That thing about the Tennessee mayor/Obama/Charlie Brown. What the hell? My head hurts from that. Yet another reason to keep drinking.

Facing South: The privatized war in Afghanistan

Thank you for that. The outrage over the escalation fails to take into account the private contractors which parallel any increase in troop level.

We are completely screwed.

Where's Susie Sunshine? The jobs picture looked much better, does she only write about things that are going bad?

Charles Schultz, American cartoonist (1922-2000).
In an interview in 1999, Schultz said that although his philosophical views evolved over the years, "the term that best describes me now is 'secular humanist.'" He went on to say, "I despise those shallow religious comics. Dennis the Menace, for instance, is the most shallow. When they show him praying--I just can't stand that sort of thing, talking to God about some cutesy thing that he'd done during the day.

I don't think Hank Ketcham [Dennis' creator] has any deep knowledge of things like that." Schultz cringed at the mention of Family Circus, the strip by Bill Keane that is strewn with cutesy references to Jesus (who wants to protect children on school buses, but can't because of laws about separation of church and state!) and those sickly-sweet images of invisible deceased grandparents looming protectively over the kids. "Oh, I can't stand that," Schultz laughed. "You could get diabetes reading them, couldn't you?"
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Was Charles Schulz an atheist? Is it evident in his 1966 Halloween television show It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown? What a tangled web we weave... and surf ;)

- an entirely bribed Congress anointing private mercenaries to rape and pillage other nations in our name;

OR,

- the Beckster slobbering on stage as his brain slowly turns to slime.

Happy Holidays!!! indeed.