Archive for August 13th, 2008

I am thinking, much more national embarrassment on this level, we will all be more closely veiled than any Taliban-bride! Goodness knows, it makes me want to hide my face in shame. I particularly like the disgusted looks on spectators’ faces, and Mrs. Bush smilingly ignoring it all. I thought his many other pictures looked peculiar….but this one, oh, yes, I have SEEN that particular stance and expression too often having been the daughter of a drunk.

So, judging by today’s news, if you lose your job you should go shoot a Democrat??  Or is that rule applicable only in Arkansas?

”

LITTLE ROCK (AP) — A man barged into the Arkansas Democratic headquarters and opened fire Wednesday, fatally shooting the state party chairman before speeding off in his pickup. Police later shot and killed the suspect after a 30-mile chase.

Police said they don’t know the motive for the 51-year-old suspect, whose name has not been released. However, they said moments after the shooting, he pointed a handgun at the building manager at the nearby the Arkansas Baptist headquarters. He told the manager “I lost my job,” said Dan Jordan, a Baptist convention official.” (http://tinyurl.com/64qsy5 )

I’m not getting why it is the fault of a Democratic Party official?  Anyone?  Is this the latest craze….get canned and shoot a liberal?   I am sorry for his family and friends, because this just strikes me as sheer insanity.  And when something strikes ME as crazy….

This post will no doubt make certain in any hesitant minds that I am a brass-bound bitch. But I cannot even muster an attempt to stop myself. I am really trying to see the side of the guys who I am sure, ARE suffering what they say; but I admit I am losing that struggle when I think of those in the war zone suffering SO much more.

Just by way of introduction, let me relate a small story from my personal Army past. In Berlin, Germany, in a military field station for gathering intelligence about the Russians and East Germans across the Wall I had a younger soldier assigned to me for close supervision. He was trying to get out of the Army on conscientious objector status. He was, like me, a linguist and analyst, and he related to me that he was suddenly filled with horror. The reason?

Well, it apparently just had dawned on him that, if “the balloon went up” the information his job supplied would direct bombs and Gods know what else at people—killing them! He NEVER wanted to have to kill anyone, and yet, indirectly, here he would be doing it if anything “real” happened. I was shocked. I mean, I figured out early (possibly as an Army brat) that ANY job in the Army had one aim: to make the other poor sucker die for his country and keep as many of US alive as possible. So, I was astonished that anyone could join the Army without that little bit of information in the forefront of one’s mind. I mean, Berlin, you silly twit….you know spy-movie city par excellence? We weren’t there to pass out donuts to the infantry guys.

So, imagine my surprise at reading a story today that strikes me the same way. This one about the National Guardsmen who fly the “Predator” drones from nice comfortable, safe remote bases in California and Nevada. They sit in air-conditioned bliss with a video screen and search for real, live targets away in the war zone.

You know, the actual war zone, where our guys and gals get killed almost daily? Blown up, shot, all kinds of messy horrible things happening to them as they try to do their hot, sweaty duty on the ground? You know, the men and women some of us would do almost ANYthing to save? Yeah, them!!

Well, these video warriors are pretty good at what they do, they blow the crap out of the bad guys, apparently. This has to save those Americans out there in the dusty boots, right? And when the National Guardsman before the video screen ends his shift, he walks across a safe parking lot and drives home on roads not likely to blow up from IEDs, to eat dinner, watch television, drink a beer and go to bed with his wife.

Well, see, that is the problem. They saw bloody things that they did on those monitors, unlike those lucky bomber pilots who fly by at 500 mph and never see the splatter on the ground. And since they get in their cars and drive home, they don’t have the “locker room experience” of venting and blowing off steam first, it makes them snap at the kids. It is just a nasty job, apparently.

Now, I am not a completely thoughtless blood-thirsty bitch. It has to be hard seeing body parts go “kaboom”….but you know what, it SHOULD be. That is why war should be the very last resort of a nation, not the “Please, Pleeeeease, let me at them!” first resort of a President spoiling for it since his kids won’t fight in it. It is NOT really a video game, it really is “death from afar” in a whole new sense. I, too, am certain I would need a stiff drink after a day of that, and I, too, know the dangers of that sort of habit. But come on, focus a bit, please? The bodies of those folks are not the ones you need to be thinking about as you sit down at the console each morning (or night). Think about the ones that will NOT come home in an American flag draped casket BECAUSE you do your job well.

But let’s just get my nastiest, snarkiest thing out right now, shall we? SUCK IT UP! Stop fucking whining, you are lucky, fortunate bastards! You can save the lives of your comrades far away, and without risk of bloodshed, injury or maiming to yourself. Did you think you really joined the National Guard just to clean up after hurricanes? Come ON, why do you think things like weapons training was part of the job? Or is the very safety of your job part of the problem? Is it guilt that you so easily survive while others end up looking like the enemies you kill with impunity? Count your blessings.

This IS a scary weapons system. It is very Star Trek, and it scares ME that it is out there, because this would be so easy to abuse. I could see some elements of government only too happy to use it on Americans….not just a distant enemy. Count your freaking blessings that you are not be asked to rain destruction on your own fellow citizens; instead you are being asked to help SAVE American lives abroad. Take the help the military is hustling to offer, it may be inadequate—but they are trying. Or, well, you could apply for CO status, because maybe the college money idea just didn’t include killing. I’m sorry your military experience is not what you envisioned—my experience is that it NEVER is what most enlistees or draftees expected.

I read a story yesterday on modern “ghost towns” being created by developers who begin big-bucks housing developments, but lack money or investors to finish them. And the buyers they found for the first few models now fear for the long-term worth of their $500,000 homes, for what if the lots around them stay empty enough that someone can erect a mere $250,000 home right next door?

Gee, cry me a river. Mind you, I really don’t know enough about economics to comment with any expertise on what has made the housing bubbles go “poof”, but I wonder what is in everyone’s pipes. I don’t think you need a degree in economics to see that things have been going to hell in a hand-basket; I’m just a never-got-that-degree-finished housewife who thinks too much and I can see it. You see, for the last ten years I have been watching prices on houses and everything else in real estate ’round here go up and up and up. To the point that many families working for companies with other branches, say in the Midwest, have moved to the Plains. They say they can afford life there. And they can’t afford life here.

But it isn’t only housing that I am looking at when empty windows catch my attention. It is business parks. Everywhere you look in the last five years, another business park goes up. Some are humongous warehouse affairs, others are collections of buildings quite artfully done to be stores and salons and restaurants and much better than the old-style “strip mall”, too. And they will have only one or two businesses filled out of a dozen. An entire complex being built in the fashion of the modern multi-roofed mall is going up not far from me. Less than two miles down the road, one of these lesser shopping pods sits empty except for a single paint store. And the big mall, which will be anchored to a Target store and a theater and gym, well, you know I expect empty windows there, too.

The rents will be too high. And people aren’t shopping much. If it isn’t a discount house of some sort, the parking lots just don’t fill; too few dollars and too many non-discretionary items to buy. The new Target in that brand new mall complex promises to open in October—too late for the school shopping season, but just in time for Christmas. But also just in time for winter’s cold and the heating oil market, which promises to be very costly indeed. There won’t be a lot of money to spend to keep any non-chain new businesses alive in that “Sunrise Park” mall.
Maybe there is a reason that GMC, embattled here by costs of gas to fuel those ridiculously huge SUVs, opened a big show of their newest vehicles in China and not here at home? Not only will jobs go overseas, but now, American vehicles will go compete abroad in new Chinese markets. Can you see a Chinese bumper sticker in a few years, reading “Buy Chinese!” But for now, the Chinese are salivating over things like the recreated Buick “Invicta”….a car not produced here since 1963. Is GMC doing the Invicta again to raise corporate spirits (and gee, like the Olympic Games, in China) or is it an admission to that new market—that China is indeed “invincible”? So, GMC goes, hat in hand, looking for a place to sell image over sensible substance because they have spent too long producing ego-fluffing monstrosities instead of prudent transportation.

I don’t see good things ahead. And empty lots for “estate” housing is just the tip of the iceberg. Somehow, even with the Cold War over, America has been put back in the position of having no business that “works” except war on other nations.  And that isn’t working so well, either.  Sure, the top crew is getting rich and undertakers must be doing well, but in spite of dumping photographers who take true pictures and banning portraits of caskets, parts of America just get restive over young American corpses, seen or not.  You can’t prop up an economy on invasion forever. And war is too expensive a game, you can’t sell stock in bloodshed as easily as you can sell cheap t-shirts.

We have acted recklessly under the tutelage of liars and thieves: the economy is shaking on the edifice of debt from war, all the old remedies are failing and the world can’t see us as a leader when we can’t save ourselves. Americans may now learn the meaning of the old song phrases about wanting bread…and roses, too. For too long, we took the “roses” for granted and now can barely afford bread. If we can’t regain our footing and prioritize better, we will have much more than ghost “towns” to contend with in the years ahead.  The ghosts of our Founding Fathers must look at us and shake their heads; they tried to tell us about the brutal effects of wealth and over-weaning pride on a democracy and they warned about getting involved in foreign wars.  Now, Bush sends a fleet to sit off the coast of Iran and rattles sabres at Russia.  He can’t get enough of his dying “war Presidency” bit; I’ve had enough, haven’t you?