How far is too far?

I couldn't help but notice a whole lot of articles and commentaries on the net recently where the topic, roughly, is "Obama is not what he presented himself to be. He's worse than what we just had".

Yeah. I know. I'd started a piece three weeks ago that began by making that same basic observation but I lagged in finishing it. No need to post that one. It's not that much of a news flash. How could it be after the financial fleecing we just got in front of God and everybody? When billionaire bankers get handed free hundreds of billions of our dollars, no questions asked, in the middle of a global financial meltdown that they themselves caused out of uncontrolled criminal greed, then you have to surmise something is up. As in belly up. As in America.

Something else I've been noticing way too much of in news reports from all around the world, is the general, staggeringly high level of world wide mass murder going on. While the US v. Iraq, US v. Afghanistan, and Israel v. Palestine situations never leave my chest, brain, or guts, ever, EVER, they aren't what I came to talk about today. They're related to be sure, but this goes far beyond any individual act of "war".

There are multiple places all over the globe where mass human slaughter is being carried out, violently, by self-appointed deciders of everything for everyone else. And who is it that dies? Innocent civilians. There is a never ending, constantly repeating theme of mass slaughtering of innocents going on. Why?

The brutal murders of indigenous people by militarized police forces of the Peruvian State happened just a couple of days ago. As always, the official perspective is that human beings who want to protect their land, culture, birth rights, sovereignty, means of subsistence, dignity or human rights are outrageous, irrelevant people who are dangerous and can only be dealt with by killing them. The human legitimacy of others is never recognized by the king, who is, let's get serious about this for once, in reality what we all have. And kings are supremely selfish, arrogant, fear based people who can tolerate no dissent. All kings demand total obeisance, and all kings, when they don't get it, send in the armed forces to annihilate the disobedient.

The government response is never to send out people to help, to determine fair solutions, to discuss, bargain and obtain mutually beneficial agreements, but always and only to send out the troops to slaughter those who are being wronged, to slaughter the victims of the king's arrogant imperialism, slaughter them brutally, cruelly, coldly, with over powering force, by the tens and hundreds and thousands. Because this whole world is ruled by the supposed rights of so called kings, there has been and continues to be a nonstop carnage fest on planet Earth. The rights of kings amounts to nonstop blood dripping carnage on our little world which in my short little life time I have witnessed going on for straight decades. Literally every single day.

When you add in the natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes, plus the floods and the famines and the tsunamis that have steadily rocked the globe; and all the while bloody, criminal war and violent carnage is playing out in the background like some sick demonic opera; it really starts to add up to a hell of a lot of dead bodies.

Plus look at the declining state of health in America, the skyrocketing rates of cancers of all kinds and the sheer inept idiocy of throwing toxic chemicals at the problem with the stated aim of either killing the cancer or the person and calling that medical "care", and you really have to begin to wonder what the hell is going on around here. Go ahead and look up annual death rates and what people are dying from. So much hype about guns and cigarettes and illegal drugs being dangerous when they barely put a dent in the overall annual death numbers in this country due to legal drugs, due to visiting the supreme beings called doctors, due to chemicals and carcinogens saturating everything you eat and drink and every breath of air you breathe. You may be very surprised to find out how many Americans go down each year, and how. Annual deaths directly resulting from mass produced foods and prescription drugs, from going to the doctor, from having to stay in hospitals, from cancers and aids and new wild ass strains of tuberculosis and flu and cancer and viral pathogens that nature never invented, this list goes on and on by the way; it becomes quite plain that the boogie threats we are given to believe are too horrible for words are the least of our worries. The reality is that Americans are dying at unprecedented rates, living much shorter, much unhealthier lives, and birth rates have plummeted. Sperm counts have dropped steeply and sharply, infant mortality is on the rise, and new impossible epidemics of autism are changing the very fabric and future of our country. Add in the staggering numbers of people whose lives are affected by or taken by war and the cacophony of carnage reaches an earsplitting crescendo. We are in a shit load of death, disease and war.

When I really thought about it in the larger sense, not just in the separate individual geographical locations where violence, killing, suffering and death are ongoing, but taking it as a whole, I am honestly overwhelmed at just how much death there is on this planet. The fact is, the killing never ends. There are always people somewhere, somehow, being struck down either by self-appointed dark lords of self-righteousness, or due to extreme deprivation and the inexplicable global inability to respond quickly enough and sufficiently enough to help other innocent people struck by catastrophe.

It's too much. It does not make sense to me at all.

We have nothing but bogus wars; and they are all bogus, that's the fact of the matter. If you don't believe me then you're not caught up and need to get that way. You've been left behind with the sleeping people who are stuck in stupid. Get your ass out of there, pick a war, and read up on it. Don't just go to the authorized spew outlets, go elsewhere. Go to the verboten sources, to the first hand accounts of those who were invaded and slaughtered and oppressed. Get the story from people who were actually there and if you really want to be honest with yourself, get all of the sides to the story. Try to verify the standard official spew by finding third party, objective corroboration and it won't take too long before you realize things are vastly different than the king's take on things. There is no corroboration. All history and all current events reporting are wholly and totally one sided, coming only from the king's side because to the king nothing else counts or matters but the king.

Recall the glorious, fear mongering, hate mongering, ignorance inciting build up to the much desired Neo-Con/Zionist war against the people of Iraq. Let the Fox news filth be forever branded in your memory. They were of, for, and by the king; and the king, our king, no matter who he is, always wants more war. They always want to expand their territory and their access to profitable resources and cheap if not free labor. They always want to force more people down on their knees and present them with offers they'd best not refuse. That's what keeps empires rich and powerful.

Keeping that in mind, tell me why our new king is ramping up an extended military campaign in Afghanistan? Why the hell is he now killing even more people across the ocean? How is this protecting us? How is it protecting anyone? It's clear that no one is being protected. It's clear that this has nothing at all to do with protection of anything. All that's happening is that people, innocent people, are being slaughtered and their homes and properties and human rights are being dismissed and stolen by kings.

On the subject of why we're in Afghanistan, let me share with you a few quotes from a May 15, 2009 article at PressTV entitled 'US to be buried in Graveyard of Empires'. Excerpts from that article:

"US efforts to cut out a friendly Afghan administration could end up as disastrous as the previous international approaches on the country, says a former presidential assistant.

"The idea of trying to establish a central government…that is going to be pro-American is foolish," said political analyst and former special assistant to ex-US president Ronald Reagan, Douglas Bandow on Thursday".

Never thought I'd see the day that I found anything worth agreeing with from Reagan's administration, but the fact is, some of those older, non Satan worshipping guys are crawling out of the wood work in the 21st century, first to barf, and then to point out how truly astonishingly evil and stupid our foreign policies are. Thanks Doug, you da man. My very favorite quote from him is coming up; it made me think of dear Madeleine Albright's stomach churning remarks about something or other being worth the price of half a million dead children. What a gal. Whatever happened to her anyway? I hope she's under 24 hour surveillance and locked up somewhere, like in the cell next to Hannibal Lecter; because the thought of her running loose in the world is very unsettling to say the least. But I digress, here's the quote from Douglas Bandow:

"Bandow, however, doubted the objective of Americanization to be Washington's prime target after the stated aim of counterinsurgency, from which, it had deviated".

"The question is what is America doing? What is America's goal? It is very hard to know."

You see that? A former presidential special assistant with decades of experience in this boiling pot has no idea why we're in Afghanistan. And neither do you. And neither do I. And neither does anyone shopping at the local mall. I see a serious problem here.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but before so much as a single human being gets his or her brains blown out, ours or theirs, should we not know beyond any shadow of a doubt exactly why we're shooting them and getting shot back at? Shouldn't the reasons for this war have been nailed to the wall and analyzed three ways from sundown and shown to be so absolutely necessary that we have no other choice? SHOULDN'T THEY? Jesus God. What are these people doing to us? What are they doing to our world?

A final quote from that article:

"The comments came while President Barack Obama has assigned 21,000 soldiers and a great number of civilian experts to the Afghan-based contingents.

This is while the civilian deaths from the US attacks on suspected militant sanctuaries continue to rise and conjure up anti-American sentiment".

"Conjure up anti-American sentiment"? Don't they mean lighting blow torches of gut wrenching hatred? I think that's more accurate. Funny isn't it, the way the king's media can play down such very real horrors when they're usually such sensationalist fear & hysteria mongers? That there is what I'd call "a clue". When the truth is super ugly and the king is the guilty party, they come up with puppy-warm and cuddly words like "Enhanced Interrogation" and "Extraordinary Renditions" so as to help people not grasp the reality or the seriousness of our sociopathic plutocracy. Sprinkle more magic dust on those newspapers boys, keep those sheeple asleep. But you know dang well that if those 'insurgents' over there were doing the exact same things to our sons and daughters on our home soil, they wouldn't be calling it necessary and legal, or coin it in these perfume drenched terms. They'd be sending multi-directional high velocity spittle out both sides of their mouths and calling it vicious, brutal, inhuman torture and despicable acts of terrorist kidnappings of innocent people off the street.

It's the hypocrisy I can't take anymore. How many more times will we have to go through this shit folks? How many more dead people will it take for the plutocrat vultures to eat their fill?

Do I need to bring up Vietnam? The same exact, self-righteous fist pounding and rhetoric about God and country, honor and duty, support our brave fighting men, "we must save the world from the evils of" (fill in the blank), banging the war drums, stoking up the lust for killing dehumanized people in some far away country, transparent lies, self inflicted insults and wounds, heavy duty propaganda, at home psyops, intelligence goons breaking our laws to spy on people who speak out against the mindless violence of war, brutal attacks on people who protest against all wars of aggression, obnoxious calls for shooting "traitorous peace freaks". To hear it from the super righteous God Bless America top-chickenhawk-guns, smashing Vietnam into a bloody pulp was the most critically important thing in the universe for America. To not do it was unthinkable. The result was well over three million Vietnamese people killed. The result was over 55,000 of our beautiful, irreplaceable sons and fathers and brothers and uncles and daughters and sisters and mothers coming back dead. That's a whole lot of flag draped coffins. I don't know how many were injured and disabled and are still suffering. Why don't we ever hear about them?

Why don't we hear about the urgently necessary Vietnam war all the time if what transpired there was of such earth shattering national importance? It wasn't that long ago, and it went on for so many years. And the losses were staggering. Breath taking. Gut wrenching. The carnage was beyond comprehension.

Those who have never seen real war can't have a clue. We would want to puke forever if we were forced to see all of the death and blood and guts and blown up babies and hacked to bits grandmothers and blown up farm animals and burnt up children. Every dead soldier and every last brutally killed civilian were all real live living breathing human beings who were violently, horrendously killed.

But these are just words. Words can be forgotten. Words can be ignored. Words can be rewritten and twisted and denied. But images can't be argued with. So try this. Imagine that you were about to be taken someplace and be made to stand somewhere, and you could not move or turn away or close your eyes; and what you saw before you was all of the death of that war, in one huge heaping, disembodied, bleeding mass, all of it, all in one place, all at one time. A literal multi-mile high mountain of corpses and body parts. Who could handle that? Who could deal with that? No one could handle that, not mentally or emotionally. It would overwhelm any of us. We would not stop retching for the rest of our lives. We would never feel peace inside ourselves again. Such a vision would end all war forever. It would literally blow our minds.

Well, just because that can't ever happen, just because we could never see what all of the carnage and suffering looks like all in one place at one time, does not change the fact that all of that carnage happened and that all of it was absolutely real just the same. There must have been one hell of a reason for all of those human beings to have to die.

If all that carnage was so critically urgent, so very important, then you tell me why the Vietnam war is all but forgotten? Why aren't we all still talking about it? Why aren't they teaching our children about it in our king's schools? Shouldn't it be mandatory to know all about the decades long Vietnam war and what it was all about? It was critically urgent to our nation, wasn't it? It was a really big deal. That's what they said. There must have been numerous lessons to be learned? There must have been a victory? We must have had the noblest goal in the world, right?

Vietnam who? It's not even mentioned. It's not talked about. It's not remembered. We're not having huge national holidays to honor those who fought and lived or fought and died. It is totally ignored as if it was irrelevant. Forgotten and swept under the rug as if it meant absolutely nothing now that it's done and over with. Now that the spoils of war have been divvied out and the war profiteers coffers have been filled and spent. Now that the king has prevailed and forced his ideology and control down the throats of millions. It is all swept out of sight and out of mind by the same exact individuals who stoked up the calls for that war and the calls for war in Afghanistan, Angola, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Chile, The Congo, Costa Rica, Cuba, The Dominican Republic, Ecuador, East Timor, El Salvador, France/Algeria, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Indonesia, Iraq, Jamaica, Laos, Libya, Morocco, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Rwanda, Seychelles, Suriname, Uruguay, and Zaire. Sometimes revisiting these places time and again. And are the pressing, burning, indelibly important reasons for all of this killing still fresh in all of our minds? Isn't the better question why we were off killing and fighting in any of these places at all? Do you know why? Does anyone?

Currently the king and his media are stoking up the calls to make Pakistan a critically urgent situation calling for unavoidable war; stoking up the rhetoric that will make it of utmost national urgency to unavoidably attack Iran in self-defense of Israel; and a whole list of other countries to unavoidably attack by no means ends here, and yes there is a real list.

All of these future threats out there, just waiting to go critical, one by one. How nice of these horrible dangerous past and future enemies of "our nation" to so courteously go critical in just the right order and at just the right time for us to go kick their asses; right when we're free and available to make war and give it our full attention, and not when we're already busy defending our freedom and democracy in some other country's cities and towns. How nice that they let us defend ourselves in just the right order to keep us endlessly at war and spending all of those trillions and trillions and trillions of unavoidable war dollars. Dang nice of our evil enemies to do that for us. Nothing here to think about folks, move along please. Everything they tell us about war is true. There are too real threats that just happen when they happen. The USA can't help it. The USA has no choice. The USA doesn't want war, we hate war, President Bush said so. Every war president says so. It's all about national security. We have to defend ourselves on other people's soil. "Have honkin' Army Will Travel". Every time. We have to do it. It is critically urgent.

The king's media is already forgetting and letting fade away the last critically urgent 7 year long "war on terror" we just had and are still having in that still smoking pile of rubble and ruins formerly called Iraq. They just can't forget 'em fast enough can they? It doesn't seem to matter at all that every war is a debacle and humanitarian crisis that leaves millions dead and bathes our country in oceans of shame. Don't even suggest that the very next war needs a damn good reason to be waged. If they say we need the next war or any war, believe them. After all their track record is... Um, wait, their track record is a piece of shit. Well, just shut up and support the troops you terrorist supporting wussy coward.

There were no weapons of mass destruction, remember? But did the king apologize and bring the troops back home and send back money to Iraq and did he show some remorse for his egregious error? NO. He didn't do that. The king's men devised new lies and false pretenses for staying there to keep pretending to be doing whatever they were supposedly doing there which no matter what it was, boiled down to killing people and destroying culture, lives, dreams, rights, history, and critical infrastructure. The whole horrible episode of trashing Iraq is too flaming unbelievably filthy for me to talk about. I can't talk about it. So much shame has descended on our country that I can hardly breathe anymore.

Would you please look at the Arab peoples over there across the sea and give them the deep and abiding respect they deserve? They have handled all of this with a grace and dignity that we'll never see in this country from our supposedly elected royal officialdom. As THEIR land and THEIR homes and THEIR countries are turned into foreign military playgrounds and THEIR innocent civilian populations are extinguished and referred to as "collateral damage" like so many boxes of supplies getting dented during shipment, they were still willing to wait out President Obama and give him a fair shot at proving we're not a lunatic asylum of barking jackals incapable of grasping simple ideas like, there are other people on earth with us and we don't get to kill them all. Gee, that they get sick of being invaded, murdered and controlled and sometimes refuse to take it anymore, is that really so hard to understand? REALLY? That people are defending themselves against the endless bombing and killing and destruction of their people, is that too complicated to mentally digest?

I don't see how it could be. Get serious. This is not hard. This is not complex. All that's required to comprehend the righteous, valid rage is the most basic level of compassion. It's a human feeling, for those who are unfamiliar with the concept. It works like this. You imagine yourself in the position of those other people and then ask yourself, "How would I like it if this was happening to me?" And then you answer your own question. And it's so easy to instantly know that you'd fricken hate it that it's honestly unbelievable that it needs to be explained; but clearly it does need to be explained.

The real question is, what kind of crud is it that can't figure that out? What kind of freak does it take to 'forget' compassion? Then again it is a human emotion. Perhaps I'm missing something. At this point I really hope that's what the problem is, because we couldn't be blamed for being taken over by flesh eating satanic aliens from outer space. But if that's not what the problem is, how the hell are we ever going to raise up our faces in this world again with any modicum of credibility or self-respect? Not that it's worth anything, I didn't vote for any of them. I don't want to encourage these people. I do not extend my permission to be ruled by people I can't respect at any level. Why the hell would I?

Yes, I am angry. I'm so tired of all this b.s. It's way beyond the point of excuses. "We're so inept", and "We're protecting the country from bad guys". Oh bite me. It infuriates me the way our good decent men and women in the military are being used and trashed like their lives aren't worth bothering about to these people. They're expendable stupid cattle, isn't that what Kissinger said? Something very much like that. Look it up. I don't have to make anything up. The world's ruling class has openly damned themselves with their own words from their own mouths and written by their own hands. This is all, always, carried out using the same step-by-step template. The same b.s. presidential orations about God and country and getting the boogie man of the year. That's all that changes from decade to decade. Switch out "commies" with "pinkos" with "reds" with "hadji's" with "terrorists" with "insurgents". The rhetoric never changes. It's the same verbatim, quote for quote, decade after decade. It's all way too steady and well funded to be anything but a hard core game plan. They will keep using the same scary enemy boogie man excuses and ramping up the mind-boggling "defense' budget to pretty near a trillion dollars per annum to keep the war machine, the murder machine, the most pointless, unjustified, illegal, criminal mass murder of human beings happening today and tomorrow and every single day for the rest of our lives and our children's lives and their children's lives, and why? From what I can tell the only reason could be that it gets them off.

A trillion dollar "king's pleasure kills" budget, yes, that's every year. Give me a break. Give us all a break for Christ's sake. When is the carnage on this planet ever going to end?

Is there such a thing as our military force going too far? Because, in their eyes, I don't think there is. If they don't think it's gone too far by now, if they didn't think it had gone too far after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it's a fair question and one that needs to be asked. How far is too far, your highnesses?

How many times has the US been in the Middle East waging violent war for whatever reason in the last hundred years? And what about before that? It's not like there's no history here. Odd how they don't ever mention it.

How many times will the US go back with all new weapons, all new state of the art bombs and planes and tanks and remote control killing machines, and how many more human beings will be annihilated off the face of the earth and forgotten, as if the king's soldiers are simply plowing down the fields for a new planting of the king's crops? The depravity is akin to what dripped down the walls in Amityville. You know that's not supposed to happen and you know that when it does happen, it's not going to be a good thing. The more it happens the worse it's going to get when the lights go out. Or even before they go out.

How far is too far, officialdom? How far is too far, war machine makers? How much death and suffering is too much? Is the sky the limit for all of you gents? Is the sky the limit for the king's media too? Is there no such thing as too much mass human slaughter at our hands? Is no number too high? Is any old reason a good enough reason to kill? As long as they're buying, you bomb and tank and war plane makers are selling, and it's not your problem who's getting killed? Whose problem is it gentlemen?

The silence is deafening isn't it? No one wants to come out and proudly state our policy or game plan or long range interests. You know they have them, they just can't apparently bring themselves to tell us what they are. It's not about national security, oh please, I think the people in the cross hairs know the secret is out. I wish the kings wouldn't be so patronizing to us. I really don't like that.

So they don't want to risk letting us know what the 10 year plan is, much less the five year plan. They want it so bad they refuse to let us get wind of it, knowing we wouldn't go along? So, I guess the definition of high moral character is to cammo up and sneak end runs around an honest assessment of policy, say it's classified, can't be discussed, and then use us for our money and our lives, and use our military for everything you can squeeze out of it, and use the intended victims taking the bullets and bombs to blame it all on, so that you may sneak in the back door and steal and black op and lie and psyop and help yourself to your desired trophy? Were you going to surprise us with it afterwards, or just lie about what it even was and come up with something you'd prefer us to swallow?

That's not the definition of high moral character in my Funk and Wagnall. Maybe I need the updated DoD/Government version where reality's been officially turned on it's ear.

We need some very serious, long over due public debate to force this tireless beast back into its cave for a season. God, doesn't it ever sleep?

If Iraq was not going far enough for the men who think that killing solves all problems large and small, will Afghanistan be enough? No it won't be enough, because they're already making all of the noises about Pakistan, and the new fable, spin, whatever you want to call it, about them being too drunk to keep their nukes in the back seat with seat belts properly fastened.

And of course the steady drumbeat about Iran being some beady-eyed Jurassic Park Arab T-Rex pacing behind its electronic fence just waiting for that power to go out. One dark and stormy night the fence gets hit by lightening and kaboom, Israel never knows what hit it.

It's a great script for Hollywood, but a disingenuous, less than objective, less than rational assessment of verifiable reality.

How far is too far Pentagon? Chiefs? State Department? Banker dark lords? Senators? Representatives? Lobbyists? Can you point to it on a Google satellite map? Can you draw a schematic on a white board somewhere so we can get the picture? At what point would you folks ever draw a line and say, we can't go that far?

We already know the answer folks, we've known it since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even before that. According to the men of war who decide the fates of all and who see every problem's solution as a military one, they'd have dusted all of us and all of the USSR and anyone else in the way and never would have stopped for one second to ask themselves, "What the fuck are we doing?" It's our way or everyone dies? Is that the philosophy? Because if it is, it's beyond barking at the moon insane. It's way past that. It's well into scarier than hell.

Is that the end goal? Turning this place into hell? Because we're half way there now, and the folks overseas have been there for years. This is what has come of you folks in the expensive seats having it your way for so many decades in a row. All the money you want, all the off the scale technology you want, all the enemies you want. Are you through yet? Will you ever be through?

As these painful years of post 9-11 terrorism and Cheney's dream of endless war drones on, don't say you're not watching where you're taking all of us. Don't say it's not you in the drivers' seat. Of course it's you. Please don't think we're not watching where you're going and where you're taking us, and how. We are most certainly watching. When are you going to be done killing people and bankrupting us for reasons so unclear that no one can put it into a simple sentence?

This is like charades and we've got your number. You look silly standing there keeping up the mime routine. Can we get real now? Or is that a national security threat in general?

Maybe that's what the plan is folks. Taking something as wonderful and irreplaceable as our country and a long list of other countries, and trashing them to make them into a hell of the kings designs. It's no stretch to say that it keeps looking and feeling more like hell than America as time goes by. I don't even see America here any more. I still see Americans, demoralized, pissed off, confused and struggling, but I don't see the defining structure, values, ethics and humanity that is supposed to be our calling card.

Not when our highest officialdom openly disdains freedom and democracy and loathes our values and overrides them with their own obscene personal version of "values" that we wouldn't put up with in our own homes, from anyone. EVER. Not when lawyers are no longer able to defend illegally imprisoned people without acres of mindless, invasive, obstructive, illegal government red tape that exists only to crush any chance of justice being done. That's not a value system we can tolerate much less be proud of. There's nothing to be proud of there.

Sadly, there's ever less things we can truly be proud of any more in this country. What a crying shame it is, what a terrible waste. Such a filthy racket, a fun little game for those high and mighty, yet oh so cowardly self-crowned global lords and masters who play the game on our lives and dreams and our children's lives and do it so very well. It's not about money to them, they believe they own everything already. They have more money than God. So what's it all about then , dark lords? Is it just the joy you get from crushing the innocent? From defiling the sacred life within us all? From pissing on and blowing to bits the sacred beauty and mystery of this thriving, life giving world? Is that what offends you so much? Life itself?

As they continue to lower the world into their stinking, roiling cesspit vision of depraved kingly perfection, it's little wonder that they're simultaneously arming and militarizing massive, violent compliance forces to attack and annihilate anyone at the slightest sign of dissatisfaction or dissent with their truly foul ideas.

Too bad the king's media couldn't get any reporters out to the Bilderberger's May 14-17 meeting this year, AGAIN, to find out what the self-appointed special people and wanna-be rulers of the Earth have in mind next for all of us. If we can't get the 4-1-1 from our own officialdom, could any of you big time major newspapers or TV news channels afford to send a couple of folks in, under deep cover, to ferret out what's next on the plan to grind us all deeper into the dirt and demoralize us while continuing to kill millions of people and redefine reality in the background like the depraved little evil wizards they are? It would be nice to know what's on the official agenda for the year, just once. Not that we can't guess, but the trusting people don't know, and that's just not fair. It's really very rude. Very disrespectful to play nations this way. Where do these people get off? If I knew I'd drop them off, personally. On my own dime. Trust me. I really would.