Who's On first?

Just watched a TV show on the rulers of Iraq from back then to now.

One of their great early leaders was Sargon the Great, a man who created what one of the earliest known empires on earth. He lived from around 2334 to 2279 BC.

A fascinating bit mentioned about his story/myth/legend is that--as an infant--he was set adrift Moses-like:

According to a folktale, Sargon was a self-made man of humble origins; a gardener, having found him as a baby floating in a basket on the river, brought him up in his own calling.

Moses-like?

Sargon lived around the 23rd to 22nd centuries BC, while moses came along much later, around the 13th to the 12th centuries BC.

Seems like Moses actually got his start in a very Sargon-like fashion, not the other way around.

Could it be that the story of Moses--as presented in the Torah--was actually a tale "borrowed" from Babylonian folklore?

Having fun With Bubba

Just got back from delivering my wife into the hands of the government for the day. It was an opportunity to tweak the 300 pound enforcers guarding the place, and they gave me the perfect opportunity.

While I was emptying my pockets in preparation to go through the metal detector, a guy just waltzed in, bypassed the storm troopers and the detector... and went inside.

Not being one to pass up such a juicy opportunity, I looked at the enforceer standing there and--pointing to the guy who just went inside--asked if I could do the same thing.

"No, you can't."

"So why could he?"

"He's works here... he's an employee."

So, with all seriousness, I Said:

"And just who is doing all the shootings in post offices around the country? Employees, that's who, and you're letting employees in here without so much as a nod?"

"Well, we know who they are, it's OK."

"For all you know, he just went off the deep end like a postal employee, has a gun in his pocket, and may be getting ready to shoot up the place. Every time you let anybody in like that, you put your job on the line."

Just try to guess what he said next:

"You shouldn't talk to an armed officer like that."

Yeah, man.

Bah

My wife just got "selected" for jury duty. I use the word "selected" with a high degree of animosity, because she did not volunteer for this task, did not want this task, but went through the "selection" process because she was threatened with fines and inprisonment if she didn't.

There was almost a hundred working-age adults at this day-long process representing 800 man-hours of lost work... so a few lawyers and county judge could hand-pick a dozen(plus two alternates)of what amounts to hostile jurors to hear a civil case.

There is no public transportation between where we live and this minor little country court house, and since my wife no longer drives, it has fallen on me to get her to the courthouse on time every day of this trial, and then drive her home at day's end. This means a bit over sixty miles of travel each and every day, or about $10.00 worth of gasoline, plus I have to wander around the halls of the courthouse all day, or spend even more on gas.

Ths thing is predicted to last around 15 days, or $150.00 worth of gasoline to us. I am told she will get about ten dollars a day.

Which brings up another point:

A judge gets paid very well to sit on high and pronounce all his earth-shaking decisions. Lawyers get disgustingly large amounts of money to shyster away all day long, but these jurors are getting $1.25 an hour. What sort of crap is that?

If they want jurors that actually want to sit on the panel--who will actually pay attention--not a bunch of hostile jurors that have been threatened into service and who would love to be anywhere else, pay them a living wage--not as much as the lawyers and the judge gets--but enough to keep afloat.

I know the constitution ensures that a citizen gets a trial with a jury of his peers. But it doesn't say anything about threatening law-abiding citizens with fines and imprisonment to provide such a jury.

Don"t start with that "doing your duty as a citizen" crap--the judge and the lawyers aren't doing any such thing--it's a well paid job to them. If they were "doing their civic duty" like the poor sap jurors, they would be getting $1.25/hr also.

Oh-one other thing... the police station is not in the courthouse building, but there are more paranoids with guns, tazers and mace patroling the place than you could imagine.

Since there has not been a terrorist attack on this courthouse in--oh, about 50,000 years or so--These people must be scared to death of... us.

Addendum:

I just realized that none of our estimated 12 to 20 million illegal aliens will work for as little as $1.25/hr. So what does that say about how the government really values it's citizens?

Big bucks

Vox pointed me to a blog value calculator.

Here--unretouched--are the results:

Site URL
Results
Earnings Report for thegundeck.blogspot.com/
The following report outlines traffic levels received by the submitted URL, overviews sources of potential income, and proposes a resale value of the site based on these factors.

Alexa Traffic RankingThe site's Alexa Rank = 15

PageRankThe site's Google Page Rank = 0.01

Backlink Report
Yahoo: 0
Altavista: 39
All the Web: 39
Average of 26 backlinks.


Your site is valued at: $34,886,309
Monthly Earning Potential
Text Link Advertising
Your site could sell text link advertisements at a rate of approximately $290/Link/Month.

Well now.

I must be doing something right.

Heh.

Zion Oil

I have been watching with interest the push on WND to peddle shares in an outfit called Zion Oil, which is going--they claim--to explore for oil in Israel.

Zion holds petroleum exploration rights in Israel located on areas that, in Biblical times, were in the territories of the Tribes of Manasseh and Asher.

Now, how could a start-up outfit manage to get those rights from the big boys, unless they were worthless?

Oil companies--for over a century--have covered the earth with their exploration for oil and have established facilites to extract it wherever it has been found. Why is there no oil facilities in Israel? The logical answer is that they never found any oil in Israel.

Listen to this from Zion's latest at WND:

Deuteronomy 33:13-16. Required long-lead inventory items have already been ordered.

They are looking for oil based on biblical expectations, statements or promises?

Shaky at best.

But here's the zinger, in something called forward looking statements.

Here's part of what Zion Oil says:

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: Statements contained in this release that are not historical fact, including statements regarding Zion's planned operations... Zion can give no assurance that the expectations reflected in these statements will prove to be correct... Zion assumes no responsibility to update the forward-looking statements in this news release.

Wowzer.

Zion's IPO ended on May 25, 2007. Over 1.8 million shares were sold to the public, raising over $12.6 million.

Hope you missed the boat on this one.

Cheney And Foot-In-Mouth

Good old Cheney puts it on the line again...

While addressing this year's graduation class of the warrior elite at West Point, he said, speaking of Bush:

You soldier for him, and he will soldier for you.

Good grief! Soldier for Bush? Don't they take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States?

Or are they now expected to swear fealty to this president?

Actually, it was a low-key method to inform those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed wonders that if they play ball with Bush, they'll be generals in no time at all. Otherwise, it's a duty station at Jackass flats, Nevada.

There really is a Jackass flats in Nevada.

Troop Reduction In Iraq

The administration has launched a trial balloon about a 50 percent reduction in troop levels in Iraq by 2008, I suppose to see how Ameircans react.

I don't know about you, but it worries me. When Bush says there will be only half the troops in Iraq in 2008, where will the other half be?

Iran.

Gah

They gotta be kidding!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States scrapped on Friday a key test of an emerging missile-defense shield after a dummy missile that was to have been the system's target went astray over the Pacific.

What's the matter with these clowns? We've been firing rockets for almost fifty years and this latest batch of rocketeers can't even get a dummy target missile off the ground. All it had to do was go ballistic and be a target. An Iraqi scud would have done better, for cripes sake.

We used to blow them up on a regular basis back in the sixties and seventies when everything was new and untested. But these guys have fifty years of knowledge and past experience to help get things right.... and they still screw up... Over and over and over.

Maybe they are busily re-designing the wheel, studiously ignoring any past knowledge as old or obsolete.

Or, maybe--as one might easily suspect--they really are a bunch of incompetent second-stringers, proudly waving their worthless sheepskins from today's worthless colleges.

We'll Leave... If

Bush has just said we will leave Iraq if they ask us to go.

What he didn't mention is the tag on... We'll leave if they ask us to, and if the Iraqi "government" passes the Bush supported "Oil Law" that gives total control of Iraqi oil to two of the world's largest oil conglomerates, not the Iraqis.

So, it is all about oil and profits.... always has been. This weasely little Texas toad has never represented America or Americans in this unjust and illegal war, only his own--and his buddies--special interests.

He has used--and depleted--the American military to further his personal goals at the cost of thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

He has lied to all of us about this war, about his intentions, about his reasons.

Iraq was never about his "war on terror".

This despicible man has used the office of the Presidency to undermine eveything America has ever stood for. He and his close circle of cretins should be tossed out of office, tried, and tossed into prison... forever.

And now--in a gesture to shove our faces in the s*it--he wants twenty million illegals to become citizens with the stroke of a presidental pen.

Why?

So he can retire, knowing he will have at least twenty million admirers.

How do you spell t-r-a-i-t-o-r?
How do you spell s-e-l-l-o-u-t?

B-U-S-H.

Keith Says It All

You must go over to "Cannonfire" at http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/ and play the video on Keith Oberman's comments.

He says it all. Nothing need be added.

Who, Me?

The Bush administration is developing plans to "internationalise" the Iraq crisis, including an expanded role for the United Nations, as a way of reducing overall US responsibility for Iraq's future and limiting domestic political fallout from the war as the 2008 election season approaches.

Oh yeah, sure. Bush tore into Iraq ignoring warnings from just about everybody and now he wants the UN to step in and help his treasonous little butt out?

Not going to happen anytime soon. Bush started this thing with the prompting of Pearl, Wolfowitz, Cheney and a few other noecon bastards.

Now it looks like Bush is going to get stuck with it.

Heh.

Military What?

Oh yes, let's scare 'em good:

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - The U.S. Navy staged its latest show of military force off the Iranian coastline on Wednesday, sending two aircraft carriers and landing ships packed with 17,000 U.S. Marines and sailors to carry out unannounced exercises in the Persian Gulf.

The Persian gulf? Good grief, that's a naval chokepoint! No room to manuever, no room to run, nothing but sitting ducks for all manner of missiles.

It's more like a show of military stupidity and has Bush's fingerprints all over it.

Bush Goes for The Brass Ring

President Bush has signed a directive granting extraordinary powers to the office of the president(himself) in the event of a declared national emergency that seems to have no congressional approval or oversight.

The "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive" was signed by Bush(of course) May 9 of this year.

This directive uses language such as "Catastrophic emergency", which is loosely defined as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

And who decides what constitutes a "Catastrophic emergency"?

Why, Bush... of course.

You have to admire the "regardless of location" bit. That could easily mean a place like Iran, and the "disruption" part could easily mean something like disrupting the flow of oil to the U.S.

And--of course--such a catastrophic emergency would mean no elections, including presidential elections, until(if ever) the president declared the emergency over.

Neat.

This weasely little Texas toad truly and really wants to be our very first self-appointed and God-sent benign dictator, and is paving his own road to that goal.

What a deal. We have hillary - who is going to save the Democrats, Gore - who is going to save the planet, and now Bush - who is going to save America.

Where do these arrogant and maniacly egotistical nut cases come from?

Wherever it is, we need to send them back. Now.

The Most Hated Nation On Earth

I read a few startling things on Fred's latest. For example:

The United States is the most hated country on the planet, followed by, to the extent that there is a distinction, Israel. So far as I know, there are no other contenders. You can say “Who cares?” as many will say, or “Screw’em if they can’t take a joke,” or “I’d rather be feared than loved.” All very droll. Still, it is an interesting datum. No country ever lives up to its own PR, but there was a time when America was widely admired. Now, almost universally, it is seen as a rogue state. And is.

This carries a price. The US consulate in Guadalajara is part fortress, part prison, with barriers and cameras and bars and rentacops, and they take away a woman’s lipstick if she is going to enter. Maybe a country that fears lipstick needs to think. The French consulate around the corner is wide open, like all others that I know of. The French, Chinese, Japanese and so on aren’t hated.

How did we Americans, who consider ourselves as kind, generous, peace-loving and God-fearing, reach this ugly point in our history? Fred offers a bit of explanation:

The United States is the most militarily aggressive country on the planet, followed closely by Israel. I am aware of no other contenders.

Some of this combativeness is obvious—attacking Iraq for no good reason, occupying Afghanistan, threatening Syria and Iran, attacking Lebanon by proxy, bombing Somalia, putting troops in the Philippines to hunt Moslems. The US is also looking for trouble with Venezuela, threatening North Korea, moving to “contain” China, embargoing Cuba, pushing into Central Asia, increasing the military budget, and pushing NATO ever closer to Russia. (How stupid can you get? Very. Stay tuned.), And the Pentagon now has Africom, African Command. Africa is now America’s business.

It gets pretty obvious when you look. An out-of-control federal government.

As Fred says:

Joe iPod in the burbs doesn’t care because it doesn’t affect him, yet. Git them Hay-rabs, ain’t no draft, plenty sushi. Urg.

Until Joe ipod and his main squeeze gets alarmed and starts taking action, this federal government will stay out-of-control.

Joe better wake up soon, time is running out.

The Lost War

This from Joe Farah:

Mexico has lost the drug war. Our neighbor to the south is officially a narco-economy now. The gangsters and murderers wield more power than the federal government. They operate with impunity. And they are taking this war across the border – expanding their base of operations and extending their killing fields.

Jose Felix was appointed as head of a drug intelligence unit in Mexico. Less than 30 days later, he was shot and killed in a street ambush, assassinated by the drug lords.

TV journalists are being kidnapped by drug cartels.

An army captain was kidnapped and killed in Chilpancingo by cartel killers.

A federal police investigator was shot dead in Tijuana.

We read of wild and insane gun battles between Mexican soldiers and the drug cartels in towns just across our border:

A bloodbath just south of the Mexican border has alarmed neighboring Arizona towns that have been monitoring the violence in the Mexican state of Sonora the past two months.

Mexican police killed 15 armed assailants in a fierce gun battle Wednesday after tracking a group that killed four policemen.

About 40 assailants apparently related to Mexico's powerful drug gangs, drove in a convoy of up to 15 vehicles into the town of Cananea, 20 miles south of the U.S. border, to seize the policemen Wednesday. Mexican state police confronted the gunmen in the mountains 60 miles south of Cananea and reportedly killed 15 of the gunmen.

Mexico City's El Universal newspaper reported more than 1,000 people have been killed by the drug cartels in the first five months of 2007.

To repeat - "These drug cartels now wield more power than the Mexican federal government. They operate with impunity. And they are taking this war across the border - expanding their base of operations and extending their killing fields into American cities."

And Bush, sellout traitor that he is, is doing nothing. Congress must force this weasely little Texas toad to start protecting America, or toss his pro-corporate anti-American ass out into the street.

Stoned

But not the "stoned" you just thought of.

A seventeen-year-old girl was just stoned to death for falling in love with a man from a different religion. One was Sunni, the other Shite. Who was what really doesn't matter. What matters is that those animals responsible for her murder called it an "honor" killing.

If this is their religion at work, if this is what they believe to be God's will, it is past time for us to walk away.

If these 12th century neanderthals can't get their act together, I say we get out completely, build a fence around their sandbox playpen and let them have at it. Dressing up in suits, driving around in fancy cars and selling overpriced oil does not make these buttwipes civilized... not even close.

I've tried to see things from their point of view, but it's useless. Let's just walk away and let them bomb, kidnap, slaughter and stone each other until the cows come home. If Bush and company want the oil over there, too bad. Get rid of Bush and company also. We have enough energy reserves in this country to last four hundred years, even at our present rate of consumption.

And if the Sunnis, or the Shites, or the Saudis attack us again, nuke the whole damn lot. It's just a bunch of sand and rock anyway... if it gets all radioactive, who cares?

If they all want to go join Allah, let's help them out.

Eight Years? THIRTEEN Years?

Congress is trying to pass a "comprehensive" immigration law, something that's supposed to solve the problem of the flood of illegal aliens infesting America.

And just what is in this new law?

The proposed agreement would allow illegal immigrants to come forward and obtain a "Z visa" and - after paying fees and a $5,000 fine - ultimately get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years. Heads of households would have to return to their home countries first.

They could come forward right away to claim a probationary card that would let them live and work legally in the U.S., but could not begin the path to permanent residency or citizenship until border security improvements and the high-tech worker identification program were completed.

Say what?

Come forward and pay "fees" plus a $5,000 dollar fine?

Congress must be daft. We are talking of people who come here without a pot to piss in, or a window to throw it out of. They work for the lowest wages in the United States. Why? So they can send the money back to Mexico(where a dollar goes about twenty times further), plus whatever those "fees" are, for a probationary card?

Imagine making a hundred bucks a week, living in a room with a dozen other dirt poor illegals so you can eat regularly(flour, beans and chili) and still send some money back home, and then having to come up with an instant $5,000 dollars. Yeah, just watch the rush forward for those "probationary" cards.

Just wait until they(probably the chinese) start counterfeiting those cards... it'll cost a lot less.

...and obtain a "Z visa"...

"Z visa". The "Z" stands for "zero" penalties, or perhaps the average number of brain cells in a congressman's head.

...get on track for permanent residency, which could take between eight and 13 years...

Oh, I see. They get to stay for between eight and thirteen years in the United States, keep our jobs, use our health and school systems--no hassle--after which Daddy takes a trip to Mexico and gets everybody their citizenship. Of course, everybody will have become fluent in english. Ha. there are Mexican families in New Mexico that have been there for generations and still can't speak english... they don't want to.

I listened to some idiot Congressman tell us this plan would force them into the rear of the line for citizenship, behind those who are applying legally. But those applying legally don't get to stay here for thirteen years--worry free--raise a family, etc., while the paperwork wanders it's way around the la-la world of zero braincell bureaucracy.

These Washingtion morons still don't get it. These illegals don't want American citizenship, they want our jobs and our homes. And... they want this country to become a part of Mexico.

And they're using what used to be our jobs--and our government-- to do it.

And don't forget... President Bush is behind all of this.

Farmers Branch Speaks Up

You must be law-abiding. Imagine that:

FARMERS BRANCH, Texas (AP) - Voters in this Dallas suburb became the first in the nation Saturday to prohibit landlords from renting to most illegal immigrants.

The ban was approved by a vote of 68 percent to 32 percent in final, unofficial returns.

The ordinance requires apartment managers to verify that renters are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants before leasing to them, with some exceptions.

Now a few details:

The city was already facing four lawsuits brought by civil rights groups, residents, property owners and businesses who contend the ordinance discriminates and that it places landlords in the precarious position of acting as federal immigration officers. Their attorneys say the ordinance attempts to regulate immigration, a duty that is exclusively the federal government's. One lawsuit also alleges the council violated the state open meetings act when deciding on the ordinance.

Let's take these one at a time.

The ordinance discriminates.

No, the ordinance does not discriminate. It only requires that any person renting in Farmers Branch be legally in the United States and makes no distinction between them being Mexican, Asian, African, male or female, Catholic or Jew, straight, transgendered, lesbian or homosexual. There is no race, religon, or sexual preference in this new ordinance.

It places landlords in the precarious position of acting as federal immigration officers.

No, it only requires the additional check as to the applicant's legal status through the usual process... drivers license, passport, green card... whatever, even less difficult than checking their credit worthiness. Applicant's often get turned down because of a poor credit rating. In this case they would just get turned down for not having proof of citizenship or legal status. They wouldn't even get reported.

The ordinance attempts to regulate immigration.

Silly. The ordinance only requires that landlords check applicants for their legal status.

The council violated the state open meetings act when deciding on the ordinance.

The voters--the legal citizens of Farmers Branch--decided the issue. The council did not "decide" anything, other than to put the issue to public vote.

Nothing wrong with being here in America for the opportunities this country offers. But don't start off by breaking our laws.

Don't sneak in like a thief in the night. Get here legally, or stay the hell out.

And learn our language.

Nice work If You Can Get It

World Bank Bigwig Paul Wolfowitz... Remember him? The neocon designer of the Iraq war? The guy with the Libyan-born British national girlfriend named Shaha Ali Riza?

Riza supposedly got a $50,000 raise, to an annual salary of $170,000 while at the WB under Wolfie. He then arranged to get her into the State Department to work with Dick Cheney's daughter Elizabeth Cheney, where the two women are operating a fund called The foundation for the Future.

Riza, a foreign national, could not hold this job without very high-level security clearances -- yet the State Department has no record of issuing her any such clearance.

Guess what? The taxpayers are funding this two-woman "Foundation" to the tune of $56 million.

So what does this "Foundation" do? Nobody knows.

Like I said, nice work of you can get it--and apparantly you can--if you have ties to the Bush gang of thieves in the White House.

Cheney's daughter and wolfowitz's girlfriend... We are so getting screwed by these people.

Greenspan Predicts Recession

The latest retail sales figures show evidence that the world's biggest economy is rapidly cooling under the weight of higher interest rates, a depressed housing market and skyrocketing gas prices.

Greenspan, No longer Chairman of the Fed, now says we have a one-in-three chance of a recession.

Good for him. He bailed before the fall, so now is successor will take the hit.

A real sign of skyrocketing prices that my wife and I saw yesterday at market:

A 24-bottle case of Aqua-Fina bottled water went up--overnight--from $4.97 to $5.97. That's REAL inflation, an almost 20% increase in cost... So it ain't only gas going up there, Greenie boy.

One of you do the math and tell me what the exact percentage of increase it was, so I can gripe with accuracy.

More "Oh-Oh"

This today:

HELENA - A magnitude 4.6 quake, reported at 9:46 a.m., was centered about nine miles northeast of Sheridan in the Tobacco Root Mountains. It was felt in the Helena, Butte, Dillon and Hamilton areas and as far away as Idaho, according to the U.S. Geological Survey Web site.

Helena is less than two hundred miles from Yellowstone--America's "supervolcano"--That had a swarm of underground quakes yesterday.

Not Good, Not Good

This is really not good news:

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. - Sixteen small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 shook Yellowstone National Park last week.

The quakes began Monday, just before midnight, and continued until Wednesday.

Bob Smith, a University of Utah professor, says the quakes occurred on the southern edge of a volcano caldera at the center of Yellowstone.

Yellowstone is one of the few "super volcanos" known worldwide, and to have a swarm of minor quakes there indicates things are moving underneath, that magma is moving, that the volcanos' magma chamber is stirring.

The last thing we all want is for a super volcano to erupt... anywhere on earth. It would make nuclear winter seem like a lazy fall afternoon.

Not good, not good.

Condi Strikes (out) Again

Good 'ole Condi does it again.

After all that hype and hoopla about maybe, possibly, just perhaps, a kinda, sort-of mini break-through over talks with Iran, she accomplishes nothing, nada, zero, zip... Just another photo-op and expensive plane ride at our expense.

Well, what did you expect?

She's a woman, and a black one at that. There will be no talks with those super-duper macho-dudes in Arab world until we send a 250+ pound man that can spit, arm wrestle, drink and womanize with the best of them.

That's the way it is.

Maybe in a hundred years--when the Arabs become a bit more civilized and a lot more PC, they will actually stoop to talk with a woman, perhaps five hundred years with a black one.

Trying to force a women--and a black one at that--down their throats will not work, period. but Bush, good 'ole stick-to-your-guns, stubborn S.O.B. that he is, keeps trying... in a painfully obvious sham effort.

It's a slam dunk, folks. Bush does not want any communications with his enemies--his very own personel demons--so using Condi guarantees it.

The New Voting Machines

This from John Gideon of VotersUnite.org:

Voters in Randolph Co Indiana are being asked to vote on a system made by now defunct Voting Technologies International; the same system that has failed in the last two elections and that failed in pre-election day set-up. Meanwhile an election this week in Scotland has been a disaster. High-speed ballot scanners failed, hundreds of thousands of ballots were spoiled, and postal ballot delays all added up to one huge mess.

Any of us can go down to any number of retail outlets and for a few hundred bucks buy a modern, up-to-date high-speed computer, complete with monitor, color printer and scanner, music system, operating system, on-line access--the while banana--a unit that can do wonders on a daily basis... reliably.

The thing will run for years and years, usually giving you problems only if you mess around with the operating system.

So what's happening here with these voting machines?

We're being cheated, robbed, fleeced and conned by a few well-placed corporations and con-artists, being sold poorly designed equipment using obsolete technology, by slicksters who know the right people... And pay off the right people.

Just like the computers sold to your local schools, none of it is anywhere close to state-of-the-art, or designed by competent engineers, or programmed by people who can actually understand what the "else" in "if/then/else" did for us all.

In case you didn't realize it, your local school bought a bunch of obsolete pieces of junk that had been stacked away in some warehouse gathering dust, and paid twice what you would pay for the latest and greatest. Doesn't matter what school it is.

We are being robbed--again--by the same players who have been robbing us for decades.

These thieves are protected by their contacts, both political and legal, and will never see retribution. We need to take these guys out and just string 'em up, and let the buzzards finish them off.

Because the politicans and the law won't.

How My Heart Bleeds

A judge sentenced Paris Hilton to 45 days in jail Friday for violating her probation.

Hilton, who parlayed her name and relentless partying into worldwide notoriety, must go to jail on June 5 and she will not be allowed any work release, no furloughs, no use of an alternative jail and no electronic monitoring in lieu of jail, Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer ruled after a hearing.

Well, cry me a river.

You'd think that the Leona Helmsley adventure might have taught these disgustingly rich high-lifers something, but I guess not.

Next step: Spending countless thousands of dollars on high priced lawyers for what will be her endless string of appeals.

She will--most likely--never spend a minute in jail.

Women In Guatemala?

I turned on C-span to watch the latest antics going on in the House of Representatives, and what am I greeted with?

Some California Rep, female, with a heavy spanish accent and spanish surname, crying over the plight of some women in Guatemala who are being abused by Guatemalans--in Guatemala--and that the Guatemalan government just isn't doing enough to protect the rights of these Guatemalan women, so this California Rep wants the U.S. government to intervene, or interfere, or some other such inter-whatever, something that no doubt would end up costing us taxpayers a lot of moeny.

Like we don't have enough troubles of our own, the House has to waste time listening to some broad whine about how a few foreign women--in their own country--are being treated.

Like Bane, I have discovered I don't give a damn. I do not care what's happening in Guatemala to Guatemalan women. Guatemalan men and the Guatemalan government--if they had the cajones and the desire--could fix the problem up all by themselves without our interference. But they don't, so they don't.

So why should we? Why should we allow some spanish-surnamed female who got elected somewhere in California waste the time of our government? If the men in the House had any cajones, they would tell this whining female to sit down and shut up. But they don't, so they don't.

To be fair, I don't care what happens to Gualemalan men either, or to Guatemala itself. The sun would still rise and set here without fail if Gualemala slid into the sea and vanished forever, taking all those abused Guatemalan women with it.

I care what happens to us, what is happening to us, and what should be happening to us.

I may be my "brothers keeper", but none of them are my brother, or sister, or even a distant relative. So as far as I'm concerened, they are on their own, period.

They need to be told that... And so does that idiot California Rep.

The Iraqi Government

We keep hearing about how the Iraqi government is this or that, is doing or not doing something or other, and how critical their success will be in getting our troops out of there and back home.

That has got me to wondering. What success... And where?

How much control of the country does this government we are propping up have? It's pretty hard to get any feel for it from our news outlets, it is apparently a taboo subject.

Seems to me all the Iraqi "government" controls is the green zone in Bagdad, but not all of Bagdad, and none of the rest of Iraq. To top it off, they govern this green zone only because we let them. It's the one place where the majority of American diplomatic and non-military presence is and needs to be defended, not by the Iraqis, but by us, and that's where this supposed Iraqi government huddles on a daily basis.

The rest of the country--with the exception of this "green zone" portion of Bagdad--is run and controlled by Shite or Sunni factions and their militias, which we occasionally raid to keep things stirred up. The fight for Iraq is no such thing. It's a fight to protect the green zone.

It appears that the Iraqi government is not a national government, it is a lot like a group of American supported politicans pretending to be somethihg they are not.

For President Bush to say that the removal of our troops is conditional on the successful conduct of this "government" is not a sane statement... he ignores the reality that Iraq has no national government at all.