let's talk about afghanistan a minute

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for the record, i've been of the opinion from day one that going into afghanistan in any serious way was a mistake.

not the going-in-and-taking-out of the terrorist camps, understand--that we should have done and should reserve the right to do in the future whenever we goddam well feel it's necessary--but going in there and actually trying to fix that country? oh, hell no--i figured if trying to take afghanistan proved too much for the soviets with all their ruthless brute force, what the hell made us think we could do any better with the kinda pc warfare we're reduced to these days?

eight years, hundreds of american lives and hundreds of billions of dollars later, my opinion hasn't changed in the least.

but fuck all that now--we're in up to our eyeballs, and our glorious leader is about to have to make the first truly tough "the buck stops here" call of his life.

and it's so clear he doesn't wanna do it--he wants to vote "present" like he's always done when times got tough, only this time he can't.

last week, i watched as general stanley mcchrystal, the american commander of nato forces in afghanistan, laid out for 6o minutes a clear, cogent, unambiguous case for why the 40,000 additional troops he had requested from his commander-in-chief were essential if we wanted to have even the slightest hope of turning things around in that troubled region.

he then flew to london and in a speech to some think-tank reiterated his point, saying, among other things, that

"Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support."

thus effectively and publicly reminding the president--to whom, tellingly, he'd only spoken once, and then only by videoconference--that it was time to either shit or get off the pot.

needless to say, this forthrightness did not go over well at the white house--i mean, how dare this upstart general come out and actually tell the world the truth, thus denying the president his god-given right as a politician to waffle and wiggle and obfuscate his way around the problem?

and yeah, mr. president, you're damned if you send those additional troops, and equally-and-oppositely damned if you don't.

now, what's it gonna be?

cassandra should be my drag name

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yesterday's headline on drudge:


which, as night follows day, led to today's headline on drudge:



of course,

• if you've been reading this blog for any length of time (plus doing the assigned listening), you were not caught nearly as flatfooted by the above events as were many of the commodities traders who were frantically covering their shorts today;
  
  
• the arabs are denying that they're colluding with the chinese, russians and brazilians, among others, to bypass the dollar altogether in their nation-to-nation commerce, but my sources have been talking about this story for months, and it should be evident to anybody who has watched the fed and the treasury department debase our currency so spectacularly over the last couple years; and, finally
  
  
• as is the case with so many stories of this kind, it took a non-u.s. (in this case, british) paper to break it to the general public, proving once again you're never gonna hear the truth from your government or your media.

are gold and silver (which is performing even more spectacularly) gonna move up in a straight line? of course not--there will be many dips along the way. watch for 'em, and get in before it's too late.

________________

oh, and in related news: as our dollar falls apart, the dow closed up 131 points today as the sucker rally continues--absolute insanity.

mystery theatre (part 2)

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[here's part 1 if you're interested.]

i've held off on this one because i kept thinking i'd come up with a clever way to end it, but that hasn't happened. suffice it to say that noblesavage did indeed get back to me with his version of our evening at the theatre, and the degree to which he was able to recall with ease every last detail of a night that i couldn't come up with if you held a gun to my head both flabbergasted and depressed me.

oh, and he also gave me the go-ahead to publish the uncensored pictures, so these are for you, judi.

the whole olympics thing

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i wasn't gonna write about this fuck-you to america by a fed-up world (and if you think it's anything else, you're fooling yourself), but the right-wingers are being such douchebags about the whole thing that i have to say something.

look, you know i'm no fan of obama, but this was one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations in which all presidents find themselves--i mean, can you imagine how much worse the fall-out over chicago's last-place showing woulda been had he chosen not to make the trip?

this wasn't the president's loss; this was america's loss. and i'm not talking about the olympics--fuck the olympics--i'm talking about the loss of face and prestige and standing in the eyes of the world that this no-confidence vote represents.

and the fact that the idiot wingnuts are crowing over this latest sign of america's decline like it's "their" victory makes me want to puke.

that's all.

gringo frio

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the other day i came across that rarest of all things: a blogpost to which all self-respecting blogposts aspire. and i haven't been able to get it outta my mind since.

written by an american [he's straight, but try not to hold that against him] who moved to south america in order to seek the yin/yang balance that had so eluded him in his homeland, and using gabriel garcia marquez's love in the time of cholera as his metaphor, he lays out the essential difference between the south- and north-american cultures in a way that not only had i never seen it laid out before, but that spelled out shit i had instinctively known and had been unable to articulate from the first time a warm glance from a latin guy made my dick hard.

the money quotes:

Latinos say “gringo frio” – cold gringo. They say our culture is cold. It’s a unanimous opinion. One Colombian girl, with a confused look on her face, asked me why gringos are like that.

and, a little further in,

Modern advances seen in the developed world require cold, hard intellect free of romantic delusion. Cold, calculating gringos have made some impressive societal advancements throughout history.

in other words, we make the trains run on time, and they live with passion. which, in the end, is more important?

think about that, and then read the post--and yeah, i mean the whole goddam thing. trust me, it'll be time well spent.

let's talk about roman polanski a minute

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when the king of pop died a couple months back, i closed my eulogy to him with the question

so, was all the sheer, gorgeous talent the world managed to wring outta michael jackson before he flamed out worth the sacrifice of tossing him a boy every once in awhile?

it was a serious question. and since i was the only one asking it, it never got answered.

today, in light of recent events, i'd approach the question differently--if i could, i'd walk my middle-aged ass up to nicolas sarkozy, compliment him on his loyalty to mr. polanski, and ask

so, mr. president, when your son turns 13 next year, is it all right if i take him out for his birthday, get him drunk and fuck him?

and when he lunged at me with a roar, i'd step back and ask him why it's ok for his friend mr. polanski, but not for me--or why it's ok for some other kid, but not for his.

because obviously there's a threshold there somewhere, and that's all i'm tryin to get at.

i want a number: exactly how rich, talented and famous does one have to be before this shit becomes ok?

maybe one of these days i'll get an honest answer. whoopi? anyone?