On Iraq:
This should be really simple. Most Iraqis want our troops to go home. Most Americans want American troops to come home. Even members of the President’s party want to stop writing blank checks and figure out how to make things end. So why does the President think we ought to stay for the forseeable future?
And as thinly stretched as the military is right now, why are we still trying to pick a fight with Iran, doing things like saying it is the Number One Sponsor of Terror just days before our top diplomat (Condi) and theirs were supposed to meet?
On Real ID:
For that matter, I don’t know anybody who just loves to spend the day in a line at the Department of Motor Vehicles with every important document needed to steal his/her identity. And yet that’s what the DHS wants to force upon us, despite the fact that the law creating the DHS specifically says No National ID Cards. Interesting points that I hadn’t even considered before are the mess Real ID makes for people fleeing domestic abuse and people who are transgendered. I must assume that if someone is in the witness protection program, the Feds will help them get legit fake IDs.
Don’t forget that Real ID is also the law that allows the government to build a huge wall along the border with no regard for pretty much anything. Like the environment. Or the fact that nobody wants it. On a related note the Christian Science Monitor points out that illegal immigration is already down, but not because of walls or better patrols. It’s down because the economy sucks for the poor.
On the price of gas:
According to the AAA, we might see record gas prices this summer, despite the fact that crude oil is not at record prices. “Problems” at refineries are blamed. The money quote:
AAA said it was “alarming” that gasoline prices were rising so high without the backdrop of a major geopolitical or natural event to disrupt supply, like a hurricane or a new military flare-up in the Middle East.
Alarming indeed. You don’t suppose the big gas companies are anticipating an event like a “military flare-up in the Middle East”, do you? And here we have news of a refinery cutting its capacity in half. Here we have a CNN story about the refinery problem. It seems to me that the government could make a bit of money and save a lot of consumers’ money by opening a refinery or two of their own.
As confusing as these issues are, maybe it’s time for a nap.
In closing:
“Oh no! You mean Fried Chicken might contain fat??“; lots of money to be made buying public assets, and then fleecing the public to use them; “Um yeah, we’ve decided not to follow the wiretap law anymore, we don’t need no steenking FISA court”; the typical Mom does 10 jobs for free that would cost $138K to have done, and I’m sure that doesn’t include that special job she does just for Dad; for the Japanophiles, LA Times article on journalism in the Internment Camps and links to this collection; and finally, “I can make purr?” — a classic episode of Star Trek in a dialect called “Lolcat”.