deadissue.com

The cocksucker extends an invitation to your’s truly, says something about his ability to keep his eyes focused on what’s important, nevermind the line of chum, nevermind the gruesome worries of each day, mayhem, murder and the like, and come on over to my joint for an evening’s worth of democracy, gaze upon and appreciate the drama as it unfolds directly beneath us, for want of a better venue or reason to take up each other’s time, why not a moment of history, and why not I and the fucking lion tamer take a break from our various gambits against one another, simply take in the scene from a vantage point appropriate…considering our respective roles as puppeteers, why not let the fucking hoople-heads take a look at it all, democracy and the like, see if any of them figure something out, perhaps notice the strings connecting performer to puppeteer, perhaps even catch a whiff of their own future as they figure this out, and how much it resembles the aroma of chink-alley when the sun hits it just right…

Or so I thought.  Nevermind that I’d no sooner trust anyone than that tycoon dancing up a hailstorm of misery, like everywhere he’s been, with that bullshit affability and a tired explaination of ‘my only passion is the color’…whether explaining himself to a reporter working on another biography, or taking a piss on the pile of Cornish his accounts demanded as sacrifice on a given day…I let my guard down and so, Captain Turner is currently attaching my finger to his belt.  Round two is over.  I’m just getting started… 

(Deadwood Season 3 – written minutes after seeing episode 2)

I think he was from the gas company.  Got him in the basement right now, his pulse is still pulsing, but not for long.  Keeps yelling about how he’s got kids…I correct him, said he should have paid better attention in Latin class, because he’s got his past, present and future tenses all mixed up. 

While I’m not that much into the US Open, I have anticipated a day of ease up till now, a day where daddy certainly does know best…or at least he’s provided the illusion that he does.  It’s a myth…I don’t know how many of my fellow fathers out there had their day planned out for them in advance, but I hope I’m the only one.  It’s 95 degrees outside, sticky humidity, nothing good on TV, and rumor has it that in an hour or so I’m going to be responsible for packing up the kids and getting them to a family gathering. 

Fuck That!  It’s not going to happen – nor should it.  I don’t know how they celebrated father’s day before I showed up…but it sure does seem like fathers had little say in it.  That changes today.  Catch some flack?  I’m sure I will, but wouldn’t that be a monumental irony, busted for pretending that since I’m a father, ‘Father’s Day’ would have something to do with what I wanted.  I know, I’m being a baby, I need to grow up…whatever.  At least one other father who’s going to this event today, I know for a fact, would rather not…my gut tells me that every other one feels the same way, but to talk freely about such things would most likely result in a lack of sex, or a lack of sanity when the non-fathers refuse to stop flapping their gums over it.

Well, I made it through basic traning in Missouri in heat worse than this – I think I’ve got the stuff to weather this storm.  Before combat ensues, let me point out that I honestly think the way to truly enjoy Father’s Day is to just go along with it and make everyone else happy…that’s what being in a ‘relationship’ is all about I suppose.  Achieving peace and happiness through muted endurance of something that you think will be over at some point…in the evening perhaps, when the NBA finally decides to play game five…or maybe it’s sometime between dinner and Father’s Day next year…vagina-willing.   

(30 minutes later)  Flack?  Oh – INDEED – but what happens if I just throw on a smile and put up with the program?  Like all programs in American life, conceived by women who then inform the men, it would grow more elaborate and intrusive with each passing year, until finally ‘Father’s Day’ becomes a day when daddy watches the kids all day while the wives congregate in day spas, sipping some bubbly, laughing their asses off. 

NO MA’AM!  The Bundy legend lives on. 

“I can’t help but feel through eyes of a combat-wounded Marine in Vietnam, if someone was shot, you tried to save his life. . . . While you were in combat, you had a sense of urgency to end the slaughter, and around here we don’t have that sense of urgency,”

said Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (Md.), a usually soft-spoken Republican who has urged his leaders to challenge the White House on Iraq.

“To me, the administration does not act like there’s a war going on. The Congress certainly doesn’t act like there’s a war going on. If you’re raising money to keep the majority, if you’re thinking about gay marriage, if you’re doing all this other peripheral stuff, what does that say to the guy who’s about ready to drive over a land mine?”

How about that!  Reminds me of that song…”sanity never came my way, sanity never came my way, don’t know what I’ll do today…” are some of the hacks feeling frisky?  I suppose they are, but the thought never escapes my mind, the scary notion that to millions, such a statement exists on a level below ‘children’s cartoon’.  I can hear it now – “What the hell is he talking about?” – perhaps the pot gets stirred and everyone is in agreement that the man must be executed for treason.

Roll your eyes if you want to – I’ve actually seen it.  All kinds of inputs saying the same thing over and over, calling around town for a 14 dollar 30-pack of beer, no preference, just as long as it says ‘beer’ somewhere on the can.  A ferocious devotion to indifference, not blurred a smidgen by anything other than the 5’1″ Japanesse stripper sent over after another order was made for a 5’9″ Blonde…it just happens, again and again to these guys.   

In the grand scheme such things are trivial, a speck of nothing, indeed…now, if  you want to talk about something about to crush the economy, suck up our resources, cause an outbreak of ‘fire rain’ in Arizona, the only things that really matter in terms of this legislative year are to shame queers and queer sympathizers, once and for all put the flag burning issue to rest, get to the bottom of the steroid issue, finally determining who will be responsible for calling who on the emergency alert tree (should opposite parties be forced to assist the enemy?)

It’s sad, but widely known that 25% of US congress members can’t opperate their own phone in an emergency.  A very old DC joke goes something like, ‘who’d you rather have to rely on in a life or death situation?  A politician or a queer nigra woman with only one leg and 4 fingers?’  Studies have been performed on peoples’ response to that question over decades, and oddly enough, the number one response over all these years by a wide margin has been, ‘are the four fingers on one hand, or two each?’ 

Clearly, none of these people were lobbyists…but that doesn’t make them irrelevant.  Sure, they can get the sized and shaped stripper promised, nice spread of food, poker, hepatitis – and for those Sopranos fiends – David Lee Roth and Lawrence Taylor will sit in for a couple hundred hands, tell stories about how many hundreds of thousands of women they slept with in their prime, you’ll be reminded of the fact that they’re both millionaires and you’re not.  Good, wholesome fun.  Just like this ‘skirmish’ in Iraq…

More plagarism from Ann Coulter – Rude Pundit is on it, from chapter one of her new book:

Here’s Coulter from Chapter 1 of Godless: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River in Maine, was halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant previously believed to be extinct.

Here’s the Portland Press Herald, from the year 2000, in its list of the “Maine Stories of the Century”: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River, is halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant believed to be extinct.

Strangely similar, no? By the way, that’s a story from 1976. Coulter doesn’t tell you that little tidbit, making you think it happened last week. The next one’s from 1977:

I posted on this a while back, after the previous examples of her doing a cut and paste job were discovered.  So she’s a fraud, yet ends up on TV all the time…I still can’t get what Bill Maher sees in her.  My guess is he’s seen her without inhibitions or clothes on a few occasions.  Maybe she performed a triple lindy on him or something.

My favorite parts:

Also globalization, e-mail, cell phones interconnect our nations like never before. It is possible for even the most insulated American to have friends from all over the world. For instance, I recently received an e-mail asking me to help a deposed Nigerian prince who is looking for a business partner to recuperate his fortune. Thanks to the flexibility of global banking, a Swiss bank account is ready and waiting for my share of his money. I know, because I just e-mailed him my Social Security number…

There are so many challenges facing this next generation, and as they said earlier, you are up for these challenges. And I agree, except that I don’t think you are. I don’t know if you’re tough enough to handle this. You are the most cuddled generation in history. I belong to the last generation that did not have to be in a car seat. You had to be in car seats. I did not have to wear a helmet when I rode my bike. You do. You have to wear helmets when you go swimming, right? In case you bump your head against the side of the pool. Oh, by the way, I should have said, my speech today may contain some peanut products…

Well, you are about to start the greatest improvisation of all. With no script. No idea what’s going to happen, often with people and places you have never seen before. And you are not in control. So say “yes.” And if you’re lucky, you’ll find people who will say “yes” back.

Now will saying “yes” get you in trouble at times? Will saying “yes” lead you to doing some foolish things? Yes it will. But don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes.”

2006 Commencement Address

Stephen Colbert, June 3, 2006

[Pours water into a glass at the podium, splashes face and back of neck]

Thank you. Thank you very much. Continue reading →

MANY of the professionals I come across in the field have had much to say about Frank throughout the years, and almost all of it has been negative.  You’ll notice that his actual face won’t show up for a couple of years, and then BAM!  He’s saving the queen of England at a baseball game.

Much of the ‘legal muscle’ around parts of America that are still relevant would like to have Frank’s head on a pole on the outside of their offices.  In fact, the man had to go into hiding outside of the US, just to have the ability to operate in any relevant capacity.  So the money handed down, from just about every criminal on earth with a billion dollars or more to protect, to assassins from 30 different countries…in a word, WASTED!

You can’t catch this guy, and for reasons I hope to never understand, the one thing nobody can ever dispute when it comes to this heroic American is the fact that Frank Drebon GETS THINGS DONE!

Unorthadox, sure.  Dangerous, absolutely.  Effective?  You bet your ass he is…and while he’s being shuttled off to Siberia (don’t tell anyone) following this last successful operation in Iraq, I can only hope that the ‘powers that be’ can finally come to realize that when it comes to saving this country from terrorism, Frank’s the best chance we’ve got!

War?  What are you talking about?  Budget?  Who told you the military’s operational budget hasn’t been approved yet for the current year?  Do you honestly think the Senate would put that aside with a war in full gear?  Wait, there is no war…so why is this ‘military’ in need of money so bad anyway?  Relax, it’s the right thing and you know it.  Just sit back, close your eyes and listen to that sweet sound of efficiency as it literally pours out of Washington DC this week like a symphony (from outer space). 

Yes, it is that time of the election cycle again, where years ago what used to be a political diatribe on how it’ll be a cold day in hell before “nigras will ever share THIS white man’s toilet, or any of the toilets I represent back home for that matter”, now we’ve got a wedge issue involving part of our society wanting to make life more difficult for a certain group of fellow citizens, and wouldn’t you know the strategy here has the South written all over it.  Continue reading →

My two personal favorites out of the newest my brother has sent. The one with him sleeping is incredible!

Continue reading →

My mission was to secure two three pronged extension cords shorter than 5 feet in length, and on my way to that aisle in the store, and elderly man asked for some help.  Something to do with a large filter screen and how it would be installed.  I had a couple ideas, but was mostly just being nice, having sensed that his knowing how to install the part probably wasn’t the reason he initiated conversation.  Sure enough, as I was trolling the electricity asile for the cords I needed, he was haming it up with another stranger about the filter, then proceeded to the checkout aisle. 

As luck would have it, I arrived just as he was sharing a few facts with the checkout clerk, like that he hadn’t had a headace in his entire life prior to turning 71 years old, that he was 82 years old now and had spent 20 years in the Marine Corps.  Stepping aside so I could conduct my business, he lagged a bit and we headed out of the store at the same time. 

“So you’re telling me that none of the junior officers you served under gave you a headace over 20 years?”  This was a good opening, as my intention when engaging strangers in conversations is generally to extract some knowledge, hear a story that might get me thinking about something other than the mundane bullshit swirling around upstairs most of the time. 

His take on life was that it’s been good, and in looking back, his military service was an entirely positive experience.  Even when he was patrolling the Yangtzee river during the 1930s, getting poped at by snipers, it was good.  Even though the method most often used to escape these attacks was to jump over the side of the boat opposite of where the bullets were coming from, and everyone ducking underwater as long as they could before the ship’s lone gunner took care of the attackers.  Continue reading →

Pictures will accompany this post once I find the cable that connects the camera to the PC…feeling guilty right now as I’ve had several posts on the slate to show off the deadissue children, which now total four…I’ve got pictures from Right and my brother to upload.  This WILL happen before the end of next week. 

Back to the pool though, it’s half full right now with a mess of leaves and dirt in a few spots.  This past week I’ve been spending my spare time scooping leaves off the top of the cover, an operation that has bulked up my arms better than pushups ever could.  Many hours were spent on this portion of the task, as the pool lies directly below several branches from the tree to the right of our house.  The idea being that the more leaves I could scoop out would reduce the amount that could end up in the pool once the cover came off. 

Expecting some help this weekend, I put it off until today, but couldn’t wait any longer…like a child on Christmas morning, I eagerly tore off the top alone, and a portion of the muck got through my un-sophisticated planning, which equals more work with the skimmer…my mind weeps, my “guns” rejoice. 

The article contains a LOT of information, as the archives were delved into, rendering the mountain of hearsay irrelevant.  It’s interesting that Kerry didn’t think to have all of this on hand during the campaign, like he thought that his service record wasn’t going to be brought out and pissed on…

His claim of being in Cambodia, his purple hearts and silver star – these were the details of his service the Swift Boaters focused on.  And now…OVER A YEAR AFTER THE ELECTION…he’s got the official paperwork to prove they lied about everything.  The lesson here of course is, have the paperwork on hand BEFORE you decide to run for President.

The Article

The similarities between Tony Soprano’s son AJ and President Bush are undeniable.  Earlier in the season, AJ paid a visit to Uncle Junior with a hunting knife stashed in his shirt.  After bungling the murder attempt, orderlies piled on him as he screamed and cried “he tried to kill my dad!”  Never mind how ill-equipped the kid was, both emotionally and mentally, in the end it’s all about a lifelong struggle to somehow live up to the legend of a man he knows he’ll never be good enough to emulate.  Uncle Junior shoots Tony, and his lack of a response equals an opportunity for his feeble-minded son to do something – anything – and that’s when people like him start believing the words of all those who’re kissing his ass every minute of every day.  A true simpleton can never tell the difference between a friend and a leech, as that’s an ability one learns through experience.  So when these leeches start tossing around bright ideas (invading Iraq-murdering Uncle Junior), the fortunate son gets to feel like he’s privy to a path that leads to glory, one that they figure daddy wasn’t man enough to travel.  Since the foolish prince hasn’t done a day of hard work in his life, nor has he fallen and had to pick himself up, lazily he becomes convinced that one act of macho-induced stupidity will ensure the legacy he longs for.   It’s a condition these two share, and in both cases there’s a gaping hole inside of them, the result of idolizing a man who was always too busy being a ‘captain of industry’ to bother with the mundane business of fatherhood.  In Tony’s case its booze, strippers, power, greed and a desperate longing for peace, quiet and a jumbo-sized ice cream sundae.   Continue reading →

President Bush (5-23-06): 

It is a difficult task to stop suicide bombers. That’s the — but that’s one of the main — that’s the main weapon of the enemy, the capacity to destroy innocent life with a suicider.

I can believe that Bush would tell lies concerning Iraq, and unfortunately I also believe that plenty will take him at his word.  What neither he, nor his crew of lackies, understand at this point is the American public is on to him.  So when he says that suicide bombers are the “main weapon of the enemy”, more than half of the people who read or hear it know that he’s lying through his teeth.

Now imagine being a soldier who was crippled by an IED hearing this.  Many already feeling like they gave up their life for a lie, now they hear the President of the United States talking ragtime about what’s actually killing our guys over there. 

Mortar rounds and IEDs – the insurgency’s version of what we’d call…well, mortar rounds and remote claymore mines.  The difference between us and them though is that we’re driving around like ducks on the pond every day, whereas the insurgency is keeping themselves hidden.  For every one of ours they wound or kill, how many of them do we get?  Whoever pretends to know the answer to this question is full of shit!

It’s a documentary shot in Baghdad at a hospital mostly, but footage from patrols is also a part of it.  Heart wrenching, void of any director commentary, no manipulated shots or short piece editing done for effect, no soundtrack, nothing is staged, nothing is censored. Continue reading →

Very dark…

When you ponder the enormity of earth and its wide array of life and death scenarios, eventually the reality of how miniscule a single one of us truly is can cause the mind to shift into overdrive.  In the case of someone whose mind spins constantly on these themes from inside a prison cell, realism can often manage to pummel religion over time, as ideas once excluded from consideration slowly start becoming plausible.  It’s all about pressure, and how our minds react to it over time.  Continue reading →

Sorry for hitting this up again so soon, but the sheer stupidity of it all is so rich, you’d swear it had to be a government operation.  Let me take you into the negotiation room for this brilliant exchange:

Army:  You rang?

Government:  We need to deploy 6,000 soldiers to the border.

Army:  Most of the ones we’ve got really belong to states, and most of them have already been in the desert over in Iraq for a year.  (break-injection is administered-3-2-1)  We’re sending them down to the border this summer?  Interesting…

Government:  Look, we know you’re straped, and we know you guys were picturing yourselves being able to save the country from another disaster like Katrina, God Forbid…but the fact is, we’re in trouble.  That means YOU’RE in trouble, understand?

Army:  Yes sir.

Government:  Numbers are down, the hoopleheads are dying for something to talk about.  They demand a show, we’re going to give them a show.  Hear that?

Army:  I’m gonna to be famous?

Government:  You bet your ass you are!

Continue reading →

It ensures one thing and one thing only…government’s gonna be spending a LOT of dough every year fixing it.  Then of course there will come the day when some politician wins by running on the “tear down that fence” platform, and the fence fixing lobby loses out.  All the fence fixers get fired, then sign on with the company given the fence removal contract…live off of that for a couple years. 

And then when it’s all over, the laid off fence fixers turned fence removers really get their act together, scatter out across the country to find work as right-wing talk radio hosts, and eventually the “build a fence” crowd gets off the ground.

It’s the circle of life. 

To study is to cut some grass or knock out a set of pushups – accumulative progression that relies on consistent effort in pursuit of a goal.  As a younger man (look at that, I just sounded like Morgan Freeman) I either didn’t understand or didn’t appreciate this concept.  Different story now, as the textbook I receive in the mail is basically the begining of a long chug at slow speeds, sometimes (with a dry subject) it’s like traveling through Kansas at five miles an hour, sometimes (with certain math concepts) it’s like driving from one end of Boston to the other during rush hour…imagine two 10 month olds and a cat who likes attention mixed with a shot of “x=4?!?!  That’s BULLSHIT!”

It’s interesting around here now.  A sense of something new.  Colorado Technical University Online is the school I’m attending, and Software Engineering is my major.  Networking Concepts and College Algebra are the first two courses to come down the chute, and in 6 weeks the next two will come right behind.  Add in about 8 CLEP tests I need to pass by 8/8 to be a junior (key thing here is saving time and tuition)…NBA playoffs, Papplebon, Cheney…I hardly knew ye.

Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report – Saturday 13 May 2006

Probably a year ago I made a bet with Lee from RTFTLC that Rove would be charged with a crime, something about admitting whoever was wrong on both sites.  Can someone reach out and remind our friend of that?  This is one I was right about from the begining.  His habit of telling lies in practically all situations involving what he does behind the curtain caught up with him, and like all headstrong spin hoars, they fly too close to the sun.  Continue reading →

Sonicrusk posted about spiders a little while back, and it reminded me of a story. One that brings out the true coward inside all of us…well, inside of me anyway.

Jimithy Johnson, welder by trade, can’t call him a friend of mine without cringing, not because of his body odor or attitude towards life, but this affliction he suffered a few years back. We were working security for Jordan Marsh (department store chain), our shifts overlaped by 6 hours every day from noon to 6PM, with one of us closing up the store at 8PM every night.

I’d gone out drinking with him and his buddies one time, but it wasn’t my bag. Too much of something and not enough of something else, like all things in life I suppose, and perhaps it had something to do with sports or humanity, the crowd he ran with tended to view the combustion engine as something 500 times more exciting than anything Tom Brady was doing at the time, and so the talk generally centered around such-n-such a part ordered from somewhere to go onto such-n-such, to which the group would split down the middle most times, one half calling whoever shared their story an idiot or a genius depending on what they had done to their car or was going to do to it at some point.

Important part of the story being that, on the night in question I was too drunk on tequilla and superiority to notice anything like a spider. Though that’s where Jimithy insists he got bit – I suspect that he was building up the courage to file a lawsuit or something – typically, he’ll talk a lot of shit about something like this and never follow up. Important thing to remember at this part though is he was BITTEN. In the FACE.

Swelling up to the size of a golfball some time afterwards, I was the one who had to have a heart-to-heart (supervisor was a woman and afraid to be alone with him) about how he should really go see a doctor about the bump on his upper cheek. “Talbots (our nickname for the bosslady) put you up to this, huh? How ’bout getting that bitch to kick down some medical insurance. ”

I told him it was beside the point, that the wound on his face was starting to be talked about all over the mall, that little children were reported to have serious bed-wetting nightmares about it all over town, with even some reputable plastic surgeons refusing to step foot into the mall until he gets that thing checked out.

He never does, not for any militant or political reason (even though that’s how he played it to everyone who’d listen), but really it’s a part needed to make his car drive faster using nitrous oxide he was saving up for, couldn’t be accomodated…this swollen, disgusting lump on his face would have to get in line.

Then it started pulsating one day. Jimithy had gone on a spin an hour earlier and was still high from what he smoked on the way to Dunkin Doughnuts, so as I started commenting from a distance, he thought I was just fucking with him. Who knows, maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I wasn’t going to touch the thing to find out. All I know is, I had the camera room while he went to get an ice cream downstairs. Next thing I know, people are going nuts on camera 4, parents swooping in for their kids, running away, and there’s my partner, hunched over the ice cream counter with little black things coming out of his face, crawling all over the counter, into the ice cream vats, down into his shirt, onto the hair and down the shirt of the poor girl who was serving him…

Took off my nametag and droped it on the floor, Beck streaming into my ears a minute later.  That’s right, I quit on the spot…the old fashioned way, NO CALL NO SHOW…haven’t seen or heard of Jimithy in years.

By the looks of it, Rove was counting on Cooper keeping his mouth shut, in a jail cell for however many months or years.  The following exerpt is from the new issue of Newsweek.  Luskin, Rove’s lawyer, finds out that his client hasn’t provided him all of the facts.  I my many years as a defense attourney this happened once or twice, but of course my clients were heavily sedated throughout our encounters.  Rove may in fact be a dope fiend, but if that’s the case, he’d better start showing Fitzgerald track marks soon…otherwise, he’s probably going to jail:

Luskin told the prosecutor that sometime between October 2003 and January 2004 he’d had a drink with Time reporter Viveca Novak. An old friend of Luskin’s, Novak (who is no relation to the columnist of the same last name) surprised Luskin by telling him that Rove might have been Cooper’s source. Last week, in an interview with NEWSWEEK, Novak described the conversation. Luskin, Novak recalls, said that Rove “didn’t have a Cooper problem,” meaning that Rove had not been Cooper’s source. “That’s not what I hear,” Novak recalls responding. At that point, Luskin’s demeanor changed, says Novak. “He got very serious from what I told him. He reacted as though he were learning it for the first time.” (Novak had heard about Cooper’s source from chatter inside the Washington bureau of Time; she recently took a buyout from the magazine.)

Luskin alerted Rove to the conversation, but his client still didn’t remember it, according to a source close to Rove who declined to be named discussing sensitive legal matters. Luskin seemed to be signaling to Fitzgerald that Rove was truthful when he said he didn’t remember the Cooper phone call; otherwise, why would he testify as such when he knew that others, including Cooper, could contradict him? (One possible explanation: Rove may have assumed Cooper would protect him as a confidential source.) Luskin did make a renewed search of Rove’s files, the source says. That’s what turned up the e-mail to Hadley. Fitzgerald was sufficiently slowed up by Luskin’s story to hold off on indicting Rove, according to the source.

Let’s face it…my best writing ends up scattered across the net, in comments, message boards, skanky cyber-bathroom walls (my best limericks are the stuff of #2s miles away from home, so says my $30/hr life coach Murma…I know that sounds unnecessary, but the guy’s also a whiz at forging documents)…so here’s a recent one. 

The Trader’s Den Politics Fourum – “What Will Iraq Become?”

deadissue:  I think this depends mostly on whether or not Muhammad descends from the heavens and says once and for all whether his son or nephew or whoever should have been his heir…

Sunni and Shiites have disagreed on this point forever. Willing to blow each other up. That’s the deal in Iraq…widespread ignorance, futility and prayer.

I predict a regional war that we’ll hear little about once our troops are out. At that point our government will pick a side they like the most and sell them twice as many weapons as we sell the other side.

A hundred years from now, we’ll be rich off of the guns, and they’ll still be debating with hand grenades over which descendant of Muhammad is going to float down from the sky one day.

If you think I’m joking, just look it up. It’s true.

Starman714 points out, “…but we’re leaving out the pissed-off-at-the-West factions and the fact that they are bound to strike our soil again for this…”

deadissue: Most of whom don’t know what an electron is, let alone enough to launch operations across the globe against us. Let’s not give these people too much credit. They were burning down their own neighborhoods over a cartoon a few weeks ago.

9/11 was a perfect storm if you will. A beurocracy caught naping, ignoring clue after clue, until finally a bucket of ice water gets thrown on it. Since then, Osama has provided hope to the same nitwits who were going to believe whatever they were told anyway, and a slice of the dirt poor who had nothing better to do until they saw a foreign tank driven by a white guy roll down their street.

I think they got lucky, very lucky.

The threat of terrorism is usefull to certain people, for the same reason it’s usefull to Osama.  Get’s the people around you on board with just about anything you’ve got to say.  Personally, I think a lot of people living in the Middle East are silly.