The Green Zone sounds like Republican purgatory to me. Come to think about it — I’m all for expanding it to make room for any true believers — so long as they stay inside those twentyfoot walls — forever. I’ll even buy a couple decks of cards.

Posted by: anna missed | Jul 8 2005 9:30 utc | 3

I don’t like TB’s labor and contract policies, so I don’t frequent the place much:
DROPPED LIKE A CHALUPA

Posted by: FlashHarry | Jul 8 2005 12:30 utc | 5

Wait the fucking minute! Keyboardists like Billmon chide the chortling commies for the chickens coming home to roost comment because it’s a really solemn occasion that a bunch of Brits got blowed up. Of course, people are getting blowed up all the time. In Iraw even. Now unless Billmon and the rest of the chattering classes of cliches gotta argue that, well, people are supposed to be getting blowed up in Iraq because it’s a war zone and thus no big fucking deal, I don’t get the ‘can’t we stop blaming and bow our heads’ riff.
Wait a minute, I forgot!
Only Yanks and Brits are innocent and the 3,000 dead on Sep. 11 is a really important bad thing. If towel heads are dropping like flies, well, so much the better and hopefully reduce the surplus blameworthy population.
Some fucking people deserve to be ruled by Rush and Rove. It IS divine punishment.
Fuckig morons…

Posted by: DeWayne | Jul 8 2005 13:07 utc | 7

“I’ve better things to do (and read) than listen to your sorry ass.”
Well apparently you don’t, or you wouldn’t be here commenting on it.

Posted by: Billmon | Jul 8 2005 13:34 utc | 9

@Damon,
They’re sons a’bitches, but they’re our sons a’bitches…better than the fascist swine who bombed London yesterday.
Actually, given a choice between an elected megalomaniac dress-up artist and an anonymous person who just blew apart a bus that I used to ride to work, I’ll choose the megalomaniac every time.
Politics was a multiple choice exam at your polytechnic was it, Damon?

Posted by: Jassalasca Jape | Jul 8 2005 14:30 utc | 11

Damon and others who “have better things to do” and can’t stand different view I don’t see why we are going to miss you? Go do it!…
Billmon is simply great…most of the time!
Quote:
They’re sons a’bitches, but they’re our sons a’bitches…better than the fascist swine who bombed London yesterday. …
***
Never have heard anything idiotic as this statement…

Posted by: vbo | Jul 8 2005 15:12 utc | 13

Josue Counting Coup
A long time ago my family returned to our roots in Kentucky
over the better part of a school year, and I found myself cut
off from the distractions of the city, and thrown into a rural
outback existence I hadn’t even known existed.
Back at that time, the country men enjoyed hunting crows.
I don’t know the geneology of that practice, but they quick
dragooned me into joining them afield, as their retriever.
Boom – ba-boom, boom, their shotguns rattled the sky,
and swift black shapes, now broken, fell from the clouds.
My uncle bagged the most, and “honored” me with the cut-
off claw of the largest crow, tendons dangling, talons still
contracting, which I took to school the next day, terrorizing
my classmates with it, rampaging like a baby velociraptor.
The teacher quick grabbed my arm, plucked the claw away,
and scolded me, “You are *not* a crow!”
I never said I was. The image, the essence, was in the claw.
Segue twenty years into the future, the illegal Cambodian War,
Kent State and massive Midwest protests, where I ran in pursuit
of my own imagery, a computer engineering degree at the Uof _.
I can still see the Guardsmen unloading from the transports,
lock-and-load, fixed bayonets, against their own countrymen.
I can still see their phalanx as it marched through the quad,
spasmodically thrusting and grappling with everyone who
had assembled to hear the anti-war speakers. The pregnant
woman beaten down, and the elderly couple, shackled and
dragged off, kicking and screaming, and the student knocked
off his bicycle, glasses shattered, kicked in the teeth.
I can still see these things. Imagine those students fighting
back with rocks and sticks, soldiers retreating, a microcosm
Palestine:Israel standoff, before the troops advanced in waves,
beating, kicking, corraling *hundreds* of people into cuffs, and
dragging them off to the local sports stadium for processing.
The microphone stood unattended. I stood there in the hot
sun, my pocket protector leaking ink, sweat on my forehead.
Suddenly a voice shouted out, my own! Somehow I was at
the microphone, shouting, “Liberate our comrades!” with
no idea where that urge to shout or the words came from.
Everyone rose and cheered, fists raised, and there I was,
leading a crowd of people down the street towards the
stadium, a kid who a moment before was just a tech nerd.
Only a sports idol or rock star can tell you what it’s like to
lead a crowd, to feel their energy flow through you, lifting
your feet off the ground with the roar of their voices.
I shouted some wild shit, my friends told me later, really Afro-
Cuban Huey Newton stuff I have no idea where it came from.
And when we arrived at the sports stadium, and the massed
troops and police waiting for us, I turned and shouted out …
To no one.
The mass of protestors had turned left at the intersection,
and were marching off away, as fast as their legs could
take them, back towards the quad, and a quick escape.
The big state trooper smiled as he braced himself, took
his billy club, and slammed me up against the side of
my neck. Somehow my shoulder got in the way, and his
baton broke neatly in half. He hesitated for a moment,
his lip trembling, and then began bawling like a baby.
His image, his essence, was in that broken billy club.
I think that’s what’s happening to US here in these days.
I think we’re reacting, and self-aggrandizing ourselves,
to an image, just an essence. Not to Reality with an “R”.
I think we’re just shooting crows.
And so, if I were leading another protest march, I’d tell
everyone to go home, turn off their TV, turn off their PC,
kick off their shoes, and go out and play in the garden.
This is not real. This illusory, imaginary un-world the
NeoCons are creating is not Reality. They have led a
march, a Mother of All Crusades, to the opposite side
of the earth, and soon they are going to fail over there.
Everything they planned, or had hoped to do, un-done.
And nothing we do or say here will hasten, or hinder it.
“We get back pretty well. There has been no further
attack by the enemy. We lie for an hour panting and
resting before anyone speaks. We are so completely
played out that in spite or our great hunger we do not
think of the provisions. Then gradually we become
… men again.” All Quiet on the Western Front
To all things, there is a season.
This is our time to re-create, to pay homage to the
Creator, to frolic in the garden. Take off from work,
turn off, tune in, drop out. Go for long walks, taking
great, big, galumpfing strides. Eat more cherries
than your mouth can hold, the droozle down your
chin. Kiss a flower. Hold a butterfly. Find a water hole
and splash until you’re a teenage kid again.
Touch the Universe. We are Josue counting coup.
See you after Labor Day at the Battle of SCOTUS.

Posted by: tante aime | Jul 9 2005 2:16 utc | 15

anna missed (way upthread) said:
“The Green Zone sounds like Republican purgatory to me. Come to think about it — I’m all for expanding it to make room for any true believers — so long as they stay inside those twentyfoot walls — forever.”
Would that be the reverse trapezoidal, multibillion dollar Re-Thug ‘Flypaper Hypothesis’?
Guess a few billion, give or take, would be cheap at twice the price if that thing moved on down the road to dogma.

Posted by: RossK | Jul 9 2005 17:27 utc | 17