News is supposed to be NEW

The reason behind the lack of my news or politics-related material recently is due to a very simple fact - the world has become boring. I haven’t seen anything new happening in months. The war in Iraq continues, stagnating at the pace of a glacier. Has anything new happened there? No. US soldiers continue to die every day. Sunni and Shi’a continue their slaughter. Iraqi politicians resign and rejoin, but no legislation of any consequence is passed.

Speaking of that, our own legislative body has yet to pass any significant laws on Iraq or otherwise. Sure, they did the FISA thing last weekend, but it has a rushed air about it and I’m sure the complaints of bone-headedness will continue.

Congress, as far as I’ve figured from the news, was never able to find out what the deal was over the fired DoJ personnel. So, was it politically motivated or not? And speaking of which, will they ever elicit testimony from the White House staff which does not contain a permutation of “I do not recall”? Seriously, the White House needs to vote to fund embryonic stem cell research because if Gonzalez’s memory is this bad NOW, imagine how bad it’ll be once he has dementia.

What else remains exactly the same as before? The insensitivity to the progress in the war in Iraq. The situation seems to be similar to having a girlfriend that bugs you, but feeling that breaking up and finding another one is just too much work. So you keep on stringing her along, hoping she’ll change or just stop being annoying. Meanwhile she’s getting more and more attached. Similarly, no one in congress seems to have the will to do anything. They’d like to get out, but it’s just too much work. Really, I just have this vain wish that they’d be a little more honest. If you think we need to stick around in Iraq, that’s ok as long as you tell people we need to be there for a few years or a decade or century or whatever. Don’t say it’ll take six months and then, six months later, say it’ll take another six months. I must praise the plan as brilliant. What American would object to six more months? Probably orders of magnitude less than those who would object to staying for years.

I used to think that senators who called for the draft were nuts. Now I see they are the only ones thinking rationally. Whether or not John Kerry had a good choice of words, it truly is the poor who end up in Iraq in disproportionate numbers. Who, in their right mind, would sign up for the military in a time of war when the homefront was not under attack? The baddies that hit us on 11 Sept were in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

What else has remained at a standstill? The presidential candidates who are likely to win all say the same non-committal things and the only interesting ones are the ones placed at the far left and right at the CNN debates.

The only other news has revolved around media-created celebs who find it impossible to get behind the while sober. Why they don’t just hire a chauffeur is beyond me.

So, since there isn’t anything new to write, I just focus my time on my hobbies.