War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Yesterday — Friday — was World Humanitarian Day. I had no idea. Of course, I also had no idea last Tuesday was the 34th anniversary of Elvis’ death, until it was ludicrously brought to my attention by one Miss Mickie Bachmann. Sad state of affairs — the human suffering currently rocking some parts of the…
Even as quick downloads of extreme weather have become the ‘new normal‘ in the US — baseball-size hail yesterday in Nebraska, and drought conditions have spread to 12 percent of the country — and even as more reports come about global warming, any kind of fix is near-about impossible. A major problem is the blow-hole…
Even as big chunks of planet earth have undergone some extreme weather recently — right now there’s a climate-change-influenced furnace blistering the US heartland — some dumb-ass, and way-dangerous people have continued to deny the obvious, with the latest flack coming from GOP nit-twits who think they should be president. And, really, for some crazed…
(Illustration found here). Yesterday, I put another $20 worth of gas in my Jeep, this time at $3.99 a gallon, which is a dime drop since the last time a couple of weeks ago. Oil prices, after making a drastic dump early last week, are apparently working back upwards again. From liveoilprices this morning: In…
Seemingly so long ago: Before the war with Iraq, Powell bluntly told Bush that if he sent U.S. troops there “you’re going to be owning this place.” Powell and his deputy and closest friend, Richard L. Armitage, used to refer to what they called “the Pottery Barn rule” on Iraq: “You break it, you own…
Left my post for just a week and imbecilic chaos ensues. As if in a fevered nightmare, the peoples of the world, and especially US peoples have taken complete leave of any known sense, and have fully and absolutely embraced bat-shit crazy. On the far side of Wall Street, which had the wildest ride in…
Home from the holiday — nearly a decade since I’d had one of those ‘paid vacations‘ and it was a most-awesome trip. Since not a real trusting sort, and with my Jeep Comanche currently being in a most-mysterious mechanical condition (to me, anyway), I journeyed south by AmTrak last week to visit a couple of…
Today starts the first official vacation I’ve had in years — the last a near-decade ago while working for a newspaper — and the feeling is already weird. I’ll not be posting again until most-likely next weekend as this ‘vacation‘ is the first time I’ve been disconnected from the online world for any length of…
In a time so awash in dramatic events, especially the last couple of weeks and the debt ceiling/financial markets bombast — worse Wall Street week in three years, the US downgraded from AAA to AA+ — and this morning came reports of 31 US GIs killed in an Afghan helicopter crash, a commemoration of a…
(Illustration found here). Yesterday’s suck hole on Wall Street is most-likely a harbinger of an anxious future. Scared of all kinds of money-entangled shit, the stock market cratered more than 500 points, the Asian markets following with the European markets this morning still tracking downward. Oops, we were wrong: “The conventional wisdom on Wall Street…