Dumb*ss

Image Licensed under Creative Commons by M. V. Jantzen

Dumb*ss

Could this be the title of Michael Moore's new docu-comedy about the Tea Party?  Could he throw in the Birthers too?   We're hoping, we're hoping...  Of course, we're referring to that great Off-the-Cuff comment made by Ken B*ck in regards to the Tea Party and their Birther "questions"?  Chris Matthews did a great segment on this on his Hardball "Sideshow" for July 26, 2010.

Bit.ly link to this post: http://bit.ly/cf9ETe

Snorting McChrystal (or Snorting Rolling Stones)?

Landmines on Display in Afghanistan image licensed under Creative Commons by Carl Montgomery

Snorting McChrystal (or) Snorting Rolling Stones?

Updated: Saturday, August 21, 2010

OK, the whole media world is talking about the sucker coup of Wikileaks (Bravo for them!) and their revelatory Afghan War Diaries leak/s.

The leak took place on or about July 25, 2010.  And blame or responsibility has already been assigned to some, sorry to say, low-level US military personnel.  A-Hem!  Excuse us!  Did everybody miss something here?  Including The Daily Show and The Colbert Report?

What are we talking about?  Hellooooo....  Didn't the US/ISAF General in Charge of the Afghanistan Operations/War just get sent down the tubes about one month ago?  Speaking of tubes, is everybody in the media snorting "McChrystal" or some other finely powdered crystalline Class I narcotic?  (Sorry, we apologize for the drug/humor reference/s, we know it is in poor taste).

Why did everybody else miss this?  Does the world have ADHD?  Is Mr. Derp now running Fox News?

Not to mention, therefore, isn't this all a result of that sh*tty tirade reported by Rolling Stone just this summer/spring?  You be the judge.

What else is funky about this relationship?  We're not saying the general had anything to do with the leaks, but the events are pretty closely related in time.  A little too close.

And, when some top guy goes down for something - they sometimes like to leave behind a little 'Position Paper' on where their major activities stood prior to their departure?  Is this all starting to sound familiar?  Helloooo...

Does anybody remember Abu Ghraib and what happened to all the low-level torture clowns involved there - and then the commanding officer.  You do remember the sequence of events in that scandal, right?  Ahhh, we detect the odor of the same order of sequence here...

Not to mention, we did have a look at the reports that appear on the Wikileaks website.  No, we haven't had time to read all of them.  We're still sorting through the Pentagon Papers for G*d's Sakes!  But, it is starting to look like the Pakistan-Taliban-US$ connection might be a little overblown.  Only 4 known reports appear in the journal concerning finance from Pakistan or anywhere.  As far as "hits" (assassinations) go, those were probably in all likelihood funded by the Taliban (with money from Pakistan or from poppy money - its hard to say for sure...).  There were something like 48 reports on hits.

We have distilled some of the more "important" categories of reports from the Diaries and listed them below.  Approach with caution.  We did this in case Wikileaks runs out of funds (again) or gets mysteriously shut down and disappears...  Meanwhile, our list, enjoy...

Oh, and something else, nothing shows you are winning the war like the number of enemy surrenders.  Ahem, we have FOUR of them.  Oh, and reported Food Distributions and Counter-Terrorism attack numbers were also weak; 4 and 1.  ONE counter-terrorism attack?  That "War on Terror" is going really swell isn't it Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney?

(Oh, don't get us wrong - we love our troops and support those that do honorable service and some not so much, too).

Bit.ly link to this post: http://bit.ly/9Q0XzI

Number of Assassinations reported in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 48



http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/assassination_0.html






Number of Attacks reported in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 2283


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/attack_0.html



Number of Ambushes reported in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 538


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/ambush_0.html



Number of Counterterrorism Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 1


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/counter_terrorism_0.html



Number of Drug Operations Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 8


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/drug_operation_0.html



Number of (Enemy) Finance Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 4


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/finance_0.html



Number of Food Distributions Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 4


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/food_distribution_0.html



Number of IED Ambush Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 350


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/ied_ambush_0.html



Number of IED Explosions Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 7202


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/ied_explosion_0.html



Number of IED Found/Cleared Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 8581


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/ied_found_cleared_0.html



Number of Mines Found/Cleared Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 396


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/mine_found_cleared_0.html



Number of Mine Strikes Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 321


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/mine_strike_0.html



Number of Murder Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 100


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/murder_0.html



Number of Willing Recruitments detained Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 1


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/recruitment_willing__0.html



Number of Poisonings Reports (attempted) in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 1


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/poisoning_0.html



Number of Enemy Sabotage Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 6


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/sabotage_0.html



Number of Enemy/Unknown Surrenders Reports in Wikileaks Afghan War Diaries: 4


http://wardiary.wikileaks.org/afg/sort/category/surrendering_0.html



FOM: False Charges Made Against Mr. Assange?

A Plan for the Global Economic Recovery

The US Role in Haiti Food Riots Image licensed under Creative Commons by barrybar

Updated Again Wednesday, September 1, 2010:   ***
Updated Friday, July 30, 2010: With the economic report just received from the BBC today **, this blog posting seems worthy of a second review and a follow-up.  Check this site later for more updates if possible.

We have been gone for a little while and we hadn't posted anything! ~
Sorry if you have missed us, but we haven't heard much from you either.  Apart from having one of our 'tweets' read on the MSNBC Countdown Twitter Report of Friday, May 14, 2010 - we just haven't accomplished much.  We're not even certain if they still do the Twitter Report - anyway we have deleted our twitter account - it was @georgek1029.  Apologies if you were one of the 1500 or so that were following us.

Anyway!  Our Senior Editor had a bit of a vision the other night - he usually does when we conspire to hit him over the head with a blunt instrument.  It was like he could see this big fresh new book coming out.  He could even see the title and the cover; "A Plan for the Global Economic Recovery".  He could even see some very odd diagrams outlining steps and phases (not phrases) meant to outline just that.

The sad thing, we suppose, is that there appears to be no book nor plan with that title.  Sure, a lot of excellent books* have been recently written and published about the Global Economic Crisis of 2007 - 2010.  But nothing about a plan or a coordinated series of steps towards the Recovery.  (What's also "refreshing" to hear is that the Wikipedia has laid the blame on the US Financial Markets for the liquidity crisis which created the global collapse of the markets - scandalous but guilty!).

Notably, the Obama-Dodd Finanical Reform Act 2010 should/will address some of those shortcomings.  But, will it guide the  overall economy back to the boisterous health that some many of us need and want?  Yes, we're talking about you too, dedanna1029.  We know, we know, there are some problems with the bill ~ isn't that right Lawrence?

Thankfully, the 111th Congress of the US has finally agreed to extend long-term UE benefits - again.  Which seemed to be their bugbear - at least for most of the GOP - with whom some of us still have problems!  Sorry to say!  It's been said before, you don't turn off the fire hydrant when the house is burning down!  Of course, you may as well turn off the hydrant when the house has burnt down...sorry to say...

But that's not enough ~ we need real prosperity and soon.  It's probably one of the real true solutions to the current problems of unemployment.  Yes, plural, problems.  UE is not a problem in and of itself.  We need to become educated as to how it is a problem, how it got to be that way and to get us poor and medium-income folks back to making money again!  Forget rich!  People are too busy just scraping by to survive.  People don't want to be rich, they just need enough funds to pay the rent, utilities, finance the car, get medical treatment, pay their union dues, give gifts, buy postage...oh, and don't forget the grocery bill.

That is a BIG problem.  We haven't seen food riots here in the USA.  But, we have seen food security issues.  Our senior editor's sick elderly father recently experienced a food security issue - this is not a nice issue for our sick and elderly to have to deal with.  Even worse is the thought of having to go to their local market - and encountering a food riot in the process.  Shades of Glenn Beck - we must be starting to sound like that mad *******.  (Our google account provisions forbid us from expressing certain opinions here - and they are correct about that!  We must agree!).  By the way, you have got to see the latest "joke" Glenn Beck account on twitter at http://twitter.com/Glenn_Beck.

Hmmm, we seem to have wandered a bit from our original point.  Our senior editor has had some further "revelations" about "A Plan for the Global Economic Recovery".  These are some of his bullet points;

1) All systems are inequitable.

2) All economies are based on a "bubble market".

3) The inherent inequities of (1) help contribute to that bubble market of (2).

4) The crash of  (2) and the time to the next crash is inversely proportional to the inequities of (1).

To further highlight the "inequities of the system", see the LiveScience article "World Markets Mostly Controlled by Select Companies".  And the BookTV Program "Color Blind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politicis and the Retreat from Racial Inequity".  Both of these should shock you to your senses.

Well, that's about it for now.  Our "mad" senior editor is developing his new economic theories (Re; the book ~ unless somebody else is writing it) at the time being.  We will get back to you with further information.

Until then, these links may be of interest:

bit.ly link to this post: http://bit.ly/9hAgR7

**Updated Friday, July 30, 2010: US Annualized Economic Growth Rate Slows to 2.4% (BBC NEWS)

Acts of the 111th United States Congress (Wikipedia)

Public Laws for the 111th Congress (Library of Congress)

Types of Riots (Wikipedia)

Food Security (Wikipedia)

Further Reading ; External Links on Food Security (Wikipedia References ; Links)  

Let's Talk (Blog by dedanna1029)

*A Colossal Failure of Common Sense by Lawrence G. McDonald 

World Stocks Controlled by Select Companies (from LiveScience)

Color Blind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat of Racial Inequity (with author Tim Wise).

***(Updated Wednesday, September 1, 2010)  2010 Hiring Outlook from Industry Market Trends