Family get togethers for such events are so much nicer than funerals. We all got to enjoy each other on July 12th when my nephew got married in Pittsburgh. Now the great-grandchildren are getting to see the fun family they were born into!

But, you know, he’s the priminster (that’s a Riddley Walker reference, and if you haven’t read it, hasten to, it fits Iraq so well, what with mining DU and all.) So if he thinks Obama is making sense about getting the hell out of Dodge, he’s apparently got no problems with the Demo nominee’s national security bona fides. He may not want it to sound like an endorsement, but he didn’t say anything good about 100 years and permanent bases.

Maybe Iraq blows up into three countries, one at permanent war with Turkey and the other two permanent Irani puppet states. If McCain knew the difference between Shia and Sunni, he might realize that wouldn’t be so terrible. Brits and the US created Iraq from disparate and antagonistic groups for the sake of Big Oil, and these things don’t ever work out well.

In 2004 I thought American voters weren’t a class of morons. It seemed incomprehensible that enfranchised citizens could be gulled by unmitigated crap like W as not a draft dodger and Kerry as some sort of poseur elitist dilletante.This is so nuts, so patently phony, I figured The Bard of Baltimore would be proved wrong. But no, got it good and hard.

Contemplating McCain‘s four more wars, um, years, the first thing that comes to mind is the truly revolting slagging he got in our home state of SC from Rove and his vile henchmen. These days, I have to wonder what sort of manly man brownnoses a pure bastard that had push-robo-calls about your totally imaginary bastard black child. Grovelling isn’t presidential. Nutless.

Wesley Clark got shot four times and directed his men to a temporary victory. McCain rained down death and got shot down, probably disobeying orders. Which one’s a more credible war hero. Kerry pulled a wounded comrade out of the MeKong, W made sure the Oclub was well-stocked. Where do these jerks get off?

McCain’s whining (thank you Rove clone Phil Gramm) about Obama and international stature is pitiful. Obam’s bot the endorsement of the Prime Minister of our great ally in the battle to spread democracy. If W could get Saudis to buy in, it might be more convincingg. But there is no underestimating the stupidity of American voters. Getting what you deserve can be brutal.

Hey, i just figured out how to get the Three Sisters (Native Americans’ corn, beans, and squash) into my sermon this morning. Thanks, Caliban . . . see y’all back in Ohio tomorrow, or just virtually here.

These people are dreeps and concessionires. They’ve raped the government for eight years. Four more with Mr. Keating Five would seem a little excessive, even for these pirates.

My family can be peculiar and turbulent and infuriating, all of which i’m sure they say about me, but to get 100 folks together from the fur reaches of Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, and here to Indiana, and eat some ham salad and sing around some cake is a startlingly uplifting thing. Hurrah to any couple who sticks it out longer than their honeymoon, and hooray for my parents who had four very different but very similar kids, and to all our cousins and shirttail, coattail, and nearly forgotten relations who came together along with some nice elderly ladies from the church where we did it.

And pray for me as i preach there tomorrow and try not to revert back to the eight year old they doubtless still think of me as — it will be deeply weird in a totally wonderful way.

Anyhow, whoever your family is, smile at them and marvel that we all can communicate at all, let alone love each other, which it turns out we really do.