A Trapdoor In The Sun

I was sitting here at my desk listening to "To the Point" with Warren Olney when I had this sudden compulsion to spit my gum out at my monitor. The topic of today's program is "How Much is America Spending on the War in Iraq?". If you check the link tomorrow, there should be a podcast available. What nearly caused the catapult-ulation of my Coolmints Icebreakers onto my Samsung LCD monitor was a mere number. Two trillion dollars, to be exact. That's two thousand billion dollars, not exactly chump change, so to speak. What will really blow your mind is if you put that amount in perspective with what Congress was told it was going to cost to fight the war in Iraq, a mere 60 billion dollars. Think of it like this. You go to a slot machine in Vegas with the full intentions of winning that million dollar jackpot on nickel slots. You put in your nickel, pull the handle and get nothing. So you put another nickel in. And another. After all, it's a million doll...

I've decided to take a break from blogging for a while. At least political blogging. What started out as a fun spare time hobby has become much too time consuming and sometimes very emotionally draining. Sadly, when I step back and look at the world as it is, I have a hard time believing that anything I say, write or do actually makes a difference. At least not here. Perhaps that seems a tiny bit apathetic, but that's the way I feel right now. To all my friends and family that have at one time contributed to the dialog here on WMD, I thank you for stopping by and leaving your thoughts. It's been a fun little project for me over the last year or so. In the meantime, I will still be contributing to other debates and conversations around the blogosphere when I have time, and I can still be found over at my personal blog, Voyages of a Carpet Yeti . Peace... Drew I have nothing more to offer right now, other than this bunny with pancakes on his head.

Once upon a time, in the not so distant past, American workers and the big Corporations they helped build held a loving if not symbiotic relationship. The worker gave hours of his/her life to further the betterment of The Corporation and thus increase profits for the stockholders. In return, the worker received a good wage, health insurance benefits and a pension to help aid his/her retirement. Now, I don't know how you view it, but when a company offers a pension plan to attract talent which further generates profit for said company, then the company in question has entered into a contractual agreement with the employee to supply the agreed upon pension. After all, word is bond. Or is it? Apparently not. By law, The Corporation does not have to offer it's workers a pension plan in the first place, so it isn't obligated to fulfill pension promises. I wish the same line of thinking worked with credit cards. I could open up as many accounts as possible, max them out, and the...

I read this op-ed piece over at Old American Century and thought it pretty much hit the nail on the head. by August Keso, March 4th, 2006 "With those children [Winston] thought, that wretched woman must lead a life of terror. Another year, two years, and they would be watching her night and day for symptoms of unorthodoxy. Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party." -- George Orwell, "1984" The irony should be lost on no one. A high school teacher in Aurora, Colorado, told his class that there were similarities between Bush's State of the Union rhetoric and things Hitler used to say. The teacher's name is Jay Bennish and he was immediately placed on administrative leave. Yet, the irony is dwarfed when compared to the ultima...