Feeling like $H1t

So we recently transitioned schedules at work. I am now working 8 PM - 7 AM for the next six months. I am a night person for sure, but it is definitely strange to be going to bed when everyone else is going to work. Then, I wake up and realize the sun is about to set in a couple of hours and it's almost time to go to work again. It puts a cramp in your social schedule for sure.

I had been doing so well at not getting sick this year, but the first cold has arrived. There have been several bugs flying around work and the one I have is mild in comparison to the others, so I am not complaining. Between the transition in schedules and the cold though, I am feeling like crap right now.

I have been reading State of Denial by Bob Woodward over the last week. It is almost beyond belief how incompetent GW and Co have been. Any kind of intellectual conversation or discussion about Iraq has never taken place. Woodward remarks on how Bush II never has questions or forces debate on any issues. Rather, he fills a cheerleader type role and keeps telling everyone how good a job they are doing. (The whole FEMA / Brownie debacle anyone?) Woodward and his sources mostly feel that Bush has no intellectual curiosity about such issues and is content to proceed full steam ahead at any cost. There have been several opportunities for the U.S. to clearly make an impact in Iraq and turn a bad situation into a good one. At every turn the current administration has bungled these opportunities and made the situation worse through its silencing of independent ideas and experienced voices. (The largest of these gaffes was disbanding the Iraqi Army. For a few million dollars, the Iraqi Army could have been kept on payroll and used for public works and civil projects that are badly needed across the country. Instead, Donald Rumsfeld and L Paul Bremmer disbanded the Army and alienated tens of thousands of trained Iraqi soldiers who turned around and started an insurgency.) Clearly Rumsfeld should have left long before he did, but the blame does not fall squarely on him. Rather, history will show that this entire presidential administration jeopardized the safety and security of our country by initiating a war in one of the most volatile areas of the world on false pretenses and will continue to spend hundreds of billions of United States tax dollars trying to put the pieces of Iraq back together. The long and the short of it is, it ain't gonna happen.

Hope you are all having a great weekend. Cuidate.