HAPPY TUESDAY: A Western airstrike of an omnibus in Afghanistan kills 27, most of them women and children. The incident is being called the worst episode of civilan casualties in Afghanistan in six months. [LA Times]

Read Full Post »

So How Did Obama Do Last Night?

We wouldn’t know, because we didn’t watch. (99.2% of all speeches give your editors the heebee jeebees.) But! Here’s the thing we could take away from the proceedings, without even following them closely: whichever course of action Obama chose for Afghanistan, it would be a loser. Troop escalation doesn’t square with the left; a perceived [...]

Read Full Post »

Tonight Your President Will Speak To America And Tell Us Why We Should Stay With Afghanistan, Even Though It Got Fat, Old, Bitter, Has A Drug Problem, Is Just ‘Okay’ In The Sack, And We Never Really Wanted To Date It In the First Place

THIS CHAT SHOULD GO OVER WELL: President Obama will be speaking at the United States Military Academy at West Point (symbolism!), and asking 30,000 troops from…somewhere…CanIHazSpareTroops.com, maybe…to head into Afghanistan, for More War. He will tell them (and us) all about how nice Afghanistan is this time of year, what with its rugged mountain terrain, [...]

Read Full Post »

Poor Job Prospects In U.S Lead To Increase In Military Recruiting

Here’s yet another shitty consequence of the economic crisis: young people have decided their chances of not dying in a war are better than getting a job. Awesome. Yesterday, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. military has met all of its annual recruiting goals for the first time in more than 35 years (if you’re [...]

Read Full Post »

No Child Left Behind Collects Teenager Information For The Military

The Sept/Oct issue of Mother Jones has a scary and eye-opening article on the invasive strategies employed by the military to collect information on millions of American teens, specifically as enabled by the No Child Left Behind Act. While we can’t do it justice here – mostly because you should just go read the article [...]

Read Full Post »

HAHAHA Good God, Richard Cohen

OHH, THIS GUY! For those unawares, Richard Cohen is one of the Washington Post‘s most blundering and ignorant syndicated columnists (one of their many, in fact!). But it is on this day that he worries himself with the ‘question’ (?) of TORTURE. He is just worrying his insides sick, y’all, for realz. I mean, it’s [...]

Read Full Post »

George W. Bush An Actual Insane Person; Attempted To Coerce Jacques Chirac Into Helping Him Bomb Iraq in 2003 By Mentioning Fictional Bible Demons Gog and Magog

WHAT THE FUCK WAS PRESIDENT OF THIS COUNTRY FROM 2000 TO 2008? EH, HERE’S YOUR LEAD: “Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.” FINE BY ME. Now, as we all strongly consider [...]

Read Full Post »

UMM … THANKS?? The new 2009 Taliban Zagat’s military code of conduct handbook “calls for restrictions on suicide attacks aimed at avoiding the killing of civilians”, instead focusing strictly on using the attacks against high-ranking enemy combatants. U.S and Afhgan officials are calling bullshit however, because, the Taliban … fuck those guys. [CNN]

Read Full Post »

Today’s Headlines: New York Senator To Send Military Gays Into Mexico To Fight The Drug Cartels

• The bipartisan Senate Finance Committee is edging closer to a health care compromise, according to the Associated Press. The latest draft of this measure completely omits a government insurance option, proposing a system of non-profit co-operatives in its lieu, and is not expected to require employers to provide insurance for their workers – both [...]

Read Full Post »

U.S TO STOP PUBLISHING DEATH TOLLS OF TALIBAN FIGHTERS AND INSURGENTS KILLED IN AFGHANISTAN: It was distracting from the task at hand (was that not the task at hand?), and generally giving everyone the bummer. But how will we know who’s winning if we can’t read about all the kills? [Seattle PI]

Read Full Post »

Today’s Headlines: Barack And Hillary Are Being Punked By The Foreigns; Meanwhile, Alaska’s Moose Population To Be Decimated By Sassy, Misguided Ex-Governor

• Hillary Clinton compared North Korea to a bunch of “small children”, and North Korea responded saying she was “by no means intelligent” and looked like a “schoolgirl or a pensioner going shopping”. Yow. Obviously, both sides are now open to talks re: North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. [Guardian UK] • Sarah Palin is no [...]

Read Full Post »

Today’s Headlines: FEMA Trailers Make Homelessness Seem … Not So Bad

• Years of state and federal neglect have hobbled the nation’s unemployment system, leaving millions of needy people (roughly 40% of claimants) waiting for months for their checks. The number of jobless Americans seeking aid has doubled during the recession, while state funds have depleted, resulting in 16 states borrowing billions to pay out claims [...]

Read Full Post »

UGH: “A prominent human rights group is calling on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate why the administration of former President George W. Bush blocked three different probes into war crimes in Afghanistan where as many as 2,000 surrendered Taliban fighters were reportedly suffocated in container trucks and then buried in a mass grave [...]

Read Full Post »

Today’s Headlines: The War Report

• The Obama administration has reversed yet another Bush era policy by offering asylum to battered women from foreign countries. There are strict guidelines however, most of them pertaining to whether the woman’s home country tolerates domestic abuse, and whether her abuser is a terrible, terrible dick, or if he’s just eh sort of a [...]

Read Full Post »

Headlines: It Was The Explicit Intention Of The Founding Fathers That Every Fat, High School-Educated American Slob Own Five Handguns, Because Of 9/11

• American demand for handguns (SECOND AMENDMENT!) has fueled a 28 percent jump this decade in world exports of small arms, a global report said today. According to the survey, the U.S. alone was responsible for about half of the worldwide increase in legal international gun sales between 2000 and 2006; the United States now [...]

Read Full Post »