That geography test was surprisingly simple. However, knowing my luck with things that seem suprisingly simple, I probably failed it. Such is life.


I promised some commentary on the day.

1. It's been about 3 years since a hurricane has struck the United States. Yes, tropical storms have hit us in that time span but no hurricanes. Lili might end that streak this week if she grows into the monster hell-child-from-the-Caribbean that she is supposed to.

Tropical cyclones are not all that bad. In fact, we need them.

September 1999 bought the horror of Floyd to the east coast. 80 people or something like that died. Darby Twp (or is it Darby Boro...there's two of them) was totally flooded. But...Floyd helped break the back on a drought that had struck the east.

It's drought time again. It's simple. If we in Pennsylvania, and other Northeastern states, do not receive tropical moisture for an extended period of time, we have droughts.

2. I have some thoughts on the one vote only article I posted earlier today.

We would have unified government. Sure, we've had it before. But usually, there's some paralysis or other inhibiting factor that stops that unified government from working, and it usally falls by the next midterm.

If the GOP gets control this time, I only forsee chaos. Here's my reasoning.

We have a charaismatic, abeit stupid, leader who has high popularity ratings due to the horror of September 11, 2001. While I have my own, personal, and very angry, thoughts on President Bush's foreknowledge of said atrocity against the American people, the public doesn't. They love the man. Why? I have no frinkin clue.

A unified Republican government would push that man's misguided and idiotic agenda. The public would be nearly powerless to stop him, that is, until 2004.

But what could happen between now and then?
1. Privitization of Social Security. This is a baddddddd idea. With the markets tumbling all the time, why on earth would anyone want to put their social security money there?
2. War. A Republican controlled Congress bascially would give Bush the authorization to do whatever the hell he wants. If this happens, Iraq, your oil is ours. Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Libya and all the rest, y'all are next. Of course, the chaos that a pre-emptive strike could hold in terms of the global geo-political view still are scary to think about. If we get to use the pre-emptive strike, does that mean India can send its army into Pakistan, causing Pakistan to use its nukes in defense, sparking a regional apocolypse? Or does China get to attack Taiwan, saying that the Taiwanese are a threat to them? Or does some country get to do a "regime change" in DC(aka Rome-On-The-Potomac)? Scary.
3. Bye-bye environment.
4. Hello corporate tax-cuts. (read: "you get a reward for looting our economy!")
5. Hello gargantuan defense budget. 500 billion? Make it an even trillion! (this of course, is an affirmation that noone really likes us and we're quite paranoid in our defense of "democracy")

and so on...imagining this stuff makes me grumpy. The moral of the story: vote. and vote well. just say "Let's Roll!" and save our country.

3. My random Iraq bitching of the day: If Saddam abuses his people, why oh why did we let Indonesia abuse the East Timorese for 25 FUCKING YEARS???
250,000 East Timorese are DEAD because we looked the other way and gave the Indonesian government arms! FUCK! All the East Timorese wanted was INDEPENDANCE and DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM and LIBERTY..things we are supposed to defend. hmmmm...I suspect oil/gas was involved. I will need to do further research. email me if you have info on why we allowed this slaugher to happen. Thank god East Timor finally got its independance. So many died bringing it too...

4. an obvious fact: Turkey brutalizes its Kurds just like Iraq does. Why are we not deposing Turkey's leadership?

time for prozac.