For the last few years, we’ve all heard the clammoring from those who have endeavored to create a national crisis in their faux War on Christmas. For some, it seems that the defense of the Christian holiday is paramount to salvation. To hear them proclaim that the day is under secular assault and in danger of being hijacked from the realm of true Christianity, one may think that life as we know it is about to end if one more variation of the common holiday greeting, “Merry Christmas,” gets uttered aloud. Their attempts to create a mountain out of a true molehill would be comical at best, were it not for the fact that the holiday as celebrated today bears little resemblance to Christmas celebrations of eras past. Yet more amusing is the fact that Christmas itself (aside from the unsubstantiated claims upon which it is based) is little more than an amalgam of ancient celebrations, usurped from native populations and incorporated into the Christian religion as it spread through the world courtesy of the Roman Empire.

Despite all your Sunday school lessons, popular mythology, and even your secular Santa’s, the fact about Christmas is this-the holiday now celebrated as Christmas in much of the western world began life centuries before the purported birth of Jesus as a pagan celebration of life, rebirth, and rejoicing.

With a little help from my friends at The History Channel (yes- I know they are an entertainment medium, but they are also quite factual in many of their presentations, and at least as un-Hollywood as one can be and still get sponsors), here are some things you may never have known about the origins of Christmas.

IN THE BEGINNING

-The middle of winter has long been a time of celebration around the world. Many peoples rejoiced during the winter solstice, when the worst of the winter was behind them and they could look forward to longer days and extended hours of sunlight.

-In Scandinavia, the Norse celebrated Yule from December 21, the winter solstice, through January. In recognition of the return of the sun, fathers and sons would bring home large logs, which they would set on fire. The people would feast until the log burned out, which could take as many as 12 days.

-The end of December was a perfect time for celebration in most areas of Europe. At that time of year, most cattle were slaughtered so they would not have to be fed during the winter. For many, it was the only time of year when they had a supply of fresh meat. In addition, most wine and beer made during the year was finally fermented and ready for drinking.

-In Rome, where winters were not as harsh as those in the far north, Saturnalia—a holiday in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture—was celebrated. Beginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month, Saturnalia was a hedonistic time, when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down.

-Around the time of the winter solstice, Romans observed Juvenalia, a feast honoring the children of Rome. In addition, members of the upper classes often celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For some Romans, Mithra’s birthday was the most sacred day of the year.

IN COME THE CHRISTIANS

-In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday.Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention date for his birth. Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival.

-By holding Christmas at the same time as traditional winter solstice festivals, church leaders increased the chances that Christmas would be popularly embraced, but gave up the ability to dictate how it was celebrated.

– By the Middle Ages, Christianity had, for the most part, replaced pagan religion. As a result of ceding celebratory control on Christmas, believers attended church, then celebrated raucously in a drunken, carnival-like atmosphere similar to today’s Mardi Gras.

CHRISTMAS GETS OUTLAWED

-When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan forces took over England in 1645, they vowed to rid England of decadence and, as part of their effort, cancelled Christmas.

-The pilgrims, English separatists that came to America in 1620, were even more orthodox in their Puritan beliefs than Cromwell. As a result, Christmas was not a holiday in early America. From 1659 to 1681, the celebration of Christmas was actually outlawed in Boston. Anyone exhibiting the Christmas spirit was fined five shillings.

-After the American Revolution, English customs fell out of favor, including Christmas. In fact, Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the first Christmas under America’s new constitution. Christmas wasn’t declared a federal holiday until June 26, 1870.

THE CHRISTMAS REFORMATION

-The early 19th century was a period of class conflict and turmoil. During this time, unemployment was high and gang rioting by the disenchanted classes often occurred during the Christmas season. This catalyzed certain members of the upper classes to begin to change the way Christmas was celebrated in America.

-It wasn’t until the 19th century that Americans began to embrace Christmas. Americans re-invented Christmas, and changed it from a raucous carnival holiday into a family-centered day of peace and nostalgia.

-Also around this time, English author Charles Dickens created the classic holiday tale, A Christmas Carol. The story’s message-the importance of charity and good will towards all humankind-struck a powerful chord in the United States and England and showed members of Victorian society the benefits of celebrating the holiday.

-In the next 100 years, Americans built a Christmas tradition all their own that included pieces of many other customs, including decorating trees, sending holiday cards, and gift-giving.

OTHER CHRISTMAS BITS

-Santa Clause is most likely based on the Turkish monk St. Nicholas.

-Christmas trees predate Chsirtianity by thousands of years. Ancient peoples would celebrate the evergreen trees during the winter to remind them of life and rebirth.

(The previous information was taken from the History Channel. Link provided above.)

SO- there you have it. Not only is Christmas just a big jumble of ancient traditions co-opted by a particular religion, there is no one defining Christian identity regarding the holiday at all. So the next time you encounter a someone babbling like a fool about the demise of Christmas or bemoaning the notion that the ‘spirit’ of Christmas is fading, remember that their idealized notion of December 25th is neither that pure or that old.

In my house, we begin celebrating at the beginning of December, and since we aren’t religious or Christian, it’s more of winter celebration. But, taking our cues from the Christians of yesteryear, we’ve co-opted our own favorite parts of the holiday, the ones we grew up with and the ones we make anew, and that’s Christmas for us. And we don’t care if you are Jewish or Muslim or Martian in my house. We’ll wish you a Merry Christmas if we feel like it. No offense intended, for to us, it’s a pretty generic seasonal exchange. Besides, Christmas is what it is, and it won’t be the same for me as it is for you. It can’t be. It shouldn’t be.

So while I understand that the commonly accepted name is Christmas, and while I myself say Christmas and wish a good Christmas to others, and sing Christmas songs with religious undertones, I don’t buy the whole “War on Christmas” bullshit. And quite frankly you shouldn’t either. After all, if you’re spending all your time bemoaning the demise of ‘your’ holiday, you surely aren’t enjoying or observing it in any meaningful way. Give it a rest…and Merry Christmas.

(cross posted at Bring It On! )

Finally a war protest that everyone can participate in and enjoy!

A group calling itself Global Orgasm is promoting December 22 as the first Synchronized Global Orgasm for Peace.

From their website:

“The goal is to add so much concentrated and high-energy positive input into the energy field of the Earth that it will reduce the current dangerous levels of aggression and violence throughout the world.”

Well, I’m not so sure about that, but I promise to do my part in making the world a more peaceful place. I might even start sooner!

So c’mon friends and neighbors…get a piece for Peace! Join the Global Orgasm Movement today!

The Bush Administration, in their never-ending battle to fight against good science, a clean and diverse environment, and other assorted evil-doers, is considering doing away with national health standards that cut lead from gasoline, a feat widely regarded as one of the nation’s most successful clean-air accomplishments. Because, well, who really cares about people anyway?

Bowing to pressure from the sadly misunderstood corporate creators of lead products (battery makers, lead smelters, and gasoline refiners), a preliminary staff report from the EPA acknowledged a consideration to drop the health standards for lead air pollution. Saying that “significantly changed circumstances” justify scrapping the lead air pollution ban, something in effect for 30 years now. The EPA notes that levels of lead in the atmosphere have dropped nearly 90% since the ban went into effect in 1976, ergo, now that the air is mostly lead free, we can start building up lead levels again.

This is just another classic Bush Administration idiot move to benefit corporations over the health of American citizens. Exposure to lead has been linked to numerous health issues, including being a leading cause of nerve damage, especially in children.

What’s next? Shall we disband the environmental protections for drinking water too? Oh, wait…looks like Bush is one step ahead of me on this one too. What a visionary. What a decider. What an asshat!

(cross posted on Bring It On!)

George W. Bush is entering the final phase of his presidency, a time when many modern presidents begin to think about what they have achieved as leader of the United States, to think about their ‘legacy.’

Legacy is most commonly described as something left behind by one generation to the next. Sometimes legacy refers to something that was done that will provide benefits for years to come. (Social Security. Medicare.) Other times legacy can define a course of action or policies that achieved a specific goal. (Defeating Communism. The Interstate Highway System.) In most cases though, legacies refer to the good things accomplished under a president’s watch. Sometimes they do not. (Watergate. Vietnam. )

What will be the lagacy of George W. Bush? Will it be the disasterous war in Iraq? The mangling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe? Or maybe it will be the systematic gutting of the Federal government.

Bush has done little in the way of making life better for average Americans, but it would be a mistake to believe that his actions are due to incompetance. In fact, the opposite is more likely to be true. In his push to privatize government and position party loyalists and all around hacks into positions of power, one of the greatest and longest lasting legacies bestowed upon us and future Americans will be the destruction of our federal government’s “nuts and bolts.”

In a recent article in The Nation, Dan Zegart examines the purposeful decimation of the federal government through the appointment of political cronies to government agencies who have no knowledge of the mandates of those agencies, or at worst, are determined to dismantle generations of government regulations that had once made American products and consumers among the safest in the world.

“…what is actually happening is more complex and far-reaching than mere brain drain. More accurately, the executive branch is undergoing a brain transplant. An entire culture of civil service professionals loyal to their agency’s mission is being systematically replaced with a conservative cadre accountable to the White House. While every President appoints his own “politicals” to run the departments, the Bush team has broken new ground, attempting to realign the executive branch permanently by junking a 100-year-old system of merit-based hiring for career bureaucrats.

While the embedding of politicals in career jobs did not originate with Bush, the scale and coordination with which it is being done under this Administration seem unprecedented, according to more than fifty current and former government officials interviewed during an eight-month-long Nation investigation. “They’ve put people in charge of many offices who simply don’t believe in the mission of the office,” said William Yeomans, a twenty-four-year veteran of the Justice Department’s civil rights division who quit last year after being inexplicably transferred to the criminal unit. “And they are there to insure that those offices will never return to carrying out the policies or enforcing the law in the way that they used to. And they’re going to do that by changing the people who are in the bureaucracy.”

The Bush practice of appointing political loyalists to positions of power is bad enough. That most of those appointees come from industries diametrically opposed to the mission of the agencies they are given control of is another altogether. From the FDA to the EPA to the DOJ, career employees, who have not only the experience but the know how to navigate an already complex bureaucracy, are being given the ax, either through transfers or demotions or by making their workplaces so hostile that they leave on their own. The result is an emasculated federal agency, bent on not performing it’s mission, so that Bush et.al. can ‘prove’ their claim that government is ineffective. Just look no farther than FEMA, Brown, and Hurricane Katrina to see the results of this practice. This may be among the most extreme examples, but it is classic Bush policy and it is being duplicated all over the place at the federal level.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that our federal government is over-bloated and has a ton of waste. But gutting the programs or agencies isn’t the way to reform a system gone astray. Unless of course that is your prime goal.

It is said that the future is in the hands of those who teach the children. The political correlation would be that the future is in the hands of those who stock the bureaucracy. Bush will be gone in 2008, at least in the sense of being head of our government. But one domestic legacy he created will live on for generations, and sadly, it’s nothing to be proud of. For this particular legacy will have no good effects, only negative ones.

(I originally posted this one year ago. It deserves another read this Veteran’s Day. Thank you to those who have served in the past, those who serve today, and those who will serve in the future.)

For over 200 years, Americans from all walks of life have answered their country’s call to arms during times of war. They have sacrificed their security, their future, and their lives to defend this country and our way of life. They march, sail, and fly into battle at the behest of our leaders with a single thought: protect American freedom and lives. They endure hardships and experience horrors most of us can never really comprehend, and they do it without thinking twice. America has been engaged in many wars over the course of our history, some of them righteous, others less so. But no matter the reason for conflict, when the military is ordered into action they go. It is this unwavering devotion to duty that makes our military among the finest in the world.

As we remember those who have fallen and those who are still fighting on this Veteran’s Day, we must try to separate the conflict from the men and women who go off to fight it. We must remember that these people did not create the wars they are sent to fight. They do not decide what weapons to use, what enemy to target, what building to destroy. They operate on orders from our civilian leaders, funneled through the military command. They just do what they are told to the best of their ability. They do it because they have to. They do it out of honor. They do it for us.

We must always remember that regardless of how we may feel about a particular conflict, we can never allow our feelings about war to denigrate those who would stand and fight for us. In the 1960’s and 70’s, American soldiers were demonized by average citizens because of widespread discontent with the war in Vietnam. No matter how wrong American policy may have been at that time, it was not the soldiers who deserved condemnation.

The war in Iraq has been drawing comparisons to the Vietnam conflict almost since it began three years ago. Some of those comparisons may be dead on, others a bit off the mark. But if average Americans learned anything in the years following Vietnam it was that our soldiers are not our enemy. There will always be atrocities in war and there will always be people in and out of uniform who betray the cause by acting in ways that bring shame to themselves and to our military. Prime examples of this include the horror of My Lai and the despicable actions at Abu Ghraib. But we must strive to remember that as a whole, our men and women in uniform work hard to live up to the high expectations we have of them. Americans no longer blame the military en masse for the acts of a few bad apples. We know that those who would fight for us deserve better than to be painted with such a wide brush.

On this Veteran’s Day, I hope that you will take a moment to honor those who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan. Honor those who have fallen in the wars of yesterday. If you have a veteran in your family, offer them thanks. If you see a veteran on the street, shake their hand, buy them a cup of coffee, throw a few dollars in their tin cup. Take time today to remember the service they have given in your name and the sacrifice they have made for all of us.

Fighting the battles of war is the job of the military. Fighting the politics of war is our duty. Tomorrow will bring another day of fighting and death abroad. Tomorrow will give another chance to confront the political machinations that have brought this war upon us. But for just one day, today, let’s forget about the politics of war and remember the warriors.

(cross posted at Bring It On! and Blogtemps)

Democrats will retake control of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate too as voters across the United States sent a message to lawmakers in every corner of the nation. In what will rightly be seen as a referendum on the Bush Administration and the culture of corruption that permeates the Republican party, this was an election when the people put national interest ahead of their own local concerns.

With 62% of voters in exit polls saying that this election was about national issues, one has to assume that the people have finally chosen to wake up and smell the burning of our constitution and our tradition of freedom. With 42% saying that political corruption was a prime factor in their votes Tuesday, one has to assume that the people are fed up with the horseshit that passes for political leadership.

57% said that the war in Iraq was a key concern, while only 40% cited terrorism. These numbers clearly show that Americans no longer trust George Bush or the Republican party to guide the helm of our nation.

But that doesn’t mean they trust Democrats either. Overall, 62% of voters disapproved of Congress as a whole, hardly a rounding show of support for the Democrats. Again, it was the lesser of two evils for many voters.

But now the Democrats will have a House majority- at the very least. To which I can only say thank goodness. So today I rejoice at what has been halted, or at least seriously slowed down- a Republican juggernaut hell bent on destroying American honor, integrity, justice, and might. Tomorrow the work can begin.

(cross posted at Bring It On!)

233 years ago, our predecessors through off the chains of an oppressive, authoritarian, anti-freedom government. Their success was the first step towards our free and democratic way of life.

233 years later, another George is trying to shackle the freedom and democracy of this great country through an authoritarian and oppressive force of will.

Today you have the chance to rescue that which our forefathers fought and died for. Today you have the chance to stand for freedom.

Today it is time to change the direction. Vote for Freedom.

(cross posted at Bring It On! and Blogtemps)

President Bush has pissed off a lot of people around the world with his unilateralist bent, his unwillingness to grasp nuanced diplomacy, and his unrelenting charge towards destabilization and mass chaos. Yet for a man like the president, it’s not a question of who you irritate, but whether you’ve done anything to irritate them recently.

Enter the newly revised Bush administration policy on space. Released this month, the Bush policy has claimed its (America’s) right to weaponize the solar system with US arms while stopping all other countries from launching their own weapons systems into orbit. I guess wars on Earth just aren’t enough for this guy.

And what are others saying about this idea?

“America wants it all — life, the universe and everything,” proclaimed The Times of London. “Space: no longer the final frontier but the 51st state of the United States.”

“U.S. turns space into its colony,” echoed a headline in the Asia Times, which concluded that “the United States intends to monopolize its longstanding space presence by militarizing it.”

Of course, space is already weaponized to a small degree if you consider the spy satellites and guidance system satellites that the military uses. But these are not weapons in and of themselves, but merely tools for earthbound weapons systems. Bush seems to want to change that limitation.

Yet where the Clinton administration issues a space policy that emphasized the right of all countries to use space as they saw fit (read- no one has ownership of space), the Bush policy claims the US right to deny space to others:

“Arms control … must not impair the rights of the United States,” the policy reads. “The United States will preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space … and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to the United States.”

Bush already withdrew the US from the ABM treaty so we could continue to chase after the elusive missle defense system started by Reagan so long ago. And despite the 1967 Outer Space Treaty that explicitly bans WMD’s from space and any heavenly body, like the moon, Bush seems adamant on developing space weapons under the guise of we need ’em to stop others from putting them up there. In other words, we have to break the treaty to protect the world from rogue nations.

Sounds an awful lot like ‘fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here’ to me. I wonder how many Space Divisions Halliburton has.

(originally posted at Bring It On!)

All indications point to the Democrats regaining control of at least one House of Congress in the upcoming mid-term election. But as they like to say, it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings. Indeed, if recent past elections are any indication, Democrats are going to have to fight tooth andd nail for every seat they manage to pick up. After all, in the 2000 election, Gore (the Democrat) had the most number of popular votes and should have had the electoral votes as well, until shenanigans in Florida, a state governed by the president’s brother no less, caused their electoral votes to be given to Bush. Again in 2004, when polls showed a Kerry victory (another Democrat) as the likely outcome, shenanigans in Ohio gave republicans and Bush the push over the top. Time and again in recent history, elections that should have favored Democrats produced opposite results in favor of the ruling aprty, in no small part because of irregularities and probable manipulation of the voting process by Republican party members. So while Democrats are expected to edge out the Republicans this election, it is by no means a certainty in my mind.

But suppose the Democrats do win enough seats to become the majority party again? Will they finally tackle some of the core problems that have led to one of the most corrupt governments in our nation’s history? Will they have the sense of duty and stewardship and character to attack and end some of the most perverse aspects of ‘business as usual’ politics? Will they muster the courage to enact real ethics reform, reestablish real oversight, and reclaim their own political independence from the executive branch of government?

I can only hope that they will. K Street, on the other hand, and its plethora of lobbyists are hoping not. Long an established money changing operation between corporations and the Republican party machine, clients of K Street Lobbyist Firms are increasingly showing up at fundraisers for Democrats and are increasing their financial contributions to those running on the Democratic ticket. And while this does strengthen the idea that Democrats are in a viable position to win in November, it also shows how quickly the sharks move from one food source to another. Big Business loves the Republican party, especially in it’s current incarnation, but they also know to hedge their bets, and are gearing up to grease the hands of the other side. The question is whether or not the Democrats really want to change the way Congress is malfunctioning or whether they just want to hold the reins of power for a while.

In spite of the fact that I despise the current Republican agenda, it’s associated hypocritical politicians and their scandals, and the ruinous effects their party ‘s administration has had on American prestige, when I vote for a Democrat this November, I expect them to buck the status quo with an enlarged sense of duty, courage, and stewardship. I expect them to change the disasterous course we’ve been set upon, to enact real ethics reform, to reestablish real accountability, and to reclaim their independence from the executive branch.

I expect a changed plan of action in Iraq through new legislation revising the AUMF orders that began the Iraqi debacle.

I expect a national clean elections act similar to those in Arizona and Maine, to permanently reduce the influence of K Street and it’s spawns.

I expect enactment of the Read The Bills Act, The One Bill At A Time Act, and The Write The Laws Act which will mandate that elected officials actually read what they vote on, write the laws up for a vote (as opposed to an aide or a corporate employee), and limit all laws to single topics, making it impossible for unrelated legislation to be inserted at the last minute.

I expect a plan to address a universal health care system, a plan to decrease the trade and federal deficits, and a plan to restore the American job market through increased educational opportunities or reformations.

I expect a mature approach to international problems instead of posturing, pouting, and pre-emptive warring.

I expect a Congress that will perform rigorous oversight on public policy and international relations while investigating the failures borne out of a decade of looking the other way. I expect them to hold responsible any and all parties who have broken laws or behaved in an unethical manner without creating a circus atmosphere.

And finally, I expect a Congress that is not steeped in partisanship or religious pandering or machismo. I expect rationality, critical thinking, and progressive problem solving.

Maybe I expect too much, but I don’t expect anything we don’t deserve from our government. And I won’t be giving a Democratically controlled Congress any slack if they fail to live up to my expectations. I’ll be voting to change the direction. I damn well expect the rudder to move.

Law Enforcement Continuing to Succeed Where War Fails

While it becomes increasingly clear that Bush’s war of choice in Iraq only produces more terrorists and does nothing to address the real problems associated with international terrorism, in Italy, we are once again shown that diligent, competant law enforcement can and does dismantle terror cells without any kind of ‘collateral damage.’

Hard to believe, eh? After all, aren’t those just the kind of tactics laid out by John Kerry during the 2004 election? Didn’t he note that fighting terrorists was as much, if not more, a law enforcement measure than one for the military? Do we need the military to stop terrorists? Sure, they were doing a great job in Afghanistan before Team Bush pulled a “Cut and Run” strategy that now has that country falling back into the hands of the Taliban. But do we need to blow up entire countries to isolate, track, and arrest the terrorists in the world?

Of course we don’t. But it will take better leadership than we have now to actually figure that out. Sadly, we’re still working with the government we have, not the government we want.

Spying On Americans-Good. Reading Convicted Terrorist Mail- Bad?

Ask yourself a simple question.

Which is more likely to uncover future terror plots and reveal terror operatives?

(A) Intercepting, recording, monitoring, storing, or listening to communications in America between Americans

or

(B) Monitoring and reading mail sent and received by convicted terrorists sitting in U.S. Federal Prisons

If you answered A, congratulations. You are the president of the United States or an elected legislator. But if you answered B then you have a brain.

Unfortunately, while the first option is being carried out with great vigor, and being touted as one of the best, most important tools to keep America safe, the second option, the one that could actually provide clues to terror operations, is barely being done at all.

According to a review of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, undertaken by the DOJ, letters are being written by convicted terrorists to other terrorists, including a letter sent to one of the Madrid bombing terrorists. That letter was being used to recruit more terrorists to the cause of jihad.

“The threat remains that terrorist and other high-risk inmates can use mail and verbal communications to conduct terrorist or criminal activities while incarcerated,” concluded the report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

So what exactly is being done to close this gaping hole in terror monitoring? Apparently not much. After all, we’ve got a bogus war and the surveillance of American citizens to conduct, and there’s only so much money to go around.

U.S. Won’t Attack North Korea? Why The Hell Not?

Remember the Axis of Evil? That nefarious threesome that our president targeted as the biggest threats to civilization as we know it? Remember the tough talking rhetoric that told us that no nation would be allowed to harbor terrorists or pursue WMD’s so long as George W. Bush was on the job?

Guess what? It turns out that George W. Bush is full of shit. In a recent speech, Bush told reporters that although North Korea (one of the fearsome triumverate of evil) was a “threat to international peace” and that “serious repercussions” would ensue following North Korea’s purported nuclear test, he asserted that no military response is planned to thwart this looming menace.

No military response? Why the hell not? After all, when it came to dealing with a non-nuclear member of the axis of evil (Iraq), Bush went in guns a-blazing, creating a whole world of hurt in that part of the world. In fact, military action against Iraq was always plan one for Bush, regardless of whether they had WMD’s, including a nuclear capability. But he used the false notion of an “imminent mushroom cloud” as an excuse to invade a country ruled by a horrific tyrant, not to go after al-Qaeda, not to bring democracy to the Middle East, but rather to settle family sleights and gain control of the Iraqi oil fields for his corporate minders. (Go ahead and argue these points, my conservative friends. I’m not here to offer proof beyond what we’ve rehashed time and again. The proof, if you ask me, is in the pudding so nastily laid out before us.) In fact, I’ll even submit that the Bush Administration was fairly certain, based on the evidence that existed but they excluded, that Iraq was nowhere near ‘going nuclear’ and that was a prime factor in targeting them when they did. It is easy to tear down a paper tiger you have built yourself.

But Bush is just engaging in classic Bully Behavior, so there’s nothing remotely surprising about his stance on North Korea. The bully always targets the weakest foes (or faux-foes as the case sometimes is) to dominate while slewing threats at those who might be able to offer a real challenge. We see the same thign happening right now regarding Iran.

Iran is also on the nuclear path, but experts warn they are at least 5-8 years away from any meaningful weapons program. Yet the Bush administration has overstated the Iranian nuclear capabilities and hyped up the threat as imminent. Again, what we have in Iran is an oil rich country and a competing religious ideology. Clearly, in the Bush declared War on Terror, where all bad guys are Islamic Terrorists, the countries you invade are the ones who can do your country the least physical harm. Iran not only doesn’t have nukes, they don’t have a system to get nukes to the US mainland. But they pray towards Mecca, so let’s target those bastards. By all accounts, US war plans are already far past the planning stages regarding Iran.

Yet curiously, North Korea, the only non-Muslim member of Club Evil, not only has nuclear capability, they have a missle system that could (potentially reach the US west coast. Yet where Iraq and Iran are to be dealt with militarily (after all diplomacy has failed) North Korea is not on the path to war with America. Again, why the hell not?

No oil in North Korea?

I’m not advocating for an invasion of North Korea, not by any stretch of the imagination. But I have to wonder why Mr. Bring ‘Em On isn’t being consistent. If ever there was a case against one of the three harbingers of world evil, North Korea is it. If ever there was a fulfillment of the reasons for pre-emptive war against a rogue nation that had no democracy, tortured it’s people, and sought WMD’s, North Korea is the proverbial “slam dunk.” If ever there was a case of “with us or against us” this is it, isn’t it?

Before the ‘Axis of Evil’ speech, there was no real race for countries to get nuclear weapons for themselves. In that sense, the world was a safer place. Thanks to George W. Bush, rogue nations are scrambling to join the nuclear club as fast as they can. And clearly, if you want to remain unscarred by American military destruction, going nuclear may be the best way to go. In that sense, the world is immeasurably less safe. Thanks Bush.

Time to change the direction.