Letting the Arabs rot in peace

Someone in comments pointed out Robert Fisk's latest article. My god, what a depressing read it is.

Fisk is a throwback to the Romantic era of English history, the Lawrence of Arabia era. It is always wise to view his pronouncements with caution. As with T.E. Lawrence, he views the Arab world from the viewpoint of the old-school Arabist. Nevertheless, the core of his argument stands. The first freedom that the Muslim world wants is not freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, or any of those other freedoms that are inscribed in Europe's charter of human rights or America's constitution. The first freedom they want is freedom from us -- from our secular liberal ideas, our greedy corporations, and, most of all, freedom from our tanks and guns and bombs.

It has become increasingly clear that the Muslim world doesn't want "our" democracy (not that we've ever had democracy in America). All that "our" democracy has accomplished, in their opinion, is bloodshed and slaughter of Muslim innocents, such as the children of Lebanon whose bodies are still being pulled out of the rubble of buildings bombed with American bombs from American planes flown by our proxies, the Israelis. They just want us to go away. They want to live in Muslim countries without us bothering them.

Fine, I say. Time to find an alternative to oil, pull our troops, pull our aid, and let them all do what they will. And oh, I think we can spare Broward County (Fla.) as the new Israel for all the European Jews currently in Palestine. It's almost as big as the current Israel, and there's more Jews in Ft. Lauderdale than there are in Jeruseleum anyhow. The Arabs view the current state of Israel as a problem of illegal immigration, a bunch of illegal immigrants from Europe invading and forcing out the original inhabitants at gunpoint. Fine. Remove said heavily armed Europeans to some place where they're more welcome (and unlike the Middle East, Florida *loves* heavily-armed Europeans, Floridians do love their guns!), and let the Arabs all rot in peace in their Islamist "utopias". They want to live in the Middle Ages? Well, that's their decision, not ours, and it's time to let them do what they will.

- Badtux the Realist Penguin

Happy (belated) Columbus Day!

Self-hating liberal Karlo sez: We are again being asked to celebrate "Columbus Day" in celebration of the European "discovery" of the Americas. It's a bit like celebrating Hitler Day to celebrate Adolph's "discovery" of western Russia. What's even more amazing is that Columbus's little group, without the help of tanks or a modern bureacracy, actually managed to mount a genocide of almost modern proportions.

Karlo, c'mon, get with the program. If you're not a good white European-descended Amurrican, you're not a human being, and thus your death is nothing worse than killing a cockroach. Sheesh. Next thing you know, you dastardly liberals are going to be claiming that ARABS are human beings and thus we shouldn't be killing thousands of them in Iraq. What next? Equal rights for Negros? How un-American can you get?!!!

-- Badtux the Tongue-in-cheek Penguin

Freedom of speech and lies

Well, another liberal gets fired for saying bad things about a conservative. I browsed a couple of right-wing blogs that covered this, and they said "Oh sure, he has a right to free speech, but that doesn't mean speech has no consequences."

Which brings to mind another issue that has been bugging me. Politicians today -- the Bush administration and Republicans especially -- lie and lie and lie. They lie about what they're going to do (see: New Orleans, rebuilding, Bush promises thereof, vs. reality), they lie in order to get what they want (see: Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, lies about), they lie about their opponents (see: "If you elect John Kerry, you'll all DIE!"), they lie about reality ("Iraq is TURNING A CORNER!" -- about ten dozen corners over the past few years, by my count), they just lie like other people breathe.

The problem is that with all this bullshit flying around, the public has a damnably hard time shoveling all the cow dung aside to find the grains of truth underneath. All these lies are toxic to representative democracy, since it becomes impossible to figure out who'll do the best job as dog catcher, mayor, or President short of spending massive amounts of time shoveling through all this bull crapola to figure out what the real deal is.

So, applying right-wing logic, I have a proposal: You have the right to tell all the lies you want to tell, but if you do, then you get fired from your job as a politician. Call it the "Truth in Politics Act of 2007". Tell a lie in any public forum (i.e., not to your family or close friends), and you're automatically disqualified from political office -- forever.

A co-worker from India says, "but who decides what is a lie or not?". He points out that in his nation, whoever bribes the Truth Commission with the most money is found to be telling the truth. Well, we have a whole court system devoted to that sort of thing. Any prosecutor in any state of the nation will be allowed to present a case to a grand jury alleging violation of the Truth in Politics Act of 2007. If the grand jury agrees that there is a case, then it goes to trial. At trial, what the prosecutor has to do is prove to a jury that the person involved a) said something that was not true in a public forum, and b) was either negligent (i.e., made no effort to detirmine whether what he said was true) or deliberately did so. All the normal rules of evidence, subpoena power, etc. apply. This isn't some kangaroo court "ethics committee" thing, this is the real deal. And if a jury of ordinary Americans decided that politician X lied, that's it. He is immediately removed from office, and forever barred from holding office again.

Now obviously, this could be abused, so we might want to have some checks and balances here. For example, if the jury rules that the prosecutor brought the case fraudulently or in bad faith in order to harass a politician or, worse yet, immunize a politician from being prosecuted again for a particular lie, it is the prosecutor, not the politician, who loses his job and is barred from public office forever. The jury then has the option to dismiss the case with or without prejudice (legal terms meaning, "the politician is found not guilty and cannot be tried again" and "the politician can be tried again by a prosecutor who isn't misbehaving").

Of course, the other problem is that politicians today employ proxies in order to avoid themselves being tarred as liars. For example, the Bush campaign, via one of their major campaign contributors, employed the "Swift Boat Liars For Truth" to lie about John Kerry's war record, rather than themselves lie about John Kerry's war record. I am accepting suggestions about what to do about that problem. But given that the people who employ liars generally are liars themselves, it's arguable that this situation would remedy itself over time -- lying politicians would go the way of the dodo bird, and thus their lying proxies would end up the same way.

It won't happen, of course. Our political system is based upon lies, the first lie being that it is a democratic system. But hey, a penguin can dream, eh?

-- Badtux the Dreaming Penguin

I feel safer...

because Dear Leader King George III removed the incentives that were keeping North Korea from exploding a nuclear weapon. And now there's nothing to be done about it.

There's speculation that North Korea may have faked the test by using lots and lots of high explosives. There's speculation that it was a "fizzle", a partial fission that fizzled out prior to reaching critical mass in the majority of the plutonium. There's even more way-out speculation that North Korea has no way of delivering a 10 ton nuclear weapon, given that its tests of its missiles have failed miserably (the last, BTW, is not true -- North Korea has dozens of mini-subs that could be used to deliver nuclear weapons to South Korea and Japan's ports, albeit it would of course be a suicide mission for the mini-sub). But there's one thing certain: North Korea did not explode an atomic weapon while Clinton was President, and did explode an atomic weapon while Bush Junior was President. Thanks for making me feel safer, Dear Leader George III!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Oh, and who gave the North Koreans their bomb technology? Our buddies the Pakistanis, of course!

Why the South votes Republican

It is easy to say that it is only racism that gets Southerners to vote Republican. "Scratch a Republican, see the white robes underneath", as I said in an earlier message. But it's more fundamental than that, and while racism is involved, it isn't the fundamental reason why the South votes Republican in national elections. The fundamental reason -- the reason that, amongst all other reasons, is most responsible for driving Southerners to vote for Republicans -- is a failure of hope.

From 1932 to 1960, national politics dominated by Democrats brought enormous gains to the South. The rural South gained electricity, telephone service, and indoor plumbing. The average Southerner went from being a subsistence farmer living in a tar paper shack under conditions reminiscent of the Third World, to living a somewhat normal American life.

And then the progress stopped -- with life in the South still being one of comparative poverty and deprivation compared to that in the rest of the nation. With Southern children still receiving an inadequate education, and Southern politicians still using electoral corruption and rigged laws to make sure that a small elite continued to control Southern politics. And since 1970, things have even started sliding backwards somewhat in the South, as factories close and move to China and elsewhere. And the response of the Democrats on a national level was... [crickets].

The fact of the matter is that Southerners have simply lost faith in the national government and its ability to build a better life for all. When Democrats make promises, Southerners look at those pretty promises and say, "Yes, I heard those same promises from LBJ." Southerners have simply lost faith in the ability and willingness of a Democratic Party dominated by big cities in the North and Pacific coast to address their needs. Thus they vote for the party that promises to drown the national government in a bathtub. At least then they won't be paying as many taxes to be misgoverned, the thinking goes.

Democrats will re-gain power in Washington some day, unless the Busheviks engineer a coup and declare the end of the Republic. If nothing else, the reaction of the ruling oligarchy to continuing Republican misrule will insure this. But if they obtain power and still do nothing to improve living conditions for all Americans -- including those in the South who did not vote for them -- they risk seeing their experience in the South extending nationwide. A Party that does not keep its promises is a Party that is doomed to extinction. If after regaining power the Democrats do not implement a French-style medical system, address the loss of good-paying jobs and declining standard of living of a large swathe of America, and otherwise behave as a party of the people rather than as just another arm of the ruling oligarchy, they risk going the same way as the Whigs. Whether that will be enough incentive for the Democratic heirarchy to risk bucking the ruling oligarchs and bring in reforms that improve the life of the average American... well, that remains to be seen.

- Badtux the Hope Penguin

Here's the "freedom" we brought to Iraq

The freedom to die because the hospitals have no medicines, no bandages, no nothing, that is.

This is the "freedom" that our Republican government wants for America too. Bank on it.

- Badtux the Apocalyptic Penguin

The revolt of the oligarchs

The Republican Revolution has been kind to the oligarchs who rule America. The Fortune 400, the 400 wealthiest people in America, now control 50% of the wealth of America and even the least amongst them is a multi-billionaire. Their investment in getting their servants, the Republicans, elected to office, appears to have paid nicely.

That said, the oligarchs appear to be getting nervous. Their servants have started to become arrogant and started to believe their own propaganda. The last time this happened, they got their servant Richard Nixon fired by having one of their own, former Naval Intelligence officer Bob Woodward, publish details of Nixon's corruption. Once again, they've started pulling out the stops. Once again they've sent in their hired gun to smear the President (not that it takes much to smear the most incompetent and most corrupt President since Ullyses S. Grant). And now comes the latest: an article in the house organ of the oligarchy, Time Magazine, taking whacks at the Republican legislature in general.

Clearly the oligarchy is worried. While Republican rule has been kind to their pocketbooks, allowing them to amass more personal wealth than 50% of the American public combined, the continued degeneration of Republican competence to what is now a level that is astounding only in that these people all somehow managed to graduate from college (talk about your grade inflation!) is a threat to that pocketbook. The massive costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars, the enormous budget deficits, the lack of investment in infrastructure needed to help them live a good life with their wealth, and, more importantly, the possibility of public disorder if the economy and government infrastructure utterly collapses as appears likely if the Republicans continue to rule, have all combined to alarm them.

Especially the possibility of public disorder. The last time that happened was in 1932, when a Communist revolution appeared to be certain due to the collapse of the Republican order into corruption and incompetence. To prevent a revolution then, the oligarchs had to put forth programs and compromises that went far beyond what they were comfortable with. But better to offer semi-socialist solutions via FDR's "New Deal" than to have the Communists take over and strip them of their wealth and power altogether -- and that's what anything less than the New Deal would have resulted in.

They don't want the situation to get to the point this time where another "New Deal" is necessary to prevent revolution. They want to remedy the situation early, before they have to once again give up a huge chunk of their wealth and power in order to keep the peasants from storming their gates and hauling them out and hanging them from the nearest oak tree. Thus the latest sabre-rattling by the various old-line oligarchical institutions.

The only question is whether the Republicans will give up power voluntarily, or whether they will instead defy the oligarchs and cling to power by any means necessary -- by ANY means necessary. Already the Busheviks have some assets in their corner that prior regimes opposed by the oligarchy did not have -- their own propaganda networks, their own armies of brownshirted storm troopers willing to do anything for their Dear Leader and His holy annointed administration, and, most importantly, control over the voting machines that count the votes in major swathes of the country. No longer is it necessary to have operatives in each and every precinct in order to stuff the ballot box. One little 'if' statement in the programming for every electronic voting machine in the country suffices. However, it is unclear if the Republicans are going to be able to hold on to their nifty little ballot-stuffing machines past the current election. The oligarchy has started to take steps ("verified voting", paper trail requirements, etc.) that render that null and void.

As for democracy, no such thing exists in America. We get to vote for candidate A or candidate B, both of whom are candidates due to their ability to gain financial support from the oligarchy. We vote for candidates that the oligarchs choose for us, rather than for the best person for the job. Instances of true democracy in America are very rare, and typically happen only in unimportant local elections in small towns where candidates can individually meet every single voter. This nation was founded by men of wealth and means who revolted against their rightful government because said government wished to take back rule of the colonies from the wealthy and powerful men who ran them, and its government was deliberately set up so that the oligarchs who created and funded the American Revolution could retain their wealth and power into perpetuity.

For the most part, they succeeded, thanks to a propaganda effort astounding in its thoroughness and thanks to their willingness to allow the "little people" the illusion of freedom. This is how it has always been, and how it will always be. Us little people have about as much power as ants to change this, as long as the majority believe the propaganda that tells them that they are free -- despite all evidence to the contrary.

-- Badtux the non-oligarchical Penguin

King George III honors King George II

King George III today christened a ship named after his father, King George II.

It is expected that Queen Jenna or Not-Jenna will christen another ship named after their father, King George III, at some point in the next 30 years.

I have another pepperoni pizza in the oven, topped with jalapenos and black olives.

That is all.

-- Badtux the "Can we call them royalty yet?" Penguin

California Livin'

The Mighty Fang catches some rays.

-- Badtux the Bonus-cat-blogging Penguin

Ze Governator throws red meat to his base

with comments that offend Hispanics, but which will have his core supporters clapping and cheering.

Scratch a Republican, see the white bedsheet underneath. Or the swastika in this case, given that the Governator hails from the same locale as that short painter dude who got half of German manhood killed...

Will it hurt his governor's run? Of course not. The people he offended weren't voting for him in the first place. This wasn't an off-the-cuff remark. This was a remark specifically calculated to shore up his support amongst the Republican base, a Republican base that in an earlier era would be capering about in a pointy hood and bedsheet, and nowdays merely vote Republican (cheaper than buying bedsheets -- have you see the price of new bedsheets lately?!).

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Send in the clowns

From an interview in which Evil Spock interviews a clown running for mayor of the City of Alameda:

ES: So why does Alameda need a clown in the mayor's seat?

KK: We have three clowns running; I'm just the only one who gets paid to be a clown.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

The mighty Fang's addiction

Can... not... resist... urge to knock over the trash and lick the cardboard!

To be fair, said cardboard *did* smell slightly of catnip. And the Mighty Fang does like his catnip, to the point where I'm always scared that the DEA will smash through my door, and, mistaking the baggies in my pantry for another weed, haul me off as a major drug distributor. But this is just ridiculous, the action of an addict jonesing for his drug and willing to do anything, no matter how anti-social, to get it.

-- Badtux the Addicted-cat-owned Penguin

Stupid idea of the week: Gun-totin' teachers

One proposal of the nutball fringe, in response to the recent school shootings, is to arm the teachers. This is the stupidest, most inane idea I've ever heard of. All you're doing, giving guns to teachers, is giving future school shooters a source of weapons already pre-loaded in the classroom.

See, here's the deal. Guns have one purpose: to kill people. It takes a special kind of person to just pull out a gun and kill a person -- the thought of killing another human being is abhorrent to most thinking feeling humans, meaning that only antisocial crazies can easily use a gun in this kind of situation, and hopefully "antisocial crazies" does *not* describe our teacher corps. Or it takes a special kind of training to over-ride that abhorrence. Infantry soldiers get that kind of training. Cops get that kind of training. Ordinary civilians don't.

Now, some folks, conditioned by television and fiction (and I'm slightly guilty here, sigh!), think you can just pull a gun out and kinda wave it around and stuff and the bad guy will just stop and put his hands up. That's not the case. The bad guy is going to lunge at you and grab the gun and turn it on you and kill you. The only way to stop that is to kill him -- immediately, without hesitation, without thought. Unless you're trained beforehand to do this, it isn't happening.

And then there's the question of where the hell teachers are going to carry weapons. In their purse that's in their locked desk drawer during class hours to keep the little hoodlums angels from stealing them blind? Open carry in a shoulder holster because the male teacher took off his sport jacket because teaching is a hot and sweaty business (talk about your classroom distractions!)? In a gun safe where it's going to do a helluva lot of good if an armed hoodlum rushes the classroom? The people proposing this have never taught a day in their life, and don't have the slightest damned idea of just how logistically impossible their idiotic proposal is, given the working conditions of a typical teacher. Unlike an office worker, you can't just leave a loaded weapon in a desk drawer where it's easily accessible. The little thieves angels *will* get into your desk the moment you turn your back, satisfying their need to steal curiousity. And because teachers are in close proximity to children all day long, the kids will swiftly figure out that there's a gun in that fanny pack holster... and if the children know you're carrying, everybody does, meaning the bad guy will simply take you out first, take your weapon, and use it to kill others.

So yeah, go ahead and arm teachers -- if you're wanting to provide bad guys with more guns and ammunition. There's a reason why all the cops surveyed think this is the dumbest idea ever to come out of the right wingnuttysphere. And it ain't 'cause they're interested in coddling criminals either.

-- Badtux the Gun-totin' Penguin

The Jesus Curtain goin' up....

The Communists had their "Iron Curtain". Now the Busheviks, their natural successors, are going to be building the "Jesus Curtain" along the Southern border to keep atheists, gays, and feminists from escaping Jesus Camps untermenschen out. Of course, show me an 10 foot fence, I'll show you a twelve foot ladder... so expect the next stage to be deployment of armed soldiers to keep the untermenschen out and, most importantly, to keep the athiests, gays, and feminists in (oops, and let's not forget about evolutionary biologists, the most heretical of all!). After all, we don't want them to be able to just leave when it comes time to round them up and send them to Jesus Camp where they can properly learn to love and worship our Lord and Savior, George W. Bush, right?!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

More Microsoft stupidity...

Any hacker will be able to disable your computer at any time just by fooling the next release of Microsoft's OS into believing it isn't a "genuine Microsoft product".

Bill Gates is the only person on this planet more arrogant than George W. Bush. His attitude apparently is, "I can do what I want, and if you don't like it, bite me." Makes me glad I'm a Linux penguin.

-- Badtux the Linux-using Penguin

Christianity: the religion of hate

Joseph Farah of World Nut Daily is fond of calling Islam "the religion of hate". But the murder of innocents is one of the sorts of things that Christians do all the time, and have done for centuries.

Christianity: The religion of hate. If you doubt it, two words: Pat Robertson.

Note to outraged followers of Jesus Christ: You're not Christians. Didn't you get the memo?! Or is the memo unclear for some reason? If you don't believe in converting non-believers to Christianity at swordpoint like the Spanish Reconquista did to the Muslims and Jews of Spain when they conquered it, you're not a "real" Christian, you're just a follower of Jesus Christ, not the same thing at all, and are going to Hell.

-- Badtux the "Christians != followers of Jesus Christ" Penguin

Grand Ole' Perverts

While we're talking about the fact that the Republicans covered up for one of their perverts, let's not forget the LAST time that Republicans covered up for their perverts -- when a call-boy ring ran its boy prostitutes through the White House. The Republicans paint themselves as the Party of Moral Values when in fact there is a whole USENET newsgroup devoted to right-wing "Christian" perverts, and right-wing anti-abortion Catholic priests are regularly caught en flagrante' with under-age boys. This isn't even the first time that a Republican congressman has sexually molested a House page. Rep. Bob Crane of Illinois gets that honor.

Let's face it, these dudes are some really gross old perverts. The party of moral values indeed... perhaps the moral values of Caligula, that is.

-- Badtux the Head-shakin' Penguin

The Enabling Act of 2006

I'm wondering whether the passage of the Enabling Act of 2006, which like its predecessor the Enabling Act of 1933 gives Dear Leader or his successor the right to jail anybody without trial forever in a military gulag with a simple declaration that said person is an "enemy of the state" (whoops, "enemy combatant", same difference), means I ought to start the process of leaving now rather than later when the borders might be sealed to prevent Americans from leaving rather than foreigners from entering. Penguins are not a member of one of the groups that Dear Leader's core constituency wants rounded up and placed into detention camps (gays, feminists, evolutionary scientists, etc.), but still...

In my post below I mention some places. Here we go:

1. Canada: Easy to get residency if you have a professional degree and professional experience. Hard to get work outside of a taxi cab, especially if you have a stereotypically American accent. 25% unemployment rate amongst immigrants.
2. New Zealand: See Canada.
3. Panama, Chile, Uruguay: Relatively "pro-business" by South American standards (meaning it takes only six months and tens of thousands of dollars in bribesfees to start a business, and if you hire someone, it takes only a year to fire them and you must pay their wages for that full year even if they find another job), note that because they are so "pro-business" you'll probably end up working in the "irregular" economy as an "independent businessman" dodging the policia, rather than as an employee. Still, if you can hack it as an "independent businessman", either place is a nice place to live. Panama has no military thus isn't going to be invading anybody, Chile has a military but the only people they would want to invade are Argentina, and the Andes make that kind of hard, so their military mostly just goose-steps a lot and occasionally overthrows the government in a junta (but that hasn't happened for 30 years now, so that's good, I guess).
4. Brazil: Enormous underclass, don't like Americans, period. Not safe for Americans anymore, alas.
5. Europe: You're kidding, right? Europe is a bunch of effete snobs who are bigotted against anybody who wasn't born in whatever country you're thinking about. And sometimes even against people who WERE born in that country. You have Algerian Muslims who have been living in France for three generations who were born in France, whose parents were born in France, whose grandparents were born in France, who aren't allowed to become citizens or to legally work, thereby forcing them into the underground economy (i.e., slave labor for the unscrupulous). Same deal with Turks in Germany.
6. Africa: Don't go there. Period.
7. Asia: As a white European you can do okay in China or South Korea or even Thailand, but you'll always be a foreigner. Some people can deal with that, others can't. Don't even think about Japan -- they're the most bigotted people on Earth, even more bigotted than the French.
8. Eastern Europe: You gotta be kidding.

All in all, your best bet is Canada if you're one of the groups targetted by Dear Leader's SS (gays, evolutionary biologists, etc.), followed by New Zealand. The Latin American locales are cheap and if you are good at hustling you can make a decent living there, but aren't particularly friendly to the groups that the Enabling Act is going to target -- e.g., abortion is illegal in most of them so feminists fleeing the camps probably won't feel welcome, and homosexuality is viewed as beyond disgusting down there. The only good news is that they will take anybody with money -- if you can get $200K out of your house (easy for Californians, hard elsewhere), Panama will take you in a heartbeat, for example. Canada and New Zealand are more picky, only accepting degreed professionals in certain fields. If you're an auto mechanic, neither wants you -- though it is proposed in Canada to change that (they've noticed that they have too many software engineers and not enough auto mechanics thanks to rubber-stamping so many visas from software engineers).

-- Badtux the "Enabling Acts suck" Penguin

Office coffee: Boon or bane?

I'm just wondering. Is there, like, some law that says that office coffee must be disgusting?

I poured a cup of office coffee a few minutes ago. It foamed. Bad portent. I took a sip. BAH! Even worse than the Folgers they used to make! I poured it out, washed out my cup and my mouth with soap and water to get rid of any taint of the stuff, and made a spot of tea instead...

Thankfully I have a little 4-cup coffee maker and my own Community Coffee dark roast at my desk, or I'd be going thru caffeine withdrawal big-time.

-- Badtux the Caffeinated Penguin

Time to admit it: I'm un-American

Republican leader Trent Lott gave the most succinct reason why Americans don't care about all the innocents dying from American bombs and bullets in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon, when he said, of dark-skinned people overseas, "I can't tell the difference between them." Scratch a Republican and see the white robes underneath that fancy facade. There's a reason why the KKK's symbol and the right-wing Chistopath's symbol are both a cross.

I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that despite the fact that I was born in the United States and hold a US passport, I am not an American. If I were an American, I would believe, like 63% of Americans, that torture is a right nice thing rather than a moral atrocity. I would believe that it is a good idea to bomb and/or invade random countries just because we can. I would believe that the question of whether Jennifer Lopez had liposuction on her hips is more important than thousands of innocents dying due to American bombs and bullets in Lebanon or Iraq. If I were really an American, I would be an incurious Budweiser-swilling boor with an unwarranted sense of self-entitlement and an impenetrable willful ignorance about anything outside of Entertainment Weekly.

The only question is whether I make it official and start the immigration process now to move north to Canada, or wait 20 years until I hit retirement age and move south of the border, where their governments are as corrupt and incompetent as the Bushevik governments but at least they don't invade random countries and start slaughtering people for no reason but to prove that their Dear Leader has a big swingin' dick.

-- Badtux the un-American Penguin