What have we wrought?

Riverbend tells us.

It's enough to make you sick of politics

Actually, more than enough. A recent letter from "key Democratic Senators" to Bush about the Iraq war and occupation was said to herald a new unity among Democrats on the topic. Well, it's true several Democrats signed the letter (our Boxer, but not our Feinstein, however, and not Hillary and of course not Lieberman), but the letter itself said nothing new. Rhetoric about the past and an amorphous proposal for the future of our occupation. A weak, spineless expession of a weak, spineless party. If I didn't despise the Republicans so much, I wouldn't ever vote for a Democrat.

Class war

This ploy by the House Republicans--tying an increase in the minimum wage to reduction of the federal estate tax--is too much. When are the poor and middle class in America going to rebel against the monsters who're running this country?

This can't be true

Bush is expanding Gitmo, building a new prison there? And the builder is Halliburton? No. Not possible.

This Shiite cleric

expresses my sentiments exactly.

You know you've got problems

when a commanding general of your armed forces won't give his full name for fear of reprisal from insurgents. (Scroll down to last paragraph of this AP story.)

Once again, words fail

to capture the quality and intensity of the outrage I experienced as I read this Marine Corps article about the "second biggest building in Iraq."

Now here's a good idea

In the midst of Israel's bombing of Lebanon, the US delivers bombs to Israel. Precisely the way to win the hearts and minds of Arab Muslims in the region.

Who's on first?

Wouldn't you love having your kid killed while deployed in this cauldron? Fighting neighborhood militias and death squads, and lions and tigers and bears? I mean, WTF? (To you cybernoncognesisi that's What the Fuck?)

All's well

Sure, the Middle East is ablaze, the Earth is warming alarmingly, the poor are getting poorer while the rich are...you get the drift.

But all is well in the world. Why? Because the last two major golf tournaments, the Womens' US Open and the Mens' British Open, were won by the sound, fine favorites, Annika Sorenstam and Tiger Woods. The pretenders, Mickelson, Wie and their ilk are still back in the pack. Annika and Tiger rule, and so I may sleep tonight.

It's no surprise to me

that the biggest of the MSM, the Associated Press, is biased in favor of the US government's positions on various reports. Now, as demonstrated in this study, we can see how subtle, but dominant that bias is.

In my next life

I want this gig.

Can you guess who said this?

After criticizing Israel's assault on Lebanon, he told assembled Western officials: "Just get your hands off Iraq and the Iraqi people and Muslim countries, and everything will be all right," and
"What has been done in Iraq is a kind of butchery of the Iraqi people."


Another report of the remarks included these telling statements.

"If a reconciliation project is going to work it has to talk to all the people," he said. "It must go through our Iraqi beliefs and perceptions. What we need is reconciliation between Iraqis only, there can be no third party."

To underscore his distaste for US forces in Iraq, he related an anecdote about how US soldiers keep people waiting in lines at checkpoints for hours because they insist on resting their bomb-sniffing dogs.

"The sleep of American dogs is more important than people being stopped in the street for hours," he said, evoking chuckles among Iraqi delegates.

The author of these statements? Speaker of the Iraqi's parliament, that's who.


Could it be that our puppets are beginning to pull their own strings?

Call me stupid

but there was a lot in this essay about money that I didn't know.

Our fearless leader

or should I say stupid leader?

Drown them in blood

Okay, I've decided: I want all of them--the Iraqi "army" and "police," the Iraqi insurgents and "terrorists," its civilians and innocents, the Sunnis and Shias and Turkomans and Kurds--all of them to die. I want the Israelis and Hamas and Hizbollahs (sp?) and Iranians and Syrians and Lebanese to die. I want the Egyptians and Saudis and Afghanis to die, as well as all Indians and Pakistanis and Chinese and Koreans (North and South) and Indonesians and Phillipinos and--you've got my drift. (Lately, I include in the list the Venezuelans, the Chileans, the Bolivians and Brazilians and Cubans, maybe the Mexicans, too.)

Wouldn't it be wonderful if there were no people on Earth, no nations, that didn't oppose the US version of the world? We'd be free to suck oil from wherever we wanted, to cut down timber, net all the fish, mine all the minerals, exploit all the workers. We could drive our SUVs at whatever speed we wanted, borrow all the money we needed, buy anything we desired.

Yup. That's what I want. Maybe then I can stop blogging. I'll be too busy buying and spending and speeding.

A query

I'd like my (numerous) readers to tell me of one thing--one thing--that's improving (a) in America, and (b) on Earth. Just asking.

My thoughts on Al Gore's candidacy for President

are captured precisely here.

The sad story of Mr. Wilson

This AP story of a Ramadi man is touching, tragic. "Destroying a village [in this case a city] in order to save it," just like in VietNam.

In the middle of the piece is an illuminating quote. After telling of Mr. Wilson's plight (and, presumably, the thousands of other Iraqis who've abandoned the city), the writer says, "In the vast scale of suffering and displacement the country has experienced, Mr. Wilson's departure is the tiniest of blips. But it's a vivid symbol of the hardships faced by the U.S.-led coalition and the elected Iraqi government in restoring peace and quiet for the countless other Mr. Wilsons of Iraq."

Hardships faced by the coalition?

Condi's free pass

Our Secretary of State was asleep at the switch during pre-9/11 when she was, supposedly, our security chief; she was the mouthpiece for Bush in the Iraq warmup (recall her "mushroom cloud" reference?), and since then has been a main shill for Bush's failed policies, including in this outrageous appearance on TV. Note how she continues to conflate the madness in the Middle East with 9/11, hoping that the sheeplike American media and citizenry will continue to endure Bush's "policies" in Iraq and his blind support of Israel as part of his "war on terror." Indeed, her terming of criticism of those policies as "grotesque" is grotesque.

It's time we called her the militaristic whore she is, an evil force in our international relations, and stop giving her allowances because of her race/gender. If you think I'm off base here, just consider how her recent words would be treated by the media--especially the liberal media--if uttered by Rummie or Cheney. There's be a howl of protest. But when spoken by Condi, they raise barely a ripple.