wall fell would be a senior in high school now! Now I feel ancient, the pivotal event of my high school years, happened 18 yrs ago. I was always conscious of the threat of nuclear war during the 80's as a kid, and it scared the hell out of me. As I studied the fall of Communism in college a few years after the fact I realized that the Soviets had been broke for years and that the Cold War was something that realistically should have ended much sooner. In some ways I may have preferred the state of affairs in my youth to the uncertainty of the current global situation. Rogue nations, failed states, preemptive wars, Islamic terrorists, and the fact that Russia and China still have plenty of nuclear missles pointed at the West. Things seemed a bit more cut and dried back then, even if the threat of mutually assured destruction was terrifying. The collapse of Communism was a much heralded event, but now almost twenty years on are we any safer from a cataclysm? I don't think so, we in the West have squandered a real chance to make the world a safer place.

While Trying To Enjoy An After Work Malted Beverage....

I see that annoying little nasally prick of an Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez. This ahole fires 8 US attorneys for partisan reasons, never mind their records, they were deemed "not loyal." I thought Ashcroft was the Antichrist, but this clown is about as bad, with the new Patriot Act excesses coming to light, and now random firing of US attorneys because they don't tow the administrations political line. I gotta start putting records on instead of cable news when I get home.

Conservative Values On Display

Fun with right wing blow hards! Heres a pic of Uber Conservative defender of Christianity and the flag, Sean Hannity at a brothel Outside of Reno called the Bunny Ranch, with its owner Dennis Hof, and presumably one of the workin gals there. Nice, send this one to all your wingnut friends, looks like someones about to get "Hannitized!" Is it just me or is that hairy Irish cro-mag sporting wood?

Cut Em Off!

Cute move by the Board of Directors at Halliburton, the energy and defense contractors that have posted billions in profit during our current misadventure in Mesopotamia, they up and moved to Dubai in the UAE. Good job fellas way to avoid paying those corporate taxes while you bilk the US taxpayers out of billions. The Pentagon is currently investigating these theives for overcharging billions for work done in Iraq, and you can bet more will be coming out. I wrote a letter to my Senator, Jim Webb today calling for hearings in Congress to strip Halliburton of all govt contracts , just like the Dubai Ports fiasco, these greedy bastards are not a US corporation and they shouldn't be getting my tax dollars. Absolutely incredible the balls on these SOBs.

Nostalgia

My stepsister and her fiance just recently got back from a trip to Germany, Austria, and N. Italy, she sent me some of her pics and it made me want to plan my next trip to Europe for my belated honeymoon. I started looking at the pics that my then girlfriend, now wife, took the last time we were in Paris and now I am longing for a return visit. Paris to me is the most lovely big city in the world. Its not hard to see why Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald settled there. I'll confess to a little bias, I'm a wine geek and a foodie, and my wife is quite the francophile, so perhaps this clouds my perception, but strolling through the 6th Arrondissement, seeing the Tour Eifel at night, and simply eating at any corner bistro are singular experiances that cannot be replicated anywhere else. I wish I was independently wealthy and could travel the world, but until then I will carefully plan my next foray to Europe and revisit my past trips through my pics. Damn I love travelling.

Dr. Gonzo Says Gun Control Sucks

So I see today that a federal court has ruled that the Districts ban on guns is unconstitutional. I gotta say bravo. I went to college and lived in Northern Va and I spent alot of time in DC and had friends that went to GW and Georgetown that lived in the District. This was in the mid nineties when DC was the murder capital of the US, and I always found the fact that you couldn't exercise your 2nd amendment rights in the nations capital quite strange. Now I'm not some raving gun nut, I don't think people should be able to own full auto machineguns, and I think that full background checks are a good thing, but anyone living in a high crime area should have the right to own a firearm to protect themselves. Where I disagree with the NRA and other pro-gun groups is this, automobiles kill way more people every year than guns, you have to have a license to drive, the same thing should apply to firearms. I have no problem with anyone who buys a gun being required to take a class in general firearms safety and having to prove profiency, what I do have a problem with is a blanket gun ban in a city or state, its contrary to the Constitution, and every American has the inherant right to self-defense.

Poverty

I just finished reading "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." The great Depression era narrative of Southern poverty by James Agee with amazing photographs by Walker Evans. The book chronicles the lives of three Alabama sharecropping families in 1936. None of these people had indoor plumbing or electricity and lived desperate lives farming cotton. I remember seeing Evan's haunting photographs a few years back in a retrospective at the National Gallery and they have stayed in my subconscious ever since. This book was written two years after my late Grandfather was born, and it illustrated to me how it must have been to grow up as a small child during the Depression. My Grandfather had better circumstances than the people in this book, his family owned their small tobacco farm in North Carolina, but his father died when he was young and I imagine his experiances were similar to those in this book. I'm a lifelong Southern Democrat, and the poor whites and small landholders of my Grandfathers era were as well, the New Deal saved many of these people from ruin, most of my family would have lost everything if not for FDR. It's amazing to me now that the sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters of these folks throughout the South have been tricked into voting Republican out of some kind of misguided patriotism, against their actual economic interests. When LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act he predicted that the Democratic party would lose its white support in the South for fifty years, so far his prediction has been right. Its time that the Democratic party reconnect with Southern voters, W's incompetence has given us the opportunity to do so.

Whats The Skinny?

I gotta post on this issue, Hollywood and the media in general glorify skininess, but lately its gotten insane. Millions of young women, and men are growing up with stick insects as their image of beauty. The pervasiveness of the emaciated look is apparent to anyone who reads fashion rags or peruses the tabloids. To me denying yourself the pleasures of the table and of the vine is like living in hell. I have young teenaged nieces and cousins that I know will have body image issues and often times this is reinforced by family members and peers, its sick. I am well aware of the obesity epidemic in this country, but it seems to me that we are either one or the other, morbidly obese or dangerously skinny, we gotta find a happy medium.

Mixed Feelings

I have to say that while I am heartened by the Libby verdict, I do feel somewhat sorry for the guy. He was a loyal servant for Cheney and now he gets thrown under the bus, he's the fallguy. The guys years of loyal servive are rewarded like this. Obviously Rove and the VP were complicit in this and Libby took orders from them, I'm not condoning his perjury, but I do think he deserves a light sentence. Will he get a pardon? Quite possibly a Christmas pardon in 08 after the elections who knows? I'm no fan of Libby, but I do feel that he took the fall here, while others got off scot-free.

Wheres The Outrage On The Right?

I peruse several Right-leaning blogs and since the Walter Reed scandal broke you haven't seen them blogging about it. It's great to wave the flag and slap a yellow ribbon on your Hummer, but actually paying up so that wounded men and women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are well taken care of when they return home, nah give me my tax cut. Rumsfeld slashed the military hospitals and VA system in cost cutting measures that have come back to haunt them. The system that has sent these soldiers to war has failed them upon their return. The wingnuts rail on about anti war demonstrators and not being patriotic, but when it comes to looking after casualties of their own making, the cash isn't there. F that, all Americans deserve affordable good healthcare, and especially those that have served their country with honor.

Oh Ann!

So today Ann Coulter referred to John Edwards at a GOP event in a backhanded way as a "faggot." Real nice, this coming from a skeletal post-op tranny who hangs out with the Queen of right-wing sleaze Matt Drudge. Has this bitch lost it or what? There I feel better, but seriously every time I hear this woman talk I think she just can't possible get any crazier, and then she proves me wrong. What an absolutely heinous human being.