Riding Easy, Riding Forever.

“You know I smoked a lotta grass. Oh Lord!  I popped a lot of pills. But I never touched nothin’ that my spirit could kill.”  — Easy Rider

Afutilestan (IX) XI

On the ninth anniversary of 9/11 (the day that America became unhinged and ushered in a lucrative national security state), we remember the innocent victims and the heroes who lost their lives trying to save them and others. Seven thousand miles away, a hundred thousand American troops and another hundred thousand plus private contractors and NATO troops are supposedly fighting …

Afutilestan

The contents of General McCrystal’s top-down review of Afghanistan ordered by President Obama found its way into the front pages of the NY Times and Washington Post today. As expected, it paints a grim picture and calls for more of everything– more troops, more money, more nation building– on top of the $ 4 billion a month we’re already spending …

Torture In Context

Demonstrating an “enhanced interrogation technique” In 1999, Bush‘s family biographer, Mickey Herskowitz, reports that W. told him he was intent on invading Iraq, saying that his status as a war time president would give him enough political capital to push through his conservative domestic agenda. (That would include the privatization of social security whose blood rich corpse would be served …

Change You Can’t Believe In

Photo of McSame’s Botched Nip/Tuck & Hormone Treatment Said to Resemble Trash Media’s Bat Boy ABOARD THE DOUBLE TALK EXPRESS  (C.U. News) — In an effort to close the perceived and actual age gap between himself and his much younger rival for the presidency, presumptive Republican candidate John McSame has apparently taken the advice of his surgically and chemically-enhanced wife …

America the Community

AMERICA THE COMMUNITY By Stan Hartman   There is so little that is close and warm. It is as if we were never children. —Wallace Stevens Those are some of the saddest lines in the whole of American literature, yet they also point to an aspect of America that’s most deeply joyful— the sense of real family, and in a …