Here are a few more posts I found interesting, amusing, whatever.

• How About Punishing The Owners
• Update on “Times says we’re getting away with murder”
• Funding Terrorist note: As far as I can tell, the title and the actual post are utterly unrelated. Nevertheless, it’s a good rant.
• Military Strength v The Will to Win
• Rodriguez playing Alabama to stay at WVU?
• Enough!!!
• Robert Plant Records in Nashville
• Brownback 2008
• Science, Skeptics, God, and Magick
• Cherokee County, GA Passes Anti-Immigrant Ordinance

Slide by and leave a comment. You don’t have to agree with ‘em. It’s just blogging.

We need to rename the “War on Terror”. Maybe we should call it “Guarding Against Terrorism”. I don’t know, but I’m open to suggestions.

9/11 scared the bejesus out of me. I realize fear is unbecoming of a middle-aged Southern boy. Nevertheless it did. Still does. It’s time to put it in perspective though.

I never thought twice as the US embarked on the “War on Terror”. It was obvious something had to be done about al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I’d have nuked ‘em, but nobody asked me.

To hear our government tell it, we’re still waging the “War on Terror”. We will be, they promise, for a generation. Our leaders want us to believe our way of life is under attack. It may be, but not from the terrorists. The politicians want us to be afraid so they can usurp our rights and do things like invade other countries in our name. It’s worked well for them so far.

The fact is, though, being afraid of Muslim fanatics is just ridiculous. Yes, 9/11 was a horrific event. If terrorists could pull something similar off on a somewhat regular basis, then it would make sense to fear them. But to fear them, in light of who and what they really are, is ridiculous. (But flattering, I’m sure, for the terrorist themselves).

Oil is the only thing we need that is produced in the Muslim world. It seems safe to surmise that if the western oil companies shut down their operations, dismantled their wells, storage facilities, and pipelines, the oil would stay right where it is, under the sand, until someone from outside the Muslim world extracted it. Muslims lack the technology to do much of anything for themselves. Sadly, the only things they are good at making are terrorists and WMD. Such a people don’t constitute much of threat to our way of life.

Consider tiny Israel. They are some six million strong, surrounded by a billion Muslims, most of whom profess to want Israel wiped from the face of the earth. But they’re still there, right in the Muslim’s backyard. The US is infinitely more powerful than Israel, not to mention exponentially further removed from the apex of the threat.

It’s time to rename the “War on Terror”. It’s time to tell the government we expect them to protect us, not scare us to death, and certainly not infringe on our rights. In reality the politicians are a much greater threat to the American way of life than are the terrorists.

Click over to Doug’s Darkworld and read his entertaining but bleak assessment of some of what’s going on in the world. I’m a regular reader now. If you’re not an ideologue you’ll enjoy his writing.

As a matter of policy, I don’t link to online newspapers. Those links turn to broken links, usually in about two weeks. Nevertheless, I’ve made an exception. Go forth and read Senator Chuck Hagel’s (R – Nebraska) letter to WAPO.

Could Chuck be presidential timber?

(Hat-tip to The Lady Speaks)

How long will it take for the hapless Democrats to shoot themselves in the foot? Not long, if the few days since they took Congress are any indication. They’ve already chambered a round and drawn a bead just behind their big toe.

It seems that hearings are in the works concerning the war in Iraq, and the questionable intelligence the neo-cons served up as justification for it. In a phrase, that’s spilt milk. Democrats need to concentrate all their energies on getting us out of that shit-hole. How we wound up there is irrelevant as long as Americans are dying. The independents are watching the Democrats to see it they are capable of anything more than blathering and preening. It doesn’t look good so far.

Plagiarist Joe Biden has vowed that John Bolton will never be confirmed as ambassador to the UN. Most Americans probably don’t give a damn one way or the other. Those that think about it probably realize that Bolton, on his best day, is an asshole, and that an asshole is just what we need dealing with the disaster that is the UN. Joe, Bolton is insignificant. We want you to do something about Iraq.

Now some crackpot has filed charges against Don Rumsfeld in Germany because they believe he’s permitted the torture of terrorist. Let me break it down; torture bad, Rumsfeld worse, filing charges against an American in a foreign court, worst by far. I realize this isn’t the work of the Democrats per se, but it reflects badly on them, at least as I see it.

If the Democrats are serious about maintaining power for more than two years, and want to have a chance at winning the White House, they better get their shit together fast. Americans despise George Bush because he’s a terrible president. Nevertheless, I suspect most Americans, given a choice between Mr. Bush, and a Kerry or a Gore, would vote for Mr. Bush again. The ball is in the Dems court. I’m betting they fumble.

Well we have a new congress. Most pundits seem to think it’s a rebuke to the Bush team in particular and the status quo in general. So, what can we expect to change? Nothing anybody who isn’t represented by a powerful PAC calls for, that’s for sure.

Here are some things that almost certainly won’t change, at least for the better, by the time the ‘08 elections role around.

• We won’t be out of Iraq. In fact, we’ll be even more bogged down there than we are now, and the independent voters are apt to blame the Democrats for that.
• There will be at least as many, and probably more, Mexicans, Venezuelans, and muslim-extremist pouring across our southern border as are today.
• There will be even more people without healthcare and healthcare prices will have risen another 20% (by ‘08).

What we can expect is more legislation, like the latest Medicare debacle, that is crafted by and for big business. The politicians will continue to mortgage the nation’s future with their out of control spending. With any luck, there will be a fist-fight, maybe even a duel, fought in the House of Representatives.

With the fifth anniverary of the attacks of 9/11, a popular topic among bloggers is “are we safer with five years of the Bush doctrine behind us”. Of course there’s no way of knowing that. The correct question is “do you feel safer”? Well, do you?

Consider the following:

• The man who instigated 9/11 is alive and well, quite possibly under the protection of our “ally” Pakistan
• Our buddies the Pakistanis are providing sanctuary for al Qaeda and the Taliban
• We’ve provided even more F-16 fighting falcons for Pakistan, a nuclear power and one of the most rabidly anti-American nations on earth
• Our NATO partners are refusing to pony up more troops to counter the re-emergance of the Taliban in Afghanistan
• Iraq is disintegrating before our very eyes
• Iran is going nuclear any time now
• Shia influence is on the rise in the middle east
• North Korea has gone public with their nuclear program

For some strange reason, I don’t feel especially safe.

Oh, I almost forgot, the Bush administration’s sweetheart deal with a Dubai company to manage our ports. They almost slipped that by us. Who knows what they have gotten by when we were fighting among ourselves and not paying attention? Oh yeah, and there’s the matter of our government’s failure to secure our borders.

Sweet dreams.

Do you ever wonder why people believe what they believe? Is it because they like the source of the information? Does some information “resonate” with certain people so it has the proverbial “ring of truth” to it?

Last night I was surfing channels and caught a few minutes of “The Drug Years” on VH1. The segment was about Vietnam and the problem with heroin many vets from that era brought home. Several of the commentators stated matter of factually that the CIA was involved in supplying our men in Vietnam with the drug. It was pretty obvious they (the commentators) believed this, or at least wanted me to. But is there even a shred of truth to it?

There are reports in the media that one third of all Americans believe there is a cover-up surrounding the events of 9/11. I’ve run across more than a few blogs whose authors are convinced that the US was directly involved in the carnage. Israel is another favorite culprit. It’s obvious that most of these bloggers are way out of the mainstream. Not all of them though.

CNN (I know, consider the source) reports regularly that fully half of all Americans still believe Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11. To the best of my knowledge, no one more credible than nitwit bloggers has ever suggested such a thing. Iraq involved with al Qaeda is one thing, but being involved in the attacks on the US is quite another.

I, for one, don’t know what to believe. As a result, I generally don’t (believe anything). In particular, if my government says it, it is extremely suspect. Here’s a quick list of the shenanigans politicians have perpetrated in my lifetime.

• The Bay of Pigs
• The Tonkin Gulf Incident
• Watergate
• The Iran-Contra Affair
• The Lewinsky Scandal

Ongoing US involvement in Iraq and our failure to finish the job in Afghanistan may one day make the list, but in my mind those have more to do with incompetence than dishonesty.

Are you a believer?

Direct TV’s most basic package is a cornerstone in my daily battle with ennui. One of my favorite programs is The Dog Whisperer. That dude knows his dogs. One of the things I learned last night is that dogs don’t rationalize. They live their lives completely in the present. (Yes, smart ass, I realize that’s the only way anything lives. It’s their emotional lives, such as they are, that I’m referring to). What you did or didn’t do five minutes ago is irrelevant to dogs. It’s strictly what you are doing for them presently that they’re interested in.

The U. S. government’s policy on selling arms to other countries is reminiscent of the dogs the Dog Whisperer charms into submission. There’s no rationale. There’s no weighing the potential consequences based on past performance. Nope, it’s strictly based on what is happening right at the very moment the sale is proposed that is relevant. In short, the U. S. government will approve arms sales to any country as long as they aren’t actively engaged in war with the U. S., or threatening to be at some not-to-distant point.

The U. S. recently sold a bunch of F-16 Fighting Falcons to the Pakistanis. They already had a bunch of them anyway, so I guess somebody somewhere figured what the hell. Never mind that Pakistan is a military dictatorship. Never mind that it is, with the possible exceptions of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the most rabidly anti-American nation in the world. Never mind that the Pakistanis did and do prop up the Taliban, who the U. S. is fighting in Afghanistan. They needed F-16s. Somebody in the United States needed a house at the lake. Done deal.

The U. S. policy on selling arms is strictly one of do as it says, not as it does. Even now the Russians have found themselves on the outs with the U. S. over jet sales to South American strong man, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. It seems that Mr. Chavez isn’t parroting the proper rhetoric to his subjects. For this reason, the U. S. won’t sell him replacement parts for the F-16s he already has. Fortunately for Chavez, but not the pilots in Venezuela’s Air Force, the Russians stepped in with their inferior, but affordable and available product.

I don’t doubt for a second that at some point the U. S. will wind up having to shoot a bunch of Chavez’s Russian jets down. It seems likely, at least to me, that the U. S. will also end up having to shoot down the F-16s it has just sold Pakistan, and that will undoubtedly prove much more difficult than destroying the Venezuelans and their crappy Russian Air Force.

Bottom line, the U. S. should be thanking the Russians, instead of punishing them, for “helping” Mr. Hugo Chavez. Had they not, he’d have been forced to seek replacement parts for his American jets on the black market. That, undoubtedly, would have made the upcoming destruction of his planes exponentially more difficult, like the upcoming destruction of the Pakistani F-16s will prove to be.