Jesus was struck by lightning and burned to the ground.
Repent!
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
UPDATE: Actually, he has just been revealed to be a giant mechanical insect. Run!
FURTHER UPDATE: In case you missed it when I offered it earlier:
It never occurred to me that they made it with a steel frame - right by the water - what a great lightning rod.
Damn! I wish somebody had video of the moment of the strike.
Continuing the theme of Iraqi politics as depressing theater, the parliament convened today for its first meeting since the election [at the beginning of March].The session lasted eighteen minutes, long enough for an opening prayer, the oath of office (taken in either Arabic or Kurdish), and an apologetic statement from MP Fouad Masoum, the chair of the session, who told Iraq that legislators need time "for further deliberations" on the next government.
And that was it! They adjourned without setting a date for another meeting, let alone selecting a president or parliamentary speaker.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Iran is sending aid ships to blockaded Gaza, state radio said on Monday.[...]
One ship left port on Sunday and another will depart by Friday, loaded with food, construction material and toys, the report said.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Residents of this onetime Taliban sanctuary [Marja] see signs that the insurgents have regained momentum in recent weeks, despite early claims of success by U.S. Marines. The longer-than-expected effort to secure Marja is prompting alarm among top American commanders that they will not be able to change the course of the war in the timePresident Obama has given them.Firefights between insurgents and security forces occur daily, resulting in more Marine fatalities and casualties over the past month than in the first month of the operation, which began in mid-February.
[...]
The Afghan government has assigned representatives to help deliver basic services to the population, but most of them spend their days in the better-appointed provincial capital 20 miles to the northeast.
[...]
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, told officers here in late May that there is a growing perception that Marja has become "a bleeding ulcer."
Nearly nine years into the Afghan war, with the number of troops here climbing toward 100,000, the pace for air crews that retrieve the wounded has become pitched.In each month this year, more American troops inAfghanistan have been killed than in any of the same months of any previous year.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday that the civilian-military offensive scheduled to begin in the southern city of Kandahar this spring would take months longer than planned.[...]
"There's no point in clearing an area until you have the capacity to do the hold, to bring governance" that does not now exist, one military official in Afghanistan said. "Without the Afghan government civilian capacity -- without a district government that can provide some basic services -- you'll end up with what we're experiencing in Marja right now."
In the last administration, he would have been canned for that assessment.
The Afghan government has not produced the civilian leadership and trained security forces it was to contribute to the effort, U.S. officials said, and the support from Kandaharis that the United States was counting on Karzai to deliver has not materialized.[...]
President Obama has said he will begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan in July 2011.
[...]
By June, more than 10,000 newly deployed U.S. troops were to begin clearing the Taliban from the outlying districts [of Kandahar], up to 80 percent of which the military estimates is controlled by insurgents.
[...]
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, said Thursday […] the Kandahar operation has been pushed back until at least September.
Ooopsy.
Karzai's promises to stem corruption have yielded few results. Last week, he fired Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh, two top cabinet officials whom the United States considered among the few who are competent and honest, in the culmination of long-running feuds with both.
Sometimes it's hard to keep your puppets in hand. They have a way of getting swelled heads and thinking they're in charge.
The Americans are reluctant to blame Karzai and his government directly for the delays in Kandahar. But the Marja experience, with troops fighting to provide political space for government officials who still have not appeared, taught them that their efforts must be matched by the Afghans.
Ah yes, the "Government in a Box."
"You've got to have the governance part ready to go," Brig. Gen. Frederick Hodges, one of the top U.S. commanders in southern Afghanistan, said in an interview last week. "We talked about doing that in Marja, but didn't realize how hard it was to do."[...]
[Gen. McChrystal] acknowledged that winning support from local leaders was tougher than expected.
When will they stop thinking that everything they want to do will be a cakewalk? How they long for the days of Mohammad Reza Shah of Iran.
As for Karzai's view point….
President Hamid Karzai has lost faith in the US strategy in Afghanistanand is increasingly looking to Pakistan to end the insurgency, according to those close to Afghanistan's former head of intelligence services. Amrullah Saleh, who resigned last weekend, believes the president lost confidence some time ago in the ability of Nato forces to defeat theTaliban.
Not completely dense then, is he?
That sounds like he's lost his faith in more than the strategy. Bye-bye Karzai.Saleh's colleagues say that Karzai even accused the two men of a plot with the Americans and the British to wreck his peace plan.
The latest casualties yesterday took Nato's toll to 29 deaths in nine days, according to an AP count. The United States, whose some 94,000 troops vastly outnumber the rest of the allies' contributions in Afghanistan, has lost 17 service members since Sunday.
If you were to read a military report, however – say: June 12: This Week's Operational Update on Afghanistan you would think everything is coming along swimmingly. And regarding a wedding slaughter by suicide bomber last week, you would learn that when it's not us doing the slaughtering (47 at a July 2008 Afghan wedding – or 90 in a separate air strike in November of that year ), "These cowardly attacks against innocent civilians reflect the Taliban’s lack of vision for a peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan."
So the news out of Afghanistan is about what you might have been expecting. But there is a dropped sentence in that NYTimes article that I'd like to have fleshed out: "[Medics working rescue in Afghanistan] picked up two Marines bitten by their unit’s bomb-sniffing dog."
A leak from Chevron's underground oil pipeline may have gone undetected for hours as it spilled 50 gallons of crude a minute Saturday into Salt Lake City's Red Butte Creek.The oil blackened the east-side creek, stained scores of birds, prompted the closure of Liberty Park and sent oil as far west as the Jordan River.
"This is extremely harmful," said disgusted resident Peter G. Hayes, a biology teacher who showed oily rocks from his creek-side home to Chevron officials at Liberty Park. "I want to know when are you going to send someone to my backyard and clean up my mess because I can't even live in my house because of the smell."
Chevron pledged to clean up the 6-mile mess, but the company could not quantify the damage. As of late Saturday, Chevron said the leak had been stopped. But company representatives could not say when it began, how much oil spilled into city waterways and why -- despite pipeline monitors -- it apparently took hours to learn of the accident.
It must be Muslims. Or maybe Mexicans. Where will they strike next?
No, wait. Rival sabotage! BP, Chevron...let's wait to see which company doesn't have a major incident in the next few months.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Here's 10 minutes of a wonderful British comedy about the acquisition of intel to support the invasion of Iraq: In the Loop
One of my favorite scenes, which isn't in this clip, is when a US Army general who does not support the invasion is discussing the insanity of the idea. He indicates that the plan is to send 12,000 troops who are expected to carry the day. He then says that 12,000 is the number of troops who are going to die in this war, and that the goal of a war is to have some soldiers left alive at the end, otherwise "it looks like you lost."
The era of corporatist governing may be peaking.
BP, it is alleged, is not telling what chemicals are in the dispersants it's using in the Gulf, insists that its clean-up crews NOT wear filtration masks (because it would cause hysteria), and that they see only BP physicians if they get sick.
And the oil is still flowing freely, with only a small percentage being captured.
With each new look by scientists, the oil spill just keeps looking worse.[...]
It is the third — and perhaps not the last — time the U.S. government has had to increase its estimate of how much oil is gushing.
[...]
Most of Thursday's estimates had more oil flowing in an hour than what officials once said was spilling in an entire day.
How about that push to Qandahar?
The headlines tell the story:
U.S. delays Kandahar operation as gains in Marja falter
Marja’s ‘Government in a Box’ Is Empty
Israel has loosened its death grip on Palestine! The occupied can now receive "soda, juice, jam, spices, shaving cream, potato chips, cookies and candy."
So lay off the Israel bashing and demands for an international investigation into the murderous raid on the aid flotilla, okay?
It's perhaps a bit encouraging that birther Oily Titz didn't win the California vote to become secretary of state. On the other hand, she was beaten by a football player.
America still likes its jocks better than anybody.
So let me give the Democrats a big hint for 2012 against Sarah Palin: run a hockey player.
So far into the world of the absurd, we may as well get used to riding in the passenger seat beside behind Roger Rabbit.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Corexit: More toxic than the oil
IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against the War
