My year in revue. But it's quicker for me to say it than type it.

Listen : Bombs - Faithless ... When We Were Young - The Killers ... Vermillion Archer - The Sw!ms.

Christmas is nearly here. You can tell because bloggers like me decide to come out of hibernation for a few seconds to tell you that Christmas is nearly here. And the telly has all those animated reindeer things on. Hooray! Off to buy the tree today.

I like this time of year. Mainly for the food, I think.

This is a pretty random post, so I may as well end with a random web page recommendation. Married To The Sea is the work of husband-and-wife team Drew and Natalie Dee. They take old lithographic images and add stupid modern words to it. Some of the time, it's just out-right offensive stuff, so don't say you haven't been warned. This is one of the tamer ones.

If the text is a bit small, it's because I shrunk it to fit on the page. Stupid blog. You can see the original one here.

Listen - I Believe In Father Christmas - Greg Lake ... Santa Baby - Kylie Minogue.

I feel ill. It started with a sore lip and moved onto my gums. It made one of my teeth hurt so much, I thought I'd have to have the thing pulled.

Then it moved to my nose. Rhinoviruses are not a fun thing to have over the Thanksgiving break. Oh well, at least I got four days off work, which was nice. Downloading mash-up remixes and relaxing.

One small pleasure over the weekend was filling the bird-feeder and squirrel-feeder in the back garden. As far as the birds go, we have titmice, chickadees, cardinals, finches, juncos, woodpeckers. A few pigeons and they're all scared by the crows. It's great to watch how quickly they come and go.

Here. Look for yourself!

Listen - I Feel Crazy (Gnarles Barkley and Donna Summer) - Party Ben ... Don't Bring Me Down (Audiodile's Breakdown) - ELO & Audiodile ... Man I Hate Your Band - Little Man Tate.

The Democratic Party did win a majority in the House and the Senate, and Bob Casey did win. So I'm happy, because that means maybe we'll be able to hold someone accountable for this mess in Iraq, this mess in New Orleans, this mess with the environment...

...and now we look towards Christmas. I wouldnt mind an iPod Nano, and maybe one of those Rabbit corkscrew thingies, and a US footie shirt (or 'jersey' as they call them here). If someone wants to get me the Thom Yorke CD, or the one by Beck, or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or maybe even She Wants Revenge, or The Killers new album? A Kurt Vonnegut book would be nice. Or something funny, something like "The Areas Of My Expertise" by John Hodgman.

Or just world peace. I'd go for world peace. That would be nice, for a change.

Listen : Harrowdown Hill - Thom Yorke ... Nausea - Beck ... These Things - She Wants Revenge.

War is profit. Here's the proof.

I was going to blog about the lovely autumn leaves and how beautiful it looks. Just like this.

...and that's quite nice, but maybe later.

I was going to post about local politics in Pennsylvania. How we met Bob Casey, how I used to live half a block away from him. How he's going to be the new Senator.

...and that's quite nice, but maybe later.

What I want to talk about is the war in Iraq. Now; you may argue against the viewpoint of Generals that are actually in Iraq and say "it's all going swimmingly". One Conservative spokesperson here in the US really said it was going "swimmingly". Ann Coulter. Sheesh, talk about a disconnect from reality. But I want to address one core idea about the war. It's an idea that was first voiced by people you might consider hippies.

And guess what? It turns out that, just like with Vietnam, the hippies were right!

I decided to see if the war was really all about the cold hard cash. Halliburton, a company that Dick Cheney used to be on the Board of Directors for (and a company that 'won' no-bid contracts in Iraq) will make or break the theory. War is profit.

This took just a few seconds of searching online. And it's not from a Liberal or Conservative political site. It's not a political site at all.

It's the Financial website of Yahoo! in the UK.

They have a graph function on their pages. Compare any share price's rise and fall to the Dow Jones Industrial in the US (_DJI) or the Financial Times Stock Exchange in England (_FTSE). Let's see how Halliburton (HAL) did against the US and UK average of 130 companies, over the last 20 years or so.

OK, not too well. Halliburton has done about as well as the 100 companies in the FTSE in London, but the 30 companies in the DJI completely trounced it. Mathematics don't lie. The benchmark of American companies was twice as good as Halliburton, an American company.

But now we're going to change the search parameters a little bit. Let's get rid of everything but the last five years. The Dow rose over 250% under Reagan (Republican) and over 300% under Clinton (Democratic), but let's keep this totally Cheney and G.W.Bush.

How did a company that barely keeps up with the FTSE do with friends in high places?

This is not some trick of mathematics. This is not 'spin'. We took the value of the DJI, the FTSE, and HAL. Rated them all at their 2001 (October 20th) closing price, and said "let's see how much you make for investors now..."

Those low points in the red line was when Halliburton was at $10 a share or so. Its 2006 high was $41.99.

A share that kind-of kept up with the market but underperformed it for decades suddenly shot off like a bottle rocket. A company that usually gave 50% suddenly went and gave canny investors eight times that in a few years. And it all seems to be concentrated just before that yellow line.

That yellow line in March, 2003. The start of the American invasion of Iraq. War is profit, if your ex-chairman is now Vice President of the invading country. Not spin, not bullshit. Fact. Mathematical, easy to see, no doubts at all.

Fact. War is profit. And there's the proof.

Listen: Don't Believe The Hype - Public Enemy.