I am a huge Tool fan.  In my eyes all other contemporary bands pale in comparison.  So I thought I would join the pack & weigh in on the new album 10,000 Days.

I bought the CD when it was released on May 2, and I can honestly say that when I reach for a Tool CD to play in my car stereo these days; I am more apt to pick up Lateralus, or more occasionally, AEnema.

The new album has some good tunes.  I find my self tapping out & quietly singing Rosetta Stoned & Right in Two… but that’s about it!  Wings for Marie/10,000 Days is a masterful compilation, but I it’s about 15 minutes of the same riff!

My main issue with the new album is this… there’s NO variety!  How so you might ask?  Well let me put it in perspective for you.  Out of an 11 track album, you’ve only got about 6 songs; tracks 1, 2, 3 & 4 (two tracks that combine into one song), 5, 7 & 8 (two tracks that combine into one song), and track 10!  Tracks 6 & 11 amount to nothing more than noise & track 9 puts me to sleep!

Compare that with Lateralus - in my opinion this is when they were at their prime - where no matter where you skip in this 13 track opus, to you are treated to a musical masterpiece.  With the possible exceptions of Mantra & Faaip De Oiad which are pretty much noise, but they are interesting noise!

Now I have read the geek sites where people have claimed to have taken the album & laid certain tracks on top of one another to make “new ones”, but you still end up with the same songs just overlapped!

Lateralus took about a year to grow on me because it was so different than AEnima… perhaps that is what is happening here but I doubt it!  The fact still remains that compared to their other albums, except for their debut, Opiate, there is about half the standard song selection that I have become accustomed to!

In closing I would like to say that the songs on the new album are very well done & insightful… I just hope that they are planning to release a second to disk in accompaniment in the very near future!  Plus, the songs on this album don’t have NEARLY the staying power that the songs on the previous albums did.  I can listen to any of their older songs in their entirety & enjoy them the whole way through.  On this album it seems I find my self just waiting for the songs to end!

Global Neocon
Globalists and Foreign Lobyists

Novakeo | July 12 2006

When you read or listen to a neocon, you must come to the conclusion that they are utterly hopeless, and infantile. Like a good liberal, emotional hyperbole is mainly what they use for intellectual debate, and they tend to back up their delusional arguments with historical revisionism. I have always said that neoconservatives are nothing more than self-hating liberals with a belligerent complex in megalomania.

That is why they left the Democratic Party in the sixties, the pot-smoking hippies in the Democratic Party were much too much wimpy and docile for the neocons. Neoconservatives like Anne Coulter unremittingly write about the "godless liberals," only to reveal to the rest of us how godless the neocons really are. Coulter talks and acts like the typical liberal, playing the big political game in sensationalism all the way to the bank. Hypocrisy is her true asset.

On a national level, neoconservatives, as a matter of ideology and strategy look for enemies to kill in the field of foreign policy, especially when there is no legitimate strategic interest for the United States to protect. The neocons are neoliberal-globalists that want to strategically and economically dominate the globe; they create confrontations, create an atmosphere of fear at home by manipulating the media, and insist that violence is the only viable course of action for national safety and survival. The most recent case in point is North Korea and its daring unsuccessful firing of a number of ballistic firecrackers.

The Pyongyang regime of Kim Jong-II has managed to get the neocons all flustered, and panicky. How dare the North Koreans fire off their Taepodong-2 missiles in an obvious act of a nation performing a sovereign act? Leave it to the modern day Romans to find danger in the actions of a sovereign nation exercising their sovereignty by firing off a number of worthless missiles. According to the neocons this blatant act of semi-aggression must not be tolerated, they currently are screaming for economic sanctions, which theoretically is an act of war.

Never mind that after the cease-fire that ended the bloodletting in the Korean War, some 37,000 soldiers continue to be stationed there with no strategic vital interest. Why should American lives continue needlessly to be at risk in Korea? Let the Japanese, Chinese, and South Koreans deal with the crazies in the Hermit Kingdom, after all, it is in their backyard. The Korean War was a stupid war directed by a stupid President in America's first official police action without legitimate congressional approval. Foolishly called the Truman Doctrine, the Korean War was fought without actually trying to win the war, setting the stage for the Viet Nam. Neocons are good at fighting unwinnable wars because they enjoy turning chaos into gold; they prosper greatly in their unending conflicts, Iraq being the latest glaring example.

What the North Korean show of impertinence has demonstrated is how much a failure the Bush administration is in international diplomacy. Saber rattling, and illegal invasions by the United States has had a counterproductive result in geo-strategic diplomacy. Nations have become weary at the constant bullying by the United States and are refusing to play the American game called the "war on terror." Any resolution that the Bush administration is able to formulate in the UN Security Council, will most likely be void of any punitive substance against North Korea because the United States has lost all moral credibility.

That is why the "war on terror" and the Iraq War is a colossal bust; it is another failure in liberalism and not much more.

Conservatives need to take a good look at themselves and decide if they want to continue to support the Republican Party which has been hijacked by a select few. The neocons do not believe in the Constitution, they believe in wide-ranging power and not much more, and their agenda is global. The Republican Party has become a criminal enterprise that needs to be cleansed of all neo-conservatism and replaced by genuine conservatives that believe in legitimate conservative principles.

The conservative movement has always been an America First political movement that opposed foreign entanglements until the 1960s. Limited government, and minding one's own business in foreign affairs is the true virtue for conservatives. The neocons have always believed in senseless foreign adventures and social engineering on a global scale.

The neoconservatives are fundamentally on the political left, presently working to establish a high surveillance police state with illegal wiretaps, and terrorist fear mongering while at the same time allowing an invasion by millions of illegal aliens from Mexico for cheap labor. This is unrestrained globalism, a criminal enterprise that is eliminating the middle class and diminishing the sovereignty of the United States which the global elites want.

Americans need to stop listening to the delusional culprits who engage in establishing chaos throughout the world so that the select few can make fortunes out of the death and destruction that they create. When the neocons from both tightly controlled political parties warn America about the national vital interest in confronting North Korea, Iran, or whoever may be the next evil entity, Americans need to understand that the only vital interest to protect for the power elite is corporate globalism pushed by the globalists in Washington DC.

The problem in Washington DC is not all the corruption, and criminality, the fundamental problem in the district of perversion and mendacity is that it is in the hands of globalists and foreign lobbyists. Americans protecting real American interests in Washington DC is a rare commodity these days.