Non Sequiters

Nothing monumental happened in my life today so I'm going to post a bunch of small stuff that are unrelated to one another.

Three Marines were killed in Iraq today, this brings the total to 1000 American soldiers killed since "Mission Accomplished". I wholly disagree with this war and I think that our troops are dying unnecessarily. From now on, I will recognize their ultimate sacrifice. I will recognize them by name if given when it is announced. The three soldiers died in Mosul. In the near future, I will list every soldier who has died in this illegal war.

Some good news, John Ashcroft and Don Evans are leaving President Bush's cabinet. I'm glad that Ashcroft is leaving. His view on civil liberties seemed to be that the government granted those liberties. Rights, though, are inherent and cannot be taken away from an individual. Everyone has the same rights, the problem is getting governments to recognize those rights. Ashcroft wasn't very good at recognizing a person's inherent rights.

We had a spirited discussion last night at our book club meeting about race, predjudice poverty, and substance abuse. We discussed, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black by Gregory Howard Williams. The author lived in the Washington DC area thinking he was a child of two white parents, but after their divorce and his father's subsequent business failure, he moved to Muncie, Indiana to discover that his father, who he thought was Italian, was half black. He lived in the black slums of Muncie during the 50's and experienced racism at it's finest. He is now married, living in Ohio and working as a law professor at Ohio State University.

And on a lighter note, Jones Soda has announced that they willl offer a holiday pack of sodas complete with utensils, a straw and a toothpick. In the holiday pack will be five sodas with flavors of turkey and gravy, green bean casserole, cranberry, mashed potato and butter, and fruitcake. (Yumm!!) The sodas are no calorie, no carb, and vegan. The cases will be numbered and will be offered at JonesSodaStore.com, select stores in the Jones Distributor Network, and select Target stores from $14.95 to $16.95 a case.