please touch the nose of the angry, stupid man who lied us into this stinking bloody nightmare

While President George W. Bush travels around the country in a last-ditch effort to sell his Iraq war, White House aides scramble frantically behind the scenes to hide the dark mood of an increasingly angry leader who unleashes obscenity-filled outbursts at anyone who dares disagree with him.

“I’m not meeting again with that goddamned bitch,” Bush screamed at aides who suggested he meet again with Cindy Sheehan, the war-protesting mother whose son died in Iraq. “She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned!”

Bush flashes the bird, something aides say he does often and has been doing since his days as governor of Texas.

Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into tirades over those who protest the war, calling them “motherfucking traitors.” He reportedly was so upset over Veterans of Foreign Wars members who wore “bullshit protectors” over their ears during his speech to their annual convention that he told aides to “tell those VFW assholes that I’ll never speak to them again is they can’t keep their members under control.”

White House insiders say Bush is growing increasingly bitter over mounting opposition to his war in Iraq. Polls show a vast majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake and most doubt the President’s honesty.

“Who gives a flying fuck what the polls say,” he screamed at a recent strategy meeting. “I’m the President and I’ll do whatever I goddamned please. They don’t know shit.”

Bush, whiles setting up for a photo op for signing the recent CAFTA bill, flipped an extended middle finger to reporters. Aides say the President often “flips the bird” to show his displeasure and tells aides who disagree with him to “go to hell” or to “go fuck yourself.” His habit of giving people the finger goes back to his days as Texas governor, aides admit, and videos of him doing so before press conferences were widely circulated among TV stations during those days. A recent video showing him shooting the finger to reporters while walking also recently surfaced.

Bush’s behavior, according to prominent Washington psychiatrist, Dr. Justin Frank, author of “Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President,” is all too typical of an alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear....

... from Capitol Hill Blue, Bush's Obscene Tirades Rattle White House Aides, today.

helicopterPop?

...a father overly concerned with his son's college education (present company excluded, naturally).

Among other things, this new blog is a place to post in digital form the sort of stuff earlier generations of parents clipped from newspapers and magazines and put in the mail along with the rest of a college-kid CARE package, like In Defense of Hovering: Why Parents Say They Meddle in College Students' Lives, by Sue Shellenbarger, in today's Wall Street Journal:

How can a parent tell when "the marshal needs to ride onto campus and restore order," as Efland, N.C., college parent Lowrie Beacham puts it. Parents generally should steer clear of roommate, housing and social issues, choices of majors and disputes over grades. David Gabriel bit his tongue when student-housing officials at his son's $40,000-a-year private college assigned his son and two roommates to a dark room in the basement of a converted morgue. The Englewood, Colo., investment-company owner hated the room, but "I wanted my son to be his own advocate," he says.

On cost control and financial aid, parents should take a coaching role. The prospect of a child's taking more than four years to finish undergrad school, which 61% of students do, is more daunting than ever at current tuition rates. Have your student set a four-year degree as a goal. Some students ask their academic advisers to sign informal statements of understanding that they've discussed that goal and the student is on track to reach it, says Susan Fee, a Cleveland college counselor and author. Have your child take notes on advising sessions and date and keep them; ask for a change in advisers if you aren't satisfied.

Ifyour child is among the 60% of full-time undergrads who receive grants or the 47% who receive loans of some type, don't expect his academic adviser to know the financial-aid ropes; it's not their job, and the requirements of various loans and grants are too complex and often private, says Jeanine Ward-Roof, director of student development services at Clemson University, Clemson, S.C. Ms. Fee advises coaching your child to learn them. "Instead of asking, 'Did you go to the financial aid office?' the question should be: 'Tell me what happened at the financial aid office. Who did you speak to? What questions did you ask?' " Ms. Fee suggests.

bon voyage, Watson!

A girl in a blue linen sailor-suit reaching to her ankles, and with a braid of hair hanging down her back, appeared in the doorway. Patty examined her in silence. The girl's eyes traveled around the room in some surprise, and finally reached the top of the ladder.

"I–I 'm a freshman," she began.

...from: When Patty Went to College by Jean Webster (1903)

now American pot hooks Hanoi hipsters

A generation after Vietnamese pot galvanized American teens, imported Canadian weed wastes the new generation of Hanoi youth, sez Thanh Nien News.

R.I.P., Brother Roger

Sad news: Founder of Taize ecumenical movement stabbed to death

why?

Cindy Sheehan writes:

This is George Bush’s accountability moment. That’s why I’m here. The mainstream media aren’t holding him accountable. Neither is Congress. So I’m not leaving Crawford until he’s held accountable. It’s ironic, given the attacks leveled at me recently, how some in the media are so quick to scrutinize -- and distort -- the words and actions of a grieving mother but not the words and actions of the president of the United States.

But now it’s time for him to level with me and with the American people. I think that’s why there’s been such an outpouring of support. This is giving the 61 percent of Americans who feel that the war is wrong something to do -- something that allows their voices to be heard. It’s a way for them to stand up and show that they DO want our troops home, and that they know this war IS a mistake… a mistake they want to see corrected. It’s too late to bring back the people who are already dead, but there are tens of thousands of people still in harm’s way.

There is too much at stake to worry about our own egos. When my son was killed, I had to face the fact that I was somehow also responsible for what happened. Every American that allows this to continue has, to some extent, blood on their hands. Some of us have a little bit, and some of us are soaked in it.

People have asked what it is I want to say to President Bush. Well, my message is a simple one. He’s said that my son -- and the other children we’ve lost -- died for a noble cause. I want to find out what that noble cause is. And I want to ask him: “If it’s such a noble cause, have you asked your daughters to enlist? Have you encouraged them to go take the place of soldiers who are on their third tour of duty?” I also want him to stop using my son’s name to justify the war. The idea that we have to “complete the mission” in Iraq to honor Casey’s sacrifice is, to me, a sacrilege to my son’s name. Besides, does the president any longer even know what “the mission” really is over there?

Casey knew that the war was wrong from the beginning. But he felt it was his duty to go, that his buddies were going, and that he had no choice. The people who send our young, honorable, brave soldiers to die in this war, have no skin in the game. They don’t have any loved ones in harm’s way. As for people like O’Reilly and Hannity and Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh and all the others who are attacking me and parroting the administration line that we must complete the mission there -- they don’t have one thing at stake. They don’t suffer through sleepless nights worrying about their loved ones

Before this all started, I used to think that one person couldn’t make a difference... but now I see that one person who has the backing and support of millions of people can make a huge difference.

That’s why I’m going to be out here until one of three things happens: It’s August 31st and the president’s vacation ends and he leaves Crawford. They take me away in a squad car. Or he finally agrees to speak with me.

If he does, he’d better be prepared for me to hold his feet to the fire. If he starts talking about freedom and democracy -- or about how the war in Iraq is protecting America -- I’m not going to let him get away with it.

Like I said, this is George Bush’s accountability moment.

a romance of disaster & victory

....We may be sure that wars will continue on the earth. War may be a biological necessity in the development of the human race--God's housecleaning, as Ella Wheeler Wilcox calls it. War may be a great soul stimulant meant to purge mankind of evils greater than itself, evils of baseness and world degeneration. We know there are blighted forests that must be swept clean by fire. Let us not scoff at such a theory until we understand the immeasurable mysteries of life and death. We know that, through the ages, two terrific and devastating racial impulses have made themselves felt among men and have never been restrained, sex attraction and war. Perhaps they were not meant to be restrained....

...from:

THE CONQUEST OF AMERICA
A Romance of Disaster and Victory: U.S.A., 1921 A. D.
BASED ON EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY
OF JAMES E. LANGSTON, WAR CORRESPONDENT
OF THE "LONDON TIMES"

BY
CLEVELAND MOFFETT

1916

AUTHOR OF "THROUGH THE WALL," "THE BATTLE,"
"CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING,"
ETC., ETC.

headline of the day...

...at our house, at least:


Alice falls into a black hole

Fat Man sang and it's still not over

Nagasaki bombed on this day in 1945: 150,000 people killed or injured.

Happy Anniversary, Alice!

22 years! Thank you for all you've been to me, and, here's hoping for many, many more together.

MB DRO ROSHI

"The Sun was in Leo and the pale Virgin was rising in
the East ..." (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, p. 263)

http://www.sundancechannel.com/on_air_event/?ixContent=8104


[Thanks, Dave Monroe @PYNCHON-L]

rivers of cocaine....mountains of meth?

New Scientist reports that Italy's River flowing with cocaine indicates 'vast' drug use
.

Maybe they ought to check the Mississippi for methamphetamine.

Stop Arnold

From the new Stop Arnold web log:

Drug companies nationwide are leading the charge to raise nearly $100 million to back Schwarzenegger's "special" election this November, all with plans to profit by re-writing California healthcare policy to serve their bottom line. As RNs on the front-line of medicine, we know this is a dangerous threat to everyone's health. We must STOP Schwarzenegger's corporate takeover here, now, and forever. A project of the California Nurses Association.

laminated dog poo on a stick

dsp