Mr. Metaphor Says...

     In the old west, if you were riding in a stagecoach, would you be happy with a driver who let the horses decide which way you were going? I think not. If you were riding in a stagecoach, you would expect to be picked up where you expected to be picked up and dropped off where you expected to be dropped off. You'd expect the stagecoach driver to have a destination in mind. You'd expect the stagecoach driver to have the ability to rein in the horses, getting them to pull the stagecoach to the location where you, the passenger, expect to be driven. You would expect the driver of the stagecoach to be working for YOU, not the dumb beasts.
   Since everyone's lives are dependent upon the safety of the vehicle, you would expect a stagecoach driver to look after the carriage, to have put every effort into seeing that the wheels won't drop off, to be prepared for Indian or gang attack, to be working for YOU, not the ruthless Indians or outlaw gangs.
   You would expect the guy riding shotgun to have good aim, the necessary equipment, a suspicious nature, and good sense. Since they're going to be sitting next to each other for the whole trip, you would expect the guy riding shotgun to get along with the driver. You would expect the shotgun to guard the goods. You would expect him to work for YOU, not the horses, Indians, or gangs.
   Inside the cabin, you'd expect everyone to treat each other civilly. After all, you're all travelers with the same destination.

    If the horses are the hounds of hell, then it's the two main political parties passing the reins back and forth, Democrats and Republicans switching between driver and shotgun, the stagecoach the economy, with the population (the majority stockholders in the stagecoach company) stuck inside, careening back and forth as the stagecoach bounces down a rocky road to reality, going much too fast, while more and more enemies are shooting at us, most of them former employees of the stagecoach company.

     If the passenger is your ego or soul and the horses your emotions, then the stagecoach is your physical body and the driver your intellect, with your conscience riding shotgun all the way. Your intellect reigns in your emotions in order to take the stagecoach where your ego/soul wants to go, and if your conscience falls asleep, we're goners for sure.
    If the stagecoach driver/intellect drops the reigns, your passenger/soul/ego is dependent upon the whims of the horses/emotions. Horses set free go where they want. If you don't reign in your emotions, using their horsepower to pull your body where your intellect wants to take your ego, you will end up at a random location, eating alfalfa by the side of a river, instead of a specific destination, which isn't always bad. Some of your finest moments can come by the side of a river when you're supposed to be somewhere else.
   Sometimes the intellect says "fuck the ego" and whips the horses to take the stagecoach where the intellect thinks the stagecoach needs to be took, treating the stagecoach as though it were empty, forgetting to serve the passenger, you, your immortal soul, encased in your physical body, whether it exists or not. Does every part of an analogy have to make sense? Is every metaphor an analogy? If the cushion upon which the ego sits is the super-ego, protecting the posterior from random bumps of reality, is it still an analogy without the ass?
   Just as the stagecoach goes nowhere without horses, so you get nowhere without emotions. Without emotions, you've got no horsepower, and your stagecoach doesn't move. In order for the stagecoach to move forward, the intellect must drive the emotions to pull you forward, which is why people create emotional scenes in their lives and how war profiteers justify their means of making a living, which is definitely more of a metaphor than a simile or analogy. After all, if it were an analogy, would this whole thing be titled "Mr. Metaphor?" If "Mr. Analogy" found alliteration alluring, wouldn't he call himself "Mr. Metaphor" just because it sounded good? And why would I ask the stupid question of the week in the middle of another article instead of under it's own headline?
    Remember, you use similes and metaphors to make analogies. You don't use similes or analogies to make metaphors unless you're making an analogy between similes and metaphors.
   But I stray from the metaphor. If everyone you meet is a passenger in your stagecoach, then my ego is at your disposal. Just tell it where you want to go and I'll instruct my intellect to drive my emotions in that direction.
    Wait a minute. Maybe a more modern means of transportation would suit the analogy better. Maybe your SUV's computer system is your immortal soul, the electric windows and moon roof your imagination, with airbags riding shotgun, protecting your conscience from hit-and-runs. You'd expect the steering wheel to be working for you, not the whims of the cruise control, and if you drop the reins, guess where the hounds of hell will take you?

MD

"Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake." 

- Rabindranath Tagore: My Country Awake -

Puns

You know you like puns too much when you actually consider writing a story about an albino prostitute just so you can call it "Behold, a Pale Whore." You know you like puns too much when you almost call an article about the victims of 9/11 "Widows2000." You know you like puns too much when you ask someone to write an article about the Palestinian Diaspora called "Good Wall Hunting." You know you like puns too much when you change a perfectly good headline from "Believe it or Don't" to "Freedom and Weep," even though it doesn't make any sense. You know you like puns too much when you consider becoming a podiatrist just so you can occasionally have a perfectly good excuse to say "I never metatarsal I didn't like." You know you like puns too much when you write a letter to the editor of GQ complaining that they didn't call an article "These are the souls that try men's ties." You know you like puns too much when you want to go to Italy just so you'll have an opportunity to say "I never Mediterranean I didn't like." You know you like puns too much when you wish that the nude statue covered by Ashcroft was oak instead of brass just so you could use the headline "Oh Wooden Tit Be Loverly." You know you like puns too much when you write something about how everything stinks and you call it "New World Odor." 

New World Odor

Everything stinks.

Smell of the Week

"The ever-ingenious inventors at Israel's weapons research and development directorate have created a schoolboy's dream: the ultimate stink bomb, with a disgusting smell that lingers in its victim's clothing for up to five years."
- Hugh McManners: Israelis invent stink bomb for riot control -

Crop Circle from Hell

Stupid Answers of the Week

Why didn't I put out an issue of Disinfotainment Today last week?

You were having your colon irrigated?
- Marta Martin -

 Two answers:
a.) To cop a line from Dorothy Parker, I assumed you were either too fucking busy or vice-versa.
b.) You finally sold 13 weeks of "Xarvon -- Alien Investigator" to the Sci-Fi channel and you were touching up the scripts.
Best,
- RSJ -
 

    Because you were in Little Guantanamo?    Because you were walking back and forth to the GAIN program since they won't send anyone to drive you anymore?
   Just to teach us a lesson?
   Book signing for Hollywoodland?
   You were in court in a custody battle with TV's Scott Bakula?
- Eliot Hall -

    You spent the week at the "Jeopardy" studios feeding Ken Jennings wrong answers. 
    You couldn't access the Internet with a 1972 Selectric Typewriter.
    Nobody knows, and as long as Karl Rove is working for you, nobody ever will.
    You had just done your "Fall Preview" issue and everyone knows that's always a double-issue.
    You actually DID put out an issue last week and you just asked this stupid question to make people like me look like asses. 
Thanks,
- Wendell Wittler -

Because I was incapable of noticing last week's edition anyway...all week.
- chris mcfarland -

    The Officer at 7/11 returned from his "smoke(what?)break to find his desk chair soaked in your butt sweat. Outraged that someone sat in his chair (and ate his porridge?) he traced your DNA from the sweat soaked napkins that you left behind through the FBI & CIA database and found that you were a 60's War Protester dissident with an open J. Edgar Hoover secret file and that you abducted your own child out of the LA riots. He issued a warrant for your arrest for defacing and desecrating Official Homeland Security Property (his squatter's desk).
   When the Police serving the warrant arrived at your house to arrest you, you insisted on calling your son's school to let your child know where you will be (jail) for the next few days but before you completed that call GAIN called you to inquire about your escape from their appointed driver. GAIN claims that while you did not benefit from their services, they suffered economic loss due your malingering and failed appearance at the scheduled appointment time. GAIN will send you the bill for their costs in holding that time with several highly paid professionals open for you and the costs of the transportation they so kindly sent to your home. Failure to pay their bill will result in Court Action and possible incarceration.
   The Officer serving your arrest warrant mistook your insistence upon calling your son's school and then accepting the threatening call from GAIN as "Resisting Arrest", which won you several more legal charges and many more days in jail.
   Your case looks weak since the Gestapo Police have your sweat soaked napkins as DNA evidence and several trained eye-witness robots to testify against you. But your court appointed attorney who is golfing buddies with the Prosecutor is thrilled about the charges being separated and tried individually insuring that you will never be out of legal debt in five lifetimes. The Prosecutor intends to call the GAIN driver and the GAIN scheduling agent as witnesses against your oppositional moral character and prove your deviate attitude.
   Your best bet now is to teach your son how to publish this weekly publication and have your court appointed attorney collect the proceeds as his payment. Your son will be more popular and fit in with all the other kids, just like Dubya has done for all American kids with "Shock & Awe" - every child must slave his whole life to pay his father's debts and march lock-step in unison "Leave no child behind in debt, Praise our Lord George!"
   There was no issue last week because you were in jail, and you used your free phone call allotment for the next 30 days to call your son, your son’s school, GAIN, your Attorney, and your mother. You can't connect to the Internet to publish your weekly from jail.
   Just proves “No good deed goes unpunished”. There is no point in trying to improve your station in life, nothing to be accomplished in setting a good example for your child, the system is set up to make all conscientious parents into a “jail-bird loser” by design.
    Cha-ching! Pay the man.

- Bill Moses -

I would guess that you were too busy counting all the money people send you via PayPal.
- Dave Cogan -

I was sick.
- MD -

No you weren't.
- Xarvon, Alien Investigator -

Stupid Question of the Week

What is the stupid question of the week?

Send your answer to stupidquestion@disinfotainmenttoday.com.

Calling All Homeless

Free room and board is on its way. Here's a State-By-State Index Of Potential US Concentration Camps.

Mr. Conspiracy Says...

Mr. Metaphor is a douchebag.

Shockwave of the Week

Do you see all the obvious connections between the current political situation and the film Pulp Fiction? Neither did I until I watched Pulp Politicians.

I Feel So Much Safer Now

Check 21 is a sweeping new federal law that takes away your ability to get back your original paper checks. Under this law, consumers will be more likely to bounce checks and may find themselves paying higher bank fees. The complicated new law gives you some rights, but those rights depend on a variety of factors, including how the merchant and the bank decide to process your check. The result? No more floating checks.
- Mandatory reading if you have a checking account -

T-Shirt of the Week

Sophistimicated Doowacky of the Week

Put a Bush-B-Gone aerosol label on all your cans.

Don't Take My Word For It

     "But don't take my word for it: That the occupation of Iraq is a festering disaster was finally acknowledged by some Republican senators on Sunday's talk shows in the wake of the latest depressing prognostications of U.S. intelligence agencies.
    "'The fact is, we're in deep trouble in Iraq,' Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) conceded. 'We made serious mistakes,' said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blamed the glaring failures in Iraq on 'the incompetence in the administration.'
    "Unfortunately, the solution offered by these Republican critics was an escalation of the U.S. military effort, the root cause of the rising anti-U.S. nationalism in Iraq that is crossing ethnic, religious and regional lines. A true conservative would heed George Washington's warning to avoid such foreign entanglements. This is why in 2000, candidate Bush, pretending to be conservative, said he was against 'nation-building.' Now, led by radical ideologues way outside the conservative mainstream, he's got us trying to build two nations and failing with many in his administration hoping to take on a few more in a second term. Talk about flip-flopping."
- Robert Scheer: True Conservatives Would Back Kerry -

    "This is my highest priority...America first! It's an inside job! At the highest level on down, I will see that those who are really responsible for the insidious acts of terrorism in our country, and around the world, be prosecuted to the fullest extent of all domestic and international laws. Right the Wrong!
   "U.S. occupation of Iraq to cease as a Bush family Nazi-esque imposed 'Concentration Camp'. As President I will insure that our military and the TRUE SPIRIT of the American people join forces with the United Nations as life-giving humanitarians to rebuild the mass-destruction created by the murderous Bush family in Iraq and other parts of the world. This insanity is going to stop! Period! Right the Wrong!
   "As President, I will totally repeal the fraudulent Patriot Act, with a special focus on individuals Rights to Privacy. I will institute constitutional law, restore all individual rights of privacy and autonomy that is the birthright of every American citizen. We must never forget who stripped these from us! It was not only the Republican Bush family administration, but also masquerading Democrats, including Senator John Kerry, Senator John Edwards, Ms. Hillary Clinton, et al. 
- John Joseph Kennedy for President -

    "Conservatives are hot on Rather's tail -- trumpeting Dan's quote, '...we have been misled' and inevitably calling for the demise of both Rather and CBS News. It's true, the whole 'fake memo' thing put a black eye on Rather, CBS News, and journalism in general. Something, I think, most people will get over by say...oh... dinnertime.
   "Of course conservatives were quite less ambitious with their efforts to castigate the last high profile 'victim' of a fake document. Recall the White House's appraisal of Iraq's Nuclear Ambitions: 'A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated,' the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said [March 6] in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.
   "Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed 'not authentic' after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council."
- Tom Ball: Remember the White House Response to Fake Uranium Documents? -

"The result prompts one to wonder if the grimy hands of Karl Rove have emerged in a sensitive area. In the wake of charges that CBS and Rather were hoodwinked and a document purporting to be authentic was really a fake, the reporter explained that one of the reasons why the network felt confident about running the story without further vetting was that the White House sent it back without protest. Rather and his colleagues believed the network could proceed, under the circumstances an instance of acting under a cloud of false confidence."
- William Hare: Is There a Bush-Media Cabal to get Dan Rather? -

"For every age, a group of bright boys, learned in their trade and jealous of their learning, who blend technical competence with plain and fancy hocus-pocus to make themselves masters of their fellow men. For every age, a pseudo-intellectual autocracy, guarding the tricks of its trade from the uninitiated, and running, after its own pattern, the civilization of its day."
- Fred Rodell: Woe Unto You, Lawyers!, 1939 -

"The news and truth are not the same thing."
- Walter Lippmann -

"The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy."
- Alex Carey -

"[W]hats important for the journalist is not how close you are to power but how close you are to reality."
- Bill Moyers -

"The point of public relations slogans like 'Support our troops' is that they don't mean anything... That's the whole point of good propaganda. You want to create a slogan that nobody's going to be against, and everybody's going to be for. Nobody knows what it means, because it doesn't mean anything. It's crucial value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about."
- Noam Chomsky -

"Cuba has also been condemned for not allowing its people to flee the island. That so many want to leave Cuba is treated as proof that Cuban socialism is a harshly repressive system, rather than that the U.S. embargo has made life difficult in Cuba. That so many millions more want to leave capitalist countries like Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, El Salvador, Philippines, South Korea, Macedonia, and others too numerous to list is never treated as grounds for questioning the free-market system that inflicts such misery on the Third World."
- Michael Parenti -

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
- Abraham Lincoln -

"The biggest political joke in America is that we have a liberal press. It's a joke taken seriously by a surprisingly large number of people... The myth of the liberal press has served as a political weapon for conservative and right-wing forces eager to discourage critical coverage of government and corporate power... Americans now have the worst of both worlds: a press that, at best, parrots the pronouncements of the powerful and, at worst, encourages people to be stupid with pseudo-news that illuminates nothing but the bottom line."
- Mark Hertzgaard -

"Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation... Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing."
- Neil Postman -

"24.9 percent of American children live in poverty, while the proportions in Germany, France and Italy are 8.6, 7.4 and 10.5 percent. And once born on the wrong side of the tracks, Americans are more likely to stay there than their counterparts in Europe. Those born to better-off families are more likely to stay better off. America is developing an aristocracy of the rich and a serfdom of the poor - the inevitable result of a twenty-year erosion of its social contract."
- Will Hutton -

"To oppose the policies of a government does not mean you are against the country or the people that the government supposedly represents. Such opposition should be called what it really is: democracy, or democratic dissent, or having a critical perspective about what your leaders are doing. Either we have the right to democratic dissent and criticism of these policies or we all lie down and let the leader, the Fuhrer, do what is best, while we follow uncritically, and obey whatever he commands. That's just what the Germans did with Hitler, and look where it got them."
- Michael Parenti -

"Only the grand scale and technocratic impersonality of the crimes conceived and directed by the [U.S.] ruling elite acting under cover of state authority distinguish them from garden variety killers." 
- Darrell Hamamoto -

"It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in."
- General Colin Powell commenting on the number of dead Iraqis in Operation Desert Storm (1991) -

"In a media universe where you're likely to find right-wing conservatives on ABC, Fox, or NPR, the facts don't matter; only the framing. And in the hands of biased pundits posing as objective journalists, the framing is always going to be the same: promilitary, pro-government, and pro-war."
- David Potorti: September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows -

"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force."
- William Blum -

"Even without the Geneva Conventions, the prohibition on torture is considered a fundamental principle of customary international law that is binding on all states, and the widespread or systematic practice of torture constitutes a crime against humanity."
- Jennifer van Bergen: If Sabotage & Assassination are Okay... What's Wrong with Torture? -

"The corporations don't have to lobby the government any more. They are the government."
- Jim Hightower -

"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good deed by stealth and have it found out by accident."
- Charles Lamb -

"The U.S. record of war crimes has been, from the nineteenth century to the present, a largely invisible one, with no government, no political leaders, no military officials, no lower-level operatives held accountable for criminal actions... Anyone challenging this mythology is quickly marginalized, branded a traitor or Communist or terrorist or simply a lunatic beyond the pale of reasonable discussion."
- Carl Boggs -

"For the media owners, allegations of a liberal bias make it easier for them to impose the conservative bias they prefer. For the pseudo-liberals who work in the media system, confessing to a liberal bias is far more comfortable than admitting that they've sold out their beliefs for a nice salary. It's only because the mainstream media is so conservative that all these right-wing pundits can make accusations of liberal bias without opposition."
- John K. Wilson -

"Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible."
- Milton Friedman -

"[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home - the ones who make it back alive - with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."
- William Blum: Killing Hope -

"This (9/11) was all planned. This was a government-ordered operation. Bush personally signed the order. He personally authorized the attacks. He is guilty of treason and mass murder."
- Stanley Hilton: The Bush Junta Unmasked from Alex Jones' interview -

"Now, everywhere he goes, Gore is faced with crowds who despair of the Bush Administration and see in him all that might have been, all the what-ifs. The heartbreak of a lifetime. Sometimes people approach him and address him as 'Mr. President.' Some try to cheer him up and tell him, 'We know you really won.' Some tilt their heads, affecting a look of grave sympathy, as if he had just lost a family member. He has to face not only his own regrets; he is forever the mirror of others’. A lesser man would have done far worse than grow a beard and put on a few pounds."
- David Remnick: Al Gore lives on a street in Nashville -

    "Will these people who support the war be there when these soldiers come home? Will they be there on lonely nights five years later, 10 years, 20 years later? Will they be there when they're homeless because their lives have been ruined, or they're in prison because they were never able to adjust?
    "I'm glad President Bush didn't have to suffer the way some of us did. I'm glad he didn't get shot and end up in a wheelchair and suffer all the awful consequences. I know what it means. I've been on the battlefield fighting for my life when another Marine came up to save my life and was killed.     "I know what it means to come home to a government that isn't prepared for all the wounded. I saw paraplegics and quadriplegics. I remember it, I can smell it and I will never forget it.
    "This is a war we should never have fought to begin with, and it's becoming a catastrophe and a mirror image of Vietnam. Another guerrilla war, another senseless quagmire. It can only make us greater targets of terror, and it can only harm the soul of America."
- Ron Kovic -

"What have Bush and his neo-conservative team really accomplished? They toppled Saddam, the House of Saud is crumbling and we have removed American troops from Saudi territory. These achievements match word for word the oft-stated goals of bin Ladin. Bush has clearly delivered the goods for Osama. Somewhere Osama is smiling, more influential and powerful than ever."
- Karen Kwiatkowski: The Al Qaeda Candidate? -

    "The after-show CD is a textbook case of the 'win-win' situation: Rabid fans get what they need, the avenue for illegal bootlegs is greatly diminished and artists get a much-needed revenue source in these days when label support of tours is dwindling. Mix has supported methods that promote legal purchases of music since the first audio-on-demand distribution services — such as Liquid Audio — debuted some eight years ago. And in the past 18 months, when artists started taking advantage of CD-R dubbers to market onsite live recordings, we've been equally jazzed about the prospects.
   "Unfortunately, a new development is not so pretty. Earlier this year, Instant Live LLC (a division of entertainment juggernaut Clear Channel) announced that it had acquired a U.S. patent covering a system of creating digital recordings of live performances. Essentially, the patent's 'Event Recording System' is a convoluted and fairly vague description of off-the-shelf stuff you could pick up at any Guitar Center, but with highfalutin names like 'secondary storage device' and 'primary editing stations.' In the patent's flow chart, it sure looks like a couple of DAWs with streaming backup and a bunch of CD burners, but you can go to www.uspto.gov, do a quick search for patent #6,614,729 and read it for yourself.
   "So far no problem, but Clear Channel has interpreted this patent to infer that it now owns the exclusive rights to all live performance recordings sold at any venue on the day of show, thus creating a virtual monopoly on the process. This development has not gone unnoticed in the industry, and small label Kufala Records, which produces live CDs of shows (although not sold on-site, as Kufala mixes live multi-track masters in the studio and offers them two weeks after the show) has called on independent artists and labels to challenge the patent. However, this is not going to come easily or cheaply, given Clear Channel's deep pockets and desire to defend its interests."
- George Petersen: Who Owns Your Live Recording? -

"From 1945 to 2003, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements fighting against intolerable regimes. In the process, the US bombed some 25 countries, caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair."
- William Blum -

    "President Bush's chief of staff ordered a review that lead to 6,000 documents being pulled from government Web sites.
    "The Department of Defense banned photos of military caskets being returned to the United States.
    "Vice President Dick Cheney kept his energy task force records secret to hide the influence of Kenneth Lay, Enron and other energy moguls.
    "The CIA asks a new question during its standard employer polygraph exam: Do you have friends in the media?
    "There have been more than 1,200 presumably terrorist-related arrests, and 750 people deported, and no one outside the government knows their names or how many court docket entries have been erased or never entered.
    "Secret federal court hearings have been held without any public record of when or where, or who was tried.
    "When the American Civil Liberties Union challenged provisions of the Patriot Act, it was prohibited from telling anyone about it.
    "The Washington Post reported that in recent years, judicial committees acting in secret stripped information nearly 600 times from reports intended to alert the public to conflicts of interest involving federal judges."
- Paul E. Kostyu: Moyers on Secrecy in Government: It's Contagious, Scandalous, Toxic -

"You have to kill a chicken to scare the monkeys."
- Chinese proverb -

   "I don't know if I can really put into words just how bad it is here some days. Yesterday was horrible; just horrible. While most reports show Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra as 'no-go' areas, practically the entire Western part of the country is controlled by insurgents, with pockets of U.S. power formed by the garrisons outside the towns. Insurgents move freely throughout the country and the violence continues to grow.
   "I wish I could point to a solution, but I don't see one. People continue to email me, telling me to report the 'truth' of all the good things that are going on in Iraq. I'm not seeing a one. A buddy of mine is stationed here and they're fixing up a park on a major street. Gen. Chiarelli was very proud of this accomplishment, and he stressed this to me when I interviewed him for the TIME story. But Baghdadis couldn't care less. They don't want city beautification projects; they want electricity, clean water and, most of all, an end to the violence."
- Christopher Allbritton: Back to Iraq -

    "The U.S. military has been here before: caught in a conflict where the thing it does best, fighting, can't win the war. In Iraq today, brute force is a wasting asset, as Major General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division, knows firsthand. On a hot late-summer day, his soldiers entered Baghdad's Sadr City slum to quell attacks from militiamen loyal to rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr...
   "Important parts of the country, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers said, are controlled by rebels. Principal cities and major roads west and north of the capital are ruled by Sunni insurgents. Al-Sadr's men launch uprisings at will across the wide Shi'ite belt, and even parts of Baghdad are no-go zones for U.S. troops and the frail forces of the interim Iraqi government. All this has helped make the peace much bloodier than the war: last month anti-U.S. attacks climbed to 87 a day, more than double the rate in 2003 and the first half of 2004. The U.S. death toll since sovereignty was returned to Iraq on June 28 has eclipsed the number killed in the invasion, and the total tally just passed 1,000. The wounded number more than 7,000. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld estimates that coalition forces killed up to 2,500 suspected insurgents in August, but the will of the rebels shows few signs of cracking. Attacks on U.S. troops increasingly come in the form of direct fire from small arms and suicide bombs, the tactics of a more sophisticated and in-your-face foe."
- Johanna McGeary: Mission Still Not Accomplished -

    "Now, some of you are saying, Bill, we can't bomb Vietnam. Who's going to make our sneakers? And if no one makes the sneakers, who's going to make the big endorsement deals? And without those, how do basketball players pay for their pricey rape lawyers? Yes, it's like a row of dominos. That's why they call it Vietnam.
   "I know that we didn't win it last time but we will this time because, if you read the papers, you'll see that since Vietnam we've mastered this whole guerrilla insurgency thing.
   "Plus, Vietnam doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction or any links to 9/11 or any ties to Al Qaeda. They're practically asking for it!"
- Bill Maher: From Campaign Trail to Ho Chi Minh Trail: Let's trade that Iraqi quagmire for another Swift boat spin down the Mekong Delta -

"My husband died in tower two and the people who killed him have not heard from us three years later. The president will not even talk about these murderers. Sometimes he claims his administration has captured two-thirds of Al Qaeda's lesser leaders; sometimes, three-quarters. The 9-11 Commission says one-quarter. Terrorists killed more people, 625, in 2003 than in any year other than 2001. They wounded more than ever, 3,646 people. Even the president concedes that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attack that changed my life forever. Why have we expended hundreds of times the resources and troops in Iraq than we have in pursuit of the mass murderers who vow to hit us again? Anybody could accept a good-faith effort that failed. But we cannot accept a so-called war on terror that has never aggressively targeted the number one terrorists."
- Monica Gabrielle -

    "The poison in Diet Coke is aspartame. As a member of the National Soft Drink Association, Coke opposed FDA approval of aspartame for beverages. Their objections, running to several pages published in the Congressional Record of 5/7/85, said aspartame is uniquely and inherently unstable and breaks down in the can. It decomposes into formaldehyde, methyl alcohol, formic acid, diketopiperazine and other toxins. In a study on 7 monkeys, 5 had grand mal seizures and one died, a casualty rate of 86%.
    "Coke knew; and knowing, broke their good faith contract with customers, a breach exhibited by the recent plot to program vending machines to raise the price with the temperature. Dissatisfied with selling flavored sugar water plus phosphoric acid, they switched to pushing an addictive formula called 'Diet'. Addictive substances multiply markets, so Diet Coke soared off the sales charts, spreading obesity in its flight. We're fatter because aspartame suppresses seratonin and makes us crave carbohydrates."
- Diet Coke, Diet Soda of any kind is POISON!!!! or Dorway -

"But these guys, do you realize how much better off we would be if they really were cynical, and they really were lying about it, because, yes, behind the invasion would be something real, like support for Israel or oil. But it's not! It's not about oil. It's about utopia. I guess you could call it idealism. But it's idealism that's dead wrong. It's like one of the far-right Christian credos. It's a faith-based policy. Only it wasn't a religious faith. It was the faith that democracy would flourish... Is there anything worse than idealism that doesn't conform to reality?"
- Seymour Hersh's alternative history of Bush's War - 

"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."
- Carrie Fisher -

"When our guardsmen and women are fighting the same war as our active duty troops, when they're facing the same dangers and coming home in the same wheelchairs, stretchers and flag-draped coffins, how can we refuse to give them the same resources and respect we give our regular troops?"
- John Kerry -

    "You will be happy to learn that the former head of the KGB, General Yevgeni Primakov, has been hired as a consultant by the US Department of Homeland Security. Do you think he will share his expertise in 'security' to prepare US citizens for domestic internal passports under the pretense of fighting the never-ending 'War on Terrorism'?...    "What Primakov finds funny are what he calls these 'right wing flag wavers' that were so anti-communist and now they're supporting a state policy of internal passports.
    "The irony is deafening.
    "Primakov continued by saying that he had been hired as a consultant and he was consulting on other 'security' matters, an ongoing policy in various agencies of government (some of these offices haven't even been created yet) to consistently narrow the rights of the American people and to expand the power of government. He professed not to know what the reason for all this was, other than that he admitted that 'it doesn't have much to do with fighting terrorism.'"
- Al Martin: Get Ready for the USSA (The United Soviet States of America) -

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
- Napoleon Bonaparte -

"In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better."
- Ellen DeGeneres -