I am living in a war zone!! As I look out my front door, I see neighbors at the top of the street shooting their neighbors across the street, who are shooting back. Behind them are the shadows of old cars, silhouetted by bright, smoke-producing, flashing sparks. Shots are heard all around me. The sky is filled with exploding, colorful cannon flash. This has been going on now for about 2 hours. Suddenly, directly overhead, a long-lasting barrage of flashing color booms, shattering flack all around the house. Not to be outdone, the neighbor two blocks over responds with even bigger booms and more color, and more flack. Then, the entire sky seems to ignite with rocket fire, flack, cannon fire, musket balls, roman candles and magnificent sparkling fountains. Someone sets off a package of 500 Black Cats, and another shoots about 20 screamers. Then all is quiet, except for the occasional screamer and various sundry m-60's. But this is only a momentary lull. The whole process starts all over again... and for the next two hours, the neighborhood is aglow in brilliant flashes and booms and cracks of varying intensity.

What is remarkable about all of this is that I live in a neighborhood dominated by hispanics and marshallese immigrants. Never have I seen such intense celebration on the 4th of July.

A little over a year ago, I was privileged to witness a citizenship ceremony. It was a beautiful experience, as one after another immigrant pledged their allegiance to the United States of America. These people worked hard to get to this point. Many cried tears of joy, expressing gratitude to the presiding judge and all those present.

This Fourth of July, as on most, the president of the United States addressed just such a ceremony. I imagine this group of candidates have worked just as hard as those I witnessed, and were just as excited. Only this group is privileged to be addressed by the leader of this new country of theirs.

Unfortunately, just as the President begins to address them, some boneheads in the back begin yelling. "Impeach Bush! Impeach Bush!" they yell. The President pauses while these folks are asked to be a little more respectful. They calm down... until the President begins speaking again. "Impeach Bush! Impeach Bush!" they yell again.

How selfish! How insensitively selfish is this! It's one thing to oppose the President, and I certainly have no problem with some bonehead proving his stupidity vocally, but have some !$%@* respect! Interrupt a fancy dinner, or campaign stump... but let these folks have their day. This is like interrupting an adoption hearing to stump for the judge's opponent. Or protesting at the burial of a fallen soldier. It is selfish, insensitive, moronic and idiotic. It does nothing to promote a cause, and only hurts those individuals who are trying to appreciate the solemnity of the occasion. Have some class!

It sounds like the war is winding down now. There is the occasional boom from the left, responded by a louder boom from the right. Now the left pauses for a second or two, then sets off another m-60. The army on the right lights off a couple of bottle rockets. From somewhere in the back comes a lone muffled shot. The guy on the left doesn't seem to want to let it end. He gets off a few more shots. After a few minutes, the team on the right replies with a single shot. Lefty quickly shoots back... I guess he made his point.

Now maybe I can get some sleep...

We the People v. We, the People

This article from the Wall Street Journal seems to nail the true decision we citizens face in today's political war. It is not so much a religious decision, as it is about whether to make a paradigmatic break from the ideals of our founding fathers. For much of this nation's history, our society has thrived on the notion that men must step up and provide for their own existence and that of their families. That is one reason families, even extended families, were so important. Together, they worked hard and lived or died off the fruits of their labors.

The Great Depression "woke us up", some would say, to the 'reality' that we can ill afford to care for ourselves without strong governmental coordination. That required, in part, the creation of government jobs and welfare programs. Eventually, this evolved into the mandate that government must protect a man from himself. However, despite all this, there still existed some semblance of the American Dream (Work hard in America and you can achieve whatever you truly desire).

Today, we stand at a new edge, where we must decide whether to drop the "work hard" portion of that American Dream. We must decide whether we, the people, individual and diverse citizens, should be permitted to control the destiny of our great country by our individual, private efforts, or whether We The People, mobocratic and of one conglomerate mind, ruled by the elite and controlled by the 'deservists', will control the destiny of our great country, carried on the backs of the ever-diminishing innovators and honest laborers.

You've Come a Long Way, Baby!

If gender stereotyping offends you, you have a new champion in Tyson Slocum, the Director of Public Citizen's Energy Program (why "Public" was even used in the name is beyond me... seems kind of unnecessary, doesn't it?). Anyway, he was on the O'Reilly Factor (Yes, we now have Fox News Channel...We discovered that we had been paying for Starz channels forever and didn't know it. Mrs. The Practicalist found that we could drop the Starz channel and upgrade to whatever package gives us the Fox News Channel, and actually save money!) where he was talking about how sucking 20 BILLION barrels of oil out of Alaska would do nothing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, during which discussion he said, and I quote (sort of): "blah blah why can't everyone just take the subway blah blah not going to knock us back into the cave-(slight careful pause)-'person' days blah blah blah".

Cave-PERSON?!! Are you kidding me?! Like, who is going to be offended by the term "CaveMAN"? That's like telling "stupid people" jokes. Who is going to come and ask you to please refrain? I'll give you that not only men deliver the mail, so some sensitive fe-uh-person (?), er, wo--person, girl might appreciate being called a mail person... but is she going to raise a fuss because you just made a generalization that only men were backward cave dwellers? What was so funny was that Mr. Tyler didn't even use the term naturally. He actually caught himself preparing to say "Man" and conscientiously selected the term "person".

Person, oh, person! (Note: After writing this post, I searched online and found that, perhaps, this guy might have something. For evidence, click here.)