Now that I'm in charge...

Hey, Cindy Sheehan said it, not me...

"It's up to you now."

I'm not absolutely positive if she was talking to me, but what the hell? I don't have anything better to do. So, America, rest easy tonight. I've got the reins.

So, while Cindy Sheehan is "going to take whatever I have left and go home" it will be up to us to make America the country she thought it should be. Herein lies the part I need help with. What exactly does that mean? But, more on that later.

I'm not going to help her out with "wondering why I'm killing myself and wondering why the Democrats caved in to George Bush," as I can't rightfully answer that. Quite frankly, I'm not expecting any takers on that one.

I think that we should all just...well, that's the thing. I don't know what we should all do. I don't know how to ask people to sacrifice their 29-year marriages to protest (again, her words, not mine). Protesting, after all, works so well. Wake up, America. This isn't 1959 anymore. People barely brake for little old ladies with walkers, do you think they'll do a double take on your placard?

So, with the official resignation of Cindy Sheehan from whatever self-appointed post she has clearly passed, in a most ambiguous manner, on to me, I assure you I will do my best to uphold the made-up duties of this self-created, self-appointed, self-proclaimed leadership position over no one and nothing that I now dubiously endeavor to serve faithfully until...I quit and "take whatever I have left and go home."

Whew! Are you still with me? OK, now we have to discover the America she said we should be.

You! Start with the Democrats!

You! No, you! Yeah, you! You start with the Republicans!

I'll start with the Mexicans, you get the pelicans, and you can check the Canadians, eh! Maybe between us, we can start to weed out this America we're supposed to be. Don't be afraid to sacrifice, but most importantly be ready to "want it." She said that was the key. She said we had to "want it." She said that she couldn't make us "be that country unless you want it."

Yeah, I still don't know what that means, but I'm in charge.

The Curse of Unpopular Wisdom

Conventional wisdom is not my forte. Abstract thought, now that's up my alley.

Am I the only one that's about to overdose on "Virginia Tech heartache"? People died. It was horrifying. It was tragic. It is a crying shame. There, now will you stop asking me to post a picture of the "VT" symbol and a black ribbon?
I guess this is just a representation of what it takes to get to the heartstrings of an American. We live in a society where things don't bother us if we don't see it. We are, in essence, ostriches. We bury our heads in the sand on a daily basis. For the most part, we don't give a damn about homeless people or orphans, as long as we don't have to see it. As long as there aren't people sifting through our trash cans, we aren't concerned. People get senselessly murdered everyday, and as long as the quantity of victims in each instance remains one or two, we don't really care about that either.

I feel like I'm the only person that isn't shocked that an immigrant, living in an upscale community, tormented by his classmates for years, struggling to find a place to fit in and feeling rejected by society snapped one day and started shooting people. I wasn't shocked at all when I heard what happened. It makes sense. But, people just don't understand that years of hearing nice things mixed in laughter like "go back to China" (when he was from South Korea) would push him over the edge. Everyone has their breaking point. Rambo had that Sherriff and this guy his. The shame is that people died that didn't laugh at him, but I suspect in there somewhere, someone, a victim, got what that poor, lost soul thought he/she had coming. That's what is tragic and his family dealing with it is also every bit as tragic as the families of the slain.

Something that has my attention a bit more than a picked-on and tormented kid going berserker is that some of our Nation's most brilliant minds are kooks. What is up with NASA? "It's not rocket science" is loosing some of its luster as a saying. An astronaut hacks into her man's email, finds out he has another lady on the side and then goes hundreds of miles to deal with "the competition". Just think about the series of conscious choices she made along the way and the number of times she could have came to her senses. The mental fragility of a NASA engineer that resulted in the killing of a co-worker he blamed for a substandard performance appraisal troubles me. His suicide adds to my wrinkled brow, but isn't alarming. It's the fact that these people did what they did in the first place that is disturbing to me.
Where are the Enterprise High School ribbons? No one there picked on Mother Nature to prompt that tornado to swing on by and say hello. But, I digress...

In the future, I simply ask that I be spared the mourning du jour for whatever the popular tragedy is for that day. I'll say a prayer, I'll ponder the events and I'll try to make sure I raise my kids so that they never contribute to another tormented soul slaughtering innocents. But, I also ask that you get focused on the real issues that we have in this country. I ask that you wonder why people pushed this kid to the edge - and seemingly over it. It doesn't alleviate responsibility on his part. But, I'd like to see Katie Couric do some "Eye on America" into "Asshole kids who torment classmates" next week.

It seems like we end up with prevention groups like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers for things like drunk drivers killing too many kids and I'm sure they have ribbons. Everyone wants to confront the cause of alcohol related accidents. After all, the reality of that is far less haunting than knowing that there may be victims in Blacksburg who also have blood on their hands, if only in a proverbial sense. Contributing factors, if you will. How about you send some reporters out there and find me a parent who says "Yeah, my kid was an asshole. He thought it was fun to pick on that kid for the way he talked." I doubt you'll find anyone willing to admit fault in their little "Johnny". If you don't believe me, ask a teacher how pleasant parents are in this day and age.

That's right, it's my new campaign to save lives: "Show your kids you care, whip their asses."

It's simple America. All we have to do is re-introduce personal responsibility and accountability to our children. All we have to do is give a teacher the benefit of the doubt when they say your little angel dropped a quarter stick of dynamite in the dumpster. Kids do dumb things, and your kid is no exception. Don't reward insane behavior in the check out line at WalMart by trying to buy off that spoiled-ass monster of yours, whip his/her ass and follow through your idle threats and that kid will stop. I promise you, it will work. And, for heavens sake, quit telling your kids how great they are. Let them feel disappointment once in a while. Let them see that life isn't always fair. And, make sure they understand one thing perfectly clear: they are not better than other people. (Caution: Building character may actually require parents to interact with their children.)

It’s simple, everyone sees 32 people slain in the worst single homicide in modern American history. However, I see a long series of events that made a kid go nuts; people only see what conventional wisdom shows them. America will never see the guy that teased that guy for years say what he's thinking when a reporter sticks a camera in his face. America hears this guy say all of the great news-worthy things like "what a senseless tragedy, he always seemed shy and withdrawn". Yet, what they should probably hear is "I wish I wouldn't have called him a stinky gook and told him to take the boat back to China". (And just so you don't think I'm being too liberal here, had Cho lived I'd be calling for him to ride the lightening.)

Sometimes unconventional wisdom is a curse. This is one of those times. My prayers go out to all of the affected people. But, my thoughts are wondering if America will collectively ask itself what we can do to prevent this from happening again - and why is NASA hiring so many mailmen?

Opposition or Juxtaposition?

Conviction. Noun. A fixed or firm belief.

Courage. Noun. The quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.

Terror. Noun. Intense, sharp, overmastering fear.

I've been reading about the recent dissention in Senate over the funding for the war. There are varying opinions that range from full support to immediate withdrawal. Please allow me to opine.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t support the troops and oppose the war. That is like protesting the useless slaughtering of cows and paying dues for the American Dairy Farmers. It’s too convenient. You’re trying to be en vogue and take a stance. America is still wracked with guilt from the abysmal, sickening treatment of Viet Nam Veterans. Therefore, the new chic political stance is full opposition of the job we send people to do, while maintaining full support of them. Huh?
Buying a yellow ribbon magnet for your car does not make you a supporter of the troops. Jumping on the convenient bandwagon of Dubya haters doesn’t make you politically savvy.

As a peer from left to right, or right to left, I am seeking the impossible. I am seeking one with an original thought about resolution. I am searching for someone who can tell me how to fix a problem without telling me whose fault it is. While I don’t see what I am looking for when I look for answers, what I do see is actually in what I don’t see.

I see one person that I will tell you has conviction. Like it or not, there is one person in D.C. who doesn’t have the all-too-convenient position of being able to change his mind on a whim; one guy who can’t point fingers. Whether he’s right or wrong is completely debatable – and a major subject of division in this nation.
If Americans could get past their media-induced, seething hatred of Bush and look at the situation, they’d see that no one is offering anything. It’s not about left or right. It’s not about right or wrong. At this time, juxtaposition should be the order of the day, not opposition. Unfortunately, all we seem to be able to do is point fingers.

Everyone thought that Harry Truman was nuts when he signed a piece of paper that effectively created the nation of Israel. He stood alone because it was the right thing to do. Today, Bush stands alone. He put himself on an island, but we took away the bridge. We cannot enter a holding pattern for two years, so we’d better get cracking.

It’s easy to tell people they’re wrong. It’s easy to tell someone how bad their ideas are, yet you offer nothing constructive toward a common goal. You know what’s not easy? It’s not easy to stand up for what you believe to be the best course of action that we have. Don’t we teach our children that they shouldn’t give in to peer pressure? Who didn’t hear the “if he/she jumped off of a bridge would you do it too?” speech from their parents? Well, all of the cool kids are saying that we don’t have any business in Iraq. The only problem is that we’re already there. This opposition would have been nice four years ago. Oh, please spare me the “we were lied to” story. I’ve heard it and don’t buy it.

So, do I support the war in Iraq? Hell yes. My friends are going there to fight it, so you’d better damn well believe that I am going to expect our lawmakers to prioritize them as they will their own retirement and salaries. I expect people to stand behind their decisions too. Bush is standing behind his. Meanwhile, nearly 400 members of Congress are not. They all had a vote. Now they’re claiming they were bamboozled. Wake up America, we’re all being flimflammed here. They’re all just telling us what they think we want to hear and I want to hear solutions - not blame.

You really do learn something new everyday.

Throughout the annals of my dogmatic existence I have experienced faith and doubt; I have learned to believe in heaven and hell and I have wondered what it all meant. Hence, my obsession with the “duality of man” as a punch line, motto and selling point for almost anything we do, but I digress. Being Catholic comes in very handy. Form the convenience of “there’s a big difference between Saturday night and Sunday morning” to trying to go to church in any country you may travel in, there are many understated selling points to the Catholic Church. Roman Catholic, that is. You know the one. We have the big house in Rome. The Nation with the lowest annual birth rate (zero), by the way: Vatican City. The greatest selling book of all time is the Bible. We basically rule the world. That’s a bold statement, I know. So, before I get too sidetracked, let me get to the point.

You learn something new everyday. I really do believe this. I try to learn something new everyday. Sometimes it is how a cathode ray tube propagates an analog display on a radar control unit from a radar beam. Once it was as simple as looking up the word “nepotism” in the dictionary. I’m not making this up. I actually used a dictionary.

Never one to deny my thirst for knowledge, today I learned how they calculate Easter, or more specifically, how they determine the exact date of Easter each year. [Background: My boss constantly jokes about me being a human calendar. OK, so just because I know that each year Election Day is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November and that Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November, I am some sort of idiot savant, I guess. So, I have a knack for remembering dates. What of it?] What does this have to do with the Catholic Church or my baptism? Well, it’s simple. I went to Catholic schools so I vaguely remembered something about Easter being the first Sunday after something-something after March 21 (the spring solstice). [That was also my grandfather’s birthday and one never forgets the birthday of a man that called his naps “going into my Yogi trance”.] Well, today I did it. I did what anyone would do - I googled it. Google, by the way, is an official word and was added to the dictionary this year. The number one hit led me to the answer to it all.

So, I also learned that there are two systems: ecclesiastical and astronomical. I discovered that in order for me to fully explain this to you I would have to entail Julius Caesar in my explanation. So, I’m going to simply show you how it’s done and then we can all say we learned something new today. If we need to learn about Julius Caesar we can just watch Rome on HBO.

Here you go. The formula to calculate the date of Easter Sunday:

c = y / 100
n = y - 19 * ( y / 19 )
k = ( c - 17 ) / 25
i = c - c / 4 - ( c - k ) / 3 + 19 * n + 15
i = i - 30 * ( i / 30 )
i = i - ( i / 28 ) * ( 1 - ( i / 28 ) * ( 29 / ( i + 1 ) )
* ( ( 21 - n ) / 11 ) )
j = y + y / 4 + i + 2 - c + c / 4
j = j - 7 * ( j / 7 )
l = i - j
m = 3 + ( l + 40 ) / 44
d = l + 28 - 31 * ( m / 4 )

So, what’s so hard about that? Easy as Pi.

The Real Problem

I always thought that there were plagues on society that degraded from our happiness and infringed on our way of life. You know, things like drugs, burglars, jihad, Hillary Clinton, etc. etc. What I didn't realize was that I've been overlooking the obvious problem. Surely, it can explain so much...

Miss Brazil is missing. Poof! Gone! And what have the super sleuths in San Palo come up with? It's almost too good to be true. (However, I saw Turista so I'm not willing to chuckle just yet.) I think that when someone is missing for six months, you can probably chalk them up as dead. I'm not a trained professional, but dead is where I think a large degree of consideration should lay. (I also saw Man on Fire, so it is sounding more credible as I type this.)

Aside from the fact that the former, now-AWOL Miss Brazil took her place on the throne because the winner of the pagent was married, I think the entire situation, although involving human life, possesses a large degree of...strangeness and macabre humor.

So, what is it that led me chuckle? The police in Brazil are considering all of their options as they explore possible avenues which may lead to her whereabouts. This includes human trafficking. Well, it's either that or perhaps she's in Belgium. Some things are too good to be made up.

Yet another reason I will never go to South America. Besides Hugo Chavez, the police work anywhere south of Texas, which is suspect, at best is the single largest reason I will never travel down there. In a world that is truly comprised of haves and have nots there is too much room for error. There are too many places to disappear and apparently too many human traffickers.

What is the going rate on a thirty-something white male? Surely Kathy Lee isn't going to hire me to run one her sweat shops, but I am curious as to the price one might get for me on the open market. Aside from "not much", I don't actually care to find out. But, really?!?! Is it that big of a problem that we actually offer it as a solution to a missing persons case?

Hey buddy! Want a watch?

No thanks. Do you have a 25 year-old Brazilian woman in your coat? I really need me one of them.

Is it really a problem? Of course, she could be in Belgium.

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! I want it NOW!!!

Like a little kid, accustomed to having his way, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez is throwing an international temper tantrum for the ages. With his hopes set high on eliminating any semblance of checks and balances in the political process of his nation, Chavez is appalled at the U.S. expression of concern.

Telling the United States to “go to hell” and referring to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as “missy”, Chavez is proceeding toward what he aspires to be the development of a totally socialist state in Venezuela. Now, I am not an expert on political ideologies, but this is ragingly close to communism in a nation far too close to home, much less one that is a world leader in petroleum exportation. Furthermore, this guy is going to “buy” the national television broadcasting company, but will “not pay market price”.

Information is power. Make no mistake about it. This guy is about to become Kim Jung-Il in South America. He is about to “nationalize” everything in Venezuela, including the national electrical and natural gas resources. As the leader of a Socialist state, he becomes the defacto “owner” of it all. His media outlets will then become his own personal propaganda tools and his wealth will only grow as he absorbs all of Citgo’s profits. This is the scariest part, to me - the fact that he will gain the most powerful tool in the world. The tool he will own is the media. He will own what people read, see and hear. He will tell them exactly what he needs them to hear to convert them to his arcane beliefs. The ease with which he will disrupt the global market is alarming. He is in the early stages of international hostage-taking and not many people see it coming. I doubt that he will ever face serious opposition in future “elections”.

The second and third order affects of this move, to socialize Venezuela, will be felt and they will hurt. Like a spoiled child, what this guy needs is a good ass-whippin’ to get his perspective straightened out. Does the United Nations need anything beyond his tirade in front of the General Assembly to realize that he is an emotional powder keg?

Speculation as to how the war in Iraq will affect this can range far and wide. But, I do believe that it will become a factor (as if it’s not already). If we do not get that region stabilized, we could be in big trouble. Well, the caribou may be in big trouble. Instability and influence on the global market may cause the U.S. to re-examine our oil importation needs versus self-sustainment options. Saudi Arabia might be the key to all of this. (I realize I may be connecting seemingly unrelated dots, but I see a connection.)

Oil and petroleum production from the Middle East may need to increase. Exportation will only increase and if the civil unrest and killing doesn’t abate it could cause the per-barrel price to, once again, sky rocket. Do you see the power Chavez is trying to seize over the international community? Deposing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq played right into his hands. His public denouncement of the execution is in direct contrast to the power he obtained, by default, when Saddam was deposed. Saudi Arabia will likely be critical elements to the stabilization of that region, with an accompanying domino affect on the economic well-being of industrialized nations the world over.

To think that no one in Venezuela is saying gracias to Americans! Thanks to us, they pay less than 15 cents for a gallon of gas. If none of this has your attention, just imagine how it will impact us if the next terrorist act on American soil is against an oil refinery.

The Disassociated Press

Once again reading the news has drawn the ire of a previously content individual. I am said individual.

So, I was cruising through my newpaper, aka the internet, when I saw a photo of three Soldiers running. They were wearing a full compliment of battle rattle and carrying M4s. I scrolled to it to read the caption. The caption was a bit long to read so I clicked on the picture to enlarge it. When I scrolled down to read the rest of the caption it read:

"Soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division run across a frozen prairie as they train at Fort Riley, Kansas, Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2007. The soldiers from the division's fourth brigade will deploy to Iraq in the next few weeks as part of President Bush's planned troop surge." (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Anything jump out of that? Does that anger you? Well, perhaps if you were part of the unit, or knew someone who was then you'd see the absurdity of the statement.

"...will deploy to Iraq in the next few weeks as part of President Bush's planned troop surge."

What a crock of garbage. They are, technically, part of the troop surge. Much in the way the original french fries in your combo meal were part of the meal before your "went large" (you glutton, you). They are part of a one dollar savings on double coupon day, but they are the original coupon for fifty cents off - not the additional fifty cents savings.

What my keen sense of perception tells me is that this is nothing more than another thinly-veiled media attack on W. This is another shot in the information war the media is fighting with President Bush; another attempt to scare the hell out of America and fill their heads with more half-truths and inuendos. The Soldiers pictures in that photo were sourced for the upcoming deployment long, long before last weeks announcement. (That is, if they are, in fact, part of the named unit and not just some random file photo.) They are not part of the additional force requirement that a "surge", by definition, would require. I am sure that secret meetings will has that out and the AP will find out in due time. That time, however, is not now. Of course, statements like that caption are much like the withdrawn question of a cunning attorney, once it's out there the damage is done.

Information is power, people, and it can be used like weapons. It's a crying shame that the weapon our journalists choose to use is one of quiet destruction at the hands of, and to the detriment of, those releasing it to the world. It is the "Agent Orange" of today. It is the weapon that those using won't know is killing them too until it's way too late. They will destroy themselves, also. What do you expect when your idea of "responsible journalism" drives a wedge into the fabric of America when we need, now more than ever, a unifying inspiration?

I just wish that some of these shmucks would gear it back for a moment and try to figure out a way toward a better future instead of telling me who fucked up in the past. It's here and we have to deal with it. We know who did it. Will you help get it right, or will you just keep telling me it was Colonel Mustard in the library with the WMD?