Grateful Dead

I'll have a slug of that whiskey with you, fluffanutter. What a bunch of crazy deals goin' down.

President Obama's opening salvo of the presidential campaign debuted at 8pm this evening. At 10pm it already had 175,000,000 views on youtube. Tom Hanks does the narration. An ardent supporter of Obama, it left not knowing what to think... The part about the bailout drove me nuts. If the bailouts had gone to every American taxpayer making less than 50k a year it would have done more to stimulate the economy than giving it to the investment banks and the auto industry. Democrats! Who can love them? Republicans! Who can't hate them? The rigged system we live under makes me just want to curl up under the blanket for about ten years and hibernate. Please somebody, pass the whisky round.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was on a "long-planned" (read - 'rushed like hell to get over there to do damage control') trip to Afghanistan today. As his plane landed an Afghan soldier went berserk and stole a truck and crashed it on the runway. This after 2 of Karzai's brothers were attacked at the village near Kandahar where the killings took place as they were addressing the villagers and paying compensation ($2k each, a rather large sum in Afghanistan, paid by the Afghan government. The US will pony up more bucks to the relatives in a bit). The Obama Whitehouse cabinet is debating the wisdom of continuing the campaign behind his back and he is taking potshots at the president tonight. Panetta says we need to continue the campaign to it's logical conclusion (withdrawal of all combat troops by 2014) to honor all those who have made "the ultimate sacrifice". And, of yeah, because we are winning. Hello Leon, I think you have your head up your ass and you sound like General Westmoreland during the Vietnam war! I think Obama has it right. NATO can't even get the Taliban to sit down and talk with them about surrender. They are laughing at NATO right now. Obama and the British PM are talking this very minute about how the hell they can get the military out of there in one piece. I am imagining scenes from the South Vietnamese capitol in 1975: The last American helicopter taking off with our loyal Vietnamese allies clinging to it and then dropping into the waiting maw of the of the Viet Cong. Those poor Afghan allies... Afghanistan is so corrupt that Karzai will continue to lead a government of loyal opium warlords until the Taliban over-run it with a coalition of their own opium warlords. When, in the last millennium, has it ever been any different over there? One thing I sympathize with Panetta about is all those who have given their life for the sake of the mission over there. Their country called them to duty and they heeded the call, their country right or wrong. Those families here in the US, those Gold Star moms, dads, sisters, brothers, children and close friends. This must be agonizing. It was coming to this anyway, but these freaking Fort Lewis cowboys have now robbed them of their psychological dignity. Heaven knows it's all obscene.

Rick Santorum looked supremely pleased last evening in his victory speech. The arch-conservative former Penn. senator looked very sure of himself as he pumped hands working the crowd amidst his Secret Service protection at the Hilton in Baton Rouge. He beat Gingrich and Romney in close races in Alabama and Mississippi. He is the Catholic candidate with very conservative social views and he has a juggernaut rolling right now. It would be a different race right now had he been declared the winner in Iowa instead of the real vote being covered up by the GOP party Chairman in that state (Santorum was declared the victor quietly a week after the vote. The GOP chairman was dismissed.). Now, Santorum has the crowds and adoration and cockiness that comes with being front and center in the limelight. While Romney looks like a bad actor with canned music, Santorum has people singing original folk songs about him! This candidacy is not good for Obama... A Santorum candidacy would pose a more credible threat to Obama than Romney, who is widely seen as an insincere, inept bumbling rich man who doesn't have the karma to be president. Please God, take your faithful servant Rick Santorum away from politics and into the priesthood so he can directly do your work and leave running the country and opposing corporate personhood to Barak Obama.

It is quite clear that something is being covered up about the massacre in Afghanistan. Now the "soldier" (still being blamed on a lone gunman) was from Fort Lewis in Washington state, where it seems that all the "problem" soldiers are from, as in involved in other atrocities and committing suicide in droves, 26 in the last year. The lone "special forces" operative (this is now dropped from all domestic news reports) did not give himself up but was found crawling through an orchard trying to sneak back into his base. When found, he remained silent and invoked his Miranda rights. News reporters are now using the word "villages" instead of village to describe where the killings took place but they are not saying explicitly that the incident took place in at least two villages. Probably because the distance involved would mean more than a lone operator. Now it is reported that the soldier wasn't drunk, but that he might have had a bottle of alcohol in his locker... Meanwhile Leon Panetta says that "War is hell" and that these events have happened before and will probably happen again. NPR reports that there isn't much in the way of demonstrations because "The Afghan people are used to these kinds of incidents". I think it's now safe to venture an opinion that this was an unauthorized "black op" carried out by a cabal of special forces operators out of Fort Lewis that went horribly bad. The President and his cabinet and the entire Pentagon is in damage control mode trying to stave off total collapse of the mission in Afghanistan. This is pathetic. Trivializing the loss of life during time of war is despicable. As long as it happens to those people and not to our people it seems to be OK? I want to vomit! C'mon people! I'm starting to feel by the lack of comments here thagt anybody who reads what I am saying is afraid to comment... Comfortably numb are we? Hey, I'm trying really hard to be number than you are but I'm an empath -- it doesn't work with me! Say something, please?

The massacre in Afghanistan was a good example of how a story is born and then gets distorted. How the truth is reported and then spun and then the spin becomes the truth. People do not understand this spoon-feeding process or are incredulous that it exists. They shouldn't be... Take the story of the massacre by US soldiers in Afghanistan yesterday. When it was heard on the BBC (a very venerable source of news originating from England) it was reported that Afghans observed multiple soldiers in more than one village. The first reports in the US on NPR said that it was one drunken soldier. CNN reported the BBC version at around 11am EST. By the time it was again reported on network evening news it was back to the original spin put out over NPR. We do not get the truth from our media outlets in this country on sensitive issues. If you really want to know what is going you have to check multiple news outlets around the world. CNN, Reuters and BBC. You should gather as many facts as possible and see how many times they recur in the various stories. It is highly likely that foreign news services will have the real, unvarnished truth. The common facts that among these outlets are probably the truth. The 5th Estate in this country has totally sold out to corporate interests. Reporters know how their stories get edited or buried. It is so sad.

Go to the website and register. You can start calling supporters with your own phone immediately. Look to the die-hard Dems. in your local area. They will clue you in to the local office where you can sit with a bunch of old people using DNC cell phones. Or, organize a party of like-minded people and do whatever while making the calls. You need to put out a coherent message though. Stick to the script. Support Obama. The alternative is unthinkable

Anybody have any contacts for a push this election? Los Angeles Deadheads want to contribute to the fight against modern conservatism and idiocy. The counterculture is alive and well. Reach out. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Eagle-Winged-Palace/19579729496

The US Marine was special forces and operating out of a forward operating base in Kandahar. There was more than one soldier involved in the killing and it happened in more than one village. The apprehended US soldier has no evidence of a mental breakdown. The villagers were dragged out of their home and summarily executed So much for damage control. President Hammat Karzai is calling for a public trial in Afghanistan. Somehow I don't think he is going to get it. The US is bracing for Taliban revenge attacks. This has to be the worst day of the war in ten years. if this was a coordinated special forces action it was stupid beyond belief. Unless, of course, it was designed as an exit strategy.

Totally. The GOD Business (Guns, Oil & Drugs) is a tough one. While the planet supports our bloated lifestyle the US has to keep it's population in a total state of fear to continue profiting and propping up that lifestyle. We have to be scared into willingly allocating our tax dollars to the US multinational military-industrial complex. Part of that is the war on terror. The Russians are pretty much finished so we have to create new enemies. This time it's iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and any other Muslim country that dares to oppose our Imperial rule. Where there are people who would plot to cause us harm we have an interest in stopping those people. Unfortunately, we have to vilify an entire religion. And that has led us to the current predicament. We can't seem to distinguish between the bad guys and those people who simply want to live in peace and practice their own religion. So we slaughter them. Slaughtering innocent people is not a human value. Human beings are basically good and when you train them to kill on command their brain's short circuit. And so it goes. You wonder why the US military is trending toward robots and pilot-less drones? Part of it is saving lives but part of it also is that machines will do whatever you tell them to and will not freak out or have moral compunctions or ask questions. We have lost the war on terror. We have become terrorists in the name of stopping terrorism. The entire population is so conditioned with fear that people are becoming irrational. Internal dissent is becoming stifled. it is no longer OK to question authority, which is one of the cornerstones of a free society. Get used to it. This is a major trend with no end in sight. How did our once great country come to this??? Lack of citizen participation and organizing principles (corporations) based on greed. if you plant the seeds you reap the harvest -- plain and simple.