Life isn’t much fun these days.

Israel is miffed again and is blowing the hell out of poor little Lebanon who seems to be defenseless in protecting its territory. A few renegades are taking pot shots with mobile rockets at Israel. The end result is that a lot of innocent bystanders are getting clobbered.

Israel is after the groups that become more dangerous as time goes on. They would rather fight now than later when these groups are stronger and have more sophisticated weapons. I don’t blame them but it doesn’t make me feel any better. From what the Prime Minister said the other night, it wasn’t the capture of a couple of Israel soldiers that turned on their fighting machine but the future potential of the “bad buys.”

Our government is still spending about a zillion dollars a day in Iraq trying to stop an insurgency that is punching at the balloon-thin lining of a civil war. Things are not getting better there. Men serving in my old Korea unit are dying in the streets. They don’t tell us much about the oil production but I’ve heard that it is interrupted by the terrorist at will.

Iran is being its nasty self. I’m sure that Israel will blow the hell out of their nuclear reactors soon as they did in Iraq some years back. They will use our state-of-the-art technology to do it. That will start a real rat’s nest just as it has in Lebanon.

Afghanistan is going back again to its old ways as the Taliban gets stronger. Osama bin Laden is probably on vacation in Mecca but he’ll be back in the field again to cause more trouble here and there. The ability of our surveillance to identify a cucumber from space has not found the mysterious Osama bin Laden. I’m not sure anyone is even looking for him anymore. Maybe he dyed his hair and had a face change too. Who knows?

Well, the oil lines are leaking in Alaska and the pools of oil they are forming do not support trout. BP® has to shut down and I figure that the replacement piping will be ready about next April or May just in time for the summer construction season. The West Coast will be paying about $7.00 a gallon until that oil stream comes back on line.

That brings us to the cost of gasoline. It’s not going to get any less expensive. It’s my opinion that gasoline will become too expensive to waste in our vehicles and that very soon we will start drinking it with a twist of lemon.

Bottoms Up!

P.S. If you’re out here in the west, get some insect repellant. We are losing both young and old to the West Nile virus (which I wish they had kept on the West Nile). One youngster from the east died here from the West Nile virus but he also had Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Maybe you should take your vacation further west. Try Hawaii!