War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Fear is a soft sounding word, nothing scary about it, at least until some circumstance is attached. Last week, my first post on fear concerned the quiet, unassuming fright in the storing of mega-dangerous spent nuclear fuel at reactor sites — fear without example. Although the message is low key — all that radioactive material piling…
News watching is a curious obsession. Among the many other neurotic proclivities living in my brain-matter’s attic, most likely the deep-set roots for this constant need for situational awareness is a fear of missing something — missing the bus, missing one of the kids’ birthdays, missing an appointment, missing a vital door key, even missing…
Insane or not: Why would the US shackle itself to a place that’s been called the, ‘graveyard of empires,’ and where most of the world’s heroin has its birth? Or as Marie asked: “Uh, he went out the window. Why would someone do that?” Yes, why indeed. So why with all the shit, would bullet…
Not! A new Gallup poll indicates a majority of US peoples don’t trust the mass media — Trust in the media is now slightly higher than the record-low trust in the legislative branch but lower than trust in the executive and judicial branches of government, even though trust in all three branches is down sharply…
(Added stuff below) News this morning that one of the great assholes of our time (on the rock-face with Dick Cheney), damn-dumb Don Rumsfeld, will release his “autobiography” early next year and will tell the tale straight — as if the sonofabitch could say anything with a straight face. The book’s working title? “Known and…
Killing people from afar has always been the safest bet in any kind of murderous situation — the longbow ended the age of chivalrous knights, and the firearm put the archer out of work — even a rock in a sling could put bad shit on a much bigger, uglier opponent. In fact, an entire…
Massive toxic leaks into the environment can be horrible, whether it be the Gulf of Mexico or a horrible, incompetent-run war in Afghanistan. On Sunday, WikiLeaks (my laptop won’t load the group’s website) released a shitload of formerly-classified documents on the Afghan conflict, and the result ain’t pretty. From the the New York Times: The…
Must-read on the twisted-horror of the US Senate health care bill at FireDogLake. Politics and the human condition.
One really mind-boggling particular nowadays is the continual use of hypocritical-irony; creating a two-faced lie through the clenched-teeth of a smile. Verbal irony is distinguished from situational irony and dramatic irony in that it is produced intentionally by speakers. For instance, if a speaker exclaims, “I’m not upset!†but reveals an upset emotional state through…
UPDATE/ADD-ON BELOW Yes, the Edwin Starr song paraphrased is the counterinsurgency of fighting dumb-shit wars. Last month on PBS‘ “Frontline,” an interview with Andrew Bacevich, a retired US Army colonel and a level head in this era of military idiots. He’s also a professor of international relations and history at Boston University, a Vietnam veteran and…