fighting someone else's civil war, pissing off mother nature, and big boxes...

things are getting bloodier in iraq with scores of iraqis being killed daily in a nation thrown into civil strife and conflict after the united states decided to take out its leader. does any of this sound familiar? hell...you could transplant "vietnam" for "iraq" in every part of that and it would be a lead to a blog decades ago. once friendly dictator who our government backed falls out of favor with those in the white house and they decide he must go...civil war ensues and the united states finds itself fighting someone else's civil war for no apparent reason. (both nations were meant to serve as a base for future operations...one to stop from being the first domino in communism, the other to be the first domino in democracy [as long as they vote in folks we like...afterall, not such a great track record with hugely popular democratically elected governments that don't follow the american party line]...at least this time there is oil involved).

you would think we would have learned a lesson from our own civil war and our attempts to be involved in several others...they are nasty, excessively and unreasonably bloody (as if any war is not) conflicts...everyone else let the north and the south duke it out...but ever since then the US doesn't seem content to return the favor. instead, we repeatedly get involved...and has it ever ended up good for us in the long run? (nevermind the horror that our involvement tends to unleash on other peoples).

nasa studies are telling us what anyone who was paying attention was already well aware of...the ice caps are melting and it is going to do some seriously fucked up things to our ecosystem and climate. conservatives like to think that the human race is meant to be served by nature and its resources, period, end of story. except they forget one thing...mother nature has been around a hell of a lot longer than any bipedal fuckup of a creature who thinks they are the end of evolution rather than an evolutionary dead-end...and she has always found a way to rid herself of abrasive asshole children who fuck up her home. so next time you fill up your gigantic suv for the drive down the street, think of some things...your heart which is so encapsulated in fatty tissue because you refuse to walk anywhere...your bank account which is drained because you are american and if you want to drive a ridiculously and uselessly large vehicle that actually has a surprisingly small cargo hold you damn well will...and think of your children and your neighbors and all the people who will die because you and those like you love to waste energy and pollute the air with excessive carbon emmissions. on behalf of mother nature, let me thank you for doing your part to trim the human population on the planet...she was growing tiresome of your presence anyhow.

mayor daley's veto of the big box ordinance held up in chicago. the ordinance, passed by a significant majority of alderman in chicago, would have required big time employers with huge stores, thousands of employees and billions of dollars in sales to pay their workers a barely living wage...10 bucks an hour plus 3 bucks an hour in benefits. put that together over a 40 hour work week and you get a whopping $20,000 a year plus another $6,000 in benefits. take out taxes and you have nowhere near enough to support yourself and save/invest in any way, shape or form, and if you have a family...forget it, might as well starve...while the company sells billions in merchandise and makes tens and hundreds of millions in profits off you because it has closed down all the other family owned small businesses in your area and is the only place you can afford to shop now.

the chicago tribune is all about mayor daley's veto...claiming that the ordinance would have declared that chicago is not open to businesses and they all would have run elsewhere and the people would not be able to consume like a good american should. it claims the ordinance told retailers to "close their stores and take their jobs elsewhere"...to that, i have to say...WRONG. it told retailers "you are making an obscene amount of money while crushing small business and gouging your workers (those that still have jobs compared to all those that lost jobs because you refuse to obtain your products domestically) and we are sick of it, now you must at least pay someone who is trying to work for a living some semblance of a living." after 17 years of never using his veto power...the mayor kills a progressive measure designed to help the poor of chicago...mayor daley, lifelong democrat, and, like other leaders of his party, a conservative schmuck.