The Old Eighteen

One for the road

System of a Down: "War?"

The Funniest Joke In The World

The Civil War: The Re-Enactments

From Mr. Show:

"The hell where youth and laughter go"

War is sweet to those who have no experience of it, but the experienced man trembles exceedingly at heart on its approach.

Pindar

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In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.

Jose Narosky

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O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

Mark Twain, "The War Prayer"

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War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

Bertrand Russell

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Let no one ever, from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell, and those who institute it are criminals. Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said; for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages.

Siegfried Sassoon

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Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

Herbert Hoover

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I went into the British Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I believe now that if you prepare for war, you get war.

Frederick B. Maurice

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War does not ennoble, it degrades.

Robert Nichols

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All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers.

François Fenelon

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War does not end strife - it sows it. War does not end hatred - it feeds it. For those who argue war is a necessary evil, I say you are half right. War is evil. But it is not necessary. War cannot be a necessary evil, because non-violence is a necessary good. The two cannot co-exist.

John Lewis

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When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.

Jean-Paul Sartre

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I am sick and tired of war. It's glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

William Tecumseh Sherman

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All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.

Emma Goldman

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I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

Douglas MacArthur

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War. The hell where youth and laughter go.

Siegfried Sassoon

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I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else, and that's the idea that when the troops are in combat everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning and troops were dying as a result. I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed?

Anthony Zinni

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Аfter each war there is a little less democracy to save.

Brooks Atkinson

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Don't talk to me about atrocities; all war is an atrocity.

Field-Marshall Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener

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I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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I have concluded, there is no war, in the history of man, that could not have been avoided by 15 minutes of honest diplomacy.

Andrew Mutton

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The only good part of a war is its ending.

Abraham Lincoln

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Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.

John F. Kennedy

Obama delegate watch

Barack Obama had a good day yesterday, picking up 3 superdelegates, including one who switched his endorsement from Clinton, and also 2 John Edwards pledged delegates. Per Democratic Convention Watch, here's a look at where the race now stands:

Without Michigan and Florida:
56 delegates needed to secure nomination
301 delegates remaining (86 pledged, 208 superdelegates, 7 Edwards delegates)
Barack Obama needs to take 18.6% of the remaining delegates to secure the nomination

With Michigan and Florida:
161 delegates needed to secure nomination
397 delegates remaining (86 pledged, 238 superdelegates, 18 Edwards delegates, 55 uncommitted)
Barack Obama needs to take 40.6% of the remaining delegates to secure the nomination

One for the road

The Shins: "Phantom Limb"

Have a happy Memorial Day weekend

A programming note about the blog: posting will probably be light this weekend, since I imagine that most of you will be out having a good time.  As for me, I'll be going to my father's house on Monday for barbeque and generally enjoying the long weekend.  I hope that each of you have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend with your friends and family.

Rhett & Link: "The Sunburn Song"

Recount airing this Sunday on HBO

This looks like it's going to be hilarious - it's got Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary, and Laura Dern playing Katharine Harris:

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(via Pandagon)

Doobie-doobie-douchebags

Yeah, I know, there are much more important things for members of Congress to be voting on than a resolution honoring the late Frank Sinatra.  But as they should have learned with the recent Mother's Day vote fiasco, if the vote's been scheduled anyway, not voting for it just makes you look like a dick:

Is the Chairman of the Board too debonair?

The three Texas congressmen who voted against this week’s Frank Sinatra resolution — spearheaded by Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano, of course — are drawing some curiosity as to why they’d vote no on such a relatively inoffensive, innocuous declaration. But it wasn’t so innocent to Texas Republican Reps. Mike Conaway, Ted Poe and Randy Neugebauer.

What’s the matter with having May 13 become Sinatra’s official day?

Poe’s office says: “It was nothing against Ol’ Blue Eyes, rather the hardheads in Congress that refuse to deal with the energy crisis.” (However, word is Poe’s still sore over his own Jimmy Stewart resolution stalling.)

For Neugebauer, it’s also a matter of principle. His communications director declared: “It has nothing to do with Frank Sinatra and everything to do with the priorities that Congress should be handling at the moment. With record-high energy prices [and] turmoil in the housing market, the American people need solutions, and Congress needs to come together and fix it instead of voting on small resolutions. We should straighten our priorities, and the American people expect more from their elected officials.”

It's awfully funny to hear House Republicans talk about dealing with other priorities at the same time that they're maneuvering to slow down the progress of the Democratic majority in Congress while they try to deal with these other priorities, using tactics like the ones they used in voting down the Mother's Day resolution.

"It's just a flesh wound caucus state"

No confirmation on the rumors that Hillary intends to say "nee" to Obama until he concedes:

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(via Doing My Part For The Left)