Arkansas Blog

I hope everyone will journey out to Disco(very) this New Years Eve for the biggest end of the year party. Norman has the champagne iced down, the bars stocked, and the entertainment will be awesome as always.

Doors open at 10:00 p.m. at the biggest and best nightclub in Arkansas - DISCO(very), at the foot of Cantrell Hill on Jessie Road.

http://www.latenightdisco.com/

Sorry Roam, but I'm out -- or maybe I should say in for the weekend. If I had other ideas (I didn't), covered-up liquor store parking lots this afternoon would have changed my mind. I know how I am liquored up.
Yeah, yeah, I've got a long memory for stuff like that. If you're interested, I can point out the telephone pole that nearly nailed me and a drinking/driving boyfriend one cold night and the drainage ditch that did nail another boyfriend a year later. Not long after that, a teetotaller began to look real interesting.
Anyway, I don't want to be out on the roads with folks who think they can drive with a snootful.

Happy New Year Max, my best to Ellen and the family. If you want to see how an A&P Commission should operate check out Claude Legris at the Fort Smith operation.

I didn't advocate driving drunk. In fact, I put people in the taxis before. Theres a lot to do, besides drinking. But on New Years, it does seem to be tradition to toast in the New Year with some champagne and a kiss!

I'm an old sailor, and I pull for the Naval Academy when they play anyone other than a team with white hogs on the helmet. And so I want to go spank the hell out of the Middies' coach for calling that stoopid option play resulting in the fumble and Navy's last second loss to the Jesuits in the Mystery Bowl. It's been a loooong time, but Arkansas played Navy in LR once.
When the Academy drum and bugle corps turned toward the home stands and played "Anchors Aweigh" I couldn't stop the tears.
But now the Navy has called to ask for me to return my Good Conduct medal.
Bullshit, neh?

I'm sure I'll enjoy some adult beverages on NYE, therefore I'm intent on not driving. I hope any of you out there who plan to imbibe will leave the driving to someone else.

"Call FRanklin 4-0333,
The Black & White cab,
Comp-a-nee."

On January 1 a few years ago, I got a phone call from the police. My son was alive. My car was a total loss.

The drunk who caused the collision claimed that my son was driving in reverse -- backwards! -- and had slammed into him.

It was a very busy intersection, and a cop sat in his cruiser watching. He saw my son pull up to wait at a red light. He saw the drunk barreling down the road and slam into my son, pushing the wreckage of my car all the way through that intersection. He called the ambulance and fire department to cut my son out of the wreckage.

Please, everybody, be careful and drive safely.

I have very mixed emotions about posting this message, and I can't bring myself to include the link. There is a very raw and graphic video on youtube of Saddam's execution. It looks as though it was taken with a cell phone but it also has audio. The duration is 2:36.

Yes, Hugh,

It is a video from a cell phone. It is also located on DrudgeReport.com. I started to watch it and then just couldn't. Ii turned it off right before the trap door opened up.

It reminded me so much of those terrorist videos where they cut the head of a Western "infidel".

Did he deserve what he got? Yes. I don't have to watch it though and didn't.

Thanks for the warning, hugh and Arky. Pretty sure I don't want to see it. Even fake snuff films are hard to take.

*sigh*

The written reports are graphic enough. Alas, that man's death is not the end of anything (from AP):

But members of the Army's 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn't get them home any faster - and therefore didn't make much difference.

"Nothing really changes," said Capt. Dave Eastburn, 30, of Columbus, Ohio. "The militias run everything now, not Saddam."

Staff Sgt. David Earp, who also fought in 1991's Operation Desert Storm, said the execution worried him.

"In my opinion, something big is going to happen," said Earp, of Colorado Springs, Colo. "There will be a response. Probably not today because they know we are looking for one, but soon."

"It reminded me so much of
those terrorist videos where
they cut the head of a
Western "infidel".
Posted by: Arky"

Very good point.

I'd never watch this video.

I'm absolutely amazed that they didn't have excellent security to make sure such a video didn't get made or released. Inexcusable.

Reminds me of the botched piano wire hangings of the German top command post-Nuremberg, where the prisoners suffered quite a while before they died.

I am staying home tomorrow night. Hubby is a musician and has a gig, so I always worry about him, but luckily this time the gig is right here in town.

Onto the other subject: Saddam will go down in history as a martyr. Executing him on the first day of Adha was a mistake.

Mr. EY and I are looking forward to a 7 pm dinner at Acadia and hope to be home LONG before the bad drivers come out.

I know Saddam was a bad man, but I doubt that we've handled this very well. Praying for our troops and their families.

Not for the faint of heart or squeamish, but this is a link to a photo of a dead or nearly dead Saddam dangling. It looks to be shot with a video camera phone. The entire video is out there, floating on the interweb. And it has been authenticated by various news organizations.
Seriously, this is like Faces of Death kind of stuff, don't look.

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p274/EllisRedding74/SaddamFinalMoments.jpg

I dont think I have ever watched a couple of funerals and an execution in the middle of holidays. A sense of dread of impending war is all to familiar but even that is on top of an occupation.

I went over to Drudge for the first time but cannot bring myself to click on the video. Maybe later.

Hey trillion dollar snuff porn for daddy from jr. and all of us. Hopefully our grandkids will pay it off.

Wonder how many students have been enticed to go for a Harvard MBA knowing that Bush has one?

JUST ANOTHER CLINTON PLOT TO SMEAR THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, RIGHT!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/washington/30royalty.html?th&emc=th

"The Justice Department is investigating whether the director of a multibillion-dollar oil-trading program at the Interior Department has been paid as a consultant for oil companies hoping for contracts. The director of the program and three subordinates, all based in Denver, have been transferred to different jobs and have been ordered to cease all contacts with the oil industry until the investigation is completed some time next spring, according to officials involved. . . ."

Is there any branch of the Bush Administration that hasn't succumbed to the temptation of easy money, lobbyist and corporate gifts?

IRAQ OIL REVENUES WILL PAY FOR THE WAR ? ? ? ? ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/washington/30budget.html?th&emc=th

"The Pentagon is seeking nearly $100 billion for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, a request that, if approved by Congress, would set an annual record for war-related spending. The $99.7 billion request, detailed in a 17-page internal Defense Department memorandum dated Dec. 7, would be in addition to $70 billion appropriated in September. The request would push the total for the 2007 fiscal year to nearly $170 billion, 45 percent more than Congress provided for 2006. . . About $50 billion - most of the money - would go to the Army, which is conducting the bulk of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The request also includes $3.8 billion for the Air Force and $3 billion for the Navy to buy or upgrade aircraft. Both services have argued in recent months that they need to replace planes used in combat operations.

But some experts questioned whether the services were exploiting the must-pass nature of the supplemental bill to seek money for other purposes like the modernization of aircraft rather than just wartime replacements. Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a policy analysis organization in Virginia, pointed to the Air Force request for $62 million for ballistic missiles, a weapon not being employed in Iraq or Afghanistan. . . "

Remember when we were told that Iraq oil revenues would pay for Bush's Little War. I think we are closing in on half a trillion dollars with no end in sight nor anything gained except nearly 3,000 KIA and thousands more WIA, the undying enmity of many Muslims and severe drop in international prestige and favor.

Had enough Bush, yet?

IT'S ALL A LIBERAL PLOT!

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-2449372.php

". . . For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president's handling of the war than approve of it. Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war. When the military was feeling most optimistic about the war - in 2004 - 83 percent of poll respondents thought success in Iraq was likely. This year, that number has shrunk to 50 percent.

Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. The president's approval rating among the military is only slightly higher than for the population as a whole. In 2004, when his popularity peaked, 63 percent of the military approved of Bush's handling of the war. While approval of the president's war leadership has slumped, his overall approval remains high among the military.

Just as telling, in this year's poll only 41 percent of the military said the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, down from 65 percent in 2003. That closely reflects the beliefs of the general population today - 45 percent agreed in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll.

Professor David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland, was not surprised by the changing attitude within the military. "They're seeing more casualties and fatalities and less progress," Segal said. He added, "Part of what we're seeing is a recognition that the intelligence that led to the war was wrong."

Whatever war plan the president comes up with later this month, it likely will have the replacement of American troops with Iraqis as its ultimate goal. The military is not optimistic that will happen soon. Only about one in five service members said that large numbers of American troops can be replaced within the next two years. More than one-third think it will take more than five years. And more than half think the U.S. will have to stay in Iraq more than five years to achieve its goals.

Almost half of those responding think we need more troops in Iraq than we have there now. A surprising 13 percent said we should have no troops there. As for Afghanistan force levels, 39 percent think we need more troops there. But while they want more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly three-quarters of the respondents think today's military is stretched too thin to be effective.

The mail survey, conducted Nov. 13 through Dec. 22, is the fourth annual gauge of active-duty military subscribers to the Military Times newspapers. The results should not be read as representative of the military as a whole; the survey's respondents are on average older, more experienced, more likely to be officers and more career-oriented than the overall military population.

Among the respondents, 66 percent have deployed at least once to Iraq or Afghanistan. In the overall active-duty force, according to the Department of Defense, that number is 72 percent. . . ."

It would appear that some have had enough of Bush XLIII.

The wife and I spent the evening over at our daughter's boyfriend's parent's house.....how's that for a lot of apostrophes! I think it was a rite of passage, having dinner with the people I suspect will be her in-laws in the not too near future.

Lovely people, but I was pretty nervous until the Coronas took effect. The Mom is hot.....and I caught hell for saying that on the way home....what...what...what did I say?

I've always wondered what a hanging looked like, but I can't bring myself to go look. I thought America had sunk to a new low when we appeared to delight in killing Saddam's 2 worthless sons and 1 of his grandsons.

I can't recall a war when our Army or Navy or the news media made a circus sideshow out of killing the offspring of our enemy.

Hitler didn't have kids to kill, we didn't kill any of Mussolini's kids or Stalin's kids or Ho Chi Min's kids...that I recall. I think it shows our national true feelings towards darker skinned people of the Middle East.

It's like they're not human and targeting their children is like stomping so many cockroaches. It doesn't have a good feel to it....it doesn't seem like an American thing.

I worry the quick hanging of Saddam is going to mean a whole lot more American troops being slaughtered. If the hornet's nest is already stirred up, why give it a couple more whacks with the stick?

Something about this just doesn't feel right. I think Bush murdered the moral high ground a while back and everything we do makes things worse instead of better.

I don't believe in hocus pocus, fate or karma but I do think you reap what you sew....and we've been sewing death and destruction, war profiteering, lies, signing statements, kidnapping, and torture.

How can we expect a glorious, flag waving, Jesus loving, victory? Tell me again why we're better than everyone else on earth?

Ok, looks like one of us with a strong stomach is gonna need to step up to the line, watch the damn video of Saddam's eyes bulging out and report back.

When I first started to watch the video on youtube, I thought it was another fake or joke. I realized it was not, yet I didn't stop watching. I wish I had stopped. I feel a very strange and very real guilt.

It was taken with a cell phone, so the video is jumpy and grainy. It's clear enough that you can tell it's really Saddam. It is dark (in more ways than one), austere, and eerie. The audio is strikingly --um-- clear. I almost said good. It's not good. You can hear the dialogue, if not understand the words. Suddenly and with a crash, the bottom drops out and he disappears. It's dark and grainy and then you hear what sounds like everyone in the room rushing over to get a look at the face of death. It's creepy.

I recommend not watching it.

________________________

So, dbi ...

Pork pot pie at the possibly (probably) potential in-laws' place, hmm? This IS serious.

Saying the mom is hot was not your best course of action, though.

And I agree that this execution was not bush's best course of action, but it is on a par with every single step he has taken (us in).

The problem is, there seems to be NO planned course of action. We just keep getting deeper and deeper in debt, blood, severed limbs, and flag-draped coffins, while our country's approval rating is tanking. Nothing gets any better. It all gets worse.

It doesn't seem to matter who tells george that he must change directions (The Baker-Hamilton Commission, the people of the US who voted in the mid-terms, etc.) it fails to sink in.

Incompetence and tunnel vision may prove to be the undoing of this once great nation of ours.

So far this hanging feels like a harbinger of doom.

Funny faux pax on NPR news just now. Dale Willman started to say President Bush's body would continue to lie in state in the Capitol rotunda ... then he corrected himself.

That was almost a double entendre (Bush/lie).

Last night and this morning, I was lamenting the apparent sideshow atmosphere -- I won't watch the video, althought I'll admit I might have been more likely to consider it if I had high speed Internet -- allowed at Saddam's execution. Appalling way for an official act to be handled, I'd say. The failure of Iraqi officialdom, I'd think, and shake my head.

This morning there is news of our own failure of (ceremonial) officialdom, with only 40 or so members of Congress attending yesterday's "state funeral" of our accidental president, Gerald Ford.
With few officials present -- Bush II's absence was the most notable, "[c]ongressional staffers and Ford family representatives scrambled to find sufficient greeters and honorary pallbearers."
My guess, and my hope, is that the multiple funeral ceremonies for former presidents will become a thing of the past.
Still, I expect more of our public officials than this.
But no, I don't expect more of Georgie, the man for whom brushcutting takes precedence. (Remember Reagan's prowess with an ax at his California ranch in the 1980s? What is it with presidents and brush cutting? A manly pursuit? Or a convenient photo op?) But if Bush II couldn't cut short his vacation in the aftermath of Katrina, why should he do so to honor a dead president?
I suppose my reaction is more than a little schizophrenic. The state funeral arrangements are too much in my opinion, as is the Tuesday closing down of government. Nevertheless, I shake my head, a little embarrassed by the dearth of official mourners.
And I wonder how many, official or otherwise, will mourn Bush II when the time comes.

I wonder if the new congress can muster the strength to cut down a bush.

Well, NYE is always one of my favorite days of the year. It's my anniversary (14th this year) and nicely sandwiched between Christmas and my birthday. My hubby and I usually do something fun - sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with a big group of family & friends, but tonight with my best friend and her husband.

One year we spent this glorious night at the Jim Stafford theater in Branson. Yep, that's right, Jim Stafford. We must have brought the average age waaaaaaay down that night. I'm surprised most of those folks could stay up that late. (Nowadays, I'm barely able to.)

One year we spent NYE in D.C. with the aforementioned best friend and hubby. That trip was AWESOME even though my "better" half ended up puking champagne for about an hour just after the stroke of midnight.

Here's hoping tonight is a little more my style but safe and happy for all.

No way, no how, am I watching a man die on video. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. So, for those of you wanting to find something cool to watch instead, here are some other great videos I suggest you "you-tube" or otherwise locate on the fabulous Internets:

* Ok Go's video for "Here It Goes Again"

* Ok Go's video for "A Million Ways"

* The video montage of folks from all over the world imitating the "A Million Ways" video - Ok Go Phenomenon or Ok Go Phenomenon V. 2 (there are two different ones)

* Any entry for the Stephen Colbert Green Screen Challenge

* Any clip of Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert talking about pretty much anything.

* The "10 F*#@ing Years" montages at the end of The Daily Show that aired over the past couple of weeks

You're welcome. :)

Here's yet another thing to do with your time rather than watching a hanging.

NPR has a great list of lists for 2006. The dangerous toys is hilarious.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6690924

we found out that nye is a terrible time to go out. dinner is bad. service is horrible. liquor is cheaper brands than usual, so we just stay at home and enjoy each other's company. tonight there is a garrison keilor special on tv and we have about a thousand music cd's so we should be able to find something to do. i will guarantee you i will not be watching a video of a hanging.

They've just announced the 3000th death of an American soldier. How proud the Bush lovers must be right now.

"They've just announced the
3000th death of an American
soldier.
Posted by: Deathbyinches"

And to think that about twice that many died every year of the Vietnam war, and they let that go on for 10 years!

And when they finally got out, after 10 years, the warmongers were crying, as they do now, "we'd uh won it if the peace-nicks hadn't made us come home."

"And when they finally got out, after 10 years, the warmongers were crying, as they do now, "we'd uh won it if the peace-nicks hadn't made us come home."

And when I hear this bs about "cut n' run" I tell them that we won the last real war in less than 3 years, fought on 3 continents against 3 major, well-armed, military powers. That was before an ex-drunk from Texas was running things.

I watched the video and
everyone should watch
it. You should see what
is going to take the place
of Saddam in Iraq.

Saddam was evil, but his
replacement isn't much
better.

It's sad that a so-called
"Christian nation" would
have a role in what's
going on in Iraq.

The Pentagon has announced the death of a Texas soldier, who was
killed by small arms fire in Baghdad late last week. According to an
Associated Press count, the death raises the number of U.S. military
deaths in Iraq to at least 3,000 since the war began.

Lwood wrote: "That was before an ex-drunk from Texas was running things."

========
Yes, and what a difference! Every American during World War II who was not in uniform made sacrifices to help "the War Effort".

We collected scrap metal and paper to recycle. Every kid in my class (except one, bless his heart) gave a dime at school each week as a down-payment on a War Bond.

Meat was rationed, but the butcher in my town had no meat -- except once a week when he got a delivery of beef tongue. We raised chickens inside our house, so that we could have protein.

My little sister and I suffered from malnutrition. Her bones bent like rubber -- she couldn't walk. My shoe-ration stamps had to go to buy shoes for her.

Sugar, flour, shoes, tires, gasoline -- all rationed.

My dad, a brilliant businessman, tried to enlist to do his part. He couldn't pass the physical. So he stayed home and created his private unofficial "jobs program" for unemployed carpenters and elderly people who needed work.

Americans volunteered. Even as little kids we were proud to do our part. We responded and sacrificed!

Shame on Bush!

Shame on Cheney and Halliburton!

They knew their war was a sham built on lies. They knew the American People could not buy into a war if they had known the facts.

So they kept the American People in the dark. And lied about it.

IT'S TIME FOR KISSINGER TO SWING

"But now it is time to turn our attention to Henry Kissinger, the man who was complicit in every crime Pinochet committed.

Kissinger was President Nixon's national security advisor in 1970 when Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile. " I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people, " Kissinger said at the time."

http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Editorial/48676/

for those like me who are too lazy to go out. we went to a drop in and came home early. there is a garrison keilor special on pbs that is excellent. takes place from ryman auditorium so you can imagine the talent but if you are like me and can't stand the modern rock talent it is real good.