Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

My Maserati does 185…

“Just saying you’re patriotic is like saying you have a big cock. If you have to say it, chances are it’s not true.”

- Real Time

For some reason I have that clip of Joe Namath drunk on the sideline blabbering to the woman reporter in my head. The one where he goes “I don’t care if the team is struggling. I wanna kiss you!” Oh wait, here it is! I love the way he says the word “struggling.” Yep, this is where my thoughts are today.

Eric Zorn prints a letter in the Tribune today from a father whose son was killed in Iraq. The letter is addressed to Mr. Bush. Excerpts:

I had many conversations with Kevin before he left to serve as well as during his deployment. The message he continued to send to me was that of incompetence. Incompetence by you, (Vice President Richard) Cheney and (former Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld. Incompetence by some of his commanders as well as the overall strategy of your decisions.

When I asked him about what he thought about your decision to “surge� more troops to Baghdad, he told me, “until the Iraqis pick up the ball, we are going to get cut to shreds. It doesn’t matter how many troops Bush sends, nothing has been addressed to solve the problem he started.�

Answer me this: How in the world can you justify invading Iraq when the problem began and continues to lie in Afghanistan? I don’t want your idiotic standard answer about keeping America safe. What did Sadaam Hussein have to do with 9/11? We all know it had to do with the first Iraq war where your father failed to take Sadaam down.

Well George, you have succeeded in taking down over 3,100 of our best young men, my son being one of them. Kevin told me many times we are not fighting terrorism in Iraq and they could not do their jobs as soldiers. He said they are trained to be on the offensive and to fight but all they are doing is acting like policemen.

Well George, you or some “genius� like you who have never fought in a war but enjoy all the perks your positions afford you are making life and death decisions. In the case of my son, you made a death decision.

You or Cheney or Rumsfeld will never know the anguish, the worry, the sleepless nights, the waiting for the loved one who may never return. If the soldiers were able to do their jobs and the ego’s of politicians like you, your “cronies� and some commanders had their heads on straight, we would be out of this mess which we should not be involved with in the first place.

My family and I deserve and explanation directly from you……not some assistant who will likely read this and toss it. This war is wrong.

I want you to look me and my wife and daughter directly in the eye and tell me why my son died. We should not be there, but because of your ineptness and lack of correct information I have lost my son, my pride and joy, my hero!

Again, you, Cheney and Rumsfeld will never understand what the families of soldiers are going through and don’t try to tell me you do. My wife, my daughter and I cannot believe we have lost our only son and brother to a ridiculous political war that you seem to want to maintain. I hope you and Cheney and Rumsfeld and all the other people on your band wagon sleep well at night….we certainly don’t.

Richard Landeck

Proud father of a fallen soldier

Now entering the fifth year of this illegal, immoral and unjustified war, what more can be said? There is no “war on terror.” There is no “supporting the troops.” There is no “plan” and there is no end in sight. There are only partisan political operatives carrying the water for an incompetent administration, and resignations, scandals and crimes.

…we were fools not to see the true nature of the people we were trusting; and too enraptured by our own sense of righteousness to realize that we could have been wrong. And wrong we were.

- Andrew Sullivan

P.S. – Thanks to Jon Swift, legendary Irishman and satirist, for the link!

Cheers to Bill Maher. Hilarious and dead on. Watch it.

Here’s a little something for you, a new site that contains Milk at Midnight’s entire discography, available for free download. It’s kind of like myspace but without all the clutter and garbage. You can click on any of the three releases (debut full-length “A Fit to End All Time,” EP “Letter Bombs and Holidays,” or the new demos from the past year) and listen to the albums in their entirety, or randomly listen to all on the main page player. And all are available for downloading. For free. Enjoy, and pass it on.

http://www.virb.com/milkatmidnight

It is interesting that with each new scandal or crime or investigation of the Bush Regime comes the cry of “Clinton did that too!” I’ve seen it all over the place, in right-wing corners and from apologists across the blogosphere. What would they do without Clinton? Better yet, what shape would Bush be in politically if he actually had emulated Clinton? No doubt much better than he finds himself today, consistently unpopular and under investigation. Of course, his scandals are much meatier than those that plagued Clinton’s administration, in that, they actually mean something. Outing CIA agents, torturing prisoners, firing lawyers for partisan political reasons…the list goes on. No blowjobs here, that’s for sure. Sadly.

Bob Barr, that silly conservative, makes the point regarding this Gonzales attorney scandal, in a way that his fellow Republicans should try and understand:

I and a number of others were critical of president Clinton when he first came into office and almost immediately removed all U.S. Attorneys. But that’s not the same thing as what’s happening now.

We’re seeing a president in his second term go after U.S. attorneys of his own party for reasons that are clearly political: not moving fast enough against targets on the other side of the aisle, succumbing to pressure from Senators for example. That is very, very corrosive, both to morale for U.S. Attorneys as well as in terms of reducing the confidence that the public has that the system is fair and impartial and non-partisan.

Nope, Clinton didn’t do that too. This Bush White House is truly in a league of its own.

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I don’t know how to embed videos here yet so here’s a link to R.E.M. doing “So. Central Rain” from the year 1983 on David Letterman, complete with a brief interview beforehand. Notice Michael Stipe sitting in the back on the drum riser, all shy and what not. Oh yeah, this is in honor of R.E.M. being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Mr. Vedder, seen below, gave the induction speech. That’s somewhere on the YouTube as well, of course, as is everything else that’s ever been filmed. Congrats, R.E.M., you’re still alright in my book.

Got lucky yesterday and pulled out Lollapalooza tix at the last minute. I was on for two hours and getting nowhere, and had pretty much given up when I decided to give it one more go. Boom, right through, two tix, and then they were sold out soon after, about 12:30. Unbelievable. Perhaps Mr. Vedder will be there this year?

*Picture of a picture taken inside Red Rocks, Colorado. Dorky, I know.

When I referenced John McCain’s “Shit Talk Express” the other day I also referred to Rudy Guiliani and his alleged “straight-talk” appeal that will allow him to be the GOP candidate, despite his personal issues and social liberalism (three divorces, pro-choice, pro-gay rights, etc.). Rich Lowry of the National Review sums that position up in the way that only a right-wingin’ nut can:

For the moment, Rudy’s weaknesses and failings may be playing into the strategic strength of his candidacy. The weakness on social issues plays into the idea that he says what he means and means what he says, and the personal failings are perhaps (incredibly enough) playing to the idea that he’s mean as hell at a time when Washington could use someone like that at the top. So the things that should be dragging him down may be boosting him more as the straight-talking, tough SOB—for you.

See? His negatives are actually positives! Expect this kind of apologizing to run rampant for the next year and a half as the Republican party pushes “straight-talker” Guiliani as their man. All that moralizing that they do so well will be shoved under the rug (along with the Religious Right) in favor of keeping the party in power. Bank on it.

Of course, they could do worse; they could get Newt Gingrich into the race.

I’m watching Charlie Rose interview the governor of Montana, Brian Schweitzer, who just said “you can’t fix a thousand years of history,” regarding Iraq. That’s why he was against the war, as logic would have it. How was such a simple history lesson avoided by so many? Wait, I just remembered, it was carefully constructed fear and manipulation. Never mind. I like this guy Schweitzer, a good interview.

I just saw this now, over at The News Blog they cross-posted my “Shit Talk Express” from the other day, so go on over and check that out. Thanks also to Nikkos for getting me over there in the first place, I was not aware of that site until recently. Get well soon, Gilly!