Man, I’m getting sick. I’ve been very busy the last few days.
We’re moving back to Texas so I’ve been trying to get our apartment rented by nice folks. Some have shown up. I am hoping they continue to.
A lot of news has happened since I last wrote, so let me give you the heads up on what I think the important bits are:
Arafat dies
We knew this was coming, we were prepared for it, and when it happened, it was greeted with the kind of apathy I expected from the American media. An ABC producer even got fired for making the call to break into an episode of Desperate Housewives to alert the nation that this potentially critical event had finally come to pass.
I think if more people knew how deeply entrenched their country was in the Israel/Palestine conflict, they wouldn’t have had a problem with it. Instead, thousands complained. Sigh.
Powell, Ashcroft, and other, lesser Cabinet members resign:
Usually this doesn’t happen until the second term, but our Administration is not usual. So unusual, in fact, that with Powell being gone and Rice taking his place, there are now exactly zero voices in the Cabinet that have ever taken issue with anything the President has ever done. When Ashcroft resigned so early, a few of us thought it was so he could get appointed to the Supreme Court. It hasn’t happened, and some have told me to lighten up on the conspiracy stuff. I tell you this – there isn’t officially a vacancy yet.
Russia is building new nukes
You heard me right. Who knew that the Bush Doctrine would lead the re-ignition of the Cold War?
Okay, so that’s a little extreme, I know. But why in the hell is Russia building nukes that can defeat our missile defense systems?
Happy Birthday to Gay Marriage
This is a prickly one – today is the one-year anniversary of the legalisation of gay marriage in Massachusetts. I’m divided on this issue – I, from a personal perspective, think it shouldn’t even be an issue, and why shouldn’t two people that love each other be allowed to get married? From a political perspective, I think this was one of the greatest fuck ups in the last 100 years. I, and others, understand that American politics, especially conerning social issues, is a giant ship. You cannot suddenly turn it. Throwing everything to stern and suddenly making a legal issue out of gay marriage in a state decried as a hotbed of Godless liberalism broke the screws off the fight for gay rights. Hence it is going to be dry docked for 10-15 years. I think it would have been far less political and heavy handed to allow civil unions that conferred the same rights on gay couples that straight couples get, and to have left it at that.
It all comes back to language. I’m for gay marriage, but I’m against the way its been gone after in the last 3 years or so simply because something like WTF04 happened. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him suddenly be okay with the idea of fellers kissin’ fellers in God’s house.
A Powell says what?
Just days after resignation, Powell, who is still SecState by the way, would like you to know that Iran has or will have weapons of mass destruction. There’s no news currently about the status of the ultimate smoking gun – weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.