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JERSEY GIRLS

2009-09-26T00:01:00.002-10:00

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REMEMBERING SISTERS, FRIENDS, ENEMIES & LOVERS FROM THE GARDEN STATE

DIAMONDS IN THE ROUGH, REAL WOMEN IN AN UNREAL WORLD

Funny How The Oddest Things Will Trigger Memories, Click

We were watching a show on the teevee called "In Plain Sight," taped some weeks ago. We like the show because it stars Mary Catherine McCormack, of Plainfield, New Jersey. Plainfield, the "Queen City," was a neighboring town to the one in which we first attempted to grow up, in "Central" Jersey. New Jersey is a small State, too small to be divided more than once and still leave something worth mentioning, so no one outside of Central Jersey ever mentions it. You can inhale in Philly and exhale in Manhattan without breathing any Jersey air, hardly. Sometimes it's hard for New Jerseyans to breathe, sandwiched in between all that greatness and history, corruption and filth. They manage, in part because they have a history of their own and in part by always supporting a fellow Jersey girl or boy. So I watch Mary's show.

Plus, OK, Mary is beautiful in that unaffected Central Jersey way. You know, the minimal make-up and the simply brushed hair, the blue jeans and the girlie "top," the pretty mouth and the sarcastic things that come out of it. Even if Central Jersey is just a geographical fiction which exists only in the minds of Central Jerseyans, some of the ladies there do have their own way of doing things. You might even call it a "style," but they would make fun of you if you did. Because there's no there there, therefore no style. The folk of NJ's post-industrial midlands know they're not from South Jersey, with its' scary Pine Barrens, Jersey Devils and "Phully" refugees, and they don't want to be from North Jersey with it's overly creative accountants, mobbed-up garbage men and Crooklyn escapees. So they have created this mental safe zone that lies somewhere West of Newark, South of Lake Hopatcong, North of Trenton and East of the Delaware River. It's a diamond shape, maybe twenty-five or thirty miles to a side, with the northern tip pointing at Morristown and the Southern tip pointing at Princeton, with the West point at Flemington and the East at Westfield. (Most of Morris, Hunterdon, Somerset, Middlesex and parts of Union, Monmouth, and Mercer Counties.) It's cozy. It's where Mary is from, right in the middle.

We know this because we recognized her accent and mannerisms, her facial expressions and ways of holding herself, and because we looked her up on IMDB. Turns out she was one of those private school girls, probably from Sleepy Hollow, in what was left of Plainfield after the riots in the 1960's some years before she was born. She would have been much younger than ourselves, a child of the 70's. But she would have worn the same snotty blazer and maybe a tartan skirt on special days at school. She would have been wickedly smart and funny, terribly studious and wild at parties, a genuine heartbreaker, tall and blonde and pretty as Hell. She would have left poor old Jersey behind for the theater and never looked back. But she would have always been a Jersey girl.

To our delight, Mary did a couple of scenes with another Central Jersey girl on the episode we watched. Laura Prepon, of Watchung, NJ, just up the hill from Plainfield, played her long-lost and unbeknownst sister. Laura's hair is blonde now, and she is tall and beautiful in that Bambergers' way. Seeing her interact with Mary was like going home for Christmas back in the days when we were all students or soldiers or wanderers on the various roads of life, magical moments when everyone was thrown together for what might be the last time, and girls we used to know as gawky in grammar school had become angelically beautiful, with wings upon which they flew away, leaving us in the snowy mud beside an over-decorated tree on the front lawn, staring up at stars we can never touch.

We could not begin to list all the Jersey girls we knew, or wished we knew, and loved over the years. Stolen first kisses and last desperate hugs, weddings and Christenings, wakes and funerals, brief dances in the Delaware moonlight and long talks on the sunburned Jersey Shore, hours and hours in cars wandering aimlessly around the Kittatinny Mountains and the New Brunswick alleys, trying to get to the heart of a girl.

OK, one girl. Suzanne. Like the song, which had just come out four years before we met her. It really was her song. We even sang it with her. Suzanne with her Guild guitar and her long blonde hair, her beautiful, intelligent, amused and unaffected face, turning towards us and then turning away. She could have been the third sister to Mary and Laura, a rare and special Jersey girl, rare and special because she was so real and normal, in that Raritanian way. She died in car crash in California at the age of twenty-one, three years after we sang her song, thirty five years ago this week. Mary reminded me of her. I could never forget my Jersey girl, Suzanne.
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ANGELINA JOLIE SUNBATHING NUDE

2009-09-25T00:01:00.006-10:00

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NAKED STAR GLORIFIES THE SUN

SUPER-HEROINE RADIATES POWER & BEAUTY

YOUTUBE: TOMB RAIDER
"Angelina Jolie - Lara Croft"
Superman, meet super woman.

OK, So Her Dad Is Nuts. Maybe That's Why She Adopts.

Thanks for not peeing in our gene pool, Angie. We're glad your father did, though.
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LET THE LYNCHINGS BEGIN!

2009-09-24T00:01:00.003-10:00

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REPUBLICAN ATTACKS BEAR STRANGE FRUIT, AS INTENDED

ANTI-AMERICAN "CONSERVATIVES" MURDER INNOCENT CENSUS WORKER

YOUTUBE: FOX NEWS
"Bachmann Rails Against Census On Beck"
Great minds stink alike.

Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage Win Another Round, Kill Another American

First they objected to a liberal female Presidential candidate. Then they freaked out over an African-American President. Next they targeted an African-American energy expert with the Federal Government. Now they have executed a man for helping with the dreaded "Big Gummint" census, and carved the word "FED" in his chest.

Is it time to round up the leaders of this "movement" yet? They have killed abortion doctors and guards in the Holocaust museum. They have shown up at town hall meetings with assault weapons. The have conspired to kill Federal judges. They have threatened to kill the President of the United States of America. They have declared a "Christian" jihad against Muslims, gays, blacks, women, liberals, etc. Should we wait until the day after Kristallnacht, or maybe sometime after the next Holocaust?

How long would it take those same "Feds" to come down on those of us in the true center of American politics, the democratic Left, if we organized to fight these people? Can we expect the Go-Along-To-Get-Along White House to act any differently, or to stand up to the Nazi's themselves? So, what is going to happen?

Don't expect the cavalry any time soon. In fact, they're riddled with Nazi's themselves, literally. The rank and file are fertile grounds for hate groups. There have been mutinous stirrings ever since Obama was elected, all the way up to the highest echelons. They're not happy with the idea of a black Commander-In-Chief, even a barely liberal one, and they do NOT want their wars against non-Christians to end, ever. And a lot of their victims, er, veterans are coming home hurt, disillusioned, mentally ill and pissed off. Only the Right is offering them any answers: Kill, kill, kill.

TIMES WEST VIRGINIAN
"Hanged Census worker had ‘fed’ on chest"
Bowie knife?

' A U.S. Census worker found hanged from a tree near a Kentucky cemetery had the word “fed” scrawled on his chest, a law enforcement official said Wednesday, and the FBI is investigating whether he was a victim of anti-government sentiment. Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky. The law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, did not say what type of instrument was used to write “fed” on his chest. Sparkman’s mother, Henrie Sparkman of Inverness, Fla., told The Associated Press her son was an Eagle scout who moved to the area to be a local director for the Boy Scouts of America. She said he later became a substitute teacher in Laurel County and supplemented that income as a Census worker. She said investigators have given her few details about her son’s death — they told her the body was decomposed — and haven’t yet released his body for burial. “I was told it would be better for him to be cremated,” she said. Gilbert Acciardo, a retired Kentucky state trooper who directs an after-school program at the elementary school where Sparkman was a frequent substitute teacher, said he had warned Sparkman to be careful when he did his Census work. “Even though he was with the Census Bureau, sometimes people can view someone with any government agency as ‘the government.’ I just was afraid that he might meet the wrong character along the way up there,” Acciardo said. “He was such an innocent person,” Acciardo said. “I hate to say that he was naive, but he saw the world as all good, and there’s a lot of bad in the world.” A private group called PEER, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, tracks violence against employees who enforce environmental regulations, but the group’s executive director, Jeff Ruch, said it’s hard to know about all of the cases because some agencies don’t share data on instances of violence against employees. From 1996 to 2006, according to the group’s most recent data, violent incidents against federal Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service workers soared from 55 to 290. “Even as illustrated in town hall meetings today, there is a distinct hostility in a large segment of the population toward people who work for their government,” Ruch said. '

YAHOO NEWS
"America armed, but guns not necessarily loaded"
The "Obama Effect"? How's the supply of black targets?

' Bullet-makers are working around the clock, seven days a week, and still can't keep up with the nation's demand for ammunition. Shooting ranges, gun dealers and bullet manufacturers say they have never seen such shortages. Bullets, especially for handguns, have been scarce for months because gun enthusiasts are stocking up on ammo, in part because they fear President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress will pass antigun legislation — even though nothing specific has been proposed and the president last month signed a law allowing people to carry loaded guns in national parks. "We are working overtime and still can't keep up with the demand," said Al Russo, spokesman for North Carolina-based Remington Arms Company, which makes bullets for rifles, handguns and shotguns. "We've had to add a fourth shift and go 24-7. It's a phenomenon that I have not seen before in my 30 years in the business." Americans usually buy about 7 billion rounds of ammunition a year, according to the National Rifle Association. In the past year, that figure has jumped to about 9 billion rounds, said NRA spokeswoman Vickie Cieplak. Jason Gregory, who manages Gretna Gun Works just outside of New Orleans, has been building his personal supply of ammunition for months. His goal is to have at least 1,000 rounds for each of his 25 weapons. "I call it the Obama effect," said Gregory, 37, of Terrytown, La. "It always happens when the Democrats get in office. It happened with Clinton and Obama is even stronger for gun control. Ammunition will be the first step, so I'm stocking up while I can." With demand, prices have also risen. "Used to be gold, but now lead is the most expensive metal," said Donald Richards, 37, who was stocking up at the Jefferson store. "And worth every penny." '

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
"Civil rights group warns of neo-Nazis in the US military"
Guess we know which way the Army's prejudices run, eh?

' The appearance of 40 active-duty US soldiers on a social networking site known as the "fascist Facebook" appears to add credibility to a controversial government report released in April about extremism in the military. Presented to congressional committees Friday, the revelations by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) – covered in depth by the military-oriented newspaper, Stars and Stripes – also raises new questions about how serious the Army is about rooting out rank-and-file neo-Nazis – and their potential impact on morale and military discipline. In contrast to the 12,500 gay service members discharged in the last 15 years because of potential impact on unit morale, SPLC spokeswoman Heidi Beirich says: "There are many people in the military using new technology to put up racist profiles, racist music and ... books that they love that are racist, and as the regulations stand today that's not grounds for being tossed out of the military." The SPLC, a civil rights organization based in Montgomery, Ala., delivered its report to the House and Senate Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees today. The organization says it found 40 profiles on NewSaxon.org, a white supremacist site, that could be confirmed as active-duty military members. "I love and will do anything to keep our master race marching," writes "WhitePride85," who claims on the site to be a 24-year-old staff sergeant from Madison, Wis. Army policy states that commanders can take disciplinary actions, including reclassification of soldiers who are active white supremacists. They cannot, however, dismiss them. The heaviest penalty a commander could impose is to bar reenlistment. The new report comes amid growing concerns about returning soldiers, especially those disaffected by the war and combat, being recruited by white supremacist organizations. Such groups hope to utilize their combat skills in "a coming race war," says former marine TJ Leyden, an ex-white supremacist and author of "Skinhead Confessions." But unit cohesion and morale – the mainstays of an effective Army – are also at stake if the Army allows skinheads to stay in the service, critics say. (The racial makeup of the Army is 62.7 percent white, 19.8 percent black, 10.9 percent Hispanic, and 3.4 percent Asian.) '

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THE END OF THE WHITE MAN!

2009-09-17T00:01:00.003-10:00

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CAUCASIAN MALE RULE IN AMERICA IS OVER

BLACKS, PUERTO RICANS, WOMEN TAKE OVER

Soon, It May Be Illegal To Be a White Guy!!!!!!

That's right, Hoss, you are now an official endangered species. The Chinese take-over of Budweiser has rendered you impotent and sterile thanks to the ancient Asian herbs now added to the brew. In many parts of the United States, you are already a minority. Special employment preferences, mandated by ACORN, now require that the best person for the job be hired, not the best white man. Soon all your bosses, landlords, lenders and public officials may be black, brown, red, yellow or purple. That's right, purple. Who did you think was behind all this? Those secret Chinese bases on the Moon were not built by the Chinese. They are alien outposts of an intergalactic interracial empire whose Death Stars are already on their way to Earth to force diversity on the entire population. In a few years, your children will be rappers.

That's right. Rappers.
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THE WRITTEN TEST FOR KLANSMEN

2009-09-16T00:01:00.003-10:00

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TWO POINTS FOR VOTING REPUBLICAN

PLUS TWO MORE POINTS FOR DOING WHATEVER GLENN BECK SAYS

Yawl Got You A Ink-Pin?

1. What is the correct answer to this question:
"Say whut? Dew whut?"

2. Where do you put the engine of a 1976 Ford pick-up truck?
a. In the front.
b. In the back.
c. On a tree in your yard.

3. The "Stars & Bars" refers to:
a. One a them snooty Hollywood taverns.
b. Officers in the army.
c. The flag in the back window of your 1976 Ford pick-up truck.

4. "Miscegenation" is:
a. Some sorta Greek food.
b. Illegal in the South.
c. Legal but still carries the death penalty.
d. A bad dream you wake up sticky from.

5. Texas is:
a. A State.
b. A country.
c. A part of Mexico.
d. An oil company.

6. The Constitution is written in:
a. Blood.
b. Invisible ink.
c. Pencil.
d. Socialism.

7. The Second Amendment:
a. Is a Sixties rock band.
b. Guarantees freedom of armed religion.
c. Authorizes religious armies.
d. All of the above.

8. A Negro President is:
a. A sign of the Apocalypse.
b. UnConstitutional, since it says they're only 3/5ths human.
c. Going to rename the White House the Black House.
d. Target practice.
e. The Republicans' best recruiting tool.

9. The White Race is:
a. Doomed
b. Destined to lead.
c. A marathon in Sweden
d. The Klan's target market
e. Just me & you, cuzzin. Huh-huh.

10. Southern culture is:
a. Yoghurt in Antarctica.
b. Athlete's foot.
c. The heritage of all rednecks.
d. Cotton, sorghum and sugar beets.
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FAMOUS CANADIAN MUSLIMS

2009-09-15T00:01:00.002-10:00

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ANOTHER LONG-OVERLOOKED MINORITY

WHAT HAVE THESE ISLAMITES GOT TO HIDE, EH?

Is It Not Just Possible That These Canadians Are Part Of A Vast Conspiracy?

NOW can we have an Orange Alert??? PLEASE!!! We need the Vitamin C.

1. Lorne Hussein Greene
2. William Hussein Shatner
3. Seth Hussein Rogen
4. Mort Hussein Sahl
5. Corey Hussein Haim
6. Eugene Hussein Levy
7. Rick Hussein Moranis
8. Kiefer Hussein Sutherland
9. Richard Hussein Dreyfus
10. Monty Hussein Hall

Hm. I'm starting to see a PATTERN here!

And, take note: NONE of these "Canadians" was in the WTC on 9/11! I rest my case. It's heavy.
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THINGS HAVE NOT BEEN GOING WELL

2009-09-14T00:01:00.002-10:00

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MEDICALLY, FINANCIALLY, IT HAS NOT BEEN A GOOD YEAR

IT'S BEEN HARD TO MAINTAIN THINGS HERE

Apologies To Those Whose Time We've Wasted

We'll try to make it up to those to whom it matters.
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NEW YORK, NEW YORK, NEW YORK SONGS

2009-09-13T00:02:00.001-10:00

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THE PLACE SO NYCE THEY NAMED IT THRICE

NOT TALKIN' BOUT F**KIN' BROOKLYN, QUEENS, STATEN ISLAND OR THE BRONX, HERE, YO

Just Manhattan, The Center Of The Known Universe

From Spuyten Duyvil to Battery Park, from Loisaida to Hell's Kitchen, the 12-mile-long 2.5-mile-wide island of Mannahata is the container of the hopes, the dreams, the failures and the disappointments of the whole history of the entire human race. In Yonah Schimmel's spinach knishes, you can taste ancient Galilee on a hot summer day. From the cafe con leche at La Taza de Oro, you may inhale the bitter defeat of the Arawaks. "The Persistence of Memory" remains a moment frozen in time at MoMA, and that last note from "Figaro" will echo forever at the Met. The Yankees will often disappoint you, and the Mets will sometimes amaze you. The kindness you witness only once in a lifetime at three A.M. on a subway platform deep beneath Columbus Circle will almost negate the inhumanity you imagine of Wall Street at three every afternoon at the Stock Exchange. P.T. Barnum and Teddy Roosevelt battle every night on Broadway, the boulevard of broken dreams, and in the General Assembly of the United Nations, even the most cynical people in the world sometimes experience a fleeting moment of hope. But that's why God created Brioschi.

IDENTIFY THESE NY QUOTES (no googling!):

"What are YOU lookin' at?"

"Does Macy's tell Gimbel's?"

"I'm the luckiest man on the face of the Earth." [a New Yorker facing certain, horrible death]

"There's a sucker born every minute."

"It ain't over till the fat lady sings."

"The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost."

"A hundred times have I thought New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times : It is a beautiful catastrophe."

"In New York I feel plugged into a strong alternating current of hope and despair."

"New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!"

"Skyscraper national park."

"It'll be a great place if they ever finish it."

"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons."

"I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member. "

"Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before."

"Speak softly and carry a big stick. "

"We need a president who's fluent in at least one language. "

"All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy. "

"An industry that cannot pay its workers a decent living wage has no right to exist. "

"Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair. "

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."

YOUTUBE: PALOMA FAITH
"Paloma Faith - New York - Live At The ICA"
Girl BELTS it out!

YOUTUBE: LEONARD COHEN
"Leonard Cohen - First We Take Manhattan (Alternate Version)"
Another Canadian terrorist.

YOUTUBE: GEORGE BENSON
"George Benson - On Broadway"
"They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway, They say there's always magic in the air..."

YOUTUBE: MANHATTAN TRANSFER
"Manhattan Transfer Boy From New York City"
Kewl, kewl kitty!

YOUTUBE: WHITEY
"Whitey's Lindy Hoppers performing the Big Apple (1939)"
So, now you know where Rock'N'Roll came from.

YOUTUBE: THE NEW YORK DOLLS
"New York Dolls - Babylon"
David is actually Scarlett's father.

YOUTUBE: THE RAMONES
"The Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop Live at CBGB 1977"
Back in the day at the Country Blue Grass Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers Emporium on the Bowery at Bleeker Street.

YOUTUBE: VELVET UNDERGROUND
"The Velvet Underground - Sweet Jane Live 1970"
Live at Max's Kansas City

YOUTUBE: KING KONG
"Hinder - Better Then Me - King Kong"
It was Beauty killed the Beast.

YOUTUBE: LUX AETERNA
"World Trade Center Tribute 1966-2001"
It was just there a minute ago.

YOUTUBE: ANONYMOUS VIOLINIST
"New York Underground - Violin player and a dancer"
The pathos beneath E.51st Street.

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KATE BECKINSALE UNDRESSED

2009-09-12T00:01:00.005-10:00

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COMPLETELY NAKED, AND RIGHT IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY

ENGLISH ACTRESS BARES ALL, DARES ALL

You Know You Want To Look! You Sexist Bastard, You!

Men want to look at women. Women want to be looked at. It's a perfect fit.

HAH!!!

Let's try that again.

Women want some men to look at them in an admiring way, but not others. Men want to admire some women, but not others. It's usually not a perfect fit. And thereby hangs Gawd's little drama, which has amused Him endlessly since the Beginning: The Great Soap Opera of Life, complete with static and white noise.

So, all the world's a stage, and all the people are going through it. Just as the Great Maw of Nothingness, or "God," if you prefer, may have put us out there in the cold cold universe just to see what might be inside Himself, we put on our own little theatricals in hopes of figuring ourselves out. It doesn't always work out. Life is always a bit more complicated than theater. But it's the only good mirror we poor mortals have. So, play on, I guess.
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THE WORLD TRADE CENTER

2009-09-11T00:01:00.020-10:00

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ARCHITECTURAL WHITE ELEPHANT, DESTROYER OF NEIGHBORHOODS, CORPORATIST GOVERNMENT BOONDOOGLE

HISTORIC DISASTER SITE, METAPHOR FOR TERROR, SHOPPING MALL

That's How We Remember It, As Our Naybahood Shops

Much has been written about 9/11. Nothing much is said about the people who lived and worked in and around the site of America's worst terror attack, the beginning of Dubya's New World Disorder, the second day in our own lifetime that the planet jumped off its' track and never got back to it's original route, the first time being 11/22/63. (Gotta watch those elevenses.)

We used to live on Maiden Lane, a block from the NY Federal Reserve Bank & Fortress of Gold, and two blocks from the WTC. We rarely shopped at the Fed; our credit was too good, and we were mere taxpayers, depositors, not withdrawers. It's only four blocks from the NY Stock Exchange, and probably connected underground; certainly by birth, marriage and Old School Ties. There was also a connection to the Trade Center, where all the gold was moved and then removed after the first attack almost melted it down.

The first attack killed six people, a small enough number, unless you loved one of them. Lots of people got badly smoked in the unlit chimneys known as fire exits. But nearly all of them survived. We were having lunch at home at the time, and didn't even hear of that first bombing until several hours later. We subsequently walked the perimeter of the Complex, some 14 acres, but saw little damage except smoke near the old Millenium Hotel on the Southwest corner of One WTC. All ten floors of the hotel were wiped out by the explosion of a van full of fuel oil and fertilizer deliberately set off by Arab terrorists in the basement parking garage directly beneath the hotel, but there was no major structural damage to the Tower.

The NYPD and the NYC office of the FBI did a great job of rounding up the bombers here in the US. They were all captured, arrested, tried, convicted and sent to prisons where they still rot, sixteen years later. High-ranking members of New York's Finest and the Feebs resigned in protest to being officially prevented from following their leads to the higher-ups in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, where masterminds like Osama Bin Laden were already planning another bombing at the World Trade Center. They vowed to come back to finish the job, which they did, eight years later, eight years ago.

So life went on as usual for most of us, after that first bombing failed to destroy the Twin Towers. 50,000 people entered and left the Trade Center every weekday. It was mostly City, State and Federal offices in those days, though financial industry offices were already moving in there. The Twin Towers had never been commercially successful. Without the backing of Governor Rockefeller and his slews of State offices, there would never have been enough tenants to build the place at all. Many New Yorkers would have preferred it that way. The monoliths wiped out much of what was left of the old merchants and residences of the Washington Market area. There was little in the Complex that was of any interest to most Manhattanites. The World Trade Center helped to kill all local life below Canal Street, until TriBeCa rose in the ashes. But that was mostly for rich assholes who forced the artists out of their converted industrial lofts, as they had in SoHo and NoHo.

We were some of the few who braved the disaster-movie desolation of the Wall Street area on weekends and holidays, when only a few tourists prowled the deserted streets, and all the bankers, brokers and bureaucrats were safely home in their suburbs. There were a lot of cheap fly-by-night discount stores selling unclaimed freight and other stores' overstocked goods for quarters on the dollar. There were lousy, over-priced all-night deli's and great, cheap Irish bars, but little else except for the turista trap at South Street.

We had worked behind the stick in one of those Irish bars on Nassau Street, four blocks North of the Stock Exchange, briefly, back in the 70's. It was an L-shaped building that had a second entrance on Maiden Lane between Nassau and Broadway. In the 80's, it became a deli. In the early 90's, we moved into a loft building next door. We usually went right downstairs to the Fulton Street Station to catch the subway uptown to the East or West Village, Midtown or the Upper West Side. If we had to go under the Hudson River to New Jersey for business or to visit friends in Hoboken or Jersey City, we would catch the PATH train beneath the World Trade Center. On the way back, we might stop at the newsstand for magazines and cigars, or at Duane Reade for aspirin or toilet paper, or at Woolworths for sox and underwear. The failed shopping mall in the basement of the World Trade Center was bereft of an anchor after Alexanders went bankrupt, but it was of some service to those of us who lived in the area. There was bad food aplenty at the Food Court, and one could sit and stare at the suburbanites for hours, if one had a mind to.

We were in love with one of the out-of-towners, a Puerto Rican girl named Esmeralda who clerked at the Duane Reade discount drugstore. She was tiny and beautiful, and we loved seeing her climb a ladder to put things on a high shelf, or to get them down again at our request. Esme, as her name tag read, was married, with a ring to prove it. She even had a locket around her neck with a picture of her baby. She was so sweet and pretty, so kind and helpful, so full of life that it was impossible not to love her. Sometimes we would see her coming up out of the Tubes on her way to work, or headed back down on her way back to Jersey. We thought of following her once, to see where and how and with whom she lived, but we didn't. If we had, we might know how to get in touch with her today, to see if she was all right, to find out whether she had made it out of the Trade Center on 9/11/01.

They say that most of the people in the Mall made it out. But Esme was little, maybe they missed her. Sometimes we have a dream about the shopping mall underneath the Twin towers. It's all dark and smokey, and we can hear people crying out. We can't see anyone, but we can hear them. We can't move, paralyzed by fear or maybe disabled by the explosions. But we have this overriding desire to find Esme, and carry her out to safety. Out to New Jersey where there are no gigantic towers, no terrorist targets, no planes crashing into buildings. We hear a voice, it might be hers. And then the dream ends.

We were born in Manhattan, but we grew up in New Jersey. Maybe it seems like a safer place to us because we were children there. Maybe it really is a safer place, as the past so often is, in our memories. Maybe Esmeralda is safe out there now. Maybe she wasn't even working that day in 2001. Maybe she found another job out in Jersey. Maybe she is living in the unbroken past, and there never was a 9/11 where she is. Maybe we are still sitting in Sbarro's at the Food Court in the shopping mall underneath the Twin Towers, drinking cappuccino, smoking a cigar, reading the Voice and, just occasionally, looking up at a pretty young girl passing by, to see if it is Esme. Maybe it's a better world.
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WHAT, NO CZARINA'S?

2009-09-10T00:01:00.009-10:00

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WHAT WE HAVE HEAH IS A FAILYUH TO COMMUNICATE

YOUTUBE: STROTHER MARTIN
"cool hand luke"
"Some men you just can't reach... I don't like it any more than you men."

YEAH, BOSS!

Boss Media Says: "Obama Must Bend His Ways Southward To Please The White Man... Or ELSE!!!"

This whole magoogle over whatsits is all just a big ol', uh, uh, k-k-kultural misundermistandin', uh, uh, yawl! If that uppity Chicago nigra wants to go round actin' like he's the Preziden', he's gotta act mo' WHITE!

This whole kazar thing is just a eggs-sample. Now, if he'd'a called 'em "Kleagles" or "Grand Dragons," or "Imperial Wizards," why, they'd a bin no trouble, no troubles atall! Why cain't thet bowah jes listen to REASON?

An it wouldn't kill 'em to fly the Stars 'N' Bars over OUR White House wunst in a good whahl, neither. Catch a hint, why dontchya? Do things OUR way, or you gonna keep on having trouble, son.
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MORE SCREW-LOOSE NEWS

2009-09-09T00:02:00.001-10:00

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TOTALLY WHACK HEADLINES

WHY MAKE STUFF UP WHEN ALL THIS IS HAPPENING?

Read It Every Day And See If You Don't Go Nuts... Or Is It too Late For You Already?

More news of the weird, wild, wacky, wonderful and weawwy weawwy scawy. Read at your own risk. Void where prohibited. Actual mileage may vary. Not valid in combination with any other offer. No purchase necessary. Batteries not included. Light fuse, get away.

SCIENCE DAILY.COM
"Australian Dinosaur Found To Have South American Heritage"
It takes two continents to tango.

' Australia's links to South America have just gotten a bit closer, but not due to economic forces, rather fossil forces. University of Queensland palaeontologist Dr Steve Salisbury was part of an international team of palaeontologists from the US, Argentina and Australia that identified a fossil that had previously only been found in South America. Dr Salisbury, from UQ's School of Integrative Biology, said an upper arm bone found at Dinosaur Cove in southern Victoria, shares a suite of unique features with a medium-sized predatory dinosaur from Argentina called Megaraptor. He said it was the first time a dinosaur with unquestionable affinities to animals from other Southern Hemisphere continents had been recognised in Australia. "Throughout much of the Age of Dinosaurs, Australia formed part of the southern super-continent of Gondwana," Dr Salisbury said. "As a result, there has long been an expectation that our dinosaur fauna would show similarities to similarly aged faunas from adjoining Gondwanan landmasses, in particular Antarctica, New Zealand and South America. "Of the Australian dinosaurs that have been recognised so far, the consensus has been that some are relics of groups that went extinct much earlier in other parts of the world, while others have been seen as early representatives of groups that are more typical of the Northern Hemisphere. "Partly as a result, it has been proposed that Australia was somehow isolated from the rest of Gondwana, either through geographic or climatic barriers. Dr Federico Angolin, from the Argentinean Museum of Natural Sciences, said when the six palaeontologists on the research team independently recognised the close similarity between the Dinosaur Cove fossil and the remains of Megaraptor from Argentina, they knew they had an important discovery on their hands. Project leader Nate Smith, from The Field Museum in Chicago, said fossils of Megaraptor have previously only been found in central and southern Patagonia, in rocks at least 15 million years younger than those in southern Victoria "The recognition of Megaraptor in Victoria provides the first definitive evidence for interchange between the dinosaur faunas of South America and Australia during the Cretaceous," Mr Smith said. "Our results are consistent with several geological models for rifting between the southern continents during the time that these dinosaurs existed. "This discovery indicates that we might need to rethink the longstanding claims of the Northern Hemisphere affinities for many Australian dinosaurs, and of geographic and/or climatic isolation of Australian dinosaur faunas." '

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER.ORG
"Terror from the Right"
Here's what the Republicans did NOT want you to hear, Americans. The new Civil War is already on.

' The slaughter engineered by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, men steeped in the conspiracy theories and white-hot fury of the American radical right, marked the opening shot in a new kind of domestic political extremism — a revolutionary ideology whose practitioners do not hesitate to carry out attacks directed at entirely innocent victims, people selected essentially at random to make a political point. After Oklahoma, it was no longer sufficient for many American right-wing terrorists to strike at a target of political significance — instead, they reached for higher and higher body counts, reasoning that they had to eclipse McVeigh's attack to win attention. What follows is a detailed listing of major terrorist plots and racist rampages that have emerged from the American radical right in the years since Oklahoma City. These have included plans to bomb government buildings, banks, refineries, utilities, clinics, synagogues, mosques, memorials and bridges; to assassinate police officers, judges, politicians, civil rights figures and others; to rob banks, armored cars and other criminals; and to amass illegal machine guns, missiles, explosives and biological and chemical weapons. Each of these plots aimed to make changes in America through the use of political violence. Most contemplated the deaths of large numbers of people — in one case, as many as 30,000, or 10 times the number murdered on Sept. 11, 2001. Here are the stories of plots, conspiracies and racist rampages since 1995 — plots and violence waged against a democratic America. '

SACRAMENTO BUSINESS JOURNAL
"Web site connects consumers to free health care"
Why fight for national healthcare when you can go begging for charity? "Please, sir, can I have another chemo treatment?"

' The online resource comes as unemployment continues to rise in the region and growing numbers of local residents lose their health insurance along with their jobs. There are an estimated 250,000 people without health insurance in Sacramento County, said registered nurse Maria Robles, president of Californians for Patient Care. “Sacramento’s teachers, firefighters and state government workers are losing their jobs at an alarming rate,” Robles said in a press release. The online service provides information on how to get coverage and/or treatment at no or low cost. While the Web site is intended for consumers who need direction to services, doctors and other providers may want to use it to find out how to help an uninsured patient get access to further care. '

NY TIMES
"On Facebook, a Spy Revealed (Pale Legs, Too) "
Super Top Secret, except for a little social networking. WTBFD?

' The man in the Facebook photographs seems like your average guy having a little fun. Here he is in a festive scene at a park, gamely wearing a red fleece and a Santa Claus hat. Here he is again, playing Frisbee on the beach, clad in a pair of snug bathing trunks that show off his muscular, if pale (he is British) legs. Oops. It turns out that this is not a regular person at all. He is in fact Sir John Sawers, diplomat and spy, currently the British ambassador to the United Nations and soon to be the chief of MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service. It is as if, suddenly, the Internet were awash with pictures of the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, cavorting half-naked on vacation. The photographs, and a great deal more, came from the collection of Sir John’s wife, Shelley, who has for some time enjoyed chronicling the life and times of her family and friends on a Facebook page. Since its presence was revealed in the tabloid newspaper The Mail on Sunday, the page has been altered so that any revealing photographs it may or may not contain can no longer be seen by the general public. '

REUTERS
"U.S. Justice Dept eyeing telecom probe"
I can haz iPhone on Mobi?

' The U.S. Justice Department has begun looking at big telecom companies such as AT&T Inc (T.N) and Verizon Communications (VZ.N) to try to determine if they have abused their market power, the Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition on Monday. The report said that a probe could concern exclusive agreements between phone companies and handset makers or whether phone operators are "unduly restricting" services third parties companies can offer on their network. Lawmakers have recently raised questions about whether large wireless carriers were hurting smaller rivals by entering into exclusive agreements with the makers of popular phones. Deals like AT&T's pact with Apple Inc (AAPL.O) for exclusive rights to U.S. iPhone sales are at the center of some lawmaker concerns. The iPhone has made this trend a bone of contention among consumers because of the devices' widespread popularity and the fact that AT&T has been the sole U.S. provider selling it since 2007. Exclusivity deals often end after about a year. '

CNN
"N.C. terror suspects had arms, ammo, FBI 'playbook,' agent says"
Wonder how they got the FBI's playbook?

' Men arrested last week on suspicion of plotting a "violent jihad" overseas had weapons, thousands of rounds of ammunition and $13,000 cash in their home, an FBI agent testified in court Tuesday. Also found at the home of Daniel Patrick Boyd and his sons were gas masks and a book that FBI special agent Michael Sutton called "essentially our playbook to how we respond to acts of terrorism." On a tape made in May 2009, the elder Boyd talks about getting the money needed to wage jihad and hitting Wells Fargo trucks and banks. He makes reference to how he had robbed a bank in Pakistan. In the search of the Boyd home the FBI says agents found: • Several weapons; • 27,000 rounds of ammunition, including some armor-piercing types; • $13,000 in cash. In addition, Dylan Boyd had a deposit slip for $16,000; • Four gas masks; • A book called "Emergency Response to Terrorism," which Sutton said would be useful to someone trying to counter law enforcement; '

WASHINGTON POST
"Researchers: Social Security Numbers Can Be Guessed"
If it ain't broke, why are they fixing it?

' Researchers have found that it is possible to guess many -- if not all -- of the nine digits in an individual's Social Security number using publicly available information, a finding they say compromises the security of one of the most widely used consumer identifiers in the United States. Many numbers could be guessed at by simply knowing a person's birth data, the researchers from Carnegie Mellon University said. The results come as concern grows over identity theft and lawmakers in Washington push legislation that would bar businesses from requiring people to supply their Social Security number when purchasing a good or service. "Our work shows that Social Security numbers are compromised as authentication devices, because if they are predictable from public data, then they cannot be considered sensitive," said Alessandro Acquisti, assistant professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and a co-author of the study. A Social Security Administration spokesman said the government has long cautioned the private sector against using a Social Security number as a personal identifier, even as it insists "there is no fool proof method for predicting a person's Social Security Number." "For reasons unrelated to this report, the agency has been developing a system to randomly assign SSNs," which should make it more difficult to discover numbers in the future, Mark Lassiter, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said by e-mail. '

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ATTENTION ALL STUPID PEOPLE

2009-09-08T00:01:00.003-10:00

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WE HAVE BECOME AWARE THAT MANY OF YOU ARE SEEKING GUIDANCE

BEING STUPID, YOU INEVITABLY CHOSE THE WRONG GUIDES

As A Public Service, We Will Now Tell You What To Think. You're Welcome.

It's OK. It's all right. Calm down now. That's a good boy. Or girl. Hard to tell with you stupid people. You're all just so stupid, it obliterates even your gender.

OK, sit. Good boy! Goooood girl!! Here, have a treat!!! That's a good stupid. Yeah. You are SO a good stupid! Yes you are. Yesyesyesyesyesyes! NO! Down boy! Down girl! None of that. Don't care how lonely you are, or how horny Rush makes you. BAD STUPID!

Come here. Sit. Listen. It's OK. You're not in trouble. Your natural instinct to cringe and crawl before the big dogs just got a little out of hand. Yes it did. So we're turning off your AM radio. In fact, let's just junk that old thing. Get you a nice new iPod. Play you some Beyonce. OK, OK, down, boy, down girl. You're not ready for that yet. OK, OK, just sit, then.

No. No FuxSnooze! It's bad for you. BAD FuxSnooze! Don't you know eating poo is bad for you? What did you think Glenn Beck was, Milkbone? No, that's sh*t. Bad. No eat. OK? No eat Glenn Beck's crap. Good boy. Good girl.

From now on, you'll only be eating Rachel. Rachel is SO good! Yes she is! Full of smarty goodness. And you're to do whatever she says. If you don't understand what she's saying, just do nothing. Don't go outside waving your little signs. Everyone will know you're stupid, and they'll take advantage of you. Yes they will. They always have. They always will. You're just too stupid to realize it. Yes you are. Such a stupid boy. Such a stupid girl. Yes you are! Here, have another treat.

You see, boy, girl; big fat stupid closet Nazi's are not good to follow. They don't have your best interests at heart. In fact, they are only blindly following other, bigger dogs who REALLY don't have your best interests at heart. No they don't. They're destroying your health and your environment, your economy and your finances, your community and your family. Yes they are. Yes they are. Yes they are. SIT! We'll take you for a walk in a minute.

See, someone's been teaching you bad tricks. Like eating their crap. That's nasty. Carrying racist signs all over town. Very nasty. Voting for people who despise you and work against your interests night and day. Those people are called "conservatives," and "Republicans." You'll never understand why, because you're stupid, but they are just BAD for you. OK? Republicans BAD! BAD Republicans! Conservatives BAD! BAD conservatives! No, no, not you, you're good. Good boy! Good girl! You're just stupid.

So, from now on, you're not going to eat the bad Republican conservatives' crap any more. You're going to eat the nice organic healthfood treats that the progressive Democrats give you. Yes you are. Good boy! Good girl! Progressives GOOD! Democrats GOOD! Except Blue Dogs. Down boy. Down girl. You be a good progressive Democrat, and your breath will be nicer and your coat will be shinier and you'll be so much happier. Yes you will!

OK, we're going out now. Try not to sh*t on anybody.
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OLD NEWS, BOLD NEWS

2009-09-07T00:02:00.001-10:00

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NO OLD BOLD NEWS? JUST SOME CRAZY STUFF THAT HAPPENED A WHILE AGO...

OK, WE FINALLY CLEANED OUT OUR WEIRD & FUNNY NEWS LINKS FILES

But We're Passing The Savings Along To You, The Weird & Funny News Consumer. You're Welcome!

We've been out of it for a while. Health problems, financial problems, problem problems. Problems. Now we're trying to catch up. Some of this may not be news to some of you, but it all strikes us as interesting, weird, funny, sad or scary. And we're too tired to write any more. So we'll just pass this all along to you now, if that's OK. Yaaaaaawn...

OREGON LIVE.COM
"Feathered fuel tank soaks up hydrogen"
Now if they could only find a way to tell chickensh*t from chicken salad.

' The gas tank of the future may be full of chicken feathers. Engineers have discovered a way to store large amounts of hydrogen fuel using carbonized downy fluff, which could help pave the way to clean, green cars. Treated chicken feathers work like a sponge. They soak up large amounts of hydrogen and hold it in a small space so the tank can be a conventional size and the fuel won't need to held under dangerously high pressures. "The question came up," Wool said, "of what to do with the six billion pounds of waste chicken feathers" produced every year. He experimented for years with various ways to use feathers and eventually wondered if they might store hydrogen. Scientists have long known that hydrogen sticks well to carbon surfaces. Research has focused on tiny nanotubes, in which sheets of carbon are rolled into a compact space. The problem is nanotubes are expensive: A 20-gallon tank of them can cost more than $1 million. Chicken feather fibers are mostly composed of keratin, a natural protein that forms strong, hollow tubes. The breakthrough moment came when researchers heated feathers to 700 degrees, causing a process called carbonization that created billions of tiny pores. They had found an ideal place to pack large amounts of hydrogen. The new feather-based material can be produced at a small fraction of carbon nanotubes' cost. A 20-gallon feather-based tank would be about $100. '

STUFF.CO.NZ
"Eyebrows up, blowup dolls down in Undy 500"
Not sure if love-doll marriage is legal down under. The land of wonder. The land down underpants.

' Queenstowner Mark Ferguson, 42, turned heads and dropped jaws when he turned up to the underwear raceday wearing just carpet slippers and a pair of tiny white underpants which he shared with inflatable friend "Brian". Ferguson and Brian lined up against about a dozen other semi-naked guys (none of whom had inflatable sextoys in their underpants) to race a several-hundred-metre course up and down the beach in Queenstown Bay. Over hay bales, under hurdles and into the lake they went. Ferguson was knocked out in an early heat, but he was not blaming the result on the rapidly deflating Brian. "He kept me nice and warm," he said. A veteran of the first Undy 500 at Queenstown Winter Festival 1996, Ferguson instead blamed his early exit on his decision to wear carpet slippers a poor choice, he reflected, in the era of professional sport. '

USA TODAY
"New 'American Patriot's Bible' sees USA's 'godly roots' "
Further proof that God is dead. Or deaf, dumb and blind.

' "This Bible is designed for the decent, hardworking core of America, the ordinary man or woman who loves this nation and believes it springs from godly roots," says Richard G. Lee, a Southern Baptist pastor from Georgia who served as the Bible's general editor. Lee is the founding pastor of the 4,000-member First Redeemer Church in Cumming, Ga. A registered Republican who's organizing an Independence Day-themed "Restoring America" conference featuring conservatives David Limbaugh and Oliver North, Lee said he's "disappointed" when politicians "use the word of God for the purpose of vote getting." His goal was to create a "non-partisan" Bible, but he quotes Republican Ronald Reagan more times than Democrats Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy combined. In an interview, Lee said he doesn't even know if Carter, a fellow Georgian and longtime Baptist Sunday school teacher, is a Christian. As for President Obama? "I haven't seen any patriotism from him yet." Lee sprinkles his Bible with some 300 articles about "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," the right to keep and bear arms, the war in Iraq and religious broadcasting. While some have praised the Patriot's Bible— former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called it "fascinating" — others have condemned it as something akin to theological and political heresy. "Get thee behind me, Satan," wrote "Crunchy Con" blogger Rod Dreher on Beliefnet. "To the extent that this Bible's publishers conflate serving Christ with patriotism … they are corrupt, and corrupters." Evangelical author and pastor Greg Boyd's lengthy critique, posted on Christianity Today's website, calls Lee's Bible "idolatrous," saying, "There's not a single commentary in this Bible that even attempts to shed light on what the biblical text actually means." '

BBC NEWS
"US dinosaur had Chinese cousin"
Hey, maybe we can start naming our dinosaurs after US Presidents! Republican Presidents. Reaganus Megastupidus? Tyrannus Dubyus? Crookus Nixonius? Hooverus Depressus?

' Scientists in China say they have identified the first Asian example of a group of dinosaurs previously found only in the Americas and Europe. The researchers say the specimen is closely related to the Sauroposeidon dinosaur fossils of North America and have named it Qiaowanlong kangxii after a Chinese emperor of the Qing dynasty. '

MITRE.ORG
"Every Little Thing It Does Is MAJIIC: A Technology for the Net-centric Age"
Does it bother anybody that our military boffins , or their PR people, use so many terms and references from lame TV shows? "MAJIIC," "Quantum Leap"? Really, dude? Oh, well, as long as Al Qaida doesn't have any hackers, we're safe. They don't have any hackers, right? Right?

' Members of a Special Forces Unit head toward a spot in Iraq, not knowing exactly what conditions they will find or where the moving target is. As they get closer, they call up digital maps and visuals in the transport vehicle—visuals taken in real time from surveillance sensors in the area. Even a year ago, much of this wasn't possible. Is it magic? No, it's MAJIIC, an innovative concept that's moved from prototype to nearly deployed technology with multiple sponsors in a few short years. The MAJIIC (Multi-sensor Aerospace-ground Joint ISR Interoperability Coalition) Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration, a concept MITRE helped to develop, pulls streaming data from airborne surveillance platforms, using Web-services technology to pass the information to the people who need it most. The "ISR" in MAJIIC stands for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—just the type of information a pilot or tank commander needs before or during battle. That makes MAJIIC a potentially powerful part of the growing collection of net-centric tools the military requires in the 21st century. The ideas behind network-centric operations are still relatively new, and the existence of operational net-centric technology even newer. For decades, the Department of Defense (DOD) has followed the "process-before-post" approach to handling data and images. Analysts sort and evaluate images and other types of data before sending the results back into the field—a painstaking, sometime hours- or even days-long process. By using the power of the network to send information directly to field personnel and command centers, warfighters receive what they need to know quickly and efficiently, in many cases within minutes of its collection. The military calls this method of handling information "post before process." According to MITRE's John Kane, a systems engineer and technical manager for the program, "MAJIIC works in a 'pull' environment, not a broadcast or data-push environment. Users will be able to discover these data services dynamically, even if they have never heard of MAJIIC. Users can query for ISR data within certain coordinates or topics and view the data over low bandwidth communications." All information posts and inquiries occur within a secure, secret-level environment, using enterprise-wide, Web-based tools. One Leap for a Program: Although still in its development phase, MAJIIC was demonstrated this past August at Quantum Leap 2—a high-level showcase of net-centric technology sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration. The demonstration performed successfully and generated a lot of enthusiasm from the services, so much so that MAJIIC is scheduled to be operational in 2005. '

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"Backup plan to get NASA to moon cheaper"
It's either this or a Great Wall Of Lunar China staring at us every night.

' Like a car salesman pushing a luxury vehicle that the customer no longer can afford, NASA has pulled out of its back pocket a deal for a cheaper ride to the moon. It won't be as powerful, and its design is a little dated. Think of it as a base-model Ford station wagon instead of a tricked-out Cadillac Escalade. Officially, the space agency is still on track with a 4-year-old plan to spend $35 billion to build new rockets and return astronauts to the moon in several years. However, a top NASA manager is floating a cut-rate alternative that costs around $6.6 billion. This cheaper option is not as powerful as NASA's current design with its fancy new rockets, the people-carrying Ares I and cargo-lifting Ares V. But the cut-rate plan would still get to the moon. '

FARM FOUNDATION.ORG
"What's Driving Food Prices?"
So, the price of oil and the price of corn are linked. And both are driven by speculation on the commodities markets. So, Wall Street is eating good when oil prices rise, anyway.

' Since 2006, energy and agricultural markets have become closely linked as biofuels production surged. Ethanol and biodiesel were linked as energy substitutes for gasoline and diesel, and usage of crops for these biofuels became large enough to influence world prices. In the last half of 2008, crude oil prices fell rapidly, but gasoline prices fell faster and further. Low gasoline and crude oil prices reduced the expected use of corn for ethanol which, in turn, put pressure on ethanol prices and corn prices. By the end of 2008, the ethanol industry’s economic fortunes had deteriorated such that up to two billion gallons of capacity was idled. There have been changes in the way markets are now functioning but the basic relationship between crude oil and corn remains strong. '

SOURCE
"OTHER WEIRD, FUNNY & SCARY NEWS"

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WORKSONGS

2009-09-06T00:01:00.003-10:00

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LABOR DAY MUSIC

YOUTUBE: MARIANNE FAITHFUL
"Marianne Faithfull - "Working Class Hero" (live)"
Hero-EN.

You Can Sit This One Out, Republicans & Blue Dogs: These Are Not Your People And These Are Not Your Songs

Anti-Labor Scum Have No Right To Celebrate A Working Man & Woman's Holiday

If you're a "conservative," you should be working this weekend. More than likely, you're making someone else work for you this weekend. Your lazy, shiftless, immoral right-wing ways will catch up to you someday, you useless bastards. Until somebody finally does a job on you, all of you, us working people will be out here busting our asses, making this country work, 24/7/52. But we still take time to remember all those who fought to make our lives just a little bit better. These are their songs, OUR songs, not yours, conservatards.

Here's to the end of conservative programs like indentured servitude, slavery, child labor, and unsafe workplaces. Here's to liberal programs like a living wage, a forty hour work week, and equal pay for equal work. Still a lot of work to do, fighting the Right every step of the way. F**K those scumbags! Enjopy your weekend, concept cooutrtesy of the American Union Movement. Not you, Repukelickin's.

[NOTE: For Video Tyros & Those With Slow Computers And/ Or Narrow Bandwidth, Or Something:
For Smooth Playback: click "PLAY" on the video, then click the "PAUSE" button on the video, and let the video download completely, till the RED LINE at the bottom is all the way to the RIGHT, then click the "PLAY" button.]

YOUTUBE: CIARA
"Ciara ft Missy Elliott - Work (Official Video)"
Workin' it.

YOUTUBE: THE SATURDAYS
"The Saturdays - Work"
TGIS!

YOUTUBE: DOLLY PARTON
"Dolly Parton & Melissa Etheridge - Nine To Five (9 To 5)"
The hardest workin' hillbilly in show biz.

YOUTUBE: BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
"Bruce Springsteen - Working On A Dream"
The Boss at work.

YOUTUBE: CHRIS REA
"Chris Rea "Working On It""
Nuts & bolts rock.

YOUTUBE: STEELY DAN
"Steely Dan 2006-Dirty Work"
Men from Brooklyn playing at work.

YOUTUBE: TEARS FOR FEARS
"Tears for Fears - The Working Hour"
Hard to imagine these guys actually working, but, hey, I'm not the boss.

YOUTUBE: DRAGONS OF ZYNTH
"Dragons of Zynth - Labor Day Lung"
A day off.

YOUTUBE: FEAR FACTORY
"Fear factory - slave labor"
Be afraid. Be very afraid.

YOUTUBE:JIMMY EAT WORLD
"Jimmy Eat World "Work""
Working class kids.

YOUTUBE: JOHNNY PAYCHECK
"Take This Job And Shove It"
The moral of this story: Don't f**k with a heavy equipment operator.

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FAMOUS MUSLIM AMERICANS

2009-09-05T00:01:00.007-10:00

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OVERLOOKED IN THE HISTORY BOOKS

MANY CONCEALED THEIR ISLAMIC FAITH OUT OF FEAR OF A SECTARIAN BACKLASH

Others Simply Abandoned Mahometanism For Political Or Financial Gain

It's a shameful chapter in our nation's history: Prominent people were once ashamed or afraid to reveal that they were Koran-carrying followers of Allah, fellow-travelers with Busta Rhymes and Q-Tip, "falafel-eaters" and "pita-benders"! Today of course, even the President of the United States can be a Muslim, secret or not. Many Americans may not be ready for this. And the worst of it is, head transplants are not covered by their private health insurance. It seems ignorance and prejudice are pre-existing conditions which can only be cured by Obamacare.

TOP TEN MUSLIM AMERICANS:
How Many Others Can YOU Name?

1. Christopher Al-Qolumbus

2. Ali Henry Hudson

3. Thomas Bashir-Jefferson

5. Osama Bin Franklin

4. Ibrahim Lincoln

6. Buffalo Bill Kaddafi

7. George Ibn Cohan

8. Al-Izabet Kadi Stanton

9. Madonna

10. Harriet Beecher Hussein (nee Stowe)
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RACHEL MCADAMS SKINNYDIPPING

2009-09-04T00:02:00.002-10:00

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THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE SWIMS NAKED

O LUCKY FISH!

YOUTUBE: "MEAN GIRLS"
"Mean Girls - Jingle Bell Rock - Unedited"
Real Yuletide spirit!

Former Mean Girl, Admitted Canadian, Pollutes American Rivers & Lakes With Beauty

Her Dad's a trucker, her Mom's a nurse, and she used to sling burgers at Mickey D's, so here's a girl for Labor Day weekend. How many end-of-summer outings will end in nude bathing across this great land of ours, no one can say. But we can all hope. Please allow for shrinkage, ladies.
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THE CHILDREN'S BILL OF RIGHTS

2009-09-03T00:01:00.008-10:00

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OK, WE ALL HATE EACH OTHER. BUT WHO HATES KIDS?

YOU HAVE TO BE A REAL SICKO TO DENY THE BASICS TO A CHILD:
FOOD, CLOTHING, SHELTER, MEDICAL CARE, EDUCATION, TOYS, TREATS

WORLDPEACE.ORG
"Building a Culture of Peace"
The kids are all right.

That's Right: Da Keiki Get One Inalienable Right Fah Treats & Toys Too, Braddah! NO? Den YOU Tell 'Em, Eh???!!!

Those of you who have experience with the wee folk already know this. I don't care if you're a Bushman from a boereplaas in a bantustan or a bourgeois from a banlieu in Belgium, you recognize the innate desire of parents to provide the basics plus a modicum of joy for their offspring. If you're any kind of a parent yourself, your life pretty much revolves around feeding, clothing, housing, doctoring, teaching and loving your babies. Even as they metastasize into teens, you do whatever you can to make their lives as good as possible.

It is this tremendous sense of personal responsibility for our own children that is the foundation of all human societies. The difference in philosophy between Left and Right, liberal and conservative, in the modern American sense of those terms, comes down to whether you extend that responsibility to other people's children or not. American conservatives operate under a Zero-Sum Theory: The pie is fixed, we can only fight amongst ourselves for bigger shares, like starving rats. Anything you get is coming out of my share, and vice versa. Liberals & progressives recognize that the whole pie can be expanded, and even duplicated. They operate under no theory, only a recognition of the actual facts that, if we all work together, we can all live better. They reject the dog-eat-dog model of today's Republicans and "libertarians," especially as regards the next generation.

The fact that the Right can extend their mean-spiritedness to helpless children is the ultimate condemnation of a pathological condition, not a political philosophy. Classic conservatism was even more inclined to use the resources of society to benefit the disadvantaged than classical liberalism, in the British sense of those terms. Liberalism meant laissez-faire, government hands-off of the private concerns of society. But even the most doctrinaire free marketeers of the 19th Century recognized that there were certain social ills which simply had to be dealt with collectively. And no one who was fundamentally human could turn away from a hungry, homeless, unhealthy child.

Until now. In America, the old notions of conservatism and liberalism got all jumbled up, like so many things here. Contemporary conservatism is comprised of equal parts inhuman corporate voraciousness and psuedo-Christian punitive exclusionism. I've got mine, screw you. The only concern for other human beings lies in the primitive desire to see them punished even for the misfortunes that befall them, to make Old Testament pariah's out everyone who is "not like us." Today's conservatives actually say things like, "I hope all you queers die of AIDS," or "Somebody should shoot that liberal." The right-wingers in our legislatures regularly vote to punish even children for such terrible sins as poverty, immigration, or membership in a perceived minority.

This is the sign of a morally and politically bankrupt "movement." Any ideological legitimacy that the Right may ever have had is now gone. All that is left is greed, hate, envy, fear, anger, selfishness, violence, ignorance and prejudice: Sociopathy, not philosophy. It is nothing but mental illness to deny our responsibility to care for our own, to heal the sick, feed the hungry, house the homeless, and most of all, to ensure a better future for all of our children.

PBS KIDS GO!: NOT FOR OURSELVES ALONE
"Kid's Bill Of Rights"
Yeah, Kira. Adults, too.

' Kira, Age 11 -I think kids should be able to vote in something they believe in. Caitlin, Age 11 -Kids should have the right to protest if they are feeling unjustly treated by adults or other kids. Susanne, Age 8 -Kids should have the right to go to bed whenever they want. Jessie, Age 8 -I want a right to help the kids with no family. I want to find more homes for them. Irina, Age 11 -All special days or national holidays we have are celebrating grown-ups like Christopher Columbus. I think us kids should have our own day celebrating us. We could be in charge for once. '

CYBERSCHOOLBUS: UN.ORG
"An 'International Bill of
Rights For Children' "
No black helicopters here, kids.

' The Convention's objective is to protect children from discrimination, neglect and abuse. It is the principal children's treaty, covering a full range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. It grants rights for children in peacetime as well as during armed conflict, and provides for the implementation of those rights. The Convention serves as both a rallying point and a useful tool for civil society and individual people, working to protect and promote children's rights. In many ways, it is an innovative instrument. '

UNICEF: MAGIC: MEDIA ACTIVITIES AND GOOD IDEAS BY WITH AND FOR CHILDREN
"Summary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: ENGLISH: Child-Friendly Version"
Ratified by every country in the world EXCEPT The United States and Somalia, due to US conservative opposition: "States RIGHTS!!!" Nice company we keep...

' Article 1 Everyone under 18 years of age has all the rights in this Convention. Article 2 The Convention applies to everyone whatever their race, religion, abilities, whatever they think or say, whatever type of family they come from. Article 3 All organisations concerned with children should work towards what is best for each child. Article 4 Governments should make these rights available to children. Article 5 Governments should respect the rights and responsibilities of families to direct and guide their children so that, as they grow, they learn to use their rights properly. Article 6 All children have the right to life. Governments should ensure that children survive and develop healthily. Article 7 All children have the right to a legally registered name, and nationality. Also the right to know and, as far as possible, to be cared for, by their parents. Article 8 Governments should respect children's right to a name, a nationality and family ties. Article 9 Children should not be separated from their parents unless it is for their own good. For example, if a parent is mistreating or neglecting a child. Children whose parents have separated have the right to stay in contact with both parents, unless this might hurt the child. Article 10 Families who live in different countries should be allowed to move between those countries so that parents and children can stay in contact, or get back together as a family. Article 11 Governments should take steps to stop children being taken out of their own country illegally. Article 12 Children have the right to say what they think should happen, when adults are making decisions that affect them, and to have their opinions taken into account. Article 13 Children have the right to get and to share information, as long as the information is not damaging to them or to others. Article 14 Children have the right to think and believe what they want, and to practise their religion, as long as they are not stopping other people from enjoying their rights. Parents should
guide their children on these matters. Article 15 Children have the right to meet together and to join groups and organisations, as long as this does not stop other people from enjoying their rights. Article 16 Children have a right to privacy. The law should protect them from attacks against their way of life, their good name, their families and their homes. Article 17 Children have the right to reliable information from the mass media. Television, radio, and newspapers should provide information that children can understand, and should not promote materials that could harm children. Article 18 Both parents share responsibility for bringing up their children, and should always consider what is best for each child. Governments should help parents by providing services to support them, especially if both parents work. Article 19 Governments should ensure that children are properly cared for, and protect them from violence, abuse and neglect by their parents, or anyone else who looks after them. Article 20 Children who cannot be looked after by their own family must be looked after properly, by people who respect their religion, culture and language. Article 21 When children are adopted the first concern must be what is best for them. The same rules should apply whether the children are adopted in the country where they were born, or if they are taken to live in another country. Article 22 Children who come into a country as refugees should have the same rights as children born in that country. Article 23 Children who have any kind of disability should have special care and support, so that they can lead full and independent lives. Article 24 Children have the right to good quality health care, to clean water, nutritious food, and a clean environment, so that they will stay healthy. Rich countries should help poorer countries achieve this. Article 25 Children who are looked after by their local authority, rather than by their parents, should have their situation reviewed regularly. Article 26 The Government should provide extra money for the children of families in need. Article 27 Children have a right to a standard of living that is good enough to meet their physical and mental needs. The Government should help families who cannot afford to provide this. Article 28 Children have a right to an education. Discipline in schools should respect children’s human dignity. Primary education should be free. Wealthy countries should help poorer countries achieve this. Article 29 Education should develop each child's personality and talents to the full. It should encourage children to respect their parents, and their own and other cultures. Article 30 Children have a right to learn and use the language and customs of their families, whether these are shared by the majority of people in the country or not. Article 31 All children have a right to relax and play, and to join in a wide range of activities. Article 32 The Government should protect children from work that is dangerous, or that might harm their health or their education. Article 33 The Government should provide ways of protecting children from dangerous drugs. Article 34 The Government should protect children from sexual abuse. Article 35 The Government should make sure that children are not abducted or sold. Article 36 Children should be protected from any activities that could harm their development. Article 37 Children who break the law should not be treated cruelly. They should not be put in prison with adults and should be able to keep in contact with their families. Article 38 Governments should not allow children under 15 to join the army. Children in war zones should receive special protection. Article 39 Children who have been neglected or abused should receive special help to restore their self-respect. Article 40 Children who are accused of breaking the law should receive legal help. Prison sentences for children should only be used for the most serious offences. Article 41 If the laws of a particular country protect children better than the articles of the Convention, then those laws should stay. Article 42 The Government should make the Convention known to all parents and children. 54 articles in all. Articles 43-54 are about how adults and governments should work together to make sure all children get all their rights. A convention is an agreement between countries to obey the same law. When the government of a country ratifies a convention, that means it agrees to obey the law written down in that convention. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 16 December 1991. That means our government now has to make sure that every child has all the rights in the Convention '

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RACIST POLITICIAN FIGHTS "B.O." ON BUSES

2009-09-02T00:01:00.005-10:00

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HONOLULU CITY COUNCILMAN ROD TAM SMELLS, SOMETHING AWFUL

BUT HE'S TRYING TO FIX THE PROBLEM

Is He Promising Not To Ride Da Bus?

This is the guy who used the term "wetbacks" in a public meeting not too long ago. His new racist offensive is targeted at foreigners whose hygiene standards may be different, or at the poor whose access to bathrooms is limited --In part by lax planning, zoning, building and housing codes and a lack of affordable housing and public facilities. Tam's our Zoning Committee Chairman, by the way, so he's responsible for a lot of that. But it's so much easier to target the disenfranchised and humiliate & punish them than it is to offer real solutions that are already available elsewhere and to people with money right here in Honolulu.

The fact that Tam has already established himself as a race-warrior with his attacks on "wetbacks" makes this new measure smell pretty bad in itself. The homeless population and immigration from global-warming and economic depression victims throughout the Asia-Pacific region keep growing, putting some less recent immigrants' and forgetful long-time Locals' noses out of joint, "Aloha" be damned. Da Bus is one of the few places where the old and the new, the poor and the middle classes come into contact. Maybe now is the time those living in comfort paid attention to the problems of the system that has benefited them so much more than others.

The solution to the unpleasant realities of poverty and disenfranchisement is not the typical conservative one of punishing the victims by criminalizing poverty, but the more liberal approach of helping people to help themselves. More affordable housing, more living-wage jobs, more public facilities for health and hygiene are a better and, in the long run, cheaper and more workable solution than locking immigrants up for smelling different, or fining homeless people for having no access to bathrooms. If you think the buses smell bad, wait till you smell the jails, the courtrooms and the prisons. But, if you're middle class, you probably never will smell them. Auwe, brah, dey steenk, ho!

HONOLULU STAR BULLETIN
"Tam sorry for saying ‘wetbacks‘"
Note how Tam harps on his own ethnicity, Chinese, as if that somehow makes it OK to disparage others. Typical Hawaii BS. So is his comparison of "liberal" [?] Hawaii with the evil haole [white] Mainland.

' On May 13, Tam's Council Zoning Committee discussed the planned University of Hawaii-West Oahu campus in Kapolei. Tam warned the developers that labor unions are saying "that they (the developers' workers) have to be skilled, licensed workers. We don't want any, uh, wetbacks, basically." The Council's Zoning Committee, of which Tam serves as chairman, discussed development plans for UH-West Oahu on May 13 when Tam warned the developers to have better communication with labor unions. "The concern from (labor unions) is basically that they (the developers' workers) have to be skilled, licensed workers. We don't want any, uh, wetbacks, basically," Tam said. "OK. We've been receiving (reports about) developers or contractors been bringing in wetbacks from New Mexico. Uh, Mexico. I'm sorry. Mexico. OK. Illegal aliens. And that's a problem here, basically. We don't want that type. We want safety building here." "Over here in Hawaii, we're so liberal," Tam told the Star-Bulletin. "We have multiethnic cultures. We don't think in the same terms of the mainland. People look at it different. I learned something, and I apologize if I offended anybody." Tam said he first learned of the offending term through a 1950s musical called "Flower Drum Song," about Chinese illegal immigrants. From this musical, Tam said he thought the term referred to illegal immigrants. "People interpret it differently now," Tam said. "It's a terminology used in the past." '

CBS NEWS KGMB-TV9 HONOLULU: VIDEO
"City Council Member Apologizes For Racial Remarks"
He's sorry "if" he said anything that was "politically incorrect," he says with a sneer. This is the guy who zones your neighborhoods, Honolulu.

' Hispanic community leaders say they've been flooded with calls from people in Hawaii and on the mainland outraged by the remark. Tam recently apologized but not everyone was satisfied. Some want him to step down as chair of the zoning committee and meet with members of the Hispanic community. '

THE HONOLULU ADVERTISER
"Bill targets pungent riders of Honolulu's transit system"
Would this cover Chinese immigrants too, Mr. Tam? Or just homeless Chinese?

' Councilman Rod Tam, a co-sponsor of the bill, explained why it is needed: "As we become more inundated with people from all over the world, their way of taking care of their health is different. Some people, quite frankly, do not take a bath every day and therefore they may be offensive in terms of their odor." '

ABC NEWS KITV-TV4 HONOLULU: VIDEO
"Council Considers BO Ban"
Heath Fascism: Six months in prison for not taking a shower? What about "offensive" odors from soaps, perfumes, colognes, "body sprays," and deodorants? Or garlic ahi, kimchee poke, or sweet balut? Will the police board buses with sniffer dogs? Or do they detect B.O. with their own snouts? Nosy people want to know!

' Honolulu City Council members are considering a proposal to ban riders from buses if their body odor is too stinky. Councilman Rod Tam and Councilman Nestor Garcia introduced the bill to regulate a number of dangerous or annoying behaviors on city buses including bad B.O. Under the bill, police could cite riders if their body odor annoyed others and a convicted offender could face up to $500 in fines or six months in prison. Tam said he's received complaints about bus B.O. "People are very concerned they don't want to get sick when they experience body odor... offensive body odor they identify it with germs, diseases," said Tam. '

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DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SOCIALISTS & COMMUNISTS?

2009-09-01T00:03:00.000-10:00

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STALIN

THE MAN WHO DESTROYED RUSSIAN COMMUNISM SPLIT SOCIALISM OFF FOREVER

After The Molotov-Von Ribbentrop Pact Became Public Knowledge, The Left Was Cleft

It's the 70th anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact that divided up Eastern Europe between Hitler and Stalin. This week, the Poles are not celebrating. The Russians are still trying to pin the blame on anybody and everybody else. And the Germans will never finish apologizing and atoning for what the faux-socialist Nazi's did. (No wonder people are still confused as to the difference between socialism and Fascism. Their very name was a deliberate subterfuge by the "National Socialist Workers Party," or Nazi's. And by today's corporatists.)

Conservatards like to make up their own history. Who can blame them? The facts place them in the outer edges of the Hitler camp. Some of them are not so outer; more inner. If you can stomach reading Hitler's "Mein Kampf," you'll find it remarkably similar in parts to the more extreme stuff that is written and spoken and done by some on the Right in America today. And by some I mean most of them, even those in or formerly in government.

Not all of the current eruption of hate in the Red States is strictly Hitlerian. Some of it is more like Goebbels or Goering or Himmler or Röhm and his Brownshirts. And then there's the original corporatist himself, Benito Mussolini. Some of them started out as Leftists, but quickly swung to the far Right in preference for violence and authoritarianism driven by racism, sectarianism, nativism, sexism and homophobia. They were all conservatives, by their own description; ultra-conservatives with more in common with Newt Gingrich and David Duke than with any liberals, progressives or socialists. They hated socialism more than anything in the world, except maybe Jews. Or Gypsies. Or Homosexuals. Or any minority, any foreigner, anyone who was different, or "degenerate." Jazz was degenerate, according to them. Benny Goodman and Cab Calloway, the pop music of your mother, grandmother or great-grandmother: All degenerates.

The Nazi's were great ones for ridiculous and obviously false characterizations. They even named themselves "Socialists," knowing that their sworn enemies were more popular than the Fascists could ever hope to be, honestly anyway. The real socialists were on the center Left, not on the far Right. They were the only ones with real solutions, and the average working people all over Europe knew that. So the Nazi's lied. In fact, they invented the Big Lie. And their ideological descendants are still telling it, every night on Fox News.

They can't fool everyone, though. The Poles, for example. They know who sold them out, who partitioned Poland, and who slaughtered them. It was an unholy alliance between the extreme right-wing Nazi's and the extreme left-wing Stalinists. It allowed Germany a free hand in Western, Central and Southern Europe. The Russians got the East, and peace; until Hitler betrayed them and opened up a suicidal Second Front in the war. That was pretty much the end of him. Hitler should have learned from Napoleon: You can't beat the Russian Winter. And so went Fascism. Until today, in the new Republican Party here in America.

In Europe, the local communists and socialists were the main groups who stood up to the Fascists. After the war, there was a split. The communists were forever tainted by their connections to Stalin, who had gotten into bed with Hitler, and wiped out tens of millions of his own people, decimating the old Bolsheviks and Trotskyites as well as much of the Russian peasantry, the Kulaks. The communists in the West resisted participation in government, preferring not to stand for elections at first, only entering coalitions with the socialists in the days before WWII broke out. The socialists swallowed their scruples early on and entered the mainstream political fray in almost every country in Western Europe before the war. After the war, now in the mainstream, men like Mitterand and Brandt had to deal with real-life everyday issues like taxes and road maintenance, unemployment and job-creation, national defense and criminal justice. To the surprise of some and the disillusionment of others, they managed fairly well, making few radical breaks with the bourgeois past, even making the trains run on time, and opposing communism all over the world.

In many areas, socialist policy even cribbed from the right: Social security and national healthcare were originally right-wing sops to the rising leftist movement in Germany under the Kaiser. The fact is, those programs just made good common sense. Ultimately, everyone would have to adopt them. Even the United States. Some day. But crypto-Fascists in America will fight common sense to the last drop of somebody else's blood. Like the Nazi's, they will let us all die in the name of some fuzzy-minded notion of racial or ideological purity, sitting in the waiting room of a bankrupt hospital's emergency room here in America.

Remember that, the next time some Republican rube starts screaming about SOCIALISM!!! SOCIALISM!!! SOCIALISM!!! It's really National Socialism, Nazism, he's afraid of, with good reason. But for him, it's too late: They've already gained control of his mind. Any "Polock" would know better.

THE LONDON TELEGRAPH
"Russia and Poland trade insults on 70th anniversary of World War Two"
Tovarich! Can't we all just get alongski?

' The dignity of ceremonies to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War in Poland is being marred by furious spats between Russia and Eastern European states over their respective wartime roles. Many Poles claim to detect the hand of the Kremlin in the recent Russian media broadside, and see it as an attempt to absolve Russia of guilt over the contentious Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, signed between Stalin and Hitler in August 1939. A pact of mutual non-aggression that lasted until 1941, it allowed Russia to invade and annexe Eastern Poland. While Poland and other Eastern European states have now made their peace with a repentant Germany, there is long-standing frustration in the region that Russia has never really recognised, or apologised for, crimes committed by the Soviet state between 1939 and 1945, or the subsequent brutalities of communist rule. '

REUTERS
"Russia's Putin rejects WW2 criticism in Poland"
The "Appeasers," by the way, were Conservative British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who coined the term "appeasement;" and right-leaning "centrist" French Premier Édouard Daladier. They were encouraged to give way to Hitler at Munich in part by the US Republicans' "Neutrality Acts" in the 1930's, a boon to Fascism everywhere, which grew unchecked by any concerns over American aid or intervention, forbidden by those Acts.

' Russia and former satellites such as Poland are at loggerheads over the actions of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in 1939, when he clinched a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany that opened the way for the invasion of Poland and world war. Russians are deeply proud of their country's victory over Hitler in 1945, but Poles, Balts and others say Stalin also bears direct responsibility for the outbreak of war, for carving up Poland with Hitler and also annexing the Baltic states. Putin cited efforts by Britain and France to appease Hitler in 1938, resulting in their acceptance of the destruction of Czechoslovakia, as well as Poland's own seizure of a strip of Czech territory shortly before it too faced German invasion. [Putin's] comments will not satisfy the Poles and Balts, who regard Stalin's actions as a stab in the back and also recall the mass deportations and executions of their countrymen that followed the Soviets' arrival. Poland wants Russia to apologise for Stalin's decision to have 20,000 Polish officers shot at Katyn. For decades, Moscow blamed the deaths on the Nazis, but after the fall of the Soviet Union it acknowledged they had been shot on Stalin's orders. Poland lost about a fifth of its population, including the vast majority of its three million Jewish citizens, as well as a fifth of its territory during World War Two. After the war, it remained under Soviet domination until 1989. Some 27 million Soviet citizens perished in the war after Hitler reneged on his pact with Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. "I commemorate the 60 million people who lost their lives because of this war unleashed by Germany," Merkel said. '

INFOPEDIA
"Encyclopedia—Socialist parties—General History"
Some ACTUAL history of socialism vs. communism.

' All European Socialist parties were marked by schisms; the main issue dividing them was whether party members should cooperate with bourgeois-dominated governments to work for gradual reforms or should organize extralegally to hasten what Marxists viewed as inevitable, proletarian revolution. Eduard Bernstein, in Germany, was one of the first to deny (1898) some of Marx's doctrines and to argue for “revisionism.” During World War II, socialists were prominent in the resistance movement in the countries occupied by Germany. In the postwar period the cold war widened the gulf between the Socialist and Communist parties, and most Socialist parties moved even further away from Marxism. Substantial periods of power have, however, enabled some to promote their goals of a planned economy and a welfare state in many European countries; their position has been especially strong in the Scandinavian countries. In the 1990s a number of Socialist parties moderated their commit to a planned economy and the welfare state, most especially the British Labour party, which went so far as to abandon formally its traditional Socialist positions. '

NEW WORLD ENCYCLOPEDIA
"Social Democracy vs. Communism"
The final schism on the Left was all about the Russians. They made communism illegitimate, and socialism, legitimate.

' In the U.S., the Socialist Labor Party was founded in 1877. This party, small as it was, became fragmented in the 1890s. In 1901, a moderate faction of the party joined with Eugene V. Debs to form the Socialist Party of America. The influence of the party gradually declined, and socialism never became a major political force in the United States. Communism also failed to gain a large following in the U.S. and Canada. The party fell into significant disfavor in the aftermath of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which resulted in the Communist Party USA opposing any U.S. involvement in the war effort against Nazi Germany until the surprise act on the Soviet Union by Hitler in 1940. The distinction between socialists and communists became more pronounced during and after World War I. When the First World War began in 1914, many European socialist leaders supported their respective governments and Lenin was very outspoken in his opposition to this. Lenin denounced the war as an imperialist conflict and urged workers worldwide to use the war as an occasion for socialist revolution. During the war, socialist parties in France and Germany supported the state wartime military and economic planning, despite their ideological commitments to internationalism and solidarity. This ideological conflict resulted in the collapse of the Second International. Throughout much of the interwar period, socialist and communist parties were in continuous conflict. Socialists condemned communists as agents of the Soviet Union, while communists condemned socialists as betrayers of the working class. However, with the rise of fascism in Italy and National Socialism in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, socialists and communists made attempts in some countries to form a united front of all working-class organizations opposed to fascism. The "popular front" movement had limited success, even in France and Spain, where it did well in the 1936 elections. The failure of the German communists and socialists to form a "popular front" helped the Nazis gain power in 1933. The "popular front" period ended in 1939 with the conclusion of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. Socialists condemned this act as an act of betrayal by the Stalinist Soviet Union. '

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BASS ACKWARDS HEADLINES

2009-08-31T00:01:00.003-10:00

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DYSLEXIC VIEWS OF THE NEWS

HOW PEOPLE WITH READING DISABILITIES SEE THE DAY'S TOP STORIES

OK, It Sounded Funnier When We Told That Deaf Guy Who's Always Laughing...

Come to think of it, what the f**k is he laughing at? [Checks fly.]

GOOGLE NEWS
"Colombian swine comes down with the president flu"
We wondered why he was snorting so much.

' Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has the swine flu and officials have advised other South American leaders who met with him at a summit of the infection, authorities said Sunday. '

CQ POLITICS
"Ex-Christ Aide To Be Appointed to Florida Senate Seat"
Wow. We thought the Apostles were all dead! Or Democrats!

' Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will appoint George LeMieux, his former chief of staff, to succeed Sen. Mel Martinez after the Republican incumbent resigns his seat in early September. '

BBC
"US trailer park death toll rises "
Better them than us. How much is the toll, anyhoo? Wait, I have exact change of life!

' An eighth person has died following an attack in a mobile home in the US state of Georgia, police say. '

TIME MAGAZINE
"Amid the Nation's Fallen, Kennedy Is Laid to Rest"
They should have bought one of those things for when you need help, cuz you've fallen and you can't get up. What was Mr. Kennedy doing there? Was he sleepy, Mommy?

' A story told around Arlington National Cemetery holds that John F. Kennedy paid a visit around Veteran's Day in 1963. As he stood near the mansion that once was home to Robert E. Lee, taking in the sweeping view of the Potomac River down below and the National Mall rolling out toward the distant Capitol, he remarked, "I could stay here forever." '

LIVE SCIENCE.COM
"Powerful Ideas: Mutant Polyester + Bacteria = More Biafras"
Jello?

' Brewing a certain type of biofuel with a mutant bacteria and polyester could double the fuel's production, researchers have found. '

THE WASHINGTON POST
"Obama Supporters Organize Bus Tour, Campaign-Style Events Across U.S."
Someone should tell them he won. Nah, let 'em punk themselves.

' President Obama's supporters hope to recapture the energy of last year's triumphant election campaign in a bid to regain control of the health-care debate, planning more than 2,000 house parties, rallies and town hall meetings across the country over the next two weeks. '

THE PHILADELPHIA ENQUIRER
"Mofo set to return Key to prison today"
How dat mofo got da key?

' ASHLAND, Ky. - Former State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo's new, assigned residence doesn't match the grandeur of the 27-room mansion he maintains in Philadelphia or the 100-acre farm he owns near Harrisburg. Maybe it's the razor wire. '

LIVE SCIENCE.COM
"Why We Cry"
Maybe it HURTS, you stupid f**king boffin!

' A scientist now proposes a new theory for why crying evolved - tears can act as handicaps to show you have lowered your defenses. '

YAHOO TECH NEWS
"Apple denies assault & battery with exploding iPhones"
That Steve Jobs is like a NINJA!

' US technology giant Apple said Friday it had seen no evidence that overheating batteries had caused screens on some of its iPhone devices to explode, blaming incidents in France on "external force." '

REUTERS
"Dead AM DJ found apartment in New York"
Amazing. Most live people can't find one.

' DJ AM, the stage name of disc jockey Adam Goldstein whose music could be heard on albums by Madonna and Will Smith, was found dead in his New York apartment on Friday, police said. He was 36. '

REUTERS
"No Black Eyed Muslims at Malaysia concert, Please"
Sounds like discrimination against battered spouses!

' Muslims in Malaysia have been barred from attending a concert by U.S. hip hop band the Black Eyed Peas sponsored by Guinness which is owned by the world's biggest spirits group Diageo. '

BBC
"Moon mission 'terminates' India "
DIABOLICAL!!!

' India's space agency has abandoned its inaugural moon mission a day after scientists lost communication with the orbiting Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. '

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A REAL IRISH WAKE

2009-08-30T00:03:00.000-10:00

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MUSIC TO SAY GOODBYE BY

YOUTUBE: SINEAD O'CONNOR
"Davy Spillane feat Sinead O'Connor-Danny Boy (The Derry Air)"
If no one will sing this song for you, you're a poor man indeed.

THE LAST FEW NOTES FROM THE 1960's

Teddy, We Hardly Knew Ye

There'll be no throwing of the uisce beatha in the man's face. No brawling, no arguments, no slamming of doors. One last time in fifty years, we Irish Americans will quietly and mournfully say goodbye to one of our own, the last of his kind, forever. We would have upturned Heaven and Earth to find Teddy's brother's killer, but we did not. We observed the custom of this great forgiving land, and we moved on, carrying John Kennedy's torch with us. We wanted to tear out our hair and rend our garments, smash something or someone when Teddy's brother Bobby was murdered, but we held ourselves to the principles we shared with him, and fought peacefully for peace and justly for justice, which we never found. Now poor old Teddy is gone. He escaped assassination by foregoing his rightful role as our President, and worked in the mired trenches of the Senate instead. Edward Moore Kennedy won some, he lost some, but he never quit fighting. Now we will again quietly mourn one of our very own, and again we will take up that torch. We will never give up the struggle for peace and justice, because we are Irish, and we are Americans, we never forget, and we never give up.

[NOTE: For Video Tyros & Those With Slow Computers And/ Or Narrow Bandwidth, Or Something:
For Smooth Playback: click "PLAY" on the video, then click the "PAUSE" button on the video, and let the video download completely, till the RED LINE at the bottom is all the way to the RIGHT, then click the "PLAY" button.]

YOUTUBE: THE CHIEFTAINS
"The Chieftains - Women Of Ireland (Mná na h-Éireann)"
A lament. Of course.

YOUTUBE: DION
"Abraham, Martin & John - Dion - Lyrics"
Always hated this song. Don't like crying.

YOUTUBE: ARETHA FRANKLIN
"Aretha Franklin - Bridge Over Troubled Water"
I got yer Chappaquiddick right heah, you Nazi f**ks.

YOUTUBE: PETER, PAUL & MARY
"If I Had A Hammer PETER,PAUL & MARY"
A song about the hammer of justice and the bell of freedom, and love between my brothers and my sisters. Silly, hunh?

YOUTUBE: BRIAN O'BRIEN
"Brian O'Brien Caoineadh Cu Chulainn (Lament) Uilleann Pipes"
These are the real bagpipes. More for laments than marches.

YOUTUBE: WALELA
"Native American - Amazing Grace (in cherokee)"
Another County heard from!

MORE MUSIC VIDEOS
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CHEAP, EASY RECIPES FOR INSTANT GOURMETS

2009-08-29T00:01:00.005-10:00

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NO TIME TO AGE YOUR WINE & CHEESE?
NO MONEY? NO PROBLEMO!

YOUR ENVIRONMENT, INCLUDING YOU, ALREADY HAS EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO MAKE FINE FOODS FASTER!

THE TWILIGHT ZONE
"To Serve Man"
It's a COOKBOOK!

How To Use The Bacteria You've Been Feeding, Clothing & Housing All Your Life. Your Guests Will Never Know The difference.

In reality, this is how the pro's do it. Well, back in the Stone Age. There have been some improvements in food tech. But they're slow, complicated and expensive. Now you too can eat, drink and be merry just like the real foodies, in a matter of minutes and hours, not months or years. Just follow these simple recipe's, and you're in like Wolfgang Puck!

1. Gourmet Yoghurt:
Sneeze into a tall glass. Add milk, to taste. Let stand uncovered in the warmest part of the refrigerator until it looks like pudding. Enjoy!

2. Gourmet Cheese:
Gather Fromunda cheese from under your various & fragrant underplaces. Add to slices of Velveeta. Drop on the floor. (The cheese, stupid, not you.) Season to taste. Pick it up. Bon appetit!

3. Gourmet Pate:
Leave slices of liverwurst on the bus, under a seat in the hottest part, near the rear. Ride the entire route, twice. Collect slices of liverwurst, which are now indistinguishable from foie gras. Serve on toast points. Champagne optional. (See below.)

4. Gourmet Bread:
Order a tuna sub on toasted Garlic & Herb bread at Subway. Tell them to hold the tuna. (If they ask where, say, "Between your legs." They love that.) Make sure they put nothing on it but oil & olives, before toasting. Serve with homemade foie gras & fromunda cheese. Tell your friends you've discovered this interesting new baker in the gay part of town. It's time you came out of the closet anyway.

5. Gourmet Champagne:
Collect old champagne bottles from rich people's trash. Fill with any sparkling clear white, yellow or pink alcoholic beverage, other than beer. Chill almost to freezing. Serve from stolen champagne bottles, pouring into real champagne glasses. Your snobby friends will never know. Salut!

6. Gourmet Chocolate:
Place a medium-sized Hershey's chocolate bar between your buttock cheeks. Go about your business. At the end of the day, remove the softened, perfumed chocolate bar and place it in your freezer. When friends come over, offer them tiny slices of the "extra-extra-bittersweet" chocolat Belge you have created. Mmmm.

7. Gourmet Coffee:
Raid the Starbucks dumpster for old empty coffee bags. Fill with dirt. Good, dark, flavorful dirt. Put it through your snotty neighbor's espresso machine, add hot frothed soy milk, nutmeg, a splash of orange juice, and some bits of that butt-chocolate. Serve in funny little cups from the thrift store. Good to the last drop.
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KATHERINE HEIGL TOPLESS

2009-08-28T00:01:00.001-10:00

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FORMER ALIEN REVEALS ALL!

SEXY "DOC" WOULD RATHER BE IN PICTURES

YOUTUBE: KATHERINE HEIGL: "ROSWELL"
"Isabel & Alex: Simply Irresistible"
Teen ET's from the 90's, in NM.

Unhappy "Grey's Anatomy" Star Prefers Adolescent Big-Screen T&A-fests To A Regular Gig On The Boob Tube.

We say bully for her. Or cowey. Or whatever. If you don't like your lines, or the direction your character is headed, change it. Words to live by. Of course, a paycheck is nice, too...

But Katherine has had a few good paychecks since her days on "Roswell." Besides the soapy doctor show, she's appeared in what seems to be the same film several times, playing pretty much the same character: The beautiful, sexy, totally together, successful Gen-Y career girl who ruins her life by hooking up with some slacker slob the likes of whom she'd never look at in real life. It's the couchbound fan-boy's fantasy, that simply by going on with their X-Box dominated lifestyles, they'll eventually land a hot chick who's capable of supporting them until someone offers them a movie deal. Or forever, whichever comes sooner. All because they're so sweet, innocent and helpless. The roles really have reversed, haven't they?
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A FIELD GUIDE TO THE REPUBLICANS

2009-08-27T00:01:00.003-10:00

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OR, HOW TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB

WHEREIN WE ATTEMPT TO PLUMB THE DEPTHS OF THAT WHICH CONSERVATIVES ARE PLEASED TO CALL THEIR MINDS

Carry This With You Whenever You Go To A Public Toilet At The Airport

Here are a few clues for translating current Republicans and Republicanisms into terms that a human being may understand. Please do not contemplate this list for more than ten minutes at a time, as severe hemmorhoids may ensue.

1. AYN RAND: Well, they have to jerk off to something.

2. RONALD REAGAN: Not the monkey. The other one.

3. NEWT GINGRICH: His first wife's tombstone says, "I'd rather be here than in bed with Newtie."

4. RUSH LIMBAUGH: Everything you ever wanted to know about flatulence.

5. GEORGE "DUBYA" BUSH: This year's winner of our annual "Free Trip To The Hague Contest." Dubya? Dubya? Where'd he go?

6. DICK ARMEY: Make up your mind: You want dick or you want army?

7. GLENN BECK: The poster boy for psychiatric bloat.

8. MICHELLE BACHMAN: Turn'er overdrive, boys!

9. BILL FRIST: Rhymes with fist. Make your own joke.

10. JOHN BOEHNER: See Number 9.

11. SARAH PALIN: The official Seventh Sign of the Apocalypse! Collect 'em all!

12. ANTONIN SCALIA: Once rejected by La Cosa Nostra as insufficiently humane.

13. LOU DOBBS: How is it possible for one man to be wrong so many times?

14. BOBBY JINDAL: On the other hand, maybe Dobbs has a point...

15. ANN COULTER: Recently married her douche bag. Hey, no one else asked.

16. COLIN POWELL: Remember that chicken who voted for Colonel Sanders?

17. BRUCE WILLIS: At last, someone who can shame even New Jersey.

18. BILL O'REILLY: Yo, Bill, yer Mom called: She wants her protoplasm back.

19. RANDALL TERRY: Ironically, he's the best argument ever for abortion. Just ask his mother.

20. MICHAEL STEELE: Doing a great job as GOP Chairman, despite the fact that his candidates keep turning their dogs loose on him.
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CHAPPAQUIDDICK

2009-08-26T00:03:00.001-10:00

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THERE. WE SAID IT. ANYBODY GOT ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY?

THE LAST OF THE 1960's KENNEDY BROTHERS IS DEAD. LET THE CHARACTER ASSASSINATION BEGIN!

YOUTUBE: ANOTHER KENNEDY FUNERAL
"Robert Kennedy Funeral- Eulogy delivered by Senator Edward Kennedy"
"Some men see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'

"Teddy Was A Murderer. Teddy Was Fat. Teddy Was A Drunk. Teddy Divorced His Wife."

Worst of all, Teddy Kennedy was a liberal. And a damned effective one, too; a rarity in our conservatively-gridlocked government. Out of sheer Irish stubbornness, Teddy persevered. He never wanted to be a politician. He was never quite ready to go all the way. But he could not let the murder of his two older brothers stand. He could not let the assassins win. He may have been reluctant to pick up the banner and lead the charge, but he did pick it up and he did fight on. And for that we all owe him and his entire family our gratitude.

In our corporate medieval State, only the rich may hold high office. Those who are not extremely wealthy, or in their employ, are not even entitled to an opinion. We technoserfs do have the enhanced ability to communicate and express our opinions to each other, but no one in power will ever hear us: Except those who choose to take up our cause, out of enlightened self-interest, a guilty conscience, noblesse oblige, actual concern or whatever: It hardly matters why. There are so damned few millionaires and billionaires who are even aware much less concerned about the problems of the peasantry that we peasants can not afford to be too critical of them when they do work for us, the plebian majority, and not for their own ilk, the aristocratic minority.

So, even if all the worst things that the corporate technobility and their lackeys can say about such rare champions of the commoners should turn out to be true, all that really matters is that they fought for our side. They were among the very few who were willing to give us peons even a small voice in our own affairs. Without these few knights errant, we would have absolutely no say, and no stake in the grand illusion once known as the American Dream. And now that Teddy Kennedy is dead, we all have that much less influence on our own "democratic" government. So, yes, we have reason to mourn. Our healthcare may have just died with him.

As to the peccadilloes, real or imagined, we suspect that they are no worse than the high crimes and misdemeanors which mark every phase of the careers of our leading opponents on the corporatist side. And if Teddy Kennedy did commit any offenses, they were not offenses against us, the people. The worst offenses of all liberals and progressives combined would never rise to the level of perfidy and harm to the interests of average Americans as did conservative and crypto-Fascist crimes such as the Great Depression of Herbert Hoover; the military-industrial complex of Dwight Eisenhower; COINTELPRO, the Phoenix Program and the Watergate Break-In of Richard Nixon; the pardon of Nixon by Gerald Ford; the trashing of our standard of living and the Iran-Contra Affair of Ronald Reagan; the betrayal of our troops and the sell-out to the oil companies in the First Gulf War of George HW Bush; or the looting of our economy and the high treason of allowing or perpetrating 9/11 by George "Dubya" Bush and Dick Cheney. No amount of private personal wrong-doing by Democrats, real or imagined, will ever equate with the actual documented public official crimes against all Americans committed by Republican after Republican after Republican after Republican.

As to the events of 7/18/69, we have heard it said, in Teddy Kennedy's defense, that his brakes were tampered with, or that the bridge at Chappaquiddick was. We have seen accounts claiming that the Kennedy's realized this and that their slow response to that tragic accident was due to uncertainty as to whether to make an accusation that they could not immediately prove as to deliberate sabotage in that incident. They may have realized that, whether the "accident" was in fact an attempt at assassinating Teddy Kennedy, or merely an attempt at character assassination, all they could do was try to limit the damage, and soldier on in the cause of the common man.

If this was a cold political calculation, there are no warm ones. Nor were there many soldiers left standing to fight for us average Joe's & Josie's. The dark days of Nixon were upon us, JFK, RFK & MLK were dead, and Teddy and a handful of others in Congress were all we had. We are glad that they did soldier on in our cause, which otherwise might have been lost along with Mary Jo Kopechne's life. May she rest in peace, and may we some day know whether she was the victim of an assassination attempt gone wrong or not. (Unlikely as that may seem, more unlikely things have happened.)

What went right is that Teddy Kennedy became a senior member of our national legislature, able to use his power and influence on our behalf, which he did for almost another forty years. That is the real reason he was targeted, if not for assassination then for character assassination, every day of his life. He withstood that and, in doing so, justified the faith that working people everywhere had in him and his family. In poor and working class homes, black, white, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander and Native American, in all fifty States and various Territories, there are pictures hanging of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, icons of courage and sacrifice, symbols of justice and solidarity, reminders of our values and our aspirations. The late Democratic Massachusetts senior Senator Edward Moore Kennedy's portrait belongs in every household beside those other champions of social and economic justice.

The power of these images, the strength we derive from them, may be the reason why, until recently, the Right stopped even talking about making everlasting martyrs out of our liberal & progressive champions. It proved easier and more effective to simply slander them out of public life and end their political effectiveness: Thomas Eagleton, Edmund Muskie, Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, et al, fell victim to the corporate conservatives' "politics of personal destruction." A public used to suckling at the toxic glass teat with the perspicacity of newborns was easily led into voting against their own interests by the tame corporate media moo-cows. We can only hope that they are weaning themselves off that poisoned boob, and are coming to recognize their own interests and their own enemies.

Despite all the snide asides we will witness on the boob tube in the next days and weeks, let us all always remember, Teddy Kennedy was on our side. You can tell by the kind of people who will take one last opportunity to kick him, now that he is down for good. At least Teddy, often alone among the one hundred millionaires in the United States Senate, stood up for us. You done good, Mr. Kennedy. Thank you, and may you rest in peace.
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AUGUST COSIES

2009-08-25T00:01:00.002-10:00

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A RANDOM SAMPLE

SOME OF THE BETTER BLOGS WE'VE CHANCED UPON

Check 'Em Out.

JESUS' GENERAL
"Who knew Christians had their own army? I mean, besides Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan & Pakistan?"

JOE. MY. GOD.
"An ACTUAL New Yorker, captured live, every day."

THE SMIRKING CHIMP
"Still smirking, eight months after the Chimp was kicked out."

ZIMBIO
"It's a magazine. Sorta. It's a blog. Sorta."

OBSIDIAN WINGS
"It's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard blog...)"

DAILY KOS
"The big shots need love too. I guess."

FROM THE LEFT
"Open. Left. Any questions?"

COSIE'S
The Cosie Awards

All the Cosie winners, so far.
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HATE IN THE ALOHA STATE

2009-08-24T00:01:00.008-10:00

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AN ANNIVERSARY OF RACISM & "REVERSE-RACISM"

YOUTUBE: BROTHER NOLAND
"MR. SAN CHO LEE"
A musical compendium of Hawaii racism. A very popular song here in Honolulu. Prejudice sells.

RACISM IS RACISM, NO MATTER THE SOURCE, NO MATTER THE EXCUSE

Hawaii's Hypocritical Stance On Racial Violence

On the fiftieth anniversary of Hawaii's accession to Statehood, there were no official celebrations. It was feared that there would be violence, as there has been in the past. The fact that the perpetrators are a tiny and well-known minority of a minority has not led to any action by local law enforcement. This in itself is an indictment of the entire State: Deliberate official ignorance, avoidance and denial of frequent hate crimes is as bad or worse than the crimes themselves.

The centralized State school system tolerates and even allows the promotion of an annual "Kill Haole Day," when white students, "haole's," are physically and verbally attacked right inside of the public schools. Black students, or "popolo's," have also been subject to racial attacks, even including a school-sponsored and managed yearbook that featured pictures of black students with racist defacements and captions. The yearbook was edited & published by the school authorities with the racist material included. This has happened at least three times in the last ten years alone.

The fact that the State has been run almost exclusively by a local Japanese elite (who are in effect a minority within the largest minority in a population consisting entirely of minorities) for over fifty years now does nothing to ameliorate or share the collective guilt foisted upon innocent Caucasian children and adults for wrongs done, and continuing to be done, against the Native Hawaiian population. The exclusionary local elite Japanese-run State government has engineered programs since 1959 which have increasingly marginalized and hurt the health and well-being of Native Hawaiians, even as local elite Japanese politicians pander to "Local" hate-groups by blaming everything, including their own actions, on "da fahkin' howlees." Using whites as scapegoats helps to turn the attention away from the dominant local elite Japanese politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen & women and their deliberate and racist acts against the Native Hawaiians as well as "haole's" and others.

As long as Caucasians can be blamed for every problem, the local Japanese elite and their toadies in business & government can go on lining their own pockets at the expense of everyone else. As long as racism is the predominant political force here in the "Aloha State," nothing will ever change, and the problems of all the people of Hawaii, including "Locals" (local self-description of local but not Hawaiian non-white & [mainly] non-Asians) as well as Native Hawaiians.

The anemic local Republican Party and their owners & operators on the Mainland have tried to import their traditional conservative tactics of racial divide and conquer to Hawaii. The result has been a net loss for the Republicans, and a ratcheting-up of "Local" anti-white racism. The historical memory of the Overthrow, the Republic, the Annexation, the Territory, the white Ascendancy and Statehood, all Republican-engineered, will never dim as long as corporate racist Republicans from the Mainland continue trying to use Hawaii to fan flames of racial hatred and disharmony everywhere.

The despicable acts of the Republicans do not, however, excuse Hawaii's own racists. Divide and conquer along racial lines may have worked well for the local Democrats, but it is hurting the State in the long run. With an education system on a par with that of Mississippi, and a poverty-driven healthcare crisis that hits brown-skinned people hardest, only by uniting all ethnic groups can our reverse-Dixiecrats ever manage to lift Hawaii out of its' plantation-days cultural and economic slums.

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: INTELLIGENCE REPORT
"Prejudice in Paradise: Hawaii Has a Racism Problem"
You'll never hear this here. It could get you lynched.

' With no known hate groups and a much-trumpeted spirit of aloha or tolerance, few people outside Hawaii realize the state has a racism issue. One reason: The tourism-dependent state barely acknowledges hate crimes. That makes it hard to know how often racial violence is directed at Caucasians, who comprise about 25% of the ethnically diverse state's 1.3 million residents. Those who identify themselves as Native Hawaiian — most residents are of mixed race — account for nearly 20%. Hawaii has collected hate crimes data since 2002 (most states began doing so a decade earlier). In the first six years, the state reported only 12 hate crimes, and half of those were in 2006. (All other things being equal, the state would be expected to have more than 800 such crimes annually, given the size of its population, according to a federal government study of hate crimes.) There was anti-white bias in eight of those incidents. But that doesn't begin to reflect the extent of racial rancor directed at non-Native Hawaiians in the Aloha State, especially in schools. "Here in Hawaii, there is no compulsion to speak out on racist attacks. There are all these hate crimes and violent things happening to white people and you don't hear sovereignty activists speaking out against it," says Conklin, who manages a massive website on Hawaiian issues. "The violence has been going on for years and it's always been hush-hush." '

USA TODAY
"Racial tensions are simmering in Hawaii's melting pot"
The world knows what Hawaii will not acknowledge.

' The current controversies are exposing racial tensions below the surface of a tropical paradise that Gov. Linda Lingle says is "a model for the world" in diversity and peaceful integration. Simmering divisions pit Hawaiians against other groups, and "locals" of all races against newcomers including immigrants and military members. At issue now is whether Hawaii will acknowledge and overcome these threats to its friendly reputation. Racial troubles in the islands usually don't get much public discussion. In a tourism-dependent state, talk about tensions is "like news about shark attacks," says Jon Van Dyke, a University of Hawaii law professor. "People are afraid they might lose customers." '

HONOLULU STAR BULLETIN
"Isles shape Obama’s racial identity "
It's even hard out here for a POTUS.

' White added in an e-mail interview that despite whatever "hapa street cred" Obama has in Hawaii, it doesn't displace the prejudice blacks find here. "Being of African descent is not valued in the same way that other ethnic backgrounds are valued here. In spite of the many positive aspects of multiethnic, multiracial and multicultural interaction in Hawaii, we still have to realize ... that being black continues to be negatively perceived in Hawaii," White said. In a 1999 essay written for Punahou's school alumni magazine, Obama recalls how his first perceptions of Hawaii as being "the world's mythical melting pot" changed that by the time he graduated from Punahou, his consciousness of race was much sharper. "As an African American teenager in a school with few African Americans, I probably questioned my identify a bit harder than most," Obama wrote. "As a kid from a broken home and family of relatively modest means, I nursed more resentments than my circumstances justified and didn't always channel those resentments in particularly constructive ways." '

HONOLULU STAR BULLETIN
"Waianae High recalls yearbooks containing racial slur"
Once is an accident. Three times is a policy.

' Hundreds of Waianae High School yearbooks are being recalled to replace a page with a photograph of what school officials call a "racially offensive" word spelled out in cards held by five students in the senior class on football field bleachers. The photograph, with the racial N-word slur, was overlooked during a review of the publication, state education officials said. State education spokeswoman Sandra Goya said the recall because of a racially insensitive photograph was a first at Waianae High, but similar problems have occurred at a couple of other public schools. Stickers were placed over a racially offensive caption in a yearbook at Kalaheo High School in 1997 and a racially offensive photograph at Castle High School in 1998, Goya said. '

FOX NEWS
"Hawaii Served as Melting Pot, Source of Racial Tension for Young Obama"
This was not at a public school This was at an "elite" private school here in Honolulu. This is the place that schools our elite. Is it any wonder that they have a problem coming to terms with racism, especially their own?

' Obama's experience in Hawaii is echoed by other blacks, including some of his schoolmates, and challenges the state's vaunted image of racial harmony. "A big joke amongst the brothers was you could be anything else but a brother and have free rein of the world in Hawaii," said Rik Smith, a black former schoolmate of Obama's at Punahou, an elite private school in Honolulu. "When it comes to people of color, black people, there's a huge amount of racism." In his memoir, "Dreams from My Father," Obama, who is half black and half white, recalled a seventh grader calling him a "coon" and a tennis pro who joked that his color might rub off. One person wanted to touch his hair, and he was asked whether his father, a native of Kenya, ate people. An assistant basketball coach used a racial epithet in referring to black players. '

HONOLULU ADVERTISER
"Hate crime not ruled out in Waikele assault"
Racism is so pervasive here that even prosecutors can't recognize an obvious hate crime. Especially not when they have political ambitions that require "Local" support. Carlisle is now running for Mayor of Honolulu.

' As debate continued over the assault on an Army couple in the parking lot of a Waikele shopping center, city Prosecutor Peter Carlisle yesterday said he had not ruled out handling the case as a hate crime. The assault remains under investigation, and the charges are up for evaluation, Carlisle said. Carlisle met with Andrew Dussell, a 26-year-old soldier, and his wife after they were allegedly beaten in the parking lot of the shopping center Feb. 19. The pair asked that their privacy be respected, and Andrew Dussell is under orders from the Army not to speak out about the case, Carlisle said. Both Andrew Dussell, who has served two tours of duty in Iraq, and his wife, Dawn Dussell, a 23-year-old nursing student at Hawai'i Pacific University, suffered broken noses, concussions and facial fractures. A police affidavit filed in court said the attack occurred after the Dussells' car collided with a vehicle while trying to pull into a parking stall. Gerald D. Paakaula, 44, and his son were arrested in connection with the assault. The father has been charged with second-degree assault; the son's case is being handled by the Family Court in confidential proceedings. The affidavit said the son was "extremely angry that his vehicle had been struck." "He began yelling obscenities toward Andrew Dussell, calling him a 'f------ haole' while kicking his driver side door," the document said. Paakaula was released after posting $20,000 bail. The police affidavit did not allege that he made any racial remarks. Much of the public debate was touched off by comments from two University of Hawai'i at Manoa professors. Jonathan Okamura, an ethnic studies professor, said he believed the alleged beating occurred or escalated as a result of racial considerations, based on the uttering of the phrase "f------ haole." But Jonathan Osorio, chairman of the Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, said the case should not be classified as a hate crime and that Hawaiians should not be painted with a broad brush as a result of the incident. UH professors contacted yesterday said that while many residents see Hawai'i as a land of aloha, racial tension does exist. Many wondered if the public outcry would have been greater if a Hawaiian couple had been beaten by Caucasians, and suggested that such a circumstance would more likely have resulted in prosecutors charging the attackers with a hate crime. Carlisle said in response that race is relevant to an assault case only if it can be proven that a person selected a victim based on that person's race. '

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HAWAIIAN ANTHEMS

2009-08-23T00:01:00.004-10:00

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SONGS OF THE ALOHA STATE

OFFICIAL OR NOT, THEY'RE ALL ANTHEMS

The Less You Hear Them, The More "Official" They Are

National anthems tend to be big, clunky, unsingable dirges. The official Hawaii State Anthem, "Hawaii Pono," is a good example. People tend to find their own anthems, and take them to heart. They are always uplifting, sometimes sad, but definitely singable. You'll know them by the tears in the singers' eyes, and the sincerely bad, heartfelt singing. That's how a song should be sung, always: With tears in your eyes and a smile on your lips.

It may only be through music that we are ever able to express the ineffable effing sadness and unbearable ball-breaking beauty of life. Like a song, our lives seem to pass away into nothingness as if they had never happened, leaving only the memory of a feeling in the hearts of those we leave behind. When it is an entire culture that passes away, a great and terribly beautiful anthem is required. The songs posted below are possibilities.

If nothing else survives of Hawaiian culture, there will always be the music to remind us of what we have lost.

[NOTE: For Video Tyros & Those With Slow Computers And/ Or Narrow Bandwidth, Or Something:
For Smooth Playback: click "PLAY" on the video, then click the "PAUSE" button on the video, and let the video download completely, till the RED LINE at the bottom is all the way to the RIGHT, then click the "PLAY" button.]

YOUTUBE: HAWAII ALOHA ACADEMY
"Hawai`i Pono`i"
The official State Anthem of Hawaii.

YOUTUBE: ISRAEL KAMAKAWIWIOLE
"Bruddah IZ ~ Hawai'i Aloha"
The people's State anthem.

YOUTUBE: MEL AMINA
"Maui Hawaiian Suppa Man"
A song to the god Maui, the Trickster.

YOUTUBE: AMY HANAIALII GILLIOM
"Amy Hanaiali`i - Aloha `Oe"
A song written by the last Hawaiian Queen, saying goodbye.

YOUTUBE: HAPA
"Ku'u Lei Awapuhi By HAPA"
My own nomination for a Local National Anthem.

YOUTUBE: HULA HALAU O KAMUELA
"Merrie Monarch 2003 - Hula Halau O Kamuela - Wahine Kahiko"
It wouldn't be Hawaiian without a hula.

MORE MUSIC VIDEOS
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GHOSTS OF A NATION

2009-08-22T00:03:00.000-10:00

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HAWAIIAN SOVEREIGNTISTS MOURN STATEHOOD

Old Territorial Office Building, Honolulu, Hawaii

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX YEARS AFTER THE OVERTHROW OF THE HAWAIIAN KINGDOM,
HAWAII MARKS THE 50th ANNIVERSARY OF STATEHOOD

Statehood protest at the Kamehameha Statue 8/21/09 ["Hawaii Five-O" HQ]

US Customs House, closed for Admissions Day

The Spirits Of Ancient Polynesia Were Abroad Tonight In Old Honolulu

While most people of Hawaiian ancestry today may not wish to renounce their citizenship in the United States of America, not many Local people celebrated Hawaii's golden anniversary of Statehood either, this week in Hawaii. Admissions Day is a State holiday but it is usually marked only by a few US flag-waving right-wing haole's, a perfunctory official press release, and varying degrees of drama from some of the wackier splinters of the tiny sovereignty community. This year, there were actual dramas at the Iolani Palace, former prison, never home, to the last Hawaiian monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, composer of the unofficial anthem, "Aloha Oe."

Hawaiian "Ghosts" at the Old Fort

Instead of a violent take-over of the Palace, like last year, or a racist rumble on the Iolani grounds like two years before, historical dramas were staged by activists today at the downtown Honolulu site. Men and women in period clothing, circa 1890, narrated, spieled and re-enacted scenes from the last days of the fledgling Kingdom, a British creation less than a hundred years old at the time of the Overthrow. The only drama was the play-acting, and there were no disturbances this year. A small crowd of mixed ethnicity listened respectfully to each set-piece as the Sun gradually fell in the West and the Moon rose in the East.

The Tomb Of King Lunalillo, Kawaiahao Churchyard

These pictures were taken at the event. There did seem a ghostly presence, which we tried to document. We are all, in a very real sense, living on the ruins of another civilization, surrounded every day by the spirits of a doomed race. And we're the ones who doomed them.

Iolani, the Royal Palace, in mourning.

HONOLULU ADVERTISER
"Iolani Palace to remain quiet as Hawaii observes 50th"
This was a quiet year at the Palace.

' Sandra Reyes strolled across the empty grounds of 'Iolani Palace this week and fully understood why state officials are not marking 50 years of Hawai'i statehood today with any kind of celebration. "I can see why they would be afraid," said Reyes, who lives in Makaha. "You have to understand the history of Hawai'i." Some Native Hawaiian groups asked that 'Iolani Palace — the seat of Hawaiian royalty and the center of Hawai'i's statehood celebration 50 years ago — be draped in black today as a way to mark the continuing struggles of Native Hawaiians, said Kippen de Alba Chu, executive director of 'Iolani Palace and chairman of the Statehood Commission charged with commemorating 50 years of Island statehood. Outside the palace grounds, the commission has helped organize educational walking tours of the sites of historic events in Island history, as well as a conference to discuss what Hawai'i could look like 50 years in the future. Palace officials and state sheriff's deputies, however, are prepared for the possibility of protests around 'Iolani Palace today and — perhaps — yet another attempt to occupy the palace grounds, as groups have done in the past. But the only official event scheduled today at 'Iolani Palace is not even considered part of Hawai'i's statehood commemoration. Eighteen chanters each will offer an oli, or chant, intended as a gift to Queen Lili'uokalani, Hawai'i's last reigning monarch who was exiled to her palace bedroom following the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom. '

HONOLULU STAR-BULLETIN
"Palace takeover"
Last Admissions Day, 2008, clownish thugs disgraced the sovereignty movement, disrespected Hawaiian history, culture & customs.

' A native Hawaiian sovereignty group briefly took control of the grounds of Iolani Palace last night, leading to the arrest of at least 22 protesters. Palace officials closed the historic site "until further notice" to assess any possible damage. About 25 members of the Kingdom of Hawaii, Nation, with its self-proclaimed king Akahi Nui, began locking the gates at about 5:30 p.m. One palace employee was allegedly assaulted at the palace gates. The takeover occurred on the Statehood Day holiday, which commemorates Hawaii becoming a state. It was the second time since late April that a Hawaiian sovereignty group took over the grounds of the historic site. '

HAWAII REPORTER
"Children Threatened by Anti-American Protestors at Hawaii's Statehood Celebration"
August, 2006: Here's the other nuts' take on this, an actual & notorious incident, but provoked by a racist clique of politically-motivated Mainland-funded professional white Republican aggrievants, three years ago. No excuse for the crackheads' behavior, nor for the lack of police protection.

' However, 47 years later on the day the state observes “Admissions Day” with a state and county holiday, there was a very different scene at Iolani Palace. There was complete lawlessness wielded by a pack of snarling gangsters who called themselves native Hawaiian protestors. They ranted irrationally about their hatred toward America and its citizens. State Sen. Sam Slom, a Republican who also heads the small business advocacy group, Small Business Hawaii, organized a 47th annual statehood celebration at the Iolani Palace grounds and invited everyone in the state to participate. He remembers the time before the Capitol was built that legislative business was conducted at Iolani Palace, so for historical accuracy, he planned to hold celebration there. Slom and other attendees said they were excited because this was the first celebration in 6 years - and the last statehood event was held in California because then Gov. Benjamin Cayetano said it was "too controversial to celebrate statehood at home." On Friday, the day statehood was observed, Slom welcomed a group of about 50 people who arrived with big smiles, American flags and plans to enjoy music by the Kalani High School Band, who were recruited to play its favorite songs. But instead of a warm welcome, the patriots were greeted by a gang of about 50 hostile protestors with bullhorns, a state-of-the-art sound system, and preprinted signs protesting the statehood celebration. They claimed to represent the feelings of an estimated 400,000 native Hawaiians throughout Hawaii and the world. These hoodlums shouted profanities in front of young children, spit and yelled at those there to observe statehood, and said they wanted to "wipe their ass" with the American Flag. One protestor screamed at a military family that it was a really good that Americans died in the 9-11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers because Americans deserved to be "slammed down." All who spoke on the bullhorns said Americans - even the native Hawaiian people who showed up to celebrate statehood - should get off "their land" and out of Hawaii. One of the rabid-eyed leaders of the pack shouted profanities directly in people‚s ears. He pushed women, children and senior citizens. He spit on people. He bit the American flags people carried, and tried to tear them. He took down his pants and told people to suck him. In front of their children, he called women "bitches" and told them to "show him their tits." He even bragged about being high on crystal math, and said he could do whatever he wanted because he belongs to the "kingdom of Hawaii," not America. Threats of Physical Violence, Verbal Attacks, Targets Kids First: The protesters first attacked the weakest people - in this case the children - so they could break apart the groups and scare them into leaving. The belligerent group began their protest by shouting threats of violence at the young band members who were sitting quietly waiting for the go-ahead from their bandleader to play. They told them and their parents that they would be in danger if they played even one note. “We cannot guarantee your safety unless you put down your instruments and leave the premises immediately,” one protestor shouted from a microphone, feet away from the kids sitting with their instruments in hand. The berating continued for 15 minutes until the bandleader and frightened parents led the kids to the bus that their senator had rented for the occasion. As the kids left, the protestors said that they were victorious, and would be taking back Hawaii from America. State Law Enforcement Never Showed, Despite Lawlessness: As the remaining 50 people there to celebrate statehood stood in a circle and sang the National Anthem and Hawaii Pono I, the protestors interrupted them, yelling, cursing and threatening to burn the American flags. Threats were also made against other citizens including Senator Slom and State Rep. Barbara Marumoto, who enthusiastically arrived at the celebration dressed as “Lady Liberty”, freedom torch in hand. Surprisingly, the Department of Land and Natural Resources, based just across the streetl, did not send its officers to intervene during the hour-long event. Some of the "unlawful events" included threatening children, parents, elected officials, and innocent civilians. Immoral “flashing” in front of women and children, demonstrating and using sound systems without a permit. They even rode a motorcycle up to the palace steps - off-limits to automobiles and motorcycles. '

THE MAUI NEWS
"The effects of statehood differ among Hawaiians"
It's my party and I'll cry if I want to! 2009 on Maui.

' As Hawaii observes a half century of statehood Friday, some Maui County Native Hawaiian activists remained steadfast that the achievement only cemented the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. It is an irritating reminder, they say, that statehood further fortified existing government- and business-created ramparts against native sovereignty. With statehood, Native Hawaiians lost property ownership rights as well as native control of natural resources, such as unfettered access to shorelines, fishing and hunting, and fresh water. In their view, the 50th state had already been transformed by pineapple and sugar plantations and later became an overwhelmed and kitschy tourist mecca. To many other Native Hawaiians, the timing of statehood's 50th anniversary is impeccable. After a decade of toil, this very likely could be the year a bill before Congress by U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka establishing sovereignty - in some form - will become a reality. Hawaii-born President Barack Obama has said he'd support the Akaka Bill, which would give Native Hawaiians self-determination rights similar to those possessed by Native American and Alaskan tribes. Sovereignty would not be possible without statehood, said retired 2nd Circuit Judge and Office of Hawaiian Affairs Trustee Boyd Mossman. "Our people generally have turned off to society. They're with drugs, the education is the worst, their standards of living are the worst. They make up all the social ills of Hawaii," he said. "You gotta ask yourself, 'What good did statehood do for the Native Hawaiians?' Although, some have assimilated into Western Hawaii, lost their Hawaiianness and become coconuts - dark on the outside and white on the inside." To many, statehood allowed mostly Mainland white and foreign business interests to exploit the native culture over the past 50 years, providing a luau of profits for themselves while Native Hawaiians were left, often literally, with the leftovers. The Hawaiian kingdom was overthrown in 1893 when a group of white businessmen forced Queen Lili'uokalani to abdicate her throne. Meanwhile, U.S. Marines came ashore. Until Congress declared it a U.S. territory in 1898, Hawaii was a republic, a political status many activists would like to see reinstated. '

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50th STATE'S 50th BIRTHDAY

2009-08-21T00:03:00.000-10:00

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HAWAII AFTER HALF A CENTURY

THE ALOHA STATE HAS GROWN & SHRUNK

Over A Million People Now Inhabit This Pricey Polynesian Paradise

Today the foreign country which produced the fake birth certificate for our first alien President celebrates the 50th anniversary of its' illegal Admission to the Union. The archipelago of Hawaii, the northernmost Polynesian islands, where white people are regarded as a tasty snack, became our fiftieth State in 1959. The Isles were once attacked by the Japanese, who later decided to buy them. Many Americans died defending these islands, but none of them were Republicans. Therefore, Barack Hussein Obama is black.

YOUTUBE: UNIVERSAL NEWSREELS
"Aloha Hawaii! Statehood Celebrated 1959/03/16"
Dah way we was, braddahs and titas.

YOUTUBE: CARL DUDLEY
"Hawaii, The Island State, 1959"
Another blast from the past.

YOUTUBE: THE NEWS MAGAZINE
"Hawaii, 1952"
News from the Territory.

HERE IT IS!!! THE SMOKING GUM (YOUR FOOD)!!!
"OBAMA'S AFRICAN-AMERICAN BIRTH CERTIFICATE!!!"
Call your WHITE CongressMAN quickly, Grampaw!

Some graphical aloha from the Aloha State.
"Hawaii In Pictures"
More foto's coming, brah.

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MILLA JOVOVICH STRIPS

2009-08-20T00:01:00.005-10:00

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ALIEN BEAUTY SHOWS SOME SKIN

YOUTUBE: MILLA JOVOVICH
"The Fifth Element The Creation of Divine Lee-Loo Jovovich"
Great movie, except for the parts with the old bald Republican from New Jersey...

BLACK SEA SUPERHEROINE KILLS WITH SEX

P*ssy Power Rocks The Sci-Fi Scene.

Milla was born to be naked. A rare example of the perfect human female form, or, as some women might say, a skinny little bitch. Either way, it's an animalistic pleasure to watch her slink across the silver screen. Unless she starts asking for real money, she should be with us for many, many sequels to come. If Eurotrash is wrong, we don't wanna be right.

The star of such epics as "Resident Evil: Extinction," ".45," "Ultraviolet," & "The Fifth Element," the lovely Ukrainian has just gotten married, posed nearly nude in next month's Maxim, and is about to appear in a new horror/ science fiction thriller. Or something. She also sings, dances, models and sells a lot of cosmetics. Most of all, she poses nude for photographs because she knows we like it, and because Lou Dobbs hates it, because she's a stinking foreigner.
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PRIVATE ARMY, MEET PRIVATE MAFIA

2009-08-19T00:03:00.002-10:00

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US HIRES CONTRACT KILLERS

WE WERE LOOKING FOR A FEW GOOD HIT-MEN

Those Blackwater "Contractors" The Iraqi's Hung From A Bridge? Assassins?

So, the government that likes to police our morals has been using our tax dollars to hire murderous civilians to kill people. You know, the same government that keeps trying to put the Ten Commandments on public buildings? Now, granted, "THOU SHALT NOT KILL" is only number five or six on the list, not as high a priority as the Commandments to take Sunday off, go to church and don't say "GODDAMMIT!" But still. God did put it on the list. Perhaps He had something specific in mind when He did that. He works in mysterious ways, y'know?

What do you tell your kids now? We don't have any money left for schools or healthcare, we spent it on murders? Study hard, kids, and maybe someday you can be an assassin? Eat your carrots, it'll help your aim?

What sort of people are we now, anyway?

NY TIMES
"C.I.A. Sought Blackwater’s Help in Plan to Kill Jihadists "
Thou shalt turn a profit, whatever the cost.

' The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials. Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects. The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said. It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations. '

MORE POSTS ON THE AFGHAN WAR & PRIVATIZATION OF THE MILITARY

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COSANOSTRADAMUS PREDICTS

2009-08-18T00:02:00.000-10:00

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PROGNOSTICATIONS FOR THE MULTITUDES

HEEL, MULTITUDES! SIT! ROLL OVER! BEG! BEG FOR YOUR HEALTHCARE!!! MUAHAHA!!

We Will Now Reveal To You Tomorrow's Headlines Today. And The Comics.

1. Both Google and Microsoft will fail to survive the next major economic downturn. The new force in computing is now called Hang-Seng Silicon Noodles, Kowloon, China.

2. Madonna will adopt Angelina Jolie. But not Brad Pitt, breaking up the set.

3. Conan O'Brien will divorce his wife and marry David Letterman in a secret ceremony in Provincetown, Mass. His ratings will still suck.

4. Nancy Pelosi will reveal that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich regularly used botox during his tenure. On his dick.

5. Barack Obama will appear at an Alabama town hall meeting wearing a Nazi SS uniform, and promise to round up and gas only liberals if Republicans vote for his healthcare holocaust. Republicans are tempted, but still won't vote for it, despite their natural attraction to holocausts, in which they claim not to believe.

6. Glenn Beck will be found to be an actual escaped mental patient with delusions of cable grandeur. Rupert Murdoch will give him a raise.

7. The New York Times and the Washington Post will merge and then quietly go out of business, cursing this new-fangled blogging thing.

8. Kathy Griffin will be found in Margot Kidder's back yard, doing something completely sane. Police will tase her, causing her to make the "C" list. (I told you it would work, Kathy.)

9. Silvio Berlusconi will fly around Florence's Old Bridge in Leonardo DaVinci's aerial screw on Assumption Day. It sounds better in Italian.

10. One of the surviving Beatles will die. Eventually.
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IT'S TIME TO GO

2009-08-17T00:01:00.001-10:00

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REPUKES & DINO'S OUT!

WE RECOMMEND A WHOLE NEW CONGRESS & CABINET
OR, HEY, OBAMA CAN GO TOO!

Some Modest Proposals For The Replacements

Hey, look, guys, um. This just isn't working out, y'know? I mean, we voted for "CHANGE," remember? So, anyway, pack your trash, OK, you have until sundown. We already have new guys. And gals.

1. Vice President: Joe, you're OK, but a little too acceptable to the assassin type: White. We need, like, a Cheney: Somebody even worse than Bush was the best insurance policy for him. So we're nominating Al Sharpton for Vice President.

2. Secretary of State: Now that Hillary has effectively been neutered... Or is it spayed? ...Anyway, she can be safely packed off to our first permanent settlement on the Moon. She can be La Regina Della Luna. We need the globetrotter job back for Nancy Pelosi. Anything to get her ineffectual ass out of DC.

3. Secretary of Defense: Stephen Colbert. They need a guy with a sense of humor. I think he might be gay, too. Also a plus. If not, then Rachel Maddow. Her Dad was military, so they should be kewl with that.

4. Secretary of the Treasury: Paul Krugman. So, nu?

5. Secretary of Homeland Security: NYPD's Ray Kelly, or LAPD's Benjamin Bratton. Anybody Rudy fired has to be good.

6. Secretary of Labor: Is Cesar Chavez still alive? How 'bout his son? Or anybody who has ever actually worked for a living.

7. Secretary of the Interior: Dennis Banks. It's only fair.

8. Secretary of Energy: A solar dude or dudette. Or Guy Kawasaki.

9. Secretary of Commerce: Someone from Orchard Street, in NYC. Or Omarosa?

10. Secretary of Transportation: Atrios. Maybe he'll shut up about trains if we let him run them.

11. Fed Chairman: Paul Krugman also. WHY not!?

12. Speaker Of The House: Is Bella Abzug reanimatable? If not, then Joyce Behar. Or Whoopie Goldberg.

13. Senate Majority Leader: Of course, Mr. Al Franken. Just for being so patient.

14. UN Ambassador: Mr. Monk. Here's the thing...

15. FEMA Chief: Any Mayor of New Orleans. BOO-YAH!!!

16. Bureau Of Indian Affairs: Leonard Peltier. For good behavior.

17. Dept of Veterans Affairs: Tammy Duckworth, so far so good; time for a promotion.

18. EPA: Kermit T. Frogg. He knows. It's not easy. Or Al Gore, if he can fit in the frog suit.

19. FBI Director: David Duchovny. I want to believe. The truth is out there. Trust no one. No smoking.

20. Supreme Court: Judge Judy, Judge Wapner, Judge Mathis, and Judge Dredd, just for balance. The liberals can stay, the Nazi's are OUT!

21. Pope: Guido Sarducci. Or Sinead O'Connor. Or me. I look good in tall hats.

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LES PAUL'S GREATEST HITS

2009-08-16T00:02:00.001-10:00

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SINGER, SONGWRITER, GUITAR PLAYER, ROCK ICON AND GENIUS

THE INVENTOR OF THE HARMONICA BRACE, THE SOLID-BODY ELECTRIC GUITAR, THE MULTI-TRACK MAGNETIC TAPE RECORDER, TAPE DELAY, PHASING EFFECTS AND MULTI-TRACK MUSIC MIXING & RECORDING

Born In The Early Years of World War One, Old Lester William Polsfuss Had A Busy Life

Descended from the Wisconsin German families that gave us Blatz Beer and the Stutz Bearcat automobile, Les Paul was a self-taught engineering genius in the great American Midwestern tradition of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. He was also a great musician and a generous soul who paid for Django Rheinhardt's tombstone, and for Chet Atkin's first real guitar. A terrible car accident in 1948 left him permanently disabled, but it didn't stop the music or the inventions. A real left brain AND right brain thinker, Les had the doctors rebuild his shattered arm and set it permanently in a position that allowed him to hold and pick a guitar. The "Log," Les Paul's ab-original solid-body electric guitar design, was then re-designed by him to be easier to play in his "differently abled" configuration. Les Paul took the log to Gibson Guitars, who finally produced a series of "Les Paul" guitars based on his design and further innovations beginning in 1952, only after Leo Fender came out with the Stratocaster. Those two guitars are the top choices of the greatest guitarists in Jazz and Rock, Blues and Country to this day, responsible for the modern sound of popular music. For both ease of use and sweetness of tone, high quality and great sustain, the Les Paul will live on long after it's master is gone.

[NOTE: For Video Tyros & Those With Slow Computers And/ Or Narrow Bandwidth, Or Something:
For Smooth Playback: click "PLAY" on the video, then click the "PAUSE" button on the video, and let the video download completely, till the RED LINE at the bottom is all the way to the RIGHT, then click the "PLAY" button.]

MORE MUSIC VIDEOS

YOUTUBE: LES PAUL & MARY FORD
"LES PAUL and MARY FORD "KANGAROO" "DON'CHA HEAR THEM BELLS""
One of Les Paul's own compositions, "Dont'cha Hear Them Bells," proto-rock & roll.

YOUTUBE: LES PAUL
"les paul takes the pis out of eveys one"
Les playing with himself onstage --years before Jim Morrison.

YOUTUBE: ERIC CLAPTON
"Hideaway (1966) Eric Clapton w/ John Mayall's Blues Breakers"
Clapton conspires with Les Paul to create the sound of the 60's.

YOUTUBE: JEFF BECK
"ROCK MY PLlMSOUL (1968) by the Jeff Beck Group"
"Beck-Ola" a la Paul.

YOUTUBE: JIMMY PAGE
"Rock & Roll -Foo Fighters with Jimmy Page & John Paul Jones "

YOUTUBE: NEIL YOUNG
"Neil Young & Pearl Jam!"
Rock'N'Roll will never die. Some of the musicians...

YOUTUBE: DUANE ALLMAN
"The Allman Brothers Band with Duane - Whipping Post - Fillmore East - 09/23/1970 (Part 1)"
The good brother.

YOUTUBE: MIKE BLOOMFIELD
""Stop" Al Kooper & Mike Bloomfield (Super Session)"
A coupla the Dylan kids, a-rockin'.

(cross-posted at CoffeeHouseStudio by cosanostradamus)

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WOODSTOCK NOTIONS

2009-08-15T00:05:00.001-10:00

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BY THE TIME WE GOT HOME FROM WOODSTOCK
THERE WAS A DRAFT NOTICE IN THE MAILBOX

HOW THE BOOMERS STOPPED THE VIETNAM WAR OR DIED TRYING

In Answer To An Ignorant Late-Boomer And His Whining, Do-Nothing, Over-Privileged Gen-X&Y-er Descendants

It really gets old hearing punk kids who've never done anything with their lives but skateboard, whose idea of self-expression is picking a tattoo out of a catalog, and whose music is the product of a lame TV show, a plastic producer or a guy who plays other people's records, whining about the "Boomers." All I can say is kids, the best part of you ran down your hippie-chick mother's hairy leg.

That goes double for our "video artist," whatever the f**k that is, below. Is he a dork who points a camera at art? Or a dweeb who makes unwatchable videos that look as if they were exposed to a magnetism by accident? Dunno. But I do know that this guy doesn't have a clue about a time period he actually drifted through, much less his debt to the people who REALLY LIVED and fought their way through it.

It never ceases to amaze us how some people can just drift through life without ever realizing what is happening around them. It's astonishing to hear the absurd notions of birthers and deathers, but they are not the first nor will they be the last to attempt to cobble together their own reality, with no factual input whatsoever. We usually associate this sort of ideation and behavior with the lunatic fringe of the American right wing. But here we have an example of similar historical distortion and delusional thinking from a supposed Leftist. His "rant" is relatively fact-free, and we have corrected his historical distortions, below:

SUZIE-Q
"The “Woodstock Generation” 40 Years on"
He often wonders, but he never thinks, or researches.

' I often wonder what Lady Emma might have thought about the so-called “sixties revolution”. There certainly was a lot to dance to, that’s for sure. But in the final analysis, I imagine she might have been just a bit disappointed with the Woodstock Generation. To be honest with you, I have always been a bit cynical on the subject of the Baby Boomers. The dirty little secret that no one (as far as I know) has yet dared to write about is that the youth revolt of the 1960s was born of out of the fact that the sons-of-privilege believed that the Vietnam War should have been fought by everyone and anyone but themselves '

What an asinine and ignorant rant! Although he is a "boomer" himself, he was obviously too young and stupid to know what was going on. But thanks to him anyway for sharing his prejudices and ridiculous notions. Very informative. Nice job of smearing an entire generation to whom he owes everything, including the fringed shirt off his tattooed back. All he's really said is that he is a bitter and clueless little person, who missed all the action and misunderstood all the significant changes brought about by his older brothers and sisters back in the day.

First of all, the initial motivation for the "youth revolt" or "The Movement," as we called ourselves, was not the Vietnam War but concern for others and for the planet itself: Banning the A-bomb, Civil Rights and conservation/ anti-pollution/ healthy foods, all going back to the 1940's & '50's. The Vietnam War did not become a huge issue until well after the first large contingent of Marines landed there in August of 1965. U.S. casualties did not hit shocking levels until 1967, and they were not exactly trumpeted by the Johnson Administration at the time. The two great images from the war that shocked us all were not seen until 1968 and 1972. The fact is, most people of every age group in the 1960's were simply unaware of what was going on in Vietnam, or even where it was, up until the disastrous Tet Offensive of 1969: You can blame the corporate media for that. They simply weren't giving the war much play up until then. And most people tuned it out because, up until then, not that many people had family or friends that went to Vietnam. That began to change by 1969, after the third full year of full-scale war for large American ground combat units. That was the point also when the American public's realization of the devastation the United States was wreaking upon the Vietnamese people themselves became the issue, not saving our own "privileged" asses, as the "video artist" puts it, above.

Most people I knew in the Movement were lower middle class and working class, blacks, whites, Asians, Latino's, men, women, kids and old people all shocked by what their government was doing in their name, and determined to do something about it. There were no "privileged" people involved that I knew, and most of us were actually quite vulnerable both financially and legally in doing what we did against a brutal and repressive government that could and did in fact use the criminal justice system, the Selective Service System and even the IRS against dissenters. The Administrations of both Johnson and Nixon used the police, the prisons, the draft and the full weight of all departments of the vast apparatus of the Federal government in all its' forms as defense against and punishment for lawful actions against the war in Vietnam. We were all very much at risk for any action we took to stop the genocidal war in Southeast Asia.

As to the draft, it didn't really mean much to anybody until it was almost over. LBJ did NOT end college draft deferments: Nixon limited them in 1972, but then stopped drafting men in 1973, hoping to undercut the already massive anti-war movement. Under Johnson and Nixon, there were so many deferments and exemptions available (for all females, overage males, underage males, conscientious objectors, clerics, high school & college students, technical school students, defense workers, Reserve & Guardsmen, prior service military, those with family members already in the service, married people with kids, sole support of the family, and almost any physical or mental problem) that you had to be REALLY naive, desperate for a paycheck, or "gung-ho" to end up in the military. Even then, most of our forces were someplace other than Vietnam.

ANYBODY could join the Guard & Reserve, they were hardly "elite" units. Most units were never called up, or didn't see ground combat in Vietnam if they were called up. (Bush's crime was going AWOL, not just signing up in the first place. Somebody else went to Vietnam in his place while he hid out FROM the Guard.) The Navy had very few people there who were actually in combat and at risk within South Vietnam, and the Air Force lost very few of the people it did have there, by comparison with losses in the Army & Marines. Even in the Army, most MOS's were non-combat. Those in "combat arms" in the Army & Marine Corps, infantry, tanks & artillery, were the main personnel at risk on a daily basis, usually for one twelve or eighteen month tour, unless they volunteered for more. There was no "stop-loss." Most enlistments were two or three years, or less, and many more enlisted than were drafted.

Repeat: Most who served in Vietnam were VOLUNTEERS, not draftees. And the total number who did serve was just a fraction of the entire Baby Boom generation. So, no, we did not fight to stop the war just to keep from going ourselves.

So, no; opposition to the war was not based entirely or even partly on selfish and cowardly motives, for most of us. In fact, it took more guts to stand up to the Fascistic bullsh*t that was going on than it did to hide out in the Guard, keep your mouth shut and hope your unit didn't get called up. Many good people, kids, really, had their lives ruined by actively standing up to the government and speaking out against the war. And most who did speak out were motivated as much or more by strongly held moral and political concerns for the lives of others and opposition to the betrayal of our American principles of self-determination and anti-Imperialism than by any concern for their own safety. Many of us went to jail, lost our homes & families, had to leave the country or go underground for years, foregoing all the blessings of American middle class existence. Some were ruthlessly hunted down and a few were killed. It was not a good career move. For every Jerry Rubin, there were ten thousand Abbie Hoffman's.

Let's not forget those who did go to war, who were overwhelmingly working class and disproportionately black & Hispanic. They were all the hated "Boomers" too. Unemployment and unawareness of the alternatives, ignorance about the war and lack of other options led many of these guys into the military, as in every generation. They learned pretty quick, though. Some of the strongest opposition to the war came from returning Vet's. They helped initiate outreach to other Vet's and guys in the Guard, Reserve and on active duty in the regulars, and to working class kids who were at risk for going over there. "Boomers" all. It was the old rich Republicans who loudly supported the War but refused to go there. They are the ones who thought the Army was beneath them, and disrespected our returning troops by limiting their benefits and medical treatment. Most Democrats of that age in Congress after the war, rich or poor, served in the military during the Vietnam era, like Medal of Honor winner Bob Kerrey. Most Republicans, like Newt Gingrich, did not, just as conservative "patriots" like Ronald Reagan had not fought in combat, even in the dark days of WWII.

It was the older generation that supported the war up until the end. It was the WWII & Korean War people who went for Nixon and Humphrey and war and repression. It was that generation that strong-armed the rising progressive majority out of the Democratic Party, effectively keeping most of us out of government until well into the 90's. Even then, all we had to vote for were Blue Dogs, mostly, like Clinton. Many Movement figures were kept out of electoral politics by bogus criminal convictions for protesting against the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights, and by the general corporatist drift of a Party purged of "Leftists," i.e., the progressive majority. The rich, the old, the entrenched and the conservative tend to dominate in politics and in the economy, despite the cultural advances of the young, then and now.

Anybody who knows anything about the Presidential election of 1980 knows it was a very tight 3-way race, which Carter lost only because Anderson siphoned off liberal votes. Turnout was historically low, especially among young people. Reagan lost the youth vote, i.e. the “Boomers,” but there weren’t enough of them voting for Carter to win. There wouldn’t be a “Boomer” candidate until Clinton, who won because of the “Boomer” voters, as everyone who follows actual developments in politics and not their own wild-assed notions would know. Again, the older generation tended to go for the more conservative candidate, despite their own dependency upon government.

But I won't tar that entire generation the way our whiner did his own. There were many heroic figures from the WWII generation in the Movement, and they helped lead the opposition to the bomb, the war, racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, sectarianism, fundamentalism, right-wing extremism & violence, poverty and social injustice. Did the WWII & Boomer generations succeed on every front? No, not yet, not 100%. But unlike the whiners, we fought on, and we will never stop fighting. We did change the world, as anyone old enough and smart enough can tell you. The "Counter-Culture" is now mainstream, although it has been co-opted and corporatized beyond recognition. It's the Gen-X&Y-ers that have reduced it all to fashions and slogans, artifacts and labels, without understanding or adopting much that was good about the spirit that created that culture. They're the ones who grew up Republican and "libertarian," in opposition to their liberal and progressive parents, the Boomers.

The Counter-Culture was created by genuinely brave and outrageous people beginning in the oppressive 1950's. It exploded as my own cohort became vocal and politically active at a very young age in the 1960's. It continued on into the Seventies as the exuberance and curiosity, the openness and joy, the revolutionary and adventurous spirit carried over into our personal lives. I mean, among those of us who were capable of those things; always a minority, if a highly visible one.

This was a mass movement without a leader or a hierarchy, but most people did not have the courage or the vision to join it, though all were famously welcomed, and everyone ultimately benefited. Most people just plodded on like old plow horses in the same old strangulating harness. They're the ones that voted Republican and DINO. They're the ones that devoted their lives to the willfully blind pursuit of money and things. Mostly, they were never cool, and mostly, those who were cool never fell in with them. They certainly were not the "Woodstock Generation," whatever their age. The "hippies" or freaks who fought against the war and created the Counter-Culture never went over to the enemy in large numbers. Those who did were never truly one of us. We're the ones who are struggling to survive now as joyful anti-materialists in an increasingly joyless materialist's world, where the younger generations have failed to embody much of any spirit, and dedicate themselves only to accumulating useless junk, from iPhones to retro-hippie paraphernalia. Sad. It's like they were never young, but they never grew up, either.

Yes, we "Boomers" did grow up, and we did have to make some accommodations to survive in a world dominated by greedy, evil people, a tiny minority of whom seem to have always controlled everything, no matter what we did. But we never gave in to them, we never stopped fighting them, and in the long run, we will win, despite bitter hopeless little people who were too young to have experienced the real revolution of the 60's, but too old to have grown up enjoying the emotional, spiritual and intellectual benefits of that revolution. You're caught in between generations, whiners, so all you can do is p*ss and moan about things that are just objects to you: Books and records, posters and clothing. Sorry, man. That wasn't it. What it was is what you missed: The spirit.

(cross-posted at SUZIE-Q by cosanostradamus)
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ASHLEY GREENE WITH NO CLOTHES ON

2009-08-14T00:03:00.001-10:00

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SEE THE NAKED GIRL. SEE THE NAKED GIRL SEEING
THE NAKED GIRL. SEE, NAKED GIRL, SEE!

OUR STARLETS HAVE A FASCINATION WITH PHOTOGRAPHING THEMSELVES NUDE

YOUTUBE: "TWILIGHT"
"Edward/Bella "Stripped""
Ashley Green and some guy, from some movie.

Thanks To The Miracle Of "Sexting," Many Non-Famous Type Females Are Also Able To Expose Themselves To The Entire World Now.

OK, so we generally accept the notion that male human beings are voyeurs: Visually-oriented creatures who are sexually stimulated by seeing images, visions and sights of other human beings in erotic and/ or sexual situations. Does it follow that human females are exhibitionists, visually-oriented creatures who are sexually stimulated by being seen in images, visions and sights of themselves in erotic and/ or sexual situations? And what about gays and lesbians? Do gay men just stare at each other without taking any pleasure in being stared at? Do lesbians just pose away without looking at each other? Are there no exhibitionist men, or voyeuristic women, gay or straight? Is technology changing that? How much of all this is entirely sexual, and how much of it is something else? What else?

We don't know. Would someone please give us a huge grant, not a Hugh Grant, to study naked women? Small unmarked bills, please. Not small unmarked Bills, thank you.
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LES PAUL MADE YOUR EARS

2009-08-13T00:01:00.004-10:00

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GUITARIST, GUITAR DESIGNER, INVENTOR

LES PAUL CREATED MULTI-TRACK RECORDING
AND NEW SPACES IN YOUR HEAD

The Guitar Gods Worship Les, Dead At 94

YOUTUBE: LES PAUL
"Les Paul: Chasing Sound! "Sound on Sound""
Here's how modern music came to be.

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SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY

2009-08-12T00:01:00.003-10:00

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POLITICS MAKE BEDFELLOWS STRANGE

OUR POLITICAL MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE IS FALLING APART

Republicans Are Guilty Of Fostering Irreconcilable Differences

Another great post from Ms. Willpen, formerly of the Borough of churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and Junior's, now the budding conscience of the Left. While it might not bother some of us to crack some Nazi heads, there are many here among us who feel that life is too precious to pollute or endanger with bloodshed, even in a worthy cause. So, nu, we wrestled with the better angels of our nature and this is how it all came out. As Honest Abe, our second Jewish President (Madison was "passing;" named after a street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan --His wife: Dolly, HELLO!!!) put it,

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

The post that launched a thousand megapixels:

WILLPEN'S WORLD
"Pay it forward…"
The beginning of the post that started this conversation.

' I have been feeling so depressed and upset and tense lately regarding all the craziness that has been going on in this country. We are at each others necks ready to strike the first blow for what we believe in. Instead of fighting against each other, we should be reminding each other how much we all love this country regardless of our political leanings. We should not be at war with our fellow Americans. So I thought that it would be a nice thing to pay it forward. Watch this video and pass it on. Post it on your blogs. Pass it on to someone you love and someone who bugs the crap out of you. Pay it forward until it has reached around the country and reminded each and every one of us that we are all fighting for the same things. '

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MY RESPONSE:
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I’d have to disagree on this one. We are not all fighting for the same things. We are all fighting each other over the same things.

Moderates, liberals, progressives and democratic socialists all believe in human rights, equal justice under the law, a strong social safety net, limiting the use of force and violence in general, a truly democratic government of the people and not of the corporations.

“Centrists” (Blue Dogs), libertarians, conservatives, corporatists and Fascists believe in the opposite of all that. They are who and what we are opposing. They have made it very clear that there can be no compromise, no middle ground, no accommodation. All of our efforts to achieve consensus with them have simply led to nothing being done on healthcare, climate change, equal rights, control of corporations, fair trade, etc. Not only have they held us, the majority, back for many many years, they have trashed this country just to fill their own pockets and empty their own bile sacs.

All this is out in the open, now. There are no more “moderate” Republicans. They are all in the thrall of the extreme right-wing. Even silver-haired millionaire old-money Senators talk like crazed illiterate thugs about our government and our polity. This is no time for compromise. You cannot show weakness to bullies. That’s what happened to the Weimar Republic. If you think I’m being hyperbolic here, folks, go to the library and read up on it. It’s not just that there are parallels between the early Nazi Party and what the Republicans are trying to do today. They are actually using the Nazi playbook as a day-by-day guide to strategy & tactics right now in America.

Not that the Right hasn’t always done this. But there has rarely ever been this level of hatred, violence and hysteria among ordinary citizens, without a word from anyone in the media or government. Those who have forgotten the days of mass rallies of the Bund in NYC’s Madison Square Garden (1930’s) and KKK political assassinations in broad daylight (1970’s & 80’s) will perhaps recall the era when John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were all assassinated without any satisfactory investigations into who was behind it all. The net result was Nixon, and forty years of corrupt, incompetent conservative Republican & DINO rule, a disaster for the American middle class.

So go ahead and make nice with the Nazi’s if you want to, folks. They will never respect you for it. You’ll just be making it easier for them to stab you in the back. After all, they’re the minority; they can’t win fairly in a democracy.
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WILLPEN'S WORLD
"willpen August 12, 2009 at 2:32 pm"
Comment in response to mine, above.

' Now we are having a dialogue.

While I wholly respect and understand where you are coming from, I have to say that I have been doing a lot of thinking about this lately. After the stuff that has been going on here for the last few days, with some crazed and pent up person using me as their whipping post, I have been observing the behavior on both sides.

I suppose that I am trying to be the devil’s advocate here, trying to push everyone just a bit in order to open up a conversation. I really think that is what is missing.

I read a very interesting article at the Huff Post this morning: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-leo-rangell/understanding-conversatio_b_257037.html
It talks about what I have been trying to say here.

People do not speak to each other but past each other, do not absorb and process what others say but pick and choose that which serves their own inner purposes. This 24/7 phenomenon, which plays a ubiquitous part in human life from Wars to broken friendships, was discussed in depth at a Round Table on “The Closed Mind” held at that Congress.

I too am angered to the point of frustration. I know deep in my heart that when the tables were turned I may have been angry and upset, but I never reverted to the tactics that are being used now against the duly elected establishment. But I also know that we cannot continue this way. There has to be someone who just yells "I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE". Someone that has to start to try and turn things around. I see us slipping back in history and I fear a racial undercurrent simmering below the surface, such as the Rosa Parks poster that was torn out of a woman's hand at a Claire McCaskill town hall meeting. We have to be the cooler heads that prevail. I must follow the same instincts that I follow in business, which is the road to success is best paved by a slow and steady march.

I know that there will be times when my head will want to explode again, but I am trying to get the better of my demons to stop and think before it does. '

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MY RESPONSE:
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Agreed.

The thing is, they have NOTHING to fear from us. We’re not Stalinists. We’re barely liberals by any objective measure of international politics. And we’re mostly pacifists; all of us are certainly against unnecessary violence.

We have a great deal to fear from them, as recent history and current events show. This isn’t a conversation any more. It’s a battle, by their own definition, and they started it. And now they’re getting violent. You can’t reason with violent, armed lunatics who won’t even talk to you.

As to hearing what they have to say, how can I avoid it? They own the media. I’ve had them screaming in my ear all my life. It’s the progressive majority that has no voice, that isn’t being heard. It’s the Right who will not listen, who mischaracterizes everything we say.

In business, you can always walk away from a bad deal. Usually. There’s always another deal. Usually. In our civic life, not so much. You can’t just walk away from under-funded schools, non-existent healthcare, brutal police, an empire-building military, and a rising corporate medieval State. And they have no reason to “hondle” with us, the majority. They hold all the cards. Except one. We’re the majority. It’s time we started acting like it, while we still can.

Yes, it may not be all that pleasant or warm and fuzzy. Wars rarely are. But brutal occupations aren’t, either. That’s what we’ve had for forty years. That’s our choice: A short painful non-violent political fight, or an endless painful accommodation with these violent Nazi-wannabees.

We really do not have a third choice. That’s their doing, not ours. We are the reasonable ones, always. But often in life, it’s the least reasonable people who win. They know that. Hence these tactics. We cannot allow them to succeed. This is only the beginning of their insanity. Have we forgotten what happened over the previous eight years? How many died? How our good name was lost? How our rights were trampled on? Look where they’re STARTING this time! Does it take much vision to see where they’re headed?

Never again.
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WILLPEN'S WORLD
"willpen August 12, 2009 at 5:10 pm"
Comment in response to mine, above.

' Cosa,

I agree with you 150% but I also feel like I have been losing my sanity. I feel a rage inside of me that I don’t like. I have visions of blowing some of these people’s brains out while smiling about it. My life has been turned upside down financially because of what has been done to this country for the last 8 years and then sometime before that.

I am trying to rationalize this all like a RATIONAL person, not a screaming banshee. I don’t know what more to do, so trying the approach of offering an olive branch is what I need to try now, because if I don’t, I don’t know how I can continue reading and watching what is going on in this country without wanting to blow my own brains out.

I am frankly scared shitless that this is all gonna end in some kind of tragedy. Something that we can’t take back. Something that is more than words.

I need to add something else here. I hate having to be filled with hate and rage. I despise the feelings that these people are making me feel. I spent most of my formative years protesting against the Vietnam War and government abuse. I may have gotten rowdy at times and boisterous, but I was young and passionate and I learned from it. I learned that hating is a bad thing and it was so difficult for me to have to deal with Bush for 8 years. I could never even bring myself to listen to anything that he had to say. I hated the sound of his voice, but I kept it to myself because it was what was needed to do. So I understand the rage that you and so many others are feeling now. '

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MY RESPONSE:
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Don't let them get to you. You exist at a higher level of consciousness, and represent a higher moral standard. Nothing they can do will ever change that, Willpen, and if there were such a thing as a Judgment Day, I think we all know who could stand without fear and who should be trembling.

Personally, I don't think there is a Judgment Day, except for the one every day here on Earth. I think that all decent people of any faith or no faith try to live their lives in as just and righteous a manner as they can, and treat one another with respect and generosity of spirit Those who do not are simply not decent human beings.

I really do not feel rage toward them, just outrage. I don't care how they live their own lives, though I feel sorry for the people around them, especially their kids. But people with such warped and twisted values as those militating loudest on the Right these days simply cannot be allowed to prevail or predominate in our public discourse. They are blindly or deliberately in the wrong and doing wrongs that are not excusable or ignorable. They are like out-of-control adolescents who will just keep pushing until somebody gets hurt. We have no choice but to be the adults and stop them before that happens.

That's why I say we simply have to say "ENOUGH!" right now, before there is another great historical tragedy and derailing of our polity. The assassinations of the 1960's seemed to come out of nowhere, though there was plenty of general turmoil at the time. The constant ratcheting up of the threat level by very visible figures on the Right today is an obvious warning that we cannot help but perceive. It does not require that we respond in kind or engage in some extra-legal measures. We just have to demand firmly but peaceably that our government put a stop to this before it becomes any more violent.

It's not your job or mine to physically oppose these thugs. All we need to do is let our government know that we support any reasonable action that will stop the escalation of violence before it becomes any more physical. Call it "reading the riot act." Give them fair warning right now that they have already crossed almost every line ever drawn on political conduct in this country. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt all took action against sedition and potential violence well before there were any major tragedies. It's time for Obama to do the same. Not in the name of partisan politics, but in the name of public safety and defense of our democracy.

I would recommend that everyone who feels strongly about this write the White House and maybe their representatives in Congress, and demand that they take action against the worst of these thugs now. That includes the Fox News and Clear Channel networks. Johnson and Nixon never hesitated to let the broadcast Net's know when they had crossed a line. Hints were even dropped as to possible suspensions of FCC licenses, for mere trivialities compared to the violent craziness being broadcast now. The 'Nets backed down rather than risk losing their sweetheart licenses. Something similar could be done now. I think it is time for that. Let's ask for it now.

The thing about bullies and their toadies is, they're cowards. Like dogs, if you stand your ground they will withdraw. If you show fear, or turn and run, they'll tear you apart. Limbaugh, Beck, and the rest of them need a rolled-up newspaper across the snout, right now. I'd like to see it come from some unassailable American hero, maybe even a conservative. I'd like to see a Mr. Welch stand up in Congress and say, "At long last, have you no sense of decency?" It's time.

So write that email to your candidate for Voice of Reason. And keep the pressure on. But don't let these dweebs get to you. They're pathetic, at best. Take comfort in knowing that decent folk outnumber them, and are universally appalled by them. It's only a matter of weeks at most until the backlash takes them down. All the conservatards are really doing right now is digging their own grave. It's going to be a LOVELY symbolic funeral! See you there!

Remember, you're not alone, folks. You're not losing this battle, they are. We're going to continue winning and making this world a better place. We're unstoppable. All we have to do is stick together and persevere in being decent human beings. You're doing a great job at that, Willpen. Take comfort in that, and in the vast community of like-minded people who are all together in this.

TO BE CONTINUED...
(Further dialogue with any civilized person is welcome.)
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SOYLENT GREEN IS WHITE PEOPLE!!!

2009-08-11T00:03:00.000-10:00

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PICTURES PROVE: OBAMACARE LEGALISES CANNIBALISM

WHITE WOMEN WILL BE EATEN FIRST

Recycling Takes A Nasty Turn

It turns out the Birthers & Deathers were both right: Barack Obama is in fact an African, from a cannibalistic tribe near Mount Kilimanjaro, and Obamacare does include "death panels." But the meat will not be wasted. Citing new levels of hunger in America, and an overpopulation of Caucasoids in the Red States, liberal Democrats in Congress have included a secret provision in their pending healthcare legislation that could cut the population of all Republican-majority States by up to half over the next twenty years. The resulting human remains will be processed in the same manner as cows, sheep and pigs who have fallen ill, and mixed with soybeans and lentils to make a tasty treat known as Soylent Green™, prepared as veggiemeaty™-loaf and veggiemeaty™-burgers.

President Obama has taken to the town hall circuit across the country to push his healthcare plan. He denies categorically the inclusion in the legislation of any provisions aimed at marginalizing or nutritionalising conservatives. "This is a bipartisan bill: Everyone will be eated trequally, er, treated equally." Chief spokesman for the White Community, Newt Gingrich could not be reached for comment. His aides claimed that he fell suddenly ill two days ago, and was picked up by a USDA truck. He has not been seen since. The FDA is recommending that all shipments of pork-flavored crackers be withdrawn from store shelves.

This blog has obtained comic strips which prove conclusively that Barack Obama is an alien being from another galaxy who came to Earth during the era of the "Counter-Culture," landing in Africa, searching for human flesh to feed on. We have them right here in this envelope we are holding in our hands...

(click on photo's to enlarge)

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OPERATION FOREVER: AFGHANISTAN

2009-08-10T00:01:00.006-10:00

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OBAMA CARRIES OUT BUSH/OILCO PLANS IN MIDEAST

WHY WE WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER LEAVE THE MIDDLE EAST

YOUTUBE: THE DOORS
"Intro Apocalypse Now"
It didn't end well...

Solar, Shmolar, It's Oil & Gas We Really Want

Dick Cheney's Assassin-In-Chief, General "Spook" McChrystal, hinted to the new Rupert Murdoch Wall Street rag that we are losing in Afghanistan. This was his preamble to a demand for dropping another 10,000 American troops into the Hole In Nowhere. McChystal's predecessor in the Hole was fired for suggesting we needed 10,000 more troops in Afghanistan.

But wait, there's more! McChrystal is offering a different strategerie in the Hole: Instead of actively going after the hostile Afghans, we will passively wait for them to come after us where we hide among the less-hostile Afghans. In Vietnam, that was called "The Strategic Hamlet Program." No relation to the melancholy Dane. But it still had a tragic ending.

The "SH" Program, as the Army abbreviated it, was based upon a recognition that we were losing the war in Southeast Asia, just as the French had before us, by losing the "hearts & minds" of the local people. Since we could not make the countryside safe, we would fortify certain villages and hole up in them until Charlie and the NVA came for us. And come they did. And go we did. It didn't work. (Poor locals! Let's hope Afghan peasants don't read U.S. history! Or have boats.)

So we thought we'd try it again, in Southwest Asia this time, where we are losing the war for hearts & minds just as the Russians had before us. Maybe it was the climate, or the terrain that defeated that brilliant strategerie in 'Nam. Maybe hiding from the enemy and holding the locals hostage will work in frozen mountains and high deserts better than it did in broiling jungles and steamy swamps. Or maybe it was the people, and Caucasoid Muslim goat-herders and opium farmers will be more amoenable to being targets than Mongoloid Buddhist fishermen and opium farmers. Either way, the troops will have plenny opium, hashish & heroin to while away the hours with, waiting for Charlie, er, Talie, to come over the wall. This is the end, my only friend, the end...

Meanwhile, back in Iraq, things are falling apart, again. Violence is up. Our strategerie of pulling our troops out of Iraq's cities and hiding them in the countryside is not going as planned. Unless the plan is to keep them there forever. Maybe that is the plan. Why else would we continue two unwinnable wars (make that three with Pakistan) just digging in and fortifying our hidey holes, while allowing chaos to reign all around us? Clearly, the plan, if there is one at all, is simply to keep US troops near the oil & gas reserves and pipelines until there is peace and stability in the region. But the mere presence of US troops guarantees that there will never be peace in the region. Is the idea that chaos is easier to deal with than independent governments who might squeeze --or squeeze out-- our big Oilco's? Easier for the Oilco's, who never shed any of their own blood, and for our war machine, which is only there to shed blood for the Oilco's? Vietnam was thought to have oil too, y'know.

And after all, there is not much point in being a general in peacetime. A real general needs a war to show his stuff. A real army needs actual combat experience to know whether it can do the job. The troopies may prefer to serve their time one weekend a month, one month each year filling sandbags for disaster relief back in Iowa, but this ain't no democracy. So there will be blood, for oil. Forever.

NYTIMES
"At Least 50 Killed in Bombings in Iraq "
The war is over! YAAAAY!! We won!!! The Iraqi's lost. All of them.

' The entire village was gone. Local television broadcast scenes of homes reduced to heaps of rubble mixed with bed frames, mattresses, furniture and bloodstained pillows. A villager cried into the camera: “Look, Mr. Prime Minister and Mr. Interior Minister, where is the security that you speak about?” '

THE GUARDIAN
"Pakistan: Premature claims"
Game so NOT over!

' But that does not mean the Pakistani Taliban are a spent force. Even with Mehsud allegedly gone, the component parts of the Pakistani Taliban are still in place. Mehsud held sway over a cluster of about a dozen groups – more of a business franchise than a company – some of which have defied his orders. With Mehsud gone or going, the cohesion could be reduced further. But that could herald an increase in bombing and shooting, as each outlet of the franchise competes for exclusive rights. Besides, Mehsud's outfit was only one of a number of groups that comprise the Pakistani Taliban. '

CNN
"Support for Afghan war drops, CNN poll finds"
Gotta keep those Repukelickin's happy. They're violent and they have guns.

' A new national poll indicates that support among Americans for the war in Afghanistan has hit a new low. Forty-one percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday say they favor the war in Afghanistan -- down 9 points from May, when CNN polling suggested that half of the public supported the war. Fifty-four percent say they oppose the war in Afghanistan, up 6 points from May. "Afghanistan is almost certainly the Obama policy that Republicans like the most," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "Nearly two-thirds of Republicans support the war in Afghanistan. Three-quarters of Democrats oppose the war." '

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
"More US troops for Afghanistan: Are they inevitable?"
"Left-leaning Democrats in Congress"? Who do THEY represent? 54% of the American people? Who CARES!

' The 21,000 US troops promised to Afghanistan have still not all arrived, yet speculation is rife that rising violence may force the senior commander there to ask for more. Last month was the deadliest ever for US forces in Afghanistan. In all, 76 coalition troops were killed. Seeking to reverse that trend, the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is preparing an assessment of the mission. News reports suggest that he could ask for an additional 10,000 to 45,000 troops. Previous commanders have all asked for more forces. In the past, "the handwriting was on the wall for more forces – and may still be," says Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst at Brookings, a think tank in Washington. If General McChrystal does ask for thousands more troops, it could cause a rift between the administration and left-leaning Democrats in Congress. '

WALL STREET JOURNAL
"Taliban Now Winning "
Strategic hamlets, anyone?

' The Taliban have gained the upper hand in Afghanistan, the top American commander there said, forcing the U.S. to change its strategy in the eight-year-old conflict by increasing the number of troops in heavily populated areas like the volatile southern city of Kandahar, the insurgency's spiritual home. Gen. Stanley McChrystal warned that means U.S. casualties, already running at record levels, will remain high for months to come. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the commander offered a preview of the strategic assessment he is to deliver to Washington later this month, saying the troop shifts are designed to better protect Afghan civilians from rising levels of Taliban violence and intimidation. The coming redeployments are the clearest manifestation to date of Gen. McChrystal's strategy for Afghanistan, which puts a premium on safeguarding the Afghan population rather than hunting down militants. '

FOX NEWS
"Pentagon Disputes Claim That Taliban Is Winning in Afghanistan"
Quag, meet Mire.

' "I wouldn't say we are winning or losing or stalemated," McChrystal told USA Today. The U.S. commander said in that interview that the insurgency has "momentum" which coalition forces are working to reverse. The dispute over the course of the war comes as McChrystal prepares to present a comprehensive assessment of operations in Afghanistan -- an assessment that could eventually include requests for additional U.S. troops. Top brass are insisting that despite the sharp rise in casualties in July and an expectation of more bloody months ahead the war is not taking a turn for the worse. National Security Adviser Jim Jones, who left the door open to more troops, told CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday that the war is not at a "crisis level." '

MT HOLYOKE COLLEGE: DEPT OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
"The Pentagon Papers"
Deja vu all over again: What the Pentagon knew, and when they knew it.

' A number of contributory reasons can be cited for the failure of the Strategic Hamlet Program. Over-expansion of construction and poor quality of defenses forms one category. This reason concentrates only on the initial phase of the program, however. While valid, it does little to explain why the entire program collapsed rather than only some hamlets within it. Rural antagonisms which identified the program with its sponsors in the central government are more suggestive of the basis for the complete collapse as Diem and Nhu departed the scene. The reasons why they departed are traceable in part to the different expectations which combined in the apparent consensus at the program's beginning: to Diem's insistence on material assistance and independence, to U.S. willingness to provide assistance only if its advice was heeded, and to the failure to resolve this question either by persuasion or leverage. Having said this, it does not automatically follow that the program would have succeeded even if Diem had met U.S. demands for change. To point to the causes of failure is one thing; to assume that changes of style would have led to success is quite another. It may well be that the program was doomed from the outset because of peasant resistance to measures which changed the pattern of rural life--whether aimed at security or control. It might have been possible, on the other hand, for a well-executed program eventually to have achieved some measure of success. The early demise of the program does not permit a conclusive evaluation. The weight of evidence suggests that the Strategic Hamlet Program was fatally flawed in its conception by the unintended consequence of alienating many of those whose loyalty it aimed to win. '

USA TODAY
"McChrystal: Jobs could curb Taliban fighting "
"It may well be that the program was doomed from the outset because of peasant resistance to measures which changed the pattern of rural life--whether aimed at security or control." -The Pentagon Papers: The Strategic Hamlet Program.

' In an interview with USA TODAY, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said his No. 1 unmet need is to have functioning local governments in Afghanistan and officials who can provide basic services. "At the end of the day, what the Afghan people are really looking for is that very basic level of governance provided, obviously, with security," McChrystal said. "I wouldn't say we are winning or losing or stalemated," McChrystal said about the current fighting. "What I would say at this particular point is that the insurgency has a certain amount of initiative and momentum that we are working to stop and, in fact, reverse." Afghanistan is holding its presidential and provincial elections on Aug. 20. '

CNN
"New NATO chief warns of Afghan 'terror Grand Central' "
Hey, anybody wanna play dominoes? Not real dominoes, theoretical dominoes.

' NATO will stay in Afghanistan "for as long as it takes," the military alliance's new leader said in Brussels, Belgium, Monday. He said success in the country was NATO's top priority "to help prevent Afghanistan from becoming again the Grand Central Station of international terrorism." '

SALON.COM
"It's easy for soldiers to score heroin in Afghanistan"
Another sad Vietnam parallel.

' Just outside the main gate to Bagram airfield, a U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, sits a series of small makeshift shops known by locals as the Bagram Bazaar. For Afghans, it is the place to buy American goods, but the stalls that make up the heart of the bazaar are also well known for what they provide American soldiers stationed at Bagram. Walking through the bazaar it takes less than 10 minutes for a vendor in his early 20s to step out and ask, "You want whiskey?" "No, heroin," I tell him. He ushers me into his store with a smile. The shop is small, 9 feet wide by 14 feet deep, and dark. The walls at the front are lined with dusty cans of soda, padlocks and miscellaneous beauty supplies. As we enter, a teenager is visible at the back, seated in a chair next to a collection of American military knives and flashlights. The shopkeeper speaks to him in Dari. The teen stands and heads for the door, where he stops and asks my Afghan driver a question. My driver translates, "He wants to know how much you want? Twenty, 30, 50 dollars' worth?" From past experience, for I have arranged this same transaction a dozen times in a dozen different Bagram Bazaar shops, I know that the $30 bag will contain enough pure to bring hundreds of dollars on the streets of any American city. Afghanistan, after all, is the source of 90 percent of the world's heroin. I say 30 and the teen jogs off. The true extent of the heroin problem among American soldiers now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is unknown. At Bagram, according to a written statement provided by a spokesperson for the base, Army Maj. Chris Belcher, the "Military Police receive few reports of alcohol or drug issues." The military has statistics on how many troops failed drug tests, but the best information on long-term addiction comes from the U.S. Veterans Administration. The VA is the world's largest provider of substance abuse services, caring for more than 350,000 veterans per year, of whom about 30,000 are being treated for opiate addiction. Only preliminary information for Iraq and Afghanistan is available, however, and veterans of those conflicts are not yet showing up in the stats. According to the VA's annual "Yellowbook" report on substance abuse, during Fiscal Year 2006, fewer than 9,000 veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) sought treatment for substance abuse of all kinds at the VA; the report did not specify how many were treated for opiate abuse. The anecdotal information, however, suggests there may be a wave of new patients coming, and it will include many heroin users. I'm a filmmaker, and I have been to Afghanistan several times to research a film about a soldier who died there under murky circumstances. Before his death, the soldier, John Torres, had told friends and family of widespread heroin use at Bagram. Based on my own experience, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars the Bush administration has spent on opium poppy eradication, Torres was right. I asked to buy heroin a dozen times during two trips a year apart and never heard the word "no"; I also saw ample evidence that soldiers were trading sensitive military equipment, like computer drives and bulletproof vests, for drugs. Other soldiers who have served at Bagram agree: Heroin, they say "is everywhere." And although they haven't shown up in the statistics yet, reports from methadone clinics suggest the VA's future patients may already be back in the States in force. Much like the caskets that return to the Dover Air Force base in the dead of night, America's new addicts are returning undetected. '

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