The Associated Press wire sounded a little less like news and a little more like the treatment for a mafia-flick this week when it reported a shooting near Naples.  It was a quiet Sunday in a town near Naples, Italy, when suddentlly bullets riddled the body of a man innocently playing a game of cards.  It was a drive by in the most stereotypical way; a fast black car speeding down a lonley Italian road.  The man who was murdered was a turncoat to one of Italy’s largest mafia crime syndicates.   So let that be a lesson to all you wise-guys:  don’t be a snitch, SEE??

I’ll keep you updated on interesting AP news reports as they come in.

For a breif while, I thought I could survive in the cut-throat, dog eat dog world that is the American political landscape.  But the more and more I talk to people in this country, or even in this county, I find I get tired.  I get tired having to be constantly be on the defensive.  I grow weary of attempting to argue some points.  However, this will not stop me from posting things I feel strongly about.  I just won’t attempt to be Governor or something down the line.

I was flipping through The Onion today (I am well aware it is not a news organization) when I saw quite a comical article about the VFW.  If you don’t know what this is, you have obviously never been a Veteran of a Foreign war.  According to the Veterans of Foreign Wars website, it is an organization of all veterans of an overseas war who served honorably.  Alright, this is a commendable group, and I honor the services of our veterans.  But for some reason this article got me thinking about another organization: Veterans of Domestic Wars.

For all those of you who are jumping to conclusions (no doubt most of you), I am NOT talking about building a time machine and collecting all the veterans of the Civil War and having them sit down and play checkers with each other for hours a day before heading off to the library or something like that.  I am talking about a Congressionally-Chartered group for all people who were born after September 11th.

To me, it has seemed like every day in this country is its own little domestic war.  We are warned that terrorists lurk in all the shadows, they want to destroy our planes and our buildings and our way of life.  We must be ever vigilant on the look out for these terrorists, but they don’t look alike.  They don’t wear the same uniform.  Hell, they might even be your neighbor.  Entering an airport in this country feels like you are entering some hotly contested demilitarized zone, where all who enter are screened by those with guns as long as I am tall.  We truly live in some hellish Orwellian 1984, Big Brother keeps his ever present eye on us.  And what do we do?  We fight!  We fight the damned terrorists, we conduct horribly racist profiles on people, we keep a database of people who are not allowed to fly because of their names, we treat foreigners as if they are less than people.  We are truly fighting a domestic war, citizen against citizen.  This is doing nothing but bringing Democracy to its knees!  Let us bring this domestic war to an end, let us no longer wake up in the morning fearful that there shall be no more tomorrow! Let us as a nation prevail, and keep our democracy for ourselves.

Thank you for your time during my rant.

A recent letter to our local rag, “The Northern Light,” has sparked a blog-write in me.  The gist of the letter went as follows:  “If we eduated all kids like they were Christians we would have far less unwanted pregnancy and vernarial diseases.”  Now I understand that inherent in almost all religions are tenents of morality.  However, why should we only be educating in the Judeo-Christian fashion?  Can someone please explain to me why this brand of morality is the superior one?  What is wrong with educating our children like they are all going to, at some point in their life, going to be capable of making their own decisions?  It is issues like these that seem to be almost paradoxical in nature, we educate that as Americans we have freedoms, but we refuse to educate children on all of their sexual options.  We preach that there is such a thing as right and wrong, that those righs and wrongs are clearly defined as lines in the sand. However, as we grow older, we find that what our parents taught us was right is not necessarily what we believe to be right.  I might not make a lot of sense, but check the time stamp on the post.

If you want me to review a movie and post it, just leave a comment here and I’ll find a way to review it for the site.  Thanks y’all!  I’ll be back to my regular posting habits soon.

I love it when a story is just asking for a rhyming title.  But, on to business.  Captain of the good ship Straight Talk Express this week expressed his opinions (via a press release from his people) on whether or not he will meet with Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain, and I quote: “Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview.”

Ah, and now your questioning what the motives behind this interesting decision are.:  I [McCain] am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for human rights, democracy and freedom and I will stand up to those who are not.”

But this still might not be keeping things all that clear for you.  You see, as reported by Politco’s Jonathan Martin, McCain seems to resent the Prime Minister because he decided to pull his people out of Iraq.  So, the line of logic appears to be that McCain will refuse to see anyone who thinks that his misguided attempt to decimate Iraq and morph it into some Middle-Eastern America is an enemy of the United States of America.  Perhaps a meeting would shed some LIGHT on the issue, perhaps it would open a door of understanding of WHY Mr. Zapatero decided that he need not fight America’s war anymore.  It is this kind of ignorance that will pervade the upper levels of the American government if we decide to elect the McCain-Palin ticket to office.

For the record, I’m done trying to hide my bias.  If you want unbiased news, read elsewhere.  But please realize I will never taint information for the sake of a story.  If you would like to see the blog I cited, visit politico.com

Here are a few videos that just make my day brighter.  Every time I watch these gems, I smile and forget about all of the problems of the world.  I hope you can enjoy them too.  I hope this is a good break from my usual serious political discussion.

That was a video Bill O’Reilly, a very viewer-friendly host of Inside Eidtion.  Of course, we now know him as the host of Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor,” a completely unbiased look at news and current events.  I wasn’t sure until I saw this video, but now my mind is made up:  Bill O’Reilly will one day rip the limbs off one of his guests and beat them to death.  It will happen.  You just wait for it.

This video makes me laugh just about every time I watch it.  So I’m sharing it with you because I love you, and Ehe Daily Show.

Who doesn’t love laughing at someones horrible, incurable disease?  I do, especially when its Wilford Brimley.  In fact, I only like doing this kind of thing at the expense of Wilford Brimley, because he sort of brings it upon himself.

I might think about making this into a page at some point in the near future, who knows.

Here’s a little going away present:

To our valiant Borderite football team, who once again proved its good to push a man in a wheelchair down a flight of stairs and cheer victoriously when he finally stops at the bottom (in the figurative sense, you illetirite jackasses).  If nothing else, this game should serve as a moral victory, because come on folks, who doesn’t like beating the living bejesus out of someone who can’t possibly defend themselves.

Of course I’m just being daft, I truly enjoy our sports, and many good friends are on that team.  But lets not allow this victory to go to our heads!  We must keep ready for our match up against Ferndale, who will surely be throwing our wheel-chair bound asses down a flight of stairs soon enough if we don’t!

Ah, yes, a nice little hot button issue to start the week. With the selection of Governor Sarah Palin as McCain’s veep, America now gets to find out a little bit about this almost unknown Alaskan and her tremendously conservative values. The specific issue I intend to address today (I have a knack for addressing issues like this, huh?) is her view on creationism, and its place in schools.

Now, I was under the impression that in a science class, you were to study science. By science I mean theories that have been tested and scrutinized by the scientific method, and have been accepted as Scientific Theory. That being said, nothing in science is ever technically “proven,” they remain open to rediscovery and re debate. Evolution could likely be disproved as a viable scientific theory if another valid argument that had empirical evidence to back it up was offered. But from what I have seen, creationism has offered no such evidence. Creationism cannot be tested by the scientific theory, as so far as I know there is no test to see if God did indeed create the heavens and the Earth. We should no more teach the notion that God created all than we should teach that Erichtonious of Athens was created by Hephaestus ejaculating on the Earth. (Keep in mind I was referring to that being taught in a science context, not a history one.) So until creationism can offer up some good scientific reason why it should be included in a biology class, I am not convinced it belongs there. However, I do have an idea on how you could still teach creationism and keep biology and the sciences intact.

Create high school and middle school level Theology classes which will teach all forms of creationism, encompassing all religious points of view on the subject, among others. Here the subject can be addressed in a non-controversial environment, where students personal opinion on whether they believe in an all mighty God or an all mighty explosion can be left aside. It is in a Theology class that we can all learn, but walk away and make our own decisions. This, so far as I can determine, is the best compromise between the two factions.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below, I always welcome them. I will usually respond within a few days, depending on my schedule. Also, please read the Rules for Commenting while your at it. Thanks again.

A “Quickcast” as I have dubbed them, are short podcasts that I do on a singular issue that takes less than five minutes for me to discuss. If you don’t like it, tough pillows mister. I’m going to keep doing them until the “man” shuts me down. Or I get tired. Also, this podcast is about the little tiff between Senators McCain and Obama over “houses.” Listen folks!

Quickcast No. 1 - Housing

NPR Story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93866218

Politico Story: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12700.html

Raw Audio of the McCain interview Segment (So you know I’m not editing): http://share.ovi.com/media/thepolitico.public/thepolitico.10070