Politics as Usual

I decided that today I would move away a little bit from my southern diatribe and talk a little about current events. I have to say that beyond science and trivia my favorite thing to talk about is politics. I would say that I have strong moderate feelings...is that an oxymoron? Anyways, reading the reuters wire a few days ago I saw the headline, "Putin plans to aim missles at Europe" to which I at first glazed over and then did a double take. My first reaction can best be summed up by the following phrase that I heard for the first time this summer. That guy is "batshit crazy." I'm not sure if its something unique to down south but I know I've never heard it in New England. Either way, I would say i'm fond of it...mostly because it makes absolutely no sense and yet conveys so much meaning. It just seems that everyone knows that "batshit crazy" must be really wacky but yet no one can really say how insane this guano really is. Regardless of its etymological or semantic significance, it certainly does an apt job at describing Vlad (we're close so I can call him that). While I was born not all that long ago and cant remember much of the cold war, I certainly believe that I don't want to start another one. I'm not even sure I understand Vlad's reasoning: "so they want to put up a defensive shield to guard themselves from our missles so in order to combat that problem we should point our missles at them even though we told them there is no threat thereby necessitating the defense shield that we didn't want them to have in the first place." Its enough to make your heard hurt...and if it hurts my head I can only imagine what is going on in the minds of the brainiacs residing in the kremlin and the pentagon. Besides that I don't really see a reagan-esque character in the political spectrum coming to tell putin to tear down this wall. I'm going to do my vest to not draw any connections between Ronald and new guy on the block Fred Thompson who seems to be running on a platform of, "I've played presidents and statesmen on TV, I betcha I could do it for real." Reminds me a little of a poll I saw a few years back where they asked people to identify the president in a line-up of politicians and other famous people and about 2% identified Martin Sheens character on the west wing as the actual president. Sorry incorrect...thanks for playing. But I suppose its the beauty of democracy that my vote counts just as much as the idiot that can't differentiate the NBC wednesday night line-up from C-Span. What it comes down to is that Fred Thompson will do well solely because he looks and sounds presidential which has been admittedly lacking in the current administration but it isn't really a reason to elect someone to the highest office in the land. Patrick OUT