Oh Lord, won't you buy me, a Mercedes Benz...

Reading the Sunday paper is a traditional experience that the web will never replace but it is rife with danger and the potential for upsetting my mood and pissing me off all day and today was no exception.  

First up is the story about Rick Perry, governor of Texas and by some accounts a stealth candidate for the 2012 republican presidential nomination – a race so far populated by more freaks than a carnival midway.  He has – coincidentally – called for a “day of fasting and prayer for our troubled nation” in August, and invited a bunch of his fellow govs to join him for this “a[political Christian prayer service” in a Houston stadium.  Well YeeeHaw, Rick, just what part of the separation of church and state do you not understand?  Maybe it’s the part about, well, the whole separation thing – about the government not even hinting at the establishment of a particular religion as the chosen one.  Any mullahs coming over that day, Rick?  How about a rabbi or two…?   No?  Hmmm.  Do you think that’s because the web site promoting the event is thematically in line with the American Family Association and its insistence on a strict conformity to “the infallibility of the bible, the centrality of Jesus Christ and, (this is my favorite part; you can practically smell the sulfur), the eternal damnation that awaits non-believers"?  Whoaaa there partner…I know it seems like a good idea now to play to the religious zealots that populate the republican party – the tea party knuckleheads, the white, Christian, gun toting, woman and minority hating, flag waving mob of Obama-ain’t-one-of-us chumps who, for some reason, reflexively support guys like you while you scheme to cut their Medicare benefits and Social Security payments but it may not play that well in all corners of the country.   And I’d be really curious to know exactly what y’all are praying for; death to gays?  Death to baby-killing abortionists?  Death to tree-hugging, Save-the Whales, enviro-freaks?  Feminazis…?   You know, Rick, you might better try to figure out how to stop your fellow god-fearing Texans from smuggling guns into Mexico to enable our brown brothers to be better able to kill each other and anyone unluck enough to be anywhere nearby.   Heaven help us…(so to speak).

I've probably said enough about Anthony Weiner but until this guy gets the hell out of sight he is just one punch line after another.  Today, accompanying a story about him seeking that universal refuge of every scoundrel who soils himself in public - rehab, there is a picture of him walking somewhere, surrounded by slathering reporters and jostling photographers, literally carrying a bundle of dirty laundry.  That’s right – this is not a metaphor or the use of some clever descriptive phrase; he is actually carrying his dirty laundry in public.  I don’t know what to say about this except that this is the rare, extremely unfortunate naughty boy who has ruined his career because of a sex scandal that didn't involve any actual sex – a perversion of the social media phenomenon that is probably all too familiar to 14 year-old girls who have to fend off slightly perverted 30-ish friend requests with both hands.   If our representatives were all subject to scrutiny because of thinking about sex…well those people calling for every politician’s head on a pike would surely have their wish.

And, as there has been virtually every day for the last eight years, there are stories of car bombs and civilian deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and now most recently, Syria.  If ever there was a clear signal to the US that it is folly to continue with the foreign policy of the last 20 years vis a vis the Middle East it is the unending violence that bedevils these countries on a daily basis.   At some point it has to beg the question; what have we accomplished in the last eight years of interventionist, semi-imperialist foreign policy?   We have avenged a profoundly cowardly attack on our soil that killed 4,000 innocent Americans with the deaths of over 6,000 American troops, including 5 more today in an Iraq that is supposed to be sufficiently stable to allow us to leave but whose government coalition threatens to collapse at any moment.   There have been who-knows-how-many civilian deaths – 100,000?  Trillions of dollars spent with a defense budget proposed to grow by 5 billion more than the pentagon actually wanted by our god-fearing, flag waving republican friends while they continue to slash funding for almost everything else.   Again, what have we accomplished?  I would argue, nothing.  We are no safer from al Qaeda – that’s a red herring dragged across our paths to try to keep our “patriotism” aroused and engaged.   Al Qaeda is just a bunch of angry guys who cling to the woeful notion that they can take the world backwards four or five hundred years and start over the way they want it.  No one but them shares this desire which is why it will ultimately fail. 

The citizens of the Middle East have roused themselves to revolt against the 14^th century tyranny and petty quasi-royalty who have ruled them for so long.  But rather than giving me hope this just looks like the same mob more out of control than ever and less capable of successfully governing themselves as well.   Has our wading chest-deep into this treacherous muck given anyone anywhere a brighter future, made us a more prosperous nation – done anything tangible for you as a citizen?   Please, Barack, if you do nothing else, get us the hell out of there and budget an enormous amount of research and development money to alternative energy creation so we are no longer held for ransom by people who we cannot influence and whose century old animosities we will never staunch, no matter how many $100 dollar bills we use.