War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
All the blubbering coming from broadcast news last night on the death of Walter Cronkite yesterday made me want to grab a barf bag and run away. These talking twit-heads on TV are nothing but smoke and mirrors — not at all connected to the news business, but a shadow, a sham and shit-long-way from…
End of trust and straight-talk – Walter Cronkite died today at age 92.  (Illustration found here). In memory, Ben Bradlee with a piece posted today in Newsweek on Cronkite and Watergate: In October 1972, Cronkite devoted two segments, back to back, to the Watergate story. The first was 14 minutes, the second eight. I think that second night…
I didn’t think the Emmys had the grapes — not like that time they nominated Vince Edwards: He’s just a damn doctor, Jim. (Illustration found here). Who said Seth MacFarlane is imbecilic? Go ahead, you homo, tell me and I’ll trim his toenails with an axe. A nomination for Best Comedy was heaped upon Family Guy this…
Two US marines were killed Saturday in southern Afghanistan, two more died Monday, while the UK lost eight soldiers in a swift, 24-hour period at the end of last week — a war getting worse and already in apparent bad need of more boots on the ground. An ironic scenerio when coupled with the recent death…
Last fall, I read Frederick Forsyth’s The Afghan, which contains a view of the riot/battle at Qala-i-Jangi fort in November, 2001, exposing the US public to a view of some ferocious insurgency fighting in those panic/dream-days just after 9/11. A work of fiction, but Forsyth’s novel has more truth in it than what the US…
As the US slogs its way through two disastrous wars, the ones doing the fighting are killing themselves. At record numbers, 88 so far this year, 21 more than the same time in 2008: “Every soldier suicide is different and tragic in its own way,†said Brig. Gen. Colleen McGuire, director, Army Suicide Prevention Task…
SOS (same-old-shit) — blame outside influences, but this time with a twist. Instead of the standard Great Satan of the US, it’s the UK: In his speech during Friday prayers, Khamenei played on the historic suspicions many Iranians have of Britain by hinting at its involvement in the demonstrations and describing it as “the most…
Still more grim news, but today’s particular sack of shit is more ethics and morals than anything else. Three stories that reflect our times — strange/bad and getting worse — and how lopsided situations have become as if a giant screw is being tightened down. The first item concerns a near-invisible US horror — coal ash dump-ponds,…
Just as I get my Jeep Commache finally running right and back on the road — a near-two-year traumatic odyssey — fuel prices at the pump are starting to go up again, rising 20 cents in less than a month. Here in northern California, we’re now paying $3.25 a gallon, well above the national upwardly-mobile US…
Still more bad news from the war on weather. Changes in climate the next few years will create a disaster scenario beyond even the old chesnut of “biblical proportions” as all kinds of bad shit will force the mass movement of many peoples. From Agence France-Presse today (via Raw Story): Tens of millions of people…