February, 2007 archive

. . . are the lies we tell ourselves.

(Warning: None of this in anyway suggests–or is intended to suggest–that Saddam Hussein and his government were nice people.)

Charles Krauthammer manages a doozy. Writing of Iraq, he says:

We midwifed their freedom. They chose civil war.

“Midwifed their freedom?”

Did they even know they were pregnant? When did the contractions start? What did they ultrasound look like?

Let’s try a little reality:

The United States of America invaded Iraq. It was not invited to the side of the maternal bed.

The United States of America invaded Iraq based on a wealth of lies fabricated by a bunch of delusional political thinkers talkers who, like Humpty-Dumpty, believed that words meant whatever they wanted them to mean, regardless of reality.

And, for some reason (perhaps because the persons who promoted this adventure were delusional liars?), it ain’t working out the way the expected.

So now they need someone to blame.

So they are blaming the persons who (check this out) didn’t want them there in the first place.

Aside: The elements that are responsible for this mess, who lied us into it–are now fond of charging their political opponents–most of whom, but not all, happen to be Democrats–with not proposing a plan to get us of of this mess.

Well, dammit, Democrats did not make this mess.

And the people who did make this mess clearly are clueless. But, you know, by all that’s holy, it’s the sinner who should repent and right the situation, not the victims.

“We midwifed their freedom.”

Yeah.

Right.

The Current Federal Administration, acting in our name, midwifed the jaws of hell.

And they just keep lying.

How strange is this?

Everyone knows suspicious neighbors. But when a Penn student pumped a dozen pistol rounds into his neighbors’ apartment door – shooting off its lock and later telling police he thought they were Indian spies – he took neighborhood nosiness to extremes yesterday.

Police said the University of Pennsylvania law student, whom they declined to identify pending his arraignment on charges of aggravated assault and other offenses, lived in the same West Philadelphia building as the victims, two graduate students from India studying biomedical engineering at Drexel University.

“It’s a bizarre case. You have people who are all in higher education, and you would think they would be open-minded… and accepting of each other’s cultures. But something triggered in this guy’s mind that [the neighbors] were not here for the right reasons,” Lt. John Walker said.

Fire in the hole:

A man splashed lighter fluid on a stranger who fought him off with a metal cane, then used the lighter to set two women on fire, police and witnesses said.

Flames broke out on the women’s clothing and hair, but no serious injuries were reported. Paul Alexander Pearson, 50, was arrested for investigation of assault, police Officer Debra Brown said.

The assault in downtown Seattle apparently began when the attacker ran up behind Gus Jones, 82, and dumped lighter fluid down his back at lunchtime Wednesday.

Jones felt someone grab his shoulder, smelled the fumes and hollered. Then, “I had to rap them with my cane,” he told The Seattle Times. Jones, recovering from a broken hip, fell to the pavement but was not set afire.

The Wing Bowl has trouble going national:

With 25 contestants and 20,000 onlookers, Philadelphia’s annual bacchanal is among the biggest eating contests in the country, drawing bellyfuls of local advertisers, including Apple Vacations, Steven Singer Jewelers, and the Matt Blatt auto dealerships. But like similar events it struggles to attract national ad dollars.

The big boys, it seems, just don’t have an appetite for competitive eating.

My school had a laundry service.

They picked up the clothes once a week, removed the buttons, and returned the clothes, neatly wrapped in a brown-paper wrapper, a couple of days later.

Ding! Time to throw your drawers in the dryer. That’s the message University of Iowa students can now receive by e-mail. Thanks to software installed along with new high-efficiency washers last fall, the school’s dormitory residents can receive e-mail alerts when their laundry cycles have finished.

(Actually, I never lost a button, but they did starch everything. Everything.)

He’s a uniter, not a divider:

Democratic and Republican opponents of President Bush’s plan to send more troops to Iraq joined forces last night behind the nonbinding resolution with the broadest bipartisan backing – a Republican measure from Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia.