Click images for desktop size: "Pounds" by Chris Nimtz Its the fourth anniversary of the War In Iraq.
If you remember back when they started the Fundamentalist Jihad, lied to us and the world to justify it, used it as a way to enforce a draconian Stalinist totalitarianism on us, they all said "the boys' would be back in 90 days, then it was 6 months and then a year and then everybody stopped caring. At least they stopped asking.
I don't like war.
Why should I?
This war is worse than most because of the people running it. I mean us.
Now I'm an American. Everywhere I've gone in the world I am always recognized as an American just from the way I walk and carry myself.
I think maybe I'm not an American anymore. I'm sure not one of the screw-your-buddies all-that-matters-is-what-I-get, kind of Americans that seem pretty proliferate.
I'm not the kind of guy who could vote for a President who already proved a certain high level of incompetence by running a beautiful thing like a baseball team into the ground and into the perennial cellar of the American League. I mean if you can't run a baseball team to the point where it can win 90 games where's your credibility in claiming you can win a war?
Nah. I'm the kind of dumb American who thinks we have a duty to protect the downtrodden, that the TriLateral Commission are a bunch of oafs who don't understand we can take in the refuse of the world and have turn them into something great by being great ourselves. I believe in freedom and in being strong and never bullying and that we are all equal.
I believe in capitalism but I think that when companies set themselves up as mini governments they have to be slapped down and slapped down hard. I don't think that "trickle down" profit is as important as a worker who might benefit in a small way from that profit.
I don't believe in war for profit. I think that is a war crime.
I think that when you use a massive propaganda campaign to induce young men to go and fight for what they believe is their country we have a duty to embrace and care for those men. I think that you have a duty to prove to them and the world that this truly is their country and their government.
That doesn't mean putting a magnetic "guaranteed not to damage the finish" bumper sticker on your car. It doesn't mean that you get elected by vehemently promising to end something and then failing on that promise and suddenly using terms like "compromise". Not when the compromise is in human blood. It means that after they've left their blood, brains, guts and limbs on a battlefield where they believed they were protecting their families and loved ones and us, the strangers who make up the country, we have an obligation to try and put them back together as well as we can.
America has seemed to forgotten it has any obligations to others and each other. Its forgotten it has an obligation to itself. Its forgotten that America is not the sum of its corporate life but the sum of the millions of people who are here and the millions who dream of being American. (This doesn't mean the people and the companies who just want our money.)
But for a soldier cajoled by his government to fighting a war to come home and face the hell that has been described in Walter Reed Hospital is old school bully cruel.
The other tactic this government seems to adore is saving money for the rich by taking it from the poor. See, after a wounded soldier has fought off the rats and the filth of the Army Hospitals, and he is lucky enough to still be alive he is dumped on to the VA.
Now you'd think this would be a simple matter - wounded soldier goes to the VA hospital to continue treatment.
It doesn't work that way.
Presently from the time the wounded soldier is discharged from the Army hospital until he is accepted by the VA hospital to continue his treatments is 5 years.
This way instead of paying the already inflated prices for sub par care the government can channel the funds to research programs . . . there's a woman in this town who is funded to try and make a pill that will "melt away the pounds"; a fat pill.
I don't quite see how this is going to help a shattered veteran but I'm sure that the 10% private vs 90% VA funding for this project is all perfectly legal or else they'd get fined a good 5% of the profits.

Click images for desktop size: "Deco Red" by David Puffer I've never lost a limb or my mind so I can't say for sure that my thoughts wouldn't go to getting those 2 inches off my waist line. Maybe. I doubt it but maybe . . .
Besides if these were "important" people they wouldn't be soldiers. And if they were important wouldn't the President go visiting them and stuff. You never see photos of Senators consoling wounded men from his district at the hospital. Senators and Presidents have more important things to do then worry about the 3,200 dead and the untold wounded. I mean Bush finally got to meet the Football National Champs today. they are important. He hasn't visitied a wounded vet or a homeless person shattered by Katerina. They're not that important.
In the 5 years they get to wait we can forget about them, maybe even curse them for trying to remind us of the debt we owe them.

Where I work I have a customer. When they were grad students at divinity school they started up a soup kitchen sort of thing. Every Sunday and Monday they fed the homeless. Around here the homeless tend to live in tents off in the woods.
They beg and the city has sold all the homeless "Pan handlers licenses." (The New America)
I like the couple who started the feed the homeless program. They're a bit too enthusiastic for my tastes but I admire enthusiastic people in general. I figured that when they got their degrees the little program would dry up. But its a good thing.
Nearly a year ago they both came in and proudly showed me their new dog collars, the outside symbol that they'd gotten their grad degrees and were full on ministers.
They've just had a child. She has her own church about 90 miles away and he works for a small group of churches.
Funny though, every Sunday and Monday they still trek down here, set up the tables and chairs and feed the homeless.
Today they came in to show me the baby and how much he's grown.
They thanked me for my help and support. As I couldn't think of any thing I'd done to merit thanks and being a product of the big cities of the world when someone thanks me like that I'm always waiting for the, "If we could just ask for one more thing . . . "
Funny they didn't have an addendum. They were done when they finished the thank you's.
After a moment of embarrassed shuffling from me I said you're welcome, for lack of anything better. I was relieved when we were interrupted by one of their clients. An Iraq war vet who got mangled by a rocket. He's the impetus for my impotent rant. Three years and waiting to get treatment for the burns and oozing sores. Still waiting to get a prosthetic arm and the surgery to remove the swollen wad of flesh they accidentally still left in place.

I went to a dog showing yesterday with my foster puppy. A place to display the puppy to try and find her forever home.
I always feel like a used car salesman caricature at these sort of things. Or at best a canine pimp, trying to foist a puppy I think to be the second best dog off on someone who really doesn't deserve something as great as she is.
The once timid little puppy was great. We had to take a couple of breaks but she did fine, accepted rough petting and fast movements from strangers with no flinching or remark. A couple of people have already filed out applications for adopting her. We'll see. I get a vote in who her new parents will be.

I got an email taking me to task for my opinion on "300". they pointed out, correctly, that this movie wasn't history but a comic book adaption that was based lightly on history.
I keep forgetting that Comic Book is now a genre.
I should have known that when I saw Time Burton's "Batman" and the audience cheered the plane more than anything else in the movie.
I used to like comic books. I like a few Graphic Novels now.
I think the only thing that saddened me was seeing a big splashy movie being made by a guy who I regret hasn't shown me much in the way of story telling abilities retelling a story I think is beautiful.
It really just jealousy because the story in my head is so much more enjoyable to me than this movie. I forget sometimes that people read this stuff. I still think of the words as just interesting frames for the pictures.

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