2007...goodbye and good riddance

Sometimes, the world feels turned upside down to me, and never more, it seems, than this last year...

Let's review:

• There are now 3,900 US military personnel dead in Iraq (and counting)...3,900... that's 25% more than perished in the attacks on 9/11...and all in a war entered into on false pretenses, invented facts, and outright lies -- assertions which the demon-in-chief knew to be false when he made them...and a war on a country that had NOTHING to do with 9/11. Yes, I know all those who are either too uninformed, or too blind to the truth or just plain morons will shout that al quaeda is all over Iraq. BUT THEY WEREN'T THERE BEFORE WE INVADED!! Which came first? We invaded. We failed to plan for what would happen when we won (you know, nation-building, that thing Dubya said no administration of his would do -- that's one promise he's actually kept...), and the vacuum(s) that followed were opportunistically filled by al quaeda...in fact, more than one student of the situation has observed that there has never been a greater recruiting tool for al quaeda than our invasion of Iraq. Meanwhile, Afghanistan languishes, the Taliban is resurgent, Osama bin Laden remains at large (you know, the guy actually responsible for 9/11)... As a great bumper sticker I saw said, "Nobody died when Clinton lied..." That about sums it up.
  
• Scooter Libby was convicted -- CONVICTED -- of one count of obstruction, two counts of perjury and one count of lying to the FBI about how he learned of Valerie Plame’s identity and whom he told (Note here...the revisionist history on this one is that she wasn't really a covert operative. Plame was a "NOC" -- non-official cover, meaning so secret, in the terms of the old Mission Impossible television series, that "the secretary" will deny all knowledge...and, by the way, the guy responsible for the law that made it a crime to reveal the identity of a covert agent -- known officially as the "Intelligence Identities Protection Act" -- was the high priest of the republican party, Ronald Reagan.) And then, facing 30 months in jail -- itself a travesty compared to the crime -- his sentence is commuted by the criminal-in-chief, effectively pardoning him, and thus guaranteeing that the details of how Plame's identity came to be leaked will remain known only to the criminals responsible (in case you've lost count, Richard Armitage, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby himself, and of course, Mr. C-Average, "W"). I wonder how many foreign agents, recruited by Valerie Plame, and working for us -- you know, the good guys -- lost their lives because she was outed, and they were traced to her...
• That (rhymes with "punt") Coultergeist (as my hero, Keith Olbermann calls her)...for so many things, but my favorite... "We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say." Won't somebody just shoot her?
• Here's another of my favorites, courtesy of the deceiver-in-chief...the fact that the US Intelligence community knew that Iran ceased its efforts to build a nuclear bomb in 2003 is proof that they intend to build a nuclear bomb... OK, my head is going to explode now...maybe all those kids who never paid attention in class were right, and I was wrong...if I were stupid, this might all make sense...
• Mitt Romney saw his father march with Martin Luther King...oops! That never happened...no, it was that the NRA endorsed him when he ran for governor of Massachusetts...oops! That never happened either! Wait, wait, he's pro-life...doh!!! There he was, speaking at a Planned Parenthood fundraiser in 1994! What a charlatan! The mormons can keep him...America doesn't need him...
• The Democratic congress is ineffectual, because they can't stop Bush...I get so weary of this! If you understood how our government works, you know, according to the US Constitution...that thing that controls, well, how our government works, you'd understand that there need to be enough Democrats in congress to override a presidential veto...the specific language, from Article 1, Section 7, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution, "Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill." Read it here... So, don't piss on the Democrats for not having enough power to defeat this bastard...we, the people, didn't give it to them!!
• And the latest, today, Benazir Bhutto is assassinated...I'm looking over my shoulder for the apocalypse...

But, there were two good things that did happen in 2007...Jerry Falwell and Henry Hyde, the devil's own minister, and the whoremaster of the US House of Representatives, died. Go straight to hell, boys...there's a special corner reserved just for you...I'm reminded of a passage (one of many) from the bible: Matthew 23:14 "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." If you know me, you know I'm not a particularly religious person, but I loathe hypocrisy...

I, for one, am happy to see this year pass...I only hope that 2008 is somehow better...I pray that it not be worse...