snuffbox

Ugh. Aesop Rock rules you all. It was the term 'indie rap' that was dumb.

Ugh.

On The Road should be required in more high schools.

And, yes, the Brewers have been unpopular in years past but this season has been VERY different. Big attendance numbers, 4 All-Stars, mainstream tv appearances & mentions outside baseball, etc. Just because Espn goes with the whatever-happened-before-will-happen-again-this-year theory doesn't make it so, cabbageboy.

Man, three straight pennants, what a shitty division Will Espn just ignore the whole thing if the 'worst division in baseball' makes the World Sries for a 4th year in a row?

I've long found Hemmingway to be good but overrated. I'm a big fan of Don Quixote. I've really been enjoying Richard Brautigan over the last year or so.

I don't even know what that meant. Anyway, the whole problem is that the entire area hit by the recent flooding (Wisco, Minnesota, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, etc) could ALL be taken care of for the cost of about one week in Iraq. Instead, there will presumabley nothing or too close to it, just like with the '05 tornadoes, and America will continue to be ignored in lieu of Iraq. See also: crumbling infrastructure, Katrina/NOLA, etc.

For being one of God's own prototypes. Too weird to live, too rare to die. Oscar Acosta was Hotbutter Spoontoaster?

That's about the only way some of these towns/areas could ever get assistance. My hometown, Viola, was hit by the recent flood though not nearly as bad as many others in this region. I, and many others, just thought back to August/2005 when we got minimal FEMA help for the tornado because 'the townspeople had much of it cleaned up themselves.' Of course, that didnt take into account the expenses or lost wages of those of us that helped out immediately & afterwards. It wouldnt be such a problem if we didnt already pay so much taxes & no, the cuts for the incredibly wealthy dont count as tax-cuts for everyone. Another $50 billion for Iraq should be authorized and spent quickly, though.

Anyone else in an area damaged by floods recently? It seems like we have to jump through a million hoops just to maybe receive the benefits we have already paid taxes into. Meanwhile, we plop down pallets of cash by the billion in Iraq. Ignoring America is the new Patriotism.

Could we stifle a foreign civil war & simultaneously nation build even with a force of at least a half million well-equipped troops? - Probably not, though there might have been a chance. Could we do the above with a sleek agile poorly-equipped force led by simple-minded idealogues who knew nothing about combat? Not a chance. Could we topple Saddam with said sleek agile...etc? Yes, could & did. Didn't work out, though, and we learned that nation building was the actual goal of our leadership after the fact. Beyond that, they didn't even consider the possibilities of insurgencies, civil wars, foreign meddling, etc....and when those things all happened our leadership downplayed them all at the expense of our troops. Except for the foreign meddling part which is discussed constantly in hopes of getting a drumbeat for yet another poorly-conceived war. And the 'the troops are volunteers, they get what they deserve stuff' is putrid and wrong. No volunteer soldier is a toy & they shouldnt be used as such. They risk their lives by their own choice & dont deserve to have the matter made more dangerous by being sent into pointless wars, without reasoned strategies or proper equipment.

These guys are politicians, first & foremost. If the 'moral majority' largely sits out an election, or if the Democrats can actually run thought-out campaigns, the GOP may have to look towards a sharp shift in their rhetoric from their current big govt/nanny state to the more classical Republican small govt stance. Lately though the political acumen of the GOP has been incredibly faulty. Yes, Rove & Co won in '02 & '04 on fear, but that is a recurrent but never constant or stable political strategy. It failed in '06 & will fail next year (barring another attack turning enough Americans into retards, or the Dems running another feeble campaign). The only crutch remaining for the GOP after fear is 'family values' & that is being noticeably weakened by Foley/Vitter/Haggard/Craig/etc. There is a very good possibility of a 3rd or 4th party 'Christian' ticket siphoning off GOP votes. If that happens, 'small govt' may e their only option.

My geuss - Joe Lieberman.

I dont find being for both small govt & federal control over female bodies to be 'sane'. He was close, though. To what extent will the continuing parade of Republican scandals play in the '08 elections? Foley, along with the financial scandals of others, certainly effected last November's outcomes...will the continuing downward spiral play up next year as well? I think that people like Larry Craig are the only thing that might push the Republican Party back towards small govt/personal liberty/freedom. As of now the GOP is the Catholic Church of American politics.

So, which one is it? We should deploy more troops, or we could never deploy enough troops? There could never be enough troops. If you're going to fight a war, fight it to win it. That should be rule #1 but draft dodgers have proven themselves incapable of fighting wars from the sidelines. They make pretty damn good cheerleaders, though. It should have been known that the groups in Iraq would fracture and then fight civil war over the power left behind by the toppled Saddam Hussein. How many soldiers would it then take to stifle a foreign civil war and nation build? That's a question that should have been asked but our leaders didn't go beyond 'slick agile force' and 'greeted as liberators'. A war game was conducted in the late 90s to see exactly how nation building/civil war-handling could go in Iraq...the findings were that 500,000 would be needed & would still probably not be enough.

55,000 isn't quite 100x 4,000. If our Iraq War leadership had as many soldiers on the ground there as LBJ etc did in Vietnam (which would still not be enough to stifle civil war & nation build simultaneously) the death toll would be subsequently higher. Also, advancements in medicine are allowing more soldiers to live on as invalids or handicappeds that would have otherwise died from Vietnam-era injuries. The comparison is apt in that it shows us what happens when we invade foreign countries with underwhelming forces without bothering to consider who/where we are attacking or the consequences thereof. Also, whoever wrote yesterday's speech apparently has a 6th grade level education in history. It was really dumb on that level. And Bush again showed that saying he will support the returning troops counts for far more than actually doing so in his & his Administration's opinion.

How does our taking out terrorist groups in Pakistan equate to the terrorists taking over control of the country? Has faith in our country reached such depths that we only feel our military is capable of beating up unrelated nations, staving off migrant workers, & spending a lot of cash? And, yes, the 'General, General' thing is germane to the argument. It shows what leadership we get when we elect leaders who know nothing about foreign policy.

I guess I'm not too keen on being al Qaeda's bent-over bitch. 'They might topple General General if we bomb their camps so lets just let them play!'

When did having actual foreign policy plans/ideas become naive? Was it around the time we decided to elect a President who though the leader of Pakistan was 'General, uh, General General'?

That 'college kids didnt save John Kerry' stuff is dumb. The youth were plenty active & voted even when they had to wait in line for hours. Dont scapegoat them just because the handicapped ran the Kerry campaign & the over-30 voters were led to Bush by '9-11', 'Kerry will tek r guns etc', 'and Kerry wasnt really in Vietnam'. And, I would also like a legitimate reason why Obama's Pakistan comments (and taking nulear weapons off the table) were such terrible things. I don't think such reasoning is forthcoming, though.

That was some hometown judging for Diaz on Saturday. I hope Marquez & Vasquez fight again next year.

I think Obama might have been trying to make a point about focusing on actual terrorists. Whether or not people believe that might be a valid strategy is certainly up to them.

PBF-Gatti 2.

Those black Metallica t-shirts was all theevidence I ever needed to see.

There was this lady that called into MSNBC all hysterical & depressed over this. She could barely speak & Danny Abrams was trying to both console her & keep her on the line for further gossip. The lady really struggled but she kept telling her story before she just couldn't go on and Abrams said 'goodbye'. About a minute later I switched over to CNN & thaat same lady's name was up on the chryon. Her emotionally strained voice was saying the exact same goddamned stuff to whoever was running the show on that channel.