I'm Just Saying

If I have to walk into the airport carrying a clear plastic bag of tampons, the terrorists have won.

I Am a Sick Puppy

Harbor, Tyre, Lebanon
Watching CNN as the soon-departed Daryn Kagan interviews a foreign correspondent standing in front of an empty beach in Tyre, Lebanon. The poor guy keeps looking over his shoulder as the sound of bombs falling increases. Daryn says, 'Those bombs seem to be getting closer. If you need to go, you need to go.' And the intrepid correspondent says, 'No, Daryn, I'm here for you.' Yes, that's what he really said. Unfortunately, I missed his name.

Is it so wrong of me that I want to see these war whores get blown up on live TV?

It is wrong, I know. I just can't help it. And I know I'll feel really bad if my secret wish comes true. But they're masquerading as journalists, doing an empty standup outside their hotel, adding nothing to the world's understanding of what is happening here.

Now CNN switches to a shot from that godforsaken hellhole, Crawford, Texas, which they are describing as "The Western White House." Can't they just call it what it is, the second home of President Eternal Vacation? There's no crisis great enough for him to give up his constant vacations. If he'd been in Crawford on 9/11 they would have waited even longer to tell him what was going on. And he wouldn't have been pretending to read. Did you see that the White House issued a list of books Brush Cutter is reading on his vacation? The guy doesn't read. Why the charade?

Grumpy today despite the cessation of blistering temperature.

Posting will be spotty for the next few days as other life responsibilities predominate. Sorry. Maybe on my return I'll be in a better mood.

It Was 108 in Central Massachusetts Last Wednesday

Yeah, that's my excuse for missing all these stories:

National Tennis Center to be named after foremother Billie Jean King.

The Iraqi blogger Riverbend describes the exodus from Baghdad, and why it's happening.

Tom Friedman has run out of six month segments (Friedmans), and even he now says we must 'disengage' from the civil war we created in Iraq. Better late than never.

Hillary Clinton, finger in the wind, ripped Donald Rumsfield a new one in a Senate Hearing. Five years too late, baby. It was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Brent Wilkes, Duke Cunningham's benefactor, told the New York Times how he funneled bribes to Republican Congressman to get government contracts.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiites marched in Baghdad chanting 'death to Israel.' I love to see democracy flowering in the middle east. Great job by the Cheney Administration.

In a new book, our former ambassador to Croatia says Bush didn't know there were two different sects (Shia and Sunni) in Iraq before the invasion. I'm shocked. At this point it would be news to learn that Bush understands anything.

Two nuclear power plants in Sweden shut down after almost melting down. As we said after Three Mile Island, We All Live In Pennsylvania. We all live in Sweden.

There's a parody making fun of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth on YouTube. Guess who made it? A PR firm that works for Exxon Mobil.

Mel Gibson, drunk as a skunk, goes on a tirade about Jews. You know, when I get drunk I don't go on racist tirades. I might say 'men can be such pigs', but that's because I believe that. You think Mel is really sorry? Neither do I.

The Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and The Poodle, Tony Blair, had a big press conference announcing a new initiative to combat global warming. Its centerpiece? Voluntary cooperation by industry. That should do the trick. It's been working so well so far.

Daryn Kagan to leave CNN to start a blog. Hah! Nobody leaves a job to start a blog. She's getting shitcanned. Her blog is supposed to be inspirational. I'd be inspired if she started posting dirt on former boyfriend Rush Limpaugh. Daryn?

And here's a story I missed two weeks ago. The US rushed a shipment of laser-guided missiles to Israel after the Israel-Lebanon war started. Maybe that's why we're having a hard time getting Lebanon to talk to us about a cease fire.

The US Has FUBAR'd Iraq

From R.J. Eskow's HuffPost article: Communication Breakdown: Army Major Describes Yet Another Example of GOP Military Mismanagement; he took the image from the Times of London.

12,000 of 34,000 doctors have left Iraq; perhaps because 2,000 have been killed, and 250 kidnapped.

I've Got an ActBlue Page

Main St USA is the name of my ActBlue page. I've got five candidates so far, and if there's someone you think I should add, send me an email (edwardssupporter@aol.com) or tell me about your candidate and your argument as to why I should support her, or him, in the comments section.

Here are my 5:

(1) Kirsten Gillibrand: Running for the NY-20 Congressional seat (my mom's district); David Boies' partner, smart lawyer, and running against the evil oaf, incumbent John Sweeney, the jerk who led the Brooks Brother riot in Dade County during the 2000 Florida vote counting fiasco, and more recently a Jack Abramoff bagman, working hard to keep sweatshops open in the Marianas Islands.

(2) John Bonifaz: Running to be Secretary of State in Massachusetts. When John Kerry took his millions and his promise to fight for every vote and left Ohio in 2004, John Bonifaz bought a plane ticket and went to Ohio and led the fight to have all the votes counted. Running against incumbent Bill Galvin, our comical Secretary of State who never saw a TV camera he didn't ham up to.

(3) Eric Massa: Running for the NY-29 Congressional seat, western New York where many friends and relatives live. One of the Fighting Dems, the large group of military veterans running to bring a realistic view of the military into government. Had enough chickenhawk leadership yet? Vote for the Fighting Dems. Oh, and Massa's opponent is a real piece of work, the Shotgun Senator (when he was in the NY State Senate, he fired a shotgun at his now ex-wife), incumbent Randy Kuhl.

(4) Jon Tester: Running for the Montana Senate seat against incumbent Conrad Burns, Abramoff bagman, and the Senator most famous recently for accosting a group of firefighters from Virginia in the Billings, Montana airport and accusing them of doing a poor job. Tester is a rancher, a gun owner, and a progressive.

(5) Joe Sestak: Running for the PA-07 seat currently held by Curt Weldon, one of the dumbest wingnuts in Congress (he keeps issuing statements saying we've found the WMDs in Iraq. Right.) Sestak is a retired 31-year Navy veteran with a Doctorate in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University. Weldon, on the other hand, is a typical corrupt Republican; his 29-year-old daughter is a lobbyist trading on Daddy's contacts. Plus he publicly criticized Sestak's choice of cancer treatment for his 5-year-old daughter. Yucch.