Today is the most important holiday of the year.  Some holidays are nothing but good times and celebration.  Take July 4th, for instance.  Others are bittersweet, like New Years’ or Christmas.  This is one of the latter.

There is much to celebrate, and much to mourn.  There is, at any rate, stock to be taken.

Anyway, Cat Power is playing tomorrow night.  If tickets are still available, I might just go check her out.  Keep your fingers crossed.

“I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman’s back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.”

In my new line of work, I consult with people about their finances. I advise them on decisions that are going to have a pretty significant effect on their financial future and their family’s. Consequently, I’m held to certain standards when it comes to my own finances.

Translation: I’ve got a bunch of old debts (including student loans) that I can no longer put off taking care of if I’m to do my job.

It sucks. It’s like I never get a break. I get this great job at an amazing company, I have a career ahead of me for the first time, but there’s still this hurdle I still have to overcome. There just doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. “Never mind the ship’s going down, you just keep shoveling that coal!”

It’s unpleasant in the extreme, not at all unlike the time I broke my foot. Then as now, I was hobbled by a really uncomfortable dead weight that limits my movement and keeps me up nights. Now as then, all I can do is continue to stump along and look forward to the day it comes off.

Hooray.

Jealous cowards try to control
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
They distort what we say
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
Try and stop what we do
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
When they can’t do it themselves
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, it’s no use

Society’s arms of control
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
Think they’re smart, can’t think for themselves
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
Laugh at us behind our backs
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
I find satisfaction in what they lack
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, but it’s no use

We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, it’s no use

We’re born with a chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
I am gonna have my chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are born with a chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
And I am gonna have my chance
Rise above, we’re gonna rise above
We are tired of your abuse
Try to stop us, it’s no use

Rise above
Rise above
Rise above
We’re gonna rise above
We’re gonna rise above
We’re gonna rise above

There seems to be a street team at work here in Seattle to get Republican long shot Ron Paul elected:  Kids with Ron Paul shirts, posters, fliers, that kind of thing.  Don’t get me wrong; if we were to have another Republican in the White House, I’d want him.  But the problem isn’t Ron, it’s that if you elect a Republican — any Republican — you’re putting the whole GOP right back into the White House.  He’s just one man, and he’ll end up doing whatever the party tells him to, so forget those ideas you’re getting about him disbanding the IRS.

So Seattle Ron Paul street team — eat it, n00bsauce.

Read more on Ron Paul here.

Shame on you, you spineless cowards.  There was absolutely no reason that you should’ve caved on this.  He was completely in the wrong, you were completely in the right — with the backing of the American people (IT’S WHAT WE ELECTED YOU FOR LAST FALL!) — and you caved when there wasn’t a goddam thing he could’ve done.

American blood is on your hands.  You really are the dickless panty wastes the conservatives say you are.

Know what I’m saying?

Reading Salon this morning — as is my custom — I came across this bit in the War Room.  Mr. Grieve’s joke was not lost on me, but it was the set-up to the joke that I want to comment upon:  Why are wasting time and resources looking for Bin Laden?  It’s a waste, and I find it very hard to believe that anyone — anyone – actually believes it serves a purpose.

There is no strategic value in the person of Bin Laden.  He is not the head of Al-Qaeda, in the way that, say, Hitler was the head of the Third Reich.  Even if you could catch Bin Laden, it would have about the same effect on terrorism that convicting John Gotti had on organized crime in America.  Al-Qaeda is a transnational, decentralized organization of multiple independent cells, like the mafia.  You can’t bring it down by taking out one person, and no one cell knows what the others are doing.  Bin Laden wasn’t the mastermind behind 9/11, just the public figure that claimed responsibility.  There was more than likely a great deal he didn’t know about the attacks at all.  That’s the way these types of organizations work — ask the mafia.  Ask the CIA.  It’s called “need to know.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s a bullshit goose chase to hunt for Bin Laden.

The only purpose the search serves is so that the President might one day be able to say again, “we got him,” thereby somehow vindicating the expense of the search, the loss of lives, the war, the torture, the illegal wiretaps, the lies and on and on.  Which really takes me back to the original War Room piece that started this little rant this morning:  We’re in Iraq because of a supposed connection from 9/11 to al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda to Iraq.  But there was no al-Qaeda/Iraq connection to begin with.

We have a history of going after the wrong people and just throwing away lives and resources and squandering global political support in the pursuit of the wrong people.  Of course, if we were to start going after the right people, the ones actually responsible for 9/11, we wouldn’t be in Iraq now.  We’d be in Saudi Arabia.

I’m anything but skittish about government, but I must say this administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous.
– John Dean, Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush.

“I don’t want them on our soil. I want them in Guantánamo where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons. I want them there,” he says. “Some people have said we ought to close Guantánamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantánamo.”

My thought on the matter is this:  Politicians who advocate torture should first be subjected to it.  And I don’t mean a little; I mean a lot.  Really heinous torture, just so there’s no question about what it’s like.

And if they should happen to die while being tortured, well that will just serve to illustrate exactly what it is they claim to support.  No great loss, anyway.