OK, I get up this morning with a medium sized hang-over, [First in about a month, don't send for help], I scan the couple of sights I follow on the internet, and I review the comments I have made hoping I made some sense the night before and also hoping I didn't embarrass myself or insult any of the many on-line people I have come to admire and respect. Then I turn on the TV to see which games will be televised. I am a big Cowboy fan and watch some of the other games.

So, what do I see? The damned pre-game bs show on the Fox channel that are on as I write have a complete military theme. Jimmy Johnson and the others have on Combat fatigues. Each representing a different branch. A live audience that is apparently all, or at least mostly, military. Video clips of soldiers in Afghanistan telling what a wonderful thing we are doing there.

This might settle down in my addled brain and I might come to understand just why I am pissed off by this after it stews for a while. If it wasn't Sunday I might go get a bottle of bourbon to help clear my mind.

During the Bush administration I sometimes wondered if they were following a brilliant plan to kill any investigation of scandal or any chance that public opinion would turn into outrage at a particular crime or stupidity by simply committing another outrageous act and diverting attention. No outrage stayed up front long enough to gain traction.

Most of the worst such actions, in my opinion, had to do with waging wrongful war and then with the war crimes committed within those wars. These wars are not just wrong in a moral sense, they are pragmatically stupid.

If the cost of operating our huge military does not financially break our country it will at the very least cost us dearly in lost opportunities to better the situation for our own citizens and for others of the world. Health care comes to mind. Our inclination towards a kick-ass military solution to every international problem must change but if it doesn't I believe it will not be too long before military intervention is required within our own country to maintain order and to "keep the trains running on time".

The following link goes to an essay by Scott Ritter. It will no doubt pop up many places except anywhere in the "mainstream Media". I got it from Information Clearing House.com.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23868.htm

An irreverent view by a former Marine.

http://www.fredoneverything.net/FOE_Frame_Column.htm

Look At Em

Yeah, just look at em.

I've thought about this often and started to write on this subject a few times but a comment by Stillidealistic finally got me to the keyboard.

"John Boehner on Hardball...what an arse. Just seeing his smug, slimy face makes me want to kick the t.v. I wouldn't buy a used car from him."

Stilli, I have destroyed a remote with a good throw at my TV screen.

So, do A high percentage, like 99%, of despicable people really look despicable or is it just that I see them that way because of how I feel about them?

Some names to consider: Oh, and I'm sorry about the accompanying visuals but this is in the interest of science.

Don't these guys all look like either pricks or idiots, or idiotic pricks. The exceptions look like mean, evil bastards. Classify them for yourself. Bill Kristol, [Smarmy, slick faced pimp] Charles Krauthhammer [should be cast as Frankenstein's fuck-up] Paul Wolfowitze, [A prick with ears], John Boehner, [Looks like a guy Perry Mason should let hang even if he could get him off] Ol' what's his name, Mich Mac the Minority Mouse of the Senate, [A perch eyed imbecile if ever there was one], Glenn Beck, [Sorry, too close to dinner time for that one], the Smirking Chimp, [Looks like a capitalized smirking chimp], Darth Chaney, [Black holes opening into chaos where his eyes should be], dough-faced Perle, [A face like a four pound sack filled with five pounds of crap.].

The list goes on. Or is it jut my bias?

Thoughts on Current Nuclear arms issues

Here are some thoughts that have come to me while listening to different aspects of the recent debates on nuclear proliferation and the reduction of nuclear weapons, possibly to zero.

My bet is that Iran is trying to [at least] reach the point that they could quickly construct an A bomb. Just because people whose foreign policy I despise say that that is the case does not make it false, but I also believe that an attack on Iran to destroy their enrichment facilities is a very bad and very wrong idea.

Iran claims they want processed uranium as fuel and that is very likely true but unlikely the whole truth.

If I ruled Iran and the geopolitical situation was as it is, I would also want the bomb. I bet you would too.

One of the threats to Iran is the cut-off of refined petroleum products. Why are they not building refineries? Maybe they are but I haven't heard anything about it. Would they be too easy a target because they could not be built in underground hardened bunkers? Do the Iranians feel that a defensive bomb is a higher first priority when they are being threatened with a cut off of the vital energy source they now depend on.

If treaties were reached that promised the destruction of all A bombs:

Russia would secretly keep some, China would secretly keep some, Israel would secretly keep some, and so would every other country that has them. The United States would definitely keep some.

As for reductions, most of the countries in the A club have so many weapons that they can deactivate 95% of them and have enough left over to likely destroy life as we know it on the entire planet and so the offer to give up ten thousand and keep only a hundred or so is a bargaining chip that would have no value if offered to me as an inducement to not get my own.

Getting the Senate to agree to a treaty giving up all A-bombs would be much harder than passing meaningful health care reform. Very much harder. A higher percentage of people would be against it to start with and by the time the fear mongers and war mongers and corporate interests held stage for a while a much higher percentage would be against it. Some people who are reasonable and wish for a safer, saner world would also think that a total ban would be un-verifiable, quickly reversible, and isn't a reality based and realistically possible way to achieve one.

If America's armed forces were actually of a completely defensive nature and not designed, and intended, to be able to bend any other country to our will, the retention of a few nukes might actually make sense by making such a defensive position possible.

If all nukes were destroyed, all fissionable material accounted for and somehow made unavailable to all entities for the quick assembly of weapons, if that is even remotely possible, and if the powers that be in the world believed it had happened, full scale conventional war between major countries might become more likely. Also,regional domination by major countries of weaker or smaller countries just by the threat of war would be more likely and more common.

The money saved by scaling back our military and using that money to invest in an honest full blown effort to reach energy independence would greatly increase our national security beyond anything we can expect by continuing on our present course of having a military capable of "protecting our vital national interests". That phrase is almost totally a reference to maintaining access to foreign oil.

.

When I go to a blog at TPMC they have a gray background as they load which normally snaps to white. In about one out of twenty blogs though the background never goes to white and in those I do not see the embedded links or the comments and I cannot make my own comment.

Anybody know how I can solve this? Thanks.