DeRosaWorld

Bush, Jr. Losing Afghanistan, Too

"At least 45 international troops, including at least 27 Americans, died in Afghanistan in June, the deadliest month since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion to oust the Taliban, according to an Associated Press count.

It was also the second straight month in which militants killed more U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

The Taliban in June staged a sophisticated jailbreak that freed about 900 prisoners, then briefly overran a strategic valley outside Kandahar. Last week, a Pentagon report forecast the fundamentalist Islamic militia would maintain or increase its attacks, which are already up 40% this year from 2007 in areas where U.S. troops operate along the Pakistani border.

In Iraq, at least 31 international soldiers died in June: 29 U.S. troops and one each from the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Azerbaijan. There are 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, along with 4,000 from Britain and small contingents from several other nations.

The 40-nation international coalition is much broader in Afghanistan, where only about half of the 65,000 international troops are American."

Anyone one to lay this at the feet of Presidetn Bush, Jr. or are we waiting to blame the next Democrat?

How about some of those Russert's rules next time ole' Prick Dick Cheney visits his Meet The Press friends.

Either Your Signature Or Your Brains Will Be On That Contract

"Iraq said on Monday it has failed to sign technical support agreements with global oil majors which were aimed at helping boost the war-torn country's oil production.

Iraq is negotiating with Shell, BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total, and a consortium of other smaller oil companies, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said at press briefing.

"We did not finalise any agreement with them because they refused to offer consultancy based on fees, as they wanted a share of the oil," he said."

The clock is ticking for Dick Cheney and Bush, Jr. to bring about Armageddon.

No matter how much money they pump into Iraq, they can't pump out any oil.

They are getting so frustrated they might just try to blow up Iran...with Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's approval of course.

Suck On This Republican Party

 

"President Bush, Senator John McCain and their Republican allies are calling on Congress to give away more federal lands to Big Oil. But oil companies do not need more places to drill – they are sitting on 68 million acres of federal lands – or 81 percent of U.S. oil reserves – that they have already leased but have not developed for drilling."

The Republican Party doesn't know whether to shit or die.

They need to be erased in 2008.

No one is buying their anti-American lies anymore.

Saturday Musings

- - Some political notes from the field and a DeRosaWorld poll: I was in Pennsylvania and New Jersey last week and talked a lot of politics with a lot of people. I think Senator Obama is going to take both states by a large margin. Most people I spoke with were Hillary supporters, but it is any Democrat against McCain for them. These are the 'Archie Buckers' the Obama campaign painted with racist colors during the primaries. They have forgiven him.

They are so sick of the Republican Party and President Bush, Jr. that they are supporting Obama. Race may or may not be an issue for them, but not a show-stopper. They are afraid of McCain and despise the policies of the Republicans that have brought about the housing foreclosures, the high price of gasoline, and the Iraq war and shame. Shame, a word I heard repeated.

They are also tired of all the right-wing media bleating on and on and on in defense of the Bush, Jr. Administration. They don't believe it anymore. They are afraid that their sons will be drafted. These are the things they are talking about.

The politics of fear worked too well and now the electorate is afraid of the Republicans.

There is a concern about Obama out here, but it is not the color of his skin. They are worried because they know nothing about him. They are afraid of his inexperience. They are afraid he will fail before he can turn things around. They are now pinning their hopes on an unknown. That is how desperate they are. So if the skinny kid with the funny name doesn’t have any more Larry Sinclairs out there with pictures of him snorting cocaine off his boner, then I think we are going to have ourselves a Democrat in the White House come November…and he is going to get a lot of white support, both male and female, rich and poor.

- - The progressive blogosphere was of a mixed mind this week. Some wanted to be mad at Senator Obama for caving into the FISA bill…and they are right to be mad. What was he thinking?

Others were begrudgingly clapping for Senator Clinton for supporting their man…and they are right to be happy. The Hillary supporters are going to come out strong for Obama in November. Could the same be said of the Obama supporters if the Democratic Party nominee were Senator Clinton?

- - The Stonewall Riots began on June 28, 1969 in New York City on Christopher Street at the Stonewall Inn. The NYC cops got as good as they gave that day. This day is still celebrated in the bars of the West Village. Before Stonewall is a great documentary about the gay community and the times leading up to the riots.

- - I couldn’t fit Don DeLillo’s Underworld into the carry-on, so I took two slim Gore Vidal novels with me, hoping the Office of Homeland Security didn’t open my bag. In A Yellow Wood and Dark Green, Bright Red are two very honest and unique novels. They have been reprinted in England; you cannot get them in America. I got them from Amazon UK. (Beware the weak dollar vs. the euro.)

Two post World War Two novels that the New York Times either didn’t care for or refused to review because of The City and the Pillar scandal. In A Yellow Wood (1947) is a rare look at life in New York City immediately after the war as veterans come home and take up the business of America. And in that glorious time between VJ Day and the Communist witch hunts when American artists thought they could be honest with us and themselves. This is the time of film noir in Hollywood. Something was wrong. The defeat of fascism didn’t bring peace, just prosperity. There was something new out there that was in charge now, and to be afraid of …and it turned out to be us.

Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) is a great example of the cliché “ahead of its time”. This book shows us what America was up to in Central America before most Americans could find Guatemala on a map; empire building, with a little sex in it. If there was ‘special rendition’ in 1950, Vidal would have been shipped off to the basement of the Pentagon for revealing state secrets.

- - Yes, I did have a soft pretzel and of course cheese steaks. Three cheese steaks in fact. I also had some decent Chinese Food, something California is in as short supply as water. How hard is it to make an egg roll with a little hot mustard on the side?

- - Get yourself some good sipping whiskey and buy Emmylou Harris’ All I Intended To Be. At first you’ll sit and feel sorry for yourself and feel the aches and pains of middle age, but by the end you will be refreshed and ready to get up and face the world. She captures that middle-aged need to put your feet up feeling. Fuck the young; let them suffer with the High School Musical soundtrack. This album was made for adults by adults.

- - One last word on flying in modern America. It sucks and the airline industry should be ashamed of itself. If they don't want to do the job anymore, give it up and let us have a lot of smaller, independent airlines with the American, small  business mentality. Let's make the FAA do its fucking job and in this new century let the major airlines go the way of TV news, movies, rock & roll, cheap gasoline and other 20th century Americana. Something needs to change because Americans need and want to travel around this great country of ours and the current major airlines do not deserve our business. Americans do not deserve being treated like this.

NPR Sucks Part Four

From Mediabistro's Revolving Door newsletter:

"NPR publicists Laura Perloff and Leah Yoon are leaving to join John McCain's presidential campaign... "

Don't let the door hit your conservative asses on the way out. 

NPR, the dick-suck internationally acclaimed producer and distributor of noncommercial news, talk, and entertainment programming, is leaking some of its quietly conservative staff to the Republican Party's presidential campaign.

I wonder if NPR is letting Fox News pick their replacements.

US Airways Blows

The Go-Go's sing Vacation.

Three hours sitting on a fucking crowded airplane with no electricity or air-conditioning.

We were locked and loaded and heading towards the runway at the Philadelphia International Airport and we were called back to the gate because of a "computer problem". So a computer was swapped out which meant no power or air and three hours later we set off on our five hour flight.

They asked us to lower the window shades to help keep the cabin cool.

After takeoff, an announcement was made regarding how much the snack boxes ($5.00) and lunches ($7.00) would cost us if we wanted to eat. Then they apologized again when they realized they had no food to sell.

US Airways...double suck.

No Shit? Neocon Strategy a Failure?

"The administration lacks an updated and comprehensive Iraq strategy to move beyond the "surge" of combat troops President Bush launched in January 2007 as an 18-month effort to curtail violence and build Iraqi democracy, government investigators said yesterday.

While agreeing with the administration that violence has decreased sharply, a report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office concluded that many other goals Bush outlined a year and a half ago in the "New Way Forward" strategy remain unmet.

The report, after a bleak GAO assessment last summer, cited little improvement in the ability of the Iraqi security forces to act independently of the U.S. military, and noted that key legislation passed by the Iraqi parliament had not been implemented while other crucial laws had not been passed. The report also judged that key Iraqi ministries spent less of their allocated budgets last year than in previous years, and said that oil and electricity production had repeatedly not met U.S. targets."

Why would this news be a surprise? Bush, Jr. and the neocons lied the United States, not only into this war, but away from the real war on terrorism.

There was never a plan for the day after we defeated the Iraqi army. There has never been a plan to secure the peace. There is no fucking oil pumping into the US economy. There is no exit strategy and there sure as hell ain't no strategy to win.

But we did hang the bastard!

Saturday Musings

- Tim Russert’s funeral was a bit surreal. I guess when you serve the Emperor; you get an Emperor’s funereal. The military honors kind of raised the bar for dead journalists, though. I mean what do we do when Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Walter Cronkite go? And can you image the funeral pyre for Rush Limbaugh?

- So, our Democrat-Congress gave immunity to the telecoms. FAIL.

- So, our Democrat-Congress keeps funding the Iraq war, no questions asked. FAIL

- Maybe someday someone will explain to me how George Bush, Jr. gets away with frightening and bullying everyone from journalists, to politicians to the military. He seems like a fucking moron to me.

- How’s the price of gasoline at your pump?

- Thank god President Bush, Jr. is visiting the flooded Midwest. It has been rumored he can part the waters.

- NASA confirmed there is ice on Mars. Of course, Earth has brought global warming to Mars by digging up the ice and letting it melt in the sun. If I were the Martians, I'd attack as soon as possible. Send the tripods now, before it is too late and you end up with McDonald's and second hand cigarette smoke.

- The airline industry, remember those guys and the $$$$billions taxpayers gave them after 9/11…well they are going to start raising prices and restricting flying with minimum stay-over requirements. Can we have the 9/11 money back?

- Too bad Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party crushed most of the unions in America. Maybe they would have wanted to help the average American. Ah, well.

- Don DeLillo’s Underworld blogging continues: Last week I finished the Prologue: The Triumph of Death. Now this was no ordinary prologue, this is about fifty pages of new wave cinema edited sports prose about October 3, 1951 and the Giants beating the Dodgers for the Pennant at The Polo Grounds, the same day the Russians set off an atomic bomb. I guess this would be called a tour de force. Among others we meet Cotter, a kid who jumps the gate to see the game and ends up with the game winning ball in his possession.

Part One: Long Tall Sally jumps us up in time to 1992. We meet Nick and learn that in the montage from the Prologue, Nick was the kid on a roof listening to the Game on the radio. He now owns the legendary baseball. He also has a typical, fucked up suburban life in Arizona. But, he also has a strange ex-lover who is painting Cold War era bombers in the desert. See this is a post-modern novel, so things are going to be revealed backwards. Man, some of this territory was covered fifty years ago by Norman Mailer. We get it.; being a middle-aged American male sucks, especially if you only moved to fucking Arizona instead of all the way to California.

The centerpiece of this section of the book is, I think the hot-air balloon ride Nick and his wife take over the nuclear bomber art exhibit. There is also a long passage full of wonder inside a condom store. Nick figures out that one of his friends and co-workers is banging his wife. Lot’s of experimental cross dialog in which you don’t know who is a talking. This just reminds me that John Huston’s Key Largo is on TCM. Huston did some sound/cross-dialog experiments in that movie. I stopped reading and put the television on and watched a couple of movies at the same time. I kept switching channels between TCM and IFC. There was a French movie on about a group of kids who decide to kill the leader of their group, for no real reason.  There is a small scene where two of the kids are riding on a motorcycle and they stop so one of them can throw-up. They were drinking and partying too much earlier. The kid who was sick asks the other if he has any gum because his mouth has such a bad taste in it. The kid offers him a strawberry flavored condom. The sick kid takes it and pops it io his mouth. And I thought. This was better that that entire condom store passage I just read in DeLillo.

Anyway, I am not quite ready to cry “bullshit” on Underworld, just yet. It may be the great American novel and because Cotter showed up again at the end of this section. So we are back in time tracing the baseball.

I’ll keep you posted on Part Two next weekend.

- Speaking of French new wave…Are you ready for this?…Belinda Carlisle has a new album out, Voila in which she sings completely in French. It doesn’t get no better than this folks. The Go-Go’s lead singer has always been a secret favorite of mine.  Guys, if reading Don DeLillo makes you worried about turning 50 or 60, Belinda Carlisle singing Jezebel in French is the cure for middle-aged angst.

Fuck You Nancy And The Majority You Rode In On.

"U.S. President George Bush has praised Congress for its bipartisan cooperation on domestic surveillance and new war funding.

At the White House Friday, Mr. Bush called on the House of Representatives to pass the domestic surveillance legislation Friday. He urged the Senate to take it up quickly.

House and Senate leaders agreed on a compromise bill Thursday.

The measure, which permits the government to eavesdrop on the communications of suspected terrorists without first obtaining a court's permission, could also protect telecommunications companies from lawsuits stemming from their involvement in the controversial warrantless surveillance. 

Federal judges could dismiss lawsuits if companies can show they received written certifications that the White House asked for their participation and assured them of the legality of the surveillance.

Mr. Bush also said he was pleased Congress passed what he called a responsible war funding bill that gives American troops the funds they need without timetables for withdrawal from Iraq.

By a wide margin Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved more than $160 billion in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate is expected to vote on the measure in coming days.

The speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, said she is disappointed the bill did not include a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq."

So what are the advantages of a Democratic majority? Nancy Pelosi just took an elephant trunk up the ass.

Join the club, Madame Speaker.

 

NPR Sucks Part Three

I have caught two "opinions" recently on NPR radio in the morning from young, arrogant white guys bragging...no scolding listeners on their ignorance concerning how good the American economy is doing and how credit and debt is a good thing. There is no credit crisis in America if you are like them and smart and manage it correctly.

This morning, some young prick form The Cato Institute told me how industrious he was and asked "is my student loan paying itself off?" How wonderful he is. Conservatism done right.

If you are in trouble, I guess you are not as smart as they all are at the Cato Institute. What is being said is actually bullshit and a little more than creepy.

NPR sucks.