Tim Hortons

There seems to be an odd, and somewhat disturbing development occurring in the Erie coffee drinking scene: an addiction to Tim Hortons coffee. Have you tried it? It's taken me probably about a year of on-and-off drinking before I finally became hooked. But, I've had it like five times in the past week and can't seem to face going back to anything else. Even Starbucks, which I used to swear by, seems to either pale in comparison - for regular coffee, or be overkill - for lattes, when compared to Tim's. The disturbing part is that my wife has also become addicted- to decaf, as she's preggers - but addicted nonetheless. Then, I was having beers with two guys the other night and they also claimed they were addicted. The one guy was actually running late for a meeting recently, but did a U-ee on Peach Street when he noticed he was passing Tim's before getting on the highway. Is this some sort of Canadian conspiracy to bring down the U.S. ? I don't know because it seems Canadians have the same problem-as I found some Canuck-centric chat boards and other posts on this very topic. There's even a Muslim-centric forum on the topic. I would like a Congressional investigation.

Speaking of which, it seems the two biggest stories in the news these days are gas prices and the continuing war in Iraq. What is the relation between these two events? Are they only tangentially connected, or are they directly related, i.e., did the war directly lead to $3 a gallon gas? Or, was the war started because the neo-cons knew there would be $3 per gallon gas on the way, and if the war had gone well, it would have prevented the price increases - or delayed them? Or has this $3 per gallon gas made the Bush's and bin Laden's allies even richer and the war was started as kind of distraction to all that? Can we get an investigation on all this, instead of whether oil companies, who last I checked were in business to make money, are actually just being really successful at what they do?

Right. Also, if you get a chance, check out David Broder's column on Joe Biden's plan for a new Iraq. It involves dividing the country up into three states: one each for the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. It's pretty much what I've been saying should have been done since we ripped apart Saddam's regime. Now, I'm not an expert, but from what I understood, Iraq was kind of kludged together by the Brits after World War II, and it has always required force to make all these people get along. The reasons for tying it together in the first place, I'm not sure of, but it probably had something to do with making it large enough to defend itself vs. the Turks. Clearly, though, these three factions are not going to co-exist in a peaceful democratic government. Hell, we even had a Civil War in the United States 75 years after it was founded, and our North and South populations had a lot more in common than Kurds and Sunnis do.

Come to think of it, didn't the Canadians pull out of Iraq? Maybe they're planning on cutting off our coffee and invading us while we're too asleep to defend ourselves.

Ralph