7 Hours, 50 minutes and Counting

It's cantata day. I dread cantata day. Maybe that's why I'm still awake at 12:41 am in middle America. I just don't want to mess the thing up. The rest of the choir has worked too hard for me to goof this deal up. I'm a preacher. Darned good one, too, if I do run the risk of boasting. (I do relish the gift; I grew up listening to the best, and God has graciously/maliciously filled in the rest-me up in front of people on a daily basis is still hysterical, 22 years in) I'm a tolerable supporting bass. The only problem is that in our operation I'm the only bass.
Or maybe it's bigger.
Maybe I'm playing insomniac theater due to what we're doing to the world, still. Sure, Rummy's gone, and that's not a bad step. But the longer I think about it, Gates had a hard time in a previous confirmation due to his part in Iran-Contra. So this guy is going to stand up to this president? Not holding the breath on that one. Just in the last few minutes, we have, in all likelihood guaranteed that some child in Iraq will always hold us responsible for the death of Mom/Dad/Grandparent in the latest car bombing or kidnapping/murder or whatever. And some American child may have just lost a Dad or Mom to a mortar round or IED, but at least they won't have to know it until tomorrow. They can have this last good night's sleep.
Just like George. George tells People magazine (he has time to give interviews to People magazine?) that he sleeps very well.
I'm divorced enough from reality that I can laugh weeknights when Letterman shows "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches," leading off with the eloquence of FDR and JFK, then following with the latest malapropism, Porky Pig sign-off or completely incoherent rambling of the dear leader. But this newest item just isn't funny.
How does he ever sleep? We're closing in on 3,000 of ours dead, and, according to the Johns-Hopkins study, three quarters of a million of theirs dead. That doesn't count the wounded, who have been very carefully and skillfully hidden by the administration. Out of sight, out of mind, don't you know? A crowd greater than the population of Memphis wiped out in this stupid, unjust, badly fought, lie driven war and the subsequent peace that has been anything but. And they're all God's!
I wish that I could talk to him. I wish that I could haunt his dreams with the faces of all the dead, all the wounded, all the orphaned. I wish that I could tell this jackass that nobody cares how he looks compared to his dad. And we didn't think that much of his dad, anyway. I wish that someone, anyone, could get it through his head that lying to the nation is bad, lying to the world is worse, and lying to yourself may be worst of all, and that he should stop all of it. I wish that he could have some of the sleepless nights of the parents who have children over there. Or those of the woman whose husband is at Gitmo, or somewhere, even thought he may have never done anything wrong to anyone. Or those of the little boys and girls who are on the street because one of those damned bombs wasn't as smart as it was cracked up to be, and it killed mom and dad-liberated them right out of their lives.
He sleeps very well? I have thought that those on my side who want to impeach him should just calm down, because they'd only be accused of trying to get even for Clinton. (Then again, as the lapel pin says, "No one died when Clinton lied") They should impeach this horrible, horrible man just for saying that he sleeps well while he's responsible, everyday, for the pointless and needless deaths of Americans and Iraqis in a war that should never have been fought in the first place.
I once had a lesson from Andre Braugher's magnificent Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Streets. Once, when they observed a suspect who'd been left in the interrogation room (The Box, for fans of the show) snoring like a chainsaw, Frank told Kyle Secor's Tim Bayliss, "The guilty ones go right to sleep. It's the innocent who stay awake all night." Amen, Frank. Amen.
Shame on you, sir! Shame on you! And God help us all.
7 hours, 18 minutes and counting. Pray for this non-singer!