2000 Plus

Tonight Texas is playing Tennessee for a berth in the Little League World Series. The crowd at Willamsport, PA is about 5000. I was watching the game this evening with my landlord's two kids. The score was 0-0 in the 2nd inning. ESPN showed happy faces eating hot dogs and slupring slush. There was no mention of the 80,000 troops in Afghanistan or that the number of US Military deaths in that long war have topped 2000. This morning the New York Times did not ignore that number. The center pages of the A Section was filled with the faces of the dead. Life Magazine had published the faces of the dead from a week in Viet-Nam. In the Times I noticed that some were young and some were old. A few were female. They all have names, although none of the dead Afghani dead are counted in the death tolls. One of the most recent US casualties was Lance Cpl. Gregory T. Buckley Jr. from Long Island. The New York Times reported that three out of four were white, 9 out of 10 were enlisted service members, and one out of two died in either Kandahar Province or Helmand Province in Taliban-dominated southern Afghanistan. Their average age was 26 and they were Marines. Eleven years with the Pentagon telling the White House to stay the fucking course. Fuck you. Bring the troops home. Barack Obama, do it before the election. According to the NY Times Mrs. Buckley recounted things her son loved — basketball, girls, movies, the beach — bitterness choked her words. “Our forces shouldn’t be there. It should be over. It’s done. No more.” Sorry for your loss, Mrs. Buckley. And this is the failing the White House, the GOP, the Democrats, the Pentagon, and especially the Press like ABC whose lead-in story for the 7PM news was the Ex-Penn State Pres. Citing His Own Child Abuse and a woman losing $4.68M Down Payment on NYC Apartment. Fuck you, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOx, CNN and the rest of your useless flacks. The news of today is not dead and California is in the finals for the final berth in the LLWS.