Another day, another massive document dump by Wikileaks, this one concerning the Iraq war, and numerous allegations of torture possibly mean treatment by American troops and mercenaries contractors. Supposedly, the latest document release shows numerous incidents, including assaults, rape and murders, as well as more garden variety torture mean treatment, of Iraqi prisoners in American custody from 2004 through 2009. Of course, the United States doesn’t torture, so we might as well just stop there, and call it a day. You know, you go to war with the men and materiel you have, not those you wish you might have…...

What Andy Borowitz said. [BTW… just one more example that our nation really is circling the drain: the environment, the economy, and, of course, the moral fibre of the country are ablaze… and the imperial class… fiddles.]

I suppose I’m not talking about the mighty New York Yankees, whose game 4 starter in a “must win” situation (the Yankees now trail the upstart Texas Rangers 2-1 in the American League championship series)… the incomparably awful A.J. Burnett, has decided to do early Halloween shopping this year. No… I’m going to talk about the verdict in the case of the would-be Riverdale synagogue bombing jihadists case, to wit, guilty on 30 out of 32 counts. And there you have it. Regardless of the asserted entrapment defense and the other flaws in the government’s case, it seems that courts–...

The concept of a “blog” (a term not yet in vogue at the commencement of this particular blog, btw) was a contraction of the words “web” as in “world wide web” and log, as in “captain’s log, star date 462.3 mark 7″… the premise was a personal narrative, preferably with one or more links to things, and some commentary. The political was never a requirement, and I suspect, comparatively few blogs (in the immense intellectual void otherwise known as what passes for our culture blogosphere, anyway) are “political” in nature… notwithstanding the insistence of some, like yours truly, on doing...

10 October 2010… a day that will live in… anniversary… as MSNBC tells us of an unusually high number of weddings on this numerically auspicious day. An interesting Sunday curiosity, to be sure. Hey, I like this sort of thing. I’m delighted to hear that there may soon be hope for the rescue of 33 miners in Chile. Happy news in what now passes for our civilized world… [for those wondering what irks me in particular, WaPo hits the nail with this discussion of the outrageous use of the “state secrets defense” to cover a multitude of governmental sins in…...

John Lennon was born 70 years ago, today. We’ll never know what he’d have accomplished in the last 30 years had our nation’s gun fetish not allowed a mad-man to have the ready means to kill him… but at least we know… whatever Lennon is, was or would be… the FBI remains interested. Fascinating. Rest in peace, John. Even if, it seems, our government remains threatened by a man who has been dead for decades. Huh.

Yes, I do sound like one myself, as I regale with you tales of completed marathons (this week, state no. 15 and marathon no. 27, “Freedom’s Run” starting and finishing in the great state of West Virginia, albeit mostly of its course being in Maryland, in a comparatively blazing fast time for yours truly… and coincidentally ran into a high school friend there, who is much farther along in her quest for 50 states glory than I am… she is also somewhat faster than I). And this, just a week after an early exit from what was supposed to be...

As there seems nothing much else to talk about… Mrs. TD and I celebrate our 19th anniversary. Woo hoo!

Malcolm Gladwell writing in The New Yorker (I confess that I have read Blink and Outliers, and very much enjoy his “not-so-fast” takes on the conventional wisdom)… does it again, in “Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted.” The “compare and contrast” is the civil rights movement of the pre-internet, pre-cel-phone, pre-fax-machine, pre-all-electronic-social-media era United States, with today’s “twitter revolutions,” be they in places like Moldova or Iran or wherever. His point is not something our “moron media by and for morons” will tell us, to wit (not shortened to “twit,” an all too apt description for all...

The ever indefatigable Andy Worthington wants us to know that Omar Khadr, the almost-certainly-innocent juvenile prisoner who American personnel have been abusing (and most likely torturing) for the last 8 plus years, and whose own government of Canada has been joining in the abuse, who stands accused as a “war criminal” of conduct (hurling a grenade in combat that killed a soldier) that is not actually a war crime, and who was likely unconscious at the time of the incident, and who was only 15 at the time of the incident and, despite the fact that “the evidence” against him...