Thursday, July 30, 2009

Bananas and the Boston Police

The root of all evil isn't the love of money, it's jealousy. The lust to bring down those we're jealous of, those we think shouldn't have the things we deserve but don't have. We festoon those people with assumed attributes like arrogance and snobbishness so that we can pretend they look down on us for ugly reasons -- and all so we can do that to them.

The lower we are on the socio-economic scale the more we are likely to find reasons -- even absurd reasons -- to disparage the rich. The more we pity ourselves for how hard we have had to work to have what we do have, the more we have to hate those we feel have been given an unfair advantage -- and if a black man, our chosen bottom of the barrel, somehow has the money or prestige or education or position we feel better qualified for by reason of not being him, the more we have to invent things to make it seem unfair; to make it seem as though nobody really is smarter than, better educated than or more capable than we are: the more we need a scapegoat.

We have been in the midst of a populist crusade, perhaps since the beginning of this country. We revel in stories where the common man has more sense than the educated man, where the Gumps are more admirable than the geniuses and political parties are happy to provide us with the mythology to feed the delusion, but what part of real life is more offensive to the fragile self-esteem of a low-wage earning public servant who feels his common sense folksy wisdom puts him above degreed, tenured professors at the country's best schools than someone like Henry Louis Gates.

How do you look down on someone that much above the level of a hard working, self pitying Boston cop? You call him a banana eating jungle monkey and you e-mail it to everyone you know. What if you're identity is tied to a failed political cult? you call him a Communist. Whatever you do or you are, if the guy who is supposed to be the one we all feel superior to starts to rise above you, you create any life raft you can to keep your sodden self-esteem from sinking.

Of course if your intellect is truly at the simian level, like Boston police officer Justin Barrett, you even mail your tantrum to the Newspapers, where the Mayor of Boston reads it and has your ass fired, but of course that's only because your white, right? In a just world, a world without those PC Liberals, Officer Barrett would be president or a Harvard Professor and those n#####s would know their place.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Regulation is bad for business

One of the favorite targets of libertarians and "smaller government" arguments is the FDA. The market should, could and would preserve us from tainted, unsafe and worthless products, just the way it didn't in the 19th century. Perhaps there's some truth to that, but the store window where the idea is sold doesn't contain a display of all the poisoned, sickened and fleeced consumers waiting to be redeemed or resurrected while the market forces grind on in the darkness of unregulated capitalism.

Of course the FDA, or what remains of it after years of Republican misrule can't do much better it seems and the free press that's supposed to be an agent of illumination in a libertarian utopia doesn't care to try. Witness today at CNN.com an article telling us that products widely being sold as steroid free, body-building aids do actually contain dangerous synthetic steroids and can, in several ways, kill you. Thanks CNN.

Of course prominently displayed on the home page is a photo of a grotesquely, steroidal male torso which links to an ad for the very things the FDA is telling people to avoid like the plague they apparently are. "Safe, natural, legal!" Never mind that little liver failure thing.

The solution is clear. We really need to get rid of the FDA and that damned government regulation - bad for business, don't you know.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Angertainment

It's the biggest thing in America and Fox News is the dominant purveyor. Their sole purpose is to select, modify, slant and sometimes create stories to make you angry at people or things selected by their owners and sponsors.

Using animatronic devices like Britt Hume, whose synthetic skin hangs from it's metal underpinnings which in turn no longer have the ability to mimic human facial expressions, Fox sells anger and unlike our automobile industry they can come out with a finished new product in minutes.

The current angertainment opera has to do with President Obama's seemingly hasty and harsh comments about the Cambridge Massachusetts police force. That occurrence has been welded together with another twisted work of fiction in which he has been touring the world "apologizing for America" to come up with the logically contradictory premise that he is "arrogant" and too arrogant to apologize even though he apologizes too much.

The subtext is that the country never has done anything it shouldn't have and we are always perfect because of our military strength and number of privately owned Hummers and that of course is a position broadcasting megawatts of arrogance like some annoying beacon.

Of course that Obama actually has apologized and in addition arranged to mediate between the two contestants goes unnoticed by the corpse-faced Hume and to the Fox Flock who only listen to the Fox product, that never happened and so presto chango, the wimp Obama becomes the arrogant Obama all at the same time. It's all angertainment.

Who cares that self contradictory arguments based on little but manufactured tribal anger are by nature false and in effect are crippling and disuniting our country? It's angertainment and it makes money and it takes power and it feels so good to be part of an angry tribe with an enemy to be attacked!

“The president could have said ‘that was a stupid thing for me to say,’ but he can’t say that for some reason"
said Hume yesterday. It could also be that Obama's actions speak louder than Obama's words and it could also be tragically humorous since he follows the most arrogant president in our history who admitted no fault while dragging us all to ruin and lawlessness. Of course Hume and whoever runs his software never wanted you to be angry at Bush who apologized for nothing. They wanted you to be angry at his critics and they remain far too arrogant to sum up their entire malignant war on truth by saying "that was a stupid thing for me to say."


Saturday, July 25, 2009

The truth is left-wing

I guess I'm a limp-minded, lily livered lefty. Truth itself of course is an "extremist, partisan" position according to John Klein, president of CNN and I'm a lefty for asserting that Barak Obama's passport is legitimate, has been furnished to the press, has been independently verified by the Governor of Hawaii and looks just like every other Hawaiian birth certificate. God knows, I must be Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin rolled into one for stating that I have a valid Florida drivers license and that it really isn't an Indonesian forgery because we just can't know for sure, can we?

As to the turgidity of my brain and the color of my liver, they're both just fine -- if you believe doctors who after all tend to be liberal. I might after all be an android since I haven't provided a birth certificate, even though I actually did. There's always a controversy; there is always the difficulty of telling truth from political propaganda when you're either schizophrenic or so dishonest the difference is moot.

So my IQ and my liver make it OK for Dobbs to continue with his "nudge, wink, you know what I'm saying" program of libelous innuendo and I guess that since all is fair by his lights, I can point out that there is no proof he isn't a charter member of NAMBLA either. He hasn't furnished a shred of evidence so you can't just dimiss the controversy and enquiring minds want to know, after all - even the limp ones.

Friday, July 24, 2009

And another. . .

Tennessee state senator Paul Stanley, that is. A Republican, abstinence only, anti-gay marriage, Faith and Church, Sunday School teaching, pro-family reptile who was bonking a 22 year old intern on video tape all the while he was telling us about God and how God doesn't like this kind of shit -- when we do it.
"Stanley recently sponsored a bill designed to prevent gay couples from adopting children." Says TPM. And when a Planned Parenthood official recently sought his support for family planning services for Memphis teens, Stanley told her, according to the official, that he 'didn't believe young people should have sex before marriage anyway, that his faith and church are important to him, and he wants to promote abstinence.'"
How long before the Republicans remind us of Clinton and that maybe 2% of such people are Democrats, so all's fair. What would be fair would be to say theirs is a party of hypocritical fornicators with an entirely different set of morals for themselves -- and to say it loud.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Ron Paul -- in the tradition.

Why does Ron Paul have to sound so damned reasonable? Why does he sound so much like I did in the late 60's? The party he somehow belongs to has been telling us we can't afford anything but wars for as long as I can remember and most of them, including the metaphorical war on drugs have produced no discernible benefit to our security or prosperity. Since much of the equipment we bought at irrational prices isn't suitable for any threat facing us, why the hell don't we stop doing that and spend the money on health care?
“Even though I have my ideal system I would like to see, with the government out completely — because that would be a much better system — that’s not going to happen. I’m realistic.”

Pragmatic, realistic, flexible and non-dogmatic? Stop it Ron -- you're killing me!
"I would cut from these trillions and trillions of dollars that we have spent over the years and bring our troops home so that we can finance it [health care].” Said Paul on CNN

Is that Dylan I hear in the background? No, not really, but it's about time that someone from the GOP, even if he's not really one of them, mentioned those trillions and trillions when complaining about the Democrats' big spending, and it's stunning to hear approval for Obama's curtailment of the F-22 fighter program at least as a first step. Of course he believes we can eventually wean ourselves away from such government health care programs and says "freedom" will produce better coverage than a bureaucracy.

Having worked for many years for insurance companies I see their bureaucracies as more expensive, less honest, more reckless and sometimes quite malignant, so I'm not so sure I agree. Still Dr. Paul is certainly not a war lover, has the courage to say it out loud and that's novel. All in all, when he described RonPaulSingles.com (”We put the ‘love’ in revolution”) the dating website for Paulistas on American Morning yesterday:
“It sort of fits a famous slogan that I sort of liked, which says ‘Make love not war,’"

I was inspired to dig out the John Brown gladiator sandals I used to wear back in the day. The times they are a'changin' you know.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Thought crimes, thoughtless laws

Earlier this year I watched some dramatic HD TV of the treasure hunting ship Odyssey bringing up objects from ancient ships. There seemed to be no problem recovering gold and jewellery that was stolen from the Inca or mined with their slave labor, but when they found an Ivory tusk belonging to an elephant that died hundreds of years ago, they had to throw it back in the ocean in order to stop the poaching of elephants. Does this seem absurd to you?

I read today that Fox News Producer Aaron Bruns just received a ten year sentence for having child pornography images on his computer. I also read today that "Palm Beach Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was just released after serving 13 months of his 18-month sentence for procuring a young girl for prostitution and soliciting prostitution. One would think that pictures of child exploitation were ten times worse than the exploitation of children, (or that billionaires buy better lawyers.)

Maybe that Greek lady with the blindfold and scales needs to take a peek at what's done by impassioned people in the name of justice and maybe put in some earplugs so that their howls and bellows won't produce any more stupidly written and ill conceived laws.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Oh please!

Here we go again. Some group called the Violence Policy Center has released statistics showing that in a 23 month period 44 US residents were killed by people legally carrying concealed weapons and therefore the "violence" is too much to bear and we must ban the practice. Perhaps my math is faulty but I think that translates to a 0.0000075% chance of being shot and killed in any given year.

No figures were given with regard to the number of lives saved by legally owned guns, but in my small county of 130,000 people several have been this year so far and of course shooting deaths in Florida have declined steadily since the State started issuing licenses and instituted the "castle doctrine."

I don't feel like doing all the work, but I'd like to see how many people die in ER waiting rooms every year because they can't get insurance. I'd like to see how many people are shot by drug gangs and more than anything I'd like to see how many innocent people are shot by the police. I'm willing to bet that more people are killed by MADD members driving SUVs while talking on the phone.

Of course the Flu claims about 36,000 lives every year and cars even more. Cigarettes and alcohol? Well, you know. More people are killed every year by lightening in Florida alone and we're not closing the golf courses in a hysterical panic.

At the risk of being called a "nut" I take a vastly higher risk of dying and of killing someone else every time I take the boat out -- or the car for that matter and I have to conclude that our friends at the Violence Policy Center are proceeding from the conclusion that guns are so frightening that the right to self defense against violent criminals is washed away by their phobia and so they must grasp at these meaningless arguments and fallacious conclusions like a drowning man at straws.

Yes, yes, the NRA. Everything including the Constitutional right is the fault of "the gun lobby." Forget not that that worn out straw/bogey man only exists because people are tired of being forced to accede to other people's phobias and it has such clout because it has so many individual, dues paying members. Much more of this twaddle and they'll have one more member.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

The perpetual foreigner

It's funny how the people who spend their lives trying to destroy democracy in America insist that everyone who stands in their way hates democracy in America. Barak Obama, regardless of what kind of a president he will turn out to be in the long run, certainly is an obstacle to the far right and their dubious objectives and of course, to the racists. Someone who doesn't give a damn about the country might find some humor in the myth making and the rebarbate logical fugues that characterize the believers and the creators and the marketers of Obamahate, but I'm not one of them. Unfortunately however, I seem to be on their mailing lists.

I wrote the other day about one US Army Major Stefan Cook who volunteered for duty in Afghanistan in order to generate enough publicity so that his claim that Barak Obama was foreign born would make the papers and boost publicity for the fabricated myth. His case was thrown out of court as expected, but the crusade wears on and it may soon be that you will receive another e-mail diatribe attempting to prove with every fallacy in the book that Obama's three week trip to visit a college friend in Pakistan proves he was travelling under a foreign passport, never had or had renounced his US citizenship, was born in Africa and must have received foreign funding of his education and travels -- which in turn proves a conspiracy to make him president a quarter century later: the same conspiracy begun 50 years ago with the intent of taking an African, Muslim baby and making him the president of the US sometime in the next millennium. It's the same conspiracy that involves the Honolulu newspapers and the Hawaii bureau of vital records.

The serial fallacy proceeds from a false premise: that it was illegal for a US citizen to travel to Pakistan in 1981. It wasn't. Supporting false premises are that it was part of a round the world cruise, which it wasn't and that it would cost a fortune to crash with a college buddy for three weeks, which it doesn't. It's worth reading the screed at Snopes.com simply as an example of poorly crafted, disjointed and clumsy fallacy and a lesson in the power of bigotry to overcome one's ability to spot it.

I should point out that Snopes has debunked so many of the products of the hateful underground that it itself was recently the subject of an e-mail and blog assault attempting to "prove" that it's owned by Liberals and so it's facts weren't facts even if independently verifiable.

I've made it my practice to denounce these never-ending viral e-mails and to hit reply all when doing it. I've irritated people, I've infuriated people, I've lost friends, I've made enemies -- but I've kept some sense of self-respect because I've not let lies and slander and subversive plots pass me by unhindered. Whoever it really was who told us that all evil needs to prosper is that good people look the other way was absolutely right. I hope you'll throw these things back at the perpetrators and the traitors as well.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

The return of Crankyboy

It's only a few days short of 4 years since I started this blog and one of the reasons I did it was that a fellow calling himself Crankyboy challenged me to try, which of course I did and still do. He stopped posting a couple of years ago for reasons I understand anew every time I read the news or deal with a troll.

I thought his decision was permanent because I've often suggested to no avail that he start up again. Anyway, it's way to hot for hell to have frozen over and even too hot for pigs to fly, but somehow Crankyboy is back and you can read him at The Daily Curmudgeon once again.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Hypocrisy house

Republicans deal with the almost daily revelations of sexual scandal in the "family Values" party by reminding us that there are Democrats who cheat as well. Of course the Democrats aren't the ones claiming that government should be more intrusive into the private sex lives of private citizens and they haven't made that nebulous phrase part of every party platform for decades, nor do they seem to be so brazenly promiscuous. So I'm sure that the latest evidence that the Family valuers may be running a veritable school for scoundrels on 133 C Street SE in Washington DC won't have any more effect than Larry Craig's wide stance on their claim to moral authority.

The house in question is owned by a shadowy "Christian" group called The Fellowship, one of those insisting that we are a Christian Nation and should have "Christian Values" without of course giving us any idea what those might be or why they might be different from non-Christian values. They assert that our leaders should be led by God rather than by the will of the electorate which is shockingly reminiscent of the government our founding fathers found to be anathema, and of course it's their God as interpreted by them.

But it's a rooming house as well as a lobbying and indoctrination center and Congressmen board there and claim to find it a place to study the Bible and the commands of Faith-based lobbyists. Moral pillars of the community who have resided at the house on C Street, like John Ensign and Mark Sanford and Chip Pickering are and have been involved in extramarital affairs. Need I point out that three out of five is a considerable majority? It would be enlightening to compare the rent they pay with similar rents on that street of elegant brownstones - and of course interesting to entities such as the IRS. Is there quid pro quo or votes for rent?

To me, the question of whether religious conviction is a marker for moral hypocrisy and turpitude is less important than the fact that at least 5 Senators and Representatives may being subsidized by a lobbying group posing as a Church. The Fellowship, which has been criticized for supporting such tyrants as Suharto, is run by the Coe family who take down large salaries. David Coe, the presumptive heir to the throne, has suggested that members of The Family are here to learn how to rule the world.

Of course it's only my opinion, but I'm convinced that the constant howling about socialism and Marxism and Liberalism and secularism from the Right is a smokescreen for organizations like this who are declared enemies of democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of religion and are running Madrassas teaching revolution, one congressman at a time.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Hell no, he won't go!

Quite frankly the idea that our military has become an evangelical camp-meeting scares me more that the Obama presidency scares the people who think he's a Muslim secret agent or that the Hawaii Bureau of Vital Statistics cooked up a fake birth certificate and the Honolulu newspapers recorded his birth forty some odd years ago as part of a plot to make Baby Obama the future president. It's not just the Biblically deluded nature of such people but also the uncontrollable urges they have to believe things for reasons hard for others to understand.

It's hard to know whether U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook really believes the fantasy or whether he simply doesn't want to go to Afghanistan and couldn't bring himself to wear a dress. I would have to assume that he does believe. He claims that he has tremendous support from fellow soldiers -- 90% is his frightening claim.

He would get on the next plane says he if only it could be proved that his birth certificate was real. That's a remarkable statement and if birth certificates needed to be proved beyond establishing that the birth was properly registered, we could easily disallow every president. Quite a can of worms, this is and perhaps it's better to ask for some evidence that, like John McCain, he wasn't born in the USA. Of course there isn't any evidence beyond that malignant viral meme that seems to spread from loony to loony like lice in a flop house.

Of course it isn't just the loons and psychos keeping the idea alive. one of the favorite tricks of our scandal addicted media is to present nasty, stale old memes in new bottles and so we often have Fox hinting that "people are saying" when they aren't and we have Lou Dobbs, fresh out of stories about the Mexican Menace saying "new questions are being raised." No they're not, Lou, it's the same insane calumny coming from yet another psycho. and shame on you for trying to keep the meme alive for fame and profit.

Of course and as we expected, a Federal judge threw the case out this morning and the Federal dumpster already contains the smelly remnants of other similar suits, but thanks to Lou and Fox and the Army of Believers the idea will survive and perhaps longer than our republic. It's not completely new of course, Clinton faced opposition from some in the military based on some some notion that he wasn't really the President. What does it tell us, I have to ask, that the notion that the SCOTUS decision to stop counting ballots in Florida and the serious evidence of voting machine fraud made W's presidency illegitimate has faded away? Maybe it tells us that the great ship of insanity lists heavily to the right. New questions are being raised, you know -- and people are saying.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

SOP

It would be hard to substantiate a claim that the United States of America hasn't been a country safe from foreign invasion, at least since the war of 1812 ended, although politicians have been shouting "danger" and starting profitable wars to ward it off for a long time. Even during the infamous first year of this new millennium, more people died of influenza in the US than in the World Trade Center; more than ten times as many on the highway. There's no money in perspective however and there's no safety for the Republican party in it either and so we still have dishonest intellectual lightweights like Liz Cheney claiming that "We" have kept the country safe since September 11, 2001 by launching the second most expensive war in US history and torturing prisoners while essentially refusing to do a damned thing about the surviving perpetrators.

Her crime boss father may or may not be able to keep a straight grimace telling us tall ones like that, but she is and although she has no way of knowing much of anything (unless the old man has been giving away State secrets,) she claims that getting close to Cheney's crimes is demoralizing the CIA which is putting us all in further danger, danger, danger. Yes, the bogeyman will crash more planes into New York if we try to prove that her father broke the law by authorizing torture, lying to Congress and a host of other unprecedented crimes.

The evidence however is that the CIA isn't demoralized at all, but of course we have Fox and Friends to further the fallacy as they always do. It's their own private sector version of Screwing America for Profit, or from the viewpoint of the GOP, it's SOP.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Guys like us

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played!
Songs that made the Hit Parade.
Guys like us, we had it made.
Those were the days!


We should worry. There are doubts. We don't know enough about her. She's "ethnic" and therefore might have "empathy" for other ethnics and therefore she might be prejudiced against us - and lets face it she's dangerous because we can't know how people like that think. Do we want someone with a special social or gender or ethnic perspective instead of a regular American anyway? It's not that we're prejudiced, it's that she probably is because, well you know. . . aren't they all?

And you knew where you were then.
Girls were girls and men were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.


Change the "she" to a "he" and you have the same whiny, timorous Archie Bunker mentality that assured us their fear and loathing of Obama had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Ni -- I mean African American.

Turn on C-Span this morning and you have the same white collar bigotry from the same, expensively dressed, white Anglo-Saxon senators from the same tradition and the same party that fought school segregation, supported restricted real estate markets and hotels and caressed their bibles while telling us it was and should be a felony to marry outside your race. The same people whose family values trump yours, who want you to affirm their religion regardless of what you believe, who would never, however be so rude as to use a racial epithet when blackballing you from the club. The same tailored suits who pretend to solemn deliberation to hide their knee-jerk prejudice. She's just not suitable, not one of us, don't you know old chap. It's nothing personal.

A wise Latina woman? Not at my country club, not on my court.

Didn't need know welfare state.
Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days!

Monday, July 13, 2009

Home from the sea

After days of overcast skies, it was refreshing to be awoken by sunlight streaming through a porthole on a bright Sunday morning. It was hardly refreshing to watch the usual Sunday TV Godblathering over breakfast. The Something Or Other ministries was appealing for last minute funds to fight the coming national disaster: the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, who would, because she is ethnic and her record notwithstanding, bias the court in favor of Hispanics in direct contradiction to God's will. It's nice to live in a country where such bigots get special tax status because they wave Bibles now and then, even if it's only to bludgeon people with.

We cast off and pulled out into the Intra-Coastal waterway just in time to wait 15 minutes for the Atlantic Avenue bridge to open and looking around the cloudless sky, I spotted something I haven't seen for a while - a skywriter. U + GOD was soon spread against the sky like an idiot screaming from a window.

An hour later. with an extra hundred gallons in the tanks and some $330 poorer; we were booming out of the Lake Worth inlet at 22 knots into the open and turquoise sea. It felt almost like an escape into a fresh, clean and fragrant world -- and not an easy one with all the small fishing boats who seem to think the middle of a shipping channel is a perfect place to spend the morning fishing. Switch on the radar, check the proper waypoints on the chart plotter and push the red button on the auto-pilot. Heading due North, the blue hull cuts through the swells and we're free of the land and its barbarism for a while.

If only it were as easy to escape the smell of religion, the reek of stupidity and the stench of bigotry.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Revenge of the morons

I'm not the least bit surprised at the Pew poll showing that only 6% of scientists are Republicans. Republicans, at least these days, are all about belief, whether it's in some magical beings and magical places and magical events or magical economic schemes that somehow never seem to be demonstrable. I was told some years ago of a Mensa study indicating that religiosity declined significantly in proportion to IQ, but I can't confirm it.

I was trying out the new digital TV spectrum on Blue Moon this morning. We're some 6o miles south of home port on the Florida coast. I was amazed at the proportion given over to bombastic preachers such as the one trying to "prove" with authoritarian proclamation and a bullying tone, that the first amendment really asserts a Christianist agenda and that secularists, scientists, intellectuals and of course "Liberals" are the enemies of freedom.

Is it just me, or do they sound just like Republicans arguing that they stand for small, cheap and almost impotent government?

Yes, digital broadcasting is a big improvement in terms of picture and number of channels available, but the price we pay is to suffer greater indignities against truth, reason, logic, history, justice and most of all -- freedom of religion. I have to wonder if the age of reason would ever have dawned, even as briefly as it did: I have to wonder if there would have been an American Revolution had the vast majority of militant, authoritarian dullards been able to have such means of expression as technology has given them.

Posted from the Delray Beach Yacht Club

Thursday, July 09, 2009

No, Mr. Bond -- I expect you to lie

The only creativity coming out of the Republican tribe these days seems to center around new and ever more precious ways to denounce Barak Obama. Still sweating from the effort it took to convince themselves that Obama Supporters see him as the second coming, they're mocking him for not being a messiah.

Take Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) for instance. Hoping you won't remember George Bush's pathetic swoons about looking into Vladimir Putin's eyes and seeing a soul mate, Bond told reporters yesterday that The president's trip to Moscow was a huge pile of shit because nothing was accomplished but an agreement to reduce the huge pile of nukes. Obama should, says Bond, have stopped the repression of the Russian media and commanded them to sanction North Korea if he were a president worth his salt. Obama has simply failed, in one magical moment, to make Russia an obedient, American client state -- as John McCain and Sarah Palin surely would have done with a great flourish of bluster, threat and bravado - and at a lower cost. George Bush? Who?

Posted from Blue Moon,
Port Salerno, Florida

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Glass houses

Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time understanding the pervasive attitude toward the Chinese crackdown on rioting Muslim separatists in Xinjian - if indeed that's what is happening. Articles like this one at Newsweek.com stress the "spin" being put on the rioting and the government response to it and indeed the reasons behind the unrest. I don't pretend to have facts that would challenge any accounts of what's going on, but I do have some history that fairly screams hypocrisy.

How many countries, including our own, treat separatist, secessionist movements without violence? How many can claim fair treatment for ethnic minorities? After all we've taken the opposite side in Israel, we came down hard and violently against the rather small Black Separatist movement here in the 1960's and there can't be anybody who hasn't heard of the bloody suppression of a Southern separatist movement in the 1860's. And then there were the Indian wars. There was the brutal supression of the labor movement in tth 1930's, brutal supression of anti- Vietnam war protesters and enough more to suggest that we're living in a glass house.

We concoct stories of Mexican separatism to scare children and Republicans and to support arguments for ethnic cleansing, yet we allow freedom of speech protection to White Separatists and Alaskan Separatists. I could go on, but it's easier to ask what the US would do if Texas, Arizona and New Mexico were to ask to secede, taking all the mineral and oil resources with them for ethnic and religious reasons. I think you know the answer.

Are we going to tell ourselves we support the Uighurs while a good part of America writes me e-mails demanding that "we" throw the Muslims out of the US? While we won't accept Uighurs we've falsely accused and jailed and abused because we are afraid of them?

Sure, China is trying hard to suppress news coverage. Heard much first hand coverage from Afghanistan lately or from any of the provinces where we're bombing and killing civilians every day in Pakistan? Were you accused of being a terrorist supporter or accomplice for questioning the WMD idea or the destruction of a neutral country? Many of us were, yet here we are, China bashing with tarnished halos and blood on our wings.

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Hot Florida nights, men in tights

Yes, despite the rain which delayed the fireworks, it was a great 4th of July in beautiful Stuart Florida. We watched the spectacle, sponsored by a local car dealer famous for bilking the elderly, aboard a friend's Hattaras and trying, as usual, to avoid talking about politics. As crazy as it was a year ago, it's crazier now that the last few decades of Republican policy and economic theory have been wilfully forgotten and new memories forged about the way we were.

In nearby West Palm Beach, not far from the homes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, politicians and propagandists were out working the crowds of tea flavoured idiots, some dressed in items of late 18th century attire.
"Yes, we do need change, you can start by giving me my money back!"
yelled Joyce Kaufman, of AM station 850-WFTL.
"I don't care which side of the aisle you're on, if you're taking money away from my children, you've got to go"
said
GOP Congressional candidate Edward Lynch who lost the 2008 race to a Democrat. Of course he cares about little else, but who knows whether he really believes our current predicament derives from the expensive attempts of the current administration to keep our economy alive long enough to recover and not from the decades of "debt doesn't matter' and "upper bracket tax cuts boost the economy" and "freedom isn't free?"

"yes, I had doubts about George Bush, but this guy. . ." was a common theme, as though any of the people clinging to it actually did anything to question the years of borrowing, revenue cutting, removal of oversight, deregulation, expense bloating and war mongering, the newly legalized scams and frauds and schemes and practices that have characterized those on that "side of the aisle." In fact most of these people would have deported you, if they could have, simply for questioning the Right Wing Religion.

To me, it's like yelling about dental bills when you haven't brushed your teeth or seen a dentist for 20 years. It's like complaining about how the repair bills are putting you into debt when you let the Sex Pistols crash at your house for years and left your checkbook and credit cards and key to the liquor cabinet on the kitchen table. It's your own damn fault and many of us predicted this collapse years ago to a chorus of your jeers and accusations.

Sure the dentist may be too expensive or the contractor may not be the best, but when you let it all go to hell, when you wouldn't listen to any advice, it's your fault and wearing three-cornered hats, knee length pants and tights in the 90 degree heat isn't going to get "your" money back after you spent it on a useless war that cost nearly as much as WW II and on gifts to the richest men and corporations in the world.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

Whither Sarah?

I have to say I'm grateful that Sarah Palin has somewhat abated the psychotic media obsession with a dead neurotic surgery addict. She has the media and the bloggers back to doing what we all do best: speculating. So why is she doing this? It's nearly impossible to tell from her tangled and mangled speech, which of course makes iher verbal mulch the the perfect medium for hydroponic conjecture.

David Wallechinsky seems to think Fox has made her an offer she can't refuse and we'll be seeing her in their little shop of horrors before long. He offers no evidence to interfere with belief, but it's filling and very satisfying, like comfort food, so I'll go along with it.

Max Blumenthal has what I think is a more credible scenario, based around the theory that an Alaska construction company, the same one that built the huge sports complex in Wasilla ( putting the town into serious debt) built her house as an inducement to get that job and future jobs after she became Governor. Todd and she have had personal and financial ties to the company of long standing.

Blumenthal also speculates about the effect a recent Salon article might have had on her decision. Revelations about her attempts to kill the stories about Husband Todd's affiliation with that Alaska secessionist group and provide false cover stories, may be about to blow up on her. Who knows, but of course the delicious irony, considering her attempts to portray Barak Obama as a "terrorist" who hates America, makes the idea hard to resist.

There are so many possibilities to delight the palate that I may be sorry if and when we ever figure out why! In a way I would love to see her as the next Republican presidential candidate, since she's so amazingly unqualified, but to be disgraced as a hypocrite and possible felon would satisfy my taste for justice perfectly. The worst outcome, in my opinion, would be to have her take her place on the Fox News Chorus, where hypocrisy, incompetence, dishonesty, lack of intelligence, irrational hostility and incipient dementia are prime qualifications. She could be as big a threat to our country as she would be in the white house, and of course there are no term limits on Fox.

The end of Independence Day?

Happy Independence day, my fellow Americans. Yes, it's Independence day and not the 4th of July as those damn liberal, Fascist bastards are trying to force us to say because they hate Independence. So why isn't Fox News telling us about this scandal? Why isn't Fox reporting the wave of legislation making fireworks illegal? Hmmmm.

People are speculating that Fox is supporting a declaration of dependence making the USA a subsidiary of News Corporation. The name would be changed to Fox Nation.

Hey, I just report, you decide.

Friday, July 03, 2009

PALIN QUITS!

One would think such a headline would push the Michael Jackson insanity aside long enough for some news to leak through, but although Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has just announced that she will resign from office within the next few weeks, further explanation seems elusive.

It's very tempting to speculate, but perhaps we'll just have to wait for the hysteria to abate before the networks can spare any personnel to find out what's happening outside the world of Michael Jackson.

Oh! The Outrage!

I wonder if the wingnuts have to take time out from raving about how they are insulted by intelligence reports warning ( correctly it seems) of increased militancy amongst hate groups, in order to find ever wilder ways to portray mainstream liberals and moderates as Bolshevik extremists -- or whether they can do both at the same time.

The party that told us it was ridiculous and outrageous to find anything questionable about the Palin family involvement with an Alaskan Independence Extremist group and witch murdering religious cult, finds it absolutely outrageous that Sonia Sotomayor once, many years ago sat on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund which concerned itself with such outrages as Affirmative Action and voting rights; but far, far worse, opposed Saint Reagan's appointment of Judge Bork. Ridiculous and hypocritical you might say? Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) agrees, saying that the Republican Senate minority would find something to object to “even if the president had nominated Moses.” You remember, Moses; that bearded radical Israelite separatist, Zionist, baby killing, Jew-extremist Commie?

Anyway, despite the rash of wingnut murders and plots, they appear still ready to insist that anyone who is not a fanatic Obama Supporter is being and will be targeted by the government and not just slandered as a member of a hate group, but put in concentration camps. A far easier fate awaits a local gentleman and felon arrested today for having a garage full of explosives, guns and money. I don't know what his private gunpowder plot was about, but I'm willing to bet that he's not a liberal and like 2/3 of the residents of my red county, hates Mr. Obama.

Yes, yes, of course -- I'm just like Hitler for mentioning it, although to continue the metaphor to the point where the wingnuts start comparing themselves to the Jews may be beyond even their level of dementia and malice.

Well, at least we have our American Circus to entertain us while the "liberal" media crams that neurotic reject from Frankenstein labs up our noses 24 hours a day as though piling up teddy bears in the street is more important than blood and corpses in the roadways and Korean missiles falling from the sky and the continuing slide of our economic prospects. That's just how Hitler and the International Jewish Conspiracy took over Germany, I'm sure.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

No lie too big, no mind too small

Get ready for it: another surge in the Anti-Obama Wars will be arriving in about a week with a new and more specious attack from the Derangement Rangers, or as these vampires call themselves the Our Country Deserves Better PAC. Twisting facts and flinging fallacy, they intend to pump up the rage junkies for some purpose we can only imagine and we can be sure that if someone stupid enough to buy their product acts on that rage, they will wash their hands of it and blame the liberals. In fact they're already doing it.

I can say that because the ad will apparently reference the recent intelligence report warning of increased right wing terrorist activity -- which of course proved true: blood, bullets, bodies and all -- as an example amongst many, of how Barak Obama is just like Adolph Hitler.
"As the regime spun out of control, they labeled political opponents domestic terrorists, and warned of confrontations between such groups and government authorities."
Is their view of an all too correct observation. Too damned bad more attention wasn't payed over the howls of offended wingnuts and too damned amazing that they're still howling after the warning was proved accurate.

Of course it takes a special person to see this alleged spin-out of the administration, but the accusation is quite predictable. Indeed every accusation made against Bush, no matter how true, is going to be re-labelled and returned in the same fashion as Watergate was reprised in every word and action and relaunched against Bill Clinton.
"They proposed a civilian security force, and a Congressman warned it was exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany. Opposition heightened after voter fraud by the president's allies, including thousands of bogus voter registration [sic]"
Since I'm personally involved with civilian security (Radio Amateur Emergency Services) I would have to laugh at a bunch of retired engineers volunteering to do emergency communications in a disaster being compared to Storm Troopers, but it's hard to understand why a thousand or two bad registrations, which don't seem to have produced any actual votes could account for the 9 million vote Obama victory. Hard, unless you're up to no good yourself and of course the OCDB PAC isn't. It's the illegitimate child of Howard Kaloogian, the fellow who during his losing campaign to replace disgraced Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham told us that Iraq was safe and almost free of violence and that the fact was being hidden by -- you guessed it -- the Liberal Press who of course support terrorism. Is there any doubt?

"And now the Obama Administration is warning law enforcement to focus their attention on the dangers of conservatives."
says their website. They're not, unless you describe murderers as conservatives, but I am and I can't help but mention that this kind of rhetoric and this kind of campaign was pioneered by Adolph Hitler himself.

These people are deranged, malignant well financed and well armed. Oh yes and dishonest, did I mention dishonest?