I never thought I'd see this day. I'm sorry but...

Al Franken...I remember when he used to be funny. No, really. He actually was.

I first encountered Al Franken back when he started out at Dudley Riggs' Brave New Workshop in Minneapolis in the early 1970s. No he wasn't funny even then. (tough love...) Whap! Come to think of it, Dudley wasn't funny either.

Den:

Don't forget to Whap! Me!

I read daily from numerous troops in and returned from Iraq;

It would BREAK YOUR HEART to understand such Courage used so cavalierly as they have been.

Some of the more well-read among them have compared their fate & situation not to Viet Nam, ... but to being a German Soldier at Stalingrad in 1943. An entire Sixth German Army sacrificed. Not to the 'enemy', but to the vainglorious 'leaders', a 1,000 miles away, looking at pins on maps and listening to carefully-selected reports from various underling Departments.

Such insight caused me, a tuff-guy, to burst into tears.

This war is SENSELESS!!!

"We are at war to kill the bad guys and build the peace"! HUH??

How can we destroy & build with one & the same instrument? That's like the 'magic cigarette' argument: [Smoke one in the morning and it will wake you up; smoke one at night before bed & it will help you sleep; it suppresses appetite, it enhances a meal].

All that those making money off of cigs hope is that one keeps smoking them for whatever 'magical' property works for the individual. It's the same with the military-industrial complex of this and/or ANY country!

Tonight, my neighbor and his wife invited us over to the Pizza Cafe where his son is cooking pizza for the last night before he reports in to the Army for active duty Friday.

I prayed hard and desperate not to say what was on my heart, so my male pal took me in his car and wanted to hear what was causing me so much anguish. I frankly told him that all the statistics are pointing toward a heartbreak coming to him and his family.

You know what his response was? That he would swim across the oceans with a knife in his teeth and avenge himself against the 'towel-headed sand-niggers' that killed his son. And he calls himself a Christian! While I understand his visceral reaction, how is his response so different than that of the Dad in Baghdad?????

And if he could actually do what he says he would, what does that say about the commitment of the 'other' Dad in Baghdad regarding our populace?

WHY is it OK to grieve for OUR brave dead and not afford the same to another? Maybe I'm not saying it correctly, but isn't it ironic?

I don't profess to even remotely understand why, for the first time in American history, we launched a pre-emptive war against a sovereign state that did not attack us. I don't understand the grief of the American families that have wounded, maimed, dead, crazy kin because of it; I don't understand the grief of the Iraqi families that have wounded, maimed, dead, crazy kin. I just know they both suffer it equally and neither fully understands why.

I don't understand this war ... except in terms of the Soldiers themselves; except in the words of the Soldiers themselves ... who compare their lot to that of the Germans at Stalingrad. That's not just sad; that's criminal in light of history.

The Reverend Billy Graham's words on this and the larger meaning of the purpose of a life here on Earth are becoming more and more clear to me.

Dan
Whap!

Now that's the Denny we know and love!! Good rant, Denny.

John McCain is a political bisexual, and a big ole joke!

Good slap session.. I feel much better too!

Alan-
You beat me to the punch on that one...

The lack of anger in this country (aside from the anti-Bush rhetoric) only increases the amount of apathy and "tolerance" to those who want to bring this Country down! Until they have a solution instead of criticism, I will remain angry and aware of their bullshit sedition.

This is the GOC that kept me coming here for a few years now...

Thanks for keeping me angry, Denny.

Good rant Denny. I hope Stabenow gets her butta kicked in the next election, she embarasses me as a Michigander. Dan, I suggest you go to EjectEjectEject.com and read Bill W's essays - you could learn much. May your neighbors son stay safe and I thank him for his service.

RE: The Clintons-
Three surgeons were playing golf together and discussing surgeries they had performed.
One of them said, "I'm the best surgeon in the world. In my favorite case, a concert pianist lost seven fingers in an accident, I reattached them, and 8 months later he performed a private concert for the Queen of England.

The second surgeon said. "That's nothing. A young man lost an arm and both legs in an accident, I reattached them, and 2 years later he won a gold medal in track and field events in the Olympics."

The third surgeon said, "You guys are amateurs. Several years ago a woman was high on cocaine and marijuana and she rode a horse head-on into a train traveling 80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with was the woman's blonde hair and the horse's ass. I was able to put them together and now she's a senator from New York.

RE: Moose-limbs
Three Cheers for Australia!

Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to
get out of Australia, as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head
off potential terror attacks.

A day after a group of mainstream Muslim leaders pledged loyalty to
Australia at a special meeting with Prime Minister John Howard, he and his
ministers made it clear that extremists would face a crackdown.

Treasurer Peter Costello, seen as heir apparent to Howard, hinted that some
radical clerics could be asked to leave the country if they did not accept
that Australia was a secular state and its laws were made by parliament.
"If those are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law
or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you," he said on national
television.

"I'd be saying to clerics who are teaching that there are two laws
governing people in Australia, one the Australian law and another the
Islamic law, that is false. If you can't agree with parliamentary law,
independent courts, democracy, and would prefer Sharia law and have the
opportunity to go to another country, which practices it, perhaps, then,
that's a better option," Costello said.

Asked whether he meant radical clerics would be forced to leave, he said
those with dual citizenship could possibly be asked to move to the other
country.
Education Minister Brendan Nelson later told reporters that Muslims who did
not want to accept local values should "clear off".

"Basically, people who don't want to be Australians, and they don't want to
live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically
clear off," he said. Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on
Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's
mosques.

"I frankly told him that all the statistics are pointing toward a heartbreak coming to him and his family."

Hey Dan, with an approximate average of 1000 KIA each year in the three + years we have been in Iraq, and approx 120,000 troops in-country, how in the world can you say the "statistics are pointing towards heartbreak"? That is less than a 1% chance of getting killed on a tour. Casualties are higher, but still rest at roughly 13%. God bless his son for volunteering to fight for this country.

And I'd also like to point out that this is not “the first time in American history, we launched a pre-emptive war against a sovereign state that did not attack us.” In December of 1941 we were attacked without provocation by Imperial Japan, which propelled us in to WWII. At that time, wasn’t Germany a sovereign state that had not attacked us?

"We are at war to kill the bad guys and build the peace! HUH?? How can we destroy & build with one & the same instrument?”

Could you not build a house with the same hammer that was used to kill? Won’t a shovel dig a hole to plant a tree that was previously used to dig a grave? Won’t a knife used to stab an aggressor also slice a loaf of bread? I don’t see why any soldier serving in Iraq couldn’t kill a terrorist on one day, and help build a school on another. It’s happening. I read daily from troops also, and I hear of much good coming out of the effort, so please try to limit the amount of time you work to diminish those efforts.

Is THIS the decade of Al Franken?

"Chances are..." Since the invasion of Iraq over 12,000 Americans (mostly men) have been killed on motorcycles. Almost 9 per day. And for what? A heartbreaker IMO.

Dan - Please keep your comments on topic. Wait until I post sumpin' about Iraq, and I will, before commenting on it. I have warned you many times about off topic comments. If you will not heed my warnings, I will be forced to delete your off topic comments, and, no, I will not make you AOTW.

HAL - If only we had some politicians like John Howard in the country and the electorate to vote for them. I also like the fact that the Netherlands is making immigrants look at a video that includes two gay men kissing and a topless woman. If the immigrant has a problem with that, as all Moose-limbs would, he can stay the fuck out of the country.

Den:

Sorry.

Now that's the Denny we know and love!! Good rant, Denny.

Amen, Alan! Good one, Denny.

How about a mini-Whap for Jessica Simpson? She refused invitation to go to Republican fund raiser and to meet with President Bush while she is in Washington this week.

That was awesome.

DanS,……..you Obviously Don't know Jack Shit about World War II history. The Iraqi Conflict is in no way, shape or form any resemblance to Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion of Russia.) Slap Slap Slappity Slap. What an idiotic comparison!!!!
You would be better served it surfing the internet on the subject or getting a library card and reading until your little heart is content.

Please explain to me how the Iraqi War is the same?

In two minutes, I found this little nugget on Wikipedia under “Operation Barbarossa.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

Incidentally, Hitler’s Third Reich had been busy invading and waging war with most of western and eastern Europe prior to attacking Russia. Prior to his attack on Russia, Hitler was reeling from a failed attack on England (Operation Sea lion)

“Ostensibly, the Germans feared that the Red Army was preparing to attack them, and their own assault was thus presented as a preemptive war. Readers of Hitler's Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") should, however, have expected an invasion of the Soviet Union. In his book, he makes clear his belief that the German people needed Lebensraum ("living space", i.e. land and raw materials), and that it should be looked for in the East. It was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave Russian and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic peoples.”

Maybe Stalin should have done some reading too. What a pinhead. Or was it that things in an extremely oppressive Russia were going so badly that he hoped that a foreign enemy would distract the Russian peoples attention from their domestic woes. Did Stalin sacrifice his own country to a Nazi invasion? Hmmmmm. I wouldn’t put it past him. Stalin didn’t give a shit about his people. In fact he killed them by the millions.

So let’s recap, We were attacked on 11 Sept 2001 by the Al-Qaeda, In October we attacked Afghanistan, knocking out the Taliban and the most of the Al-Qaeda.

We turned our attention to Iraq because we believed that Saddam’s Iraq had WMD’s and Saddam did nothing to convince us that he did not such weapons. It was largely believed by everyone in the world including the UN, that Saddam had access to these weapons and ties to the Al-Qaeda. So we invaded and kicked his ass with relatively low loss of coalition lives. Certainly, a lot lower than any battle of World War II.

This has been a difficult struggle but a necessary one. Or would you rather be fighting these assholes over here. Global Islamic Terrorism is quite literally that.
DanS, if you can find a place on the world map where all these assholes are living called “IslamicTerrorstan” so we can nuke that place and rid ourselves of this global blight, I’m Prince Charles (All Ears). 

Cheers

Scaryguy:

I'm being good until Denny posts on this. Suffice it to say for now, I didn't say what you impugn to me. I'll see you on the appropriate topic.

Regards!

See you there

Cheers

Denny, I need a sound effect to go along with all those Whaps!

I just read "Enemy at the Gates" by William Craig. I guess the only thing the movie had in common with the book was the title. Well, not the ONLY thing, but you know what I mean...

I don't mean to track off-topic, Denny, but all this talk of the Eastern Front got me excited.

And by the way, comparing that conflict to the war in Iraq is senseless.

Marksman said "I just read "Enemy at the Gates" by William Craig. I guess the only thing the movie had in common with the book was the title. Well, not the ONLY thing, but you know what I mean..."

The History Channel had an interesting story about the battle for Stalingrad on about a week ago. They compared the Russian and German sniper rifles. It turns out that the Russian rifle was crude but very effective in that it was easier to sight in the scope (no hand tools required and opposed to the German sniper rifle) and that the gun grease was more fluid in extreme cold temperatures. Also they went on about the bombing actually created near perfect hiding places for Russian snipers etc, etc. I'm sure you got that from the book. Just an interesting note.

Wow, that was a really good bitch slapping. I was groggy with my cup of coffee here before I clicked on GOC. Now I'M MUTHA FUCKIN' FIRED UP BABY!! Happy Friday every body!

Shouldn't you be bitch slapping someone over the abject failure of Bush's war in Iraq? He pretends he can create a stable democracy just by taking over the country and magically making it happen. And then he seems surprised that peace and stability have been impossible to achieve. Now he closes his eyes and pretends the country hasn't devolved into civil war.

There are many in that administration who deserve a bitch slapping for a stupid decision to go to war followed by incompetent prosecution of that war.