VCU Makes The Final Four

And the riot is on in downtown Richmond for the second time in 3 days. The cops were out in force, but there were no arrests on either occasion, even tho' the kids did get a little destructive - mostly inadvertently.

You can see Nick in the bottom right foreground starting at about 0:18, for about 4 seconds. He's the devilishly handsome young cat with the curly brown hair wearing the black VCU hoodie.

Hippies!

Clay Bennett Cartoon

I can get next to most of what Bennett has to say.  I'm wondering why this particular toon popped up right now.

Also, I wonder if having the "lying Politicians" sign next to the "lying Fox News" sign is coincidence.

Duly Noted

It's completely slipped by the attention of the Press Poodles, but at least WisconsinWatch and Crooks & Liars are alert enough to catch it for us.

“Currently, the media is painting the union protest as a democratic uprising and failing to mention the role of the DNC and umbrella union organizations in the protest. Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support that the media may be creating in favor of the unions. God bless, Carlos F. Lam.”

Obviously, it's good that a putz like Carlos Lam is pushed out.  But his 'resignation' was a quiet thing, so I have to suspect his ouster was more a result of his being so open about his suggestion than it was about the dirty trick itself.

When assholes like Mr Lam are brought down loudly and publicly, then maybe we'll start to see a change in the way we do things.  Until then, we can probably expect more of the same.

The Costs Of War

Beans, bullets and band-aids is just the beginning. We'll be paying for these wars for a very long time in ways we can scarcely imagine right now.

I Was For It Before I Was Against It

He's Back - Kinda

Muh man, Keith demonstrates again why "the left" is right and "the right" is wrong.

Today's Quote

"Destiny is a tyrant's justification for his crimes, and a fool's excuse for his failures."
--Ambrose Bierce

Political Science

A longtime personal favorite. I played this in a tourist bar in BVI sometime in 2003 (we were there on vacation), not knowing of course, if the crowd would get it. Most did. Some didn't. Some things never change.

Hat tip to Steve P in Oregon. I had no idea anybody else even knew this tune existed.

The World Is A Battlefield

Wondering why Obama isn't following thru on what we all took as a pledge to change how we approach the "War On Terrorism"?  Simple answer = he can't.

It's possible that a lot of the turmoil and upheaval in Western Asia grew out of The Bush Doctrine (tho' it's more probable it was happening by itself anyway), but the main thing is that something very big and very dangerous is in motion, and is gathering a heavy inertia.

All Obama can do now is try to guide the thing on its path; to minimize the damage, and to position us to take advantage of whatever tiny crumbs of benefit might fall out of it along the way.

So here's the thing:  The massive cluster fuck we call The Arab World gets bigger and more complicated every day.

Jeremy Cahill on Democracy Now.
BTW: you know Cahill is probably onto something because our Corporate Government insists on ignoring what he reports.