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Aging Hippies, The Final Chapter"NOTHING IS LIKE IT SEEMS BUT EVERYTHING IS EXACTLY LIKE IT IS" January 31 Nostradamus NewmanRandy Newman wrote this song (Louisiana 1927) in 1974.
It seems to relate to Katrina, the tsunami in SE Asia, the earthquake in Haiti, the War on Terror, and a number of other events of recent times.
Perhaps there is actually nothing new under the sun and history does repeat itself despite our best efforts.
Click on the song here: Louisana 1927 December 20 Peace on Earth, Good Will....I admit, my hearing has deteriorated due to age and years of listening through headphones using military R-390 radios to Cambodian (in the '70's) and then to Chinese Mandarin (in the '80's) as a linguist/voice intercept operator/translator/signal intelligence specialist.
This Christmas season of 2009 I swear that instead of hearing "peace on earth, good will to men," I'm hearing "piss on earth, let's kill some men." Pissing on earth refers to the pride we display in being the world's #1 consumer of mass quantities of everything from gasoline to pizzas and our willingness to wallow in our own excrement. "Let's kill some men" is the mantra we've used since 9/11. This time it refers to a "yes we can" president who hasn't (and apparently won't,) and a foreign policy based on the Bush era idea of "hunt, capture, kill."
Happy Birthday Jesus....
The history books say that the Cold War era was the ultimate age of fear and hysteria in this country with Joseph McCarthy, Mutually Assured Destruction, "duck and cover" nuclear drills in the schools, and the concept of personal bomb shelters and Civil Defense. None of that was as scary as Homeland Security, the duct tape solution, the Global/Eternal/Christian War on Terror, the Dick Cheney/G.W. Bush comedy team, a president who accepted the Nobel Peace Prize while expanding an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, or the current Democratic majority that doesn't seem to have the balls to accomplish anything of lasting value.
Despite all this, Happy Birthday Jesus...
Almost every media critic and reviewer of current Christmas ephemera has given Bob Dylan's latest album thumbs down. What in hell do they know? I like it. Give an old white guy with a voice that's shot to shit credit for singing a Christmas song in Latin.
November 08 Short History of War1. On 9/11/2001, 19 men hijacked airplanes and caused the death of some 2,976 people and some $650 Billion in damages. 15 of the hijackers were Saudis, one Egyptian, one Lebanese and two were from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
2. In the hours following that attack air travel in the US was shut down except for a few flights authorized by the Bush White House that returned dozens of Saudi citizens, many of them Bin Laden family members, to their home country.
3. The US attacked Afghanistan, supposedly to capture/kill Bin Laden and to neutralize the taliban/Al Qaeda. In one of the most strategically moronic military moves in the history of warfare, the US chased Bin Laden from where he was into the uncontested Afghan/Pakistan border regions where he escaped. Since that time we have supported a puppet urban Afghan government fighting a civil war against medieval rural warlords while the country continues to live in armed conflict and continues to grow record Opium crops as its major source of income.
4. The US also attacked Iraq under false pretenses having nothing whatever to do with 9/11.
5. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have gone on longer than WWII.
6. Foreign terrorists caused the deaths of some 3, 000 Americans on 9/11. Two American Presidents, on the other hand, are responsible for the deaths of some 4,000 US soldiers since then in Iraq and Afghanistan, besides the tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan military and civilian deaths due to our intervention.
7. Guantanamo is still open, rendition is still taking place, torture is still ok, and the Patriot Act is still in effect. We have lost our moral high-ground and a measure of our civil liberties as well as violated the law of land warfare, the Geneva Conventions, and international law. Not one of our elected officials has been impeached or held accountable for their crimes or censured for their stupidity.
8. Another 5 years in Iraq or 40,000 more troops in Afghanistan isn't going to result in any beneficial outcome to us or them.
9. As the C&W singer said, "Ya gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."
Cost of U.S. Wars Since 2001
$926,906,942,391
Cost of War in Afghanistan
$230,543,563,508 July 14 Poet Laureate Kay RyanKay Ryan, the present US Poet Laureate, is not your average writer. Look her up.
TurtleKay RyanWho would be a turtle who could help it?
From Flamingo Watching Copyright Kay Ryan. Don't we all "live below luck-level never imagining....." Ok, you read it. May 17 Claims OfficeGold Rush, Diamond Fever
Most of the huge, easy nuggets (having been picked up)
were sold one Saturday night
long ago
for a song
a few drinks of the house whiskey
or a piece of long-forgotten ass
in a lawless, frontier mining town.
The lucky ones who struck it rich are dead;
dead or growing old,
forgetful.
Those who are left
sift tons of rock and sand
for the occasional flake
for what is left over that is
precious.
You are surrounded by rock and dross, for instance,
not a golden vein of purity;
and I,
both unlucky and unskilled as a collector of precious things,
will never declare you an easy catch.
The difference is:
I chose to dig deep and long for you
without a guarantee
through piles of worthlessness
for a few small pieces
of
treasure.
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