---

After the 48^th Infantry Brigade of the Georgia National Guard lost 11 soldiers in 10 days, Governor Sonny Perdue called for a moment of silence scheduled for today at 1PM [EDT].

When you use the Guard and Reserve in combat operations, you concentrate the effect of losses to small geographic areas.

The Shrubbery is still on vacation, hiding from Mrs. Sheehan.

---

---

Some may wonder why Scarborough is being courted for Florida Senate race.

Some of those from outside may say ‘but she did what they wanted and stopped the recount’ which shows a blindness to the reality of the Religious Reich that controls the Florida GOP. The problem is that she is a she and she wants power.

I won’t bother to go into what’s wrong with Joe Scarborough; he was my congressclown. Yes, he really is as clueless as he looks on television; yes, he really was an apologist for Slobodan Milosovic in the Balkans; and yes, he did not “support the troops” during the Kosovo Campaign; but he has the proper pronoun to be a US Senator for Florida Republicans.

---

---

While really ticking off our friends, the Shrubbery seems to be helping old enemies to come together: Russian-Chinese war games begin.

Oh, this is just great news for the United States. I know I’m thrilled with the possibility that instead of two dozen Chinese designed and built single warhead nuclear ICBMs, they could have a hundred Russian designed and built MIRV missiles.

---

---

The US ambassador insists that the Canadian government has to return to negotiations on the sale of softwoods. He makes this statement in spite of the fact that the US has again lost on this issue in arbitration, and hints that the US doesn’t actually have to return the billions in fees it has collected since the beginning of this dispute.

The basic claim is that the Canadian government doesn’t charge timber companies enough for the logs they cut in Canadian government forests, and the US has been collecting a fee to increase the price of Canadian wood products.

The Canadians referred the matter to a NAFTA panel, which keeps ruling in favor of Canada. What’s to negotiate? The matter is settled. Apparently the US thinks it can bully the Canadians into accepting less than they’re owed.

Meanwhile there’s a shortage of plywood and the price is spiking, raising already outrageous building costs.

The US is also dumping water out of Devil’s Lake in North Dakota that will end up in Lake Winnipeg, an important Canadian fishery and water shed.

The Canadians wanted a review by the bi-lateral commission on US-Canadian water issues, but the US just started pumping. The Canadians are worried about pollution and invasive species ending up in their waters.

I could be wrong, but I thought that the US and Canada were friends, at least for the last century [no need to go into that little trek Benedict Arnold and some of my relatives took, or the Maine and Oregon problems]. Why is the US being such jerks? They sell us oil and timber that we don’t have. If they get mad, they can sell those things to Asia.

---