Pig Fat

His coat and gloves went up on the hook and he heeled off his boots. Ma's new rules. Slippers for everyone. Wash your face and gargle before you sit to table ever since that oriental girl came for a 'home-stay' two years back.

Hardy liked the new food but wasn't about to admit it. Besides, sea-weed and bean curd was never gonna beat home-made jam and jelly and looked like there were fresh eggs and cinnamon rolls steaming under the steel warmers on the table today.

'Don't touch a thing, boy. Go get your cousin.'

Damn. Must have eyes in the back of her head. Hardy went down the long hall to the back room. Dennett was glued to CNN.

'They show the hockey scores, yet?'

Nothing. Sometimes Hardy thought about bouncing a shovel off his cousin's head just to see if he'd budge.

'Let's go, Denn. Time to eat.'

Year of The Cow

Picking rocks. Hardy's back screamed each time he tossed some millions-year old stone into the steel bucket of the front-end loader. His nose ran a little in the fresh, sharp winter air.

Climate change? Shit. Snow melted and Hardy was out in those fields, picking out the fresh crop of boulders the freezing earth pushed up into the topsoil. Every year. No wheat or corn got planted till the rocks were gone.

Most kids worked at the outlet mall for an hourly wage un-packing boxes from China. Most times Hardy had no regrets, but clearing rocks each spring always had him thinking about his decision to stick it out another season.

The big loader engine grumbled and stopped.

Mary's jeans tight on her rolling hips and her full, firm ass, glorious as a vision of Jesus, was the about the only thing keeping him going.

Time for breakfast. He straightened with a groan and turned for the house.

1930's

What's at stake. Storm-clouds have yet to completely break over the horizon but that doesn't mean they aren't out there.

There is no substitute for America on the world stage. The choice we have before us is between the potentially disastrous effects of disengagement and the stiff price tag of continued American leadership.

Following the moron currently occupying the Oval Office was never going to be easy. Should the arsenal of democracy choose to follow 'I've got a bracelet, too' we could be looking at a major realignment in the global map, with authoritarian regimes pushing a weak president off positions the west fought for and held for generations.

No We Can't

Joe Biden served notice that all the promises of the last year don't mean squat. Biden warned supporters to expect 'low poll numbers' and expect 'unpopular decisions'.

Gee...higher taxes, no more troops for Afghanistan, and full retreat on all fronts. After pushing the experience candidate out of the primary, the junior Senator from Illinois sends Biden out to beg for patience and understanding while 'I've got a bracelet, too' tries to figure out which part of America is up.

Nobody could have imagined experience might matter.

Take a bow, bots!

Deadwood

Dropping an octave is far more important than dropping the ball. Al Swearengen has a point. Watching McCain sit at the same table for just a few seconds with the guy who knows this election was scripted months ago was almost torture. The fix is in. McCain can fight his corner, pray, and hope to salvage something for Palin in 2012. Obama sat on his 6 point cushion like it was K2 and he had all the keys to the kingdom.

If voters don't step to the musky wonder things are going to get ugly. Dems are eager to surrender the field to every enemy George Bush has managed to embolden on four continents over the last 8 years. America has squandered immense amounts of capitol pissing the world off. Snake oil will sell your kids future to China to win the world over while Putin and the rest smirk.

Get ready to redraw some maps.

Bush Nostalgia

The towers of commerce are crumbling. What better way to celebrate the farcical notion that any of us are capable of learning much from history than the sight of so many voters drooling at the bounty they believe is about to pour forth from an empty cup?

An eternity ago American voters, bored of Clinton constructed good times, sniffed at Al Gore and decided (kind of) for the much more exciting and affable political operator from Texas. Unable to enter any decent grad school on merit, the Connecticut Senator's grandson slithered past the proletariat to snake his place at Harvard Business School, where he might have learned something had he a mind.

Dubya mastered, however, the skill of cracking wise; and often made himself the butt of his own jokes right up until he winked his way into the White House. Then all hell broke loose.

Eight years later with record deficits looming and the world financial system on the brink of collapse, American voters look to let yet another glib prevaricator unable to win an honest place at an Ivy League graduate school without the help of the well-connected sail straight past GO into the Oval Office.

Average Americans and the naive are appalled. Others take cold comfort from the thimble of continuity. Our big-screen careen towards the precipice is scored, at least, with familiar platitudes all designed to lull the dull-witted and sedate the anxious.

What fresh hell beckons on the cresting wave of credit collapse? We can only guess.

By the time the final bill is tallied George Bush probably isn't going to look like such a rotten president after all.

Yes, it could be that bad.

Barack Busted Sabotaging US-Iraqi Settlement

The NY Post is reporting that the Chosen One is trying to keep US troops in Iraq and prevent the signing of a US-Iraqi withdrawal plan.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.

Republican President John McCain will be remembered as the candidate who stated: 'Winning the war means more than losing the election' and as the individual who risked all to stand by an un-popular President to win victory for America in Iraq. Barack Obama did just the opposite and is now scared to death that peace in Iraq will put a final end to any chance he still has of worming his way into the Oval Office.

The Chosen One opposed the war and then opposed the surge championed by maverick Republican candidate John McCain, whose efforts and support of the surge actually made the US-Iraqi settlement possible. Should US troops start coming home too soon, the candidate of hope might have to concede John McCain is right: America is a country all Americans are proud to serve.