America the Beautiful
Go ahead and play this. It won't bite.
On this Fourth of July, Independence Day, America's Birthday, what do YOU want your country to be in 100 years?
Well, presently we are diligently building more highways, more strip malls, more sprawling suburbs, and lots of gee whiz fancy weapons to kill our enemies (and collateral civilians, who apparently we needn't feel responsible for).
So, is this where YOU want to go?
What do you reckon America will look like 100 years down this path?
They're YOUR grandkids, after all.
Welllll, this is where leadership comes into play. Since we are in the process of picking our next President, how about we ask about their 100 year vision.
I know, I know. McCain tried that and is still catching flack for it. But look at what we've learned! Most of us don't really want 100 years of Americans at war in Iraq, which most of us still have trouble picking out on the map. Hey, it may seem obvious that we wouldn't pick war over peace, but it's important to know this with clarity, not to mention certainty. The other thing that we learned by Mr. McCain's blunt proposal is that apparently a good number of us, though a minority, actually do want 100 years of war. That is really the surprising part to me, and, again, important to know.
So what? Does a long term vision matter in picking our President? Or is getting the housing market and retail sales back on track asap the most important thing? Well, actually, they are both important. We can't go bankrupt while we build our country's next generation of infrastructure.
So, looking for a vision, here's a crazy sentence I ran across recently: The purpose of humankind, like that of all other creation, is to sustain that which is right. For humankind, this occurs through active participation in life and the exercise of good thoughts, words and deeds.
Lot's of people believe this kind of stuff. But it's really hard to really live that way on a day to day basis in our commercial society. And a quick note to the few folks out there who will sniffily reply, "Well, it's not hard for me," come here so I can slap you.
So, today on America's day, where do we take her from here? Give it some thought. Ask Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain what they want the country to look like in 100 years. Of course, the hard part is always getting from here to there. But this is exactly what America has excelled at in it's history. It is our extraordinary national talent to be able to put our collective (commie word alert!) shoulder to the grindstone and get things done!
Can we do it? You bet your ass we can. Americans will work hard when persuaded that it really matters.
Ironic Hint Here
In the meantime, we need to take care of the business at hand today.Today's Challenge - Black Gold, Texas Tea
Everybody talks about oil prices like they talk about bad weather. "Wonder if they'll go down?" "Well, they always have." Well, it ain't necessarily so. Oil prices are a tsunami that can drown us if not stopped.
The problem here is how to get the oil prices back down to a sustainable level. That is the goal. It is what we need. This is our endgame. Low oil prices define victory for America.
But the Bushies don't get it. Or, gasp!, maybe they are not really on our side. Bush and his crew seem to think that the real issue is whether the market is being "manipulated."
That's not the problem! The attitude of Hairless Hank Paulson and President Bush seems to be that if these high prices are simply a market response to supply and demand, then that's just fine. Our newsies all watch dispassionately while they dutifully report the latest numbers, then segue into their next news segments on rising unemployment, the falling dollar, inflation, and the need for higher interest rates here at home. It's all so interesting to watch, isn't it?
Famous Fiddler
As Johnny Most would say, Bush is fiddling and diddling.
This is absurd. Rome is burning! That's a metaphor. Don't flip to CNN.com. It means that we are fiddling around with minor things while everything around us turns to shit and gets flushed away.
Staring into the Abyss
War for America
When I was young, we worried about war in Europe. A third of our Army was always stationed in Germany. Now Europe is unionized. The European hot spots today are where east meets west, like the Balkans, and Turkey.
The Patsy and Pansy Strategy
Republican pussy-ass Senator Mitch McConnel recently said, talking about Iran, "Americans should be scared." What a chicken. Scared of Iran? Is he kidding? Doesn't he know what a nuclear tipped MIRV ICBM is? Well, It's about 8 atom bombs on one missile that goes into outer space and then comes back down, each bomb going to a different target. Cool, huh? The US can send these missiles to anywhere we want in the world, on about 15 minutes notice. Each American ICBM has about 8 MIRV's. Once they are launched, they are on their way, and noone can stop them. We have about 3,000 of these babies. So, 3,000 ICBM's times 8 MIRV's is about 24,000 nuclear bombs raining down from above. And that doesn't even count the nuclear bombs we can launch from our submarines, any of our 250 Navy ships equipped with the Vertical Missile Launch System (VMLS), or the plain old fashioned "silver bullet" nuclear bombs dropped from virtually any US Air Force or Navy aircraft, or any left over nuclear tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles that we don't really deploy anymore.
And guess what else? Our counterparts in Russia and China have loads of them, too.
So, as North Korea had the pleasure of learning, upon joining the nuclear bomb club, Iran will have the educational experience of realizing that it now has several hundred nuclear missiles permanently aimed at all of it's major cities and government and military facilities. Not just by the US, but by Russia and China, too. Maybe also India, England, France, and Israel as well. Congratulations on this great achievement! Do you feel more secure with your six bombs and no way to deliver them to a target? Oh, and remember not to make any of us too nervous.
Remember, the US has an official "strike first" policy now.
This is why some countries, such as Ukraine and now North Korea, have elected to become non-nuclear. It makes sense.
As for US policy, we don't need to keep every street in Baghdad free of bad guys to make the world safe for America. If we are worried about our enemies plotting to destroy us, let them ripen into a destroyable target, then go in and destroy them and come home again. This could probably be managed on a once every 3 to 5 year basis.
The current war is draining us of blood, money, military strength, and national morale. We don't need this war. This war is for the chickenshits who are afraid to deal with bad guys. Fuck the bad guys. I'm not afraid to talk to them. Go talk to them. Tell them that if we get any more of their shit, then we come back and blow their country up all over again. We owe the Iraqis nothing. For us to be paying to rebuild their country is the most stupid foreign policy I've ever heard of.
Let's rebuild New Orleans instead. Did you know that there is lots of oil in New Orleans? And they like off-shore drilling there. And they hardly ever kill American soldiers, except for the occasional bar fight.
Well, I'm about done ranting for today. I had better stuff originally, but the Google Blogger program lost it all. So this is all I have. I apologize for the tardiness in getting you a Fourth of July post.
Her are some old timey anti-war songs from the day when singers and folks weren't so afraid of losing their record deals by taking a stand. That was called "selling out" in those days. Today it seems like the only thing our talented people want is to get into a position where they can sell out and cash in.
We all need to start speaking up. If you don't like the war, start mentioning this to people. You don't need to be maniacal, just you don't see the sense in continuing it. But it is important say something. It may even be your patriotic duty.
You can play these by clicking on the pictures.
Country Joe McDonald and the Fish
Edwin Starr - War
Troops Home Now!
