the defeatists!

A Day in the Life of the Fearless Leader

He actually spoke about chicken factories at the town hall meeting/friendly audience photo-op session yesterday in Ohio. You know, I've avoided listening to him speak for so long now that when I do hear him flap his gums I forget how stupid he really is. And there's not much to look forward to in 2008. We've got a wannabe Major Kong, a $400 haircut smiley image boy and a triangulating Big Sister. I so don't care about next year... 

Buddha made him do it!

Let us live gladly! Quite certainly we are free to do it. Perhaps it is our only freedom, but ours it is, and it is only phenomenally a freedom. 'Living free' is being 'as one is'. Can we not do it now? Indeed can we not-do-it? It is not even a 'doing': it is beyond doing and not-doing. It is being as-we-are. This is the only 'practice'. 'All Else is Bondage; Non-Volitional Living' - Wei Wu Wei

Somebody get me my time machine, the two by four and a map as to where Buddha was under that goddamn tree! No Buddha, no Wei-Wu-Wei, probably no Buddhist drivel in Korea and possibly no kimschee. I like kimschee, but after Virginia Tech, the problem is obviously the combustive mix between this drivel, Korean food and Twinkies...

If it is possible to be a good person, it is possible to be a bad person. Evil is real. God is not, save Tiffany. But, evil is real. The Korean community is supposedly humiliated by this clown's antics. Well, at the risk of offending people, I am bothered by the fact that someone didn't try to stop the bastard. I know, he had a gun -- they had books, pens, desks, chairs and goddamn facial piercings. I honor the folks who died to protect their classmates, students and total strangers...but, it would have been helpful to reassure me that the Hobbitification of the US middle class was not complete if someone had charged the bastard.

By the way, I am an advocate of licensing gun owners, particularly handguns. We license people to drive trucks with background checks and so on; trucks can be weapons of mass destruction, but we do it to protect the lives of the average guy on the road with 10 wheeled behomeths whose reason for existing is simple -- transport crap. Guns are not neutral...their sole purpose is to put possibly lethal holes in things. Paranoid screwups need not apply -- but, Virginia appears to be a lot like some Texas bars where if you cross the door sill and don't have a gun, they issue you one.

There was a bit in Abbie Hoffman's Revolution for the Hell of It! where he describes a Digger in San Francisco waiving around an iron bar and proclaiming that "This is a liberated zone! Enter at your own risk." Ok, the guy was undoubtedly high. Still, there is a point. I have a liberated zone around me, that varies depending on threat. Snakes get no closer than 10 feet before they die. Just a thought...

internalizing one's impact on the environment

Mr.Fundamental has been having some interesting email conversations with some friends about global climate change and human impact on the planet.  it's been real fun.

check out no-impact man.  his mission is to reduce his impact on the planet to zero.  sounds like a fun guy, right?  now maybe along the way he'll learn why things are the way they are. 

personally, I think he'd be better off hopping in a chipper shredder.  send that carbon footprint straight back to where it came from.  but that's just me.

all this thinking about having no impact got me thinking about my non-impact.  I mean, how much impact can one person have?  well out of this thought mulched(ouch) an idea: is it possible to account for all the things that are bad for the environment that I could have done today that I did not?  I want to compile a list of things I did not do today that were bad for the environment.

I did not dump motor oil down the drain.  I did not leave all the lights on in the house and crank the thermostat up when I left for work.  I did not take a crap in the storm sewer grate.  I did not dump the freon out of the air conditioning units and volatilize it with a fan.  I did not dump all of the cleaning products in the house down the storm sewer grate that runs to the ocean.  I did not travel by plane.  I did not use a nuclear submarine to my knowledge.  I did not burn any plastic.  I did not take an hour long shower.  I did not flush after I peed.  I did not drive a car.  I did not peel out.  I did not break a mercury thermometer and dump it on my street.  I did not spill acetone all over the sidewalk in front of my house.  I did not take a train to work.  I did not strip mine anything.  I did not cut down a tree.  I did not widen the lane widths on any major highway.  I did not lay asphalt paving.  I did not spray pesticides on a lawn.  I did not pour concrete. 

so far it's been a good day, would you say?

I think we need to account for all the harmful things each and every one of us could do and then compare that with all the things we actually did and are doing and see if we're really doing good or not.  a true metric of our impact!

the more I think about it, the better I feel about myself.  I'm not so bad after all, aren't I?

feel free to share the things that you did not do today that are bad for the environment. 

this is totally like therapy.

we go after the mindless viewers

just got this from a friend.  (Mr. Fundamental has friends?)

if only Fox viewers like knew this.  that would like totally blow their minds and possibly even change them.   for the better, or the betterment of humanity even.  that would rock.  pass the bowl, please.

do you think Fox viewers care?  does this statistic make you feel better?  what?  now you know the demographic to aim for next election cycle?  next time we feel like going to war?  what is the use of this information?

thinkprogress seems pretty mindless and self-congratulatory to me. 

self improvement is masturbation.

and as my fav MC Slug says:

Progress will never rest in the hand that has no head

Earned right to be

Surrender Monkeys.  I know the power of the myth of the potato famine in the Irish diaspora, even though most of our forebears wandered away before or after that episode of despair. But, there are tales told below the skin, and Chemin des Dames is certainly one that haunts France. Of course, a lot of things haunt France. Still, the collective saying of "You're fucking kidding me, right? Screw you!" is rare.

I was a soldier. I was lucky -- none of the dumb things I had to do got me killed. Most soldiers are lucky; most of the idiots in successful armies manage to either get out of the line on their own or they get killed through their own ignorance, vanity and bullshit. But, every now and then you bump into someone or something so ludicrous that all that can come out of it is despair, death and memories. Deep, deep memories.

The image of drunken troops singing to the their incompetent masters despite the inevitable logic of bureaucracies is vivid, don't you think..."In April 1917, all the basic ingredients for mutiny were present: three years of mud, rats, and lice in the trenches; mild spring weather; political revolt in Europe; and a classic tale of hubris.

Nivelle, a hero of Verdun the previous year, wanted a quick breakthrough, and he did not relent, even when nearly all signs pointed to defeat.Meantime, revolution was in the air in 1917. The czar had abdicated a month earlier, and units of allied Russian soldiers scattered through the Chemin des Dames were restive, singing "The Internationale." ...

"Visitors to Chemin des Dames today will find a two-lane highway straddling a crest with engaging hilltop views. There is nothing in the landscape to alert the casual traveler that this was once, in the writer Louis Aragon's words, "that living ridge of slaughter."

But three roadside placards near Craonne, sponsored by the local authorities and the European Union, tell a story of men driven to exhaustion and quote the "Song of Craonne," a ballad whose lyricist remains anonymous: Now it's your turn, you bigshots, to climb the ridge, because if it's war you want, pay for it with your own skin."  Are you listening, Dubya? Probably not...

Drivin' by MP3

The AXE has a XM setup in the AXE mobile --  a 2006 Dodge Charger that bottoms out in the drive-way and that I'm thinking of having customized...jack up the rear, put a brushguard on it, have the portrait airbrushed on the roof and then cruise up and down the California byways and highways at 2 mile below the speed limit to just make the CHP crazy. However, I flew up to the beautimous Shire this week, and drove my wife's Suzuki Grand Vitara back. Not bad, actually. But, to avoid listening to Mrs. AXE's total Barry Manilow-Rick Nelson collection, I plugged in my MP3. Ok, first of all, anyone who thinks you shouldn't drive wearing one is an idiot. Helluva lot less distraction than punching radio buttons or looking for CDs.

So, what did I listen to?  Lots of Blues as usual; some classic stuff like Traffic; and, Drive By Truckers. I also had some Gary P Nunn and Cowboy Junkies and Alehandro Escovedo. "Bit I could paint all the colors of your evening gown while I'm waiting for  your blonde hair to turn grey..."

So, the four terrorists are together and getting used to each other...alternately hissing, chasing and grooming while rolling around in some catnip. Ms. AXE has announced plans to rearrange everything. And, I find myself thinking more of the significant other...waiting her blonde hair to turn gray.

Even Darth Cheney thought this piece of shit

was a really bad idea. Of course, all the heart attacks and the cyborg stuff made him really fond of bad ideas. But still -- The Osprey doesn't work in stressful situations. It costs more than three helicopters, can't do the tricks it needs to evade things like RPG7s -- and is a bigger target than a Blackhawk -- and tends to fall out of the sky and kill Marines. So, send a few to Iraq to prove that you need to send more. Of course, there is a twisted logic to the whole chingasa thing as Col Armador Cantu DO, former LT working for Sgt AXE a bizillion years ago in Germany would put it. If you can't stop Iraq because of the sacrifices of those fallen already, you can't kill Osprey if it keeps killing Marines.

So, they are sending this piece of shit to Iraq. Meanwhile DOD is determined to get a new rifle in the hands of the troops...so long as they are the grandchildren of the troops currently getting shot at in Iraq. The M4 carbine is a helluva improvement over the M16A2; but, it is still finicky in dust and sand. Of which there is a lot in Iraq. Nothing says fun more than having to try and clean a goddamn rifle while you're under stress...I've had to have soldiers do it on the range because they couldn't shoot fast enough to qualify. In this case, people are shooting back. Trust me -- more complex. Try and do something relatively simple but mechanical while your neighbors are pelting you with apples. Trust me, more difficult.  The XM8 is a neat concept, but there are better guns out there now. But, they aren't designed by the geniuses who ruined the AR15,  forced the 9MM down the services throats and can't even design a good bayonet. Which, for those of you who aren't sure, is a big fucking knife, not a new model from Dodge.

Well, the dead soldiers from the weapons failures can get together with the dead Marines from the Ospreys in Valhalla and throw empty beer bottles and chicken wings at the idiots who got them killed.  Tiffany is always in favor of a party, and she'd probably figure she looked good in a  Hooters outfit with a horney helmet.

Fish Rots From the Head

There are so many ways that this is silly.  Not evil. True evil requires some level, however slight, of competence. Nepotism, make-work, imaginary work, and so on. The correct words are boondoggle, make-work, feather-bedding, and so on. Sexual harassment might rear its ugly head -- he made me sleep with him for a 50% raise! -- and so on. But it gets better... as the Post describes:

"The woman at the center of the storm surrounding World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz has spent the past few months trying to get one of the signature efforts of President Bush's Middle East democracy campaign off the ground.

The Foundation for the Future, as the effort is called, has made no grants and held only two board meetings since its creation 1 1/2 years ago. Though Shaha Riza, who has been romantically linked to Wolfowitz, is not listed as part of the staff on the organization's Web site, she is the only person working in the group's offices, located within the Henry L. Stimson Center, a think tank. The Washington office is listed as a "branch," according to the site, which promises that soon a main office will be established in Beirut."  Sure it will...about the time Jenna takes over the Peace Corps. Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Feith, Cheney and Bush will take over the lead from the Harding administration as the lousiest and least competent administration.

Irked by bankers, hobbits and weather

The AXE is in the Shire of Ectopia, and irked beyond belief. The Ectopian Household terrorists are being boarded in a local kitty jail, and we didn't get to close on selling the Ectopian house today...it looks like the escrow company will have to email the documents to me, and I'll get to print, we'll sign and mail back. That doesn't make a helluva lotta sense in some regards - but, I need to be at work on Monday and the household crap is being delivered at 8AM Monday. Why can't we close? Got me -- there really isn't a lot complicated about this stuff today...everything is immediately available through the net. So, I may be staying in a Holiday Inn Express (yippy barking rat dogs in booties and sweaters allowed, but no cats; bastards!) but I'm not feeling any smarter...just irked.

Speaking of immediately available, Don Imus and Paul Wolfowitz are looking available. Of course, Imus deserves little comment; he's probably getting slammed more than he deserves for this one, but he has probably a bit more deserving than he'd like to think. Words have meaning.

Wolfie is a different story. There always was a whiff of corruption about these guys. So the guru of Shock and Awe who couldn't understand Shinseki's  concept of it takes more to hold and secure than it does to defeat has a Nazi-concentration camp guard look-a-like companion with an Islamic Syrian-Libyan-Saudi background. . She used to work for the World Bank and when he showed up, he helped her get a leg up so he could stay over, so to speak. "The transfer and a subsequent raise eventually took her to a pay of $193,590 from $132,660, tax-free because of her status as a diplomat, and exceeding the salaries of cabinet members. “In hindsight, I wish I had trusted my original instincts and kept myself out of the negotiations,” Mr. Wolfowitz said.“I made a mistake, for which I am sorry,” he added, pleading for “some understanding” of the “painful personal dilemma” he faced when he left the Pentagon to become bank president. " Yeah, sure. Shaha now works for Cheney's daughter Liz -- as opposed to Lez (now, I'm channeling Imus) in State.

What's really kind of interesting is the departure from administration form. As Captain Capitulation's favorite Princeton economics Professor points out, most of the nepotism and favoritism in this administration has gone to fundamentalist Christian types and their spear carriers. From some of the commentary, it appears that Shaha is a Muslim. Well, she and Wolfie can keep kosher...

Then, there's Iraq. Sheesh...there they are, eating their yoghurt cooked lamb kabobs or whatever the hell they eat in Iraq besides the blood of Christians, Jews and Defeatists and blooooooommmmm! There are bright red blossoms in the Green Zone.  The idea that any area in a war zone is secure is silly. It was kind of cool to watch the Shi'ite shit, so to speak, when the blast went off.

But, what I found more important was the bridge. When the Old Bridge in Mostar went down, the fate of Bosnia was kind of sealed. There wasn't a lot of doubt, of course; but the old Bridge had been a symbol of community in Mostar and there it went. In the case of the bridge over the troubled waters (yecchhh, but who can resist...) the bridge was considered beloved according to some sources. It looked like a lousy iron railroad bridge, but no accounting for tastes. A bomb in a truck that can take out a major hunk of the bridge requires a sort of special bomb. The charge needs to be shaped to blow down as opposed to out in 360 degrees in all planes.

Now, the nonsense a couple of days ago that the Iranians were training the Shi'ite militias and the Sunni Insurgents and the Pathet Lao, the Orange Order and the Symbionese Liberation Army indicates the intellectual bankruptcy of this administration. What is interesting is the activity of al Quieda in Algeria. Pass over the sort of stretched analogy between the Battle of Algiers, the Battle of Baghdad and the new Battle of Algiers -- adherents of the Islamic Brotherhood has been very active in Algeria attacking Christians, Jews, other infidels and other Muslims. Al Quieda's approach is not that different from the ideology of the Islamic Brotherhood. But, Osama's gang has a better level of organization... .

Kind of hard for the AXE to think of Algeria without thinking about France. France has never really ever let go of its colonies. The treatment of Algerians in France led to riots last year, and can lead to more. Wondering, just wondering, if the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triumph has seen an increase in security. The tower would not be a serious challenge to the sort of destructive artisan that can blow down a bridge using a u-haul....

So, I'm irked. Wolfowitz, Feifth and Rumsfeld are gone but their truth continues to march on.  And lurking in the background, looking over the shoulder of Jacques Chirac, who comes slouching toward the new Bethlehem, but...Don Imus. In a Burkha...
 

Somewhat surreally, forsure...

This is a week of absurd, postmodern nonsense...the resolution of the Duke lacrosse case at the same time Al Sharpton is taking aim at Imus. Hey, Imus' remark made damn'all sense to begin with. Anyone who's watched the women's game in college or in the pros knows that the game is tough, fast and physical. Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm and UCONN has broken her nose in a playoff game and played in the next game...she left the court under her own power, at a dead run because she knew what had happened and was hoping to get some gauze and get back in the game. But with the "over-reaching and unethical" tag placed on the Durham prosecutor, the irony of Sharpton in a tie going after Imus is intriguing...can anyone say Taiwan Brawley? And, what is that lovebird up to these days? Not playing for Rutgers...

Tiffany has been watching Henry V in the Kenneth Branugh version and after watching Emma doing French along with Paul Scofield decided that she needed a herald...and, she plucked Kurt Vonnegut. Well, I gotta say that my favorite was probably Mother Night, despite the wiredly weird Nick Nolte version. (is it me, or is the last good movie he made not Another 48 Hours?). I didn't care much for Slaughterhouse 5. but loved Cat's Cradle. I first picked up his stuff in a little bookstore near Syracuse University where I'd go after my weekend job as a hospital janitor near the university; it's also where I got Thus Spake Zarathustra, my copies of Ramparts and The Evergreen Review and a bunch of other stuff that made me the man I am today...

Oh, and then there's IraqIranAbsurdistan. Robert Gates appears to be a serious anomaly in the upper regions of this administration. An honest man who speaks his mind by just ignoring the president. The extension for the current troops and the in-bound troops has nothing to do with timetables...it has to do with numbers. Tell the Army to train 3 new divisions from scratch and assuming they can get the manpower...which I doubt, by the way...it'll take at least 12 months to train, equip and form them. There simply aren't enough soldiers and Marines to go around...so it goes like this.
"

Word of the extensions reached the American military command post in Juwayba, Iraq, in a rural area east of Ramadi, overnight when a sergeant spotted it while surfing the Internet. It was greeted with a mixture of anger and resignation among the few soldiers who were still awake. “We’re just laughing,” said Capt. Brice Cooper, 26, the executive officer of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment of the First Infantry Division. He was chuckling nervously, his frustration palpable. “It’s so unbelievable, it’s humorous.”The soldiers crowded around the outpost’s few computers, sending e-mail messages to their families and parsing Mr. Gates’s words in the hope of finding possible loopholes that would exclude them from the extension. The unit was scheduled to return to its base in Germany in June. The extension meant it would probably have to stay here until September.“I’m fixing to lose my girlfriend,” one soldier grumbled." There is no good answer...the First Herd is permanently stationed in my old German stomping grounds in Northern Bavaria, and that's a helluva lot nicer in the spring than Iraq has been since, oh, Nebachanazzer...SUUURRRRRGGGGEEEE!

The news that the White House is looking for a  WAR CZAR to head up the State and Pentagon's efforts to handle Iraq-Iran-Absurdistan fronts is amusing. First of all, they actually had 3 four-stars already turn them down. The best line was from General Sheehan..."The biggest problem is that they don't know what the hell they are doing..." It's hard to describe how hard it is to get one of these guys -- or most old soldiers -- to say no if called. ( My boss retired 70% disabled. He came in grumbling about a report that we submitted about reserve status saying that he didn't understand why he was listed with a "termination" date for his inactive reserve status. I said hell, that's weird, let me track it down -- but, that was not until I'd checked my status and saw that I was still "indefinite...") People don't get four stars  because they are willing to not take risks. However, we are trained to take calculated risks...just marching soldiers into the meat grinder isn't a great idea. Until someone has a great idea, it'll be really hard to get someone who has served for decades to think this is a great idea.

Does anyone honestly think they're looking for anything besides a scapegoat? The word is probably out among the retirees -- you don't want to follow Pete Scoonover back into harness; they don't listen, they don't remember, and they lie. Someone like Barry McCaffrey is not going to not answer when they ask him, "Gee, is there a problem?" They might have feelers out for Stormin' Norman, but that would be a mistake. He has no tolerance for idiots.

Meanwhile, I am in Tacoma, waiting to close on this house and drive back with Mrs. AXE and the Tacoma Terrorist cell to the Crossroads of Opportunity. It's weird after almost a year in the desert...they have water here that just sort of comes out of the sky...