Category: Politics

Here’s another reason to hate the war: My wife has developed quite the crush on CNN’s military analyst, Wesley Clark.

Damn you, Clark, and your boyish good looks!

I never thought I’d be able to quickly calculate what time it is in Baghdad.

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty numb to reports of Palestinian or Israeli attacks. Every other day, I hear news reports about a (Palestinian/Israeli) (suicide attack/missle) exploding in (West Bank/Tel Aviv) killing X number of (Palestinians/Israelis).

Anyway, I came across this list. It certainly broke through the din of information and put the human cost more in perspective for me:

Victims of Haifa bus blast on Wed. March 5
Yuval Mendelovitch, 13, from Haifa
Staff Sgt. Barry Oved, 21, from Rosh Pina
Staff Sgt. Eliahu Lacham, 22, from Haifa
Abigail Leitel, 14, from Haifa
Daniel Harush, 16, from Safed
Kmar Abu Khamed, 13, from Daliat al-Carmel
Mitel Katav, 20, from Haifa
Assaf Zur, 17, from Haifa
Tom Hershko, 16, from Haifa and his father
Mordecai Hershko, 41
Marak Takash, 54, from Haifa
Semadar Firstetter, 17, from Haifa
Tal Kirman, 17, from Haifa
Miriam Attar, 27, from Haifa
Elizabetha Katzman, 16, from Haifa

So, I was watching television last night, and I saw something disturbing. I know that’s hard to believe, a disturbing site on American television, but trust me, I witnessed it.

The wife and I were watching this documentary about American soldiers getting ready for combat (read: Iraq) and this commercial came on. It was a commercial for the Iraq war. I shit you not. It was a commercial advertising the new war and that you should tune in to MSNBC because they have the best war correspondents and expert analysts. And it even had these experts standing there with their arms crossed, looking very expert-like as war/desert images flashed on the blue screen behind them.

So, you know, tune in to MSNBC because their war coverage is going to be kick ass, and stuff.

Never have I been more sickened about being an American.

I don’t want to seem like Chicken Little, but I’m definitely not liking all the shit that’s going on around the world. It’s seriously freaking me out. I feel like a huge terrorist attack is imminent, we are about to ignite a powder keg in the Middle East and apparently N. Korea has a nuclear missile pointed at LA right now.

I am constantly vacillating between barely controlled panic and a shrug of, “oh well, there’s nothing I can really do, so quit worrying and enjoy this re-run of the Simpsons.” Speaking of TV, being a fan of the show 24 is probably not helping my mental state at the moment, either.

I just can’t help feeling like we are entering an elaborate end game of the United States as a super power. There are so many scenarios where the US could seriously go down in flames here. And I really don’t care about our government’s dominance in the world and think that our government IS way too arrogant. It’s just that the immediate effects will be devastating in loss of life and will probably negatively affect my life for some time to come and that is not exciting to me.

So, with that said, I’m going to link to this anti-war in Iraq link: I don’t think the US should go to war with Iraq right now.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t see a good reason to do that.

If you’re like me and listen to NPR on the drive home from work, you probably heard the piece about anti-war songs yesterday (sorry, it’s in crappy realaudio format). I really liked Yo La Tengo’s version of the Sun Ra song, Nuclear War. Something about the children’s chorus singing along to phrases such as “It’s a motherfucker” and “You gonna lose your ass” makes it simultaneously funny, eerie and poignant. I can’t think of a better anti-war song.

If you don’t believe me, listen for yourself.

We here at themuy feel it is our Democratic duty to urge you to get out tomorrow and vote vote vote!

But, please be informed about the candidates and issues in your area. A good resource can be found at yahoo. You can enter your zip code and receive a list of the candidates for your districts. Go there now and then go to your polling location tomorrow and vote!

And if you haven’t registered yet, go do it now so you will be prepared for the next election. I, for one, think the next Presidential election will be an important one.

That is all.

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

�Jack Kerouac
On The Road (1957)

I think it’s my duty to inform as many people as I can about this:

“Thank you for financing global terror” stickers

I think it’s a brilliant idea and you should buy some for your friends and family this Christmas.

I’m back to using the personal pronoun. It feels good to be back in the personal pronoun saddle, or PPS, as I call it.

So, Bob Barr accidentally fired a handgun at a reception in his honor.

Way to go, Bob. I’m sure the National Rifle Association will appreciate this. Especially since you are one of their board members. Also, the man opposing Barr in the 7th Congressional District of GA race, John Linder, said (apparently unironically) of the incident: “The guy’s a loose cannon.”

mmmmm, politics.