4/23/2003:   Ok, I was going to let this go, but... NAH! I just can't pass it up

WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION?!

The U.S. won't let Blix and his crew back into the country. They want to look for the fabled reason for the enormous expenditure of resources and lives that is the Gulf War II. Or, and I think this is completely possible, they want to have time to fabricate the WMDs, take pictures, and then "destroy" them. And that won't be easy because they'll have to find a place where these weapons could have been produced and hidden without any witnesses, since no one in Iraq seems to know where any such weapons were built.

And won't Bush have egg on his face when they don't find any WMDs? Yeah, I think he will. Which means he'll make sure he ducks. And how best to duck? Why, the same way he ducked the fact that we can't get bin Laden (remember him?).

He'll start another war!! Yeah, I'm thinking either Syria or Iran. Iran is looking pretty tasty. There aren't too many countries you can point to and say, "They allowed the kidnapping of our citizens and offered no real aid in recovering them." They hate us big time, and very few people in the U.S. can say they don't dislike Iran.

And if not them, then Turkey. Turkey would like nothing better than to stomp the mortal hell out of the Kurds in Iraq and prevent an independent Kurdish state. And they jerked us around about letting U.S. troops come into Iraq via Turkey so we could get a northern front going. They cost us time and, arguably, some lives by yanking our chain, ostensibly for money, but probably just to wag the dog.

Yup, I'm putting money on it. Nothing big. Say, $100 that we have troops on Iranian or Turkish soil by August 2004. Any takers? No? I didn't think so....

4/23/2003:   Apparently, Republican Representative Tony Perkins has been having political relations with Rick Santorum, because their diatribes read like they're in bed together, at least where their agendas are concerned.

Mr. Perkins has put me on his spam list which he calls "The Beacon". A beacon of hatred and intolerance is obviously the full description. Why this jackass has me on a Republican email list, I can't imagine, but it certainly gives me plenty of fuel for my page!

So let's jump right in, shall we? The Beacon for today listed the following legislation as bills that "pro-family" groups need to work on defeating:

• HB 1482/SB 677 Richmond/Irons, Includes gender identity and sexual orientation in the definition of harassment in public schools and requires schools to adopt policies to prevent "harassment" through training.
• HB 1246 Schwegmann, Gay Pride" license plate, funds raised from the sale of the plates would go to organization like "Friends of Gays and Lesbians" and according to the legislation would be used for education and advocacy.
• SB 168 Fields, Includes sexual orientation in a measure to prohibit racial profiling by law enforcement officials. Also prohibits law enforcement officials from stopping individuals based on national origin.
• SB 1013 Dean, Forbids discrimination in state contracts based on homosexual behavior.
• SB 1017/1034 Dean, Creates special employment protection for homosexuals
• SB 992 Dean, Seeks to repeal the state's sodomy law.

4/23/2003:   Mr. Perkins also wanted me to know that "Tax Freedom Day" came earlier this year thanks to the Monkey Faced Frat Boy (MFFB), George W. Bush. He wanted me to know that, on average, the American tax-payer made enough money to cover their tax responsibilities on April 7th. The rest of the money for the year is all ours to keep!

What Mr. Perkins doesn't mention is that the richest 1% of of the nation had their taxes paid in the first 2 nanoseconds of the year, also thanks to the MFFB and his tax cuts, exemptions, and tax shelter legislation.

4/23/2003:   And here's the part that makes it all so f***ing senseless: this moron is writing me from Louisiana!! Hey, Tony! I'm not part of your backwoods, hateful, stupid, intolerant, ignorant constituency! You idiot!! I'm in frikkin' California!! Gather up your empty beer bottles and molding green stamps, trade them all in, and use the money to buy your stupid ass a CLUE!!

4/22/2003:   Sen. Rick Santorum was quoted this week as saying that, "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

Mr. Santorum's fear of homosexuals comes through loud and clear here.

Ok, so let's review.

1. Sex between two consenting adults is not equivocal to incest. That's an easy one. Anyone that tells you that it is is ignorant and hateful.

2. Bigamy and polygamy would necessarily require that the state provide and support contractual agreements between multiple partners for those contracts to be legal and binding. Otherwise, you don't have bigamy and polygamy, you have adultery, regardless of what the parties involved say. There's the religious definition of marriage and there's the legal definition, and bigamy and polygamy are not legal anywhere in the U.S., even in Utah.

3. I don't know if adultery is illegal at the federal level. It wouldn't surprise me if it's still on the books in some states, although I dare say no one enforces the penalties for adulterous acts, much to the profound relief of over 90% of the adult population.

3. "You have the right to anything." I'm just guessing, but I think Rick ran out of horrible sex acts to invoke. The man just has no imagination...

So Mr. Santorum is obviously asserting his religious views to hurt others. Period. He wants to shape the world in his distorted view, and that means denying gays the same rights and privileges that straights enjoy, right down to invading their bedrooms and telling them what kind of Puritanical sex they have to indulge in, but only with the opposite sex. How Fascist. I'll bet Mr. Santorum would have supported eugenics.

There's a very fine line, in my personal opinion, between Mr. Santorum's brand of politics and David Duke's. Both are intolerant of people who are different from them. Both seek to use the government to further their exclusionary agendas. Both are quite comfortable quoting Biblical scriptures to support their views. Neither one seems to understand that the primary goal of a Christian is supposed to become Christ-like, and that Christ held none of the exclusionary views that the Jewish faith held at the time that he lived. Jesus was the epitomy of tolerance, of acceptance, of adherance to the simple tenet that has come to be known as The Golden Rule. Mr. Santorum sees no problem with hurting others if it will garner him political juice. He can always soften his position later, but not so much that he loses his political foundation, the Religious "Right". What I hope, though, is these hurtful remarks will stick to him, the same way David Duke's past could not be forgotten, and that they will drag him down in similar fashion.

Update, 4/23/2003: I just read the excerpts of Rick Santorum's interview (www.cnn.com) with the AP on CNN's website, and I have another point to make. Ricky is entirely against your right to privacy. He says exactly that in the interview. And he's against that right to privacy because he wants to be able legislatively control your behaviour in your home. Why? Well, let's pull a few points out of the interview:

• He thinks that homosexuality is "antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family."
• He defines the basis for society as the future, or preservation, of that society. He boils that down further to mean children and monogamous, heterosexual relationships.
• He fully feels that homosexual acts undermine the basis of society.
• He also goes on to say that the right to privacy is not outlined in the Constitution.

And then, to add insult to injury, Genevieve Wood, vice president for communications at the Family Research Council, said, "I think the Republican party would do well to follow Senator Santorum if they want to see pro-family voters show up on Election Day." Well, Mrs. Wood, I am truly pro-family, enough to realize that homosexual parents can provide just as loving and nurturing an environment as any heterosexual couple can, but I'm strictly anti-hate, and as such you couldn't pay me to vote for Mr. Santorum.

4/22/2003:   I don't know about you, but I miss the Iraqi Information Minister. I was just starting to kinda like the Oompa Loompa-browed lug. His completely disassociation from reality was charming and rather inspiring. No matter how bad things really were, he was upbeat and insulting in an optimistic sort of way. I think there's a lesson in there somewhere for all of us.....

4/9/2003:   I spent this morning watching the toppling of Saddam's statue in the center of Baghdad on CNN. I saw it live, and I watched the replays of different feeds from various TV stations. I watched with a mixture of pride and dismay as the U.S. flag was put over Saddam's face, and I felt a mix of disappointment and relief when it was replaced with a pre-Saddam Iraqi flag.

4/9/2003:   So let's think about this for a moment: Saddam's troops are proving to be completely ineffective. His communications systems are down and his soldiers, cut off from one another for days, are throwing down their weapons and uniforms and fleeing. The U.S. is wondering where you are, and if you don't turn up soon, they're going to start going door-to-door.

4/23/2003:   The curators of the Iraqi Museum of Antiquities keep blaming the U.S. for not preventing looting of some of the oldest artifacts in the world. And others in Iraq gesticulate and orate endlessly that the U.S. is at fault for the looting of government facilities, private insitutions and stores, and general lawlessness.

Um.... no. It's your people doing the looting. Yeah, we're just standing there watching it happen, but we didn't come in to police you folks. That's your job. If your police weren't cowardly, they'd be doing their jobs. And if you were all good little Muslims, you wouldn't be taking what isn't yours in the first place!

And that raises an interesting question: What do you do with thieves under Muslim law? Y'know, I've always heard that you cut their hand off. Can you imagine the pile of hands that would accumulate from the day-and-night chopping that would result if they could round up all the looters? Ewww....

Anyway, my point to Iraq is simply this: don't blame us because your people have completely lost their last shred of dignity while under Saddam's thumb. Yeah, it's a real shame that national treasures were looted along with everything else that wasn't nailed down, but if you want to point a finger, look to your own.

4/9/2003:   The other day, the leader of North Korea was quoted as saying that any attempt by the U.N. security council to sit down and discuss disarmament strategies regarding North Korea's nuclear capabilities would be seen as "an act of war."

4/9/2003:   There's been some noise in the news about how Cuba has been imposing some *really* heavy prison sentences for "crimes" having to do with uttering opinions critical of Castro. The reports are peppered with terms like "crimes against humanity" and "oppression." The general opinion seems to be that the U.S. appears distracted and so Fidel is doing whatever he wants.

4/9/2003:   Oh, and a quick note to the folks in Indonesia that were holding Saddam up as the "defender of Islam": your boy isn't defending anything anymore, and the Iraqi people appear to be pretty darned happy about it, especially the Muslims that weren't part of the Ba'ath party.

4/7/2003:   Tyson is going to box again (surprise). When asked why, he replied, "A man's gotta eat."

4/7/2003:   As of today, coalition forces took some sections of Baghdad, occupying bridges, palaces, and major city buildings. They even managed to take the Information Ministry building. Saddam's statue was torn down from the military parade route in downtown Baghdad.

4/4/2003:   Eight to ten hijackers managed to take a ferry, holding several women and children hostage, in Cuba. They demanded to be refueled, then set off for Florida.

My position on Cuba is a simple one: drop the embargo and open the border. Yeah, we'll get a huge flood of immigrants right off the bat. But then money and businesses will begin flowing into Cuba. And Fidel's rule will falter. The people will see first hand that communism sucks, and we can start planting the seeds of democracy before Fidel dies. And that part is critical. Imagine if he dies and some upstart general with nothing to lose comes into power. Dictatorship has treated Fidel well. If the people aren't motivated to push for something better, it could be many years still before the people of Cuba get another chance to determine their own fate.

It's critical, for the sake of the Cubans, that we start now.

As for the hijackers, Cuba contacted the FBI, who stopped the boat. Between the FBI telling the hijackers they would not be allowed to enter the U.S. and the high waves on the ocean, the hijackers were convinced to turn back. The ferry was towed to Cuba. The U.S. will not give political refuge to criminals, period, and that's a good thing, but this situation once again points to the desperation felt by the Cuban people to reach for a better life than what they have under Fidel's government.

4/5/2003:   Today, the Iraqi Information Minister denied that coalition troops had entered Baghdad with very little effort, saying instead that Iraqu troops had "slaughtered" coalition forces at the newly renamed Baghdad International Airport. He also reported that Iraqi troops had slaughtered the entire population of Washington, D.C., and had renamed it the District of Saddam.

4/4/2003:   In Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, many are beginning to view Saddam Hussein as the "defender of Islam."

Meanwhile, it was discovered that Iraqi troops were using a highly revered mosque as a weapons depot and toilet. And in other news, the noose around Baghdad tightens inexorably. Following the capture of Saddam International Airport (and renaming to Baghdad International Airport), the Iraqi Information (read "Propoganda") Minister (read "dork") issued a statement that could be summed up as, "They are lying! They didn't capture the airport!"

Two thoughts:

4/4/2003:   Former CIA director James Woolsey has had the balls to push the U.S. closer to being seen as completely insane. Bad enough that the MFFB chose to specify his "axis of evil", now Woolsey has decided to include Syria.

He said the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda.

"Fascists." Straight out of the Reagan Dictionary For Warmongers and Idiots. This administration is about nothing if not pissing people off by calling them names. And I wouldn't care -- Woolsey may be right -- but Bush is considering Woolsey for a key position in the reconstruction of Iraq.

But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.... it gets better.... ready?

Woolsey told a group of roughly 300 students at UCLA that Iran, Iraq, and Syria have essentially been at war with us for years, but we're just now noticing. "As we move toward a new Middle East," Woolsey said, "over the years and, I think, over the decades to come ... we will make a lot of people very nervous." He went on to state that it will be America's backing of democratic movements throughout the Middle East that will bring about this sense of unease. "Our response should be, 'good!'" Woolsey said.

Singling out Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, he said, "We want you nervous."

Woolsey, sporting a short brush mustache and close cropped hair, and wearing jackboots and a swastika, went on to state that he would see to it personally that the Middle Eastern countries were molded into the U.S. ideal of cheap labor nations.

Ok, I made that last part up, but you can bet that's how the Middle Eastern countries are feeling right now. British and French occupation of those countries not even a century ago have left them with a severe distaste for being occupied by anyone, especially non-Arabic countries. One thing that unifies these people more than anything is the concept of having some non-Middle Eastern government invading and "restructuring" them. And this jackass has the audacity to outline his plans to reshape the Middle East in the image of his Reagan-era, post-Soviet "Evil Empire" ideals in a public forum where they can, indeed, set the world ill at ease. Thanks, Jimbo. What a dork.

4/3/2003:  As of last night, coalition troops were within 15 miles of Baghdad. As predicted by yours truly, the Iraqi army fled into the city. The Iraqi troops that have been fighting us up until now were just a harrassment force. They were to slow us down. The real preparations have been going on in Baghdad itself.

The Iraqi troops outnumber us dramatically, and the only place where our technological advantage is lost is in hand-to-hand combat. Saddam *wants* us to come to Baghdad. And you can bet he's not there. Nope, Satan... erm... Saddam... is long gone, that's my prediction. And we will now engage in the bloodiest chapter of this war.

Imagine guerilla warfare in the streets of New York. That's what this is going to be like. Nasty, bloody. And the invading force is always, in any battle, at a disadvantage. The home team knows the terrain better. They can set booby traps and plan counter-attacks based on the location of the booby traps. They have the home field advantage. And our only ace in the hole, our technology, doesn't help us nearly as much. Yeah, we can call in an airstrike, but we have to pin the troops in the building to be bombed or we're just leveling a building. And our night vision goggles aren't an edge anymore: Russian made night vision goggles are in the hands of our enemy. How they got there is a burning question, but regardless, they can see us just as well as we can see them. So much for "owning the night."

Will we win? Oh, yeah, we can't afford not to. Will there by a high cost to pay? You bet. A *very* high cost, indeed.

And did Bush know this going in? Sure he did. If an arm-chair strategist like myself can work this out, you can bet Bush's experts worked it out a long time ago, before Bush ever started making noises about going after the man that "tried to kill [his] Dad."

And does Bush care about the price paid to unseat a pinned down dictator? Hell no!

I'll say it again: Now that we're in it, I just want our men and women to get the job done and get out of there as quickly, and with as few casualties, as possible. I don't agree with the Monkey Faced Frat Boy's (MFFB) approach to putting us in this war, but now that we're in it, legally or not, let's get it done and get home. Let's not expend one more drop of the blood of our nation's promise into the sands of a foreign land than is absolutely necessary to bring this war to an end.

4/3/2003   So Senator John Kerry has stated that President Bush has so ticked off our allies, even before his personal war against Iraq, that only a new president can rebuild damaged U.S.-international relationships.

Yeah, no kidding.

He says, "Because of the depth of this breach, because of the anger that exists with many countries and their leaders ... I don't think they're going to trust this president no matter what."

"Not going to trust?" Son, they hate us. Period. Get used to it because that's going to be part of MFFB's legacy.

Kerry backed a congressional resolution last fall ok'ing Bush's war powers for invading Iraq, but at the same time he has criticized the fact that this war went ahead without giving diplomacy due time. Kerry says that if he's elected, he would attempt to fix the incredible damage Bush has done. He'd push the United Nations to make the United States a leader on international, environmental and health care issues without ceding its right to defend itself.

Now wait a minute. Environmental? Does that mean he'll sign the Kyoto Treaty that Bush refused to sign while citing a pseudo-scientists crackpot theories on how global warming doesn't exist? Will he pass laws further protecting Alaska's wildlife, the same wildlife Bush sold out to his oil buddies? Will he put controls back in place on commercial waste, dumping, and air emissions that Bush rolled back? Wow! How informed, intelligent, and forward-thinking of him, if that's what he's saying.

Health care? Exactly how would the U.S. lead *anyone* in health care? We are world reknowned for our lousy health care system. We've got great doctors and the latest technology, but we also have poor doctors that are protected from lawsuits by legislation that adds insult to the injuries of victimized patients. We have malpractice insurance premiums that are out of proportion to settlements and that prevent some doctors from practicing. The latest and greatest technology is only available to those who can afford it. We shouldn't attempt to be leaders in health care. It would be enough if we were followers for a while and attempted to catch up with nations that have socialized medicine.

But the quote that really got my attention was this, "I believe we can have a golden age of American diplomacy."

What the -? Ok. Hm. Perhaps he means, "Whoever comes after Bush has a golden opportunity to mend fences because there will be so many fences to mend." Bush's successor will be able to pick the low hanging fruit and come out of it smelling like a rose. And with improved international relations comes improved trade and commerce, which would correct the stock market, which would raise consumer confidence, which would snap the economic slump. Yup, whoever comes after Bush will look like s/he walks on water. It'll be a snap. Thanks, Bush ole buddy, for making your successor's job so easy....

4/3/2003:   The family of a serviceman has taken to putting yellow ribbons up in downtown Burlingame. The shop owners there have welcomed the symbols of support, pride, and hope. But then a resident of Palo Alto wrote the city council in Burlingame protesting the ribbons, calling the war "illegal" (yeah, ok) and the troops "criminals" (now wait just a darned minute!). This individual has threatened to organize a boycott of the businesses in Burlingame until such time as the ribbons are taken down.

And the city council is taking this seriously.

They've begun pondering whether a city ordinance against posting ads on utility poles applies in this situation. What a bunch of putzes. What they *ought* to do is pass an emergency ordinance allowing the ribbons specifically for the purpose of showing support for troops involved in fighting for the coalition in this war. But wheedling around, whining about, "Well, maybe we should just take them down... we don't want any trouble..." is just plain cowardly. Our troops are laying down their lives to get rid of an evil man.

And to the a****** who wrote the Burlingame council and said they'd boycott the businesses there, I say, "Hey, I've got a better idea. Why don't you boycott the U.S.? I hear South America is just filled with U.S. hating exiles, most notably former Nazi's and their descendants. Maybe you should join them..." Dork.

One last idea here, to the businesses in Burlingame. Show your support by removing the ribbons from the utility poles -- and tying them onto your signs and posting them in your shop windows. Send a message that we will support our heroes, our human shield against the evils of this world, our troops. Send a message to the scumbag in Palo Alto that Burlingame will not be dictated to by some idiot who doesn't appreciate the price our troops are willing to pay to protect their country and its ideals.