Ettrickbridge, Borders. 
Wonderland
Alan Seeger Natural Area
DOUBLE SUPER SECRET BACKGROUND
Time Reporter MATT COOPER Sounds Like a Pledge at the Stupid White House Fraternity in the latest revelations in the VALERIE PLAME affair. Young Matt Cooper wants to make the grade on his journalism class at the Cool College and he has a real just terrif tale to tell about terror and this hot coed married to some kid named WILSON, but Matt Cooper wants to be part of the White House Fraternity first and foremost so he can still go to all the White House Press Briefings frat parties. What a strange initiation and entry we have into how the Animal White House works. NEWSWEEK has more in its latest issue.
"Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation ..." Cooper proceeded to spell out some guidance on a story that was beginning to roil Washington. He finished, "please don't source this to rove or even WH [White House]" . . . . "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," Rove told CNN last year . . . . Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCIA"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip."[NEWSWEEK]
Did the Frat Boy President George Bush know about what the BOY GENIUS Pledge Master Rove was doing? And does he care? Why doesn’t the Frat Boy President care about what happened to that undercover sorority sister Valerie Plame?
SOME MORE NOTES: DOUBLE SUPER SECRET BACKGROUND? Don't source to Rove or even White House? Got a big warning? Matt Miller sounds like he wanted to tell a story, but more than that he did exactly as he was told to do. This is what passes for journalism today. Spoke to Rove for about two minutes? Rove works quite efficiently when he turns someone's life upside down. Rove may have that same feeling himself soon enough. (more)
But there's a subsidiary annoyance that gnaws at me increasingly: the demand when a bomb goes off - unless it's one of ours - that all Muslims drop whatever they're doing and condemn violence by Islamic extremists.
Are you white? Or male? Raise your hand if you've formally condemned the actions of Eric Rudolph. I know I haven't gotten around to it, and Rudolph's actions disgust me to the point that I'd find it hard to turn down an offer to compact his septum with a coal shovel. I have lived with Becky for 16 years, and she's Asian, and yet I haven't once heard her formally denounce Aum Shinrikyo's 1995 poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway.
We have been granted the courtesy, by society at large, of the assumption that we abhor acts of mass murder.
But mainstream liberals and racist reactionaries alike have no problem demanding ritualistic condemnations and apologies from Muslims when an extremist splinter of that massive, mindbogglingly diverse religion commits mass murder. And I have to say I expect it from the reactionaries. But I'm naive enough to be stunned when people who claim to be liberals trot out arguments that closely parallel demands for black obeisance issued by the likes of the White Citizens Councils.
And when such people - like the truly execrable "Jen," whose rantings are displayed in the first of those links above - are presented with evidence that prominent Muslim clerics have in fact denounced the murders, and floridly, that somehow isn't enough. The Jens of the world want Muslims to fine-tune their public statements painstakingly, carefully watching to see if they are being obsequious enough. "Dance, Muslim monkeys, dance! The purpose of your public life is to satisfy my desires!"(more)
Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)
Lyrics by Woody Guthrie
Music by Martin Hoffman
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their cresote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again
My father's own father, he wanted that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they took down and died
CHORUS
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maris
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.
Some of us are illega, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like theives.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
CHORUS
A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?
©1961 (renewed) & 1963 Ludlow Music Inc., New York,NY (TRO)
Over the Sea to Skye by Robert Louis Stevenson
Sing me a song of a lad that is gone,
Say, could that lad be I?
Merry of soul, he sailed on a day
Over the sea to SkyeMull was astern, Rum was on port,
Eigg on the starboard bow.
Glory of youth glowed in his soul,
Where is that glory now?Give me again all that was there,
Give me the sun that shone.
Give me the eyes, give me the soul,
Give me the lad that's gone.Billow and breeze, islands and seas,
Mountains of rain and sun;
All that was good, all that was fair,
All that was me is gone.
Sometimes there are too many things competing for our attention. Should we comment on the London bombings? No. Already there have been many voices--ours would only add to the cacophony. We didn't watch but five minutes of the news last night-- enough to see that it was non-stop human interest -- bloodied bodies emerging from tunnels and buses. Just in case you forgot what horror looks like. In case you forgot that news is not news, but repetitive viewings of carnage and violence. Are you afraid yet? Maybe they could run that video just one more time.
The following excerpt was taken from the comments section at Today in Iraq. It was left by an anonymous comment-dropper:
VIETNAM 2 PREFLIGHT CHECK
Cabal of oldsters who won’t listen to outside advice? Check.
No understanding of ethnicities of the many locals? Check.
Imposing country boundaries drawn in Europe, not by the locals? Check.
Unshakable faith in our superior technology? Check.
France secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
Russia secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
China secretly hoping we fall on our asses? Check.
SecDef pushing a conflict the JCS never wanted? Check.
Fear we’ll look bad if we back down now? Check.
Corrupt Texan in the WH? Check.
Land war in Asia? Check.
Right unhappy with outcome of previous war? Check.
Enemy easily moves in/out of neighboring countries? Check.
Soldiers about to be dosed with *our own* chemicals? Check.
Friendly fire problem ignored instead of solved? Check.
Anti-Americanism up sharply in Europe? Check.
B-52 bombers? Check.
Helicopters that clog up on the local dust? Check.
In-fighting among the branches of the military? Check.
Locals that cheer us by day, hate us by night? Check.
Local experts ignored? Check.
Local politicians ignored? Check.
Locals used to conflicts lasting longer than the USA has been a country? Check.
Against advice, Prez won’t raise taxes to pay for war? Check.
Blue water navy ships operating in brown water? Check.
Use of nukes hinted at if things don’t go our way? Check.
Unpopular war? Check.
Vietnam 2, you are cleared to taxi.
. . .
I urge you to read the entire post on which this comment was left. It is a brilliant yet gruesome wrap-up of the events in Iraq during the past two years. Excellent work by Yankee Doodle, Friendly Fire and Matt from Today in Iraq.
Comments from --handdrummer --
Ahh, hell, when will I admit the truth that once again we're losing a war because those of us on the left don't ever clap hard enough for Tinkerbell?
During Fox News' coverage of the July 7 London bombings, Washington managing editor Brit Hume told host Shepard Smith that his "first thought," when he "heard there had been this attack" and saw the low futures market, was "Hmmm, time to buy." Smith had asked Hume to comment on the lack of a negative U.S. stock market reaction to the London attacks.
From Fox News' July 7 breaking news coverage between 1 and 2 p.m. ET:
SMITH: Some of the things you might expect to happen, for instance, a drop in the stock market and some degree of uncertainty across this country -- none of that really seen today, and I wonder if the timing of it -- that it happened in the middle of the night and we were able to get a sense of the grander scheme of things -- wasn't helpful in all this.
HUME: Well, maybe. The other thing is, of course, people have -- you know, the market was down. It was down yesterday, and you know, you may have had some bargain-hunting going on. I mean, my first thought when I heard -- just on a personal basis, when I heard there had been this attack and I saw the futures this morning, which were really in the tank, I thought, "Hmmm, time to buy." Others may have thought that as well. But you never know about the markets. But obviously, if the markets had behaved badly, that would obviously add to people's sense of alarm about it. But there has been a lot of reassurance coming, particularly in the way that -- partly in the way the Brits handled all this, but also in the way that officials here handled it. There seems to be no great fear that something like that is going to happen here, although there's no indication that we here had any advance warning.
Comment from -- havana gila--
Once an ass always an ass. Unbelievable. And Faux News expects us to trust everything that comes out of his warbling piehole.
London police are now confirming that at least 37 people were killed and 700 injured in a series of explosions that ripped through the city's transit system within minutes Thursday morning.
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| The remnants of a bus that exploded near Tavistock Square, central London, Thursday, July 7. (AP photo). |
Scores of people suffered serious or critical injuries such as burns, severed limbs, chest and head injuries from the three explosions that rocked the subway network.
Police said at least two people died from a fourth explosion on a packed double-decker bus. (more)
 |
They have such evil in their heart that they will take the lives of innocent folks. The war on terrorism is on!It makes me truly nauseous that US President Bush is using the London bombing as his self-supported soapbox to spew out his own political agenda. His narcissism at comparing the resolve of the world as "strong" as his rather than speaking for himself really underscores the political expediency in filling the swamp with terrorists. Bush is squandering this golden opportunity to unite with the world and is again drawing the line in sand.
I was most impressed with the resolve of all the leaders in the room. Their resolve is as strong as my resolve.
We will find them and bring them to justice. And at the same time we will spread an ideology of hope and compassion that will overwhelm their ideology of hate.
Bush's latest rationale for maintaining the course in Iraq adventure has been the "flypaper strategy" -- it's better to fight the terrorists over there than at home. Nevermind that the Iraqis never asked to have their country turned into a dangerous den of terrorism, insurgency, violence and death. For war supporters looking for an excuse, any excuse, to justify the continued disastrous American presence in Iraq, the flypaper rationale was as good as any.
Except that it's not working. The war isn't making the West any safer. In fact, it's creating a whole new class of terrorists. Today it was London. Next time it could easily be the United States. And waging the war in Iraq, rather than make us safer, is further motivating Islamic terrorists to strike at the West.
...There are consequences to the mess in Iraq. And today, we're seeing one of them. Unfortunately, it won't be the last.
Last night, I was talking to someone who said, "When people say that Bush is doing a good job against terrorism, I want to hear specifically what he's actually done. What has he done other than give speeches?"Is it inappropriate to bring up 'politics'? Maybe, but it also might be necessary. We are still suffering from the reluctance of Democrats (and the media) to ask hard questions in the wake of 9/11, thus allowing the Right to 'frame' the event - and the response to it - for all time. Basically, Dems foolishly assumed that their goodwill would be matched from the other side of the aisle, that the GOP wouldn't politicize 9/11 if they didn't. Wrong.
The London bombings make one realize just how morally degenerate the attitude of "fighting them over there, so they're not over here" really is. And if you think I'm being inappropriate by bringing up politics and policy, just wait until the Republicans sink their teeth into this. Turd Blossom will do anything at this point...
Hop on over there and help them reach 1 million visitors in time for their third anniversary (July 10)
