Kind of tired, so these will be brief.
Cruz Control. Here we go again, lurching from crisis to crisis, the federal government sputtering along on fumes once more, its lifeblood of funding drying up. We haven’t had an actual federal budget plan approved in years, just a series of continuing resolutions and last-minute deals. And now, as the federal deficit has shrunk (thanks in part to the blind cuts imposed by sequestration) to nearly half its 
size one year ago, the party who rules Washington – the tea party-fueled G.O.P. – has decided to drive us over the cliff once again, only this time it’s about ideological, not budgetary, complaints. We must kill Obamacare (and fulfill a long list of other reactionary desires), or the economy gets it.
Ted Cruz is working the reps in the House, but really … the reps should know better. How can you call yourself a conservative and support playing chicken with the debt ceiling?
Good call. Iranian president Rouhani called our own president today, and they had a 15 minute conversation – the first between leaders of these respective countries in more than thirty years. You may not like to hear this, but the reason for this is more about us than about them. We overthrew Mossadegh in 1953, imposed the Shah Reeza Palavi for 25 years, supported Saddam Hussein’s savage attack on them, imposed sanctions that have starved them, sickened them, and prevented them from living a decent life for decades. Small wonder they’re unhappy with us.
Our government’s criticism that they support “terrorism” is ironic at best, cynical at worst. What worse terrorism is there than that which we have practice on them since 1979?
luv u,
jp
Christ on a bike. Sloth has reached a new level of intensity here at the hammer mill, and it’s no surprise. We have been cooped up in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill for the better part of three years (the worse part, too … I remember those awful days…), not a hand’s turn of work. Sure, we produced and released an album, 
I think if we’ve learned anything over the last thirty-five years it’s that the United States does not want any detente with the Iranian government, no matter how accommodating they become. We saw this with the Khatami government, which was very moderate and reformist and yet ended up on the “Axis of Evil” shortlist. Frankly, our leaders much prefer it when Iran elects presidents like Amedinejad, who are conveniently cartoon-like, racist, and easy to demonize. It’s the Rouhani’s who give them a belly ache.