War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
As someone growing up in the US deep south, anytime there’s any mention of tornadoes gives me a deep, frightfully-shocked desire to run, run far away — even just reading about crazed funnel-clouds gives me heart ache. And once again, according to CNN: Residents in Joplin, Missouri, braced for news of fatalities Monday after a…
US peoples are a resilient breed. The great American Dream still lives, but only within a nightmare of sleepless fantasy. James Truslow Adams coined the phrase, American Dream, in his 1931 book, The Epic of America: “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity…
Overburdened or maybe in need of more war? (Illustration found here). After the killing of Osama bin Laden, about any near-sane person would recommend a kind of slow down in the worldwide war on terror, at least allow US GIs some breathing room — and not just taking a quick break loaded down with equipment…
Juxtaposition a bit, and, bingo: The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we…
A whole shitload of US peoples have nothing between their ears, except maybe emotions placed there by an incompetent, corrupt media and in reality, are like dumb-ass sheep responding to the most-lowest of hysteria. This past week is a shameful example. Even as climate change is wrecking havoc upon the US — unimaginable flooding along…
Last Thursday, I put $20 worth of gas in my Jeep — Union-76 at $4.45 a gallon for regular, and about the norm for this particular region of northern California. One wonders when last week’s oil-price nosedive will be reflected at the pump. From liveoilprices: Brent crude oil futures for June 2011 delivery ended the…
“You can’t be afraid of words that speak the truth. I don’t like words that hide the truth. I don’t like words that conceal reality. I don’t like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth,…
“The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history.” — Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, 2005 The late Gen. Odom — he died in June 2008 — was one the earliest outspoken critics of George Jr.’s horrible foray into Iraq, astutely commenting in 2007: “The…
“They gonna make him outta be a martyr.” — liquor store customer The above quote came from just one of a ton of customers at my liquor store yesterday, all expressing some form of jubilee at the death of Osama bin Laden and offering a wink-wink at how life will now somehow return to normal.…
Since 9/11, social media has become today’s platform for expressing news and views. A sign on Facebook aptly summed President Obama’s political rejoinder to Republican provocateur Donald Trump: “Sorry it took me so long to get you a copy of my birth certificate. I was too busy killing Osama bin Laden.” Meanwhile, on Twitter, a…