Pat Tillman Was Murdered

This explains a lot, doesn't it? It's horrific. Pat Tillman was shot by more than one soldier, with standard M16 rifles, in the head, from a distance of less than 35 feet. He was delibrately targeted and fired upon by his own men. Then superiors covered it up and even congratulated each other via e-mail for preventing a criminal investigation. And while the Tillman family was lied to, the heroic story of Pat Tillman was sold to the American public to drum-up support for the occupation of Iraq, Army enlistment, and the War on Terror.

I am not shocked much in Bushworld, but even this story has me shocked. And knowing that Tillman was a left-leaning atheist, and seeing how he affirmed it in his very last words, has me furious. He was in Afghanistan for the same reason I would have gone - to kill the guys who trained and financed those who killed our people (and nearly killed me) in 2001. He wasn't there to promote Bush's 2004 reelection, but that's how he was used in the end. It it outrageous. And since the Bush administration took steps to prevent the truth from coming out, claiming broad executive privilege, then they must be held accountable for the cover-up.

The NFL needs to shut the fuck up about how one of their stars kicked Taliban ass. The Bushies and warhawks need to shut the fuck up about how we need to enlist and fight their war. And the wingnuts just need to shut the fuck up. I want justice. The Tillmans deserve justice.

AP: New details on Tillman's death

By MARTHA MENDOZA
AP National Writer
July 26, 2007

Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman's forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player's death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors — whose names were blacked out — said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman's comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman's death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.

The medical examiners' suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

Among other information contained in the documents:

• In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

• Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

• The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn't recall details of his actions.

• No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene — no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman's death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers.

With questions lingering about how high in the Bush administration the deception reached, Congress is preparing for yet another hearing next week.

The Pentagon is separately preparing a new round of punishments, including a stinging demotion of retired Lt. Gen. Philip R. Kensinger Jr., 60, according to military officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the punishments under consideration have not been made public.

In more than four hours of questioning by the Pentagon inspector general's office in December 2006, Kensinger repeatedly contradicted other officers' testimony, and sometimes his own. He said on some 70 occasions that he did not recall something.

At one point, he said: "You've got me really scared about my brain right now. I'm really having a problem."

Tillman's mother, Mary Tillman, who has long suggested that her son was deliberately killed by his comrades, said she is still looking for answers and looks forward to the congressional hearings next week.

"Nothing is going to bring Pat back. It's about justice for Pat and justice for other soldiers. The nation has been deceived," she said.

The documents show that a doctor who autopsied Tillman's body was suspicious of the three gunshot wounds to the forehead. The doctor said he took the unusual step of calling the Army's Human Resources Command and was rebuffed. He then asked an official at the Army's Criminal Investigation Division if the CID would consider opening a criminal case.

"He said he talked to his higher headquarters and they had said no," the doctor testified.

Also according to the documents, investigators pressed officers and soldiers on a question Mrs. Tillman has been asking all along.

"Have you, at any time since this incident occurred back on April 22, 2004, have you ever received any information even rumor that Cpl. Tillman was killed by anybody within his own unit intentionally?" an investigator asked then-Capt. Richard Scott.

Scott, and others who were asked, said they were certain the shooting was accidental.

Investigators also asked soldiers and commanders whether Tillman was disliked, whether anyone was jealous of his celebrity, or if he was considered arrogant. They said Tillman was respected, admired and well-liked.

The documents also shed new light on Tillman's last moments.

It has been widely reported by the AP and others that Spc. Bryan O'Neal, who was at Tillman's side as he was killed, told investigators that Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat (expletive) Tillman, damn it!" again and again.

But the latest documents give a different account from a chaplain who debriefed the entire unit days after Tillman was killed.

The chaplain said that O'Neal told him he was hugging the ground at Tillman's side, "crying out to God, help us. And Tillman says to him, `Would you shut your (expletive) mouth? God's not going to help you; you need to do something for yourself, you sniveling ..."

___

Associated Press reporters Scott Lindlaw in Las Vegas and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.

Feinstein vs. Gonzales: The Full Clip

Reposted from Politics TV. In the now-infamous July 24th hearing, Feinstein tries to get to the very bottom of the USA terminations. Who put the USAs on the list and how many firings did Gonzales approve?

This was so infuriating, I almost expected Feinstein to drop an F-bomb when Gonzo laid-out examples of possible misconduct and then admitted that none of the terminated USAs were terminated for such examples. I myself would have said, "fuck you," gotten-up, and stormed out. Fuck that. Would you agree? Try not to curse.

Human Trafficking By First Kuwaiti Contracting

That's not a typo. This is fucking incredible. These two whislteblowers, despite their hokey appearance and grammatical errors, speak for themselves.

The US State Department has a lot to explaining to do. And this is yet another scandal to unfold in Bushworld.

Just watch this, especially the second video.

Holy Motherfucker.

Henry Waxman should go on the fucking warpath. And he will.

Rory Mayberry is not a new face to appear before Congress. He blew the whistle on Halliburton's scandalous management of food services for foreign contract laborers in 2005.

And now, he reports that he met Filipino and Indian workers who were being paid as little as $200 per month by First Kuwaiti, and if he blew the whistle then, he would have been thrown out of the Green Zone to face greater physical risks. Sounds like something out of Pol Pot's Cambodia or Argentina 30 years ago. It's scary and real.

Max Blumenthal Strikes Again!

He's incredible and he is on a roll. And he does it for free (it helps to have the Wingnuts come to DC to do their conferences). This time, he infiltrates the Christians United for Israel conference in Washington, DC back on July 16th.

You will notice two young female PR agents in the video. I find it funny when I do a simple Google search for their backgrounds. Alison Crisci is a graduate of Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, PA, and is a liberal compared to most people in the conference (although she is an outspoken Christian, she supports tolerance of Muslims). Kara Silverman graduated from Ohio State University in 2005 who majored in geography and Jewish studies. They both work for 5W, a fast-growing PR firm in New York. I am tempted to call them both losers. But as a Communications major, I have to remember that the PR industry really sucks when you are starting out. Long hours, low pay, and gigs like this. Ouch.

Live Earth And Other Circle Jerks

By Archetype:

It's official. I will no longer attend ANY "green" events. You know what I mean, these self-important, self-righteous, self-absorbed, do-gooders who want to tell me that either things are really, really bad and I have to change or that they are really really trying hard and here is the evidence in which a 100-slide PowerPoint presentation outlines everything they have done to protect the environment or at least identified the problems that all these other people have the change (as was skillfully pointed out at an EPA seminar on green building I attended this week). Where is the ownership to this issue? Where are the real leaders?

All I have to say to all of them is, GO FUCK YOURSELVES!

"Compiling the data is hard… it takes time"

"Changing behavior is hard… it takes time "

"Changing policy is hard… it takes time "

Nope. None of those are hard. Complicated? Perhaps, but not hard. There are many things about this issue that are hard. But let me share something that is really very easy, simple in fact.

A collapsing eco-system. Very easy.

Doesn't need consensus.

Doesn't need further research.

And now that we continue to sit on our hands with half-measures at best and a whole gaggle of rhetoric, here is another thing it doesn't need, time.

Time is no longer of the essence. As Living Colour once sang, Time's UP!

Look, I like Al Gore, we should be having retrospectives on his two-term Presidency at this point, but he is part of the hypocritical problem. The time is well past. Happy Earth Day, folks. Al and the many disillusioned thousands (millions?) who attended or watched the Live Earth "festivities" all must face some facts here. We, the people, do not have a say in our future. The rich and, subsequently, the powerful, which have always had that say, will determine our fate. And they give less than a shit about state of the planet. An inconvenient truth? Indeed. Inconvenient because we fat, lazy citizens might have to walk to work. We might have to drive smaller cars or live in smaller houses or even GOD FORBID, use less electricity. Wait, that sounds strangely like sacrifice. Apparently, all you good Christians leave the sacrifice to sons of God and the like.

Well, we reap what we have sown. And we have sown a wonderful world where nature is going to make it really easy for us in the not too distant future. I love the gun-to-the-head analogies. Hey, that only works if people actually know it's a gun and not a finger with the thumb mimicking a trigger. Nature has the gun and has held it to our collective heads for a long time now. But we all look up and obliviously smile like it's all just a big joke. We all have that Iraq-War-George W. Bush-Press-Conference look on our faces. Well, ha-ha…..BOOOOM. Yeah, fucknuts, that's your brains on that wall back there. Nighty-night.

I am an architect, which puts me on the front lines of this debate. Buildings are the number one consumers of energy (the key player in the environmental debate). This means that I am both the uniter and the divider. I let this shit happen. Why? Because I am too afraid to confront superiors and clients with cold hard realities. More of that truth stuff there. Superiors have benndoing this stuff a hell of a lot longer than I so they know what's best for me and world at large. And Clients do not want to pay for innovation. Well, good design needs not innovation. A well thought building will cost the same to build as a less thought one, but will greatly reduce the cost of operation of that building over the life of it. Well hey, clients don't care about later, they have a budget now to worry about. All in due time, right?

I am also a LEED accredited professional. That sounds pretty special, no? What that means is I have taken an exam given by the United States Green Building Council (I know you all are ware of such an organization, right?) regarding my aptitude in their LEED rating system, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Do you know what it really means? Nothing. More than half my current firm are LEED Accredited Professionals. Know how many know really what a green building would look like? Very few. That is the problem. There are so many in the know about these things, but they do the least amount of the actual built work. In our wonderful little profession comes the term "value engineering". "Value engineering" is the art and craft of taking a building that works perfectly and cutting out all of the things that architects and engineers agreed would make the building work effectively and cut those things down so that the price (that some less than expert contractor has priced to build) will be reduced. Inevitably the first things cut from a construction budget? You guessed it, the "green stuff". Why? Because we pussy-architects cower at the clients and their devil-on-the-shoulder contractors wim. Where are the Samuel Mockbees and the Glen Murcutts of the corporate architecture realm? Suppressed and encourage to adhere to the old adage, " young designers should seen and not heard."

Hey, all you mentors in the architecture field….please read the passage starting with the 123rd word of this blog and ending with the 126th. Thanks for your precious time.

So whether its Architects or Should-Be Presidents or even scientists or climatologists, they all say the same things. We need to change. And sure, change is coming slowly. But the fact remains true to a saying that has become my mantra,

Less Bad, Is NOT Good.

Less bad. More Sustainable. They both say the same thing. Our demise is merely slowing. The problem is at what rate? No one can quantify that. How convenient.

So enjoy Live Earth 2, enjoy Leonardo DiCaprio telling us what car we should drive, enjoy being less bad. I will be avoiding these self-congratulatory circle jerks and other back-patting or finger-pointing events and meetings in order to draw up some new plans about impacting real change that is so desperately needed. I will take care of this, I wouldn't want all y'all to be inconvenienced.

- Archytype, July 26th 2007, 13:00 EDT

Leave Coco Alone!

By M:
Can this guy get a break. I didn't see the play last night but I'll just assume he fucked up royally. But I'm getting tired of the BDD's nailing him and then crying about Johnny Damon being gone every time.

from BDD:
Johnny Damon Never, Ever, Ever, Ever, Never Hid From Reporters After a Game or Ducked the Tough Questions for Four Years in Boston.

Ok I'll play along. Johnny talked to the media...never had anything even remotely enlightening to say...except that he's an "idiot", but yes he talked to the media. He made the reporters and BDD feel legitimate and cuddly all over.

But let us not forget that Johnny Damon is a Yankee now...and he's a Yankee not because the Yankee's were willing to spend more (which is based more in myth than in reality) but because Scott Boras (and JD by association) is a fucking liar (which to the best of my knowledge Coco is not). During the negotations Boras repeatedly told the Sox that there were teams (as in multiple teams) that were making offers of six year contracts for ridiculous amounts of money (like 15+ per year). The Sox were never willing to go past four. They made an initial offer of around 10million per year (2 million more than the 8mil per year JD was already making) for four years. Now if there were offers for 6 years at 15mil per year than yes the Sox offer would seem low...but the reality is there were NO OTHER OFFERS. The Yanks gave Boras a fortnight to accept their four year 12 million offer. SB and JD knew this was the only other offer out there and to save face they took it.
John Henry asked Boras afterwards why Johnny took an offer for 12mil a year for four when supposedly there six year deals for more $ on the table.
Boras gave a bullshit response about Johnny being attracted to the Yankee mystic and the Sox not having been aggressive enough. Henry naturally was furious feeling rightly that they had they been given the opportunity they could have met (and probably beaten the Yankee offer)...but Boras and Damon never gave him the chance. Damon allowed his ego to be bruised because of the Sox's initial offer (which was just that...an INITIAL offer) and Boras used that to his advantage. Boras's angle was to get someone to switch sides from the Sox to the Yanks or vice versa...to establish a trend where players would actually make that leap. That way as his other clients from both teams hit free agency he'll have set a precedent (that's its no longer taboo to make that direct switch)...and then these two big budget teams can go at it. Breaking that taboo was great for Boras...but it exposed him for the lying piece of shit he is. He negotiated in bad faith. Johnny was just stupid and allowed himself to be manipulated by Boras. I think he really thought the Yanks were his only option and that the Sox didn't love him anymore....which was bullshit.

Now BDD knows this completely. All of the above info is taken from Feeding the Monster by Seth Mnookin...they've posted links to the except on this many times. But whenever Coco makes a mistake or even worse refuses to talk to the media they cry about Damon...as if any of the above is Coco's fault!!!

And what about JD...yeah he hurt the Sox last year. But he's breaking down.
He has to DH most nights. And Coco has made at least a half dozen insane catches this year alone that Damon couldn't make on his best day...never mind the routine stuff (like actually taking the field) Plus look at their #'s. Damon is batting .245 with 5 HR, 36 RBI's and 18 stolen bases. Coco is at .281, 5 HR's, 38 RBI's, and 17 stolen bases. So where's the travesty of not having Damon? If the choices were Coco and Damon of 2003/04 than I could see the point. And Coco is hot as hell right now. To be hitting .281 when I don't think he made contact with the ball until June is pretty impressive. Plus his body actually works.

Damon was one of my favorite players and I hate that he went to the Yanks.
But the circumstances that sent him their were entirely his own. Its not the fault of Coco or the Red Sox front office. So BDD and any other Red Sox fan or reporter that wants to keep throwing JD at Coco should check the facts and then fuck off. And the "tough questions"? Give me a fucking break. Tough questions...more like incessant whining from a bunch of little bitches who couldn't do a lap around the Red Sox locker room without needing medical attention afterwards. Leave Coco alone.

Gonzales Cannot Be Fired

So he must be removed for lying to Congress. We have found the Administration's defensive wall. Take down Gonzales and we can discover the other scandals and violations of the constitution that are going on in the White House.

And speaking of Whitehouse, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island rocks. We don't see much of him here, but he has pretty much researched and has proven the solid, unprecedented political links between the White House (Cheney's office and Rove's office) and the DOJ. Ted Kennedy is becoming more and more silent by the month. He has lost his teeth, it seems. So Whitehouse, Feingold, and now Schumer have to take-up the slack. Chuck also rocked on Tuesday.

Thanks to TPM Muckracker for posting these video clips.

Highlight Reel:

His dangerous exchange with Schumer. If he goes down for perjury, it will be for this clip:

2007 Genesis Tour: Bad News For Europe; Worse News For The USA

The more I post, the more you can learn about my interests. Not only am I a fan of the golden age of science fiction (1953-1980), space opera (Star Wars, Farscape), and auto racing, but I am also a fan of progressive and art-rock. I don't consider myself to be hardcore. I don't drool at the thought of seeing a Magma or Dream Theater show. I only went to NEARfest once, and it scared me a little. But I am enough of a fan to enjoy most of the works of Pink Floyd, Emerson Lake & Palmer, King Crimson, Rush, some of the Yes family tree, some of the Roxy Music family tree (Brian Eno, especially), and most of all, Genesis.

Now I am not here to provide a history of the band, but let me wind-up to deliver this week's curious and depressing news.

Genesis is a band that has had more than one artistic peak, which makes them an exciting and interesting band to follow. They released six studio albums with Peter Gabriel at lead vocal. The last three of those albums represent the peak of Genesis as a five-member unit (Foxtrot (1972), Selling England By The Pound (1973), The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (1974)). As many pro-rock fans know, Gabriel left the band following the Lamb tour, and after hundreds of auditions, Tony banks and Mike Rutherford agreed that their drummer, Phil Collins, would take-over singing duty. Genesis returned from the studio in 1976 as a four piece, and released two more great albums, Trick of the Tail (1976) and Wind and Wuthering (1977). Following the departure of the great Steve Hackett on lead guitar, Genesis transformed again.

Genesis remained a storytelling band. They had gravitated towards songs about medieval times, Greek drama, English country life, Scottish history, fantasy tales, and apocalyptic and/or futuristic tales. With Wind and Wuthering, they still brought-up cricket, afternoon tea, and 16th century Scotland. But they changed their tone a bit with their next phase. With their 1978 album And Then There Were Three, there were fantasy stories, a song about the gold rush, a complex emo-rock song in 5/4 time (Snowbound), and...a radio-friendly ballad! Follow You Follow Me was the first Genesis song to get the attention of large numbers of female listeners and eventually, female fans. Nothing wrong with that at all. But the narrative of the band from 1978 to this day reflects the band's artistic, personal, and political structure. Simply put, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, the two former public schoolboys and residents of little castles in Surrey, manage the band. Phil brings-in the most commercial, radio friendly material (which seems to have had an influence over Mike and his contributions since 1983 or so). Tony has consistently provided the best musical compositions. And the band has made sure that at least one long song is produced for each album (the final ones being Driving the Last Spike and Fading Lights in 1991). And perhaps most interesting, the band seems to get together and/or produce new material whenever Phil is going through a rocky phase in his marriage.

Really. That's how it works.

They recorded Wind and Wuthering in Vancouver in 1976. At that time, Phil's first marriage was slowly falling apart after just one year. Phil and Andrea Bertorelli divorced in 1980, after two more acclaimed Genesis albums were released. His angst over the divorce manifested itself in his finest solo albums, Face Value, and Hello I Must Be Going. That's a lot of good material over one failed marriage. In 1984, he married Jill Tavelman. During his second marriage, he released three more best-selling solo albums, picked-up some Grammies, and released two more albums with Genesis, not to mention two enormous singles (Against All Odds, Easy Lover) that helped canonize him into 1980s pop culture. 1987 saw Genesis and Peter Gabriel competing against each other for MTV VMAs and Grammies as the platinum counts mounted higher. The difference is, So was as commercial as Peter Gabriel would ever get. The last Genesis album with Collins on vocals, We Can't Dance (1991), sold a whopping 10 million copies, about half of them in the USA.

Phil left Genesis in 1996 as his marriage to Jill fell apart. Phil had a solo album up his sleeve with Dance Into the Light, which was a financial and artistic failure compared to his previous five solo albums. He found himself being commissioned by Disney to compose songs for both the Tarzan movie and Broadway show. He picked-up an Oscar for Best Original Song for that effort, and met and married the young Orianne Cevey along the way, followed by a move with his then 27 year-old bride to the English-speaking side of Geneva, where she borne him two children.

Phil is not usually as cold or as distant (or as WASPy) as his two public school-educated bandmates, Mike and Tony. But apparently Phil has shown a pattern of transmitting bad news via e-mail or fax. Some of his divorce-related communications were sent to Jill via fax in 1996. Now that's not as bad as Rudy Giuliani breaking the bad news to Donna Hanover in a public press conference, but still, that's cold. She fortunately walked away with a $30M settlement. We later learned that Phil's company ceased paying royalties to two members of Earth Wind and Fire, under the cold explanation that the two were overpaid, and so royalty payments for the Serious Hits Live CD would end. It seemed like an unprofessional way to end a 10-year relationship.

Last year, Phil and Orianne Cevey separated. Many fans speculated that it would lead to a Genesis reunion. And indeed it did.

As for live performances - Genesis world tours since 1986 have all followed a similar template. Whereas their shows of the late 1970s features a mix of lengthy older songs and shorter ballads, the tours over the last 21 years have cut the longer songs into medleys (particularly The Lamb, and the solo of Firth of Fifth). Two long songs from the 1980s have survived: Home By The Sea (parts 1 & 2) and Domino (parts 1 & 2). And the rest of the setlist has been filled with some classic hits (Turn it On Again), recent # 1 hits (No Son of Mine), and recent ballads (In Too Deep (released as a single in 1987), Hold on My Heart (released as a single in 1992). The encore has essentially been the same, which includes a truncated Tonight Tonight Tonight, and their biggest hit Invisible Touch.

In November 2006, Genesis announced that they were going to get back together, release a box set of their best material with Phil on vocals (1976-1982), and play songs they haven't played in years on the tour. They even hinted that they would drop medleys in favor of complete song performances. I didn't take it too seriously, and neither did most fans. When the first setlist was leaked, it was a real downer. With the exception of the Duke material woven into the medleys, it looked a lot like their 1992/93 setlist:

Behind The Lines / Duke’s End (medley)
Turn It On Again
No Son Of Mine
Land Of Confusion
In The Cage / The Cinema Show / Duke’s Travels (medley)
Afterglow
Hold On My Heart
Home By The Sea
Follow You Follow Me
Firth Of Fifth / I Know What I Like (medley)
Mama
Ripples
Throwing It All Away
Domino
Drum Duet
Los Endos
----------
Tonight Tonight Tonight (intro)
Invisible Touch
I Can’t Dance
The Carpet Crawlers

Ripples, In The Cage, Afterglow, Los Endos, Follow You Follow Me, and Carpet Crawlers stand-out as pre-1980 songs to be performed in their entirety. Not bad. But three of those above songs were performed in their early 80s tours. So it seems like an easy way to add songs back to the setlist rather than reach deeper into the catalog to play something that would truly be 'new' for even old fans. Granted, Ripples and Carpet Crawlers fit that definition. But being selfish, I would have wanted more. A complete song from Duke or Abacab would make me feel a lot better about this tour.

Also, Genesis fans would question why Throwing It All Away is in the set list while the songs from Duke are edited into medleys. Also infuriating would be the Firth of Fifth medley, in which guitarist Daryl Sturmer obnoxiously plucks extra notes into the solo, or the bit of The Cinema Show where Tony Banks' keyboard solo is truncated (at least in the European clips I have seen).

Furthermore, fans report that Tony's keyboard setup sounds low-budget and amateurish. Genesis should be supporting their box set and play more songs from the late 1970s. But instead, they continue to play 1980s top-40 hits and reduce Gabriel-era works into lazy and uninspired medleys. For the fans, it does not represent a compromise. It gives them no compelling reason to go to the show at all.

These blokes are hardly working and laughing once again to the bank.

Archetype and I are still seeing the September 16th show in Hartford, despite my argument above. He writes:

The British are coming… The British are coming…

The band Genesis is returning to the North American shores in the coming weeks and with it shocking news…..(warning: sarcasm in use) Rumors are abound of them changing the set list to accommodate the American audience.

Accommodate, indeed! What it really means is "dumbing" the set down to just the ultra-pop hits. Songs like Ripples will serve as the casualties. I am not sure who comprises the demographic that would rather hear In Too Deep over Ripples, but I venture to guess they are not really Genesis fans. Maybe in 1986 In Too Deep thrilled the pop-thirsty Yanks, but for the likes of myself and other hard core fans we saw it as the necessary evil to ring in another chance to see our boys tour.

Lets put aside the overwhelming desire for myself to see the entire quintessential group reunite, that being the current threesome (Tony Banks, Phil Collins, and Mike Rutherford) joined on stage with Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett (lead guitar). No offense to Daryl Steurmer and Chester Thompson but most have us have seen that version more so than the other line up. Perhaps that will come to fruition someday. Though I am reaching an age where it appears that the troubadours of my youth are really just an aged bunch that lacks the hunger of their preceding selves. Unparalleled success, I suppose, can bring that. Even Tony Banks in a recent interview backstage in Europe said as much, that not supporting an album has made the tour more relaxed and since they don't feel they need to win fans the pressure to perform is lessened.

I think something has been lost here. Perhaps I have loftier standards for a band that pushed the music world and especially the live gig presentation. While I am sure the visuals will dazzle, they have slipped a bit in the delivery of the music itself, whether it's the vocal range that slips with age or the virtuosity in the play or even the selection of songs themselves, this is not the Genesis I would necessarily have paid to see.

Truth is, though, I am paying to see them, the 16th of September in Hartford, Connecticut. Not a choice venue for me but they were purchased with the hope of them being true to their words in the press conference, of renewing the idea of Genesis being a band beyond the hits, so to speak. Well the vast majority are just that, the hits. And on the surface that is OK, but news that as they arrive on the North American leg of the tour that more hits will supplant less popular tracks breaks my heart. I have heard that stuff. Ripples is a beautiful song. It is a song that perhaps the majority of the American audiences may not remember in lieu of the popularity of the more recent ones, but it is a chance to re-introduce NA to a truly beautiful song. That is what a live show is about!

Supporting an album might just be what the doctor ordered, only instead of one that has yet to be recorded, how about one that was recorded a long time ago that has been forgotten on American airwaves? Say, A Trick of the Tail, Wind and Wuthering, and …And Then There Were Three , all of which were re-issued with bonus material just before the tour began? But not the tracks that keep showing up as medley pieces, but rather the very beautifully penned pieces that are not instrumentals such as Squonk, Entangled, Blood On The Rooftops, Say Its Alright Joe, Ballad Of Big, and Cul De Sac. Would the audience who is in the know not appreciate this? Would the audience that is not in the know not find these pieces beautiful?

More so than the unknown is the known, and I am referring to the legitimacy of certain songs in the live realm. I am sure Hold On My Heart and In Too Deep are fabulous singles in the catalogue, but they are not compelling live tracks. Live tracks should evoke the very senses not covered in the albums and should be more dynamic than the album cut. Neither of those two do that. Most bands fall short in the live realm, a product of over-production in the studio. Live gigs should ebb and flow with dynamism but to not include a song that proved to ascend beyond the album and basically had it all, Supper's Ready, and include songs that cannot reach further than the album cut seems as though the Genesis has lost track of its roots. They did not outsell Pink Floyd, but they out played them. Maybe "proggers" acknowledged the sheer magnitude of the abilities of Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman when comparing them to Tony banks but Banks wrote better pieces than either of those two. He understood the power in less is more and when that combined with well timed crescendos would create epic moments that Genesis is most known for with the live material.

So, here we are on the verge of a let down. I am trying to remain upbeat about that press conference promise but I have trepidations. I beg the members of Genesis to reconsider any thought of changing the set-list from the European one. Though if you do, consider going the other way with it to re-examine older songs with the same commitment that you have to these newer pieces. Give us here in America another chance.

The latest interview with Mike & Tony supports the post above. They are discussing dropping Ripples in favor of In Too Deep. And my god are they grumpy. Look at that video greeting. Yeah. Thanks for sticking with two guys who were performing with vigor 25 years ago, but today are two grumpy millionaires from Surrey.

It's almost as if I treat them like members of the 2004 Red Sox. Sure, some of them were truly great players (Ortiz, Cabrera, Lowe, Arroyo, Schilling, Foulke). Some were unlikely heroes (Bellhorn, Reese). But others really were idiots. Some were evangelicals I wouldn't want to be seen with (Nixon, Varitek). But if I actually saw any them in the flesh, I would pay for their dinner, buy them a drink, or just thank them.

Genesis' greatest work is behind them and they will always be thanked for that. What's frustrating is how they could get right back on track now if they just dropped the medleys, and added some songs we fans really haven't heard in a while. Ababab. Snowbound. Squonk. Burning Rope. Entangled. Man of Our Times. Dammit.

And just last week, Phil revealed that the tour is a royal pain in the ass because it is keeping him away from his two youngest children, who are back in Geneva with Orianne Cevey. Boo hoo.

As my friend M says:

I'm so sorry I've given Phil over $100.00 of my money...now I owe him an apology too. I'm sorry Phil!! I didn't mean to keep you from your children. As a father I truly sympathize. I'm sorry I dragged you out of your home and forced you to do half ass versions of what was once great music.

I will keep an open mind, and follow this tour through the Genesis blogs. I will comment on the Hartford show after it takes place.

You Can Terminate It, Britney.

That is, assuming you are pregnant again. I hear that your bodyguard may be the father. Hey, if a small-time blogger in Manhattan has heard that, then it might be everywhere when US Weekly hits the news stands this morning.

Just reminding you that you have at least 15 weeks to change your mind. That's a long time to contemplate if a third child before your 27th birthday is really a good idea. And considering your incoherent, sad interview to OK magazine this week, I think a full-term is the last thing you need.

I'll make this simple. You have your publicist or assistant contact me here, and I can get you taken care of in a clean, discreet Manhattan clinic for free. No photos. No interviews. I'm sure someone you trust can be here for you as well. Maybe JT. He's a good guy. He wants you to be well and be happy.

I would not ask, but I would hope that you one day tell the press that you had an abortion, and you are not going to hell for it.

You would be a ground-breaking celebrity who made a difference. We need abortion to come out of the closet. That's the best way to keep it legal in this country.

So if you are pregnant again, please terminate it, Britney. Do it for you.

Crazy Right Coast, Crazy Left Coast

A classic from Crazy Eddie (NYC) 1984 and one from Crazy Gideon (LA) circa 2003.

New Age Hits

Friday music videos again. I am not going to touch the Red Sox on this blog until I know what the hell is going on with them. Instead of pulling-away from the Yankees, they are being reeled-in. Scary.

My girl told me this morning that she had this song, Shattered Dreams, in her head. We were trying to determine who performed it. Well, it is Johnny Hates Jazz. Remember this one from 1987?

This is the US video, in which the lead singer, Clark Datchler, is unshaven and more masculine than he appears in the color UK video. So for the US, he's got black & white stubble, very much like the dude in Cutting Crew, which had a hit just months before this single. Interesting also how this single went to # 2 in the US, while it peaked at # 5 in the UK. Could it have been the result of the better video in the US? It was their biggest hit, along with Turn back the Clock (featuring Kim Wilde on vocals).

These guys are not to be confused with the slightly more funky Level 42 around the same period (1985-1987). Level 42 would be grouped into the same sub-category of white UK acts that dabbed in R&B and soul, like Living in a Box, Joe Jackson, and Rick Astley.

Kids, Are You Ready For The Mushroom Clouds?

You'd better be ready, you little suburban lambs. Don't forget the bottled water. And be afraid. Don't forget to always be afraid.

Keith Olbermann: Go There And Fight YOUR War, YOURself.

And he didn't save it for the end of his show. He kicked-off his Thursday show with this outstanding special comment. Instant classic.

Generation Chickenhawk (AKA The 2007 College Republican Convention in DC)

The nation's Max Blumenthal has put together a piece of guerrilla filmmaking that would make Michael Moore proud. This piece speaks for itself. It's hilarious. But listen to the remarks from Tom Delay regarding the relationship between abortion and illegal immigration.

If you believe abortion doesn't affect you, I contend it affects you in immigration. If we had those 40 million children that were killed over the last 30 years, we wouldn't need the illegal immigrants to fill the jobs that they are doing today. [3-second pause] Think about it.

Wow. Just wow.

This is simply awesome. Could this be the best thing I have ever seen on YouTube? Except maybe the sneezing baby panda? No, this is even better. You rock, Max!

The quotes in this are incredible. And these kids seem sober (of course, their mental stability is highly questionable).

That kid talking about how we are all tempted by homosexuality is pretty funny. Speak for yourself, kid.

And don't accuse Max for being just another liberal. He got a press pass to the Taking Back America conference in June, and did his best to ridicule it as well:

And here is Max at CPAC (the Conference Political Action Conference) in March. Also hilarious. Priceless stuff.

Saying Goodbye To Private Wilson, 18

There's a tragic story behind every one of our 3,628 soldiers lost in Iraq. This is the most recent example from my city. A young Trinidad-born son of a naturalized Army officer enlists at age 17. He is dead at age 18:

The Imperative of War: A Life Recruited at 17, Taken at 18
By JIM DWYER
July 18, 2007

A little more than a year ago, Le Ron A. Wilson, not yet 18, walked into the military recruiting center on Jamaica Avenue in Queens and signed up to serve in the Army. He had the kind of brains and drive that make a good soldier, the persistence that wears down parents. His mother, Simona Francis, gave her permission.

Yesterday, not far from the recruiting center, the short, happy life of Le Ron Wilson was recalled at a funeral Mass in Christ the King Church. Twice named soldier of the month in his platoon, a specialist in the repair of weapons, a correspondent with scores of friends on his MySpace page, Private First Class Wilson and another soldier were killed on July 6 by a roadside bomb.

Many of those in the church yesterday wore buttons with his image. The pictures that show him fresh-faced do not lie. He was born on Nov. 16, 1988. He was not yet 13 during the attacks of Sept. 11 and never voted for a president. He barely had to shave.

He is among the youngest soldiers killed in Iraq. Of more than 3,600 soldiers who have died in the war, about 30 have been 18. Tens of thousands of Iraqis young and old have also lost their lives.

In the pews, his classmates from Thomas Edison High School dabbed their eyes.
“Me and Danielle, one of our friends, tried to talk him out of it,” said Lilibel Araullo, 19, recalling when he enlisted. “A few others signed up. Justin. Derrick. I went to see him down in Savannah, before he left.

“Last time I heard from him was in June, a phone call, he was telling me it was hot over there,” she said. “I told him: ‘Message me on MySpace. Let me know you’re O.K.’ So I would get messages from him — ‘I’m alive, I’m okay.’ ”

These are the rites of connection for the young. Rituals for the dead are woven into the church and the military. For the church, a bishop came; for the Army, a general. The bishop, Octavio Cisneros, recalled the suffering of the mother of Jesus, and prayed that she would bring peace to Private Wilson’s mother. The general, Bill Phillips, spoke of the fellowship of soldiers, their care for one another and their mission.

He read the citations for the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star and the Combat Action Badge for service in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the name given to the invasion that started more than four years ago as a mission to eradicate weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist, and in retribution for the Sept. 11 attacks, which the Iraqis had nothing to do with.

The name of the operation is not heard so often these days.

The medals and a framed flag were presented to his mother. Ms. Francis handed them to relatives. Then the bishop, stood to begin the final prayers in the church.

“Into your hands, father of mercies, we commend our brother Le Ron,” Bishop Cisneros said.

When he was done, Ms. Francis strode behind her son’s coffin, composed but struggling.

The young people did not bother. They wept openly, then pooled together in cars, ready to join the procession to Long Island National Cemetery in Farmingdale, where they would lay their friend down.

“A girlfriend? Not in high school,” said Ms. Araullo. “He went to Hawaii, on recreation; there was a girl named Roxanne he met that he liked. That was before he went to Iraq.”

A few blocks away, as the funeral procession moved east, it was break time at the military recruiting center where Le Ron Wilson declared that he would become a soldier.

Two girls cantered streetward, down a flight of stairs, out into the sunshine. They paused beneath a sign for the center, where they are working through August.

“We go leafleting, we call people up about recruitment,” said one of the girls. “A lot of people say ‘no’ right away because they think they have to go straight to Iraq, but that’s not true, there’s other things they could do.”

She was 14. Her companion was 15. All told, they said, nine teenagers, paid $7.15 an hour by the city’s summer job program, are working at the Jamaica recruiting center.
Military recruiting, of course, is the work of professional soldiers, not teenagers in a summer program to learn how to hold a job.

Still, it is not surprising that they would be drawn into the search for new soldiers. Just as youth must be served, so, too, must the needs of a country at war.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

An Anti-Bush Editorial From A Scaife-Owned Newspaper

Short and sharp. This, from a Scaife-owned newspaper:

The war in Iraq
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Editorial
Sunday, July 15, 2007

Perhaps Jack Murtha put it best: The Pennsylvania congressman, among the first to make the cogent argument that staying the course in Iraq was the exercise in futility that indeed the war has become, says President Bush is delusional.

Based on the president's recent performance, we could not agree more. "Staying the course" is not simply futile -- it is a prescription for American suicide.

We've urged for months to bring our troops home. Now is the time.

"Progress" has become such a nuanced, parsed and tortured term that it no longer has meaning.

The "fledgling" Iraqi government -- how long can it reasonably be called that? -- consistently has not stepped up to the plate.

President Bush warns that U.S. withdrawal would risk "mass killings on a horrific scale." What do we have today, sir?

And quite frankly, during last Thursday's news conference, when George Bush started blathering about "sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved," we had to question his mental stability. [Italics added]

If the president won't do the right thing and end this war, the people must. The House has voted to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April. The Senate must follow suit.

Our brave troops should take great pride that they rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein. And they should have no shame in leaving Iraq. For it will not be, in any way, an exercise in tail-tucking and running.

America has done its job.

It's time for the Iraqis to do theirs.

People Are Still Buying CDs. Which Ones?

Well besides the latest from the White Stripes and Interpol (both of which I highly recommend), people are buying classic rock, pop and hip-hop. I must admit, I only got Metallica's 1991 album two years ago. But I was the first kid on my block to own a copy of Paul's Boutique, which I am very happy to see below. The Beastie Boys brilliantly turned 1989 into 1972, and they did it in their mid 20's. The album's 18th anniversary is this Thursday! Here is the full wire story:

Vintage AC/DC, Nirvana still big-sellers
By JAKE COYLE, AP Entertainment Writer
Mon Jul 16, 5:31 PM ET

Much of the rock 'n' roll and pop canon is well established.

Buying the albums of `60s and `70s acts like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley is akin to a rite of passage for any young music fan. These are the artists that baby boomers love to keep buying, and with whom seemingly every teenager at some point experiments. (Remember A.J. hearing Bob Dylan for the first time in the "Sopranos" finale?)

Now that the `80s and `90s are ancient history, what albums are people still buying from those decades? Do critical favorites like Radiohead and the Pixies grow more popular with time? Or do the Backstreet Boys and Madonna still rule the charts?

The short answer is that, above all, people are buying vintage Metallica, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Guns 'N Roses and, well, Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

AC/DC's "Back in Black" (1980) last year sold 440,000 copies and has thus far sold 156,000 this year, according to the Nielsen SoundScan catalog charts, which measure how well physical albums older than two years old are selling. (All figures for this article were provided by Nielsen SoundScan.)

Those "Back in Black" numbers would make most contemporary CDs a success. Metallica's self-titled 1991 album is altogether the second-biggest selling album of the Nielsen SoundScan era, which began in 1991. "Metallica" sold 275,000 copies last year.

Bon Jovi's greatest hits collection "Cross Road" last year sold 324,000 copies, while Guns 'N Roses "Appetite for Destruction" (1987) sold 113,000. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Christmas Eve and Other Stories" (1996) continues to be a holiday favorite; it was bought 289,000 times last year.

Greatest hits compilations are counted as catalog releases, and account for the majority of vintage best-sellers. Artists that commercially peaked in the `80s or `90s that have had lucrative best-of collections include Garth Brooks, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tim McGraw, Creed, Queen, Tom Petty, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Def Leppard, Aerosmith and Lionel Richie.

U2, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Celine Dion, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Dave Matthews Band and the ever-touring Jimmy Buffett also all continue to sell large amounts of old records.

Michael Jackson, of course, still has one of the most desirable back catalogs. His best- selling "Thriller" moves over 60,000 copies a year and his "Number Ones" collection yielded 162,000 sales last year.

Avid fans may be buying everything their favorite artist puts out, but there's more than nostalgia fueling vintage sales.

"Young fans aren't excluded from catalog sales — especially the ones who really get interested in music, there's always that sense of discovery," says Geoff Mayfield, the director of charts at Billboard Magazine.

Not everything maintains long-term success. Asia's self-titled 1982 album was the biggest seller of 1982, but only sold 5,000 copies last year. Whitney Houston's 1985 debut, also self-titled, was 1986's top album, but now sells about 7,000 discs a year.

The same trajectory has befallen past mega-hits like Ace of Base's "The Sign," Bobby Brown's "Don't Be Cruel" and the Spice Girl's "Spice." Though one of the best selling artists of all time, Mariah Carey's self-titled debut sold a measly 5,000 copies last year. The Backstreet Boys' "Millennium" managed only 9,000 sales.

Alas, the turning wheel of fortune isn't always kind to boy bands.

"The only thing that kept coming to mind to me was that line in the Bruce Springsteen song: `Someday we'll look back at this and it will all seem funny,'" recalls Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke.

Now, some critical hits that were trounced on their initial release by the likes of 'N Sync can claim a measure of commercial superiority. The Flaming Lips' "Soft Bulletin," often hailed as one of the best albums of the `90s by critics, sold a solid 38,000 copies last year.

Radiohead's legendary "OK Computer," currently celebrating its 10-year anniversary, last year sold 94,000 copies. Nirvana's "Nevermind" has done even better; it sold 143,000 copies in 2006.

Current events can alter the charts. When Ray Charles died, his older albums spiked for months, says Mayfield. A new album from Alanis Morissette would surely increase sales of her 1995 disc "Jagged Little Pill," one of the best selling albums of the past 20 years.

Likewise, recent reunions of the Police and Genesis can be expected to increase sales of their catalogs. The Police's 1986 compilation "Every Breath You Take" has already doubled its already strong 2006 sales by selling 107,000 copies so far this year.

Many well-regarded albums continue to do healthy business, including: U2's "Joshua Tree," Dr. Dre's "The Chronic," Beck's "Odelay," Wu-Tang Clan's "Enter the Wu-Tang," the Clash's "London Calling," Weezer's "Weezer," and the Pixies' "Doolittle." Each sold at least 20,000 copies last year.

Still, many albums that are consistently revered on critic top-ten lists of the `80s and `90s have not sold much. Joy Division's "Closer," the Smiths' "The Queen is Dead," My Bloody Valentine's "Loveless," and REM's "Murmur" all sold 12,000 copies or less last year.

Labels often reissue classic releases to capitalize on the devotion of die-hard fans and to attract a new audience. In the past few years, revered indie label Matador Records has released Pavement's first three albums, including "Slanted and Enchanted," a disc frequently ranked among the best in the `90s.

"It's almost like a new release for us," says Matador founder Chris Lombardi. "We probably sold in a one-year period, pretty much what those records sold in their first year period when they were initially released."

Though hip-hop continues to rule today's charts, many of its most historic albums don't enjoy the catalog sales that those from rock's heyday do. Public Enemy's "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back" sold 15,000 copies last year; Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique" sold 22,000; and Run DMC's "Raising Hell" sold far less than both.

So far this year, catalog sales are down 11.7 percent, but that's stronger than overall sales, which are down 14.7 percent, according to Billboard. It's a major portion of the music business. This year's total catalog sales of 95.6 million copies accounts for about 40 percent of all albums sold physically.

When people switched from cassette tapes to compact discs, catalog sales received a windfall as people re-bought their collections. The onset of digital downloading hasn't had that affect because CDs can easily be downloaded to your iPod, but digital stores do have the advantage of unlimited (virtual) store space to sell older music.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has pegged catalog downloads as 64 percent of all download sales in the U.S. (Apple declined to share its iTunes data on catalog sales.)

That still leaves illegal downloads unaccounted for, as well as a more important quantity: cultural impact. Though bands like Sonic Youth, the Ramones and Public Enemy may never sell as much as other acts, their influence remains immeasurable.

"Impact is not strictly about sales," says Fricke. "Otherwise everyone would be running around forming bands that sound exactly like Poison."

More Bush-Related Depression

Let's go back three years, to October 2004 - the second debate between Bush & Kerry. I need a drink after Bush's press conference this week. This has been a bad, bad week.

In the video below, the president's comments are edited together in one long rant. I wish I could post the entire second debate here. It was the debate in which Bush fumbled over and over again. It was the debate in which he quipped, "Don't forget Poland!" His delusional thinking is all here on the table. Bush's way forward in Iraq was to keep believing that it is possible to effectively referee a civil war. And despite pensive and even painful looks from the audience, we re-elected him anyway. How could we have been so fucking stupid? How could we not see a complete lack of leadership and intelligence. How could anyone follow this guy?

"I'm worried about our country," Bush says in the amateur video above.

I'm beyond worried. I think America is finished. Done. Over. It was fun while it fucking lasted.

Yes this country has dusted itself off before. We survived the Civil War, which would have destroyed any other nation. We got past an ugly and unjust Reconstruction. We survived the Cold War. We survived Nixon. But I am not sure we can survive Bush's legacy. His shadow over us will be long and long-lasting. He has tarnished this nation, and has buried the next several presidents and future generations in mountains of debt. He has virtually destroyed this country.

The world didn't change in 2001. But America did. Permanently. For the worse. Our votes were thrown into the trash. Our nation was attacked. We were put into a state of perpetual fear, and pinned-down by a war we didn't ask for, but were convinced we needed. And who am I to thank? A man whose Saudi-financed, $1 Billion library will be built on the SMU campus, but will display nothing because his was the most secretive presidency in our nation's history?

Remember this from December 2000? Wasn't this the truth:

A little dose of Reagan optimism won't help me. A speech from Barack Obama or Bill Clinton about "hope" won't make this feeling go away. It is twilight in America. The sun has set on our once great nation.

It's time to drink on this Friday the 13th.

Stuck In Iraq While The War Against al Qaeda Fails

Thursday July 12th will go down as one of the more depressing days of the Bush administration.

In his press conference, the president told the nation, in broad terms, that he will keep our army and marines in Iraq through the end of his second term. He also said that he will leave Iraq to the next president, and his legacy to historians to judge. He tried to end his press conference with this sound byte:

When it's all said and done ... if you ever come down and visit the old, tired me down there in Crawford, I will be able to say I looked in the mirror and made decisions based upon principle, not based upon politics.

As if there was not enough evidence that Bush has become delusional. He even took a shot at his dad while politely telling a reporter to shut up:

Do we ever use 'kinder and gentler'? No.

Just hours before the president spoke, the latest National Intelligence Estimate was either rushed to leaked to the press, on the heels of Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff's pitiful 'gut feeling' that we will be attacked very soon. I take the NIE with a grain of salt. It could be somewhat embellished to serve a political agenda. But even so, it should be considered mostly factual. And the facts do not bode well for this administration. It means that after nearly six years of invasions, bombings, kidnappings, torture, secret prisons, spying, bullying, and suppressing domestic dissent, there are al Qaeda survivors relatively safe and sound in the mountainous region of the Afghan-Pakistan border. Among them, presumably, is Osama bin Laden.

They don't have passports. They have guns and some rockets. We assume they cannot attack American targets very easily. But this means that while Bush moved half of our global military into the sands of Iraq, our real enemy was given time to recover, regroup, and possibly replace members who were killed. This is nothing less than a defeat for Bush - and us. The US has failed to finish-off al Qaeda.

Try spinning that, wingnuts, war hawks and fighting keyboardists. What are you going to say? It's Clinton's fault? It's the fault of liberals like me? John Kerry? Al Gore? I'm sure. Isn't it time you all got depressed and started doing hard drugs and just drifted away? Please do. Michelle Malkin, why haven't you and Ann Coulter hung yourselves in a Vegas hotel room yet? It's time you did that. You can do it naked as one last thrill for your fanboys. You can leave a note behind saying that you had sex with each other before doing it. That sounds hawt.

The pretty, bible-thumping Marie Jon'? Enough. Your articles defy reason. Stick to your MySpace page.

The very un-sexy Pam Atlas? Ew.

And let's not forget the male wingnuts out there. Especially the ones who keep making quasi-homoerotic comments but deny that they are gay. Militant homosexual brownshirts appear more than once in the current list of wingnuts.

Mark Steyn?

Jeff 'Manshake' Goldstein? Good lord. He is the personification of this theory.

How about "Vaginas are Icky" Ace of Spades, who this spring, famously described the female sex as resembling Play-Doh and bacon. That one is still getting laughs today. And Ace doesn't stop. He goes on to describe a woman's breasts as feeling like bags of sand. If he had ever touched a woman, maybe he would really know.

But seriously -

There have been many essays on yesterday's proceedings. I give you two of the best.

A Black Mark Not a Benchmark
by Rep. Jim McDermott
Huffington Post
Thu Jul 12, 5:51 PM ET

The President called another news conference today to pretend he is making progress in Iraq. It is the beginning of another White House White Wash.

This President is bound and determined to have U.S. soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq throughout every last day of his Administration.

The Administration's interim report released today represents a black mark, not a benchmark in the President's deadly and disastrous military escalation to prop up his failed Iraq strategy.

When the Vice President said in mid 2005: "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency," 1,000 U.S. soldiers had already died in Iraq.

When the Secretary of State said in late 2005 that the U.S. would probably not need to maintain its current troop levels "very much longer," 2,000 U.S. soldiers had already died in Iraq.

When the President held a news conference in mid 2006 and predicted that "progress will be steady" toward achieving the U.S. mission there, 2,500 U.S soldiers had already died in Iraq.

When the Vice President said in early 2007: "We have, in fact, made enormous progress," 3,000 U.S. soldiers had already died in Iraq.

And as the President touted his latest vision of progress today, over 3,600 U.S. soldiers had already died in Iraq.

And we cannot forget the 26,000 U.S. soldiers who have been wounded, the 40,000 U.S. soldiers who will suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the uncounted tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have been killed and the millions of innocent Iraqi civilians who have fled the country.

But this President sees progress. I see a President willing to keep misleading the American people, no matter the consequences.

We are 17 months away from a new President being sworn into office and thousands of additional U.S. casualties if we follow this President.

It will be a travesty of justice if it takes getting to the 2008 general election and the American people throwing out every Republican in order to stop this war.

It is time for the Republican Members of Congress to stand up and stand down this President's war.

And this beautiful essay on our setback in the war against al Qaeda:

President Bush Loses His War On Terrorism
By Bob Cesca
Huffington Post
Thu Jul 12, 1:55 PM ET

President Bush is a loser of monumental proportions. We know this. But late Wednesday afternoon, the AP reported that al-Qaeda has returned to its pre-9/11 strength -- perhaps stronger, according to the latest National Intelligence Estimate.

Counterterrorism analysts produced the document, titled "Al-Qaeda better positioned to strike the West." The document focuses on the terror group's safe haven in Pakistan and makes a range of observations about the threat posed to the United States and its allies, officials said. Al-Qaeda is "considerably operationally stronger than a year ago" and has "regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001," the official said, paraphrasing the report's conclusions. "They are showing greater and greater ability to plan attacks in Europe and the United States."

All of the tens of thousands of dead and wounded American soldiers; all of the torture; all of the illegal wiretaps; all of the damage to our national reputation; all of the trespasses against the Constitution; all of the billions of dollars spent on this effort have succeeded in absolutely nothing positive. Nothing.

Al-Qaeda is not on the run.

President Bush, May 5, 2003:

Al-Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top al-Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they're not a problem anymore. (Applause.) And we'll stay on the hunt. To make sure America is a secure country, the al-Qaeda terrorists have got to understand it doesn't matter how long it's going to take, they will be brought to justice. (Applause.)

Their leadership is certainly not depleted by 75 percent, and Pakistan has agreed to a treaty allowing al-Qaeda to occupy the border.

President Bush, September 2, 2004:

Today, the government of a free Afghanistan is fighting terror, Pakistan is capturing terrorist leaders [...] the army of a free Iraq is fighting for freedom, and more than three-quarters of al-Qaeda's key members and associates have been detained or killed. (Applause.)

Not a single one of the myopic bumper-sticker horseshit platitudes which the president, Republicans and right-wing pundits have bleated into our hemorrhaging eardrums have proved true. If I'm wrong, name one. Terrorists are stronger now than they have been since September 11, 2001, according to your government.

There's no other way to spin this news. The president has unequivocally failed at the one thing he's supposed to be good at: fighting those folks -- the terrorists. Vice President Cheney has repeatedly instructed us that he and his henchmen are the only ones who can keep us safe. Without Bush & Cheney and their successor Rudy, we're all doomed and al-Qaeda will get us.

But as it turns out, the Republicans can't hack it.

Every terrorist they've claimed to have captured or killed has been replaced, as predicted, by another terrorist. According to the September, 2006 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, your government said that the replacement terrorists have been recruited because of our ongoing occupation of Iraq.

And now, according to this latest NIE, some of the jihadists are dispersing elsewhere. In other words, they're not staying over there. In fact, they're evidently following us home even though we're still there.

At this stage of the effort, and with everything we know, you can't dream up a delusion large enough that says, "But hey -- that means we have to stay the course! That means we have to fight them in Iraq. Duh-yuk." Anyone who buys into this, after all the facts and events which have come to pass, is lying to themselves and to you.

That includes Mr. Giuliani, who rapidly evolved from a tarnished yet mildly popular mayor into the most delusional, narcissistic, opportunistic, fear-mongering, shameless, cock-a-hoop in the history of modern politics. Strong words, especially "cock-a-hoop," but all too true.

The Giuliani campaign theme of "staying on the offense against terrorism" is as laughable as it is meaningless. The evidence shows that staying on the offense has succeeded only in strengthening al-Qaeda, no? But this guy is proud to announce that he supports continuing the incompetent Bush/Cheney effort against (or, as it turns out, for) terrorism.

What other countries would Rudy invade in order to remain on the offense? How much longer would Rudy keep our boys in Iraq? Both scenarios have proved, to date, ineffectual at best and counterproductive at worst -- dangerous above all. If his only issue is horseshit, he has no choice but to drop out of the race now. Don't embarrass yourself any further, Rudy. Follow Senator McCain out the back door.

The Bush/Cheney/Giuliani policy has played out like that scene in Fight Club in which Edward Norton pummeled Jared Leto into a regurgitated bag of goo. Likewise, after 9/11, most of us felt like we needed to pummel something. But the pummeling surpassed the threshold of vengeful exhilaration and rapidly transformed into excessive and meaningless aggression. When we invaded Iraq, we surpassed a "stay on the offense" zero barrier, a point at which even the other pummelers cringed, took a step back and said, "Where'd you go, Psycho Boy?"

So where does that leave you and I? Our only course as Americans is to...continue onward as Americans. That means not acquiescing our constitutional rights for the sake of a little extra security. That means channeling our fear and uncertainty into supporting productive and forward-thinking measures, rather than meaningless sloganeering and futile military campaigns.

The Democrats, meantime, should be mandated to watch Michael Moore's appearance on CNN. Over and over again until the force of Moore's charisma bleeds into their collectively soupy Jell-O mold, hardening it to a razor sharp edge. Hopefully, then, they'll snap to the program. Hopefully, then, they'll cut the shit with this apologetic glad-handing and cease their reactive stammering in the face of a 29 percenter who has failed at everything at the peril of the entire world.

A Week of Mixed Messages About al Qaeda

This is not a complicated series of events. But look where the Bush Administration's terror message has taken us this week:

1. On Tuesday, the incompetent hatchet-man Michael Chertoff told the Chicago Tribune that he has a 'gut feeling' that al Queda is planning a major summer attack. You know, like 9/11. Aside from not caring how this man's stomach is feeling, this is correctly interpreted as an intentional sound byte from the Bush administration to re-plant seeds of fear in the public. Most people ignored this, considering it is came from a man who couldn't foresee the levees breaking in New Orleans, and appaently did nothing when they did break.

2. On Wednesday, a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was either leaked or rushed to the press, entitled, al Qaeda Better Positioned to Strike the West. The White House responded by calling an emergency counterterrorism meeting for Thursday.

3. On Thursday morning, Michael Chertoff appeared on Good Morning America to downplay the report and what he said on Tuesday. As if anyone is listening to a word he says.

4. Then president Bush announces that he is holding a press conference Thursday morning at 10:30, to discuss the latest report which details that the Iraqi government is behind or is failing on at least 10 of the 18 goals we defined for them in January legislation. Surely, he will also remind us of why we must remain in Iraq, so we don't have to fight 'the enemy' here.

Enemy? Well, in Bushworld, there is only one enemy - the axis of evil, the evildoers. But as the brave and objective Michael Ware explains to AC, it is enemies. There are at least four distinct groups that are attacking us and Iraqi civilians. Bush sees a world of black vs. white, and one-on-one conflicts. But that's not reality.