Surf's Up! Who's got that coin from the fish's mouth?

Surf's Up!, a call that always interferes with work. Work will always be there but good surf comes and goes.


A nice start from memeorandum a political news summary site with some interesting sister sites.


A few nice runs from the Washington Post, one from three years ago, one from this week

Hussein's Baghdad Falls

U.S. Forces Move Triumphantly Through Capital Streets, Cheered by Crowds Jubilant at End of Repressive Regime

By Anthony Shadid

Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 10, 2003; Page A01

BAGHDAD, April 9 -- Swept aside by U.S. troops who drove through the streets of Baghdad, President Saddam Hussein's government collapsed today, ending three decades of ruthless Baath Party rule that sought to make Iraq the champion of a modern Arab world but left a legacy of fear, poverty and bitterness.

As U.S. Army troops occupied the west ... -read more-

'Waiting to Get Blown Up'

Some Troops in Baghdad Express Frustration With the War and Their Mission

By Joshua Partlow

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 27, 2006; Page A01

"How did it become, 'Well, now we have to rebuild this place from the ground up'?" Fulcher asked.

He kept talking. "They say we're here and we've given them freedom, but really what is that? You know, what is freedom? You've got kids here who can't go to school. You've got people here who don't have jobs anymore. You've got people here who don't have power," he said. "You know, so yeah, they've got freedom now, but when they didn't have freedom, everybody had a job."

-read more-

Very tubular from Time

World

Condi in Diplomatic Disneyland

Viewpoint: The Secretary of State tells the Lebanese that the blood they're seeing represents the birth of a brave new order. She's convincing nobody

By TONY KARON , Posted Wednesday, Jul. 26, 2006

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced a thankless, all but impossible task in trying to sell the Arab world on the U.S. policy of delaying a cease-fire so that the Israeli military can continue its anti-Hizballah campaign. But her case was hardly helped when she explained that the violence that has already killed more than 400 Lebanese and turned more than a half million into refugees represents the "birth pangs of a new Middle East." Phrases like that and her rejection of the call for an immediate cease-fire on the grounds that "whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East" carry a revolutionary ring that scares the hell out of America's allies in the region. It was revolutionaries like Lenin and Mao, after all, who rationalized violence and suffering as the wages of progress, in the way a doctor might rationalize surgery painful, bloody, even risking the life of the patient, but ultimately necessary. Social engineering is not surgery, however, and its victims find little comfort in the homilies of its authors.

-read more-

One final run from an obscure SciFi author

When there is no real hope, we must mint our own. If the coin be counterfeit it still may be passed.
- Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light, 1968

Why am I having trouble sending tax money in?

OK, W-2's, 1099R's, 1009I's, bank statements, 2004 Intuit passwords, coffee ...

Ready, begin, www.turbotax.com. Who's got that coin from the fish's mouth?