Dead is dead

Here's a controversy I don't understand. I get the concept of "football hero goes off to war" and all the epic grandeur of that. But what I don't understand is the outrage surrounding his death.

Pat Tillman died from friendly fire. His own dudes killed him instead of the godless Muslims. It happens in every war. War is dangerous. The point of war is killing. So there's that.

But I don't understand why it's a scandal. Apparently, the Tillman's family didn't learn whose bullets killed Pat until five weeks after he died.

So what?

Dying from friendly fire doesn't make his death any less tragic or honorable than it would have been if some Iraqi with good aim had snuffed him.

I've thought a lot about this, because my stepson is on his third tour in Iraq. Now, I imagine if something bad happens to him, I'll hear about it third hand, because he doesn't talk to me and neither does his mother, my soon-to-be ex-wife. (I don't miss her. I do miss him. And I've never been quite sure why he doesn't talk to me, though I'm sure he has his reasons.) She didn't even tell me when she had the cat put down, so I don't imagine she'll call me if our soldier has a problem.

In any event, for those people in Iraq who get killed, dead is dead. It doesn't matter how they died, generally speaking. (I heard once about a guy who got killed by rolling a Humvee. That seems pretty idiotic and not at all honorable, but that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about.) I can't imagine giving a damn about who shot my kid. Dead is dead.

It's possible, however, that the Tillman family is upset about being lied to by the army and the administration (because W, opportunist that he is, used Pat in a speech about the war). Sure, I can see that. Being lied to sucks, especially by the people who run the show. But this is par for the course for this administration. Why does Alberto Gonzales have his tit in a wringer? For lying about his involvement in firing those U.S. Attorneys, not for actually doing it. What was Scooter Libby convicted of? Lying, not leaking.

The Pat Tillman controversy is strange, but it's an excellent indicator of W's presidency slowly collapsing presidency. That the Dems have finally figured it out is amazing, too, since they've been afraid of looking disloyal for years. I just hope people figure out that the web of lies coming out of Washington today is more serious than lying about a blowjob.

Cracks me up

This is totally within the spirit of this blog. (Very little isn't.) Read on:

http://bn.craigslist.org/rnr/298811397.html

Lost

Great show.

But I wonder, how did a pussy like John Locke become such a badass on the island?

He sure manages to blow a lot of shit up, too.

Also, I'm not the only one who's gotten the joke of his name, right?

Pet Food Recall

If you have pets, check the list of contaminated food here:

http://www.menufoods.com/recall/

Lawyers Are Fascinating

First of all, some high-priced lawyers have funny names. My favorite is Scooter. Could a guy named Scooter ever be on the Supreme Court? I don't know. But Scooter Libby won't be, though I suspect W will pardon him at some point, probably after the election. Even being a fall guy has perks.

But what I've been thinking about lately is the U.S. Attorney thing. Eight of them (all appointed by W) were fired. The Justice Department said it was for performance, though this apparently contradicted previous reviews. The U.S. Attorneys were pissed. They said they were fired for political reasons.

Well, you lie down with dogs, you get fleas, right? I have no sympathy. The Elite Eight are Republican appointees who serve at the pleasure of the president. They got their jobs because of politics, and if they're losing them because of politics, then they ought to update their (no doubt swanky) resumes, same as everybody else.

But the eight have suggested they were fired because they either were doing things the administration didn't want them to do or weren't doing things the administration wanted them to do (like fucking with political opponents).

Maybe so. But from what I can tell, the administration's biggest fuckup was giving a reason. All they (W, Gonzales, etc.) had to say was, "We appointed them, and now we're appointing someone else."

Sure they were probably doing it to appoint people without Senate approval (since the Patriot Act now allows such a move). Maybe Congress will actually read the fucking bills before approving them. (I know they're a lot of pages, but Congressmen have minions. And it's not like the Patriot Act was a non-binding resolution.)

But the real question has little to do with the eight U.S. Attorneys who were fired. The real question is this: Did the ones who didn't get fired play ball in some way that the administration dictated?

That's what I think is interesting. Why only eight? Why not 50? Because these are the only ones not corrupt enough to use their office for political retribution? Now that's interesting.

Welcome

This is where I call bullshit on all manner of things. I think the world is finally ready.

First up, we get to delve into abortion, which is cool because we also get to mock a southern state. The South Carolina is legislature is considering a law which would require women to look at a picture of the fetus before the fetus is aborted.

Basically, the state has conceded that it can't actually ban abortion, so it's taking steps to make women (who are making what has to be the hardest decision ever) feel even shittier than they already do.

Abortion, for the time being, is legal. Making people feel shitty for engaging in a legal act sucks. Hey, South Carolina, why not make people look at a scan of their own carbon-filled lungs before buying a pack of cigarettes? (South Carolina, after all, has a long history of tobacco farming.) How about making fat people weigh in before buying a bag of chitlins? (Yes, an annual chitlin festival known as the "Chitlin Strut" is held every year in Salley, South Carolina.)

This is the dumbest idea since Kansas wanted high school teachers to teach creationism.

Here's the thing. Beginning in about 1980, the right wingers of the world held the executive branch (Reagan) and the Congress. Within a couple of years, the federal judiciary had dozens of judges at all trial and appellate levels, including a right-leaning majority in the Supreme Court. And yet, abortion remains legal.

Why?

Here's your answer: Because legal abortion is too useful a campaign tool to get rid of. If the right actually outlawed abortion, which it could have done for YEARS, it would have given up a surefire rallying cause. They don't want to get rid of abortion. They just want to complain that they can't. It brings people to the polls.

And the people who really do care about outlawing abortion? Well, they just haven't seemed to figure it out. (I don't think they have a lot of smarts, really.) So they keep voting for the same dickheads who say they want to get rid of abortion, but they never demand accountability.

Seriously, if GW and his buddies could drag us into the clusterfuck that is Iraq, don't you think they could have managed to outlaw abortion, too. Or at least tried?