TGIM

Lonely German man
jumps into polar bear
enclosure to join lonely bear.

Thank god it’s Monday. I don’t know about elsewhere in the world, but here it seems to me that life begins again every Monday. Maybe if I went to church on Sunday? Naw, I’ve tried that. It’s horrible listening to all that drivel. Everyone should read Cenk Uygur’s piece in Smirking Chimp today about executing adulterers.

Well, apparently they are planning to do it. Who is they? The Pentagon. What are they planning to do? Double the number of American troops in Afghanistan. Is this insane? In my opinion, absolutely. I don’t know if this is being done with Obama’s blessing or not. He has said he wanted to increase our troops in that impossible situation. If they go through with this we will apparently have 60,000 troops fighting for a hopeless lost cause. We are not going to “win” anything in Afghanistan, at least not militarily. This is an absolute fool’s errand. I cannot believe Obama will go through with this. We should remove all our troops and replace them with peace corps volunteers (who would, of course, need at least some protection) who would seriously attempt to rebuild that shattered country, improve their standard of living, their schools, infrastructure, and so on. In fact, I believe this is what we promised to do in the first place, but like all our promises it faded away quickly in favor of more losing military adventures. No one has ever conquered Afghanistan, probably for good reason, it’s impossible and not worth the effort required. This will be Obama’s Vietnam, or at least a replay the Russian’s embarrassing defeat, and that is a certainty as far as a certainty can be. And we have no clear-cut goal in mind in any case. I pray (to the Great Mystery) that Obama will come to his senses in time to see this for the horrible mistake it is going to be.

I know this will strike everyone as even crazier than sending more troops to Afghanistan, but why don’t we send 60,000 troops to Gaza to protect the Palestinians from the Israeli genocide. They could force open the supply lines into that beleagured place and at least rescue some of the Palestinians from having to search the garbage dumps for food. What is happening in Gaza, to my way of thinking, is far more important, and much more urgent, than anything we can do in Afghanistan.

Bush/Cheney and several others should be arrested and tried for war crimes. Biden is totally wrong-headed when he says these things happened in the past and we should concentrate on the future. Biden’s statement is just plain silly, if it were true no crime would ever be punished. Of course I know we have terrible problems that need to be overcome, but I do not see why this should result in letting these terrible crimes go unpunished. Indeed, as I understand it, the failure to prosecute such crimes is itself a crime. Obama is a constitutional lawyer, he must be aware of this. Will he, too, just flaunt the Constitution as “just a goddamn piece of paper?” And let’s stop worrying so much about partisanship. Who cares what the Republican criminals think about partisanship? They certainly didn’t worry about it when they arrogantly and viciously shut the Democrats out for these long, miserable eight years. Obama’s “reaching across the aisles” threatens to hamper any positive changes that might be made, Republicans are not known for compromising. Indeed, at this very moment, instead of trying to cooperate in solving our monumental problems, they are union busting and even putting together a committee to investigate every move Obama makes. If Obama truly wants to make some important changes he should start by emasculating whatever Republican influence remains, not by inviting them in to sabotage his every move. Let them sit on their hands and twiddle their thumbs while they contemplate the terrible damage they have done to our great nation.

LKBIQ:

Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

TILT:
A standard snooker table is 12’ by 6’ with pockets on all four corners and one on each side rail.