War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
If not for the way-pissed-off feeling I have, coupled with a sense of nothing-you-can-do despair, maybe this would be sad, or least wouldn’t appear so freakin’ obviously stupid: Mr. Haas walked on, his pink shirt a burst of color on a slate-gray afternoon. The words came haltingly. “You have to understand,†he said, “there are…
Ironic in an age of such brain-busting technology, such a simple device can cause such horror. Four US soldiers were killed last Sunday in a roadside IED blast in eastern Afghanistan, three of those from the Illinois National Guard — 11 from its ranks have now died since the unit arrived in country last September.…
Today six years ago, one of the most dumb-ass and dangerous operations in all of history started up and despite all kinds of processes to the contrary, is still going full banana with no end in sight. Just as the eyeballs of the whole US was focused Wednesday morning on DC — AIG CEO Edward…
Gail Collins, who writes for the New York Times editorial pages, has penned a right-on, nail-’em-to-the-wall piece this morning on the AIG/banking/finance clusterf**k of a freakin’ mess. Collins is way-pissed: Angry. So very, very angry. Unable to speak due to mega-anger washing over every pore and fiber of my being. Anger is in. (Hope’s so…
In the past few years, a lot of people and organizations who should have been the standard bearers for news gathering and reporting have dropped the ball big time — Journalism sucks nowadays. Despite all kinds of media available, the exciting journalistic genre of “investigative reporting” has nearly disappeared off the mainstream radar. Except sadly…
The new normal for Republicans exemplified by such goings on: Inverness Police say former Cook County Republican Chairman Gary Skoien admitted having two prostitutes in his children’s playroom when his wife walked in on him early Sunday morning. The allegation is in a domestic battery report from Skoien, 55, against his 36-year-old, 5-foot-4-inch, 110-pound wife.…
Last graph in Al-Jazeera‘s report on Tuesday’s shooting in south Alabama: “The right to own guns has been fiercely defended in the US since the country’s civil war in the 19th century, and they are widely available for purchase for reasons of self-defence and hunting.” (Residents of Samson, Ala. Illustration found here). Samson, Ala., Mayor Clay…
After nearly a year, an arrest warrant was issued Wednesday for Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, charging the guy with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The good Mr. President, however, told the International Criminal Court to literally stuff it, and then performed a kind of nasty-wacko dictator routine: Speaking on Tuesday ahead of the announcement, Mr…
Been there, done that. President Obama’s recent order to put 17,000 more US GIs in Afghanistan may be a move made too late, or in light of history, a shift toward disaster regardless of the number of boots on the ground. Despite conflicting opinions from the Afghan people, Obama should also take stock in what…
Why the US is losing the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan population: Between 1-2am on the rainy night of 16 January 2008, a large number of international military personnel wearing desert camouflage surrounded the house of two brothers living in a two-family house in Kandahar. According to various family members, the soldiers knocked loudly…