for the life of me see what could possibly be offensive about one beautiful black woman admiring another beautiful black woman. Let's all chill out and shake our white, black, red brown, yellow, and yes, purple booties to the sweet soul vibes of this lovely and troubled world in which we live.

actually have quite a bit in common. Both think they have all the answers, and neither have spent time in war zones. Graner is not the problem. Hell, even Caley was not the problem. The problem was and is those people in power who create the conditions in which torture and other atrocities become acceptable. Do you really think My Lai was isolated? Do you think Abu Ghraib is the onlyone of its kind? The chickenhawks need symbols to crucify. And the peaceniks need the chickenhawks. The rest of us need leaders who understand psychology and how it feels to be tossed into a war zone at the age of 18. Leaders who know the brutal reality of combat and guerrilla warfare. Those who know war don't like it. And they generally don't blame the grunts for carrying out the orders of the brass.

Don't hold your breath. My dad was involved in a friendly fire incident nearly 40 years ago in the Cambodian Incursion. Remember that ugly chapter? I spent months and months sifting through declassified after ops reports and other officialand unoficial documents. Nothing. Not one word. And this was an entire company of soldiers that was strafed by machine gun rounds and rpgs on a swift boat. So basically what you have is one man's word against the brass. That, my friends, is just the way things go in war. And certainly the American military leaders are no worse than others.

The same applies to this business about Charles Graner. If citizens, particularly armchair patriots, understood the profanity of war, we would have no war. We wouldn't have the stomachs. A war zone is not a place of moral clarity. We can't expect soldiers to follow any code of conduct in a place where all the old rules of normality, all the things they thought they could depend on, are gone. Shit happens, plain and simple. Put weapons in the hands of scared young men in combat zones, expect unintended consequences. Expect governments to cover things up and find scapegoats in the grunts when pr problems arise. Read some Tim O'Brien.

You ever notice how the divine constitution crowd always leaves from their arguments the historical record showing Franklin and Paine and most of the rest of those cats spent more time with Native American "heathen" thinkers than with Christian colonists? What the founders dicovered among local tribes, especially the League of Iroquos Nations, were only the basic tenants of our constitution. If DeMint and the rest of his ilk are dead set a monument to the religious principles influencing our history the most, they would surely agree that Northeastern tribal beliefs would have the largest representation. No?

I'm not sure how many have read the NYT article about the increase in "hooking up" as opposed to dating. Ican't help but see parallels here, and I can't help wondering whether internet porn and hooking up are both symptoms, not of some permisive trend, but rather the sad and simple fact that people have less time to develop traditional relationships these days. We all like to "bust a nut" as they say, but how many people have the time or the money go through the old fashioned channels?

If you all though you we going to a Fellini film when you walked into the theatre to see this thing, I've got news for you--you weren't. Tarkovsky? No. Bat-fucking-man. You know, the guy with the car who's always getting fucked with by the Joker? Yeah. That one. Nothing more, nothing less. Ledger--as far as Batman villans go, he was scary as hell. Do you think Devito was better? Nicholson? I mean, Jack was good at what he did, but he was funny. Heath Ledger was sickeningly frightening. Worthy of a best supporting actor? Maybe. Maybe not. Who fucking cares? It's Batman, people. If you were dissapointed it was only because your expectations were way out of line.

is that we argue too frickin' much, and while we argue among ourselves about what people may or may not write on blog threads, reporters like Gregory are doing far greater disservices to us all. Keep our eyes on the prize, people. We call ourselves the tolerant ones. Let us tolerate dissenting thread posts. Say it with me: dissenting thread posts of aesthetics other than our own. Journalists getting drunk with the people they are supposed to be grilling. Gregory and Rove, sitting in a tree: what is the bigger problem?

The Zionists could give a shit less about the average Jew. Enjoy. Quotes from Zionist founders and all.

The Hidden Roots of Zionism

by Annie Zirin

International Socialist Review, July-August 2002

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Israel/Hidden_Roots_Zionism.html