This one's for you, Twinkie the Kid

[Bush] also repeated his warnings against a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, saying "to retreat before victory would be an act of recklessness and dishonor -- and I will not allow it."

We lost already, Mr. President.

Yeah. I hate to be the one to break this to you. But we lost. We lost the minute we invaded and took over a country that did not pose a threat to us. We lost when we started holding "enemy combatants" indefinitely without a trial. We lost when we secretly tortured people and tried to pass it off as justifiable. We lost when we allowed the government to limit our rights through the Patriot Act. We lost when the FBI encouraged spying on peace protestors and the NSA tapped our phones without oversight.

WE FUCKING LOST. We let a terrorist attack completely compromise the freedoms we keep crowing about defending. That's not what a strong country does; and Mr. Bush, you are not a strong leader. You are weak and a coward. Nothing you can say will convince me that any result following the unnecessary loss of 32,000+ lives is a victory. We lost.

I believe one of my detractors once openly wondered whether I got mad every time I saw one of the big monuments on the Mall. I don't, but I do get sad when I see them, because I think about how little it took for us to abandon our ideals. For the time being, they're a thing of the past.

OK! Is that defeatist enough for you? Sorry, but I'm especially pissed off tonight. Can't sleep after all the crap that's gone down this weekend. I still can't believe the NSA story; I could have gone to work for those people. That would have been a fun ethical pill to swallow.

I guess while I'm awake, I should also tell this other fun story that I never got around to posting. This is a good one that's been kicking around in the brain late at night and needs to be exorcised, bloggy-style. It happened at work, about a month before I got laid off. A co-worker came in and started talking about events of the day, which is always fun. And this was the day after hundreds of Muslims were crushed to death on a bridge in Baghdad, after rumors of an imminent suicide bomber attack spread through the crowd. Basically just a horrible tragedy, and very sad.

Said co-worker's editorial comment on the story:

"Stupid Muslims."

That was it. "Stupid Muslims." Yes, how stupid of them. For getting crushed to death in a panic.

Those fools.

What I should have done was angrily yelled at him to get out of my office, and I actually had half a mind to do that, but I didn't want to get in trouble, so I tried to ignore him instead. Which is no fun at all. Ugh... and, of course, this guy, who I'm not going to name, David Guill, is a devout Christian; because, if Jesus stood for anything, it was reveling in the senseless deaths of others.

Of course, that guy still has a job, and I really really don't. It looks I'm going to need a birthday/Christmas miracle to land a job out of town. (And that's still possible. I'm talking to you, place I follow-up interviewed at last Wednesday. You were supposed to call me last week. Please call me Monday. Get me the crap out of here.)

Four shopping days until utter humiliation. One shopping day until I get turned into Soylent Green.