Coming to a mall near you: Food Riots

Yes, folks, none other than the Wall Street Journal suggests that Americans begin stockpiling food. As oil companies, unhappy with last year's record profits, continue to gouge the public for gasoline, food prices climb. And I have trouble feeling your pain because I am unemployed. Rice, a cheap staple for all of us, is being rationed at Wall-Mart. Eggs are up 30% and as raw materials increase, there is no end in sight. We can blame the demand for ethanol or we can place the blame squarely on the shoulders of this miserable excuse for a government, which does not care if you starve in dark of an unheated house. Provided you still have a roof over our head. We are spending billions of dollars on our ill-fated occupation of Iraq, we are enriching the already over-filled pockets of every single one of Bush's cronies and we are now facing the inability to purchase a decent meal. Let's extend this: If you cannot afford to buy staples to cook and eat in your own home, you will not be able to afford eating out, when people stop eating out, restaurants close, when restaurants close, people become unemployed. And we won't even touch the service industries that will be adversely effected by restaurant closing. But here's the good news, when you get your $600 some time this summer, you may be able to afford a pound of potatoes.

Journey of Disharmony

The ceremonial relaying of the Olympic Flame from Olympia to the site of  the games is the brainchild of none other than Joseph Goebbels. That's right folks, the whole torch thing was a Nazi good idea. I only mention this because of  this controversy surrounding the current Journey of Harmony, which has met some resistance by the rest of the world in light of China's treatment of Tibet.

Some people worry that the violence that has confronted the latest edition of the flaming tour will crush a sacred tradition. Most people don't know that the whole torch thing originated with the 1936 Berlin Games--you know, the one's that was closed to Jews. The United States considered boycotting  the games, but then Germany put a couple of Jewish names on its athletic roster, not that they were allowed to compete. In the United States, Jewish organizations staged rallies against the German Olympics and two Jewish-American competitors abstained from competing.

That's the trouble with boycotts, the reason for the boycott never changes, but athletes pay the price by not competing.  The Olympics will survive this, and so will the torch relay. But before we become teary-eyed about  the whole process, it's good to remember how it started. By the way, the  Berlin Olympics were also the first games to be televised live, albeit only in Berlin and Potsdam. 

Crocodile tears

George W. Bush wept yesterday at White House ceremonies honoring 22-year-old Marine Jason Dunham who died two years ago in Iraq. I'm not sure I'd call that single tear that dribbled down his mottled left cheek weeping, but Georgie's eyes watered. Could have been emotion. Could have been hay fever.  No word on whether he has wept buckets over the other 3,999 US servicemen who have been killed in Iraq, or the thousands who have been permanently injured, or the hundreds of  thousands of Iraqi's who are living in a war zone. We have been in Iraq for five years, and no one's life is better and no one is safer, and the economy is in the tank, crushed under the weight of an ever escalating, never ending war debt. It's about George Bush shed a tear for something. The invasion was a failure, the occupation is a failure, the surge is a failure, and the government wants to continue. I have no idea where these soldiers are coming from, short of a draft. Bush continues to characterize this debacle as central to the "war on terror," which would be laughable if it were not so tragic. All Bush has managed to do is to turn more people against the United States, make it citizens the focus of Islamic distrust, and make the whole world generally more dangerous for the rest of us. So, why can't we just cut our losses and walk away?

Why bother?

I'm way past  the time when I voted on principle. Ralph Nader wants to be president, and to get there he will be hammering at the Democrats, once again, pushing more people into the arms of the dysfunctional Republican party. And yes, I am talking about independent voters who believe that John McCain is the best alternative to Hilary Clinton or Barak Obama. We have already seen the kind of damage Nader and his single digit has in an election. Nader may not he able to derail the Juggernaut that is Barak Obama, but do you really want to take the chance? Do we really need John McCain as president?