Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

I’m off to Ireland. See you on the other side of the rainbow.

When you read Glenn Greenwald’s assessment of the Tillman/Lynch frauds, you can’t help but wonder if anything that has been said by this White House and regurgitated by the eager media has been true. It is truly unbelievable. I watched Charlie Rose interview Bush last night and the man was vapid, he had absolutely nothing to say. I mean, he seems like a guy who — well, I just don’t understand how he got to his position. OK, I know how he got there, but I don’t understand how anyone around thinks he should be there. Compared to anyone that Charlie interviews, whether a politician or an actor or a journalist, Bush seems like a very dim bulb in comparison. He just doesn’t say anything.

I had to flip over and watch Bill Maher talk to Jay Leno, which was a helluva lot more interesting and funny. Maher is right on. And then Amy Winehouse was on, who I am quite intrigued by. Uh huh, very nice.

And then you watch Jon Stewart take on John McCain on The Daily Show and wonder how it is that the best journalist we have (besides Charlie) is a comedian on Comedy Central. Stewart tackles that entire “support the troops” bullshit that props up the Apologists and leaves McCain looking like a fool. There’s a reason: he is one. There are so many things wrong with what he says in this interview, it is an embarrassment to the man who would have been a slightly better president than George W. Bush (not saying much, I know).

This is all there is left to say:

The war was wrong to engage.

The war was terribly mishandled.

The war cannot be won militarily.

The war should end today.

Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire but that story was withheld so that he could be propped as an American hero by our military and the Bush White House. Instead, we were told, Tillman fought valiantly to the death against our bitter enemies. The football star who gave up everything to die for his country could not have been an easier sell for the military.

Jessica Lynch was rescued from an ambush in Iraq and had her story dramatically altered to create another soft-focus hero for the patriotic American public. Lynch was praised for her fictional heroism in this battle and became yet another perfect poster child for the pro-war crowd. Poll numbers were high. Tillman’s funeral was nationally televised and Lynch’s story was made into a television movie.

We now know that these stories were purposefully dramatized and re-invented by our military and the Bush administration to sell a war that had no justification, nor strategy. When we say that Bush “lied,” you can take either of these stories as examples of just that. As Pat Tillman’s brother said today:

“We believe this narrative was intended to deceive the family but more importantly the American public,” Kevin Tillman told a House Government Reform and Oversight Committee hearing.

Jessica Lynch, who, unlike Pat Tillman was able to speak for herself, said:

“The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don’t need to be told elaborate tales.”

How many other tales has the White House spun over the course of this dreadful presidency? The truth is like kryptonite to these guys.

I haven’t written about the Pope, or religion in general for quite a while, and it has been pleasant. But now this. I should ignore, like I do almost always, but this is pretty sick. “Terrorism with a human face!” “Evil!” “Contrary to the nature of the human being!” What could be so awful?

Abortion and same-sex marriage. Like suicide bombers, they terrorize our daily lives: pregnant teenage girls and men in love with each other. What, really, is the difference between any of them?

Nothing solidifies my support for women’s choice and gay marriage like an ancient cult spouting off against it.

Says Harry Reid. Yeah, no shit. Now get the hell out!

I’ve already heard and read too many times in the last couple of days that this is not a time to talk about things like gun control; it’s a “time to heal.” What a load of shit. At the Booze Cabinet, we say heal yourself, there’s no better time than right now:

Handgun laws are insane in this country.

In Virginia, you can get a handgun and bullets as easily as getting a case of wine.

The Second Amendment is a powerful one, and Americans’ right to bear arms is based in the violent revolution that threw off tyranny and created our free nation.

But neither a semi-automatic Glock 19 with a 15-bullet clip nor a Walther .22 that holds 11 bullets is needed to ward off squirrels or oppressive federal agents.

In 2004, there were more than 29,000 gun deaths in the United States, and not one of those was Osama bin Laden.

But 16,750 were suicides.

- Rick Telander, Chicago Sun-Times

Here’s some good news: a couple of right-wing nuts who wanted to ban books got beat in a suburban Arlington Heights election:

“Somewhere, Kurt Vonnegut is smiling…Vonnegut, who died last week, wrote Slaughterhouse-Five, one of nine books a board member proposed dropping from classroom use last year.”

Amazing, the world that these people want to create for their children.

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While we go balls out mourning the Virginia Tech shootings it seems like a good time to remind gentle Americans of the daily toll that continues in Iraq — 157 people just today — and the illegal and immoral nature of that war. So yes, 32 people dead is pretty bad and this is a very sad story. And guns are effective weapons and Americans love them and that’s a sad story.

Now multiply it by 5 and imagine it happening on a daily/weekly basis and you know what Mr. Bush has created in Iraq. It’s almost like we’re giving a little slice of Americana to our Iraqi friends and calling it “democracy.” What are they gonna do, say no?

UPDATE:

The total is now up to 178 dead today. It’s still early though.

There are people who truly believe that if everyone was packing heat, shit like this wouldn’t happen. Or, that our vigilante force of Second Amendment troops would be able to take out a shooter in the midst of such an attack and therefore minimalize the carnage.

Has this ever happened? Ever? Where are all the Second Amendment proponents when we need them most, to shoot down a loner with a grudge? I’ll tell you where they are: hiding in their fortified gated communities peering out the window with crazed paranoid eyes, shaking like the cowards they are.

One thing is for certain, there is no problem obtaining the necessary weapons to kill large amounts of people, and you can thank the efforts of the gun lobby and their Republican puppets to keep guns available and loaded. Because one day we will need to be armed and ready to ward off an insurgent militia or a rogue government or martians from outer space. Let’s hope the pussies with guns have the courage to come out and protect us unarmed liberals.

UPDATE:

You’d think this is parody, but no… The Badge of Bravery goes to NRO’s John Derbyshire, who wonders why no one jumped the gunman, as he would have in such a situation. Are these people real? Apparently so.

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Saw this band open for Blonde Redhead last weekend, very cool! Midnight Movies. BR was great, of course, but it was nice to see a new band I never heard of before and have them surprise me. The singer sounds like Nico and can play some kick ass drums too. A little switchy with the other girl in the band, and overall a moody, David Lynch-y feel going on. Me likes very much.

The good old News Blog has cross-posted me again, go check that out over here! Thanks, News Blog!

Yeah, I grilled it. I wasn’t going to let this weather get me down! I got out there and I tried to start a fire but the winds were a-howlin’ and things looked bleak. See, I have a gas grill but I thought the tank was empty. It didn’t work last week, when it was warmer out, and so I thought it was time to re-fuel. Anyway, I thought I would use the real grill instead, and so I used the last of the charcoal and then threw some special Texas chips or some such thing on there to give it some smoky flavor. But the winds, they were a-whippin.’

So as I’m out there trying to start the fire I decide to check the gas grill again, and whaddaya know, the thing lights up! I guess I have some juice left. Meanwhile, I put the top on the real grill and it starts to smoke up as I’m cooking my chops on the gas grill. By the time the chops were done, the charcoal was starting to heat up and now I’ve got two fires burning.

There was nothing I could do about the charcoal, so I went inside and ate the pork chops, which were delicious. After we were done eating I went out to check on the grill and it’s still smoking and basically ready to go. A fire without a meat. Then I hear sirens and see a fire engine pull up right out in front of our house. We kind of hung out at the front door to see what was going on and we hear a neighbor say to the firemen “We smell gas!”

I start to laugh and wonder whether it was the grill that they smelled. After all, who would be grilling in such shitty weather? We watched as all the neighbors come out of their houses and everyone looks around quizzically and the firemen shake their heads. It has to be my grill! We shut the door and I went out back to check the grill. Yep, it smells like a fire. I poured some water on it and it smoked up even more, so I just put the top back on and left it alone.

And then, like Carl Spackler in “Caddyshack,” I put the hat down over my eyes and shuffled off as the smoke and fire billowed and the neighbor’s noses tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

Don Imus and the Duke lacrosse team.

In Pitchfork‘s world, a 7.0 is a pretty good rating for an album (out of 10, of course), and so by that standard the new Blonde Redhead album 23 got a pretty good review today. But at what cost? Oh, the pretension! The entire review is sick with self-important blathering and referential bullshit, and if you didn’t know it you’d think the album was a 2.0 instead of the 7.0 it somehow got. Whoever this guy is, he takes the long way of saying “this is the album that will probably break BR big-time, but I knew them back when they spoke to just one person: Me!”

The final paragraph of this pretentious pile of shit is the cherry-top, a real disaster, concluding with this string of hipper-than-thou toilet prose:

Innovative? Sure, but when all the day-glo splatters, candy-coated swooshes, and chocolate waterfalls obscure the individualized songs underneath, what’s the point? 23 coulda/shoulda been the album where Blonde Redhead added on that much needed new wing to their mansion of moody cool craftsmanship. But instead, constructed right in front, blocking the entire view of the ornate and majestic building they took over 13 years to build, is a garish warbly and weird Frank Gehry-esque monstrosity.

Who the fuck writes like this?