these are our dead

bush sent them to their deaths. now he wants to send even more troops. his “surge” is an escalation, and any trooper that goes there is not likely to come back.

impeachment time is now.

weird time of the year for a new year to roll in, eh? why not make the calendar flip in the summer, when you can be outside and have a good time? stupid ancient pagan festivals. bah.

Well, we can think of his whole life and musical innovation as a Squidmas gift, eh?

RIP JB.

Fish On (Fisherman’s Chronicles Part II)
Sailing the Seas of Cheese
Primus

Felt a pang late one afternoon
I was fishin’ off Muir beach
With Larry LaLonde
Grabbed a tuna salad sandwich
And I started to chew
Pretty soon Ler’s yellin
Fish on!
Fish on

I was just a little pup
And it was derby day
Was dad and me and Darrell
Out in San Pablo bay
Taco flavored Doritos
And my orange life vest
Dad caught a hundred pound sturgeon
On twenty-pound test
Now he fought that fish for an hour an a half
Darrell’d say “Jump ya sons a bitch!”
And he grabbed for the gaff
When we got him in the boat
He measured six feet long
I was so danged impressed that
I write this song called
Fish on

T’was a bright and sunny day
It was me and Todd Huth
Fishin’ shark & Stingray
Out of Bohuas Lagoon
Well hey, hey, hey I’ll be screwed,
Blued and tatooed
Looks like I got me one of them fish on
Fish on.

Incomparable.

here.

while i was too young to see this in the Vietnam War, here it is again: body counts to claim victory. because that ground up, lifeless hunk of flesh that was once a person is a signpost on the way to winning the war against a tactic.

jesus fucking hell.

what’s with the guys over at AOL?!

tom delay started a blog! he left commenting on!
the expected happened.

it is to laugh.

Greg Palast is one of my personal heroes. I paid $100 for a signed pre-release copy of his latest book, Armed Madhouse (from Powells), and get his newsletter. The latest came up today and it talks about stuff I was yammering about, just more lucid, hard-hitting, and, well, better. In talking about the suggestions from the ISG:

They’re kidding, right?

James Baker III and the seven dwarfs of the “Iraq Study Group” have come up with some simply brilliant recommendations. Not.

Baker’s Two Big Ideas are:

1. Stay half the course. Keeping 140,000 troops in Iraq is a disaster getting more disastrous. The Baker Boys’ idea: cut the disaster in half — leave 70,000 troops there.

But here’s where dumb gets dumber: the Bakerites want to “embed” US forces in Iraqi Army units. Question one, Mr. Baker: What Iraqi Army? This so-called “army” is a rough confederation of Shia death squads. We can tell our troops to get “embedded” with them, but the Americans won’t get much sleep.

2. “Engage” Iran. This is a good one. How can we get engaged when George Bush hasn’t even asked them out for a date? What will induce the shy mullahs of Iran to accept our engagement proposal? Answer: The Bomb.
>>>>>Read more

Right on. Here’s his homepage, gregpalast.com. I’d really recommend any of his books, especially if you don’t like blatantly political stuff. He’s more into smarm than politics, and numbers than heresay.

So, I’m sure you couldn’t avoid but hear that there was a group of white-haired old men meeting for the last 9 months talking about how fucked we (well, mainly our soldiers stuck there) are in Iraq. Now the news has been going on a full-out deepthroating of this Iraq Study Group, despite the fact that a) none of their work is in the slightest way binding or 2) these ten dudes had to come in and tell the fucking federal government, the billions of dollars and thousands of workers, elected and appointed, what they should do, and iii) they didn’t come up with a single new idea.

Fucking. Pathetic.

We have an executive branch that cannot…I don’t even know the word to use, it gets into such a philosophical arena, the nature of conscioiusness, cognitive abilities, etc…cannot think. These people have such a severe disconnect from the reality of what’s happening, at least the public faces of the fiasco, Bush, Lieberman, Cheney, Rummy (rot in hell), and the rest, that it’s hard to understand what their motivations are. It’s like trying to guess the motivations of a sea sponge. Except it’s a sea sponge that’s been responsible for the deaths of 3,000 soldiers (and over 6,000 civilians in Katrina and on 9/11), countless (countless!) civilians in foreign countries, and the squandering of our reputation and treasure around the world (funneling it conveniently into coroporate pockets, Dem and GOP).

These people, in the Congress, decided that they couldn’t come up with anything on their own. So they hired HW’s old hand James Baker (noted oil hitman), current SecDef nominee Robert Gates (former Reagan Iran-Contra hand), and some other stiffs to tell them how bad it was. Is this what we give these people such massive resources for? To not be able to analyze facts on their own? Why would the leading deliberative body in our nation not be able to…welll…deliberate? It makes me fucking batty. Moonbatty.

This is seriously like an oracle or wise man situation, where the king asks some learned subject to advise him. Shouldn’t the fuckin’ King be able to see the probability of this fucking happening? It blows the mind. How many anti-war folks were RIGHT ABOUT THIS? This war generated the largest protest rallies ever. Vietnam took 5 years to generate that kind of opposition. The incredibly asinine Iraq invasion started protests when it was a THEORY. I believe I’ve heard ONE major press figure (and I can’t even remember who, it was a link on Eschaton I believe) say that we oughta start listening to the people who were right in the first place, namely the anti-war left & center, and (though it can be dangerous and stupid) the libertarians.

Ah well. I’m going to go douse myself with a bucket of cold water. Perhaps some naked racquetball to take the edge off. I give you all permission to go “EW!”

Go check it out on her blog