On a pouring rainy Friday that’s as dreary as my hopes for sinful excitement this weekend, I’ve compiled my top 10 examples of why the world has lost its mind:

10 – In microsoft windows, you have to press “start” if you want to power down your PC

9 – toyota, which built its reputation on reliable thrifty cars for the masses, is drowning in unsold vehicles as it continues to churn out gas hog pickups (Tundra and Tacoma), and no less than 6 SUVs (Sequoia, Land Cruiser, FJCruiser, 4-Runner, Highlander, and RAV). This of course doesn’t include the rebadged, up-priced clones they sell at their Lexus stores.

8 – the republican party has become the chief purveyor of entanglements in foreign wars and deficit spending, reversing 150 years of governmental rectitude in just one administration. a case of political rebranding gone horribly wrong . . .

7 – my home state of Maryland, along with Delaware and Virginia, refuse to enact harvest reforms on blue crabs, despite continuing evidence that populations are less than 10% of what they were a short while ago. Oysters are already virtually extinct in the Chesapeake due to government pandering to “watermen”.

6 – A feel good Olympic year and cheap big screen TVs are more important than stopping the torture and murder of Tibetans. Check out the video on YouTube of the buddhist nun being shot in the back as she runs away from chinese soldiers.

5 – Related topic – people are still imprisoned without counsel and trial in GITMO. It was wrong 6 years ago, and its 6 times as wrong now.

4 – America has the highest teacher salaries, the shortest school day, and the worst student test performance in the industrialized world. And we are now behind bastions of free inquiry and intellectual achievement such as Pakistan, as well.

3 – iran is building nuclear weapons and no one is stopping them. hello? people . . . this is the country that sent 10 year old boys into battle as human minefield detonators during the iran/iraq war, equipped with plastic “keys to paradise” around their necks to dispel the kids’ fear . ..

2 – Myanmar (burma) is using the recent cyclone disaster as yet another way of achieving population control, purging dissidents, and consolidating military rule.

1 – we’re about to elect a president who has never held any administrative office before (governor, big city mayor, quickee mart manager, etc.) and has a total of just 2 years service in congress.

10 – In microsoft windows, you have to press “start” if you want to power down your PC

That’s funny, I never thought of that. Can somebody explain to me how, in the supposed land of free trade, Microsoft managed to completely eliminate the chance of free competition ? In Europe they were heavily fined – in America, I don’t know.

8 – the republican party has become the chief purveyor of entanglements in foreign wars and deficit spending, reversing 150 years of governmental rectitude in just one administration. a case of political rebranding gone horribly wrong . . .


Is this satire ? My knowledge of American politics is limited but I seem to remember Bush snr, Reagan and Nixon all embroiling America in foreign wars. I know that Reagan and Bush ramped up huge deficits, I don’t know about Nixon but something tells me that Vietnam wasn’t good value for money. Ironically, Carter, who actually achieved something in his foreign policy, is one of your least popular presidents.


7 – my home state of Maryland, along with Delaware and Virginia, refuse to enact harvest reforms on blue crabs, despite continuing evidence that populations are less than 10% of what they were a short while ago. Oysters are already virtually extinct in the Chesapeake due to government pandering to “watermen”.


I don’t know much about crabs – well, not that kind, anyway.

6 – A feel good Olympic year and cheap big screen TVs are more important than stopping the torture and murder of Tibetans. Check out the video on YouTube of the buddhist nun being shot in the back as she runs away from chinese soldiers.

I haven’t seen that yet, I’’ check it out. Is it as funny as the cat fighting its shadow ?

1 – we’re about to elect a president who has never held any administrative office before (governor, big city mayor, quickee mart manager, etc.) and has a total of just 2 years service in congress.


Even if Obama does absolutely nothing, he will still be doing a better job than Bush. Like I said before, my dog could do a better job than Bush.

(Good luck with the sex)

I forgot, if you’re still feeling guilty about global warming, you could get a SMART car. They cost a bit and you’re in trouble if you hit anything bigger than a squirrel but parking’s a dream.

Tarquin Machismo:

Is this satire ? My knowledge of American politics is limited but I seem to remember Bush snr, Reagan and Nixon all embroiling America in foreign wars. I know that Reagan and Bush ramped up huge deficits, I don’t know about Nixon but something tells me that Vietnam wasn’t good value for money. Ironically, Carter, who actually achieved something in his foreign policy, is one of your least popular presidents.

Yes, the dirty little secret of "anti-big-government" Republicans is that they've run the biggest governments and biggest deficits for the last several decades.

As far as foreign wars go, Vietnam goes to the Democrats (Kennedy/Johnson) more than the Republicans, and Reagan and Bush I at least had the sense to keep their excursions short and sweet (?) - Lebanon, Grenada, Nicaragua, and of course Gulf I, not to mention various covert actions. Clinton re-introduced the idea of long-term overseas engagement with the NATO Balkan war

But Bush II is the clear winner in terms of foreign entanglements.

Tarquin Machismo:

Even if Obama does absolutely nothing, he will still be doing a better job than Bush. Like I said before, my dog could do a better job than Bush.

QFT

In any case, we will have the first election of a current senator as president since Kennedy.

Yes, it’s ironic that Reagan, who pushed for an expanded military, generally left the fighting to other people. 
I know that Kennedy was the one who instigated the war in Vietnam ( I don’t want to sound like I don’t know anything pre-1975) but didn’t Nixon ramp up the spending / deployment / bombing ? Like I said, my knowledge is sketchy.

Qtf ? – I’ve learnt something new.

QTF is a typo for either QFT or WTF - both are easy to do, but oddly, have opposite meanings.

So what do you folks use over there - JGS (jolly good show)? TRM (too right, mate)? NBF (not bein' funny)?

I got that last one from "In Bruges" - maybe it's Irish.

8 – the republican party has become the chief purveyor of entanglements in foreign wars

3 – iran is building nuclear weapons and no one is stopping them. hello? people . . . this is the country that sent 10 year old boys into battle as human minefield detonators during the iran/iraq war, equipped with plastic “keys to paradise” around their necks to dispel the kids’ fear . ..

Maybe it is just me - how exactly do you propose to accomplish #3 in view of your feelings expressed in #8?

Are you going to call up Iran and say pretty please will you not build any more nuclear weapons? Don't get me wrong - I am definitly anti war (I have two sons, two nephews and one brother in law who served in iraq) but sometimes asking people to play nice just doesn't work.

Instead of sitting around whining and feeling sorry for yourself and thinking that you are soooo superior to all of us unthinking, unaware, blithering idiots, maybe you could actually do something about some of these problems.

Let me share with you something that I have learned in my 51 years on this earth.

First - the best way to solve problems is to go to work on them, to actively do something about them - not to sit around on a rainy day and post messages on the internet.

Second - you alone will not solve the problems of the world - however you may be able to help someone in need who is not on the other side of the world.

How about volunteering at a homeless shelter, volunteering at red cross, rounding up food for a soup kitchen, donating to salvation army. Stop obsessing over what kind of cars toyota or GM or honda builds. You can walk, ride a bike, take public transportation, or buy the most fuel effecient car that you can. Stop eating crab and oysters and figure out a way that all of the people who make their living that way can do something else and still support their families. Maybe you can figure out a way to help people in GITMO - but also remember that there are truly evil people who live among us. Perhaps you could organize a neighborhood watch program to help protect ordinary citizens.

I can go on - but unfortuately I have also learned something else that holds true a majority of the time. Those who can, do, and those who won't, whine.

Now, don't you have some knittin' to tend to?

I wish I did - helping to organize a walk-a-thon to raise money for MS research - gotta go.

Darn. There's a vest with a patriotic kountry kat that'll never see the light of day.

Ah, I miss the Bay after living a few years in Deale, MD. Hope you have had a chance to see my buddies at:

www.oysterboys.com

at least for the past century . ..

• we entered world war 1 on woodrow wilson's watch
• we entered world war 2 on FDR's watch
• we invaded korea on truman's watch
• we invaded vietnam on JFK's watch, expanded it to 500,000 men on the ground on LBJ's watch, and lost the war on Nixon's watch
• bush was a key architect of the bipartisan (democrat/republican) support for gulf war 1, which was essentially a coalition of NATO members who wanted to throw saddam out of kuwait, and restore the emir to his unelected throne.
• reagan sent a few hundred peacekeepers here and there to hotspots (lebanon, panama, etc) but never declarred war on anybody. most of the troops he sent were allegedly at the request of besieged local governments. clinton more or less continued this policy, to good effect.

I do find myself agreeing with grams, BA, you do a lot of posting about the environment, pollution, politics, general state of affairs, but I haven't seen you post what you do about it.

Dreary? Unless there's a funeral or something, it's hard for a Friday to be dreary. Well, maybe the Friday at the end of a long vacation. It's sunny & hot here - mid 90's, maybe low 100's. And it's payday. The most dreary thing today is that I have to be indoors all day.

Are you implying that American intervention in the first and second world wars was an unnecessary extravagance by warmongering Democrats ?

Yes, it seems strange to me that everyone seems to forget that Kennedy led America into the Vietnam quagmire – a bit like people forgetting Reagan’s dirty wars in Central America, supporting death squads in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. And it’s ironic to hear America complaining about Iranian interference in Iraq after their support for the mujahedeen (kudos again, Reagan). Then again, how can you fail to admire his bravery in standing up to the terrible threat posed to America by the military might of Grenada and Panama.