It's a slow-getting-going morning. More blog to come.
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100 comments (Latest Comment: 12/14/2012 02:14:21 by clintster)

Good Morning.

Today is our 4,083rd day in Afghanistan.

We'll start as we always do; with the latest casualty figures from our ongoing war, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 2,165
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,073

We find this morning's cost of war passing through:

$ 1, 401, 827, 500, 000 .00
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90 comments (Latest Comment: 12/12/2012 03:27:07 by clintster)

I woke up early this morning, drenched in sweat. It was still dark outside - still night, yet I felt as if the sun was blazing down on me and I was laying on a beach in the tropics. Sweat raced down my body, making the bed a soggy mess. This was it, my first sign of the dreaded menopause. I could feel the bed sagging and the sheets swelling against my body as the sweat came pouring out of me.

Menopause. End of life. I laid in the bed trying to decide which would be the fastest way to end it all. Gun? Poison? Pills? I did like the way that Maude ended her life in the cult classic Harold and Maude. Perhaps I could jump off a bridge? The plans started forming...
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14 comments (Latest Comment: 12/10/2012 17:01:36 by Scoopster)

When was the last time you remember anything passing through Congress and being signed by the president that wasn't either a budget funding bill, the NDAA, or the debt ceiling being raised? It was probably 2010 during the lame-duck session as the Democratic House passed a flurry of bills, including the repeal of DADT. Since Jan of 2011, the Republican-led House has brought up (and in some cases passed) bills that would never make it through the Democratic-led Senate, and certainly not be signed by the president.

That's just party politics, and the wide chasm between the parties' ideologies. What's a mess is the filibuster in the Senate and the political infighting and power plays that seem to go on constantly among various factions of the Republican congressional members.
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66 comments (Latest Comment: 12/07/2012 22:41:49 by Raine)

What happens when a "useful idiot" is no longer useful? Such is the dilemma in the Republican party. In the spring of 2009 in an obvious reaction to the inauguration of President Obama, the Tea Party rose up out of nothing (ok - from a FOX "News" cabal) to speak out against taxes (ostensibly). Grover Norquist was their mouthpiece, and they looked to be a shiny new alternative to a stodgy old GOP.

The movers and shakers in the party were initially threatened by the upstarts, but then figured they would glom onto them and rise to power... which sort of worked in 2010. They took control of the House and narrowed the gap in the Senate. The GOP immediately began focusing on... um... social issues, something the Tea Party didn't really have much of an opinion on (supposedly). The outlook for 2012 was rosy.

Except - 2012 didn't happen the way they predicted. President Obama was reelected. The Republicans lost seats in both the House and Senate. Apparently, being loud and the center of attention doesn't necessarily equate to popularity and/or votes. Americans looked at these Tea Party "darlings" and decided they were nuts. The Republicans embrace of the Tea Party initially helped, but now they appear to be a liability.
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82 comments (Latest Comment: 12/05/2012 23:14:57 by Will in Chicago)