Friday Rant With Apologies To Country Joe And The Fish

Eugene Robinson
Rebecca Dana
Stephen Kurczy




It was only a matter of time until some terrible disease like cholera would break out in Haiti. So far, 135 people have died, and it has not been contained. It's such a cliche to accuse the government of being too slow to clean up the rubble from the earthquake, but who else can we accuse? Too many people are still living massed together in tent cities, without water or sanitation, many of the dead are buried in too shallow graves, all waiting for the mold and rot that comes with the first monsoon rains. Another awful tragedy is that it will replay itself in Pakistan a couple more months from now...


Wikileaks publishes another few thousand pages of classified documents on the American military presence in Iraq. Any time something is classified is because it contains something embarrassing. We would rather you didn't know what they contain, because then we might have to take responsibility for that information. In the case of Iraq, war is hell, and both the US and al-Qaeda committed atrocities that, in a saner situation, they would be put on trial. Usually, the governments involved will either ignore everything, or pay off the victim's families, just like Blackwater did...

Or, we can buy off a whole army, like we are doing in Pakistan, to the tune of $2 billion. And if they behave and stop complaining about who our drones keep killing, we might send over Paris Hilton or Shakira to entertain their troops. Or guarantee to buy their heroin crop, or let them pirate the next 10 Hollywood blockbusters... And if the Talibans become our new BFF's, maybe we can invite them back to Texas for another barbecue, or print up their training manuals on the University of Nebraska's printing press, like we did before when they were in power... Can't you see Hamid Karzai linked arms with general Petraeus, holding hands with the Haqqani family, leading everyone during intermission at the Afghan peace talks in a rowsing rendition of Fixin to Die Rag - my apologies to Country Joe and the Fish:

Come on all of you big strong men

Uncle Sam needs your help again

he's got himself in a terrible jam

way down yonder in Pakistan so

put down your books and pick up a gun we're

gonna have a whole lotta fun

(CHORUS)

And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for

don't ask me I don't give a damn, next stop is Pakistan

And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates

ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee we're all gonna die

It's one of those songs where recruits from all sides can sing and get the same message...

Another woman has come forth to talk about her relationship with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas before he was nominated for the court, and she is supporting Anita Hill's description of his behavior at that time: "When Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his explosive 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Thomas vehemently denied the allegations and his handlers cited his steady relationship with another woman in an effort to deflect Hill's allegations.


Lillian McEwen was that woman." Now that she's retired and trying to get her memoirs published, it feels better talking about it than 19 years ago when clarence asked her to keep it under wraps... She dated Thomas from 1980 to 1985, and often heard him talking about the women he worked with. "He was always actively watching the women he worked with to see if they could be potential partners," McEwen said matter-of-factly. "It was a hobby of his... He was obsessed with porn," she said of Thomas, who is now 63. "He would talk about what he had seen in magazines and films, if there was something worth noting."

Nobody who is a spokesperson for Clarence or Virginia Thomas got back to the Washington Post reporter on this story, they are hoping that it will die over the weekend. So it looks like Clarence is a big, self-righteous, hypocritical bag of wind, and we can soon read more enough about it, if Miss Lillian's book ets published. Perhaps it will be enpugh to get Mr Thomas to resign, it would be the RIGHT thing to do... "I know Clarence would not be happy with me... I have no hostility toward him," McEwen said. "It is just that he has manufactured a different reality over time. That's the problem that he has."