Late to the party, as usual...

I know that there will be folks out there who may chastise me for this, but this morning I finally downloaded my first Dropkick Murphy's album from good old iTunes of course. And look, I know, like the title of this entry says, yes, I'm late to the party. Not wanting to be "that guy", I decided to go in reverse on this one, and instead of buying the latest album, I went back to their first studio LP instead. 1997 I think the release date was. I've got to say, good stuff, good stuff indeed. They being an Irish punk rock band, of course there are some bagpipes in there, but I can live with that I think. They're Irish, we'll let it slide in this case, they're OK to throw some damn bagpipes on there. Anyone else though, you can forget about it. If you're not Irish, or Scottish for that matter, leave the damn bagpipes off of your records. It doesn't make you pseudo nerdy cool, it just sounds stupid. So this first record that I've got from them though, called Do or Die, got to say, me likey, me likey very much. I got into this whole Irish punk rock thing (the later version) a few years back when Rob Notti at the bike shop turned me on to Flogging Molly, and then from there, I just started finding albums that I liked. The Dropkicks are just the latest "find". Like I said, I had known of them before, but for some reason, hadn't gotten anything of theirs yet, so today was the day. Time to refresh the music collection. I've got 30 GB to fill up on the old iPod, got to get it moving here. I'm sure that Jason "the fart sniffer" will make fun of me for just running into this music, because he's on top of such things. But oh well, what can I say? My taste in music is what I like to call eclectic, or as my friend Chad would say, downright sucky (he's just basing that on the fact that yes, I have some Dave Matthew's Band CDs, and yes, a G Love CD or 2 hanging around, they were big when I was in college). If you don't have any Dropkick Murphy's, get yourself some, I don't think you'll be sorry about it.

Meanwhile, the President has taken up making trips around the US again, trying to explain to everyone why we're fighting a war in Iraq. According to the President, "Our goal in Iraq is victory." Wow! Thanks for making that clear chief. What kind of crack is this guy smoking, and does anyone believe anything that he says anymore? I mean, the poll numbers, that he says he doesn't ever look at, say he is down to around a 34% approval rating. Just for a comparison, Clinton, same time during his second term was at over 70%. Now, I'm no mathematician and all, but I'd say 70 is a lot better than 34. Call me crazy and all. So the biggest problem with Iraq is that we're not battling the people that attacked us on September 11th. No, those guys are running around between the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, still hiding in the small villages and mountains that afford them cover. Right now, we're fighting it out with Iraqis who don't want us in their country. And now our Secretary of Defense, Rummy boy himself is saying that if indeed, the country falls into civil war, they're on their own. We won't straighten that out. Even though by our military being there and invading their country, we made said civil war possible, if it does happen. And of course, their most recent reason about why civil war seems imminent over there (bear in mind it's not the dozens of dead people they keep finding every single day, or the busloads of people who have been tortured and then brutally murdered), it's once again the media's fault for just reporting the bad things that are going on over there instead of what might be going good. Let's think about this critically shall we? In the United States, when a little girl falls down a well and is trapped for half of a day, the entire country stops what they're doing and pay attention to the little girl who fell down a well. Same thing for a victim of kidnapping and probably murder in Aruba (Natalie Holloway anyone?). Let's pretend, just for a second, that a busload of say, 20 people were found somewhere on a city street in the US, their hands bound, their eyes covered, their mouths gagged, and they were all strangled or shot dead. How do you think the general population of the US would react? There would be holy hell to pay for such a thing, especially if the people were white, but I digress about that. Now imagine something like that happening a few times a day every day for weeks on end. Yep, things are going peachy over there, just going fine and dandy. Never mind the man behind the curtain, just close your eyes and pretend he's not there. Our fearless leader will let the country devolve into total and utter civil war, and then he'll pull our troops out, and say, we're not there for that. Hey asshole. We caused it. Stay and keep the peace now you dickhead. Frustrates me it does. How in the world did we re-elect that nincompoop anyway? The whole bunch of them are corrupt, and getting worse. I don't know if we can handle another few years of this guy in office. Let's hope we complete and investigation, and find out that indeed he did commit crimes against the Constitution, and then maybe we can get him to quit, or we can impeach Bush. That would be like a dream come true. I keep running into these people who are blind. These are the same people who were out for blood when Clinton was found to have perjured himself, but when Bush conducts surveillance against US citizens without a warrant, they let it pass, and say stupid things like, "Well, if you're not doing anything wrong then you don't have anything to worry about." Which is not the case. I hate it when people say that. Oh well, I guess there is a reason why the stupidest man in the world got to be the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, and he is almost, by himself and a few of his cronies, dragging the US into the gutter. Look at how the rest of the world looks at us right now. We're getting laughed at all over the place. It's sad. We need new leadership. I can't wait for 2008.