Positive Press on Iraq – If you type it out, you’re in the money! (by Walter Pincus)

When Utah Protests – Heavily religious, anti-Iraq war…polygamy they hate, I’d jump in if Chloe Sevigny could be one of my wives…otherwise, I’d rather shoot myself in the face at the very thought of it.

NEVER SHOP AT RADIOSHACK AGAIN!!!! – They fired hundreds over EMAIL 

Big Papi is out of the hospital

Bush Declares that US must STAY THE COURSE – - indeed…so much for ‘adapt to win‘ (slogan used last week, must have polled poorly) – - Bush is telling us that America needs to hold on until 2008 so the GOP can start blaming Democrats for these mistakes.

Sonicrusk is wary of bums approaching his stoop for lighters and money

Real Michaud likes Nixon, but hates many many others

And last but not least – let me say today that ‘Off the Wall‘ is one of the best albums EVER produced by mankind!

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:42 PM GMT+4

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This guy is better at his job than I’d like to give him credit for on most days. I’d been reading for a couple months about his collaboration with mayor Bloomberg (NYC) on cutting down carbon emissions, that they’d be attacking it for the sake of mankind and also the chance to shake up those whores in DC. Read the rest of this entry �

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 9:58 PM GMT+4

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I’m just getting into act 3…I’ve been trying to figure out how to relay the significance of seeing this to people who might be inclined to skip it. Maybe its the military experience, but for me, as an American, this is the defining event of my generation thus far. The reality of chaos and the effect it has on the lives of human beings who (for their entire lives) were conditioned up to that point, familiar reality consisted of something like law and order, help when you needed it, the comfort of family…so the experience becomes a part of us, that’s how I see it. When soldiers and marines die at war, it’s the community that surrounds that person who feels it, while the rest of the nation is upset their team lost the night before.

That’s how America reacted to Katrina and its aftermath. It was a TV show.

Answers or plans haven’t materialized…you see, it’s the “free market” that needs to sort this mess out.  So when the next disaster hits, every city in the nation refers to that and decides to close their doors.  You’ll hear, “this is a temporary situation, we appreciate your help!”  -Damn you sleep good that night, and the next, so on-  What happens a year later?  Oh, it’s showbiz government saying this and that, patting itself on the back for what a great job its done.

Freedom medals all around…

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 10:30 PM GMT+4

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With the year past since Katrina as a backdrop, and the current condition of New Orleans, still trash and debris in the streets, still without half of its population, still without consistent electricity (ala Iraq), it’s a good time to take a moment and start wondering what the hell happened to us? And who is our President think he’s kidding with his bullshit this week about “progress” and “the future” (ala Iraq)?

We just released a 70-something year old man from Guantanamo and are sending him back to Afghanistan, apparantly nobody involved with operations down there had any idea of what he was picked up for in the first place. The pentagon says he was an enemy combatant, yet the man can’t walk without something to hold on to. No charge, no evidence of wrongdoing, yet the guy had to rot inside a jail in Cuba for 4 years.

Notice a patern? It’s nonsense like this that convinces me to ride the wagon for a while now and then in terms of politics. There’s a partisan reponse to everything I suppose, but how can anyone be proud of our government these days? A guy like my father would vote Republican even if the GOP candidate on the ticket couldn’t read…I understand that type of voter, but the stream of embarrassments never seem to end with this generation of idiots running Washington DC today.

Seriously…most of them could **** up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Is Osama bin Laden dead yet?

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 12:40 AM GMT+4

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Arrogance and bigotry are finally equaling negative results for dirtbags who dig up hatred for the sake of feeling big in front of a crowd…the ‘mucaca’ insult has managed to vault his opponent into first place according to some new polling. I’ve read a bunch of pages on this guy, and the most interesting was his sister’s account of growing up with him, apparantly he’s a textbook bully, most likely looking down the pike at years of accrued karma on it’s way back to him. After he loses in this election and then in the presidential primary, maybe he’ll get depressed and start drinking…perhaps try to bully the wrong guy, end up found beaten to death somewhere with a poolstick shoved up his ass…I’ll settle for depression and weight gain, but every bully deserves a beating at some point, getting sodomized with sporting equipment is just icing on the cake. Racist prick!

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 12:15 AM GMT+4

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Ended up in Maine these past few days, stayed in York and noticed some interesting things, one being that when driving down main roads in this area of the country, pet groomers outnumber licquor stores 5:1 – an estimation, as I never actually saw a place to pull over for a bottle of whiskey, so it was near beer and lots of laughs with family, the most fulfilling moments of the trip were spent with Heather, Sam and Max, walking the streets of Kennebunkport.  One moment in particular I’d like to share…we were crossing a street and came upon two old ladies holding up anti-war signs, I said ‘thank you’ as we approached, Max began claping his hands, which gave me the feeling that I was really making a difference in the world, that one day my boys are going to teach the world to sing…

Or at least not oversee the deaths of hundreds of thousands like that dipshit Dubya, who was across town, probably asking a youngin’ to pull his finger around the time we made it back to the spot where those old ladies were, but they were gone, probably in cuffs down at the station, booked for ‘hurting rich folks feelings’, a charge that’s worth a $10 fine on most days, but when Big Daddy Evil and his offspring are in the area it’s a felony. 

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 6:25 PM GMT+4

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Of why the font changes three times in the previous post, or why it distorts the rest of the page.  Being that I’m 11 months away from a software engineering degree, it shouldn’t be out of my grasp to figure out what’s wrong, though, without being paid for something, my mind requires incentives far greater than going to bed knowing I’ve mastered the nuance of this blog of mine…I fall asleep with thoughts of problems in coding something due sometime soon for school, and that’s alright – besides the urge to hop out of bed and sit at the computer now and then – or maybe I’m thinking about the boys doing something that makes me smile, or the Patriots, Celtics…many things I can drift off to sleep with, but the font particulars of deadissue.com, it doesn’t get into that rotation right now.  Maybe after I see that Branch has resigned, that it’s week 14 and Seymour-Wilfork-Warren-Bruschi-Vrabel-Colvin are all healthy, maybe then I’ll be able to rely on HTML code.  Until then, I’m taking insomnia seriously…and my ultimate motive behind posting this is that by doing so, the font problems go away somehow. 

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 3:01 PM GMT+4

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Rough-draft fictional character, a music producer…one of my many (when I can find time for it) characters in play right now, though a common story for all of them is hard to come by, I like this guy quite a bit…part of my problem is developing a character and not getting attached to them to the point where I cringe to destroy him or her, destroy being my idea of turning them into a monster of some sort. Anyways, the board has been weak the past few days in terms of new material, so here’s a peek at one of my hobbies and hopefully what I’m able to do full time once I retire…the conversation here is between the producer (italics) and a musician in the group ‘Dip’: Read the rest of this entry �

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:12 PM GMT+4

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Into the local library to complete some school assignments and send them in.  Hiatus for any heavy stuff a few days, I have been working on some fiction I’ll be laying on you in a day or two.  Hope everyone is well and that your sports teams aren’t turning you into the laughing stock of your respective neighborhoods.  Yankees sprawl is a threat to my habitat…I’m in the planning phases of developing an aerosol spray that can take care of this problem. 

But hey – the PATRIOTS on the other hand – aside from Branch not being on the field, this team looks downright deadly at the moment.  Trench warfare will play heavily into our strategy for victory on both sides of the ball, with the opposition screaming for mercy before the 4th quarter most times. 

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 6:31 PM GMT+4

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Would you rather not be able to walk – or – not be able to speak?

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:19 AM GMT+4

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On the ACT College Entrance Exam, it’s like this:

1. Minnesota  2. WISCONSIN (Nick)  3. Iowa

Big Ten country, out of where the Pats 1st round pick Maroney (RB-MIN), Brady, HOBBS, Hochstein, Light, Eugene and VRABEL are from. 

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 1:40 AM GMT+4

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Americans with a particular skin pigment purchased 150 prepaid cell phones for the purpose of reselling them.  The news report this morning was about terrorism and said that the phones could be used to detonate a bomb.  My first impression was that the phones would be sold on the street to a particular brand of criminal, one whose line of work conditions them to fear wiretaps.  Imagine a bookie somewhere gearing up for football season.  His people each get a phone that they then throw out before the next weeks games, making it logistically impossible for law enforcement to get a wire up, due to the response time of the company that makes the phones.  The company says they can turn a request around in 7 business days, and since gambling is about as low as the trafficking of guns or drugs on the FBI’s priority list, the bookie has a failproof system, and the cops’ only hope is to turn out informants and hope for the best.

A person that understands the street can make money in a number of different ways, a lot of them 100% legal.  These guys might need a vendor’s liscense to resell the phones, and they must pay tax on the transactions (you know this never happens).  At best, the feds have them on tax evasion ONLY IF they keep track of these guys, can prove the phones were sold without the profit declared on the individuals’ 1040.

The press is interested in spooking us daily from now until November.  An activity that’s way too similar to what the White House and Republicans plan on doing also from now until then.  The irony here is, that the REAL REASON for someone to purchase 150 disposable cell phones has everything to do with crime…only it’s the types of crime politicians don’t give a shit about.  Drugs, thugs, witness intimidation, loan sharking, forced prostitution, smuggling, black market sales of weapons – all crimes taking place on a larger scale today than they were ten years ago, but because they won’t scare people into voting a certain way, they don’t matter to anyone with the power to stop it.

Legislation that forces these cell phone manufacturers to turn around a request for a wiretap in 24 hours would go a long way towards reducing the viability of this criminal tactic, but I’m sure there are a batch of lobbyists who’ll make sure that never happens.  Which is sad when you think about what the feds actually DID uncover in Michigan – to dig a bit deeper and understand that aside from the detonation of a bomb, these products act as a stone wall to law enforcement, a problem that manages to hinder the safety of Americans, threaten Homeland Security.   

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 4:14 PM GMT+4

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“Well, I like Joe Lieberman, but I support Ned Lamont, because Joe is showing with that regrettable statement that he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it. The fact is that we were attacked on 9/11 by Al Qaeda and its affiliates and its sympathizers, not by Saddam Hussein. And unfortunately Senator Lieberman has supported the Bush Administration’s disastrous strategic approach of getting us stuck in Iraq instead of focusing on those who attacked us. I mean, look at the places that have been attacked: India, Morocco, Turkey, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Somalia, Spain, Great Britain. What does this have to do with Iraq? And Senator Lieberman is stuck on that point. Ned Lamont and I believe that we should refocus on those who attacked us on 9/11 and not simply try to cover our tracks because this was such a very poor decision in terms of the overall battle against the terrorists who attacked us.“  -Sunday Morning on ABC

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 12:05 AM GMT+4

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Now that a few days have passed, political particle dust settled all over my brain, some sections of the tissue have turned red, infected, pulsing with a beat all its own. Scalpel in hand, let’s get after it already, start sifting through this Lieberman-Lamont landfill and see if there’s anything the gulls and vermin haven’t yet gobbled up for themselves. Described as a phenomenon by all sides, this outcome is internal, yet Republicans are the ones pounding the top of the bar, screaming at whoever’s listening with a crazed look in their eyes. This Lamont fellow, according to them, represents the little terrorist in all of us.

Tony Snow linked Lamont’s win in the CT-Democratic primary with the nation’s safety at large, and seemed to predict that such behavior on the part of voters would lead to very bad things. Osama Bin Laden is happy today according to Snow, so maybe they do know where he is, maybe he’s been sitting in on President Bush’s security briefing every morning. The message I’m getting from Republicans about the Lamont victory is that the voters should be ashamed of themselves for non-adherence to abstract concepts and all the extra smoke they’ve added to photos of the twin towers in flames. We’re not watching enough episodes of 24!

Indeed – the problem with voters is they simply don’t pay attention to the news, world events and most important the spin added to these things by Fox News. You see, each of us has a job to do. Scholars point out that this is the first war where Americans haven’t been asked to sacrifice anything individually, which is simply not true! That sacrifice comes in the form of listening to the words of our leader, and voting based on what he tells you. When the leader gives a candidate a kiss on the cheek, that means America is giving the candidate a kiss on the cheek, and your job is to VOTE FOR HIM!

They don’t ask for much, really they don’t. In fact, as long as distractions keep multiplying, the GOP Congress might be able to slip in a few more tax cuts before their power is gone after November. The least you (the voter) could do is cut these poor guys some slack, stop screwing things up for the sake of bullshit concepts like “accountability” and “peace”…I mean, it was the voters who demanded that flag burning, gay marriage, Terri Shiavo and more corporate subsidies be put at the front of the legislative agenda…Republicans would have much rather dealt with health care costs, illegal immigration and war in Iraq, but they acted on YOUR behalf when they pushed all that aside.

Show some gratitude for God’s sake! Oh, and speaking of God, I think that everyone will be pleased to know that the debate over ten commandments plaques being mandated above all government urinals will be debated for three days once Congress opens up for business again, so don’t go worrying about something boring showing up on CSPAN, like the national debt or how our military units aren’t capable of sustaining current troop levels in Iraq according to Army generals. We know that none of it is important to you, and that it’s been long enough trying to piss without those plaques too keep your eyes where they belong.

Hint: Lieberman is IN FAVOR of piss plaques! I hear Lamont pissed ON a plaque once while shooting up his reefers in a ‘coloreds only’ mens room. The man was PROUD of it! He’s a terrorist. Are you?

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 8:53 PM GMT+4

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Boxing in the United States can sometimes make me wish I was Canadian…and I’m feeling like that right now.  HBO on Saturday night had a couple of great fights, two African boxers who both won in my opinion.  The first was scored fairly, the second was a complete farce.  Vernon Forrest vs. Ike Quartey - I finished this one tonight after having watched the first bout live and the first 7 rounds ondemand w/ my sons…at that point I had it 5-2 Quartey, expecting him to slow down, but mostly kind of down knowing that after I put them to bed there wouldn’t be much of a chance that Forrest would be able to make up the difference, at least not by the looks of it.  The glimmer of hope I had in the final rounds being special was that perhaps Quartey would tire as predicted and the contest would get close by the end. 

Clearly, the one punch Forrest landed that had any impact at all was the right uppercut in either round 3 or 4, but after that Quartey tightened up his defense with his gloves and forearms closer together in front of his face, preventing that same punch from hurting him again.  Forrest worked the body, but a hook to the head came back in return almost every time he went there.  Quartey was blocking practically EVERY jab and hook to the head Forrest tried to land.  Not only that, but it wasn’t like Quartey was making all his shots off of retaliation, but instead MOVED FORWARD ALL TEN ROUNDS and landed the more damaging blows from start to finish – - – Compubox had Forrest throwing twice as many punches, yet landing LESS (under 20%)…this was Quartey’s defense showing up in the stats.  Now I mentioned that I’d stoped the taping after the 7th with it 5-2 for Quartey, so from there Forrest gets off his 3rd (by my count) low blow of the fight and loses a point in the 9th, so going into the final round I figured it was a done deal…6-2 at best, I could see a judge giving Forrest 4 rounds if they were drunk, but minus the point deducted for the low blow in the 9th, that should have sealed it for the African fighter.  Quartey won the final round, and the fighters’ body language clearly indicated who won.

It wasn’t even close!  Quartey won it hands down and yet…

Unanimous decsion in favor of Forrest!  I’m so ashamed that tonight I’ve started looking at houses in Toronto…what a cheap representation of this great sport.  I can’t say for sure that it had something to do with where the man was from (Ghana), but then again, that’s the only reason I can fathom such a decision.  On the simplist terms, Forrest was outdone offensively (he landed less punches) and defensively (he landed under 20% and Quartey landed over 45%) AND was moving backwards the entire fight AND had a point deducted for too many low blows, yet all three judges scored it for him anyway.  God Bless America?

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 2:14 AM GMT+4

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Newt Gingrich: “(if the CT insurgency wins)…it will be the beginning of extraordinarily important period in American politics, and in American history.”

Notice that he doesn’t guarantee anything.  The obvious retort to any politician predicting doomsday if we withdrew from Iraq is the fact that everyone chirping about the ‘domino theory’ once we left Vietnam were 100% full of shit.  We’re trading with Vietnam now.  We’re also trading with China and they’re communist…Vietnam isn’t, but communism became someone else’s problem once America finally woke up and realized the military industrial complex was wagging the dog.  Terrorism is no different.

I’ve argued for a long time that terrorism is a criminal enterprise, as it was when Tim McVeigh blew up the building in Oklahoma City.  War is what it’s called by our government, but to put two and two together there, simply look at who benefits from our irrational aggression.  While the politicians who deride “throwing money at” fixing education, eradiating poverty and suring up security – do just that when it comes to the Pentagon – let’s all remember that after Vietnam, nothing like what they warned about happening actually took place. 

Gingrich is taking the opportunity to pretend he’s qualified to call this one way or the other, when in fact he’s a suit with much less credibility when it comes to war than say…

Chuck Hagel: “…(Iraq’s) a hopeless, winless situation…we cannot put American troops, and ask them to do the things that we’re asking them to do in the middle of a civil war.”

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 1:21 AM GMT+4

40 Comments »

In a lot of ways we’re becoming just like the mainstream media with the tendency to treat newscycles like chumlines, with everyone heading in the same direction all the time.  On DailyKOS I posted in a thread about a Lieberman supporter hollaring at Lamont somewhere…the back and forth can be seen in its entirety here, but the one part I want to share here pretty much sums up what’s on my mind:

Adding to the pixels is something I thought about, but this has been bugging me for a while now.  I’m a believer in Howard Dean’s strategy, so it bothers me at times to see so much attention going to one race – AND – the fact that notorious blogs have a tendency to collectively beat something to death while allowing other issues to fly under the radar.

There are times when I question what our values are.  Whether it’s truly “newsworthy” that a Lieberman supporter acted a fool in public – compared with what could have been posted in its place, like the words of a soldier home from Iraq without legs, or what a family member of a Sago victim thought about the news that oxygen tanks are still not in place – or perhaps what that same person thinks about industry reps being put in charge of government regulation.

The large column on this front page is read by a lot more people than the diaries, and with that in mind, I think that strategically it would be prudent to highlight our collective values and how they are not being represented by those in charge today.  Get more into ideology and concepts like “the little guy getting stepped on” and resist the urge to milk something all political junkies have already made up their minds about.

These writers are doing us a favor with their dedication to this community, but the overall health of this phenomenon requires that we not only remain aware of what’s going on, but to more importantly start coming together on what specifically happens the day after we take over.  

When victory is achieved, what happens then?  I suppose that pointing out the idiocy of our opponents will continue to be entertaining, but these people we send to Washington will have an opportunity to change things for the better…it’s never guaranteed that they actually will, or that if they even do whether their deeds will coorelate with concepts that actually matter to Americans.  

Right now we’re winning in certain places more because of the incompetence of Republicans than the strength of our ideas.  In order to make sure what we gain can be retained in the long run, it’s going to take a LOT more than identifying what we’re against and going after it.  

We’re losing crucial time right now by beating our chests and celebrating the fact that we’re “players”, begining to taste our relevence and power, and ignoring the larger matter of what happens after the votes are counted.  

These stories aren’t that important in the long run…articulating and KNOWING what we believe in is a much larger matter.  Discussion in a thread on this level is worth a lot more than 200 comments on a story about some jerk yelling at a Democrat we like.  That’s all I’m saying.

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 1:24 AM GMT+4

21 Comments »

The term has some negative conontations, but that only speaks to a lack of understanding of what a ‘jailhouse lawyer’ represents within the many cultures of humans all over the globe today.  In basic terms, a jailhouse lawyer is a little person who sticks up for his or her fellow little people for the sake of something inside of them, regardless of how badly it will ensure they are fucked over personally in the end.  Jesus was perhaps the most notorious jailhouse lawyer in history.  In prison a jailhouse lawyer generally is someone of higher intelligence than their peers, who utilizes the collective plight of those around them to further a cause against `the system’.  On the street, a jailhouse lawyer could be someone that organizes their coworkers towards forming a union, or perhaps someone who sets up a community watch in their crime infested neighborhood.  To come into contact with such a person may lead you to inspiration, anger, bewilderment or envy depending on what part of history your life existed during and where.  For the vast majority of people on this earth, silence is a choice most attractive, especially for those of us who have something to lose.  Fear is the jailhouse lawyer’s #1 enemy. Read the rest of this entry �

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 11:52 PM GMT+4

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(last night)there’s a man somewhere sweating his life away down some bleak highway with a gas can and nowhere to fill it, and here I am in summer heat without a clue about how to get on the internet to do what i have to do, what is required of me at this time besides throwing down cash for network cards and beer, like a fool i’ve been dicking around with comcast and their bullshit, a whole lot of my own bullshit and the threatening notion that to get by in this brief portion of life it’ll take a new computer or another new part to put into the old one, of course i still owe, we all do, but me especially since i’m officially the duct tape douchebag with a system too old to breathe, let alone connect me to the world outside of this dank basement room full of particles in the air…but now i’m just acting foolish, as i’m known to do.
i owe – it’s as simple as that.
having known this for quite a while now, it’s only reality catching up with me here, letting me know that oil changes alone will not cut it, that for christ’s sake i need to treat this bump in the road like a CONSUMER goddamnit!  the flag outside of my house has stars and stripes, so it’s about time i got with the program and forked over that dough for something new, like i’m supposed to, so years from now they all won’t laugh at me like they do now, jeering and sniveling around my possessions like teenagers talking about how my existence is “so last year” after which they all laugh in unison and here i am stuck nonetheless with noone but Jesus to save me…and even then i’ve still got to find a way to get on the internet so i can finish this assignment for this class i need credit for to receive the diploma, the piece of paper that indicates i’m not as stupid as i look or sound, but in fact could be just the guy to squeeze a few years of paychecks out of you before the cat is finally out of the bag, until it is obvious to everyone that a grave mistake was made along the way, perhaps one that could cost the firm some well earned prestige, this lout trying to fix a machine more complicated than his own brain as if it were a toaster or a bicycle missing a chain.
shit…just jiggle the somabitch, give it few hard raps on the head then maybe see if it’s thirsty.

Posted by Al Swearengen as Words at 10:43 PM GMT+4

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