GIBBON GOES GOOGLE

Today Google started their books on the web feature. It's just books out of copyright, for now, but boys and girls that's still a hell of a lot of books. The first search I did was for our old friend Mr. Gibbon.....and there on the page were books published in 1838 know one remembers about the history of Europe from Rome to the French Revolution. It's free porn for bibliophiles......Check it out : Download the classics I read " The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire " in the sleeper of my Freightliner. Nothin' like a little Gibbon to put you right to sleep.

" APPEASERS "

AMERICANS OPPOSED TO THE WAR IN EUROPE : Charles Lindbergh Potter Stewart, future Supreme Court Justice Gerald R. Ford, future president R. Douglas Stuart Jr. Lillian Gish General Robert E. Wood, chairman of the board of Sears, Roebuck Senator Burton K. Wheeler Senator Gerald P. Nye Sinclair Lewis E.E. Cummings Gore Vidal Frank Lloyd Wright That's a real morally and intellectually confused group alright.

HOW TO POUR PISS OUT OF A BOOT :

QUESTIONS ?

" WE'RE FIGHTING THE STRAWMEN HERE, SO WE DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT THEM OVERSEAS"

From Rumsfailed's speech in Salt Lake City : ❖ " Indeed, that year -- 1919 -- turned out to be one of those pivotal junctures in modern history -- with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the creation of the League of Nations -- a treaty and an organization intended to make future wars unnecessary and obsolete." *The Treaty of Versailles is widely reguarded as one of the causes of World War II. *The United States didn't join the League of Nations. " We find ourselves in a strange time: ❖When a database search of America’s leading newspapers turns up 10 times as many mentions of one of the soldiers at Abu Ghraib who was punished for misconduct, than mentions of Sergeant First Class Paul Ray Smith, the first recipient of the Medal of Honor in the Global War on Terror; ❖When a senior editor at Newsweek disparagingly refers to the brave volunteers in our Armed Forces as a “mercenary army”; ❖When the former head of CNN accuses the American military of deliberately targeting journalists and the former CNN Baghdad bureau chief admits he concealed reports of Saddam Hussein’s crimes when he was in power so CNN could stay in Iraq; and ❖It is a time when Amnesty International disgracefully refers to the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, which holds terrorists who have vowed to kill Americans and which is arguably the best run and most scrutinized detention facility in the history of warfare, as “the gulag of our times.” *Abu Ghraib is one of the great blunders of the invasion of Iraq, and was the result of the lack of training & planning, and failure to understand the conflict we were fighting there. *I'll let Newsweek defend themselves.......Although the out sourcing of our military, and 20,000 private security contractors running around Iraq comes to mind. *I'll let CNN defend themselves......If they can. *Guantanamo Bay only got better, because what was going on there got exposed to the light of day. ❖You know from experience that in every war there have been mistakes and setbacks and casualties. War is, as Clemenceau said, a “series of catastrophes that results in victory.” *From Senator Jack Reed.....“no one has misread history more” than Mr. Rumsfeld. The LA Times continued: ' He continued, "Can we truly afford to believe that, somehow or someway, vicious extremists could be appeased?" ' Tomorrow Dick Cheney speaks to the NRA on....." Hunter Safety " Straw Man from Think Progress.

WORDS FROM THE SEC.

From todays Salt Lake Trib....... Touring the Middle East a month after the U.S. military's expeditious invasion of Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was basking in the apparent miscalculations of those who had predicted U.S. forces long would be mired in a difficult war. "Never have so many been so wrong about so much," Rumsfeld told his troops in April 2003. AMEN

" WE'LL BOMB EM' BACK TO THE STONE AGE "

This just came over the wires..... From the man who's not Santa Claus : "Rumsfeld, after that closed-door meeting, said the Pentagon was considering a plan to replace the nuclear warheads on some intercontinental ballistic missiles with conventional weapons, a move that would make the missiles less lethal and therefore more conceivable for politicians to use in preemptive strikes against terrorist groups."......Rumsfeld eyes ICBMs in terror war Sun Aug 27, 2006 9:41pm ET As I read Cobra II, one little factoid jumped out at me. Remember all the targeted air strikes that were conducted to get various members in that famous card deck, not one worked. In fact, until al-Zarqawi we were 0 for 50. In 1966, for example, U.S. aircraft flew 81,000 attack sorties and 48,000 combat-support sorties against North Vietnam; in the panhandle of Laos there were 48,000 attack sorties and 10,000 combat-support sorties. Vietnam remains the most heavily bombed place on the planet. Today, that shrimp in your scampi at "Joe's Crab Shack" comes from Vietnam. This news that Rummy let slip is not good. It will make far easier for Cheney to prod our pinhead president into striking Iran. Then 135,000 Americans will be at the end of 300 kilometer rope strung from the Kuwait border to "Camp Victory". And on every meter of it will be one of Muqtada al-Sadar's boy's standing there with a knife.

"GREED IS GOOD"

" The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA." GORDON GEKKO I still have a 100 shares of Teldar stock....I wall papered my bathroom with them.

"NO ONE COULD HAVE IMAGINED THAT ..........."

PICK ONE : A. "PEOPLE WOULD FLY PLANES INTO BUILDINGS" B. "A STORM THIS STRONG COULD HIT NEW ORLEANS" C. "TWO HURRICANES WOULD STRIKE IN ALMOST THE SAME SPOT" D. "GOD REALLY DOES HATE NEW ORLEANS" E. "OIL BROKE $80 TODAY ON THE NEW YORK MERC"

"NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO....THERE YOU ARE"

The only thing I learned in college. I had a work study grant in college. 3 days a week I worked in the ceramics lab with George Soco. George had been tricked into coming to Texas Tech by the administration there. George wasn't happy about that. They promised him a modern lab to teach glass blowing to grad students, he ended up in the government surplus barracks teaching education majors ceramics. Everyday when I showed up, my first duty was to ride my bike to the student union and get Prof. Soco 5 packs of Marlboro green 100's. Then my day could begin. On days we emptied the kilns after a firing, he would stand by wearing a big asbestos glove. Should a particular ash tray or coffee cup catch his eye, he would step forward, take the offending object, and hurl it across the court yard into the barracks wall that contained offices of other art profs. The pile of broken bisque ware was 3 feet deep. In the late April of 1970, while sitting in a biology lecture, something snapped in my head and I got up, rode my bike to the administration building and dropped out of Texas Tech. I was bound for Colorado. When I went by the ceramics lab to say good-bye Prof. Soco said the following: " Bob, if you forget everything I've taught you remember this....No matter where you go, there you are."