War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
In the last couple of years, the US foreign take on the disaster in Afghanistan is to junk on another acronym, ‘Af-Pak,’ in an apparent effort to link Pakistan with the war being lost in the region. And Af-Pak is more than a mouthful. Despite dumping some $1.5 billion a year in aid to Pakistan,…
Tony Blair’s speech before the UK’s House of Commons, March 18, 2003: “It will determine the way in which Britain and the world confront the central security threat of the 21st century, the development of the United Nations, the relationship between Europe and the United States, the relations within the European Union and the way…
Fright Friday: John McCain ratcheted-up national apprehension when on Friday, Aug. 29, 2008, he named Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate, blubbering: “She’s got the grit, integrity, good sense and fierce devotion to the common good that is exactly what we need in Washington today.” And from that frightful fatal day, US politics…
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, wrote in 1993 that in the last century (the 20th, if you don’t remember) 167 million to 175 million men, women and children had their “lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage.” And, of course, the first decade in this new century has been nothing but war. (Illustration…
As the GOP pulls his head out of the ass of dumb, they seem ready to crush that horror of President Obama’s health care reform — as Republicans dub it, “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act” — and have it at the top of its so-called agenda. The Tucson shooting and its heated talk…
As the US comes to grips with the plain idea that we’re a gun-wielding, dangerous society, and despite all the comfy talk about “civility,” from President Obama to Rep. John ‘The Boner’ Boehner, the culture created this past decade will not allow it. Hilarious — Horse walks into a bar, bartender asks: “Why the long…
One of the most amazing items within the horror of the Tucson shooting this past weekend is the abundance of firearms found in the US and how a whole, dumb-ass shitload of people think it’s their absolute right to carry one around, and, use it if necessary. Guns are part of the American heritage —…
Even as the news of the world continues to play out, the shooting last Saturday in Tucson keeps it fingers tight on my brain. Involved within this tragedy is a mural of how the US has found itself in an intractable vise of how to wiggle out of this horror — guns and nasty-mouthed assholes…
In the wake of Saturday’s Tucson shooting, it’s hard to find any kind of humor in the horror that’s been coming from the right side of the political aisle the last couple of years — the Safeway slaughter an incident indicating a mangled/reversed ‘put your action where your mouth is‘ kind of event. When you…
‘Peace upon earth!’ was said. We sing it, And pay a million priests to bring it. After two thousand years of mass We’ve got as far as poison-gas. — Christmas: 1924, Thomas Hardy (Illustration found here). In shame, the US has become another asshole nation. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the absolute contrary, the NATO/US…