Iraq's "Hidden" Conflict
Raed Jarrar March 18, 2008
Editor: Erik Leaver


From: Foreign Policy In Focus

"While the majority of Iraqis know that the current Sunni-Shiites tension did not exist before 2003, no one can deny that after five years of U.S. occupation, sectarian tension is now a reality. Sectarianism is another disaster that was brought to Iraq by the war and occupation of Iraq. "

If you only have time for one source of information on the Middle East, this should be it:

http://www.juancole.com/

Spring is here

Spring has sprung with a beach full of sand dollars and a park full of mating chickadees I kid you not. About a dozen baby house finches there too, little miniatures and busy busy busy.
Since I won’t be having any spring sex, spring cleaning will have to do. Followed by an attempt at tomatillo pork.

Kristen

$1500 an hour? Does she bring animals or something? I don't get it....

Josie

Allow me to introduce Josie Stolp Kennedy, my mother Jean’s mother. Josie was born 9/2/1891 in Cowley County, Kansas, the daughter of Ellen May Stolp and, well – don’t ask. Later Ellen married Oliver Crum (which is why she is referred to as Grandma Crum, though she is actually our great grandmother), a farmer, who was willing to install both and her b*** daughter as virtual slaves on his farm. Making this story even more pitiful - little Josie contracted an eye infection and became quite blind.
Eventually, Ellen took her daughter and left Kansas and the evil Mr. Crum, settling in Seattle, Washington, where Josie was trained as a seamstress (a popular profession among the blind).
Eventually Josie regained her eyesight and in July of 1918 married Richard Edward Kennedy, a musician and all around swell guy, though his eyesight wasn’t too good.

Happy VD To All My Sweet Babboos

Last Tango in New York

HEATH LEDGER - LEDGER APARTMENT BACK UP FOR RENT

The apartment HEATH LEDGER died in has been put back on New York's rental market. Three weeks after the actor was found dead in his bed after accidentally overdosing on prescription drugs, the Broome Street, Soho pad he had rented since September (07) is being offered to New Yorkers with deep pockets. The vast apartment is 10 times the size of many Manhattan homes, with 4,400 square feet of floor space; three bedrooms; two and a half bathrooms; an office; laundry room; kitchen and balcony. Ledger was paying a reported $24,000 (GBP12,000) a month in rent - so prospective new renters will need to be high earners. But real estate agents are confident it will be snapped up soon. One broker tells the New York Post, "You don't wait around in a hot rental market like this. As ghoulish as it sounds, people will rent that place in a heartbeat, especially when the vacancy rate is below one per cent."
07/02/2008 16:22 -- Contactmusic.com

Which raises the following questions: Couldn't they wait until he was in his grave? How much is a one-bedroom apartment in New York? Do the leftover drugs come with it????

Notes on Herd Thinning

Bye Bye to Mittens, who has dropped out of the race in order to keep the terrorists from killing us. Actually, since Edwards dropped out of the race Mittens no longer takes any joy in having his hair done, and going to the mirror for donations evokes a sadness past bearing. His children also wished to spare him the pain of spending more of their inheritance.
This leaves McCain assuming the position and preparing to brownnose Dobson, DeLay, Coulter et al. Having spent 8 years bending over for Cheney and Bush, he is well schooled in the task. Nevertheless, he can count on a certain amount of swiftboating from his own. The big issue is – who will he choose to be his VP (and the next President when he drops dead)?
The search for a reason to vote at all without becoming physically sick continues. My current rationalization goes like this: I would rather vote for a Republican pretending to be a Democrat than vote for a whack job posing as a Republican.

But take heart! There’s always Goldwater/Miller!

Super Tuesday, or so they say...

So there I was – ready to fill in my absentee ballot. My first love, Kucinich, had dropped out of the race, but I always thought Richardson was pretty hot, so that wasn’t a problem. Then Richardson dropped out so he could spend more time growing a beard, and I had to settle for Edwards, which was fine; I could do this and still look at myself in the mirror in the morning. Then Edwards took a powder, leaving me to fall back on sheer principle and vote for the person I actually really agreed with on the issues. And that is how I ended up dancing with the ugly guy, Mike Gravel. But I don’t know that I want to look at him in the mirror in the morning…

Thanks to #1 Sis for suggesting Isabelle Allende’s Ines of My Soul and My Invented Country. Then I had to go back and re-read House of Spirits which lead to Daughter of Fortune. It’s a good thing the California EDD is paying me to stay home and read, which was always my major career goal.

At my age one cannot waste too much time nurturing a broken heart, so after Richardson left me I looked for and immediately found my transition crush –Javier Bardem. Ok, that sounds kind of depraved (No Country for Old Men). For a less sicko (but arguably still a trifle disturbed) character, see him in The Sea Within. However, reviews of Love in the Time of Cholera are not encouraging.

Happy New Years -- 2008

What a beautiful New Years Morning. Woke up to the sound of a solo-playing Auld Lang Syne on a midnight otherwise soundless, still and -- dark! The power had gone out, seemingly simultaneously, which made the music omnipresent and pure. Pretty cool.

This AM the sun was not only shining -- it was actually putting out the heat. The park had bluebirds and the vultures were sitting in the tree tops, wings out to capture the solar energy. I picked out about 10 perfect sanddollars, stuck a feather in my hat and felt like Crazy Jane. No one offered me food or money, but no one confiscated the perfect size firewood I collected on the beach.

A Little Light Reading

According to NPR, the 99% Moslem country of Turkey really goes for Christmas, or at least the trappings thereof– the Santas and singing and decorations. I thought C would get a kick out of this, but she gave me one of those looks. I don’t think I’ll tell her about Beijing.
Karen Fowler – The Jane Austen Book Club. Nice little read with a nice little conceit: relating each book discussed to the life of a member of the club. Usually this involves more than a bit of a stretch (read artifice, read cliché, read lack of nuance). Ok, not exactly “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” but a nice break…
Saw Waitress on DVD; pleasant enough in a head full of cotton candy genre kind of way. Sort of like plowing through the entire Kathy Reich mystery series with the rationale that everyone else reads this crap, why can’t I? - but was relieved when I reached the last Reich. (I rest my case.)

Ol' Kel in Ol' Mexico

The Cast: #4 (Kelly) #4a (Kevin) #4b (Robin) #2 (MissKG). Cameraman: #3 (Chris)

The Place: El Sabado

The Time: October, 2007

The Menu: Jugo, coffee, hot chocolate, beer, tequila, Mole, Pozole, Menudo, Bacon, Sausage, eggs, empanadas, fruit, queso, tequila, beer, tequila.

The Review: 5 Stars

The Girls' Xmas Card to The Chairman.

Merry Christmas to General Ed Leslie of the Budgie Liberation Army of God, even though you’ve done a crappy job of liberating anything, feathered or otherwise.





A donation has been made in your name to the Drew Peterson Defense Fund.

— Mazie & Stella

Are these birds a couple of sick fucks or what?

Entertainment

If you're planning on seeing Lions for Lambs, bring a pillow. Very boring; C and I walked out maybe halfway through.

At the tender age of whatever, I have finally read War & Peace. This was accomplished by skipping all of the boring parts and only reading the soap opera. Short on sex, high on epiphinies. Cheat notes say that Tolstoy's characters are always becoming. A lot of them are busy becoming dead.

Good Morning

Paul Krugman on "Islamofacism":
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/opinion/29krugman.html?hp


My Birds on Drugs:

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Farewell to Dennis Hastert, resigning his House seat so he can spend more time with his refrigerator.

Bye Bye

Those who do not learn from history include just about everybody...

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows...We are today not far from disaster.

-- T.E. Lawrence, in the Sunday Times, August 1920.

Quote of the Day*

"Knowing that George W. Bush is our nation's leader is not unlike knowing that Jeffrey Dahmer's your brother..." -- The Rude Pundit


*If you think you are really going to get a new quote every day, you haven't been reading this blog....

Gore and Me

Though he admired the magazine, it was clear from early on that his short stories did not meet the moral standards or fit the literary mold The New Yorker embodied. It “was a marvelous support group of middlebrow writers called John like Cheever and Updike,” Vidal observed. –Gore Vidal: A Biography – Fred Kaplan

Slogging through this biography, wishing I liked it more. Kaplan has done a tremendous amount of research, but could benefit from some judicious editing – the book is vastly overpopulated. Total indexing items under W: 52. Of these 50 are people, comprising 248 page references.

To be fair, all of Vidal’s literary works are indexed under “Vidal, Gore – writings of (fiction), “Vidal, Gore – writings of (nonfiction), “Vidal, Gore – writings of (plays, screenplays, and teleplays). Thus Julian would not be indexed under “J” (14 entries, Felix Jackson to Judith Jones, all people).

Though I do enjoy the references by Vidal and friends to Anais Nin as “stupid,”
55 pages (references to) are more than enough. I was sick of her after two.