BAM! Just like that! Reluctant accountability...Freedom of the vote...Un-Vikings-like behavior...and feel the burn.

* Bush has taken responsibility for the intel failures that led to our invading Iraq. Small consolation now that everyone knows it and there's no possible way of it ever finding its way under the rug in history.
Too little. Too late. Very timely accountability, however. Bravo. And thanks a bunch. In itself, it's not such a bad gesture, provided one can ignore that the intel was bad all along and the President still went full steam ahead and invaded another country based on that and this administration's obvious reliance on and embellishment of those flaws.
A ship's Captain, making a gross misjudgement based on bad information would lose his command. It seems however that a Captain of State does not. Go figure.
Bush did far less for bolstering the impact of his (apology?) acceptance of responsibility when he pretty much insisted that he (somehow) did the right thing none the less by removing Saddam's regime in Iraq. On what grounds could he possibly be making that assessment? On the use of bad intel which he now accepts responsibility for, conveniently after the 12 year agenda that Perl, Rove And Wolfwitz dreamed up during his Daddy's presidency was finally set in motion with no chance of being brought up short?? Is this man basically telling us that he made his decisions and that they were the proper ones to make, based on all the wrong reasons and justifications? How can a mere mortal do something like that.
We can only thank God this wasn't a matter of issuing a nuclear first strike under that same set of circumstances and coincidences. Or he could very well have been making his recent speech to but a handful of surviving American citizens who would be as unimpressed as I am while they were hunkering down with rad fever for a long cold and lethal nuclear winter! Duh, thanks, GW! But for the grace, Baby!

* Iraq elections are over now. Pundits say it may be a couple weeks before the tallies are in. I haven't heard much on just who will be amassing these figures. I'm probably better off not knowing. An imposed election being judged by virtually hand picked officials by the occupation is just the beginning of this Outer Limits episode.
Beyond that word has it that there was a field of candidates that amounted to about a thousand people! How in the world a country that is as ill prepared in democracy and infrastructure as Iraq is, is going to manage coming to an agreement on who will lead or represent them is beyond me.
In America we have a limited field of candidates and supposedly the most advanced polling system in use globally, and look what happened in 2000 in a simple balloting process with just two candidates? I have to wonder just how more muted the voice of the people would be had we an invading occupier doing their best to oh, so impartially manage the process and lead us by the hand to our own self determination.
Am I cynical? Often, but not always. Yet in this situation? Yeah. I reek of it.

* Four members of the Minnesota Vikings were charged today for their involvement in a "sex party" aboard a privately chartered yacht in October. What? Illegal use of hands? Personal foul? Unsportsman-like conduct? Sounds a whole lot like consensual adult fun and games to me. No one was kidnapped, raped or forced to do anything against their will. Old Leif Erickson and the original Norse Vikings must be laughing in their graves! Now those guys knew about how to throw parties! Of course then it was called something else, and rightly so. All without so much as a slap on the wrist.
But that's how we like things these days. You can go out and publicly knock someone's block off every Sunday, to the television viewing pleasure of millions... A virtual re-enactment of the gladiators in the coliseum, but God forbid you get caught making a booty call and somebody's moral sensibilities will be shaken to the core. It's that same twist in our national collective that makes gun and weapons conventions acceptable while adult sex toy conventions held in the very same convention centers, nation wide, give cause to righteous indignation in so many God fearing Americans.

* Scientists are still sounding the clarion in hopes of getting some of the industrial nations (sounds like "us" to me) to wise up to global warming issues. Of course most of us have seen enough science fiction and horror movies from Jaws to the Day after tomorrow to know that "the man" isn't going to loosen his grip on the profit margins long enough to fix a problem until his own face is crumbling to dust from ultraviolet radiation exposure. Just ignore it…and we'll all go away!