Appropriate

How can you stand the silence
That pervades when we all cry?
How can you watch the violence
That erupts before your eyes?
How can you tell us something
Just to keep us hanging on?
Something that just don't mean nothing
When we see it you are gone.
Clinging to some other rainbow
While we're standing, waiting in the cold
Telling us the same old story
Knowing time is growing old.

That was a wonderful remark
I had my eyes closed in the dark.
I sighed a million sighs
I told a million lies, to myself, to myself.

How can we listen to you
When we know your talk is cheap?
How can we ever question
Why we give more and you keep?
How can your empty laughter
Fill a room like ours with joy?
When you're only playing with us
Like a child with a rubber toy.
How can we ever feel the freedom
Or the flame lit by the spark?
How can we ever come out even
When reality is stark?

That was a wonderful remark
I had my eyes closed in the dark.
I sighed a million sighs
I told a million lies, to myself, to myself.

--Wonderful Remark
1983 WB Music Corp/Caledonia Soul Music(ASCAP)
From The Best of Van Morrison.

Had it on the CD player in the truck the other day and it struck me as appropriate on many levels.

BTW, a great album, but I'm a big Van the Man fan.

Toga, toga, toga

Mrs. F is off to New Jersey and it's just me and the dog. Not like anything will change. I sure as hell ain't throwing a party, but it's nice not having to run for the train later. Dancing girls would be nice, but I'd just have to clean up afterward and I'd miss some valuable sleep. Oh well, it'll be just me, the dog, and this beige box. No pun intended. Ha!

Now this is important

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MSNBC Breaking News
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Private manned space mission is successful -
The first privately funded space mission soared 62 miles above the earth Monday.

MOJAVE, Calif. - With a triumphant thumbs-up and a broad grin, the pilot of the SpaceShipOne rocket plane celebrated becoming the first private-sector astronaut to steer his ship into space.

Go read the whole thing here. Privatization of space is a must for humanity to develop. NASA has dropped the ball along time ago, turned into a top-heavy, meandering bureaucracy. It is human nature to break the bonds which stagnate us and space is the next frontier, just as crossing the oceans and the continents were centuries ago. Hopefully, the Ruttan boys and others can get us up there before I'm too old. Congratulations, fellas.

How dare he

Stolen from Jesus' General:

Klinton dishonors Our Leader

Like many of you, I watched Klinton's disgraceful acceptance of responsibility for the Lewinsky Scandal last night on 60 Minutes. He did not try to lie his way out of it or blame it on an underling. It's as if he believes that it's acceptable for a President to admit to making mistakes.

If Our Leader had been in Klinton's position, he'd have done the honorable thing and blamed the White House cigar provisioner. He'd do so with the knowledge that today, Rush would back him up by railing against tobacconists, O'Reilly would be calling for a boycott of wrapper leaf from the Dominican Republic, and Coulter would have killed some elderly Cuban cigar roller in Tampa with a homemade shiv. By next week, no patriotic American would dare voice the slightest doubt about presidential infallibility. That's Bush Era leadership--the kind of leadership we missed during the Klinton years.

Yes, how dare that sex addict [sic] take the moral high ground. Ha!

Campaign finance

If you're planning to give to a campaign (I'm talking Democrats here), one of the best places to figure out where to put your money so it does the most good is Eschaton. Along the left side of his page are links to almost all of the campaigns and committees for President, Senate, and House candidates.

Another good place to follow the races is Daily Kos. If you're a wonk and love polls, Kos does a fine job of keeping up with them and disseminating the latest information.

Something to do while I'm fixing your piece of shit car today. Later.

Thanks for your help, motherfuckers

I never believed we should be in Iraq in the first place, but since we are, I'd like the outcome to be as good as possible. Well, it seems that the Israelis are running their own operations, independent of U.S. oversight, in the Kurdish-controlled areas of Iran, Iraq, and Syria. They are helping the Kurds, but their involvement isn't helping to bring the different ethnicities in Iraq together under one government.

Via Corrente and Seymour Hersh.

By supporting Kurdish separatists, Israel also risks alienating its Turkish ally and undermining attempts to create a stable Iraq. "If you end up with a divided Iraq it will bring more blood, tears and pain to the Middle East and you will be blamed," a senior Turkish official told Mr Hersh.

Read it all here.

Mrs. F heading to Jersey this afternoon so I'll be without adult supervision tonight. Party at my house, provided everybody's out by 8 so I can go to sleep. Ha! I'm getting old. Well, time to empty the dog and head out. I wonder how many people broke their shit this weekend. Have a good day!

Off to the mines.

Michigan

Uh, boys, uh, I know you know all about engines and shit, and while I'm not a NASCAR-type crewchief, I have built my share of race motors over the past 30 years. Listen to me. You cannot run a conventional V-8 at close to ten thousand rpm for an extended period and expect it to last. Hello, McFly!

Conventional valvetrains can't keep up with the increased rpm and eventually something up there fails (lifter, valvespring, rocker arm). It seems that seasoned veterans in the pits and the managers of the engine programs at all the big shops forgot that this week. Three quarters of the way through the Michigan race and they're dropping like flies. Until NASCAR approves the use of overhead cam cylinder heads, better to keep the rpms closer to nine thousand than ten thousand. Silly boys.

The one bright side is that a Penske car (Ryan Newman) won. Don't ask about Rusty Wallace. Seems his engine succumbed to over-rpm too. His season's essentially over. As my parents used to say about the Brooklyn Dodgers, wait until next year.

Now I'm really done

Stick a fork in me

I'm done. Been rather prolific today and now I'm gonna crack a beer and watch the race. Have a good evening, ladies and germs.

Pleasant dreams.

I'm not the only one

There are a lot of NASCAR fans who are pissed about the spate of rule changes since Nextel took over sponsorship from Winston. Even that mental midget Darell Waltrip thinks so. NASCAR is turning into the NBA where, if you look at someone crosseyed you get penalized. Stock car racing is about banging fenders. Think Richard Petty (The King), David Pearson, Cale Yarborough, Junior Johnson, and their feuds and outright aggression, fisticuffs in the pits, and all that good shit. Stock car racing was started by guys like me and my dad, real guys who liked going fast, not this whiny, yuppie-type scum that's taking over the sport.

Oh, and Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there. Unfortunately, mine isn't around anymore. He passed away before we could get some things straight, but I miss him regardless.

9/11 Hearings

Been killing time before the race and watching the 9/11 Commission special on MSNBC. I'm sure they'll rerun the hell out of it, so look for when it's on again and watch it. It's a good recap of the hearings that have stretched over such a long time period.

From Richard Ben-Veniste, Commission member on VP Cheney's insistence on the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, even though 9/11 Commission found none. "If the Vice President has this information, he should make it known to the Commission."

I guess Cheney has himself convinced, but he's beginning to look like a mental patient as he flies in the face of all the evidence. I wish his pacemaker would short out.

Via Glen at A Brooklyn Bridge:

Happily, in addition to the Times, the Commission is also calling Cheney's bluff: show us the proof. Rather elegantly, by means of his own mouth, Dick has put himself in awkward position. Either he and George withheld critical information from the commission, further eroding their credibility (wouldn't that be a surprise?), or they're lying now (same note). And a word of advice, guys: if you do "suddenly" find some proofs lying around [sic], do us the courtesy of making sure the ink is dry. (That means exactly what you think it does.)

Read it all here.

Tax petition

The local Rock & Roll station on Long Island, 102.3 WBAB, has a 'repeal the gas tax' petition going on their website. They've already got the attention of the New York State Assembly and the Governor's office. If you live in NY, it behooves you to sign it here.

Who knows if those idiots in Albany will do anything, but nagging them can't hurt.

Thinking with the little head

As Maureen Dowd explains, both Clinton and Bush are guilty of it, only Bill's little willy never got anybody killed. Well, Hillary might have wanted to kill him while he slept, but 800 troops didn't die because Monica blew him.

The Clinton alpha instinct on Monica, fueled by a heady cocktail of testosterone and opportunism, was the same one that led W. into his march of folly with Iraq. After 9/11, the president, vice president and secretary of defense wanted to go to the Middle East and knock the stuffing out of somebody bad — because it would feel good, because it would put our enemies on notice, and because it would make the president look strong.

Go read it here.

BTW, Mrs. F just walked out of the shower so now I'm beginning to think with my little head.

So?

Whaddaya think about the new format? Easier on the eyes for me.

I'm jealous

Via Wonkette.

So That's Why the Book Took So Long to Finish

Variety doesn't shy away from the shocking headlines:

Clinton blows his own horn

You know what this means: While he doesn't have Monica around anymore, there are still some things he does just because he can. . .

Wish I could do that, but I'd be in traction for weeks!

Yeesh!

This is an email sent to yankeedoodle at Today in Iraq.

Monkey Mail!

From: xxxx@rjia.net
To: yankeedoodle@gmail.com

Subject: you need to put our country down

It would seem to me that you should live elsewhere. This is our country, our President and our code of living standards. If you do not like it....leave it. Our president needs us now and it is really like a spiritual war. We will win, but whose side will you end up on? Those people come over here, use our resources, thanks to people like you, get an education and turn it against us. You apparently are so busy kissing foreign butt that you can't see that will be your permanent job in hell. Learn to defend what you have. They came over here with their ideas of grandiosity and now, they and their tribes are going to reap the benefit of some good ol American kick-butt.

Have I mentioned that I've had it with these fucking Jesus freaks? I might be classified as part of the 'East Coast Intelligensia' (intelligensia, ha!), but Jesus H. Christ! Read what I said about Biblical Literalists. I had one of them tell me once, that if you killed a snake and burned it afterward, you would see the Devil in the smoke. And you wonder why the East Coast Liberals call you morons?

Update 10:55: See what Anna Quindlen has to say on this subject here. She has a calmer disposition and writes far more eloquently than I can without cursing or calling people names.

Gun control

You think the NRA can use this in their next ad? Via The Head Heeb.

An entirely new argument against gun control

The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands appears to have run afoul of the law of unintended consequences with its gun amnesty and confiscation program. The gun confiscations have succeeded to a great extent in calming the violence in the Solomons, but they have also led to an increase in crocodile-related deaths because the islanders no longer have weapons to shoot the man-eating crocs. At the moment, RAMSI and the Solomons government are considering whether to give back some of the guns or institute a crocodile control program.

It would be funny if it weren't so serious.

Barking Spiders

Via South Knox Bubba. Another choice in 2004, the National Barking Spider Resurgence Party.

From their Mission Statement:

We of the National Barking Spider Resurgence Party will not -- unlike our Democrap counterparts -- treat the rule of law like a used kleenex when it doesn't suit our objectives; and unlike our Republican't counterparts, will not legislate morality from the oft-hypocritical halls of Congress. We'll do it over Happy Hour at the local bowling alley, where everyday rationale and morality is more likely to be found. And unlike the myriad of fractionalized third parties, we won't propose totally impractical, moonbeamish programs, such as a world without cars or flushing toilets, 100% taxation on income above $107,000, etc.

We will look at global warming as a threat to the world ice cream supply, however. No price is too high when such threats arise.

Anybody who makes policy over drinks is for me!

This is what I mean

When you take the Bush Administration's claim that regardless of the lack of WMDs, or an Al Qaeda connection, we were doing the humanitarian thing going to war to oust Saddam Hussein. "The torture chambers and rape rooms are closed," President Numbnuts is fond of saying. Fine, even forgetting about the tortures and rapes that occurred at Abu Ghraib on the part of 'Americans'. But if that's the case, why haven't we gone after, aguably, more dispicable tyrants and regimes? From Matt Yglesias:

Sudan

For the record, those folks out there who were so eager for America to involve itself in a little humanitarian do-goodery ought to take a look at a genuine humanitarian emergency. Once upon a time I would have counted myself a strong proponent of the view that we ought to be willing to deploy the American military to try and halt a genocide, but the reality is that the whole Army's in Iraq. That we can't solve all the world's problems was a cliché of the 90s-era debates over humanitarian intervention, but right now we're stretched so thin that we can't solve any of them.

Meanwhile, the government of Sudan somehow got itself on the UN's Human Rights Commission and the European opponents of American hegemony have managed to allow an extremely wealth continent with over 300 million inhabitants to have no real capacity for military action independent of the United States, so even those countries who wisely stayed out of the fray in Iraq can do almost nothing. A lovely world.

And there are other places in Africa, and the Far East, more deserving of U.S. attention than Iraq. But then, they aren't floating on a sea of oil, are they? Had we not squandered our resources and treasure in Iraq, we might be able to help more people who desperately deserve it.

Oops

Mrs. F reminds me that she is not going to Atlantic City on Monday, but to Princeton, N.J. All I know is that I'll have to sleep alone that night. After waking up next to the Mrs. for close to fifteen years, I find I have trouble sleeping when she's away on business. It especially sucks when she's gone for a week at a time, but hey, that's life. She is good at what she does and I support her 100% in her career endeavors. Even if it means her riding on the NYC Subway system and working right across the street from Ground Zero (World Financial Center). Gives me the willies when I think about watching the 2nd plane hit the tower and the flaming engine blow right past her window. I thought I lost her that day and I sorely wanted to put my foot down and force her to find a job somewhere closer to home. It's a good thing I didn't. Her company moved to Ft. Lee, N.J. for 6 months while they rebuilt the place, and I saw the difference in my wife as soon as they went back to WFC. The deperession and funk she was in after 9/11 seemed to lift instantly. She was back in her element, the pointy end, it's what makes her the woman I love. My wife needs to be at the Crossroads of the World, and she thrives on the pressure of the place. Wall Street, the Financial Center, and all that comes with it is her strength, the place she draws her energy from, the place that allows her to shine. As they say, 'if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere'. Not only do I love her more than anything else, but I am also proud of her professionalism, intelligence, and competence. I knew she was capable of greatness when I met her, but she has far exceeded anything I could have dreamt. And the best thing is that she still puts up with me. I'm a lucky dude.

Fucked up beyond all recognition

From the ever-vigilant Melanie over at Just a Bump in the Beltway:

FUBAR

As Handover Nears, U.S. Mistakes Loom Large

Harsh Realities Replaced High Ideals After Many Missed Opportunities

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, June 20, 2004; Page A01

First of three articles

In many ways, the occupation appears to have transformed the occupier more than the occupied. Iraqis continue to endure blackouts, lengthy gas lines, rampant unemployment and the uncertain political future that began when U.S. tanks rolled into Baghdad. But American officials who once roamed the country to share their sense of mission with Iraqis now face such mortal danger that they are largely confined to compounds surrounded by concrete walls topped with razor wire. Iraqis who want to meet them must show two forms of identification and be searched three times.

The Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. entity that has administered Iraq, cites many successes of its tenure. Nearly 2,500 schools have been repaired, 3 million children have been immunized, $5 million in loans have been distributed to small businesses and 8 million textbooks have been printed, according to the CPA. New banknotes have replaced currency with ousted president Saddam Hussein's picture. Local councils have been formed in every city and province. An interim national government promises to hold general elections next January.

But in many key quantifiable areas, the occupation has fallen far short of its goals.

The Iraqi army is one-third the size U.S. officials promised it would be by now. Seventy percent of police officers have not received training. When violence flared across the country this spring, many soldiers and policemen refused to perform their duties because U.S. forces failed to equip them, designate competent leaders and win trust among the ranks.

About 15,000 Iraqis have been hired to work on projects funded by $18.6 billion in U.S. aid, despite promises to use the money to employ at least 250,000 Iraqis by this month. At of the beginning of June, 80 percent of the aid package, approved by Congress last fall, remained unspent.

Electricity generation remains stuck at around 4,000 megawatts, resulting in less than nine hours of power a day to most Baghdad homes, despite pledges from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer to increase production to 6,000 megawatts by June 1.

Iraq's emerging political system is also at odds with original U.S. goals. American officials scuttled plans to remain as the occupying power until Iraqis wrote a permanent constitution and held democratic elections. Instead, Bremer will leave the Iraqis with a temporary constitution, something he repeatedly promised not to do, and an interim government headed by a president who was not the Bush administration's preferred choice.

Iraq = Diminishing expectations and increasing failure. Rat bastids.

Update 08:00: Matt Yglesias has his own take on this subject here.