The Wacky Wire Team!

Found on the Internets:

The Wire as a Hanna-Barbera cartoon — Paul Sizer’s contribution to Warren Ellis’s latest Remake/Remodel thread. (via.)

Earth Day 2011

An Earth Day tradition: George Carlin on the intellectual bankruptcy of "saving the planet"


The Earth isn't going anywhere. WE ARE. Pack your $hit folks.

Happy Earth Day - Save A Human.

A Dark Anniversary

U.S. Now In Afghanistan Longer than the Soviets

The last Red Army troops left in 1989, driven out after nine years and 50 days by U.S.-backed fighters known as mujahedin. Despite contrasts, the U.S. and Soviet wars have common narrative elements.

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Moscow — As wartime days go, Friday was a fairly quiet one in Afghanistan. Helicopters skittered across the sky; convoys rumbled along desert roads; soldiers in mountain outposts scanned the jagged peaks around them.

But one thing set the day apart: With its passing, the U.S. military's campaign in Afghanistan matched the Soviet Union's long and demoralizing sojourn in the nation.

Read more ....

In a completely unrelated note...

Afghanistan discovered an oilfield containing an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of crude in the north of the country, a Mines Ministry official said.

If proven, the resource would be more than 10 times the size of the country’s oil reserves, assessed at more than 150 million barrels by the U.S. Geological Survey. By comparison, Saudi Arabia had proven reserves of 264.6 billion barrels at the end of 2009, according to BP Plc data

“A huge oil resource, which looks like a triangle, with an estimated 1.8 billion barrels of oil, has been discovered by Afghan geologists in cooperation with international geologists between Balkh and Sheberghan provinces,” Jawad Omar, a spokesman for the ministry, said.

The field is a new discovery and was not among those found by Russian exploration companies, Omar said. Further research will be carried out in the next six months and the field will be tendered once all investigations are completed.

The U.S., which has spent $27 billion since 2002 training Afghan forces, is promoting development of Afghan resources in an attempt to stabilize President Hamid Karzai’s government, U.S. Deputy Under-Secretary of State Paul Brinkley said earlier this year. Back in August U.S. President Barack Obama and Karzai discussed the need to jointly keep the pressure on the Taliban and to build Afghan capacity.

The country itself lacks local knowledge to get the oil itself, according to Sayed Masood, an economics professor at the University of Kabul .

“Lack of capacity, lack of capital, lack of skilled people means that Afghanistan cannot extract the reserves itself."

If only there was a country that had the military and the capacity to extract that oil and buy it to fuel their infrastructure?

Send in The Clowns

When the Bozos and Clowns are testifying before Congress - the Republic is hereby ended.

"A clown in the circus who doesn't hide the fact that he is a clown. Now, who's the clown who asked him to testify?"

Stephen Colbert, in character, spoke to Congress today.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was not amused. "Mr. Colbert's submitted statement was considerably different from the one that he presented," he said. As if Mr. Conyers deserves or commands any respect? It's hard to have a sense of humor when your wife is sentenced to 37 months in jail on bribery charges.

He submitted serious testimony to a judiciary subcommittee hearing on the issue of farm workers and immigration, but when it was his turn to speak, the talk show host slipped into character as a satirical conservative to make his points in support of more favored status for migrant farm laborers.

Yes, yes. Laughs. Ha ha.

I get the point that he's trying to bring attention to this issue - however, jokes aside - when you can't take anything seriously - you're going to wonder why the Republicans are re-running the 1990's -- and there isn't anything left to laugh about.

Electric Boogaloo

The Republicans are set to unveil their new "Contract With America II: No Really, This Time We Mean It". The 1990's contract has gotten some credit for the Newt Gingrich Republican Revolution, which was about as revolutionary as a decision to change crack dealers.

In 1994 Newt Gingrich and the Gang put out a Contract on America - er, 'with' - introduced six weeks before the 1994 Congressional election and signed by all but two of the Republican members of the House and all of the Party's non-incumbent Republican Congressional candidates; provisions included 12 year-term limits.. ironically this bill rejected by the U.S. House 227-204. By then Newt was Speaker.

Remember all the hype about cutting government spending? Of the departments and programs that the Republicans pledged to eliminate, their combined budgets had grown by 13% by the year 2000. I repeat, what's going to happen when the Tea Party people get hit with more broken promises out of their candidates they backed? What's going to happen when these same double-crossing double-speak establishment Republicans return to their usual corporate masters, er, I mean, interests?

Really, what happens then? Start thinking about it.

No Compromise

Obama Rules Out Compromise to Extend Bush-Era Tax Cuts for Wealthy

President Obama will rule out on Wednesday any compromise that would extend the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy beyond this year, officials said, adding a populist twist to an election-season economic package that is otherwise designed to entice support from big businesses and their Republican allies.

Mr. Obama's opposition to allowing the high-end tax cuts to remain in place for even another year or two would be the signal many Congressional Democrats have been awaiting as they prepare for a showdown with Republicans on the issue and ends speculation that the White House might be open to an extension.

Mr. Obama finally has decided that the show of 'reaching across the aisle' and 'bipartisanship' needs to close it's curtain? It's only been close to 19 months.

This is a political show. He's trying, nay, daring the Republicans to oppose him on this - just in time for November. How funny.

Just so we're clear - where's THIS guy been?

Re-Run in the Gulf

Ah Jeeezzzeee... not this shiat again!

Summer reruns!

Another doggamned oil spill.

Luckily, no one was hurt.