Nice to see Goldman Sachs employee Barack "President" Obama get rolled by Gen. Stanley McChrystal so we can send more troops to Afghanistan on a hopeless mission. (And did you catch the name of the new Marines foray in Helmand Province: Operation Cobra's Anger? Someone at the Pentagon has waaaay too much time on his hands.)
Obviously Barack didn't have the cojones to stand up to McChrystal, so we now send off 30,000 more troops to a pointless end. How futile is this effort? Well, let's share a little history Phillipe and Jorge came across by accident in the December 6 New York Times Magazine.
Being huge Sherlock Holmes fans and erstwhile members of the Cornish Horrors, Little Rhody's Holmes addicts, we picked up on an article about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Holmes canon. The writer described the historic first meeting of Holmes and Dr. John Watson: " 'How are you?' he said cordially, gripping my hand with a strength for which I should hardly have given him credit. 'You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.' " It seems that Watson had been involved in the Anglo-Afghan War, Part Deux in 1878, one of the many futile attempts at trying to force the swarthy sons of the mountains into some century nearer the 13th in which they continue to reside. Watson had been wounded by a Jerzail bullet and sent home to England, where he made the Master's acquaintance and became his roommate.
There is no reason to think that the US effort is going to be any different than decades of failed nation-building in that God-forsaken rat hole. The fact that Obama didn't have the gumption to get us out of there and Iraq is appalling. At least now when he goes to meet the body bags arriving from Afghanistan, he can be quite proud to call them his own. What a tragedy. (P.S. How's that hunt for Osama bin Laden working out?)
TOO HOT TO HANDLE?
Now that the GOP has done its little Butterfly McQueen "Prissy" routine — "I don't know nuth-in' 'bout birthin' babies, Miz Scarlett" — over "Climategate," how about we tell the truth? The hacking of scientists' e-mails was doubtless a set-up by Big Oil and Big Coal corporate buccaneers timed to discredit the global climate change conference in Copenhagen. It also involved some of the most shameless and intentionally misleading journalism ever on display, and not just by Fox News, which has long since stopped blushing when they tell lies.
This winter, the next time you hear another idiot say "How's that for global warming?" after a snowstorm, just wash their face with slush. Global climate change is not measured by how often you have to shovel the driveway or in degrees Fahrenheit, but in the unpredictability and intensity of storms.
HEADLINE OF THE WEEK
BeloJo legend Tom Morgan sends the headline below to Casa Diablo, taken from the Associated Press:
AIRLINE BLAMES DEADLY BUFFALO CRASH ON PILOT ERROR
As he inquires, "Didn't know buffaloes had pilots. And just how deadly was the buffalo?"
WHEN CAPTAIN PACKARD & LOBO CONQUERED PROVIDENCE
The feature news story in last week's Phoenix about the preponderance of freelance superheroes popping up around the country, particularly here in the Northeast, reminded P&J that, unbeknownst to most of you folks out there, the concept of the real-life superhero was actually pioneered right here in Our Little Towne more than 40 years ago.
