Iraq Vets Describe Common Civilian Casualties

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The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness:

“I’ll tell you the point where I really turned,” said Spc. Michael Harmon, 24, a medic from Brooklyn. He served a thirteen-month tour beginning in April 2003 with the 167th Armor Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, in Al-Rashidiya, a small town near Baghdad. “I go out to the scene and [there was] this little, you know, pudgy little 2-year-old child with the cute little pudgy legs, and I look and she has a bullet through her leg…. An IED [improvised explosive device] went off, the gun-happy soldiers just started shooting anywhere and the baby got hit. And this baby looked at me, wasn’t crying, wasn’t anything, it just looked at me like–I know she couldn’t speak. It might sound crazy, but she was like asking me why. You know, Why do I have a bullet in my leg?… I was just like, This is–this is it. This is ridiculous.”

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links for 2007-07-20

Continue Readinglinks for 2007-07-20

Harry Potter, Spoilers and Media Blackouts

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After a friend posted a link to twitter displaying the last two pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – which I inadvertently clicked on and read, because I never received the previous “tweets” discussing what the link was about – I’m curtailing my media viewing for the rest of the week. Unfortunately, before I realized what I was reading and closed the page, I found out something I didn’t want to know, so I’m not nearly as excited about reading the book as I was.
It’s called direct messaging, people – where you can send a twitter to just one person. Learn how to use it, please. Thanks.

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links for 2007-07-18

Continue Readinglinks for 2007-07-18

Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney Ties Dog to Roof of Car

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I’m a couple weeks late on this story, but it bears repeating. According to Time Magazine, and itchmo.com, Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney tied his family dog’s crate to the roof of the car for a 12 hour trip on the road. You can visit site to know more about the other packages offered by them.

It was 1983 and Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor and now presidential candidate, was going on a vacation with his family. The family was driving from Boston to Ontario, and Seamus, the dog, was also coming along for the trip.
Where did Romney put Seamus? Romney strapped a dog carrier with Seamus, an Irish setter, in it, to the roof of the family station wagon for the twelve hour drive. Fortunately, Seamus survived the long trip on the top of the car, although he protested being on top by releasing his bodily fluids on the car.

Massachusetts’s animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit anyone from carrying an animal “in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner or in a way and manner which might endanger the animal carried thereon.”

An officer for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals responded to a description of the situation saying “it’s definitely something I’d want to check out.” The officer, Nadia Branca, declined to give a definitive opinion on whether Romney broke the law but did note that it’s against state law to have a dog in an open bed of a pick-up truck, and “if the dog was being carried in a way that endangers it, that would be illegal.”

And while it appears that the statute of limitations has probably passed, Stacey Wolf, attorney and legislative director for the ASPCA, said “even if it turns out to not be against the law at the time, in the district, we’d hope that people would use common sense…Any manner of transporting a dog that places the animal in serious danger is something that we’d think is inappropriate… I can’t speak to the accuracy of the case, but it raises concerns about the judgment used in this particular situation.”

Too damn bad that we aren’t allowed to put Mitt Romney down for that stunt. Fucker.

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Rich white douchebags count on racism to win in 2008

During a panel discussion of the 2008 presidential election on the July 15 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, syndicated columnist Robert Novak asserted: “Republicans are very pessimistic about 2008. When you talk to them off the record, they don’t see how they can win this thing. And then they think for a minute, and only the Democratic Party, with everything in their favor, would say that, ‘OK, this is the year either to have a woman or an African-American to break precedent, to do things the country has never done before.’ And it gives the Republicans hope.” Neither host Tim Russert nor any of Novak’s fellow panelists, Bloomberg News Washington managing editor Al Hunt, Republican strategist Mike Murphy, and Democratic strategist Bob Shrum — all of whom are, like Novak, white men — commented on or challenged Novak’s assertion. As Media Matters for America documented, the four Sunday-morning talk programs on the broadcast networks, Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday, feature guest lists that are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male.

Yeah, they’re counting on racism and sexism to help them win next year. Nice.

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links for 2007-07-17

Continue Readinglinks for 2007-07-17

Sesame Street Clips that scared me as a kid

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Courtesy of Boing Boing, where they felt the same way. This first one with the orange singing was really scary:

This one was more funny, but it still bugged me.

I swore up and down that Mahna Mahna was from Sesame Street, while friends of mine insisted it was from the Muppet Show. Turns out we both were right. This first clip is the one I remember from childhood:

This one came much later:

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Rejected Openings for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

From theonering.net

One morning, when Harry Potter woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single wizard in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wand.

The sky above Privet Drive was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Stately, plump Neville Longbottom came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: Wingardium leviosa!

To Severus Snape she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Lily Potter. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind … and yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Lily Potter, of dubious and questionable memory.

There once was a boy named Dudley Dursley, and he almost deserved it.

Dumbledore was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Harry Potter signed it: and Potter’s name was good upon Diagon Alley, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Dumbledore was as dead as a door-nail.

Once upon a time there were four little wizards, and their names were Neville, Ron, Hermione, and Harry.

You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of “Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone;” but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Ms. J. K. Rowling, and she told the truth, mainly. There was things which she stretched, but mainly she told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Petunia, or Professor Dumbledore, or maybe Hermione. Aunt Petunia – my Aunt Petunia, she is – and Hermione, and Professor Dumbledore is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

When Mr. Harry Potter of Privet Drive announced that he would shortly be celebrating his seventeenth birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk in Hogwarts.

In a cupboard under the stairs there lived a wizard. Not a nasty, dirty, dark cupboard, filled with threadbare sheets and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, cramped cupboard with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a wizard’s cupboard, and that means comfort.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wizardry, it was the age of Muggles, it was the epoch of Dumbledore, it was the epoch of Voldemort, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Hogwarts, we were all going direct to Azkaban –in short, the period was so far like the present period, that the Daily Prophet insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Hermione Grainger was not beautiful but young wizards seldom realized it when caught by her brilliance as Ron Weasley was.

Call me Hagrid.

Last night I dreamt I went to Hogwarts again.

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