Two Hundred Ten Billion Dollars

The invasion of Iraq has cost U.S. taxpayers and that cost is rising at a rate of $6,000,000,000.00 each month. Let's forget about WMDs and any fairy tales about a connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. We have torn apart and are now rebuilding a country. This is happening under the watch (and I use the term loosely) of a president (and I use the term usely) who promised no nation building.

After being pitched one reason after the other for this war, one that the administration seems to have settled on is that we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here. Imagine the dent that could have been put in terrorism if we had spent $210,000,000,000.00 going after Osama bin Ladn and al-Qaeda. Instead, we're mired down in street fighting and have committed ourselves to rebuilding Iraq. No one will ever convince me that Republicans care about the Iraqi people any more than they care about their own.

Rush and Viagra

Guess what, Rush? Prescriptions filled in your name by your pharmacist are also confidential. Not to worry! You can spin it any way you want to and your sheep will follow.

President Bush temporarily moved his bubble from Washington to Baghdad. I have no problem with his going there. To think, however, that there was any substance to this is ridiculous. He said that he wanted to look P.M. Maliki in the eye (remember his revealing gaze into Putin's eyes?). He must have wanted to check out the color. I would hope that he's not stupid enough to think that he can tell anything else.

Bush: War in Iraq worth high price to U.S.

So Bush says. Please tell me how he, his family or anyone else involved in the original and ongoing decision to wage war against and then rebuild an entire country in the Middle East has sacrificed anything toward that goal. What makes it doubly painful is that those who have sacrificed, in all probability, will not live to see peace and stability in that country.

Zarqawi

A bad man is dead, but a lot of good men, women and children are also dead or maimed. Bush would say that the price that they have paid is worth it, but I wonder if he would be willing to give one of his girl's lives in order to have Zarqawi dead.

The Bible

Methinks a lot of Christians are mistaking the Constitution for the Bible.

The Decider

The Decider has decided that it's time to drag Same-Sex Marriage out for the Mid-Term Elections. It was a tough choice between it and Abortion, but he'll let the party of Lincoln use that in 2008.

What the Decider and his Base don't want to understand is that it's not about marriage, but rather rights; rights that all other citizens have and don't have to think about. Currently, gays are the last group in America that can be taken advantage of legally.

Same-sex partners who have lived together a lifetime, paid into the system and have accumulated all the things that a married couple have can find themselves involved in a much different scenario should one of them die. Depending on how the partners have looked to the future and protected themselves, greedy and righteous family can legally swoop down and claim ownership of the deceased's property and leave the living member of the team with nothing.

Without the proper documents, should one partner linger in the hospital, the other has no say in his/her care and can even be barred from visiting by the other's family. How is society served by that?

Then there are pensions and Social Security Benefits that stop cold when one partner dies, while the spouse in a heterosexual union can collect until the day he/she dies, though he/she may never have worked a day in his/her life.

Health insurance, a problem to many is often solved when one member of a heterosexual union has a job that provides it. Not so in same-sex unions; the other partner does not exist as far as the insurance company is concerned. Well, that's not quite true. Some companies recognize domestic partners and let them insure a house together, but only after an AIDS test.

Meanwhile the Decider wants to change the Constitution of this country to make sure that these issues of fairness will not be addressed on a state level. He's taking us backwards. He's using the Law of the Land to deprive citizens of fair and equal treatment under the law.

As it stands now, two teenage, illegal immigrants , legally married in Mexico, can step in front of lifelong gay citizens in this country in claiming what the law says is theirs. What are we thinking?

To Bush and all the ignoramuses that he is using to bring up his numbers, gay marriage is a threat to heterosexual marriage-i.e., the concept of one man, one woman...at a time. How homosexuals are going to harm marriage and threaten families flies in the face of intelligent thinking. It's a thinly veiled attempt to write religion into our laws, a goal that being pursued daily by the Far and Not-So-Far Right everyday.