Apparently A New Version Of The New ISIS Is Threatening To Come Soon To Fort Worth

In the past week or two direct threats to America  have been made by the idiotic barbaric miscreants who have co-opted the relatively sane religion of Islam, whilst Blitzkrieging across Iraq, delusionally thinking they are establishing a medieval caliphate while brutalizing an already brutalized Iraqi population with the worst brutality yet, far out-doing anything of which Saddam Hussein was ever accused.

Or did I miss, among the bogus Bush claims, such as the claim Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam also had the heads of little kids chopped off to be displayed in Iraqi city parks?

I know I am totally ignorant about all things political, particularly anything going on anywhere else in the world, but I know I could more willingly get behind the idea of sending in American troops to save little kids from barbaric head chopping monsters than I could get behind the idea of sending in the American troops to rid Iraq of imaginary weapons of mass destruction.

I digress.

So, the leader of the band of barbarians that was calling itself ISIS, before shortening the name to IS, threatened that the barbarians would be visiting America soon, places like New York City and Washington, D. C.

No mention has been made, that I know of, by the barbaric leader of the ISIS barbarians, of a threat to come wreak their warped, sicko brand of havoc on Fort Worth.

However,  today I saw evidence that maybe the ISIS barbarians are much more long term planners of murderous mayhem than anyone has credited them with being.

And that Fort Worth is a target.

How else can one explain the existence of a building in the Fort Worth Stockyards called the New ISIS Theater?

With the New ISIS Theater's billboard threatening, in very fractured English, "COIG ON THE NEW EW ISIS".

Which I translate to be saying, "COMING SOON THE NEW NEW ISIS".

So, the new ISIS is coming soon to Fort Worth? That should put Fort Worth on the national and international radar screen for the first time in its history.

But, I don't think this will likely make other towns, far and wide, green with envy.....

Fort Worth To Serve As Oligarchy Model For Iraqi Provincial Councils

Fort Worth's official website has some interesting news in its City News section.

The headline of the story is "Fort Worth to serve as model for Iraqi provincial councils."

Under that headline is the following....

The transition from autocratic rule to democratic government isn’t easy, but it helps to have an example of how to do open government right.

Since 2003, the U.S. Agency for International Aid has been working to provide these examples to Iraqi officials as part of the Local Governance Program and, recently, they looked to Fort Worth for help.

Iraqi national Satie Najm has worked with officials at City Hall through the month of August to create an informational video about the structure of local government and the role citizens play in open government.

Mayor Betsy Price and Mayor Pro Tem Zim Zimmerman, along with members of city staff, were interviewed this week for the video, which will be presented to Iraqi provincial council governors in Iraq Sept. 12.

I am sort of speechless. Of all the towns in all of America Fort Worth is picked as a model for Iraq's transition to democratic government?

Is the real reason Fort Worth was picked for such a thing due to being the biggest city in America run as an Oligarchy, like a giant company town? Thus fitting the Iraqi way of operating more than a more democratic, liberal, liberated town, like, for example, Austin or Portland or Denver or Seattle or New York City?

Was Fort Worth picked so that Iraqi officials can learn how to impose big public works projects on their citizens without having to resort to something as messy as a vote?

Fort Worth to provide Iraq an example of the role citizens play in open government?

Did not Fort Worth only recently get rid of a mayor who acted like an autocratic dictator? Limiting citizen input at city council meetings. Refusing to talk to Fort Worth's real newspaper of record, that being Fort Worth Weekly.

This is all very perplexing.

Washington Mountain Cowboys & A Returned Iraq Soldier

No. That is not a group of Texas cowboys huddled around a fire somewhere in the Piney Woods region of Texas.

These particular cowboys and cowgirls set up camp about a week ago in the North Cascades of Washington State, after a 4 hour horse ride from their launch pad somewhere near Winthrop at the eastern end of the North Cross State Highway.

The cowgirl closest to the camera is also known as the Scrabble Queen of Washington. There is no Wi-Fi deep in the Cascade Mountains, so I had a brief respite from getting beaten at Scrabble.

Speaking of Washington girls, but not of the cowgirl sort. Today I called Miss McP. I'd not been able to reach her for quite some time. Miss McP moved to Oklahoma about a month before I moved to Texas. We have known each other since we were little kids. And at one point in time we shared a domicile.

Today Miss McP answered her phone. Only to say she could not talk right then because she was getting off a plane in Denver, to get on another plane to fly to North Carolina. She said she'd call me back when she made it to her next gate.

So, Miss McP did call back and we talked until she had to board her next plane. The airport was being very noisy, but I did manage to learn that Miss McP is flying to North Carolina to see her son who has returned from a year in Iraq. This was not his first tour of duty in Iraq. Also in North Carolina are Miss McP's 3, or is it 4, grandkids.

To me it seems very wrong to send a kid, with 3 or 4 kids, to Iraq. I think if a president decides, or in the Iraq case, deciders, that we need to invade some random country for specious reasons, that that president can only do so if his own kids, who are old enough to be in the military, are enlisted and sent to the war zone along with the thousands of other kids the president is sending off in harm's way. This type caveat might have a sobering effect on the judgment of a president who might not otherwise think all that soberly.

Of course, this type rule would not apply in World War II type war situations.

I must go play Scrabble now. And then have lunch.

Saddam Punked By Texan

If you don't have Google Earth on your computer, you really should. It's free. Just Google "Google Earth" and download it.

Tonight I felt like doing some traveling so I went to Baghdad via Google Earth. I wanted to explore around town to see how it is looking. Well, Baghdad is looking pretty good. I saw no bombed out buildings.

It is fairly easy to find the Green Zone. Just follow the Tigris or Euphrates River as it winds through town. When you see an awful lot of blue dots you are likely in the Green Zone. The Blue dots indicate pictures. Or information.

There are many pictures of Saddam's former palaces. They were bombed early on. They appear to have been restored. You can check out the new U.S. Embassy. All over Baghdad there is interesting architecture.

Including several impressive bridges, including at least one suspension bridge.

In the Green Zone I did see something that was just a tad embarrassing to me, me being a Texan, with very thin skin, thus easily embarrassed.

A Texan had graffitied a poster of Saddam and put the Lone Star Flag over Saddam's face, writing, "Iraq Good. US Good. Saddam Donkey."

Eventually I tired of Iraq and Baghdad and decided to go to Iran to check out Tehran. I saw no Texas graffiti in Tehran. Or Lone Star Flags. But I did see a lot of impressive freeways and very cool buildings. I saw no Ayatollahs or nuclear bombs under construction. But I didn't look very hard.

An Iraqi Shoe For Bush? A Fort Worth Boot For Mayor Moncrief?

George W. getting shoes thrown at him at a Baghdad news conference made for one of the weirdest things I remember seeing in a long time. W.'s reflexes were quite quick. As was Iraqi leader Malicki's running interference on the incoming 2nd shoe.

The thrower of the shoe was quite good, too. Great aim and speed. A shoe is not the most aero-dynamic of items to be thrown. It's no baseball, football or frisbee. Yet the thrower hit a bullseye twice, or what would have been a bullseye were it not for George's deft ducking.

George handled it quite well, sort of turning the lemon into lemonade. I doubt many would want to drink George's lemonade, but it was a valiant effort, nonetheless, at off the cuff spin control. You can hear that and see the flying shoes in the video below.

Last night on MSNBC Keith Oberman was running and re-running over and over and over and over again the Bush Shoe Attack. With running commentary. It was sort of funny, in a sort of perverse way.

In the meantime, Don Young sent out an email that suggests that maybe this particular tactic might be used to get the attention of Fort Worth's corrupt Mayor Moncrief, he of the multi-conflicts of interest in the gas drilling business, with the Mayor owning interests in the companies seeking political favor in Moncrief's jurisdiction.

McDonald's in Iraq

I don't remember where I read it, maybe it was in the Bob Woodward "State of Denial" book, maybe not. But somewhere I read that when we hear that a McDonald's has opened in Iraq we'll know we've won the war. Or something like that.

So, I was curious if a McDonald's has opened in that forsaken country, thinking that maybe in the peaceful, prosperous Kurd zone the Golden Arches may have sprouted.

Well, I haven't been able to find out if Iraqis can get Big Macs yet, but I did find something interesting.

In the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan there is a city named Sulaimanya. In that city are 2 restaurants that purposefully copy McDonald's, both in appearance and menu. One of the restaurants is called MaDonal's. The other is Matbax.

That's MaDonal's in the photo on the right.

On the MaDonal's menu you'll find "Big Macks." The owner of MaDonal's, Suleiman Qassab, fought in the Kurdish resistance back in the 1970s. After that he escaped to Austria where he was a cook at a Vienna McDonald's. In the 1990s Suleiman applied for a McDonald's franchise in Iraq, but McDonald's turned him down.

So, he opened MaDonal's. Suleiman gives free food to U.S. troops, has been threatened by suicide bombers and has become a Kurdish celebrity. He hopes one day to turn MaDonal's into a real McDonald's.

There have now been multiple requests from various Iraqis hoping to open a McDonald's. So far McDonald's has not agreed to open in Iraq.

Kathy Griffin's Life on the D List at Walter Reed Hospital

I've not watched a lot of TV since I've been in Tacoma. But last night, after a long day of washing and re-washing the same dishes and cups over and over again, in addition to hours of trying to fix computer problems, I was in the mood to be diverted by something other than my pathetic reality. That and apparently I'd drained this house of all medicinal relaxation liquids. Appalling.

So, I turned on the TV right when the season ender of Kathy Griffin's current Life on the D-List show began.

Sadly, we quickly learned that Kathy's torrid, sordid romance with Apple Billionaire Steve Wozniak had gone sour. Too bad. Kathy seemed to have great hopes of getting her hands on some of those Apple Billions.

So, Kathy quickly moved on to other good works. Previously she'd gone to Iraq to entertain the troops. On this final episode she was heading, with her Team Griffin, to Washington, D.C. to Walter Reed Hospital to do a show for wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kathy met with wives of the soldiers to try and get some idea of what might work for her show. Then she toured the re-hab facility. She was a bit nervous due to her usual type humor wouldn't work so good, the making fun of celebs and Our Glorious Leader and targeting humor at her gay mafia.

And then Kathy found out there would be kids and 4 chaplains in the audience. That amped up her worrying. Which was borne out to be reality based when she bombed bad at first. But then this guy she met earlier wheeled himself in. He'd had "F**K THE IRISH" tattooed across his chest. Which Kathy got him to show to the audience. After that she seemed to hit her usual level of being funny.

But the reason I'm blathering about this has nothing to do with Kathy Griffin and her show. It has to do with the first amputeed vet she met. It was shocking to me. This kid looked so young looking, she joked with him that he looked 12. Because he did. But he was 20. And his wife was with him.

This kid was not happy. And with good reason. He had the rest of his life to look forward to, missing a limb. The idea that someone like George Bush could set in motion a series of incompetent acts that led to young boys like this being maimed just pissed me off. A kid like that, barely out of high school is too young to be sent to such unnecessary danger. Particularly when the situation we are facing was not dire like WWII, when it's so obvious to so many that the entire George Bush debacle was totally unnecessary.

And yet, where are the Impeachment hearings? Where are the calls for War Crimes Tribunals? No one died during Watergate, yet Nixon was forced to resign. No one died due to Clinton's sleazy shenanigans, yet Clinton was Impeached. George Bush is the worst president in most of our memories, committing what would seem to be all sorts of Constitutional violations.

But only in isolated outposts, like where I am now, in the Pacific Northwest, do you hear voices of reason calling for the Impeachment of this person who should never have been president.

It'll be a long time before the image of that victim of George Bush's Folly gets out of my head.

Voices From The Third Reich and Iraq

Last night I finished reading Voices From The Third Reich: An Oral History. I have read more books, than I can remember, about the Nazi era. Years ago, after reading Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich, no more, I was done with WWII books.

But then, a couple month's ago, I read a book about the Japanese atrocities during WWII, and before WWII, that shocked me. After that I happened upon the definitive Hitler bio.

Ever since I was a little kid, 10 or 11, and learned of the Holocaust, I have despised Germans. I've always thought they got off too easy after the war, due to the Cold War starting up between the U.S. and the Soviets. I've always bought into the idea of the German's collective guilt. How could they not know the Jews were being killed? How could they not know of the mass slaughters in the occupied zones of the Soviet Union?

After reading this Oral History I've changed my mind. The majority of the German people were just as much victims of Hitler as was the rest of the world. By the time these oral histories were taken, the older generation had died off, so most of the stories are those of men and women who ranged from 11 to in their 20s during the war.

Survivors of the Holacaust tell their stories, survivors of the Russian Front tell their stories, survivors of the Allied bombing tell their stories, survivors of the mass executions that followed the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt of Hitler tell their stories, survivors who worked with or met Hitler tell their stories, surviving German POWs, of both Soviets and Americans tell their stories (which do America proud, and make an American, me, a bit more ashamed of how the Bush wars have treated prisoners), survivors of the brutality of the Russians as the Soviets overran Germany tell their stories, survivors of the Western Front tell their stories. All in all, all types of German surivors in all sorts of situations tell their stories.

The German stories of their first encounters with American forces after the Normandy invasion was new information to me. The Germans were used to fighting the Russians. The Russians would just advance into a line of fire. In their first encounter with Americans, the Germans would find that the Americans would quickly retreat. In their first encounters, the Germans thought the Americans are easy. And then, about 5 minutes later, the Germans would be hit from the air and by artillery and tank fire. The Germans quickly learned that the Americans used heavy fire power to protect their soldiers.

Also interesting was how desperately both German soldiers and civilians tried to get under American control rather than the Russians. In the book there are several accounts of how amazed the Germans were at how well the Americans treated them. One told of being brought to America on a troop ship, well-fed on the way, landing in New York City, being put on a glass tourist boat to be brought to a camp in New Jersey. The German could not believe how prosperous America was, how much food, how many cars and how well they were treated. One German was shocked to see Black American soldiers. He was hungry when captured. The Nazis had convinced him that Blacks were sub-human. This American drove the German to a food supply bunker and loaded the German up. This was the point in time when this German realized he'd been lied to by the Nazis. This German ended up thinking the Black Americans were nicer than the Anglo Americans.

Anyway, after reading this book I realized that I was ridiculous in my attitude towards Germany. All Germans were no more guilty of all the Nazi crimes than are all Americans responsible or guilty of the various dubious acts of the Bush adminstration, you know, things like invading another country, on trumped up charges, and using a Blitzkrieg method to do so, and then putting prisoners into concentration camps, like Guantanamo Bay, where the prisoners are held, without trial, many of whom have been shown to be totally innocent, just like those the Nazis stuck in camps.

So, I know there were Good Germans, and others who were afraid to speak up. Just as I know the majority of Americans are Good Americans who are horrified that America, in even the most slight of ways, has acted in the same manner as Nazi Germany. And just like in Nazi Germany, it will be those who resisted the evil-doing, who will soon restore America to its rightful place as the Number One most decent, respected and admired member of the family of nations.

So, I am almost certain that in about 5 months or so, either Barack Obama or John McCain will begin that process for America and America again will be seen as America was seen during World War II, a beacon of rightness and goodness and power that made the world feel safe. Not scared.

George W. Bush Air Force Academy Commencement Goofiness

Yesterday Our Dear Leader, President George W. Bush, gave a commencement speech at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

During his speech Bush said the whole Iraq thing had been a learning experience, as in he said, "we learned from hard experience that newly liberated people cannot make political and economic progress unless they first have some measure of security."

Let's see, we invaded Iraq while bombing the hell out of the country in a program called "Shock & Awe." We then occupied Iraq, supposedly to make sure Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.

Then, for some reason some Iraqis did not feel as if they'd been liberated, they felt like they'd been invaded and so they fought back, hoping to be liberated of the liberators.

I know if some other country didn't like America having weapons of mass destruction, which we do have, and if that country thought America's leader was a threat to the peace of the world, and if that country decided to invade America, with a Shock and Awe bombing of Washington, D.C., including the presidential palace known as the White House and if after the invasion that country captured our President, put him on trial and then executed him, well, I would be quite mad and I would become an insurgent doing anything I could to hurt the invaders.

And it would really make me mad to hear the leader of the country that had invaded America, and toppled our government, claim that we'd been liberated.

And on a totally different note. The photos in this post were taken yesterday during the graduation ceremony. Bush appears to be acting quite goofy, what with chest thumping a cadet and smoking cigars, among other things.

Meanwhile two more Americans were killed in Iraq yesterday during a battle at a place in Iraq called Donkey Island.

The Academy Awards, Car Wrecks & Iraq

Well, Little Miss Lulu called early this morning. Just as I predicted yesterday she did not watch the Academy Awards except for seeing a bit of it on a TV in a bar in Tacoma called Tempest that caters to mostly a female clientele that Lulu and her husband frequent. I've been to this place once with Lulu and some of her friends. I'd never seen a restroom with so many photos of Marilyn Monroe.

So, last night I made a bowl of popcorn and tried to watch the Oscar show. I don't care for Jon Stewart so that was strike one right there. That show has just become tedious to me. And almost as bizarre as the Super Bowl in how such a fuss is made as if it is something significant if someone wins or doesn't win. It all seems so pompous. I used to like watching it when I lived on the west coast because it came on at 5:30 and was done by 9 or so. And since it is a live broadcast odd things used to happen. Like streaking. But it's been sterile for years now.

The show used to seem sort of like living history. There'd be all these Stars who were Big Stars, but one by one they've mostly died off leaving only a few remaining. And they are old. I think Paul Newman is in his 80s now. I don't know if Elizabeth Taylor still walks. I don't know if Debbie Reynolds can stay out of her wine long enough to attend a long, nighttime event.

Yesterday afternoon I went over to see the Puerto Rican Illegal Alien I've mentioned before. She'd had a stressful week and had left me a couple voice mails. So by mid-afternoon she was self-medicating a bit and somehow spilled a huge glass of spiked water and ice on me. Part of this week's drama was her 15 year old nephew in El Paso had stolen his mother's brand new car and took it for a 2 block joyride when he had a wreck and totaled the car. The kid was not hurt.

The father of the kid is the brother of the Puerto Rican, he is stationed in Iraq. The kid claimed he took the car because he misses his dad so much. I don't quite see the connection. The dad had already been injured once in Iraq, was sent to Germany to recover. That's where the family was stationed. Then the army decided to move them back to the U.S., to El Paso. And then Bush's surge happened and despite being told he would not be sent back to Iraq he got shipped back last August.

My friend up in OK who is moving back to WA who set her property on fire last week also has a kid in Iraq. He is only 25, married, with 3 kids. He was shipped to Iraq with the 3rd kid on the way and has been back for two weeks to see the kid after it arrived. I forget how it was that he ended up in Iraq, it was like he was supposed to be in some officer's training deal, and then he got told it'd look good if he did a tour of active duty during a war and that it'd only be 6 months. But somehow that turned into 15 months. How can they/we send a kid with 3 kids to a war that should never have happened?

Bush should do a tour in Iraq or Afghaniststan when his current job ends. It'd be good for the boy. No one should ever get to send anyone to war who has not been in a war. Or in the military for that matter. Bush's military experience apparently consists of having watched Patton and The Longest day a number of times.