Eric, My Dude, Wha’ Happened to Ya?

Tags

Eric Cantor, GOP, John McCain, men with no brains, stupid party, teabaggers, when old men need to lie down

Frank Luntz really got one thing right. “The GOP is lousy when it comes to doing polling.”

By all accounts, Eric was blindsided by his rather convincing loss to a third-rate “economist” called Brat. He dinna see it cummin’ as they say.

As all politicians do, they manage to put on a thin smile as they stumble to the podium to admit their loss and congratulate the nobody who was somehow good enough.

The punditry is all awash in ‘splainin’ how this happened.

Some say it was his flirt with immigration reform. Other’s his watering down of a bill that would have but a stop to insider trading by congress people, who are as you know, so danged overworked and unpaid that it’s only fair that they should be able to do what nobody else can do without going to jail.

Some say Eric was just a total shit, arrogant and dismissive, failing to act, ya know, like one of his constituents, on those “hanging out  in the district” times. He was in a word, (words actually) full to the brim with the sweet smell of his own poo.

He will likely be replaced by an even more odious (ideologically speaking) commodity, the Brat guy. Who is some sort of economist, but apparently not much of one, who when asked what his position was on minimum wage increases, said he hadn’t had time to work out a “fully crafted statement” on that yet, or some such bullshit. What freakin’ economist doesn’t have a thought on a subject that, ya know, DEALS WITH ECONOMICS?

But I guess one shouldn’t wonder since his economic philosophy seems to be “Brat believes in free-markets as run by some curious amalgam of Presbyterian theology and Ayn Rand’s economic sociopathy.” If that don’t make your head spin I don’t know what will. The atheist Rand married to a dude who claims that his win was a “miracle from God”. I can’t wait to see how it pulls that off.

It is however, most comforting to know that there are plenty of GOP tenderfeet waiting in the wings for their chance on the national stage.

As well as some old has beens who are still trying to be relevant to something that passes for significance in this political world.

Enter one John S. McCain. A meme last week on Facebook asked commentors to sum up Johnny in three words. My favorites were “still not relevant”, “still not President”, and “Sarah Palin, seriously?”. Fresh off his flopping like a dead flounder all over the Bergdahl mess, he ‘s moved on to utter more stale bullshit to an increasingly deaf audience.

You may not have heard, but Iraq is being overrun at the moment with Al Qaida–you know–the crazies who came into Iraq when George W, following orders from Cheney and Rummy, decided to invade it, because they wanted to? That war. The war that we sorta fought to a tie, which gave us our escape window? And we escaped. And like everyone on the planet knew that chaos (or more chaos I should say) would ensue until the damn country became a bloodbath? And a few hundred people have died in that country every month, but Syria was worse, so we didn’t notice? Until the deaths started being several hundred a week? Now ya remember?

Yeah, well, now Johnny, setting aside his blatant memory loss, has declared that we won that war, (more specifically George did after following John’s instructions), and now Obama has gone and lost it, and his entire group of foreign security advisors should be fired, and replaced by the old crew from George’s tenure, and hell, while you’re at it, let George take over, cuz God we all felt so much better and more secure when he was at the button. Such is the way John sees things, or forgets things.

Meet Jeff Miller, (R-FL).

Look carefully since Jeff, is a zombie. Not walking dead, but walking brain-dead. He is shown holding on to his head, for it would float off to the ceiling if he didn’t. It’s full of nothing but helium.

Florida, as you may know, if one of those areas of the country that will soon lose half its sovereign soil when the oceans rise due to climate change. It is of some minor concern to its residents not all of whom are ready to trade their land based homes for boats.

So in their brilliance, they, in part at least, elect this fool.

Jeff, make no bones about it, is a fool, in CAPITAL LETTERS.

Frank has that wonderful ability to hold lots of facts in his empty brain that are in utter conflict.

First, Frank says that scientists are not agreed about who is causing this particular climate change. That’s not true, of course, for they are, to a degree of more than 97%; the rest being dismissed as owned and paid for by Koch brother enterprises and others in the fossil fuel industry.

Frank chooses to side with the paid-for deniers, and of course reminds us that “the climate is always changing”, as indeed it is. The planet we call home has, over billions of years, undergone plenty of change, most of it taking millions of years to build up. No doubt Frank doesn’t believe this because he must stay on the good side of the funny-gelicals who don’t believe the earth is more than 6,000 +/= a few hundred years old. But, for purposes of this argument I guess he believes that climates change over time.

His proof? Oh the dinosaurs. How in the heck could the dinosaurs have been axed if climate change wasn’t a “natural thing”. After all, he says, man wasn’t there (oh no screams Ken Ham–he’s an atheist!), and they weren’t driving around cars and such.

So the fact that the dinosaurs disappeared means that climate change isn’t man made. (Get the ropes and pinions, that jump across that chasm of logic is mighty wide!)

What Jeff doesn’t have a clue about is that the climate was rolling merrily along in old dinosaur land, when a comet or asteroid hit the planet and threw up so much dust and dirt, that the climate changed massively in a very short time (hint, hint like today’s human activities), and produced an unlivable situation for the dinos quickly. (purists note that this is the Alvarez theory to which I generally adhere or the catastrophic extraterrestrial theory. There are other serious theories which we aren’t going to get into here, suffice it that it has no effect on the argument.)

In other words, there is climate change which is normal and then there is that which is abnormal. What is happening to the earth today is abnormal, proceeding much too rapidly, and is demonstrably man-made.

The point is, there is no connection between the dinosaurs and the reality of man-made climate change. Never was, never will be.

And so we end, “Your week in GOP shenanigans and really stupid stuff.”

 

I’m Going As Fast as I Can!

Tags

Iraq war, life in the foothills, women's rights

Really I am. Actually, I’m traveling at lightening speed.

For example:

Yesterday I got up, cleaned house until 6:50 a.m., walked Diego two miles, finished cleaning the house, went to the grocery store, returned home, put away groceries, searched through all the papers in the file cabinet, finding 90% of what was necessary for the accountant tomorrow and the taxes, drove the Contrarian to the Eyemart with his new prescription, picked out frames, and stopped for *gasp* fast food for lunch, and arrived home, all before 1 p.m. At 3:00 p.m, I returned to Eyemart and picked up his glasses. The(Two more weeks and I can have chocolate again!)

Today, I cleaned house until 6:50 a.m, (finished by the way!), walked Diego two miles, and returned to make the basic parts of a Shepherd’s Boy casserole, which is now waiting to go in the oven. And *gasp* it’s only 9 a.m. and I have 50 minutes of leisure before we head off to get the taxes done.

Tomorrow, I get to go to the pool, and get my hair cut. We are determined to get all our “stuff” done this month. We have to hit the Veterans Affairs office to turn in our property tax exemptions yet, and something else that needs filling out, which I no longer remember.

I keep waiting for that blessed week when there are no “things” to attend to. I never used to be this busy. I really never used to be. The more retired I get, the busier I get. I know there is something important I should be ingesting from that realization, but I’m either not aware of what it is, or I’m scared to discover what it is.

I once upon a time said that virtually everything I dreamed about moving down here came true, but for a couple. The Catholic churches basically suck here (which I never would have imagined), and there is no pool within two blocks of where I live. Well guess what? One just got a good deal closer.

It turns out that one of the parks and rec outdoor pools is only about four miles from me. A darn sight closer than the approximately thirteen mile one that I go to now. It doesn’t open until Memorial day, but I have been told that almost nobody goes there, so I can enjoy myself in solitary bliss probably. Why they wait so long I have no clue–it’s in the mid-seventies every day now, and often in the low to mid-80’s.  Go figure.

≈

It’s been ten years since the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq. Where are all the celebrations? Were we not greeted as “liberators”?  Yeah, I guess not. It’s really hard to make an argument that awful as he was, the Iraqi people are not really any better off than they were before we “saved” them. I suspect they are much worse. And nobody worth a damn went to jail for that crime.

≈

The GOP screams like a stuck pig that they have “no war on women”. Well, yeah they do. But it’s only a huge segment of a much bigger picture in which a lot more people (mostly men, but not all) are implicated. Cases in point.

• Remember the dude at the CPAC who wanted to know why Frederick Douglass sent a letter forgiving his slave master? After all, the North Carolinian “white demographic” pointed out, he got “food and shelter” after all. He pointed out it would be a damn sight better if we still had segregation, and that Black folk could do all the voting they wanted in Africa. Well it turns out that as that meeting broke up, a woman approached and proceeded to give him a thing or two about his overt racism. Said White Male, retorted, as I am told, “so is this the new rebranded version of the GOP where women confront and tell off men in public?” or words to that effect.
• You all no doubt heard or read about the Steubenville case where at least two young men of high school age took advantage of an inebriated fellow teen girl, and raped her. The coverage has been, to say the least, extremely sexist in its presentation. The reporters and their networks cannot get over how sad it’s been for the boys, who had “promising football careers” and were so altogether nice in every way. They never missed a chance to remind us that the girl was so drunk she passed out. Oh and they ALL “inadvertently” dropped her name in their video reports even though she is a minor.

Forgive me if I still bluster about the need of women to continue the fight for full and complete rights in this still patriarchal world we live in. We put on the trappings of equality, and people do the “politically correct thing” and underneath it all, well, men will be men and boys will be boys, and women? Well women just keep taking it.

Read the link. It’s an important commentary on how we still operate in this country.

And well, it’s time to be off to the tax accountant. Sigh…you know I just love this!

Related articles

• Tar Heel Teabilly at CPAC: Frederick Douglass Should Have Thanked His Former Slave Master for Giving Him Food and Shelter (pensitoreview.com)
• CPAC 2013: The racism at CPAC (dailykos.com)
• CPAC ‘trump the race card’ event goes wrong (thegrio.com)
• A Low, Dishonest Decade: New Details for the Iraq War Crime Mosaic (willyloman.wordpress.com)
• 10 Years After Iraq Invasion: Continued Myths, Hundreds of Thousands Killed (intellihub.com)

S’more People I’d Like to Send to Antares

Tags

Bill Kristol, Charles Colson, Evangelism, fundamentalism, Iraq, Kirk Cameron, neo-con, right wing religious, Sarah Palin

Billy (The Man!) Kristol is just one of those guys you can define just by looking at his face. A few sentences from his mouth, and you are sure.

Billy was born in 1952 to educated parents, his father being managing editor of Commentary and his mother an English Lit scholar. Born in NYC he was preppy all the way. In other words, Billy was born the good life.

His dad, an old progressive, disillusioned, became the major founder of the neo-conservative movement. Billy, ever, his Dad’s boy, attended Harvard and soon was deeply enmeshed in politics of the Republican kind.

With a few others, he started the Weekly Standard,  holy grail of  neo-con thought.  Murdoch financed it. Nice to have everyone in the same bed doncha think?

It appears that Billy was instrumental in killing the Clinton health care initiative and well, one could argue that Billy got heady with power. He self-claims that he alone was the main creator of the Iraq war, and ain’t that something to be proud of?

He claims almost sole credit for promoting the “surge” in Iraq. Kristol, ever the war monger wanted to join in the Lebanese war in 2006, and mused that it might be an excellent time to “take out” Iran’s nuclear capability as well. “The Man” is a full-blown believer in American Exceptionalism, meaning that America is somehow entitled to rule the world.

There is an overriding smugness about Kristol, a looking-down-the-nose kind of superiority. One could wonder mightily whether he is really the result of an unholy tryst between his mom Gertrude and one Dick (The Dick) Cheney, but alas that is pure speculation. Both biological oddities (they call themselves men) have that air about them that most of the rest of us stink in comparison to their heavenly brilliance.

Of course, riding on his own self-importance, Billy pushed hard for John McCain to choose the Moose woman as his running mate. True to his immense ego, Kristol no doubt saw a pathetic-star-struck wannabe and thought he could meld and mold her into a perfect mouthpiece.

But the Sarah has turned out quite different. Her advice to Christine (hands off my private parts) O’Donnell, to not be handled by the professional handlers, is clearly what has happened vis-a-vis Kristol. She has not been amenable to being groomed into the perfect neo-con Barbie.

Kristol of course, smirks and chuckles about Sarah’s independence, but clearly he and others are concerned about her “mavericky” behavior. O’Donnell’s surprising victory in Delaware, have all but destroyed any hopes that the GOP can capture the Senate.

We have little doubt that Kristol has had more than a few phone calls that start out with “Why in the hell can’t you control that woman!” No doubt such attacks recall the long years of youth when Billy was without doubt the subject of much taunting as the sissy boy nerd. Much of what passes for his “expertise” today is merely payback for all those playground assaults.

Suffice it to say, if I ran into Kirk Cameron, I’d be inclined to pipe up with: “What stupid vat did you fall into?”

You remember Kirk, cute teen TV kid, Mike Seaver on Growing Pains?  Uhuh, yep, that’s the one. with Alan Thicke.

Today? Why, he’s a full-blown evangelical minister. He now stars in Left Behind movies although his post Growing Pains career was fairly successful.

Kirk became a born-again while still filming GP, and was, if one believes Wikipedia, often heard to demand that anything “racy” by stripped from the show. He married his GP girlfriend, Chelsea,  and apparently will not “kiss” another woman in film shooting because it would violate his vows.

Normally I don’t give a hoot if someone professes and practices born-again Christianity. I do draw the line when they have an ability, as Cameron does to reach the masses. Then I sit up and watch. And watching, in this case, will hurt your brain.

Cameron espouses all the usual crap of the right-wing–creationism instead of evolution, and with few qualms about altering Darwin to suit his purposes. He and his partner Ray Comfort then distribute the altered versions free on college campuses.

He’s recently finished a film called Monumental which “documents God’s action in America.” He supports Glenn Becks efforts, but questions his Mormonism. (I just love that sort of thing don’t you?)

He voices the usual enemies list: secular humanists, radical atheists, socialism, and one can assume that he is nix to abortion rights and gay rights as well.

Nexxxt!

Chuckie (Hatchet Man) Colson is another of your evangelical types, having discovered the true faith sometime as he contemplated prison or had plenty of time to think while there.

There are only so many resurrection careers available to the ex-con and this is one of them, not that I question the conversion of Chuck. I surely don’t.

It seems that he has been admirable in putting most of his money into his ministry, contrary to many of his evangelical buddies.

As part of the inner circle in the dark Nixon administration, he identified himself as “ruthless” and was known for heavy-handed tactics. He authored the infamous “enemies list” at the White House. He of course is most famous for being a member of CREEP and imprisoned for his cover-up attempts of the Watergate scandal.

He has been active in his prison ministry but of course began to dabble in politics again, bringing, with others,  a “just-war” excuse to then President Bush, to justify the attack upon Iraq. He is a vocal opponent of abortion rights and same-sex marriage. As of late, he has claimed that he will no longer use the term “same-sex marriage” or “gay marriage”  because as he says, “there is no such thing.” Yep, problem solved, just define it out of existence.

PS: Dear Antareans: Should you have sentient beings on your planet, please feel free to divert this garbage scow to a more suitable barren planet. Your friend, Earthing Sherry of the species Homo Sapien Sapien

Related Articles

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War, Good God, What is it Good For?

Tags

Afghanistan, Iraq, Veterans, Vietnam, War

It may come as a shock to you to know that I am a pacifist. I hold no truck with war. None. I find it an ugly waste of life.

I am not a patriotic person by nature. I don’t understand artificial national lines of demarcation. I figure you farm where food grows, and you manufacture where factories make sense. Anything less makes no logical sense.

War never ends war, never has, and never will. Within every war are the seeds of the next one, and the next, and on and on.

It has been said that these interminable wars we now are engaged in, are real only to the actual soldiers and their families. The rest of us remain largely untouched. That is probably true. But it probably always has been like that. We fail always to see the deeper and more subtle costs that effect us all.

I read many years ago Normal Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead.  He won the Pulitzer for it, and well he should. I never felt the same way about war after that. I learned there is no glory, no adventure, no honorable patriotic pride. There is only blood, sweat, insects, rot, disease, discomfort, pain, mental distress and death. Nothing heroic or noble, just putting one foot interminably in front of the other, marching into the jaws of death.

I think it speaks volumes that most veterans don’t talk about their war. It is too horrific, too vile, too inhuman. The fear they have is, I suspect, the revulsion they might find. My father never spoke of WWII, except to point a time or two, as he gazed at his company yearbook, “This guy got shot in the gut right next to me. He died.” On some beach, somewhere in Italy. Somewhere in some far off land.

I’ve been reading Tim O’Brien’s extraordinary book, The Things They Carried. I found it on a great books list, and thought my husband might need to read it. He cannot stop reading it, re-reading passages again and again. My husband wasn’t a grunt, he flew on helicopters, yet O’Brien’s poignant vignettes of life in the bush of Vietnam ring so true that he finds common ground aplenty.

I’ve read about half, and there are times I want to set it down and not continue. So raw and so frightening are the feelings. Time and again, I cannot relate to the behavior of young men living in such hell. I try, but I fail to understand. I would guess they would act one way, and they don’t. My husband understands, but I do not.

The book is so aptly titled. For he speaks of what they carried common to them all, water canteens, rations, M-16’s, ammo. But he then goes on to speak of the more personal things, the letters, the rabbit’s foot, the pair of pantyhose of a girlfriend, a deck of cards, a bible. And then deeper still, the fears, hopes, dreams, terrors that each carried in varying degrees.

One line I shall never forget.

“They died so as not to die of embarrassment.”

Vietnam was a war of the draft. Boys were called up. Damn few chose to go. Most did about everything they could to avoid it. College was a safe place to be, but grad school was not. The state army reserves was excellent, but the waiting lists were huge. Conscientious objector status was good, but you really had to show a history of such beliefs before being drafted. Boys sometimes pretended insanity, or homosexuality to escape. And then there was Canada.

O’Brien almost ran. He drove to the border, he fought his internal battle for a couple of weeks. In the end, he says, he was not courageous, he was a coward, he went back home, to report for boot camp.

You see, it was the embarrassment. Better to die in a war you did not believe in, wanted no part of, than to face the embarrassment of family, friends, town. Embarrassment that one couldn’t stand up and do the manly thing.

Ironic, that the draft captures the young. The eighteen through twenty-something. Exactly before young men have found themselves, their self-ness. Still so locked into peer pressure, and wanting to life up to expectations of what others desire them to be. It’s an ingenious system that works, most go like lambs to the slaughter because they cannot bear to be different. Thought cowardly.

So they go. And they die. Or they are grievously wounded. Or they see and participate in horrors the likes of which we who have not drunk from this cup, cannot imagine. We would recoil, we would move away. We would relegate such as these to leper colonies, these no longer quite humans.

So they don’t mostly speak. They live among us, with their terrible memories. With guilts and tears unshed, with fears of cowardly acts, of monstrous visions. Of death, of more blood than any animal slaughter house would conceive.

Of the smells, awful rotting human flesh, the charred remains of villages, of once sweet smells now gone rancid because of associations. The sounds, that make fireworks at home on humid July nights intolerable. The same for backfiring cars. The sounds of helicopters rotate through the mind and recall the sinking feeling as one is propelled downward into a free fall crash.

These are lifetime memories. Never to be escaped. And they forever color and mutilate lives, shrinking the scope of opportunity. Forever icing over the heart. Always the need to protect the raw pain that is ever present, though often softened by drugs and alcohol or any other addictive and repetitive behavior that numbs the senses.

And since we, the unchurched in such affairs, don’t understand, we all too readily are willing to defer to the crazy minds who still think that war is an answer. And so we don’t rise up in anger and indignation and demand that this hell stop. We tell ourselves it is unfortunate, but necessary.

And it is not necessary. It is simply humanity stuck in a rut of pain giving and receiving, back and forth like some crazy swing set. And I weep for all, for all who are ground up in this endless meat grinder.

**

The lyrics to Edwin Starr’s War, can be found here.

For a poem about life at Landing Zone Betty in Vietnam, read Gary Jacobson.

Peace

Dusting Off Our Hands

Tags

Afghanistan, American Exceptionalism, Britian, empire, France, imperialism, Iraq, Middle East, Vietnam, War

We in America are quite good at forgetting the past. Any past that implicates us as being less than wonderful, that is. I suspect other countries might experience some of the same thing, conveniently dis-remembering their evil acts.

Do the French still recall their contributions to the Vietnamese debacle that captured so much of the 50’s and 60’s? I rather doubt it.

The British, no doubt don’t spend prodigious hours bemoaning that their interference in Middle Eastern affairs in decades past has at least something to do with the current troubles of the region.

We here in America are no different. We tend to gloss over, most of us at least, our horrific treatment of American Indians and our imperialistic behavior toward Mexico and the stealing of their land. No, we “move on.” And in truth, there is something to be said for that too. After all, I had no part in the near genocide of the American Indian in their glorious diversity.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean that I should forget. For in the remembering comes the responsibility to do what can be done to repair the injuries.

We are in danger of forgetting about Iraq. Since some measure of calm has returned (meaning mostly that our war dead numbers have decreased to some “acceptable” level), we have largely stopped talking about it. The news outlets don’t mention it much. Afghanistan has leapt up the charts of public interest as the death toll there, (again in terms of American lives) has started to climb.

But people live in Iraq and their lives have been forever (it seems) altered by our decision to enter their country and upturn it’s civil life. Of course, to a degree, we don’t care about any of that. There is still in this country a contingent that fails to care, as long as  American lives are not the ones lost. Iraqi casualties have always been hard to collect and estimates are wildly veering from one end to the other.

Mostly we see Iraqi’s through the eyes of soldiers who’ve been moved to help out some child or other who touches them personally. That makes good news and allows us the feel good moment where we can tell ourselves that our troops are “doing good.” They are, to be sure, doing their best, but they are sent there to kill, not adopt puppies.

 I  ran across the post today from one living in Iraq. It’s not a big deal, not so important a post. But it speaks eloquently to the day to day  crap that people now endure. This new Iraq that we have created with our bombs. Not a place you or I would like to live in. A fact of life for them.

And we don’t talk about Iraq much any more, and when we finally get completely out, we won’t talk about it at all. Other than to shake our head that it hasn’t become the shining city on the hill we promised it would be. They just don’t want democracy it seems.

Just like the Vietnamese didn’t want it back in the 70’s. Damn stupid people. Too lazy and uneducated to know what freedom means. It had nothing to do with the havoc we wreaked, the lands we destroyed, the villages ruined, the lives distorted and forever changed.

We pulled up and left, and wiped our hands of it all. Not our problem any more.

We’re looking, getting ready, to pull the plug on Afghanistan now. You can hear the remarks, see the looks. We’re starting to emotionally disengage. Our losses matter, and they are getting way too high. Osama bin Ladin is no longer the rallying cry. Screw him, we’re getting  ready to get outa here. We’re tired of dying and losing and feeling impotent and inadequate. We don’t know what is wrong with you, and frankly we no longer care.

Truth is, we are replaying a story that we have played oh so many times, more than these examples. We define lofty goals to cover our own singularly ego driven desires, we enter and shoot up the place. We install puppet governments, almost always comprised of people who have some powerful allies to now professional rape their peoples. They do it well. We can’t understand why they HATE US?????

No indeed we don’t understand, and we will never understand until we face up to the truth. We are no better or worse than any of the other imperial empires. We just aren’t as blatantly bloody obvious about it. We couch our blitzkriegs with flowery “freedom” words and esoteric goals of transforming lands into islands of prosperity. We lie, both to ourselves and to them.

I have no answers. You know better than to ask me for any. I just sigh as I watch this Afghani scenario begin to play out. There is not victory in sight, there is no reason to stay. We have not left the country better, just battered. And we will refocus.

Refocus without learning a thing, and we will soon find ourselves in another place in another time, promising freedom and jobs and equality and justice, and we will emprison, and practice no equality and no justice, and leave another land in smouldering ruins. Our OOPS factor is mighty big here in MeriKa.

They say China will soon overtake us and become the new bigger better best empire. Perhaps. But I don’t expect they will do any better with the crown than we have. There is just something wrong with having that much power. It corrupts. And somebody I believe said that. Absolutely in fact!

If I Were Gay, I’d Be in Love with Ellen

Tags

Dick Cheney, Ellen DeGeneres, Fox Noise, health care reform, Obama, racism, Rep. Joe Wilson, right wing extremists, Sean Hannity

Indeed, if I were a gay woman, Ellen is I think just my type. I mentioned yesterday, that Ellen has been named as the newest judge on American Idol. And additionally, her show has moved from CBS to ABC. I have had occasion to see it here and there, mostly when the Contrarian is busy, since he is always chomping at the bit to get to the news channels.

Anyway, I got a chance to watch a bit as I cooled down from my walk. And I remembered just how funny I find her. Her whit is so quiet and so innocent.

I realized that that humor is perhaps the most important attribute I look for in a relationship. As you undoubtedly know, I am deeply blessed in that the Contrarian has a fabulous sense of humor and keeps me laughing daily. It’s the very best elixir to a marriage I believe.

So her attractive countenance aside, I find her so funny as to be utterly endearing. Portia is no doubt a lucky woman to have such a lovely wife.

***

I’m told that the Congressional cafeterias have removed all forms of metal cutlery from the dining area. Word is out that too many Republicans are talking about suicide these days.

While the rank and file somewhat rational GOP’ers were quick to condemn Joey (the mouth)Wilson’s outburst during the President’s speech, hoping this would cap the disaster quickly, that of course didn’t happen.

Wilson scurried over to the Foxy Noise people, who immediately commiserated with him, with Ann (the badger)Colter, calling him a “great American Statesman.” Similar mewlings came from the great Sean (you’ll believe anything I tell you morons) Hannity, who pouted that nobody apologized from the Democrats when they booed our President George (I read books!) Bush.

The funny part is that all the “defense” of Wilson people are so deluded that they don’t get it. We aren’t interested in vilifying Wilson. We want to shake his hand for doing exactly as we hoped. We didn’t know who of course, but we figured one of the wingnuts would take the bait and parade his/her hatred on national TV. He did, and we reaped the benefit in wonderful upticks in the polls.

***

Oh we always are thrilled to mention our boy Sean. Sean, who never was one to look a gift opportunity in the mouth, shamelessly takes advantage of a niche and panders to the wacko right.

He’s been tagged more than once by deliberately sanitizing written statements to alter their meaning. Usually he quotes a sentence without the rest which would have made it clear that it means just the opposite from what Sean alleges.

Sean’s propensity for this seems to have increased, suggesting they are not finding much of an reality to gripe about. His latest: In the President’s speech Wednesday night, Obama, said that insurance CEO’s were NOT evil or bad, but motivated by profit concerns. Sean simply reported that he was aghast (yeah right) that the President had used to intemperate and ugly rhetoric in CALLING INSURANCE CEO’S BAD PEOPLE.

I’m inclined to think that Sean has so little regard for the admitted limited intelligence of his followers that he assumes they can’t understand what they hear either, and need his “interpretation.” He’s of course happy to alter the truth to suit his agenda. Not because he is a bad person of course, but only because he is motivated by profit concerns. And Sean gets richer and who cares about truth?

***

No doubt a very few of my readers, fewer since I think  some have departed in disgust, disagree when I point out that much of the anti-health care anti-everything is in reality racism against the President. The fail to see that only either thoroughly mental defects or those who have latent and virulent racism can buy into the crazy world of birthers, deathers, parenters, and so forth legitimately. I might suggest that they suffer from one or the other themselves, but that would be mean.

In any case, lest there be any doubt as to the vicious hatred expressed by the far right, let me link you to a post by David Kahane in the National Review. If you think this is legitimate disagreement, I invite you to review the name given the President: His High Serene Highness, the Emperor, Barack Hussein Obama II, whom he afterwards refers to as Barry. His wife, Michelle is called Madame DeFarge. He makes some ugly references to the President’s vacation coinciding with Ramadan. If you don’t think racism is alive and well and being eaten up by the trailer-trash, beer swilling, bible thumpers, hatin’ them colored/black brown/oriental types, and fishy Muslim sneaks (not all adjectives apply to all persons), then you may be one of the above described.

***

How could we pass up this gem. It seems that two retired Marine Generals have said enough is enough. They have renounced former vice president, Dick “The Dick” Cheney, for his continual championing of torture as something that works and has “kept us safe.”

Both, speaking in the Miami Herald, both said that the techniques and tactics used by the Bush-Cheney administration actually hampered efforts to fight al-Quaeda and resulted in additional harm to US service personnel who were captured by enemy forces.

Of course we all remember that polling suggests that the right wing evangelical church goer is the type most supportive of torture of enemy combatants. That’s I guess the answer they get when they ask, “What would Jesus do?”

Dr. Evil continues to try to protect his legacy as best he can by again giving responsible Republicans more reasons to wish for muzzles, and federal laws preventing retired politicos from opening their mouths without permission.

But in the end, Dick cares not about America, but about how he is remembered. I guess he doesn’t get that this kind of talk only digs his hole deeper. Republicans are already quick to say, “I never knew him,” and all before the cock has crowed three times too.

Learning from Iran

Tags

civic responsibility, democracy, elections, Iran, protests, voting

If you are like me, you’ve been keeping a close eye on Iran, and the results of the last election. I at least, have remained measurably hopeful. I don’t suppose that is very realistic.

A country that cheats as inelegantly as Tehran has done, probably is not likely to respond with a “my bad” when their deception is uncovered both at home and abroad. I don’t expect they will be announcing a “do over” any time soon.

It is painful to watch as people struggle to just have a fair election, where their voices actually count for something.  I think we take that for granted here in the US. Everyone alive in this country has never known anything different if they were born here.

Of course, we are not free from our own dirty tricks. There are plenty of election shenanigans to go around, mostly in attempts to suppress the votes of opposition voters through “legal” objections to voting rolls. But by and large, we think they are pretty fair. I mean if ever there was one that wasn’t, we can look to 2000, and Gore bowed to the right of the SCOTUS to have the final word. He signaled that that stamp was authoritative and was “fair.”

Because of this overall complacency, we are in danger here, and few realize it, or even believe it. We stood by as the Bushites pushed through “Patriot Acts” designed to take away freedoms such as privacy and speech, making it seem “unpatriotic” to oppose such legislation.

We’ve learned that there are ways around Congresses sole right to declare war, and we have now lost that means of control over our government as well. Plenty of people when polled, are happy to give up rights we claim to hold dear in the name of “national security.”

While we have been busy with life, our elected officials have had their power eroded and controlled by mega conglomerates, beholden to only themselves. They dictate just about everything these days. Obama and his team promise a dismantling of all this, but it’s so far unclear how much they can and are willing to do. Much too much ends up being aimed at re-election rather than the public good.

You can ask, and I invite you to, and plenty of folks will tell you that unfair police practices are okay, because, like national security, crime must be stopped, and “honest” people have nothing to hide, right?

I used to get asked a lot, and still do occasionally, how I “can/could” represent criminals when I “thought they were guilty?” The short answer is that because the law doesn’t assure them a lawyer who believes they are  innocent, but a lawyer to hold the state to its burdens of proof.

The long answer is that we have a country of laws. If lawyers don’t have to represent those they deem guilty, then why have courts or juries at all. Let the cops do justice on the street by personal whim. If you, your child, or loved one were charged with a crime, you’d want the best lawyer in town, not the ignorant sap who “believes” you.

We’ve grown soft in democracy, or federalism as you wish. We actually think we are doing our civic duty by voting. Precious few of us can even bother with that. Far fewer than that go to town councils meetings, and join groups who actively work for issues. I’m not wagging my finger at you, because I fall in the same category. I try, but fail, to convince myself that blogging is my contribution to improve the “public discourse.” Uhuh.

And don’t tell me that this happens to all democracies. We have the lowest voting record of any of them I believe. We are complacent. Well, not all of us. White people are complacent. When we move off that  demographic, there is at least a lot of folks who have been the recipient of our less than “fair” democracy. Like African Americans, Latinos, American Indians, Asians, all the non-whites actually. Yet even here, there is  a lack of co-ordinated voting of any kind, and poor turnout as well.

Can you imagine Iranians not voting because they had something better to do? Or Iraqis? Perhaps it is our less than long history of oppression in a real and obvious way that allows us to sink so rapidly into shrugging our shoulders and assuming nothing bad will happen. I don’t know, but I do know, that Iran is important.

Important, not just because we could use some more rational people to deal with there on big issues that face them and the region. We can look repression dead in the face, and place ourselves there, on those streets, in that fear of what will happen next? Will I get out of this alive? Will I be free to say and do what I wish?

We have lost any sense of how precious our freedom is, until of course, we wish to strut it around as giving us permission to dictate to the world on any issue under the sun. They we parade it and our flag high and strong. I find that I can use a remark of  Jesus’ often and well. America, remove the plank from your eye before you go about instructing the rest of the world how to live. Iran reminds us, we recently retreated from the edge, and we can peek over the edge once again all too easily.

Freedom requires vigilance. We best not forget that, or we too may one day face the streets, the batons, the water hoses, and the bullets.