So I recently heard a survey that reported that Republicans were more likely than Democrats to be avid sports fans. I could have told you that! Anyone who spends so much time watching contrived conflict on TV and reading stats and histories of ball-chuckers in their paper will have little time or brainpower left for social issues or politics. And, they will be much more aggressive by nature to boot, from their conditioning with American football. What better training for war could there be? The problem as I see it is one of national machismo- our people are aware that we are a superpower, and the fantasy of overwhelming force played out crushing blow by blow on the muddy fields by black men without other career options, and a few white guys, is just a microcosm of the true expression of the power of our men: when they don a different uniform and set forth to crush foreigners somewhere their countrymen can't find on the map.

So here's one for ya: a pro footballer, after 9-11, enlists in the military to serve his country, and gets killed doing it. Now, I have in past blogs lamented the phrase "serve one's country" being reserved for soldiers- there are plenty of people risking their lives here at home, or not risking them but working their butts off (think: non-combat military) and I gotta say if you are doing your do in New York, you are serving your country a hell of a lot more than some sucker in Iraq.

I admire the spirit of service in our fighting forces, just think it is misdirected and abused by those in power. Also, I am stubborn about not elevating the soldiering profession above others simply because it involves violence and risk. The spirit of service for country manifests in every fireman, every teacher, every bus driver, every home healthcare worker, who takes their job to heart and provides the best service they humanly can. It sure looks glorious to say I'd give my life for my country, and suit up in that uniform, and when we are attacked, we need the services of those guys. The whole world backed us in Afghanistan, even though Rumsfeld himself remarked that Afghanistan didn't have a lot of targets- you can't bomb Al Qaeda because they aren't a nation, and they just move their tents. So there go the special forces, combing the mountains by hand. And not being welcomed very warmly. Tell you what: to understand how some parts of S. Asia view Western power, you have to get in their heads and see how they experienced colonialism. Rent the Indian movie, Lagaan. It has subtitles. Who is the bad guy? How are they stereotyped? They have as much reason to distrust whitey as we do to distrust towelheads. There's a history. Why can't we all just get along? Why can't we be friends? Why did a good man, a real solid lug, a man you'd want on your side, a guy who'd be a fine drinking buddy in any city on earth, a true blue American meathead, have to die so young?

Before you wave your flag and cry for the footballer, remember the hundreds of other grunts, who gave up ordinary lives to die in this madness. They didn't pass up million dollar deals, and some of them joined because traditional career paths did not seem open to them- their families were a mess and they needed direction, discipline, limits, goals. But plenty joined to serve. As you trumpet the valor of those who serve- remember that you don't have to go overseas and kill to serve. You don't have to follow orders without question. You don't have to risk your life to protect the lives of others- at least that's what the Red Cross teaches, but they are in the safety business, not the hero business. Anyway, The NFL headline is predictable: Epitome of a Hero. And while I am not a fan of Al Qaeda, I have to say that anyone who rushed to enlist after 9-11 thinking they were going to prevent terrorism was not thinking clearly.

Big guns wouldn't have stopped the guys with box cutters, and they won't stop the guy with the dirty bomb. Diplomacy and intelligence will solve our terror problem, if anything can. With all the Muslims in the world, we need to understand that viewpoint to the point of developing empathy- shouldn't be too hard with a closet theocracy in the White House. So before all you other footballers rush to enlist, know that signing on that dotted line right now just means you are a willing tool of the new self-proclaimed architects of the political world as they seek to impose their will. And know that the pentagon paid too much for that bodybag with your name on it. And to me, each bag is just another number- another proof that we were dumb to invade. And I do not particularly respect deaths of people I don't know personally. Here's a headline for you:

Epitome of a Sucker.

Why abortion should remain legal, by Leonel Shine.

Abortion should be legal because a lump of dough is not a cookie. Only a cookie is a cookie. Now, cookies begin as lumps of dough, which are baked in an oven until they slowly mature, gaining the shape and texture and color that marks them as proper cookies. And every cookie is a valuable thing But what about dough? Sure, dough is nice. Some folks like to eat it as is, by the spoonful. But is a lump of dough a cookie? No sir. Dough is dough, cookie is cookie. You put dough in oven long time you get cookie. Same for babies. A fetus is not a baby, it is a mass of cells that slowly divides until it looks more and more like a baby. When the thing is shaped properly and all its valves and pistons are well-formed, it is shoved out in a a life-threatening process called birth, and then it is a baby, capable of living without the life-support system of its previous host momma. Now, if every life is so valuable, what about the life of the incubator- I mean, mother? Moms can die giving birth, not to mention the discomfort and inconvenience of being pregnant, the social stigma if the baby was unplanned, the post-partum depression. If I was pregnant but I didn't want a baby for any reason- personal, economic, social, whatever- I would feel like I had an alien in me, a parasite. And moms driven to illegal abortion risk their lives, and certainly the lumpy fetus. Even if mom survives the coat-hanger, little Freddy Fetus probably won't. Is mom's life, with all the love, money, social capital invested in it, suddenly worthless because she carries a potential baby? Here's the other thing: Africa is overflowing with orphans, as the AIDS epidemic hits home. There are plenty of lives, plenty of babies, there and elsewhere that are already alive and kicking, and in need of protection, at risk of dying from starvation, diarrhea, and all those flies. Why does Pro Life passion end when the umbilical cord is cut? Hah, a baby born, a life saved, job done, go home. The life is still sacred, even more sacred, once it is actually eating and shitting. Why should I be concerned about the well being of babies not yet born, when we are not even able to care for all the ones already here? I will take the pro-life message seriously when there are no more orphans, no kids in the foster care system- disabled, drug-addicted, deformed, any and every color, I want them all cared for by a loving, pro-life family. Those are the only pro-lifers with the right to open their yaps about the value of life. I say: we got too many cookies already, so don't go crying over some flushed dough. And keep your laws off my bitch.

What else. Been thinking about how miscegenation is a great way to end white privilege. First, you extend some of the benefits of the white legacy to a brown family. Then, you make sure your kids aren't lily white. And you gain a whole new perspective in the process. Race mixing is the best. Catch jungle fever today. Plus, side benefit, you get to piss off neo-Nazis everywhere you go! What a bunch of stupid fucks. Number one, we are all sharing 99.99% of the same genetic code- visible racial traits are such a small amount of our genes that the whole idea of distinct races is ridiculous. Plus, so many people fall in between what most dumb skinheads take for race- Afghanis with Asian faces and green eyes, Afro-asian kids, Michael Jackson...they go on and on about race but none of them can really define what the hell it is. Is it really one drop of black, and youa re out of the white race? Or if you're really pale, can you pass? Plenty of Iranians pass. Are they white? Better write off the Sicilians and a whole bunch of Spanish people. you know where that black hair came from. Besides which, cultural institutions- things like 911 emergency response, flawed democracy, these things have a life of their own and can run no matter what color is administering them. And cultural change, cultural extinction, happens all the time. Just ask the Native Americans. The funniest thing about the whole effort to save the white race is how hopeless it is. The census has already shown that whites will no longer be a majority in 50 years time. That is some kind of justice. If we cannot will ourselves to rid our society of racism, in time it won't matter because everyone will be brown. Relax, join the party, get on with it. The Europeans were all a bunch of Pagans but they took Jesus up the butt and went on treating others savagely anyway. Changing the color of America won't mean a damn thing either; they'll still be a bunch of stupid WalMart shoppers. The interesting thing will be to watch the elite whites, the millionaires and boards of directors, react. Will the change reach them in the same time, or will they resist and try to maintain their clan in some new American Apartheid?

Ok, ok, the North Pole is melted, the snow is vanishing from Kilmanjaro, but maybe this is all part of some natural process. Or maybe it has something to do with all the burning humans are doing. We burn a lot of crap, from light bulbs to gasoline to coal, and it all produces heat, as well as CO2. Now, most of that stuff, we kind of need to burn; to see at night or just light up our favorite billboards, to warm our homes, to charge the electric grid in China, to drive our Hummers. I have been known to argue that Hummers, while cute in a huge ugly kind of way, are unnecessary for 99.9 percent of the chuckleheads who buy them, and a big slap to mama earth. The entire SUV thing is already way out of hand, there was no need to super-size it. Capitalism without limits means consumption without limits, which means that the human species is a virus which will devour the flesh of the earth and reproduce and consume and reproduce until we drown in our own shit. Tools which consume too much, and people who have too many babies, are only speeding the processes that threaten to degrade living conditions for all of us. I should relax; I drive a Toyota, I don't have kids. I recycle. I am saving enough world for a few of my selfish neighbors to gorge themselves and drive vehicles that, when viewed from a distance, actually succeed in making their drivers' asses look small in comparison. But today I saw another of the most ignorant devices ever to insult the climate; an outdoor space heater. I want to hit each and every one of these with an RPG, I really do. let's get this straight; here is a device whose express purpose is to convert fuel, in the form of electricity, into heat, which is not to be retained in any insulated dwelling where people go to get out of the cold- no, this device is expressly designed to pump the heat straight out into the atmosphere. What about putting on another sweater? About doing some exercise to stay warm? Or just going inside when the weather isn't cooperating? No, no, now for our comfort and luxury we would even prefer to defy the weather. Of course, this isn't the first time I have seen energy wasted. In some tropical countries, you can find air-conditioned malls- with the doors wide open to allow easy traffic of customers. But they just want two things; to keep customers cool, and get them in the mall. What they don't do is move a giant air conditioner out in the backyard and blast it hard enough that you get a cool breeze. Maybe that's the whole soultion to global warming! Global air-conditioning!