COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Sunday, April 13, 2008

37 senior police officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general fired in Basra.



1,300 Iraqi troops, police dismissed
By BUSHRA JUHI, Associated Press Writer


BAGHDAD - The Iraqi government has dismissed about 1,300 soldiers and policemen who deserted or refused to fight during last month's offensive against Shiite militias and criminal gangs in Basra, officials said Sunday.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said 921 police and soldiers were fired in Basra. They included 37 senior police officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general.

The others were dismissed in Kut, one of the Shiite cities where the fight had spread.

Last month, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the security forces to confront armed groups in Basra, Iraq's second largest city.

But they met fierce resistance and the attack quickly ground to a halt as fighting flared across the Shiite south and Baghdad.

Since then, government officials have revealed that about 1,000 members of the security forces — including an entire infantry battalion — had mutinied, on some cases handing over vehicles and weapons to the militias.

The majority of Iraqi soldiers and police are Shiites.

Speaking in Basra, Khalaf said those dismissed included 421 police officers and 500 soldiers who had not returned to duty in the southern port city and would be tried by military courts.

"Some of them were sympathetic with these lawbreakers, some refused to (go into) battle for political or national or sectarian or religious reasons," Khalaf said.

But he said that those who returned in coming days and could prove they had been prevented from doing so by the militias would be reinstated.

In Kut, a senior police officer said 400 local policemen have been sacked for refusing orders to combat the militias, including the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the Interior Ministry in Baghdad had ordered the policemen removed from duty on Saturday.

Although fighting in Basra eased in late March, security operations are continuing.

Fighting in Baghdad's Sadr City, a stronghold of al-Sadr's militia, has been ongoing for the past two weeks. Fresh clashes were reported Sunday and at least two rockets or mortar rounds were fired at the capital's Green Zone, which houses diplomatic missions and much of Iraq's government.

A senior military commander said Sunday that Iraqi forces in Basra were expanding their sweep of six neighborhoods, with army and police cordoning off the areas while searching for illegal weapons, ammunition and criminal elements.

Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Fireji said the operation, which started on Saturday, had netted significant amounts of weapons, roadside bombs and drugs. He said a large number of suspects had been detained, but he provided no figures.

Al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran, repeated on Saturday his demand for American soldiers to leave the country and urged his fighters not to target fellow Iraqis "unless they are helping the (U.S.) occupation."

Despite the strident rhetoric, however, there were signs that al-Sadr was trying to calm his militia to avoid all-out war with the Americans. Al-Sadr is also under pressure from al-Maliki, also a Shiite, to disband the Mahdi Army or face a ban from politics.

Meanwhile, an Apache helicopter accidentally destroyed a U.S. Humvee in eastern Baghdad when a Hellfire missile missed its target and struck the armored vehicle instead, the military said Sunday.

Two U.S. soldiers and three Iraqi civilians were injured in the incident on Saturday, the statement said.



75 comments:

  1. Dear Abby:

    I saw the dismissals as a positive sign. Am I overly optimistic?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Let's see how this develops:

    Egypt Islamist Group Backs Strike

    CAIRO, Egypt — Egyptian textile workers and pro-democracy activists are calling for a day of strikes and protests Sunday, just ahead of local elections at a time of widespread anger at President Hosni Mubarak's government over rising prices and low wages.

    The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's strongest opposition group, threw its support behind the strikers Thursday. The move raised government fears that the group is trying to position itself as a political vehicle for the widespread economic discontent.

    "We are with the strike as a means of expression and peaceful protest in the face of the despotic and suppressive actions of the executive authority," the Brotherhood said in a statement.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Whit,
    Regarding the Iraqi troops SENT to Basra, I read somewhere that the majority of those that deserted came from relatively newly formed units, ie recent recruits.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You may be optimistic. If you put your team on the field and 1000 plus desert and turn their equipment over to the enemy, what else can you do but fire them?

    How would any future action, using Iraqi troops, inspire confidence? If you as an American soldier were in a joint forces operation with Iraqis, would you trust them?

    ReplyDelete
  5. I too thought of the positive aspects of getting rid of folks that gained rank in the Basra Cesspool.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Doug,

    "37 senior police officers ranging in rank from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general fired in Basra."

    ...they are not raw recruits.

    ReplyDelete
  7. No bread in Egypt? The Nile went dry due to global warming?

    ReplyDelete
  8. McCAIN: What’s the lesson that we are to draw from that, that a thousand Iraqi police deserted or under-performed?

    PETRAEUS: Well, one lesson, Senator, is that relatively new forces — what happened was in one case, a brigade that literally had just come out of unit (inaudible) fielding was pressed into operation. The other lesson is a recurring one, and that is the difficulty of local police operating in areas where there is serious intimidation of themselves and of their families.

    McCAIN: Suffice to say it was a disappointment.

    ReplyDelete
  9. ...but even BC only readers were aware that the POLICE were full of shite criminals.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Now for the SERIOUS Stuff:
    ---
    Salman Rushdie's Heather Mills (but this one has principles AND talent)
    Sir Salman Rushdie has a new, even younger, woman in his life.
    At 32 and 5ft 9in, Aimee Mullins is 28 years younger and at least 2in taller than her companion.
    (picture of ex-wife #4, Padma, shows artifact on arm that I cannot figure out:
    any guesses?)

    ReplyDelete
  11. (no need to waste time below the knees. Always think positve.)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Proof positive that some liberals reside in hermetically sealed mental ghettos for their ENTIRE Lives:
    ---

    Memo to Petraeus & Crocker More Laughs, Please - Dick Cavett - Opinion - New
    York Times Blog

    ---
    ...I always wanted to like Cavett,
    guess I can't.
    Comments on Iraqi soldiers and the General's medals particularly adolescent.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I always found Cavett pretentious.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Doug: (picture of ex-wife #4, Padma, shows artifact on arm that I cannot figure out: any guesses?)

    Wikipedia:

    "When she was 14 years old, she was involved in a serious automobile accident, causing an injury of her right arm, which required surgery leaving a 7 inch scar"

    ReplyDelete
  15. I never liked Cavett either. Didn't know he was still around. He always tried to be so urbane, came across as kinda lame, to me.

    That was my quess, a scar. Some people have scars that look sort of pale.

    Famine in Egypt, Mat? Maybe it's the start of a new round of plagues. Up next, the day of the locust. And then came the frogs...

    ReplyDelete
  16. I wouldn't believe this if she walked into church with a .45 strapped on her hip. Which would make the 6 o'clock news for sure--


    Hillary Portrays Herself As A Pro-
    Gun Church Goer

    VALPARAISO, Ind. - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton managed to co-opt Mr. Obama’s message of hope and optimism, beginning a speech in Valparaiso, Ind., by talking about how positive and “fundamentally optimistic” Americans are.
    “We don’t get bogged down and looking back – we’re always looking forward,” she said, as heavy applause nearly drowned out her words. “Whatever obstacle we see, we get over it. Whatever challenge we have, we meet it. We’re the problem-solvers, we’re the innovators, we’re the people who make the better future.”
    For the third time since Mr. Obama’s remarks were made public Friday night, Mrs. Clinton criticized him at length, saying his comments seemed “kind of elitist and out of touch.”
    “I disagree with Senator Obama’s assertion that people in our country cling to guns and have certain attitudes about immigration or trade simply out of frustration,” she said.
    She described herself as a pro-gun churchgoer, recalling that her father taught her how to shoot a gun when she was a young girl and said that her faith “is the faith of my parents and my grandparents.”

    “is the faith of my parents and my grandparents.”

    They were shabby con-artists, too?

    ReplyDelete
  17. Sounds like the one sure way of finding out who is loyal to the government in the Iraqi Army is to send them into battle.
    *****
    Concerned about the color tone of your more intimate areas? Looking for a bikini wax job, or a Polish whore? Need a Swedish massage?(Post Falls, Idaho is the place for you) Go Here

    ReplyDelete
  18. There is no basis to suggest that this process is in any way insufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans," Chertoff wrote to Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), chairmen of the House Homeland Security Committee and its intelligence subcommittee, respectively, in letters released yesterday.

    I'm not sure I like This You won't be able to sit by the pool in your backyard and sip a cocktail without someone back in Langely taking a look. Believe it or not, the eye in the sky has been used to survail The Frank Church Wilderness Area, at times. On the other hand, if Homeland Security isn't watching, Google is.

    ReplyDelete
  19. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  20. You left out the safeguards in that National Applications Office plan, Al-Bop:

    "If at any time more than half the country demonstrates their displeasure with the administration in DC by simultaneously mooning Langley, the administration shall be required to schedule an election for it's replacement within 40 days of said mass mooning."

    ReplyDelete
  21. If Republicans don't reject the oil/military industrial complex lobby, and very aggressively move towards alt. energy like solar, there's a good chance that they will lose the good faith support they now enjoy in the political economic and moral battleground. I've already discussed the issue of going Solar at BC, but it seems most peoples heads are in the sands of Arabia.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Is Solar Power Inherently Deflationary?

    http://seekingalpha.com/article/68788-is-solar-power-inherently-deflationary?source=yahoo

    ReplyDelete
  23. As to trusting the Iraqi soldiers ...

    That would depend upon their training and the length of time I'd had spent with them.

    If I had trained 'em, I'd go into combat with them. If they just showed up on a sunny afternoon, well I could have second thoughts.

    Worked with a lot of US units that I'd have never wanted to go into combat with. Back when I trained folk for that kind of thing.

    ReplyDelete
  24. And, mat, if frogs do not grow wings, they'll bounce their bellies when they hop

    ReplyDelete
  25. dRat,

    From BC:
    What's the point of all of this? Is Middle Eastern oil and the accompanying welfare to military contractors where taxpayers money should be spent? Is it not time to rethink this economic model?

    ReplyDelete
  26. No, mat, it should not be where the money is spent, but the idea that the GOP will take part in charting a new course, that is just not going to happen, unless or until frogs fly.

    These are dark days for the Republic, that's a fact.

    ReplyDelete
  27. I really wish somebody would clue them in.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Even frogs have the good sense not to swim in poison.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Doug,

    Thank you for the 60's You Tube link!

    ReplyDelete
  30. In the late 1980s, when I was in college, I served as captain of the Princeton women’s ice hockey team. My teammates and I, our Harvard opponents, and everyone else in the league were beneficiaries of a significant piece of legislation called Title IX — the Education Amendment of 1972 that prohibited discrimination in any activity on the basis of sex.

    A few years before I went to college, there were no women’s ice hockey teams at the college level in America. Nine years after I graduated, women I’d skated with competed in the first Olympic games to include our sport.

    ...

    On February 4, 2008, in an act of segregation disguised as “collaboration,” Harvard University set the clock back fifty years by agreeing to ban men from a popular university gym for six hours each week to appease Muslim women. Harvard University spokesman Robert Mitchell stated to me that this was done at the behest of a group of women “whose religion does not allow them to remove their burqas and/or hijab in the presence of men.”


    Segregated Gym

    ReplyDelete
  31. ah, ask me later...I'm busy running for President now....


    SCRANTON, Pennsylvania (CNN) – After a weekend spent making direct appeals to gun owners and church goers, Hillary Clinton said Sunday a query about the last time she fired a gun or attended church services "is not a relevant question in this debate” over Barack Obama’s recent comments on small town Americans.

    “We can answer that some other time,” Clinton said at a press conference held in a working class neighborhood here.

    ReplyDelete
  32. Back to beddy-bye now, children.

    ReplyDelete
  33. I always like the term 'appropriate'--like in, 'that's not an appropriate question for this venue'.

    Or, maybe, it's not appropriate to ask how much of your hard earned money I will appropriate from you for others, if elected.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Former president Bill Clinton stopped in Jim Thorpe on Sunday afternoon to persuade voters to support his wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, in her campaign for a seat in the Oval Office.
    It was Clinton’s third stop of the day in Pennsylvania during a "Solutions for America" campaign event.

    Bill Clinton stopped in Lewisburg and Bloomsburg earlier Sunday.

    He spoke to a crowd of about 1,500 at Jim Thorpe Area High School for about an hour on Hillary’s campaign issues.


    Jim Thorpe

    ReplyDelete
  35. And you can bet Bill Clinton isn't telling the rubes of Jim Thorpe, Lewisburg and Bloomsburg anything they Don't Need To Know

    ReplyDelete
  36. Meanwhile, Clinton's husband, former President Bill Clinton, added his voice to the mix.

    Campaigning for his wife in Bloomsburg, Pa., he opened his remarks in a middle-school gym by relaying comments he said were made to him before he arrived on stage. "I just want you to know that the people you are about to see, they're not bitter, they're proud," Clinton told the crowd.

    "They just want this country to go in a different direction."


    Bloomsburg, PA

    ReplyDelete
  37. Next thing you know, she'll be volunteering to personally go clean up the mess in Basra.


    2008-04-13) — Sensing an opportunity to portray Sen. Barack Obama as elitist and out of touch after his remarks about “bitter” rural Americans who cling to guns, God and xenophobia, Sen. Hillary Clinton stopped after church today at an indoor gun range, where she fired roughly 300 rounds through a handgun she said she carries concealed everywhere she goes.

    Her lower lip bulging from a dip of Skoal, Sen. Clinton put her Bible in her handbag, and drew out her own Para Ordnance Warthog .45 caliber pistol.

    As reporters looked on, the Democrat presidential candidate emptied one 10-round magazine after another, with fair accuracy, at a human silhouette target.

    “Small town folk like us,” said Sen. Clinton, “don’t cling to God or guns because we’re bitter about the economy, as my opponent suggests. We believe in God because he’s real, and we keep and bear arms as the best insurance against tyrants who would strip our freedoms if they didn’t fear our collective power.”

    As for the economy, the candidate said, small-town people haven’t been sitting on their hands since the steel and textile mills closed 25 years ago.

    “We’re Americans,” she said, “We’re not a bunch of cry babies. Things change. We deal with it. We suck it up, learn a new skill, and do something else to earn the money we need to buy stuff, you know, like Bibles and bullets.”
    scrappleface

    Bibles, bullets and beer.

    ReplyDelete
  38. The e-mail message addressed to a Booz Allen Hamilton executive was mundane—a shopping list sent over by the Pentagon of weaponry India wanted to buy. But the missive turned out to be a brilliant fake.

    ...

    When the deluge began in 2006, officials scurried to come up with software "patches," "wraps," and other bits of triage. The effort got serious last summer when top military brass discreetly summoned the chief executives or their representatives from the 20 largest U.S. defense contractors to the Pentagon for a "threat briefing."

    ...

    In written responses to questions from BusinessWeek, officials in the office of National Intelligence Director J. Michael McConnell, a leading proponent of boosting government cyber security, would not comment "on specific code-word programs" such as Byzantine Foothold, nor on "specific intrusions or possible victims." But the department says that "computer intrusions have been successful against a wide range of government and corporate networks across the critical infrastructure and defense industrial base."


    Espionage Threat

    ReplyDelete
  39. Jimmy Carter seeks a true understanding of Hamas---


    "I think someone should be meeting with Hamas to see what we can do to encourage them to be cooperative and to find out what their attitude is,'' Carter said on the ABC News program "This Week.''

    If only we knew the true attitude of Hamas, we could think clearly what to do.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Do you suspect that Menachem Begin misled you in on the Palestinian issue, and that he intended from the outset to conclude a separate peace with Egypt?

    "Begin committed to withdraw Israeli military and political forces from the occupied territories and then also to give the Palestinians full autonomy. I had written in the text 'to give Palestinians autonomy,' and he insisted that we put in 'full autonomy.'

    Begin was extremely courageous, honest and fair.


    Israel Must Talk to Everyone

    ReplyDelete
  41. Bobal: If only we knew the true attitude of Hamas, we could think clearly what to do.

    The only attitude control Hamas cares about is for their rockets.

    ReplyDelete
  42. "We suck it up, learn a new skill, and do something else to earn the money we need to buy stuff, you know, like Bibles and bullets.”

    Bibles, bullets and beer.


    Proverbs 31:6 (New International Version): Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish;

    ReplyDelete
  43. Legitimate Government Action To Protect Children, Or Nazi State Come Alive In America--A Look Inside The Polygamist Compound In Texsas

    What say you about this, aenea? Signed, curious

    Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish;
    You pulling my leg, or can it really translate like that?

    ReplyDelete
  44. King Jimmy has it as: Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts

    BUT

    Proverbs 31:4-5 says: It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; nor for princes strong drink

    Lest they drink, and forget the law, and pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted.

    And verse 7 says: Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.

    Which is bad advice, as it may have been the boozing that made him poor in the first place, but, then again, maybe not. At any rate, it's not going to help him out of his poverty, and that's for sure.

    ReplyDelete
  45. I've been comparing condo prices this afternoon.

    Vancouver, B.C.

    494 square feet, one bedroom, one bath
    $199,000 asking

    Las Vegas

    976 square feet, 3 bedroom 2 bath
    $104,900 begging
    estimated market value it says is $163,000, and we all know something is worth exactly what can be gotten for it, and not a nickle more. So it might well go for less than $104,900. Literally dozens and dozens, maybe hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, of offering in Vegas like this.

    Nice Vegas condo, five years old, looks good in the pic.

    ReplyDelete
  46. The rectangular DiamondTouch table relies on a projector hung from the ceiling, pointing down, to create images. Hundreds of tiny radio-frequency transmitters embedded in the table surface send a low-energy signal through a person's body when he touches the surface, and a receiver pad hidden under his seat completes the circuit (allowing the table to know which user is touching where).

    A PC connected to the table processes the touch input, and instructs the projector how to respond. Different kinds of touches can draw boxes on the screen, zoom in, or tag particular objects.

    A DiamondTouch table with a 32-inch diagonal surface costs $9,500, not including the PC or projector.


    What a Start-up Brings to Table

    ReplyDelete
  47. Bob,

    Forget Vancouver. It will drive you to depression. Check out La Jolla, San Diego, instead. I don't know about the pricing there, but from what I remember the location was excellent.

    ReplyDelete
  48. La Jolla is a great town. Spent a lot of time there when I was younger and in the Navy. It is excellent.

    ReplyDelete
  49. La Jolla -

    Condo
    1 x 1
    506 ft.
    $229k

    ReplyDelete
  50. I've been to La Jolla, my brother and sister are down by Santa Cruz. I imagine it's very pricey. I'm not going anywhere anyway, less it's Ohio:( Not till my circumstances improve a bit. I have thought about one of those Canadian lakes in British Columbia, and a condo to the south somewhere for wintering. Dreams, mostly. I'm actually pretty happy right here.

    ReplyDelete
  51. Sam confirms my suspicions. A bed and a place to crap--229K.

    Right now, the prices in Vegas, and the prices in Moscow, seem nearly the same, with maybe Moscow a little higher. You couldn't find two places more unlike.

    Here's what I can't understand. Some guys built some storage units as condos between Moscow and Pullman on the corridor highway. 60K! And some have sold. Who on earth would pay 60K for a storaqe unit? Are these students all filthy rich, or what?

    ReplyDelete
  52. Mohammad was also subjected to waterboarding by the CIA. At a hearing before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on March 10, 2007, KSM, as he is known, said he broke under the harsh interrogation.

    COURT: Were any statements you made as the result of any of the treatment that you received during that time frame from 2003 to 2006? Did you make those statements because of the treatment you receive from these people?

    KSM: Statement for whom?

    COURT: To any of these interrogators.

    KSM: CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning, when they transferred me...


    Enhanced Interrogation

    ReplyDelete
  53. Babine Lake. Just googled it. Never been there. Looks nice.

    ReplyDelete
  54. "Don't you fuck me, Brimley!"

    "I'm not fucking anyone, Frank-

    "I don't believe my fucking ears, Wilford, I don't believe my fucking-

    "Now hold on a minute, this is my name and my reputat-

    "We paid you! We paid you! We didn't pay for your heartfelt consideration! We paid for you!"

    "Old Wisconsin has been good to me, yes, but, I don't know what else I can tell you-"

    "You can tell me you're going to forget all this healthy living crap and do the commercial, the commercial we paid you to do, not imagine in your minds' fucking eye."

    "You've been very difficult to work with, Frank"

    "Don't you even, Brimley! We didn't take three months to draft a contract for you to flirt with us. You signed with us to work with us, not come into this office and complain about your indigestion and think that lets you slink out of your obligations to us."

    "So, you want me to lie? You want me to -"

    "Shut up! Just shut up, Brimley."

    "Now, wait a minute, if you think I can be bullied into -

    "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! You either agree to the commercial, you give us 10 minutes of content and you get to not waste our time in court, after wasting my time this afternoon"

    "Oh, well then fuck you!"

    "No! Fuck you, Brimley! Fuck you from the bottom of my fucking hear-

    "Oh for christ's sake, fuck Old Wisconsin and fuck whatever else you fucking do, badgering an old man like I was your little whore"

    "Brimley, if you were my fucking whore, I would beat the living shit out of you, dump you in the projects, and wait for you to be found by housing inspectors a year later. Don't you ever think-"

    "Oh, of all the god-forsaken things, you act like I'm ruining you, Frank. If Old Wisconsin sinks its because you've threatened partners and figuratively shat on any benefit of the doubt people have prior to working with you"

    "Get out, Brimley. Get the fuck out and return the marketing merchandise. You don't leave this parking lot until its all here, right in front of my fucking desk.

    "Merchandise?"

    "Don't! I will have you thrown in fucking jail! I will have your assets seized, garnished and repossessed, right down to your liberty mutual pig stickers you fat fucking nosferatu!"

    "Liberty medical, you fucking nitwit!"

    "Get out, Brimley! Get out before i dump confectioners sugar on your lap and make you comatose!"

    "Well, I've never ever met someone so obnoxious, so...

    "Don't care don't care don't care don't fucking care-

    "...miserable, that he can't work with..oh, fuck, to hell with it! I'm leaving, alright. I'll leave and you can pry your merchandise from my dead hands"

    "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck me god dammit! Leave and fucking drop dead then! Get out! Get the fuck out!"

    "Go choke on your own cock, Frank, you rotten little queer!"

    "Haha, look at you-

    Frank places his hands on his desk, stands up, and leans toward Wilford.

    "Look at fucking you, Brimley. All fired up, risking your cardiac health on trying to piss me off, trying to see if you can leave here with some pride after fucking us all over."

    "You don't scare me, Frank. I've seen, heard and beaten worse. And you're the last person who should talk about pride, threatening someone because of their honesty!"

    "Weren't you leaving, Wilford?"

    "Weren't you, oh hell, yes, I'm leaving, I'm leaving right fucking -

    "Wonderful!"

    "Right fucking now!

    "Charming, Wilford. Really! You should swear more often"

    "And you should consider this bridge burned frank! Best of luck to you, really."

    Wilford rose and put on his hat.

    "Oh, and Frank, tell Michelle I say hello, will you?"

    His eyes glassy as if just now he was prodded with an instrument of torture, Frank gazed into a spot on the wall, and jerkily yanked a desk drawer open. Seeing this, Wilford doddered towards the door, but not before Frank produced a .38 special revolver, and riddled Wilford with three bullets, causing him to topple into the hallway. Frank stood over the half of the prostrate and panting Wilford that laid in the conference room.

    "Lesson for you, Brimley - don't fuck with me"

    Wilford tried to suck in air, as if to fuel a shout, but not before Frank drove two remaining bullets into his already bloodied chest.

    Cordite and sulfur in the air, Frank looked at the mess in front of him, the geysers of gore having dissipated into dribbles. Sighing to no one but himself, Frank turned away from Wilford.

    "I'm..."

    Putting the gun to his temple, he pulled the trigger, toppling dead onto the floor beside his former business partner.

    ReplyDelete
  55. Just googled Lake Christina, which looks nice too.
    There are a lot of them up there.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Last year we were talking to some folks about a place at Quesnel Lake Cold in the winter, have to be an Eskimo to stay over. Three, maybe four, good months, then shut the igloo up for the winter.

    ReplyDelete
  57. What's the name of that book, Gitout? "Wilford Brimley's Mistake" ?

    ReplyDelete
  58. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  59. "The Unauthorized Brimley: Ribald Tales from the Glycemic Edge"

    ReplyDelete
  60. Or, "Wilford Brimley Off His Meds"

    ReplyDelete
  61. I must be off my meds. I thought Sam posted that.

    ReplyDelete
  62. In an interview on CNN on Sunday evening, Clinton said that Obama’s comments raise a legitimate political issue.

    “Someone goes to a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco and makes comments that do seem elitist, out of touch and frankly patronizing. That has nothing to do with him being a good man or a man of faith.

    We had two very good men and men of faith run for president in 2000 and 2004 but large segments of the electorate concluded that they did not really understand or relate to or frankly respect their ways of life. And I think that is an issue for voters as I’ve heard today from people I visited in Scranton and elsewhere.”


    Obama's Elitist Comments

    ReplyDelete
  63. Clinton v Obama is turning mean.
    Damn, I hope Clinton wins big in Pennslyvania, and Indiana. I want to see blood on that convention floor.

    ReplyDelete
  64. There was a moment of levity on Sunday night when Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was asked at a nationally televised faith forum whether she believed “God wants you to be president?”

    “ Well, I could be glib and say we’ll find out,” Clinton said to laughter from the audience.

    “But I — I don’t presume anything about God. I believe, you know, Abraham Lincoln was right in admonishing us not to act as though we knew God was on our side,” she said.


    God on her Side?

    ReplyDelete
  65. What? I thought Hillary was God.

    Round Towers Of Ireland--The Mystery Continues

    G'nite, Sam, or, g'day, to you.

    ReplyDelete