Good News, Boom News

First, the good news...it's becoming increasingly clear that the country is rising up to force the Bush adminstration to abandon the mindless "stay the course" approach to their disaster in Iraq and begin the process of bringing our troops home. Latest example of this was the incredibly large turnout of people for a symposium on Iraq in the sleepy town of Northbrook on a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon in January. Ellen describes the day much better than I can here. She also mentions that our absentee congressman, Rooster Kirk, was surprisingly not present for yet another important open meeting in his district. He probably should be excused as his leader, Tom DeLay, was at the time scurrying to try to protect his lucrative leadership position. Now that the party of the culture of corruption has finally given up hope of keeping DeLay in charge of the dirty money chute into their pockets, they are very busy trying to find someone who can paint a false front of supporting campaign reform while making sure that the money continue to flows to them behind the scenes.
Now, the bad news...it's not going to matter anyway as it looks like the planet will be blown up soon. Those paragons of stability, the religious crazies who run Iran, have decided to openly resume development of nuclear weapons. They don't even try very hard to hide their intentions as they use the ridiculous justification that their work is for peaceful, nuclear power research. When you are sitting on more oil than your can ever pump out of the ground? Hmm, sounds a bit suspicious. Let's see, their president actually claimed that the Holocaust never happened and that Israel should be wiped off the map. I wonder what their first target will be? Until three years ago, the world was a safer place because these crazies would be put in their place by the reasoned actions of other countries, especially the superpowers. Economic sanctions would be threatened, technology would be embargoed, United Nations pressure and sanctions would be brought, and if all else fails, the military might of the United States would be brought to bear and nuclear facilities of rogue nations would be bombed or more secretively destroyed. These type of actions were effective because of the strong moral international reputation of the United States and its allies that backed them up. That moral reputation has been totally ruined by the precipitant actions of the Bush administration in Iraq. To think that the US could go before the world and propose that it must unilaterally act militarily to stop Iran is laughable. No matter what evidence they would present, no one would be believe them as they will be comparing it to Collin Powell holding up a vial of "anthrax" and all the other distortions used by the neocons to rush to war in Iraq. Our only hope is that Iran will need more than a few years to go nuclear. Once our government starts to shift to sanity in November with the election of a Democratic House and Senate, we can begin the long process of restoring the reputation of the United States and making the world a safer place.