Of course Israel has a right to defend itself, and building a buffer zone is a good idea if you can't get Hezbollah to relax a little. But could we please do it without turning Lebanon into a third world country? Again?

Now in addition to blowing up trenches, missiles, terrorists, women, children, aoartment complexes and TV stations, Israel decided yesterday, despite repeated warnings not to, to kill some Smurfs (Or to give them their official title, UN Peacekeeprs).

Secretary General Kofi Annan (or to give him his official title, Papa Smurf) is now pissed at Israel which is not going to help them get this thing done before Condi looks at her stopwatch, checks with the linesman then blows her whistle.

So we will end up with the same half-assed mess we had before this started.

Everyone needs to just chill the f*ck out.

Including me.

The other thing that pisses me off about this, for reasons that I cannot begin to articulate, is that in addition to using US taxpayer money to provide aid to the Lebanese, The current administration is also using US taxpayer money to help Israel continue to blow the living crap out of them.

I would like to say this surprises me, but of course it doesn't. Having blowing up Iraq for no damn good reason at all (with US taxpayer money), we are now rebuilding it (with US taxpayer money).

A fundamental republican principle is that government should be small and efficient, hence less taxes.

Well we got less taxes, but our government appears to have grown exponentially. And yet the education, social security and basic support stuctures once provided by these taxes have been gutted.

Why? Because as we continue to trade liberty for security, and as we continue to fund the destruction and recreation of other countries (make that three so far this last 5 years) the US government has no money left in the coffers to provide the fundamental services for which it was created in the first place.

Neither do the States, because of the demands placed on them by the Fed.

In the past five years, I have been surprised by some things, annoyed by a lot of things, scared a couple of times and experienced the odd case of Schadenfreude, but I do not recall the last time I was really and truly happy about the way things were going.

And are we really supposed to be excited that this might be Armageddon? What the hell is up with that?

Perhaps Hell on Earth starts with making this place hotter - hence all the Global Warming.

Nothing like a good self-fulfilling prophecy to start the millenium...