Has the 'War' reached your town yet?

Horde your bibles and hide your children...godless heathens are descending once again!! It's that time of year again, when the holier than the holier than thou start squawking when they don't see a total saturation of their religious holiday across our multi-cultural and religiously diverse land. A land without a state sponsored religion I might add......much to the chagrin of the chosen ones.

This year, the decadent and evil American Humanist Organization has launched an ad campaign that ***gasp*** implores people to "Be Good...For Goodness' Sake". The nerve of them, asking people to treat others well and kindly...without the oversight of an invisible sky wizard!

This year's holiday campaign aims to promote the idea of being good without God. For example, on D.C. ads that appear on the interior of Metro cars and buses the slogan is accompanied by the explanation, "Be Good for Goodness' Sake. Humanism is the idea that you can be good without a belief in God."

"Humanists have always understood that striving to make the world a better place is one of humanity's most important responsibilities," said Speckhardt. "Religion does not have a monopoly on morality--millions of people are good without believing in God."

Well....the mis-named Liberty Council is having none of that! If you have the twisted desire to visit their website...don't forget to check out their 'Naughty or Nice' list, where they segregate commercial companies who don't mention 'Christmas' at all or as often as the holy believe is required.

The American Humanist Association is waging war against Christmas, but its temper tantrum is doomed to fail. Most Americans believe in God and celebrate Christmas.

Liberty Counsel is fighting back with our seventh annual Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign, which is designed to educate and, if necessary, to litigate to make sure that Christian aspects of Christmas are not censored.

As part of the campaign, we have included our "Naughty & Nice List" of stores that either censor or recognize Christmas. We thank God for this campaign's successfulness.

Err.....what century do we live in again?

So very true....

Nuclear Beer!

Now if I could only figure out what 35 Pounds exchanges to in dollars......

The BrewDog team have pulled off our most audacious and ambitious project to date, and smashed a world record in the process. We have today, Thursday 26 November 2009, set a new world record after creating the strongest beer in the world. Weighing in at an ABV of 32%, BrewDog’s ‘Tactical Nuclear Penguin’ beats the previous record of 31% held by German beer brand Schorschbraer.

This beer is bold, irreverent and uncompromising. A beer with a soul and a purpose. A statement of intent. A modern day rebellion for the craft beer proletariat in our struggle to over throw the faceless bourgeoisie oppression of corporate, soulless beer.’

The Antarctic name inducing schizophrenia of this uber-imperial stout originates from the amount of time it spent exposed to extreme cold. This beer began life as a 10% imperial stout 18 months ago. The beer was aged for 8 months in an Isle of Arran whisky cask and 8 months in an Islay cask making it our first double cask aged beer. After an intense 16 month, the final stages took a ground breaking approach by storing the beer at -20 degrees for three weeks to get it to 32%.

For the big chill the beer was put into containers and transported to the cold store of a local ice cream factory where it endured 21 days at penguin temperatures. Alcohol freezes at a lower temperature than water. As the beer got colder BrewDog Chief Engineer, Steven Sutherland decanted the beer periodically, only ice was left in the container, creating more intensity of flavours and a stronger concentration of alcohol for the next phase of freezing. The process was repeated until it reached 32%.

Brewdog

Wha?????

This....

is why Glenn Beck is a miserable piece of shit. Shared sacrifice my ass!

This chicken-hawk psychopathic coward knows nothing about sacrifice.

Read or watch the video at the bottom of the page.

But....but...what would happen if we just withdrew??

Wouldn't Al Qaeda simply roll back in and attack us again? Wouldn't we look impotent on the world stage?

No and No. After a withdrawal...and if....Al Qaeda tried to re-establish themselves in Afghanistan, we have a myriad of options at our disposal that are far more lethal and far more conservative than perpetual occupation.

Remember....we're not even fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan....we're fighting the 'Taliban' [entities]...who didn't attack us, don't have global jihad aspirations, and simply want us to leave. Why again are our sons and daughters fighting and dying there?

To start, we now have an incredibly detailed picture of the human and geographical terrain in Afghanistan, compared to September 2001. With that, we have HUMINT sources, SIGINT signatures and IMINT data to detail any occurrence of a 'training camp' being established post-withdrawal. Every arm of our military can contribute to a post-withdrawal reaction force, should Al Qaeda attempt to establish itself again [though nobody has anything beyond hypothesis that this would even occur, as AQ has the same information that I just posted above]. Having Al Qaeda back in Afghanistan would actually be to our great benefit, as they could then be interdicted. That's the myth of a 'safe haven'. Terrorism 101: establish a static position, and you are vulnerable to attack.

Predators already fly out of bases near Islamabad and in Uzbekistan. Army Special Forces would continue to aid the Karzai regime, or in the event of a coup, tribes that would be anti-Taliban [as we did with the Northern Alliance with great effect]. SF teams, Navy SEALS, MARSOC and three Ranger Battalions are all trained to strike and interdict in a non-permissive environment from Carrier Task Groups or friendly airbases. And Special Mission Units (SMU's) are an even more highly trained and specially focused element to conduct HVT grabs, raids and ambushes. Airspace permissiveness is not really an issue beyond Stinger and other manportable air defense systems that the Taliban already possesses.

The savings in terms of dollars, manpower and most importantly lives, would be tremendous for obvious reasons, but also the not so obvious, such as force Protection, which eats up an enormous chunk of the war budget and manpower.

If Al Qaeda returns and holds ground in Afghanistan, we have every opportunity to strike at them. Host government authorization doesn't appear to be an impediment, as we are striking with impunity inside Pakistan, while the government outwardly condemns them.

Palin's Army

Here is yet another [of a wide library] video of Sarah Palin supporters, gathered outside of a Border's bookstore for one of her signings. Now the typical right wing response will be...."but this leftist video only showed embarrassing comments...."

OK....but after perusing YouTube and right wing blogs.....where are the informed, intelligent and cogent supporters??? Where are the people who can accurately sum up Palin's qualities and policy platforms?

This is your America......if it weren't so early [and the fact that I'm at work].....I would be drinking already, after watching this travesty.

The Importance of Words

I usually flip the radio dial between Bill Press and Bill Bennett on my morning commute. This morning Bennett touched on one of his favorite themes, the importance of words. As I listened, I was struck by the hypocrisy of a faction of antagonists in the misnomered 'war on terror' saga.

Terror cells, and Al Qaeda in particular, deem themselves warriors in an armed struggle against their foe.....in this instance the decadent west. They believe they fight a holy war and that they are soldiers in every sense of the word. They take honor in that role.

For purposes of this conversation, I'll distill the American characters into two factions, the realists and the nihilists. The realists attempt to understand terror groups in order to subvert and eliminate them. The nihilists choose brute military force to quash them....believing that to understand them is to show sympathy with their cause. But the nihilists are hypocrites [for more reasons than need be expressed here] in their use of words; which is ironic, as they place so much emphasis on words and their effect on the masses.

Nihilists foremost want a 'war' on anything they oppose. When they feel slighted or under scrutiny, they proclaim a 'war' against them. No realist has ever declared 'war on Christmas'. Nihilists wish for terror suspects to be held as POW's, yet not treated as POW's; they place great stock in the fact that Al Qaeda declared 'war' on the west....though that is about as successful as our own 'war on drugs'. Nihilists call 9/11 a mass murder....and label the perpetrators as murderers and thugs. But Nihilists want terrorists tried by military tribunal, even though this legitimizes the terrorist claims of being a soldier.

Realists understand that calling this operation a 'war on terror', using massive military force against terror cells and trying terrorists under military means......all legitimizes the struggle in the minds of the terrorists themselves.....and more importantly, future recruits and benefactors. Realists also understand that terrorism is a crime by Federal Statute...and that treating the suspects as criminals using our Justice system is a far more lethal blow to morale.

So is this hypocrisy the work of fearmongering or simple ineptitude? Is it calculated propaganda to stir the semi-ignorant masses of mouth breathers, or is it semantic laziness? Given the nihilists history of 'freedom fries'.......I opt for door number one.

Who Knew?

The allegedly "ultra-liberal" New York Times features a blog called Home Fires, highlighting the writings of veterans who have returned from war. Now part of my daily reading list......won't my boss be happy...

The Army, and especially the infantry, gives its junior leaders tremendous responsibility. The rough world of the 82nd Airborne Division was a steep learning curve for me, a freshly minted lieutenant accustomed to the studious habits of Stanford University, of its School of Engineering, no less. I learned an awful lot and, I think, emerged a better person.

More recently, I’ve realized some of my beliefs have formed so slowly and subtly that their learning has been entirely unappreciated. I’ve learned that no matter what, life goes on — it’ll do so with or without any one of us — and I’ve found a measure of respect for selfishness; for people who look out for themselves and their lives yet to come. This is surely cynical.

If there’s redemption in the selfishness, it has to do with loving life, with respecting yourself enough not to end your days prematurely or in futile pursuits. Yes, I said it. Somewhere between my second and third tours, I came to believe that our foreign, undeclared wars flouted our Constitution and made us less safe — from terrorism, from debt and from tyranny at home. Believing this wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t help it. Without faith in our military endeavors, my long-held notions about duty, heroism and fighting the good fight didn’t survive long.

I think you’re only a hero for as long as your image is useful, as evidenced most dramatically by then-Major George S. Patton’s cavalry charge against World War I veterans protesting for their pay in 1932, and General Douglas MacArthur’s zeal in pursuing them across the Anacostia River even after President Hoover ordered an end to the assault. If you’re not troubled by history, you’re not studying it correctly. Let’s choose our role models carefully.

Obama caves on Afghanistan

McClatchy is reporting that Obama will announce on 1 December, the decision to send an additional 34000 soldiers to Afghanistan.

The Monday evening meeting was the ninth that Obama has held on the crisis in Afghanistan, where the worsening war entered its ninth year last month. This year has seen violence reach unprecedented levels as the Taliban and allied groups have gained strength and expanded their reach.

A U.S. military official used the term "decisional" to describe Monday evening's meeting among Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Gates, Clinton, National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Eikenberry and senior U.S. military commanders.

The administration's plan contains "off-ramps," points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or "begin looking very quickly at exiting" the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.

So continues a long American tradition (dating back to the insurgency battles in the Philippines) of the United States committing troops [or escalating in this case] against an enemy who neither attacked us nor poses a security threat to us. This decision spotlights the Obama Administration as decidedly un-liberal and bringing about little to no 'hope' or 'change'.

This decision further taxes our already worn military establishment, allowing for nearly no reserves in contingency.

This decision also comes amidst our ironically recent tradition of funding and supporting our own enemies.

No word yet on any substantial strategy shift from the Administration.......but as we have not yet defined the mission......after eight years.....what's the point right? War seems to be good business.

In a related note House Appropriations Chairman David Obey has called for a 'war surtax' to fund the ongoing....and going.....and going....effort.

"On the merits, I think it is a mistake to deepen our involvement," Obey said. "But if we are going to do that, then at least we ought to pay for it. Because if we don't, if we don't pay for it, the cost of the Afghan war will wipe out every initiative we have to rebuild our own economy."
ABC

Normally, I'm set against almost any new taxes....but as we have not been asked to mobilize, sacrifice or contribute to this allegedly vital effort.....maybe it's times this splendid little adventure hits it's ardent [and armchair] supporters where it hurts.

Strangely...Mr. HopeandChange states today.....

Signaling he's decided on new troop levels for the Afghanistan war, President Barack Obama said Tuesday he intends to "finish the job" on his watch and destroy terrorist networks in the region.
AP

As Al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan [save a few footsoldiers/forward observers], how are more troops in Afghanistan going to accomplish that?

Confused about spirituality?

We got your flowchart right here! From West of the West:

Another group whose sole mission is to be offended

A Christian group says it is boycotting the Gap and its brands Old Navy and Banana Republic because they feel the company's holiday TV ads are "offensive," Brand Week reports .

The American Family Association (AFA) reportedly feels that the lighthearted ads poke fun at religion (Watch the ad below).

Gap has been criticized by the AFA in the past for not using the word Christmas in its holiday ads, but this year's version features the line, "Go Christmas, Go Hanukkah, Go Kwanzaa, Go Solstice."

Randy Sharp, a rep for the AFA, doesn't feel the ad is in good taste, however. "It looks like an attempt to patronize people," he said. "What they did was almost make a joke of it."

Gap said its campaign was designed to include all people. A Gap representative told Brand Week that the company "is and has always been an inclusive, accessible brand in which everyone can participate and we embrace diversity across all of our customers, and more importantly respect their beliefs as individuals. ... We focus our marketing on the joys of the holiday season as a whole."

Read more....

I guess some people won't ever be happy unless we live in a repressive theocracy.

We won in Iraq????

Hat tip to Disaffected and it Feels So Good........

We won. The Iraq War is over.

I declare November 22, 2008 to be "Victory in Iraq Day." (Hereafter known as "VI Day.")

By every measure, The United States and coalition forces have conclusively defeated all enemies in Iraq, pacified the country, deposed the previous regime, successfully helped to establish a new functioning democratic government, and suppressed any lingering insurgencies. The war has come to an end. And we won.

What more indication do you need? An announcement from the outgoing Bush administration? It's not gonna happen. An announcement from the incoming Obama administration? That's really not gonna happen. A declaration of victory by the media? Please. Don't make me laugh. A concession of surrender by what few remaining insurgents remain in hiding? Forget about it.

The moment has come to acknowledge the obvious. To overtly declare a fact that has already been true for quite some time now. Let me repeat:

WE WON THE WAR IN IRAQ

That is sobering look into the mindless mind of a chicken-hawking neo-con. Mark my words...we have created another tyrant in Maliki. I saw it with my own eyes, and we see in the the news that doesn't get reported in the US. How many Americans know that Maliki recently shut down an opposition news outlet? How many people know that Al Qaeda is resurgent in Iraq? How many people know that entire Iraqi Army Divisions are controlled by sectarian elements? How many people know that Iraq is #176 out of 180 of the most corrupt nations, as indexed by Transparency International? The list continues as well as the violence.

We didn't 'win' in Iraq....we created another problem.

More Matt Taibbi.......

This guy has started to become one of my daily reads:

What the people who are flipping out about the treatment of Palin should be asking themselves is what it means when it’s not just jerks like us but everybody piling on against Palin. For those of you who can’t connect the dots, I’ll tell you what it means. It means she’s been cut loose. It means that all five of the families have given the okay to this hit job, including even the mainstream Republican leaders. You teabaggers are in the process of being marginalized by your own ostensible party leaders in exactly the same way the anti-war crowd was abandoned by the Democratic party elders in the earlier part of this decade. Like the antiwar left, you have been deemed a threat to your own party’s “winnability.”

And do you know what that means? That means that just as the antiwar crowd spent years being painted by the national press as weepy, unpatriotic pussies whose enthusiastic support is toxic to any serious presidential aspirant, so too will all of you afternoon-radio ignoramuses who seem bent on spending the next three years kicking and screaming your way up the eternal asshole of white resentment now find yourself and your political champions painted as knee-jerk loonies whose rabid irrationality is undeserving of the political center. And yes, that’s me saying that, but I’ve always been saying that, not just about Palin but about George Bush and all your other moron-heroes.

What’s different now is who else is saying it. You had these people eating out of the palms of your hands (remember what it was like in the Dixie Chicks days?). Now they’re all drawing horns and Groucho mustaches on your heroes, and rapidly transitioning you from your previous political kingmaking role in the real world to a new role as a giant captive entertainment demographic that exists solely to be manipulated for ratings and ad revenue. What you should be asking yourself is why this is happening to you. Even I don’t know the answer to that question, but honestly, I don’t really care. All I know is that I find it extremely funny.

More......

Right-Wing fears of leaking classified secrets at KSM's trial.....

In his column today in Salon, Glenn Greenwald puts this fear to rest:

To see how false this claim is, all anyone ever had to was look at the Classified Information Procedures Act, a short and crystal clear 1980 law that not only permits, but requires, federal courts to undertake extreme measures to ensure the concealment of classified information, even including concealment from the defendant himself. Section 3 provides: "Upon motion of the United States, the court shall issue an order to protect against the disclosure of any classified information disclosed by the United States to any defendant in any criminal case in a district court of the United States." Section 9 required the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to consult with the Attorney General and Defense Secretary to develop rules to carry out the Act's requirements, and the resulting guidelines provide for draconian measures so extreme that it's hard to believe they can exist in a judicial system that it supposed to be open and transparent.

Many federal judges -- particularly in criminal cases -- are notorious for being highly sympathetic to the government. That's even more true in a case involving one of the most hated criminal defendants ever to be tried in an American court, sitting a very short distance from the site where he is alleged to have killed 3,000 people in a terrorist attack. And note that the law permits the judge no discretion: if the Government claims something is classified, then "the court shall issue an order to protect against the disclosure of any classified information." With some exceptions, ever since the "War on Terror" began, nobody has safeguarded government secrets as dutifully and subserviently as federal judges -- even when those secrets involve allegations of war crimes and other serious felonies. That's what DOJ officials mean when they keep praising Southern District of New York judges for their supreme competence and expertise in handling terrorism cases. Federal courts in general love to keep what is supposed to be their open proceedings a secret, but that instinct is magnified exponentionally in national security and terrorism cases.

Even during the Bush years, numerous defendants accused of terrorist acts were tried and convicted in federal courts -- John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, Zacarias Moussaoui, Ali al-Marri, Jose Padilla. Those spewing the latest right-wing scare tactic (Osama bin Laden will learn everything if we have trials!) cannot point to a single piece of classified information that was disclosed as a result of any of these trials. If that were a legitimate fear, wouldn't they be able to? Like most American institutions, our federal court system is empowered to shield from public disclosure anything the government claims is secret. Just look at the extreme measures invoked in the Ghailani case to see how true that is.

CLASSIFIED INFORMATION PROCEDURES ACT
PL 96-456

Is that Roses I smell?

Seriously Oregon......you guys can't keep doing this to me. I age at an insanely faster rate every game I watch.......two overtimes last night just about did me in.

By the time the game ended.....I was too emotionally worn out to celebrate.

Though I'll be in Georgia on 3 December, I'll be cloistered in my hotel room at 2100 hrs, ready for the most important Civil War game in Oregon history.

Sagacious Commentary...from Matt Taibbi

The really beautiful thing about the culture war, from an entertainment standpoint, is that it is fundamentally irresolvable. There isn’t a concrete set of issues involved, where in theory both sides could give in a little and find middle ground, reach some sort of compromise.

That’s because there are no issues at all. At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t).

It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.

And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time, these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we’ve now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it. Start fighting first, figure out the reasons later.

Sarah Palin is the Empress-Queen of the screaming-for-screaming’s sake generation. The people who dismiss her book Going Rogue as the petty, vindictive meanderings of a preening paranoiac with the IQ of a celery stalk completely miss the book’s significance, because in some ways it’s really a revolutionary and innovative piece of literature.

The rest.....

Good News on the Furry Front

Amid all the gloomy news from Afghanistan (and the fingers-on-chalkboard strategy debate), here’s a cheerful headline: An Australian Special Forces explosives-sniffing dog has been found alive in Afghanistan — more than a year after she went MIA in firefight.

According to a news release from the Australian military, Sabi, a Black Labrador, was found by a U.S. soldier at an isolated outpost in Oruzgan Province. Sabi had gone missing after a 2008 firefight in which nine Australian soldiers were wounded, including the dog’s handler. Trooper Mark Donaldson, a member of the Australian Special Air Service regiment, won a Victoria Cross for his actions during the battle.

It’s not clear from the news release who was taking care of Sabi, but it’s a fair guess that there are some dog-lovers in Oruzgan Province.

The U.S. soldier, identified only as John, happened upon Sabi in the company of a local man. He knew that the Australians were missing an explosives-sniffing dog. “I took the dog and gave it some commands it understood,” John said.

Read the rest at Danger Room.

An expedition I can get behind:

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A beverage company has asked a team to drill through Antarctica's ice for a lost cache of some vintage Scotch whiskey that has been on the rocks since a century ago.

The drillers will be trying to reach two crates of McKinlay and Co. whiskey that were shipped to the Antarctic by British polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton as part of his abandoned 1909 expedition.

Whyte & Mackay, the drinks group that now owns McKinlay and Co., has asked for a sample of the 100-year-old scotch for a series of tests that could decide whether to relaunch the now-defunct Scotch.

Workers from New Zealand's Antarctic Heritage Trust will use special drills to reach the crates, frozen in Antarctic ice under the Nimrod Expedition hut near Cape Royds.

Al Fastier, who will lead the expedition in January, said restoration workers found the crates of whiskey under the hut's floorboards in 2006. At the time, the crates and bottles were too deeply embedded in ice to be dislodged.

The New Zealanders have agreed to try to retrieve some bottles, although the rest must stay under conservation guidelines agreed by 12 Antarctic Treaty nations.
Mmmmmmm..........

KSM visits the Big Apple

Regarding AG Holders decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court of law in new York City......

This is definitely the correct course of action. We are not at war, and KSM is not a war criminal. Terrorism is a criminal act as defined by Federal Statute.

Holding a civilian trial will take away from the Public relations/Information Operations campaign by terror groups. It will show that the rule of law and our system of justice is superior; that we do not have to invent extra-legal, parallel systems of recourse based out of fear and power.

We have successfully tried and incarcerated terrorists in the past using our Constitutionally mandated system of justice, with the requisite oversight. I have a feeling that people upset with a civilian trial of KSM are more worried that it highlights the failures of previous administrations and their boastful claims of bringing terrorists to justice.

Now let's square my eminently rational and logical elucidations with the knee jerk, chest thumping grade school rantings of Caribou Barbie [Sarah Palin] courtesy of Think Progress:

Horrible decision, absolutely horrible. It is devastating for so many of us to hear that the Obama Administration decided that the 9/11 terrorist mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be given a criminal trial in New York. This is an atrocious decision. [...]

Criminal defense attorneys will now enter into delaying tactics and other methods in the hope of securing some kind of win for their “clients.” The trial will afford Mohammed the opportunity to grandstand and make use of his time in front of the world media to rally his disgusting terrorist cohorts. It will also be an insult to the victims of 9/11, as Mohammed will no doubt use the opportunity to spew his hateful rhetoric in the same neighborhood in which he ruthlessly cut down the lives of so many Americans. [...]

If we are stuck with this terrible Obama Administration decision, I, like most Americans, hope that Mohammed and his co-conspirators are convicted. Hang ‘em high.

..............sigh

I don't even have to wait for the end of the game.

The USC curse has struck again. Win against USC and you're doomed to lose at least your next game. Add to that the Ducks curse. Oregon either plays like the best team in the NCAA.....or they play like shit. Guess which team was on the field today.

At least Stanford is a formidable opponent. Going to workout and lose some frustration.

Afterthoughts........The Ducks made an effort at the end, but it was far too little, far to late.

Guys, we need to figure out why the football keeps bouncing off your chests.

The Shootings at Fort Hood

I can't add too much more to what has already been floated around the blogosphere; the courage of SGT Kimberly Munley in taking down MAJ Hasan; the quick reaction and disregard for personal safety exhibited by the soldiers at the SRP site, etc...

There is no worse tragedy than to bear an attack from within your own ranks. It is treachery of the highest order and no circle of hell is enough punishment for Major Hasan.

But three things stick out in the aftermath: Obama's initial television appearance after the shootings, the inability of mainstream media to cover a story without looking ridiculous and irrelevant, and the inability of mainstream media to act as a fair and impartial reporting organization.

Obama spoke about the shootings at a Native American Tribal conference. Nothing wrong with that so far, but prior to his somber reflections, he was yucking it up. Not classy Barry....not classy at all.

I only get Fox and CNN in my current hotel room, so my lens is through those two questionable outlets. In the zeal to 'stay on top of the story', CNN filled the dead air with every available hack and mouthpiece they could dig up. They at one point had on Dr Phil. Dr Fucking Phil.......disgusting.

Fox's rampant chest thumping racism and jingoism was on full display as they featured notable loons like Ralph Peters who stated that the tragedy was “the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11… It was committed by a Muslim fanatic.” Even though there is little to no evidence at this time that Hasan held any extremist views, nor that his faith was central to his rampage. It may come out that those views are indeed the case, but the rush to judgment in the face of nonexistent evidence is a sign of stupidity. He followed that with “Our president tells us not to rush to judgment, to wait until all the facts are in. What facts are we waiting for? This was an Islamist terrorist act… We knew he was an Islamist. The military did nothing about it, out of political correctness. So, Bill [O'Reilly], what am I missing?”

Thanks Ralph...you're a true beacon intellectualism......

Next, disgracing the service and ultimate sacrifice of Muslim soldiers, Fox News's Brian Kilmeade [speaking to Geraldo Rivera] opens his pie hole with a sterling gem: "Do you think it's time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim Army officers -- anybody enlisted? Because if I'm going to be deployed in a foxhole, if I'm going to be sticking in an outpost, I got to know the guy next to me is not going to want to kill me." This is from the "We Report, You Decide" crowd.

So while I guess I shouldn't expect anything less from the Infotainment whores who soil our television screens, I would much rather they keep their unsolicited opinions to themselves until the facts are known. Report the event and the facts, not the theories.

Ironically, Fox's Brian Kilmeade did have Pat Brown, a professional criminal profiler, who took a decidedly non-emotional, anti-knee jerk reaction to the motives of Hasan:

Kilmeade: It seems to me, Pat, religion plays a role. He perhaps was on a different mission.

Brown: Well, Brian, actually, I think religion does not play a role in this. What we're actually looking at is a typical mass murderer.

Mass murderers are either two age groups. They are either teenagers, who are disgruntled with where they are in life, and don't think they're going to be anything -- those teenagers that say 'I'm being bullied and nobody likes me, and so let me take everybody out -- or they're middle-aged men who are going downhill in life -- they're having problems with people, personality issues, you know, going up against authority. For whatever reasons, they're failing, and then when they start failing they have to find something to hang their hat on, they have to blame something.

So he happened to pick what he picked. But I don't think it really has anything to do with him being Muslim or any kind of "jihad." I think he just wanted to kill people and this was his excuse.

Kilmeade: Well, he did yell out, "Allah," that's kind of an odd thing to yell out for somebody who was just unhappy with his success in life.

Brown: But he was already going downhill. He's a psychopath, and that -- he's gonna say something. Link

Book Review

I just finished Neil Strauss's book Emergency.....and I must say.....I am impressed.

Take a guy who was a music journalist and author.....who new nothing about survival and taking care of himself and his loved ones.....and took on the challenge of preparedness.

This is a guy who thought that survival meant fleeing to another nation [with a second citizenship] was the key to emerging from a national meltdown of man-made or natural disaster. This is a guy who [although receiving St Kitts and Nevis citizenship] realized that becoming certified and trained in how to respond to disasters, emergencies and terrorist attacks....along with hunting, tracking and wilderness/urban survival skills......made him realize that survival didn't necessarily mean moving thousands of miles away.

Not that I'm jettisoning my Costa Rica fallback plan....but stay tuned as I investigate becoming certified in Virginia Emergency Management.

Prognostigations of my Ducks...and more random gloating from me.....

Courtesy of ESPN:

What coaches and players refer to as chemistry is really not chemistry at all. Chemistry is a science subject to irrefutable law. It is what it is.

That's not football. What coaches and players refer to as chemistry is really alchemy. Alchemy isn't subject to the laws of science. Alchemy takes a substance of lesser value and transforms it into something greater.

Submit every position at Oregon and USC to the eyeball test and you'd take a Trojan almost every time. Ask Ducks defensive tackle Brandon Bair.

"They've got amazing athletes," Bair said. "If you had all of their talent they have on their team functioning as one unit, they'd be unstoppable."

That's where the alchemy takes place. USC didn't have that at Autzen Stadium on Saturday night. Oregon did. The Ducks won 47-20.

"We have a unit -- defensively, offensively -- we love to play with each other," Bair said. "We love to be out there on the field with each other. We feed off of each other's energy. We know if we mess up, somebody is going to be right there behind us. We don't have any fear of going out on the field together. We absolutely love being on the field together. The unity we have is absolutely unbelievable. I've never felt anything like it."

It may be unity. It may be love. It may have a little to do with blocking and tackling. Oregon head coach Chip Kelly said Friday he has never had a team listen to its coaches as well as this team does. "Everything we ask them to do, they do," Kelly said.

As coaches will tell you, that trait has a value greater than gold. Alchemy may not be a strong enough word to describe what is happening at Iowa and Oregon.

Instead of a word, try a phrase: "Rose Bowl opponents."

The 'Fox' keeps trotting along.....

I do not endorse [nor has anyone else] a revocation of Fox's FCC license. To advocate for that would be to advocate against the free market and liberty in general. What I [specifically] rail against is a 'news' agency that is admittedly and diametrically opposed to any Administration. The position of Fox does not in any way embody the spirit of what our free press is supposed to stand for......a check and balance against the ruling system....not merely the ruling system it happens to support.

I merely wish for an end to Fox playing the victim card and promoting a 'war' of the White House against it. I want a free press that exposes corruption and abuse for the sake of Democracy, not for the sake of one of the two major party's.

Limbaugh Lies Again

But when you take your cues from Liz Cheney, you're pretty much guaranteed to be lied to.

A few days go, President Obama went to Dover AFB to witness and honor fallen service members making their final journey home. Without any fresh ideas for the nation, the Republican Party falls back onto it's tried and true formula: attack, obstruct and demonize....even when it's a bald faced lie.

From The Raw Story:

Dissecting President Barack Obama's recent visit to Dover, where he saluted America's war dead on camera, right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh echoed the words of Elizabeth Cheney, falsely implying that President George W. Bush had done the same, but without the cameras.

"I don't know why he went to Dover," Cheney said during a Fox News radio interview on Thursday. "I think that it is clearly important for a commander in chief, whenever he can in whatever way possible, to pay tribute to our fallen soldiers, our fallen military folks. But I think, you know, what President Bush used to do is to do it without the cameras. And, um, I don't understand, sort-of showing up with the White House press pool, with photographers, and asking family members if you can take pictures. That's really hard for me to get my head around."

"Mr. Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush, visited the families of hundreds of fallen soldiers but did not attend any military funerals or go to Dover to receive the coffins," CBS News reported on Friday.

Tenth-ranked Ducks hand Trojans worst loss since '97

EUGENE, Ore. -- Jeremiah Masoli threw for 222 yards and a touchdown and ran for 164 more yards with another score and No. 10 Oregon ran past No. 4 Southern California 47-20 Saturday night, the Trojans' worst loss since 1997.

'Nuff Said......