Annual Pagan Praying for Saturnalia 2008

Dear Saturn:

Once again, I call upon thee using my Unitarian powers of open-mindedness to see about getting me all the cool fun toys and the wicked cool political reforms that Santa simply won't send my way. That cruel bastard just won't take any letters not done in crayon, which is prolly why he still listens to Dubya and not the rest of the fed-up planet...

Anyhoo: my wish list for 2008 and well into 2009:

1) I WOULD LIKE A thorough and legal accounting for all those in the Bush Administration responsible for condoning and promoting the use of torture during the so-called War on Terror that ended up more a War on Justice. How can the United States claim to be the standard bearer for the Rule of Law when we allow Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Rumsfeld, Addington, and a handful of others to walk away untouched from their violations of the Geneva Convention treaties, their violations of our own Eighth Amendment, their violations of COMMON HUMAN DECENCY! This Bush the Lesser Administration has been one prolonged effort to avoid accountability for anything and everything they've done, every law broken, every rule violated, every code of conduct mocked covering EVERY aspect of our nation be it from business to health to education to governing to the general welfare of every citizen however humble. They walk on this, no nation will ever respect us. EVER.

2) I WOULD LIKE A constitutional amendment assuring that no copy of anything written by Ayn Rand gets anywhere near an economics college ever again.
2a) And a guarantee that the napkin that hideous Laffer Curve was drawn on gets used as a toilet wipe and flushed down as it so richly deserves.

3) I WOULD LIKE A girlfriend. Oh Lord, O Saturn, ye of the God of Time, you know full well it's been 20 years (!) since I last went out on a real date, back in high school, that Christmas party at the Allens' place, and there was that small bonfire in the backyard with noone sitting there, and Suzie and I sat on a log and looked up at the night sky, all those stars, and she and I talked some pleasant stuff about all the inconsequential stuff, and then I looked down and saw a scorpion crawl up my leg OMFG and then we realized why noone else was sitting on a log covered in scorpions and Suzie and I ran back into the house and that was pretty much that. Thanks, God. Thanks a bunch. Twenty years now, I would very much like a little help here in the dating department. All I ask is, yes someone cute, with a sense of humor, centrist politics, Keynesian, oh and a love of football and comic book movies. And all I ask is you get inside my head and make me less of a bleeping geek spaz, okay? Please and thnkxkbye.

4) I WOULD LIKE TO see the Tampa Bay Rays make it back to the World Series in 2009. This time against the Cubs. So that I know we'll win. ;-)

5) I WOULD LIKE A rule that makes any media blowhard who makes wishy-washy statements using 'strawmen' to make an argument, and who claims that there's a controversy when the only ones making the controversy are other blowhards, be forced to leave the media echo chamber and work the night shift at the nearest available 24-hour bowling alley. Because it's for their own good: they need to get away from their empty-headed soulless colleagues in the media and actually get out and meet actual people struggling with their lives and maybe just maybe those blowhards will see what's really going on out here outside of those damn studios of theirs.
But I doubt it. There's a reason these idiots worked and backstabbed each other in order to get inside these hermetically sealed media studios in the first place.

That's all I can think of for now, Saturn. Oh, and for the annual sacrifice of the Mithras bull, send the bill to Bill O'Reilly as always.