AT&T’s Net Neutrality Video

For more background on all this, you can see the documentary I posted a few weeks ago:

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What if Israel had turned back?

(by Tom Segev – JERUSALEM) Forty years ago, on the morning of June 5, 1967, Jordan launched an artillery attack on the Israeli part of Jerusalem. In reaction, Israel conquered the Arab sections of the city as well as the West Bank.  History is full of “what ifs,” and historians should not indulge in such speculation. But journalists may. What if Israel hadn’t taken East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the Six-Day War? Would the Palestinian situation have found some solution and would Israel be living at least in relative peace with its neighbors? Would Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism have been avoided?

Perhaps. The alternate history is not as inconceivable as one might think. Leading Israeli policy planners had determined six months before the Six-Day War that capturing the West Bank would be bad for the country. Recently declassified Israeli government documents show that according to these policy planners, taking over the West Bank would weaken the relative strength of Israel’s Jewish majority, encourage Palestinian nationalism and ultimately lead to violent resistance. Continue reading

Posted in History | 3 Comments

Tomorrow

sad day

Not only does Hillary stand in front of the first one, but ABC News manages to get it wrong another way on the same page.
You know that each of these mistakes made their way past a number of eyes. 50 years ago neither of these mistakes would have made it through, but today…WITH spellchecker, they both make it through. See if at least the article mistake is fixed by now (ABC News).

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Asante’s Holdout Begins

asante samuel

(BostonGlobe) Asante Samuel: “I’m not coming to camp. I’m not showing up until the 10th week [of the season]. I feel unappreciated. The way they’re treating me is just wrong.” ~~ He added the ‘week 10’ thing, which is original. Will we have 3 first round picks for next year? I’d rather have Samuel locked up for 2-3 years, but as I explained earlier:

(Asante Samuel – 1/9/07) “There are plenty of them going here or there each offseason, but the “shut-down” cornerbacks in this league are few and far between. What results of course is maximum 7 year contracts with signing bonus cash entering the player’s bank account in 5 million dollar chunks or more on the first day of training camp. Asante Samuel has his eyes on just that heading into the divisional round of the playoffs. With 11 interceptions under his belt so far, the chances of a holdout…are probably higher than Samuel receiving that kind of a contract from Bill Belichick.

Posted in Sports | 5 Comments

Cavs-Spurs

Bruce Bowen ages a year in this series vs. Lebron, and the team that can figure it out consistently on defense and hit open shots will prevail. I was enlightened by something I read earlier today:

(CavsBlog) Reason to Believe #1: Cleveland is 2-0 against the Spurs this year. The Cavs played San Antonio twice this season. The first was the second game of the season way back in November (box score) and the second was the day after New Years’ (box score).

Posted in Sports, Video | 2 Comments

Phish – Down With Disease > Frankenstein – 9/14/99

Boise State University ~ the entire second set is a masterpiece. My #1 favorite bootleg for years, and here’s one part of it. Hard to pick which one to feature here, but I had to go with the energy on DWD and then a ferocious rendition of Frankenstein.  Notice how Trey signals to Page and Mike after DWD (the walk), and also Fishman’s ‘One of these days…’, something that ran with the credits in an episode of Sopranos last year (from my favorite Pink Floyd album):

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Banned from Right Wing News

Update 8PM: After simply choosing a new username (kent brockman) and email, I was able to create a new account, then post for the rest of the day. My main point in all of this was to perhaps warn Mr. Sanchez of the fact that the GOP has already tossed him aside, and to be careful about going into this new phase with high expectations of what will come of it. His celebrity status is enough for Right Wing News to work hard at making him feel like a big shot, because…let’s face it, they haven’t got much else going on over there from the looks of it. In fact, if you scroll down the front page a little ways, you’ll come across a post that contains 4-5 links, which they urge you to click on. Cyber-panhandling…if that phrase hasn’t been made famous yet, then this is a perfect opportunity to introduce it into our language.

Oh – so after a number of hours, one of the storm troopers is still thinking that kent brockman is Hal Kimball, and I’ve already said my piece, so I help the poor guy out and explain the obvious, that deadissue and kent are the same person and have been all along. My IP address has now been blocked. Heh – not bad. ~~

Matt Sanchez is a blogger in Iraq, and he’s posted a rant about how the mainstream media is too chicken-shit to leave the Green Zone (he apparently is notified of the activities of the entire media apparatus in the country on a regular basis)…stop me if you’ve heard this one before from a right-winger…and so he is debunking news articles, one in particular about a suicide bombing that was reported by the Wall Street Journal, without facts or a follow-up to the news division or even a single word from the article itself. You’re just supposed to take his word for it, and that is precisely what 99/100 readers of Right Wing News are prepared to do. Here’s a link to the Sanchez post, ‘Embed Matt Sanchez Reports From Fallujah‘.

I was able to post comments up until I submitted this (went into moderation and so I posted a comment that showed up on the site – meaning that, I wasn’t banned until they read the following): Continue reading

Posted in Al Swearengen, Military, Politics | 24 Comments

Out of ideas?

“At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001 ], and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country” – Dennis Milligan, Arkansas Republican Party Chairman

H/T nkz83

Posted in Politics, Words | 2 Comments

Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham (late 60s)

Outstanding find, Thank God For YouTube!!! Part 2 is below the fold. (H/T Andrew Sullivan, hockey assist Your Daily Awesome)

Continue reading

Posted in Religion, Video | 3 Comments

Deangelo teaching Wallace & Bodie about chess

From season 1 of The Wire – sitting in the housing project courtyard, “The Pit”…relating chess to the drug game. Three great characters, not able to know all about that from this clip alone, but it delivers nonetheless:

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Journal ~ December 2000

GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY ~ of methods such as specific manipulation of the body and mind’s emotions as well as its ability to speak to you using signs & language bop that will pop loud or soft depending on how good you’ve been. When it’s tallied, how much did you – affect – infect – kill – produce – accumulate – steal – keep – burn – learn – love – share share – lose ~~

Hunkered over this night’s product – words, words and more words have provoked my right shoulder blade into organizing a non-peaceful protest against my body ~~

Persephone theory – thought if all she ate was 4 then I’m sure the bitch could have gone without – but I kind of like the idea that a woman is responsible for the existence of winter ~~

old man downstairsMy apartment is the only one decorated with Christmas lights for blocks. It’s a good feeling to drive up at night, but I’m fearing burglary now more than ever. The weird guy downstairs would probably figure it out though as during most of the time he’s home you can expect a bolt out of his door upon hearing footsteps…but seeing that I’m the one being robbed they’d probably just kill him and get away with it all. The guy bugs the hell out of my friends when he jumps out of his door like that, and he definitely frightens the girls. Just as well I guess as most of the time all anyone brings here is the potential to make a mess that I end up cleaning every time, but maybe if I related the lights-burglary thinking to him, he’d stay inside just in case. Surely what’s going to go down is the opposite of what I hope for ~~

Posted in Al Swearengen, Words | 2 Comments

Hillary Convo From Elsewhere

(from Control Congress) preussow Says: Al, how can she (Hillary) lose you, she keeps changing the stance on the audience and surely at one point she hit your button.

Al Swearengen Says: Nah – I expect all politicians to lie on the campaign trail, as it has always been that way (no magical place in world history exists where this wasn’t the case), but Hillary is so full of sh*t compared with Obama, Biden, Dodd…I tend to go through a loop where I’m settled on Obama, then decide to think of him as the worst of the worst for a while to see what it’s like without him in the running, and the politicians who have been around in Congress for so long just get me feeling even worse, and right-wing talk radio helps out with this experiment, as apparently Obama is really a terrorist with half a brain, big nigger lips and no work experience…

hillary says hiI can’t get around it. Hillary just makes me feel like a consumer, and Obama makes me feel like an American. Edwards used to be that guy on TV asking if you’ve ever been injured in an accident that wasn’t your fault…I’m not done with him just yet, but it is something that makes me feel like a mark. Biden is my favorite Senator out of the bunch, and he’s probably the smartest guy in the race from both sides. What he’ll have to do along the lines of (political) sex for money along the way is bound to make me sad, because it is beneath him really…to have to go through all this, like it’s really worth something to voluntarily turn yourself into a whore in the face of such damning odds against you ever actually being “the one”…

Hillary sucks. What will happen is, Obama will have a lead going into a big primary day, get shot in the face by some redneck and die on the podium somewhere, and Hillary will win because of it.

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Journal ~ September 2000

This here is a bit of some journal I’d found a couple weeks ago, long after remembering it was written or still in existence. Very engrossing for me since then, picking it up and catching a glimpse of Al, age 21. Thought I’d drop a couple portions here and there, nothing deep…there’s a lot here, so I basically just opened up a few minutes ago and decided to post whatever was there.

My discussion of things I’m going to write is right in line with my discussions of things I’ve already kicked out ~ Sonic’s transcription is vital now, as I can’t remember a damn thing about what I wrote even a year ago – I imagine it’s good, about as good as it is now I suppose ~ All I’ve really acquired is perception and a problem ~~

Cool PictureI’m through with the match-making racket for good now – Bobby couldn’t have been for real about Julie, couldn’t have been real about anything ~ and my ability to judge a person’s character must not apply to high school students who’ve eaten too much acid ~~

(about 20 days later, Roberta is a roommate) Roberta’s drive for the truth was sickened by her constant contradiction regarding her feelings – her middle name was contradiction, and such a multitude of that viscous swill in anyone’s head is bound to aggravate everyone they are close to – nothing computed logic-wise…ever, it was always a problem (i.e. boyfriend) ~ we’ll use the boyfriend. He’s this rat-like, stingy, selfish bastard who does nothing but burden her and everyone else around him ~ she’s fed up one day & confides in yours’ truly. Agrees with me that he needs to go, for hours and hours she elaborates on how shitty he is & how he needs to go and no more than a day later here they are again ~~

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Colbert at the WH correspondent’s dinner

This one is like the Zapruder film – destined to be viewed millions of times by several generations of Americans. The shock-value with both is what links them together in terms of their popularity and staying power. Aside from the man sitting about 10 feet away from him though, Colbert put on a clinic here that must have been widely admired throughout the comedy world. Whether it needed to be done or not, this film redefines the role that comedy plays in our democracy, and I can’t help but remember Bill Hicks as I watch this once again. There’s a piece of Bill’s genius that can be heard in the voices of so many comedians today, but in Colbert’s performance here, it is very thick, like you can almost picture him thinking the same exact things if he were still alive…this one’s in memory of Bill Hicks:

Posted in Comedy, Politics, Video | 2 Comments

Bush talks crazy to a reporter

This 2 minute clip is one you cannot afford to miss!

Posted in Comedy, Video | 3 Comments

Soldier Speaks Out; Military Funerals Turn Wholesale

blue man in a red districtBlue Man who blogs on Blue Man in a Red District is doing great things in support of the military these days. Before I had the chance to highlight this first story, there was a second one that blew me away.

A Soldier Speaks Out: No wonder the military elites have worked to silence these hero’s. They provide an accurate first person account of what exactly is going on in Iraq. This recent post by Alex provides greater perspective on the clusterfuck in Iraq.

Monthly memorial to replace individual soldier funeral: Fort Lewis was my favorite duty assignment of all. Not only did I serve in a great unit, the 1st Battalion 23rd Infantry “Tomahawks”, but I enjoyed the mild winters and summers, as well as the scenery of Mt St Helens, Puget Sound and other west coast treasures…Soldier from Fort Lewis are dying in such high numbers that the post is unable to perform individual ceremonies.” From the Post Commander:

“As much as we would like to think otherwise, I am afraid that with the number of soldiers we now have in harm’s way, our losses will preclude us from continuing to do individual memorial ceremonies,”

Posted in Military | 2 Comments

10 Things You Shouldn’t Know

surgery“Poor people go to hospital for minor surgery of some kind, abdominal surgery, or for women gynecological surgery, and come out of the operation with a longer recovery rate and a larger scar than expected. They learn later on that while they were in for this minor surgery a kidney was taken at the same time.” (1)

A new Dutch reality show from the producers of Big Brother, features 10 contestants competing for 1 kidney. (2)

Another reality show by those same producers, Fat Teens Can’t Hunt, will see 10 overweight British teenagers sent to Australia’s outback to live and eat in the wild. (3)

drunk groomAn elephant in eastern India has sparked complaints from motorists who accuse it of blocking traffic and refusing to allow vehicles to pass unless drivers give it food. (4)

Villagers at a wedding in eastern India decided the groom had arrived too drunk to get married, and so the bride married the groom’s brother instead. (5)

A man cut off his penis with a knife in a packed London eatery. (6)

An overweight inmate was executed by injection after a delay of about 90 minutes while prison medical workers struggled to find suitable oral sexveins in his arms. (7)

Iraq’s president heads to U.S. to lose weight and hopefully improve his overall health. (8)

All men who receive a Prostate Cancer Screening outside the ballpark will receive two free tickets to a future Milwaukee Brewers game. (9)

Oral sex linked to throat cancer – “worse than tobacco” (10)

Posted in Al Swearengen, Comedy, Words | 3 Comments

Spam Net Too Wide

FYI – bernie kosar and a few others…my spam filter managed to catch one of my own comments and in reviewing the contents I noticed several others that should have gone through.  I’ll be checking this daily from now on, so if you’ve been frustrated with comments not posting, rest assured, I’m on it.  Sorry about that!

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Playoff Heartburn

Bad feelings in the captain’s chair last night, all about this recognition of something I’d denied a few times already this year, this biased mind clinging onto hope for a higher peak yet undiscovered, though realistic the entire time about how much extra juice could actually be injected into the bloodstream from the addition of Chris Webber, the Pistons have lost something along the way, and while I wasn’t made to be more optimistic by anything I saw this season, there wasn’t much of a doubt that they’d handle whatever came at them in the East and struggle in the finals. The best that most teams in this league can hope for is a realistic outlook like that.

chaunceyThe fear hadn’t crept in to stay until last night. It was hard to watch Chauncey Billups single-handedly blow the game in the final two minutes. My yearly playoff dream team has had Chauncey at the point for 3 years running, but if last night’s game was a sign of things to come, the ride may be coming to an end. Analysis will point out the disgraceful numbers produced by Webber and a bad night from Rasheed, but like I said before, expecting Webber to make your team better is a mistake, and with Sheed’s production throughout the playoffs, I’m not laying game four on his shoulders. This one belongs to my guy Billups, and worse than anything, his poor decision-making spanned a couple timeouts, plenty of time to get your head back to where it needs to be.

That didn’t happen. He iced the game for Cleveland with a stupid pull up 3 pointer in transition. So maybe he figures out what made him lose 50 points on his basketball IQ in game 4, and it turns out to be a fluke. I hope that’s the case. Because if Detroit has a 3:1 or 4:1 chance of beating San Antonio in the finals, then I’d put Cleveland at 6:1. I’m rooting for the Pistons, but above everything else, I’m rooting for the chance to see San Antonio sweat at some point in their series. And yes, that means I have indeed written off Utah. Deron Williams cannot do it alone. Kirilenko and Okur need to donate their game 4 checks to charity. Doom and gloom…

Posted in Sports | 1 Comment

Herbie Hancock & The Headhunters – Chameleon

SoundStage (1975) – 2 Parts

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US Interrogation Tactics = War Crimes

German interrogation techniques

Andrew Sullivan: “In Norway, we actually have a 1948 court case that weighs whether “enhanced interrogation” using the methods approved by president Bush amounted to torture. The proceedings are fascinating, with specific reference to the hypothermia used in Gitmo, and throughout interrogation centers across the field of conflict. The Nazi defense of the techniques is almost verbatim that of the Bush administration…Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture – “enhanced interrogation techniques” – is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.” (t/b)

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Scent of a Stevens

ted stevensTPMmuckraker: “Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) jacked his house off the ground, inserted a new first story and placed the old first floor on top, thanks to the help of a top executive at local oil company Veco Corp. who hired at least one key contractor to complete the feat of a job…two former Veco Corp. executives who pled guilty to federal bribery and conspiracy charges…The sentence, preceded by a listing of a dozen Veco-related enterprises around the world, said: “Veco was not in the business of residential construction or remodeling.”

Posted in Politics, Words | 2 Comments

Marquise Hill – RIP

marquise hill“Here’s a 6-foot-6, 300-pound guy, as intimidating as can be, and yet every time you approached him he always welcomed you with big old smile. In between the lines, he had his game-face on, but outside the lines, in the community or in the weight room, he was always smiling and having good time.”LSU athletics spokesman Michael Bonnette

“Marquise will be remembered as a thoughtful and caring young man who established himself as one of the year-round daily fixtures of our team. I send my deepest condolences to the Hill family.” Bill Belichick

“We are absolutely heartbroken to learn of Marquise’s death. Our immediate thoughts go to Marquise’s mother, Sherry, and the rest of his family. He was only 24 years old and his death is hard to comprehend. Marquise was a very respectful young man who worked hard to improve and was always eager to contribute to the team, both on the field and in the community. On behalf of the entire Patriots organization, we extend our most heartfelt sympathies to Marquise’s family and friends who mourn his loss.”Robert Kraft

Hill’s agent, Albert Elias, said the player spent much of his time since Hurricane Katrina helping rebuild the homes of family members including his mother, Sherry, and the mother of his 2-year-old son.

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Cindy Sheehan – Broken

cindy sheehan deadissue.com

This really broke my heart to read, as it is yet another example of the collateral damage this compromise over the Iraq war funding has created. It confirms that as a people, we were too collectively fucked up at this point in our existence to do the right thing. This country chewed up Cindy Sheehan and spit her out. This outcome is a symptom of something that is historically significant, and in 100 years, if we made it out of this dark age better for the experience, I’m sure that the treatment of our military and Mrs. Sheehan will play a major role in that process. Politics aside…if you are ambivalent to the plight of these people or unwilling to take them seriously for one reason or another, THEN YOU ARE LACKING! As a human being, as an American…this storyline of Iraq and terrorism is barely B-movie plot worthy at this point, and on Memorial Day it’s a sad thing that the unbelievable bullshit won out over reason once again. We honored those who served, those who died, all across the country as my family did in our town today. How are we honoring those who have died in Iraq? How are we honoring those who are still there? How about the ones who have been cast aside and defecated upon by the system? Will the millions we blow on fireworks in a little over a month come at the expense of a hundred veterans out there, unable to get treatment for PTSD – or – at the expense of a hundred soldiers in Iraq patrolling streets driving in an IED’s dream?

Cindy Sheehan (link): …I have also reached the conclusion that if I am doing what I am doing because I am an “attention whore” then I really need to be committed. I have invested everything I have into trying to bring peace with justice to a country that wants neither…The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance. I failed my boy and that hurts the most.

I have also tried to work within a peace movement that often puts personal egos above peace and human life. This group won’t work with that group; he won’t attend an event if she is going to be there; and why does Cindy Sheehan get all the attention anyway? It is hard to work for peace when the very movement that is named after it has so many divisions. Our brave young men and women in Iraq have been abandoned there indefinitely by their cowardly leaders who move them around like pawns on a chessboard of destruction and the people of Iraq have been doomed to death and fates worse than death by people worried more about elections than people…

Posted in Al Swearengen, Military, Politics | 4 Comments

A Great Debate

Neoconservative Bill Kristol debates progressive Robert Kuttner:

Posted in Politics, Video | 2 Comments

Cheney’s Wisdom

Dick Cheney at the West Point graduation ceremony on 5/26/07:

Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.

General David Petraeus:

Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history showsdick cheney speaks that they are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone “talk;” however, what the individual says may be of questionable value.

Senator Patrick Leahy from ‘The Murder of Maher Arar’:

“Oh…Mr. Attorney General, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to treat this lightly, WE KNEW DAMNED WELL IF HE WENT TO CANADA HE WOULDN’T BE TORTURED, HE’D BE HELD AND INVESTIGATED. AND WE KNEW DAMNED WELL THAT IF HE WENT TO SYRIA HE’D BE TORTURED, AND IT’S BENEATH THE DIGNITY OF THIS COUNTRY, a country that has always been a beacon of human rights, to send somebody to another country to be tortured. You know and I know, that has happened a number of times in the last five years by this country. It is a black mark on us.

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bBlogBouillabaisse – Tones of Home

Group Therapy‘ by Marc Olmsted, this one comes with my 100% money-back guarantee!

Operation Freedom From Iraqis‘ by Frank Rich

On why Jose Padilla is looking more and more innocent every day, I suggest you read Lewis Z. Koch at Firedoglake

glow stick war

The Good Life?‘ by Quinn, is one of many stories to be found on this site pertaining to cocaine addiction and madness.

Why do the Iranian people not revolt against the regime?” by Hoots

Secret memo shows Israel knew building settlements was illegal‘ by Kel at The Osterley Times

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Andrew Card at UMASS

A video clip from my neck of the woods:

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3 Stooges – Disorder in the Court

Curly in ’08!

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Another Soldier in Iraq

an army of one - bsI’m tired. This is the beginning of week 12 of my second tour in Iraq. Its not any better than the first time. This time, a lot of things have gotten even worse. The last time, you knew the Iraqi Police were corrupt, but they weren’t all militiamen. Now the IP around here are almost entirely followers of al-Sadr. Or members of the Badr Corps. Or simply corrupt, black-marketeers who’ll siphon off weapons and body armor to be sold to the same. The last time you didn’t have to worry that an Iranian-built (oh yes, they are) EFP (Explosively Formed Penatrator) would tear right through your HMMWV. You wouldn’t worry about the fact that the need to house the extra soldiers of the ‘surge’ has left you living in a KBR built mobile home with no overhead cover in an area prone to rocket and mortar attacks.

So I’m a little tired of the worrying, sweating, and the smell. I am one of your soldiers, writing from the front line in a war without any, and I’d really like you to bring me home…I don’t even wake up during mortar attacks anymore. I’m tired of the heat, of carrying an M16 everywhere, of listening to the local Iraqi government rep explain why he needs more money to advance a project that’s a year behind. I’m tired because I just came off of one shift at the battalion TOC, and have just a few hours downtime until the next one. So I send out this diary, this first post on DailyKos and ask everyone back home, and the people who just voted to keep me here for months more; bring me home.  (read the rest)

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