I See An America

I webbed the news today, oh boy!

Recent revelations from the UK’s Iraq inquiry seem to confirm what we’ve long suspected, and common sense told us, under Bush II, war with Iraq was inevitable—there was nothing Sadaam could do to satisfy Bush II. So, under dubious pretenses, (it was obvious there were no WMDs lurking), after Sadaam satisfied every single Bush II ultimatum, with no coalition in place like Bush I was able to craft, the US drove our one Arab ally against Al Quaida in the area into a hangman’s noose and loosed the very evil is said it was trying to root out.

Simultaneously, we forgot about the war in Afghanistan where we were actually fighting Al Quaida for a change because some idiot determined that Sadaam was more evil than Bin Ladin. Maybe it was a ratings move…not too many reporters lining up to embed themselves on patrol in Afghanistan whereas even Geraldo volunteered to be embedded in Iraq.

We, as a country, sure treat the rest of the world weirdly. Makes you scratch your head trying to understand things at times. I mean there’s a large segment of us who want to change the rest of the world to be just like us, while at the same time they are trying to deport foreigners who have immigrated to our country so they can be just like us. Am I the only one who sees the disconnect?

Back in the 70s we were told the world would run out of oil within 20 to 30 years. Here we are 40 years later and pumping oil like there’s no tomorrow. I’ve been expecting the Mammoth California Earthquake for most of my life and it hasn’t happened yet. And for the last three years we’ve been told a terrorist attack was bound to happen in the next few months and it’s been pretty quiet on the home front since 9/11. That all of these things are likely to happen, at some point in time, I do not dispute. Are some of them more likely to happen sooner rather than later, quite possibly. But if I’m living in Denver and California falls into the ocean after a 9.0 on the Richter quake, I’m not really going to be all the affected by it. Although I may think about getting some beachfront property in Arizona before it gets too expensive.

I’m glad Who Dat won the Super Bowl. New Orleans deserves it when I think how they must feel seeing the US effort to rescue Haiti dwarf anything that they, the victims of Katrina ever received. Even sadder are new revelations that faulty engineering by the Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for much of the flooding. They began constructing levees in earnest after Hurricane Betsy in 1965. They also did shoddy work. Back in the day the USACE was the bomb performing engineering feats of wonder. It’s one thing when you get screwed by Cousin Vinny the contractor, it’s another entirely when you get screwed by Uncle Sam.

I bet if you asked the average American how they thought cell phone service the United States compared to the rest of the world you’d get back an overwhelming majority of folks saying the US had the best service. (If you didn’t already know, when it comes to cell phone service we aren’t all that much better than most third world countries.) This false sense of entitlement, this unsupported leap of faith that America is the best in everything is not only wrong, it’s dangerous to ourselves. It’s clear to me that Bush I had a well developed sense of reality, while Bush II fell victim to blind faith…and look at the mess we’re in now.

Myself, I lost respect for the government of this country about the same time the government lost its respect for me. R-E-S-P-E-C-T is a two way street. After 1964, and the nonsense called the Warren Report was the end of respect from me.

It’s truly a sad state of affairs when laws are passed more for their fat content than their value. I’m talking about pork, of course. I suggest the Congress of the United States takes a lesson from sports and makes it against the law for any representative or senator to cast his vote in favor of a bill that provides funding to his or her own state. Maybe then we’ll have laws with merit and substance, rather than nonsense fueled by greed.

Class action lawsuits can be good things under the right circumstances. I see that there’s a class action suit brewing against Toyota because the recent recall for stuck accelerators has lowered the resale value of Toyotas. That’s quite some insidious and odious mind that came up with that concept. Let’s put the common sense rule into play….get over it folks, shit happens. Live with it. You could have bought a Saturn, or any of the other numerous defunct US car brands and then where would you be? How’s their resale value holding up? Even with the hit Toyota’s resale value has taken, they’re still hold one of the top resale values.