Hey, While You Were Sleeping, Another Month Went By

Tags

GOP, Media, Osama bin Laden, pundits, right wing wackos, Sarah Palin

In case you aren’t keeping track, we went a shoppin’ in See the Rabbits. Inside joke. When the Contrarian was a wee lad, his tender ears translated Cedar Rapids as “See the Rabbits.”

Anyway, we went and did all that stuff. God my hair cut too. That’s always a bit of a crap shoot. I got my shortest cut this time from a beautician who was obviously in a hurry. The Contrarian suggested that when he first saw he was glad I had no tattoos, otherwise I might have been mistaken for a biker Biotch. A couple of weeks, and it will look okay.

Sarah, bless her insignificant and fairly now passe` heart, has gone and done it again. This isn’t worth a link. Just take it from me that at the party following the Correspondent’s Dinner, she was asked who she thought was the most influential journalist.

In true Palinesque-caught-in-the-headlights style, she replied: “Oh good question. I’ll have to think about that and get back with ya. So many of course.” As she turned to walk away, she ran smack dab into gal pal Greta Van Susteran, and turned back “Greta here is the most influential!”

A pig was seen to fly by over her head at that point.

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Anybody at all surprised that the wacka-doodle exTREEEEme right has twisted the entire Bin Laden affair around? The head nut at Tea Party Nation, not only says they entire thing was staged to help Obama’s re-election bid, but (AND I KID YOU NOT) his announcement was precisely timed to interrupt The Donald’s Celebrity Apprentice! Wrap your sane head around that one.

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An interesting little piece of work here. A college class and their professor analyzed a number of “pundits” on some 400+ predictions they made  over a sixteen month period. The standard, was some measure of accuracy. The results are amusing, and enlightening. Paul Krugman scored highest in accuracy along with Maureen Dowd, Ed Rendell, Nancy Pelosi and some others. Fairing the worst? Cal Thomas, Thomas Friedman, George Will, and politicos such as Lindsay Graham and Johnny McCain. Read it all, and then remember who to listen to in the future.

Well, that settles it. Don’t release the pictures. One can always know one is on the “right” side simply by saying the opposite of what the Grifter says. Besides, no photo will be acceptable to the uber wackos anyway, and it just makes sense to let them babble and turn off even more of the electorate. Rational people don’t need convincing.

Breaking News: The President has decided against releasing pictures.

♦

What’s on the stove? Steak salad with honey mustard dressing and garlic toast.

 

Related Articles

• New study says Paul Krugman is top prognosticator (crooksandliars.com)
• Ranking The Pundits (outsidethebeltway.com)
• STUDY: Paul Krugman, Liberal Columnists Make Better Predictions Than Conservative Ones (businessinsider.com)
• Poor Cal Thomas (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

Thoughts Dripping From My Disheveled Mind

Tags

Al Qaeda, editorial, Obama, Osama bin Laden, terrorism

You may consider me either sin personified or a saint. I don’t believe I am truly the former, and I am certain I am not the latter.

I am to put it quite bluntly, caught between these two images. I have been for several years.

We were watching the usual Sunday night fare on the TV when suddenly it was interrupted with “breaking news”. We sat momentarily queasy as we wondered what terrible thing might have befallen the world.

We learned, as did everyone, that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in a commando raid on a compound in Pakistan.

My first reaction was one of relief that nothing horrifying had occurred in the world.

But then, I didn’t know quite what to feel.

I have always been struck by the fact that my first reaction to a photograph of Bin Laden is that he reminds me of paintings of Christ. Especially those that are more Semitic in nature.

This is always quite a shock to me, since OBL is clearly a man who has guided other men to die and to kill innocents in large numbers while doing so. I thoroughly reject everything about his methodology, though in some very basic respects I can sympathize with his anger at the West.  For the West has much to answer for in its treatment of Middle Eastern peoples down through time.

I am reminded too, of Matthew 25, wherein Christ reminded a confused audience who were sure they had never failed to minister to him in his needs, that when they did not do it to the least of his children, they did not do it for him. In other words, as Mother Theresa reminded us often, we are to see the face of Christ in everyone we come upon.

I am reminded too that I am to believe that God loves every one of his creation as perfectly as I am loved. While I can note the “wrongness” of another’s actions, I cannot make claims of self-righteousness.

I am reminded that I am thoroughly and utterly opposed to the death penalty, and by all accounts this was a pure assassination.

I am reminded that a man I deeply admire, Barack H. Obama, gave the order with the intention that this man die. I can but image the awesomeness and awfulness of that moment to him. I am truly glad that he is our President.

I am reminded that OBL was separated from the day-to-day workings of al-Qaeda and that whatever plans are being made will continue.

I am reminded that it has long been thought that the death of OBL would bring forth an attack, planned for just this occasion.

I am reminded that the streets of America filled in many places spontaneously and people are joyous at this death. And I feel utterly utterly uncomfortable.

I am reminded that the stock market went up, and the oil futures went down.

I am reminded that the President will undoubtedly receive a huge bump in the polls.

Should I be happy at these political plusses?

I am deeply confused and pained by it all.

Ironically, or as I like to think in a fit of serendipity, this is the first thing I read this morning:

“We are living in the greatest revolution in history–a large spontaneous upheaval of the entire human race: not the revolution planned and carried out by any particular party, race, or nation, but a deep elemental boiling over of all the inner contradictions that have ever been in man, a revelation of the chaotic forces inside everybody. This is not something we have chosen, nor is it something we are free to avoid.

This revolution is a profound spiritual crisis of the whole world, manifested largely in desperation, cynicism, violence, conflict, self-contradiction, ambivalence, fear and hope, doubt and belief, creation and destructiveness, progress and regression, obsessive attachments to images, idols, slogans, programs that only dull the general anguish for a moment until it bursts out everywhere in a still more acute and terrifying form. We do not know if we are building a fabulously wonderful world or destroying all that we have ever had, all that we have achieved!

All the inner force of man is boiling and bursting out, the good together with the evil, the good poisoned by evil and fighting it, the evil pretending to be good and revealing itself in the most dreadful crimes, justified and rationalized by the purest and most innocent intentions. [Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander 54-55, reprinted in Seeds, 27, Thomas Merton]

I am angry because I don’t know what is appropriate to think or feel. Although people will talk of “closure” and of “justice” they are words only, and in the dark night as I sit pondering how we so seemingly give legitimacy to murder, I am not comforted in any way. I am the opposite.

I wonder at how no one questions any of this. How all is smiles. “We got him!”

Yes, but who are we?

The Smell of Killing in the Air

Tags

civilization, death penalty, Europe, John Allen Muhammed, Osama bin Laden, Timothy McVeigh

It is with some certain irony that President and Mrs. Obama travel to Texas today to participate in the memorial services for those slain at Fort Hood a few days ago.

For today, we, the nation of the USA are intent on our own killing. And we do it with a certain assurance that we are doing what is right and good.

It does not seem that way to me. I make no excuses or defense of my position. I am against the death penalty. I find it barbaric and inexcusable, occurring in a nation such as ours. We consider ourselves the definition of civilization at its highest. This practice hearkens to a time when civilization was a mere shadow of its self.

I state my feelings honestly. I abhor what these killers do. I do not make charges against the victim’s families for their desire to see “justice” done. I have not walked in their shoes. I can only hope and pray that should such utter evil befall my life, that I would find it in my heart to forgive and accept that there are no guarantees in this life of anything. We, as Christians, hope for what is yet unknown and unseen.

Plenty of non-believers are against the death penalty too. I would never suggest that this is a Christian or Buddhist or Jewish issue. It is not. It is a human issue, and morality is something that humans have developed over a long time. In it, we have been helped immeasurably by faith. Yet, we can also look to the extreme right and find that faith inexplicably can find its way to support this barbarism. We wonder what kind of Christian this is, yet we are clear that they argue for death with the same fervor we wail against it.

John Allen Muhammed is scheduled to die today in Virginia for the sniper killings that occurred some years ago. His accomplice, Lee Malvo, has avoided the death penalty by cooperating with authorities.

Mr. Muhammed dies today because we as a nation cannot spend the time and energy to come up with a better solution to our acted out aggression. It is far easier to kill it, bury it, and move on. It is so much more difficult to confront it, and us and how we have come to this state of existence. We don’t confront the issues that create malformed consciences capable of such horror. We don’t address mental health. Kill it, bury it, move on.

John Allen Muhammed was once a toddler, happy and curious about the world he was just coming into. He lived with all the promise and expectation of any child. He might face more than his share of obstacles in life, but there is no assurance that that is true. Something went terribly wrong somewhere at some time. The wrong blending of life experiences, family, genes, and things yet to be discovered produced a human who could not empathize with his fellow humans.

The same can be said of Osama bin Laden. He too once delighted mother and father with his laughter and antics. He once looked upon the world as a wondrous place to explore and enjoy. He too saw, perhaps, unwittingly, his life spiral into hatred and vengeance.

It was no different for Timothy McVeigh, who slaughtered so many in Oklahoma City, and suffered the fate of fatal injection.

The victims saw their lives, young or old, happy, sad, or however they had developed, cut short in violence. Most, perhaps, never knew what hit them. Others lingered long enough to wonder why and to lament however briefly what their death would mean to others. And in truth, we cannot minimize or trivialize in any way, what the victims and their families has suffered. They cannot be replaced.

The problem is, that killing the killer cannot change a thing. I defy anyone to truly claim that somehow there has been “closure” with the state killing. It is all easy to say that one feels peace, but in fact, nothing changes.  If the loved one is in heaven, which so many of us fervently believe, it is hard to believe that they sanctioned or rooted for the death of the one who ushered in this new way of “living” to them.

It is doubly hard to believe that God nods with favor on such actions. For God too is as close as the next breath to Mr. Muhammed this day. He sits vigil with a human being so cruelly made aware of his last moments of being living flesh.

No doubt Mr. Muhammed has had much time to reflect on his life and its tragic turns. I have no idea whether he regrets his actions, or even is aware that what he did was wrong by his or anyone’s standards. It does not matter.

I am diminished by this act as surely as if I had pushed the plunger on the syringe. Or signed the documents, or denied the last appeal. I am a murderer this day. And I am deeply angered that this burden has been placed upon me. I resent that we are so foolish and immature as this. I am ashamed. As I recall, in Europe, in some countries, note is made of every execution that occurs in this bloody country. They wonder what is wrong with us.

So do I.