Sooner Blue

Cows on waterbeds.

http://www.waterbedsforcows.com/wb4cows.html

And this dress...

http://ukfrogman.googlepages.com/frogman

They should put up a sign: "We'll leave the light on for you."

Another US military contractor overbilling scandal in Iraq. Ah well, you fight a war with the corrupt, criminal thugs you have, not the ones  you wish you had.

If there's one thing we've learned about the Bush administration and Iraq, it's don't mess with Dick Cheney's corporate buddies at Halliburton and KBR. If you do, you end up like this poor guy, a former Army contract official who had the nerve to question $1 billion dollars worth of questionable charges by KBR back in 2004.

From the New York Times:
"Army Overseer Tells of Ouster Over KBR Stir
By JAMES RISEN Published: June 17, 2008
WASHINGTON — The Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.

.....He is giving his account just as the Pentagon has recently awarded KBR part of a 10-year, $150 billion contract in Iraq. [..]"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17contractor.html

Ain't this something! A private firm holds our troops hostage by threatening to cut off food, water and services, and DoD can't find anything else to do but pay the ransom?

This is even more scandalous than simple corruption, obviously KBR has "good connections". It means that we have outsourced absolutely critical functions to private companies, companies which, unlike military personnel, can threaten to stop doing their jobs without facing courts-martial.

Shouldn't it be considered a threat to national security to have our military so completely dependent on a single private corporation? Because how "secure" is a nation who is this dependent on civilian contractors?

Once upon a time our military provided their own "food, fuel, and potable water along with critical services ranging from complex engineering to cleaning out the port-o-potties."

Just another reason to end the war. We are being blackmailed, hijacked, and ransomed by our own greedy corporate giants.

You know, war profiteering used to be taboo...not so much anymore. Can you recall any sitting Vice president, who kept a financial interest in the companies he formerly controlled as CEO, ever having such an influence over how government contracts were awarded and managed for the benefit of his friends?

And has any White House in history ever done more to cover up the corruption and outright theft of public funds?

Hopefully, President Obama will have investigations into the fraud and abuse which occurred during the Bush years. Not only has abuse, corruption and cronyism been rampant, KBR knows it's playing with a stacked deck, in a rigged game...they can do anything they damn well please, because without them, the army's between Iraq and a hard place.

...are still sending lies about Sen. Obama through email.

From his website:

A recent email forward allegedly quotes passages from Senator Obama's
books related to race and religion. The majority of these are
alterations, deliberate manipulations, and in one case, an outright
fabrication, of Obama's words.

EMAIL
From Dreams of My Father: 'I found a solace in nursing a pervasive
sense of grievance and animosity against my mothers race.'

FULL QUOTE
Nothing close to this quote appears in Dreams from My Father

EMAIL
From Dreams of My Father: 'There was something about him that made me
wary, a little too sure of himself, maybe. And white.'

FULL QUOTE
"He offered to start me off at ten thousand dollars the first year,
with a two-thousand-dollar travel allowance to buy a car; the salary
would go up if things worked out. After he was gone, I took the long
way home, along the East River promenade, and tried to figure out what
to make of the man. He was smart, I decided. He seemed committed to
his work. Still, there was something about him that made me wary. A
little too sure of himself, maybe. And white--he'd said himself that
that was a problem." [Page 142]

EMAIL
From Dreams of My Father: 'I never emulate white men and brown men
whose fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the
black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought
in myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela.'

FULL QUOTE
"All my life, I had carried a single image of my father, one that I
had sometimes rebelled against but had never questioned, one that I
had later tried to take as my own. The brilliant scholar, the generous
friend, the upstanding leader--my father had been all those things.
All those things and more, because except for that one brief visit in
Hawaii, he had never been present to foil the image, because I hadn't
seen what perhaps most men see at some point in their lives: their
father's body shrinking, their father's best hopes dashed, their
father's face lined with grief and regret.

Yes, I'd seen weakness in other men--Gramps and his disappointments,
Lolo and his compromise. But these men had become object lessons for
me, men I might love but never emulate, white men and brown men whose
fates didn't speak to my own. It was into my father's image, the black
man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in
myself, the attributes of Martin and Malcolm, DuBois and Mandela. And
if later I saw that the black men I knew--Frank or Ray or Will or
Rafiq--fell short of such lofty standards; if I had learned to respect
these men for the struggles they went through, recognizing them as my
own--my father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring,
rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard
enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black
man!

Now, as I sat in the glow of a single light bulb, rocking slightly on
a hard-backed chair, that image had suddenly vanished. Replaced
by...what? A bitter drunk? An abusive husband? A defeated, lonely
bureaucrat? To think that all my life I had been wrestling with
nothing more than a ghost!" [Page 220]

EMAIL
From Audacity of Hope: 'I will stand with the Muslims should the
political winds shift in an ugly direction.'

FULL QUOTE
"Whenever I appear before immigrant audiences, I can count on some
good-natured ribbing from my staff after my speech; according to them,
my remarks always follow a three-part structure: "I am your friend,"
"[Fill in the home country] has been a cradle of civilization," and
"You embody the American dream." They're right, my message is simple,
for what I've come to understand is that my mere presence before these
newly minted Americans serves notice that they matter, that they are
voters critical to my success and full-fledged citizens deserving of
respect.

Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow
this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and
Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the
stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from
neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have
been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a
dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship
really means something, that America has learned the right lessons
from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will
stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly
direction." [Page 260-261]

Read More...

http://factcheck.barackobama.com/

"Florida: Legal Drugs Kill More Than Illegal"

From The New York Times: 
"MIAMI — From "Scarface" to "Miami Vice," Florida’s drug problem has been portrayed as the story of a single narcotic: cocaine. But for Floridians, prescription drugs are increasingly a far more lethal habit.

An analysis of autopsies in 2007 released this week by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission found that the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of deaths caused by all illicit drugs combined.

....The report’s findings track with similar studies by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which has found that roughly seven million Americans are abusing prescription drugs. If accurate, that would be an increase of 80 percent in six years and more than the total abusing cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants.[..]"

http://tinyurl.com/6zhygq

Don't get me started about Big Pharma pushing pills for all our ills constantly on TV...I want to talk about a non-dangerous drug, marijuana.

Like I've always said -- the urge to alter our perceptions and our mood is strong in humans...people have been using mind altering substances from the beginning of time (pot seeds were found in cavemen's gear), and no threat of jail or fines will stop them.

It's also interesting that in those 4,179 legal incidences, "alcohol was the most commonly occurring drug" found in bodies of the dead, although listed as the sole cause of death in only 466.

BUT marijuana remains the only so-called dangerous drug which has not been attributed as the cause of a single fatality in what?...5,000 years.

Yet in 2007 there were almost 45,000 Americans imprisoned at the state and federal level solely for marijuana offenses...a natural herb. There's no numbers for the ones held in local and county jails.

We didn't learn our lesson from alcohol prohibition...and we're doing the same silly thing with cannabis prohibition. It was declared illegal in 1937, and if it hasn't worked in the last 60 years, it won't ever work.

Yet we still keep throwing billions of dollars at the failed policies of eradication, interdiction and incarceration, when we could invest a fraction of that money in treatment facilities that would actually solve the problems of addiction and abuse of hard-core drugs like heroin, etc.

TV reporter loses his cool

I challenge anyone to watch this without laughing. It's video of a reporter getting a bug in his mouth.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqjV4Tzv1j8

"Sh*t flying in my mouth! Let's get up out of this country ass motherf***er!"