Living In A Phone Booth

Well, it's over. Ron Paul's hidden campaign didn't get off the ground. Whumping up wild enthusiasm on YouTube and MySpace, while playing the timid mouse during the Republican Debates, and on other nationally televised appearances like This Week With George Stephanopoulos and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, failed to get him the nomination. He sure could have used a loud, outrageous campaign manager to get some media attention to his plan to end the war on drugs and the rest of his platform. (Too bad Abbie Hoffman wasn't around for the job.) Instead of the campaign's outlaw, Mr. Paul became its punch line.

Defense contractors and career military types learned the hard way with Viet Nam that if you want to have a free hand at making war, having a military draft creates too much public opposition to unlimited financial success and personal advancement. If it's all volunteers doing the fighting, and citizens aren't being dragged off against their will to participate, who back home can object without easily being labeled "unpatriotic". Okay, I have no problem with that. I just think about the poor Soldiers and Marines these days. Viet Nam was a party for a lot of the troops back then. I've had veterans tell me, "Bob, I wish you coulda been there with us. It was great. The day you arrived, they'd set you in this special chair and stick a pipe in your mouth with a bowl so big they'd light it with a blowtorch! Then . . . " But now in treeless countries, it doesn't seem like there's any place to get out of sight to kick back and unwind. The basics for down time, women, music, and beer, are also scarce in these places. So now that things are heating up again in South America, I think it will be a far better environment for serving than Afghanistan and Iraq. (Though Afghani hash[ish] was always my favorite, that distinctive flat hard black sheet with the slightly lighter, softer center. Mmmmm.....mmmmmm. Unlike the crumbly baby-poop yellow Pakistani product--but which was okay in a pinch.) Now in South America, besides the trees and rivers and warm weather, there's those other God-sent pleasures that made Columbia famous and I'm not talking coffee. (Sign me up when the shooting starts.)

Oh, and other big news today. The California Supreme Court is hearing arguments for and against same-sex marriage. A tough choice for political types: God or Voters. Though I've never heard of anyone He's told personally, there seems to be a long list of actions The Lord doesn't like. He has no problem with fatal diseases and natural disasters, but He's really down on any form of hanky-panky! (Sorry, Big Guy. I'll take a roll in the hay over a kidney stone any day.) It's legal in this country to have sex if you meet the strict criteria of the various state legislatures, and buy a license, but anybody else who dares be horny is subject to wearing an ankle bracelet for the duration. (I think after being spoiled by the freedom of the sexual revolution, the years between The Pill and HIV/AIDS, it's time to legalize group marriage). "The six of us love each other and we want all the rights and privileges of everybody else." Why not?

Hang up and drive!