What's "FUBAR?"

Today is the 5 year-anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by U.S. led coalition forces. This occasion is being marked by hundreds of bloggers across the net as they show their solidarity in a commitment that the United States should withdraw from Iraq. If you have some time today I'd encourage you to check the Iraq War Blogswarm blogroll linked above and read some of the other very moving and sometimes very personal stories about the war.

For those of us who were against this war since well before it began this has been a pretty frustrating five years. We marched, we wrote letters and we voted. None of that seemed to help. In fact: it seems like things have just gotten worse.

If you're like me the last five years have made you feel a bit powerless. But we don't have to feel that way. Here's a couple of modest suggestions to things we can do today to make things a little bit better all by our lonesome.

The first is to visit and consider participating in the Any Soldier program. Effectively it's a care package deal but more. Men and women serving in Afghanistan or Iraq post lists of items they're running short on - everything from socks to DVDs to alleviate the periods of boredom - and civilians stateside fulfil those wishes. Maybe we can't bring these guys home today but we can at least make their lives a little bit better.

My second suggestion is something a little more personal and something I feel strongly about, but hesitate to bring up. When matched against the gravity of the thousands of lives lost in the war in Iraq it just doesn't seem that important. Still...

Five years ago we lost a lot of stuff when President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq. We lost lives, treasure and our sense of national identity as a nation founded on universal principles of human rights. We lost much of the goodwill America had built up at the end of the twentieth century in fighting for these principles. We lost our moral stature as a nation.

We also lost our flag. I'm not sure how this happened or how it was even possible, but the people that supported this war were able to turn our flag into a bumper sticker. They were able to re-brand the flag belonging to all of us as a symbol supporting George W. Bush and his ridiculous decision to start a war in Iraq. They took it from us.

I want it back. So today I'm getting out my own flag out of mothballs, which I haven't flown since 2002, and hanging it in front of my house. I'm also embedding the flag on my page and am encouraging anyone who feels the same way and hasn't done so already to do the same thing.

Our flag was never theirs to take and it's been in their hands much longer than they deserved. Let's take the damn thing back.

When two hunters go after the same prey, they usually end up shooting each other in the back. And we don't want to shoot each other in the back.

I haven't commented much lately on the Presidential race. It used to be pretty much all I wrote about here.

There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I'm just as sick of the whole thing as the rest of you are. I've spent almost my entire life as a political junkie and I still can't wait for this to end.

Then there's my firm conviction that the whole thing will sort itself out on it's own. That conviction is waning the longer this drags out, btw.

That being said; I'd like to make two quick observations.

Obama's speech today on the Wright flap and race was Lincolnesque. I do not use that description lightly. Here's a snippet- Here's the whole damn speech--



Text of the whole thing can be found at the NYT website.

The other is a short, semantic observation. If you check the dictionary the antonym of the word "hope" is not "pragmatism."

Some people seem to have lost sight of that simple reality.

Little girls shouldn't look for four leaf clovers.

Democratic congressman just never seem to get it. Various elected democrats includingPatrick Leahy and Dianne Feinstein have criticized John McCain for his campaign stop in Iraq this week.

Anytime McCain wants to highlight Iraq he's welcome to. Not only does it confirm his horrible judgement in supporting the war but it demonstrates he clearly doesn't meet the magical "Commander In Chief Threshold" that we've recently heard so much about. A Republican that thinks standing on George W. Bush's stellar record in Iraq is a positive is clearly living in la-la land.

A McCain visit to Iraq with toady Joe Lieberman in tow is a net plus to the Democratic candidate. We shouldn't be bitching about it. We should be encouraging more of the same.

Whoever holds the conch gets to speak.

Happy Friday! Today is Scotch & Cigar Day here at my office (after hours, of course.) I have a bottle of Glengoyne and a box of cubans I've been saving for this occasion. I might try and pawn off Jack Daniels and Swisher Sweets on Zaius and Randal instead of the good stuff. Don't tell 'em, okay?

Last night I went to Dean Jr.'s Parent/Teacher Conference and wound up laughing through the whole thing like an idiot. The problem was the had us waiting outside the classroom and there on the wall was a big poster his fifth grade class had made entitled "Books We Like To Read."

Next to each child's name was a list of one or two books they personally recommend. All of the books were what you might expect: "Lemony Snicket," "How to be a Pirate," "Harry Potter" or "Bart Simpson Comics."

Next to Dean Jr.'s name: "Lord of the Flies."

After staring at that for about 10 minutes I found myself unable to contain my giggling.

Of course this book choice does explain why he asked us the other day if he was "Emu" because he liked to wear black t-shirts. We looked at each other and then said "Why yes, son, you are a large flightless bird."

Anyhoo, Mr. Dr. Zaius AND the fabulous BAC tagged me with the the six-word biography virus thingy so...

Dungeonmaster.

Tackle.

Saint.

Pimp.

Hubby.

Pop.

I've had too much scotch to get out of my comfortable leather chair and tag anyone else so consider yourself lucky, punks.

If God didn't want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.

Like much of the progressive side of the web I don't hold out much hope that congress will hold firm in the face of a tantrum by President Veruca Salt screaming for retroactive immunity for telecoms. Having said that; one of the things that strikes me as more than a little odd about the current situation is that the House is currently the voice of reason while the Senate has become a rubber-stamp for the passions of the moment.

Isn't this the diametrically opposed to the framer's intentions with our two great legislative bodies?

Now I tell a tale of the threshold people, so astounding that some of you may faint.

This story is awful--

A woman was locked for four days in a tiny holding cell in a northern Arkansas courthouse, forgotten by the authorities and left without food or water, the local Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday.

The woman, Adriana Torres-Flores, 38, a longtime illegal immigrant from Mexico, slept on the floor with only a shoe for a pillow, and with nothing to drink except her own urine, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported. There was no bathroom in the cell.

A bailiff had apparently forgotten that he placed Ms. Torres-Flores, a mother of three, in the cell last Thursday, and simply left her in the empty courthouse, in Fayetteville, over the weekend, said the chief deputy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department, Jay Cantrell. A snowstorm meant that there were far fewer people than usual working at the courthouse on Friday.

I scanned the story a couple of times to see if the baliff was fired. There's no mention of any discplinary action of any other kind than an "investigation." That is flat-out ridiculous.

I realize that Ms. Torres-Flores is an illegal alien and that somehow that makes her a little less important that us regular citizens but is it too much to ask she be treated with the minimum amount of respect and dignity she might see in any other third-world nation?

I'm hoping that if she's deported back to Mexico she goes back with a wallet stuffed with cash from her lawsuit against these idiots. Shame on bailiff and the county for letting this happen.

No one can pull the wool over my eyes. Cashmere maybe, but wool, never.

Aha!

From Mary Ann's Gilligan's Island Cookbook the recipe for Mary Ann's Famous Coconut Cream Pie.

3 egg yolks
dash of salt
1/4 cup sugar
3 cups milk
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup corn starch
1 cup coconut
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 q/p purple haze or skunk fresh ganja.
1 baked 9-inch pie shell
3 egg whites
coconut for garnish


I'm telling you it was right under our noses the whole time.

What was that stuff you just gave me?

Anybody that used to watch Gilligan's Island suspected that Mary Ann's innocent farm girl routine was just an act but still this comes as a bit of a surprise --

A surprise birthday party for Dawn Wells, the actress who played Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island," ended with a nearly three-hour tour of the Teton County sheriff's office and jail when the 69-year-old was caught with marijuana in her vehicle while driving home.

In retrospect it's obvious somebody was passing around a little herb. Gilligan in particular seemed to be living in a perpetual state of the munchies. No real human being could put away that many coconut-cream pies.

Speaking for myself this definitely tips the Mary Ann vs. Ginger scale in the direction of the girl in the tight shorts.

UPDATE-

Take a look at this photo of the Professor. Look at the equipment he's working on in his "lab." You might suppose the Professor is making glue to fix the boat or trying to find a way to turn an invisible Gilligan back to normal. WRONG!

It was right there under our noses this whole time. No wonder those idiots never got off the island. They were all lying on the beach listening to Pink Floyd and giggling to themselves.

This isn't Geneva, Colonel.

Jess Wundrun catches the President speaking out of both sides of his mouth on torture. Since there's usually also chaw in there the whole thing is pretty gross.

Winners do not empathize with losers.

The Freedom Ship is an idea that's been, ahem, floating around for some time. Effectively it's a Libertarian paradise; a tax-free floating utopia. It would have it's own hospital, casinon and 3000 member police force. The ultimate gated community.

The project has been plagued with delays. Initially the construction was to have been finished in 2000. As of this writing they haven't even begun building the ship and are still in the fundraising/ design phase. Something to do with various "scams" that have caused set backs. Huh. You'd think that if anyone would be able to spot business scams it would be financially savvy libertarians.

Could you come up with a better metaphor for libertarianism if you tried? Pie-in-the-sky idealism which, for one reason or another, never quite meets fruition. This why most libertarian ideas don't quite make it out of the pot smoke filled college dorm rooms in which they were concieved.

Still- the Freedom Ship is an interesting idea in a Waterworld sort of way. And who could deny they have a great theme song?


Greed, exciting and new Come Aboard. We're expecting you.

Greed, life's sweetest reward. Let it flow, it floats back to you.

Libertarian Boat -- soon will be making another run. The Libertarian Boat promises selfishness for number one.

Set a course for anarcho-capitalism, your mind on a world with no laws. Greed won't hurt anymore. It's an open wallet on a foreign shore.

Yes GREEEEEEDDDDDDD! It's GREEEEDDDDDDDD! (hey-ah!)



For a serious article on this subject read this.