I find it interesting that an animal can make us more human; but I am truly a better person for having known him. I would like to believe he is in a better place–he truly deserves it. Sadly, I don’t believe such things. It would be nice to imagine him with young hips, jumping into the bed of a truck–young hips that can handle long walks in the woods and runs through a meadow. Or in a place where there are swimming holes to enjoy every day. He deserves a place where no one ever tells him to go to his corner or to get out of our way. And no one is ever mad at him for being a dog and doing dog things.

I have found myself closing my eyes and imagining exactly these things even though I know it’s just my imagination.

I wasn’t good enough for him, but he made me a better person. I learned a lot about loyalty and peace during my 13 years with him. Over the last several years, his age was catching up with him. His step was slower and his hips bothered him a lot. Sadly, I know that his last several years were made worse as he became less important while my wife and kids filled larger and ever larger parts of my life. He deserved better in his twilight years considering all of the things he went through with me. Only now that he is gone do I realize what a large hole there is in my heart that he still filled.

So long, my dear friend Reggie. You will be sorely missed for a long time.

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You see, the country is weary of Bush.  The country is weary of war.  The country is weary of being told that they should be afraid of a few boogeymen who live in caves in the middle east.  The country is sick of being lied to about things that are obvious lies.  So they’re looking for change and they are gladly going to support a candidate who looks like change–even if he isn’t.

Imagine how they would have supported a candidate who stood for real change and had the record to back up his claims.  But, “I told you so’s” isn’t really why I am writing this entry.

Really, I’m writing it to tell you what you have been telling me and my fellow third party voters for years:  Your guy can’t win.  If you cast a vote for John McCain, you are throwing your vote away.  Obama has this locked up and will win in a landslide.

So make your vote count.  Vote third party.  Both Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party nominee, and Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party nominee, stand for and support the things you believe in.  It’s true that neither of these candidates can win either; but at least a vote for one of them is a vote that you can walk away from with a good conscience.

A vote for Bob Barr or Chuck Baldwin is not a vote for Obama if Obama has it locked up either way.  So show your disgust with the Republican party.  Show your disgust with the system that nominated the worst possible candidate.  Do it by giving your vote to a person who actually deserves it.  Or throw your vote away and vote for McCain.

Your choice.

To the neocon statement I say, “so what?”  It only takes a few moments on Google and Wikipedia to discover that there hadn’t been a single terrorist attack on American soil in the prior 8.5+ years.  As a matter of fact the last attack on our soil by non-Americans prior to 9-11 was the bombing of the WTC on Feb. 26, 1993.  The last terrorist bombing on American soil before 9-11 was on April 19, 1995 by homegrown terrorist, Tim McVeigh.

The bottom line is that there just aren’t that many terrorist attacks in our country–homegrown or otherwise.  The number of attacks increases somewhat if we count things like snipers, school shooters, anthrax mailers, or mailbox bombers–but the neocons don’t like to count those things because they are almost always done by homegrown American crazies, and where’s the fun if you can’t blame some swarthy, beard-growing Muslim gentlemen?  They also don’t like to count these types of terrorists because then they can no longer claim that there haven’t been any attacks in seven years.  Heck, school shootings alone there have been five separate incidents just this year.

Seems like maybe Bush needs to ask Congress for permission to declare a War on Schools.  In his twisted view, it would probably make sense to invade the University of Wisconsin because there are midwesterners there and it was a midwesterner responsible for the shooting at Northern Illinois University.  Besides, if we’re fighting them in Wisconsin then we won’t have to fight them here at home.

Not that executive experience is necessarily that important.  The most important trait for our President would be the ability to read and comprehend the limits that the Constitution places on the Federal government. Sadly there’s no one running who has that ability. The Libertarian candidate usually comes closest, but Barr’s record doesn’t really match his current campaign.

Finally, how does being elected to the US Senate, primarily because your opponent was forced to drop out of the race because his Hollywood ex-wife made up stories about him in a divorce, and then doing practically nothing once you’re there other than explore a Presidential bid and then run a campaign prepare one for the Presidency?  Frankly, no one’s prepared to be President. Palin isn’t.  Obama isn’t. Biden isn’t.  And especially McCain isn’t.

Not a single one of those assclowns even knows that the Constitution is a charter that tells the Federal government exactly what it’s allowed to do.  Bottom line: if it’s not in the Constitution, we the People do not grant the government the power to do it.  Read the Federalist Papers sometime, people–then maybe you’ll be close to being qualified to be President.

When I was in the Navy in my late teens and early twenties, I was in a command that was oppressed by a tyrannical Master Chief.  Unless you were there, it would be difficult for you to comprehend the sheer hopelessness and helplessness that was felt throughout our ranks.  Unfortunately my power of storytelling can’t do it justice, but I will give a couple examples.

Shortly after my promotion to Petty Officer 3rd Class, while working in our squadron’s line division, I was in the line shack working on paperwork or filling out a log book.  The Maintenance Master Chief walked into the line shack looking for someone or something (I’ll never know what because he didn’t say).  “Petty Officer Snyder, congratulations.  That chevron looks pretty good on your sleeve.”

“Thank you Master Chief,” I replied.

“IF YOU’D LIKE TO KEEP THAT MOTHERFUCKING SONOFABITCH…”  I’d be lying if I claimed to remember a word he said after that.  My point is that I was doing my job, doing nothing wrong and he tore into me for no reason whatsoever.

Another example:  By the time of this story, I had been promoted to Petty Officer 2nd Class.  We deployed onboard the USS Eisenhower out of Norfolk, Virginia; although our squadron was based in Jacksonville, Florida.  This meant that every time the Ike was to leave the pier we were required to pack up our squadron and ship it to Norfolk–two semi-trucks and six large helicopters worth of gear.  Of course, everyone in the squadron was involved in packing, loading the trucks and unloading the trucks.  Then after unloading, distributing the gear to its proper space onboard the ship.  And when I say everyone, I mean everyone who was a 2nd Class and below.  Chiefs were good at standing around and “supervising” while 1st Classes were good at disappearing.

Anyway, in Norfolk, the Ike was at the pier with aircraft elevators 1, 2, and 3 pierside, which left only El. 4 able to run equipment and gear between the hangar deck and the flight deck.  There was a conveyor set up to get boxes, bags and other gear from the pier to the hangar which beat the hell out of trying to carry everything up a ladder or gangplank.  Once on the hangar deck, there were forklifts and pallets for moving stuff into staging areas.  However, most of our gear had to then be distributed from the hangar to various places throughout the ship.  Most of our work and berthing spaces were on levels above the hangar deck so running it up to the flight deck and carrying it down ladderwells made much more sense than carrying it up ladder wells from the hangar deck.

Unfortunately on this one occasion El. 4 was undergoing routing maintenance and it would be several hours before it could be run.  Fortunately there really wasn’t any hurry.  The problem was that apparently the deck department was also telling our Master Chief that the elevator might run sooner.  The other problem was that the mess decks were only open during a brief window and no one was allowed to go for fear that the elevator might make a run sooner.

At one point, I and several other people asked the chief who was left in charge if we could rotate people down to eat.  The chief agreed that was a good plan.  I was among the first people who went–rank has its privileges (although they were few and far between in that squadron).  After eating quickly, we returned so that the next group could go, to find everyone standing in ranks at attention.  Not knowing what was going on, we fell into ranks.  A few minutes later, the Maintenance Master Chief walked up and asked, “how many people have been to eat.”  Those of us who had raised our hands.

“LOOK AT ALL THESE COCKSUCKERS!”  I’d be lying if I claimed to remember a word that he said after that.  But I remember the result.  He decided that since some people were gone when the elevator was ready to run that now we wouldn’t use the elevator at all (even though we could have just taken a slightly later elevator run) and we would have to haul everything up the ladderwells to their respective places.  “Everything” included 100 pound cruise boxes with little wire handles that would cut into our hand regardless of the quality of our gloves–which were only of a decent quality at all if we were smart enough to have bought our own.  Many people weren’t that smart.

During my time in that command, someone decided to start fires in the barracks back in Jacksonville.  On another occasion, someone poked holes through the skin of the helicopters with a screwdriver or something similar.  There may have been other acts that I don’t know about, but one thing is clear: these acts could have killed people–and the wrong people at that.

Now, I’m a very stable person, but even I fantasized about the day that someone less stable than I would walk into the Maintenance Office with a pistol and put an end to all our suffering.

The whole point to these examples is that when someone has been pushed around enough with no recourse they may ultimately take the only recourse left open to them.  Starting fires in a barracks or poking holes in an aircraft are a type of terrorism.  Sometimes terrorism is the only recourse left to a desperate soul.

Why is it so hard to understand that after years and years of overthrowing governments, or taking other actions that lead to the starvation or other deaths of millions of a person’s countrymen (and women and children) that those survivors may resort to the only recourse they have left?  In my squadron we suffered for a few years and a few desperate people broke down and resorted to a type of terrorism.  What might 50 years of unimaginable provocation lead to?  Call it what you will, the CIA calls it blowback.

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly don’t condone terrorism.  But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand it.

In most political campaigns today, the candidates are always talking about all of the things that are wrong that need to be fixed.  President Reagan campaigned the other way.  He talked about the things that were right with America.  One of his most memorable speeches came at the 1976 GOP convention–the impromptu “Shining City on the Hill” speech.

Today, the candidates are all talking about the things that are wrong.  Even my own [former] candidate, Ron Paul, spoke a lot more about how we’re in trouble than how great things are.  Granted, if things don’t turn around we could soon be in a lot of trouble–but that should emphasize how important it is to focus on the positives and come up with ways to achieve even more positives.  In most of his speeches and writings, that’s what my [former] candidate did, even if the press marketed him as a grouchy old man.

But the two remaining candidates aren’t talking about ways to acheive positives.  And on the rare occasion that they do, their only answers are to spend more of your hard-earned money.  That’s where Dr. Paul became grouchy–every time he saw another candidate promise to throw away more of your money.

Of course the biggest (and easiest) way to save money is to bring our troops home and shut down our Empire’s foreign bases.  According to Chalmers Johnson at The History News Network, we have well over a half million Americans employed overseas by our military.

Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage — Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.

Even during the Cold War, we weren’t spread this far and wide despite the fact that we faced a real threat at that time.  The Soviet Union was a powerhouse that could readily match our military and technology.  Not like today where we are asked to live in fear of a medium-sized tribe of guys that live in caves who fight with weapons that we would hardly consider worthy of being peddled at the Army-Navy store.

To make matters worse, that minor threat wouldn’t be a threat at all if we hadn’t constantly been antagonizing them over the past 50+ years.  At least since the CIA orchestrated coup against Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953 that included dressing as Mosaddeq supporters and firing machine gun bursts into crowds.  This is the kind of thing our government does, and then we’re asked to act shocked when “Islamic extremists terrorists” retaliate.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  We can return to being the “shining city on the hill” if we stop believing all of the propaganda that our government puts out to convince us to let them become larger and more powerful.

Now, back to Reagan.  Things were rough in the 70’s and the early part of the 80’s.  In the 70’s there were long lines for gas.  Gas was relatively expensive (by the standards of the day) on those days that you could get it at all.  A lot of people panicked and worried that the country could never return to the glory days of the 50’s.  And they were right, it never did.  But it became better than it had been in the 50’s–different, and probably not as innocent, but in many ways better.  Part of that was due to having a leader who was an optimist.

That being said, although I still could never vote for Obama’s style of socialism; at least he is positive on occasion, and he has ideas even if his ideas are economically unrealistic.  On the other hand, McCain wants us to continue to live in fear, probably for the rest of our lives, of the boogeymen in the middle East.  He has no answers to the problems we face and most likely isn’t even aware of the questions.  This is definitely not an endorsement of Obama, but he probably is a slightly better choice than McCain–in much the same way that eating Tiger Tricholoma mushrooms is superior to dining on Pinkgills.

Fortunately, whichever clown wins; they will have only four years to screw things up worse.  During those four years, the Campaign for Liberty will do nothing but grow bigger and stronger.  The goal at this point is to get Ron Paul some help in the Congress and hopefully get a few like-minded folks elected to the Senate as well.  With this campaign and the masses that Dr. Paul has awakened from their apathy, within a few years we should have a few well-respected Senators and Congressmen that will make the current crop look even more ridiculous than they do now by contrast

That apex in the distance is looking bright again, indeed.

They make promises that they cannot keep when it comes to the social programs and entitlement benefits in the United States. There are no funds for this. Our dollar is seriously devalued which is going to lead to ever increasing prices on everything. On one hand they say tax cuts while on the other promising one payer health care. Where are they planning to get the funding? As the dollar’s value continues to lessen–for many reasons such as the growing public debt, the growing removal of commodities pricing from the USD to the EU and the continued printing of dollars that aren’t backed by a gold standard–fewer countries are going to want to loan us money. We are already indebted to Japan and China to the tune of about $1 trillion.

Think about it. Let’s say you started a big business. You took many, many loans from the bank and consistently only pay on part of the interest and at the same time you borrow smaller amounts from friends claiming that when they retired you would take care of all of their expenses and medical care. You do this over a long period of time and your debt to the bank increases until you owe considerably more than your net worth. You still owe this debt to your friends whose contributions didn’t even come close to how much you are going to have to pay out to them and they are beginning to retire. The bank won’t loan you any more money, you owe huge sums to your friends and you aren’t even managing to pay the bills to keep your business running or even your home.

If you did this you would be in jail, but this is exactly what our government has been doing over time. And even in the much touted “balanced budget” Clinton years the federal debt (public debt) increased by more than $1.3 trillion according to TreasuryDirect.gov.

At some point this has to come to an end. Do you think sending the same kind of people over and over to DC is the answer? Did you know that at no point in the history of the United States has there been no public debt? That’s correct, not one single year. Isn’t it time to try something different? By all means, if you think things are great and that government is doing a very fine job go ahead and send one more typical politician to Washington. But if you think that it’s time for a change, if you think that it’s time that we begin to send Congress a message that we want change, then vote for someone who actually would be a change. Don’t send any more lawyers. If we get the choice, let’s send doctors and economists, physicists and chemists, philosophers and engineers. And if we can let’s send some basic, hard-working, real people who can really represent us–like plumbers, electricians and construction workers. Let’s even send hairdressers and dancers. Pretty much anyone else we send has got to do better than the lawyers have and a good mix of varying types of people would have to represent the interests of the people much better. Now we just have to find ones who are crazy enough to run.

Living in a military community, the meaning of the holiday is much more observable. It’s supposed to be a day where we contemplate those who die in war. Well, there is quite a lot to contemplate.

My job is teaching. I teach electronics to young Sailors and Marines. One of the things I wonder sometimes when I’m in front of one of my classes discussing transistors, is how many of the people sitting in those seats won’t be around in a few months–another casualty of our continued occupation of Iraq.

On the other hand, when I’m at home, I can’t help but imagine that my wife, a Navy Corpsman, could be sent to a combat zone pretty much at any time. Any of my students or my wife could become the next of the roughly 4,000 young men and women who will never return.

When I think of what it would be like to raise my two young sons without their mother, I think about all of the war dead who had young children who will never know their mother or father. Dad will never get to teach them how to bait a hook, how to start a campfire, how to throw a football. Mom will never get to lecture them about how important it is to enunciate their words (sorry, Mom, I couldn’t resist).

I have all these great memories of the things my mother and father did for me and taught me. So many kids won’t have that.

And why won’t they have that? The neo-Cons want us to believe that it is to protect our security. Yet, the vast majority (including the CIA) recognizes that our involvement in the affairs of other nations puts us at higher risk. So what’s the real reason? Cheap oil? Have you compared the price of a barrel of oil today to the price at the start of this war? If that’s the purpose then it isn’t working.

Recently, I read an article about the billions of unaccounted dollars that the Defense Department has misplaced. That is BILLIONS of dollars. And there is the real reason. It’s usually the reason for wars–money, property, and power.

So to all you war orphans, you’ll never get to have those great memories of your Mom because a few people wanted to have a lot of money and power, but they didn’t want to earn it.

Our military housing authority is having a contest where people can submit essays about what Memorial Day means. I should submit this–somehow I don’t think it would win.

So thanks to StumbleUpon Stumbler FerretMom, my really good and equally sarcastic friend, for stumbling me this webpage:

www.theonion.com/content/news/obama_clinton_mccain_join_forces

I can’t tell you how much I needed the laugh.

One of my favorite lines was: “At the top of the platform is a military strategy calling for the phased withdrawal of .000006 brigades from Iraq and Afghanistan every seven months over the next 350 years.”

Sadly I had forgotten that during an election year one must not only submerse oneself in the issues but also partake of the vast buffet of political humor. As usual, the Onion does not disappoint.

Thanks, FerretMom, for the reminder. In times of trouble one must always temper the stress with laughter.

wishing you all much laughter,

Serena