Stonekettle Station

Marines, Symbols, And A Little Perspective Please

2012-02-10T18:00:00.001-09:00

Other than a few smart Alec comments on Facebook and the occasional post here, I’ve been offline for most of the last couple of weeks.

Some of you noticed and wrote to wonder why.

No, I haven’t stopped writing. Nor have I lost interest in it. Nor have I been kidnapped by space aliens.

I’ve been ill.

It’s been ongoing for about a month and a half now.

Nothing life threatening, unless you count the possibility of drowning in my own mucus, but between feeling like absolute hammered crap from both the illness and the drugs they gave me to fix it, I haven’t had any energy left for writing. I thought I was better for a while, then it came back with a vengeance. For the last two weeks, I’ve mostly spent all day in a fog feeling like I’m wearing cement shoes, then I come home from work and eat a dinner I can’t taste, and fall into bed. I’m pretty sure I am singlehandedly responsible for putting every kid whose parents work on the Kleenex assembly line through grad school.

I seem to be getting over it now, thanks to Teh Eeevil Big Pharma, so yay for that.

Over the last few weeks I let the email pile up. So, if you wrote expecting some kind of answer and didn’t get one, well, it’s me not you. What? Alright, it is a little you, when I’m sick I find you just irritating as all hell. Your voice is like a rusty razor blade grating on my spinal column. I actively hate you and between bouts of coughing I am plotting your demise. (Ok, I’m not a good sick person, I know that). Anyway, email. I’m going to be honest, I probably won’t read the older stuff, there’s just too much of it. However, I have managed to read back over the last couple of days and a number of you asked what I thought of this:

My thoughts?

Meh.

That picture has been floating around the internet for the last two years and recently came to light when a leading Jewish organization saw it and was predictably outraged.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Los Angles Simon Wiesenthal Center, among others (both Jewish and not) demanded an investigation and discipline of the Marines involved.

If you’re not sure what the hoopla is about, it’s the big blue flag with the double “s” that resembles stylized lightning bolts.

The Marines in the picture say that flag was intended to represent their profession, Scout Sniper.

However, many folks, including Rabbi Hier say those lightning bolts bear a distinct resemblance to the symbols of the dreaded Nazi Waffen SS, the Schutzstaffel, Hitler’s special military forces who were irrefutably responsible for horrifying atrocities before and during World War II – many of most infamous were carried out against Jews.

Yesterday the Marine Corps announced that the matter has been investigated, no malicious intent was found nor any violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice nor Military Regulations, and therefore the Marines involved will not be disciplined.

The Corps does however, regard the incident as regrettable and used it as a “teachable moment.”

Again, somewhat predictably, Rabbi Hier was not satisfied:

“That 70 years after the United States Armed Forces helped liberate Europe from Nazi Germany, to learn that a unit of the United States Marine Corps serving in Afghanistan adopted the SS insignia alongside the Stars and Stripes, desecrates the memory of some 200,000 Americans who gave up their lives to defend freedom against that infamous symbol”

Maybe.

If I wasn’t so damned tired from being ill, maybe I could work up some outrage. If I was Jewish, maybe I’d be offended. If I was one of those who fought against the Nazi’s 70 years ago, or was related to one of the 200,000 dead Rabbi Hier mentioned, maybe I’d be mad as he apparently is.

But probably not.

I try to save my outrage for targets that actually matter.

These are United States Marines. Not only that, they are scout snipers. They are an elite unit of an elite fighting force. They are sworn to honor and to duty and to the Constitution of the United States. I find it somewhat difficult to believe that these men, of all our military forces these men in particular, would deliberately associate themselves with Nazis.

Hier says he doesn’t believe it was an innocent mistake.

He wants the Marines disciplined and he thinks the American public has a right to know what “really” happened – with the obvious implication being that something nefarious is happening.

“This shameful display of SS 'lightning bolts' by U.S. service personnel enrages our regional allies, emboldens the extremist Islamist forces with whom we are contending, and eviscerates good order, morale, and discipline within the U.S. Marine Corps”

The Rabbi offers no evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, to back up this claim.

I’m not saying he’s wrong per se, but I see no evidence to back up Rabbi Hier’s assertion that good order and discipline have been degraded in any fashion whatsoever within the Marine Corps as a result of this picture. Nor do I see any evidence that our allies are offended in any official or unofficial capacity (and by allies, I assume we mean Israel, since in this post Bush era they’re the only ally who actually counts or would possibly give a good goddamn). Nor do our enemies appear to be rallying around this picture for either good or ill. Note, I do admit to bias here, as I am always supremely skeptical of any accusation that contains the vague and non-quantifiable word “embolden.”

It’s ironic, don’t you think? The Rabbi’s unsupported claim of insidious evil within the ranks? A creeping fifth column agenda perpetrated by those who would topple freedom and liberty from within? Ironic in that there was a time and a place where similar unsupported accusations against Jews led to their persecution at the hands of those who thought themselves righteous in the service of country.

Maybe it’s just me.

One has to wonder, however, if the good Rabbi has seen the logo displayed on the cover of the various KISS albums, but I digress.

One also has to wonder if those expressing outrage are familiar with military symbols in general.

Sure the SS displayed on the Scout Sniper’s flag resembles the Nazi SS logo. Maybe even deliberately so and with malice aforethought. So? So do the skulls routinely displayed in military tattoos and painted on tanks and worn as decorations resemble the Nazi Deaths Head. Just as do the swords and daggers and various crosses of military heraldry. The Nazis didn’t invent this stuff you know, no more than they invented the Swastika or any other military iconology.

Now, does that mean that the Marines in that picture above displayed the best judgment? I think the answer to that is probably obvious. At least I hope it is.

And I can certainly understand how the SS symbol could be perceived by Jews the same way the Stars and Bars are perceived by the descendants of American slaves.

However, context is everything.

These are young men, full of pride, full of piss and vinegar, the best of the best. They are bent to the horrible business of war. It’s important to understand that they are not just surrounded by the symbols and tools of death, they are surrounded by death itself. You’ve heard me say this before, context is everything. Everything. And the context of this picture is not something that many folks experience – and that’s probably a good thing. These men are Marines, Scout Snipers, and they were proud of that.

Should you be outraged that their flag bears some passing resemblance to a hated Nazi symbol?

Outraged? Probably not.

Should you be concerned that they, as Marines, didn’t seem to know why others might be offended?

Maybe. The USMC thought so, and took corrective action. Something Marines do very well indeed.

Should you be worried that these young men appear to be ignorant of history?

No.

The young are often ignorant, and naïve, and blissfully unaware of the consequences of their own actions in the greater world (just one of the many reasons we tend not to send older folks to war, they are far too aware of the consequences. But I digress, again). These hard young men will have learned from this, the Marine Corp will make certain of that – you can count on it. Thus will they gain a bit of wisdom. Or not. Such is being young and foolish and indestructible and alive.

I was there once, long ago, and I suspect many of you were too.

Now, to be clear, I’m not going to be so crass as to tell Rabbi Hier not to be outraged, but it seems to me that there are plenty of cases of legitimate hate that he should be far more concerned about.

And he doesn’t have to look any further than the comments his own outrage has generated:

and N korean, Iranian and chinese soldiers march like nazis, you yahoo libtard writers are waaay too sensitive, go bang a black chick and maybe you will see the light [sic]

I, um, what?

Just another example of trying to tear down our military. Media is behind it all- harming our country to make headlines!

GENERAL .... NO MORE VIDEO ... NO MORE PHOTO ... WAR IS WAR ....

Ah yes, the liberal media is responsible. If only they wouldn’t report things, then the Rabbi wouldn’t have anything to be offended by. If only it was like the old days, say 1938 or so, when Jews and other undesirables were being herded into camps in Europe, with Americans blissfully unaware.

The New World Order has arrived.

Really? This is the New World Order? I was sort of expecting, I dunno, more.

Also, New World Order sounds like a punk metal band to me. Four skinny white guys, shaved heads, makeup, leather, Nazi symbols, doing a Sex Pistols cover of God Save the Queen, she ain’t no human being!

hello wake up. i have friends who are white. OK the symbol is questionable. if it isn't then its OK to be white and proud of it. all people are proud of what they are born with soooooooo i guess these bunch of marine guys/girls are proud to be white and perhaps like to kill of their own mankind.........hellohellohello.................................carrying a symbol of what who knows..............may be like to scare.....BOO!!!!! [sic]

Boo, indeed. Wait, what?

I see this as an insult to anyone who has ever worn the uniform, and particularly insulting to WWII veterans and those who died to rid the world of the Nazi's including my grandfather, and the families of hundreds of thousands of their descendants.

Well, thank you for being insulted on behalf of all us veterans and our families and all of our descendents. Big of you.

This pic is 2 years old? It is being dredged up because the 'big' story about Marines peeing on dead savages did not gin up the outrage the press was hoping for... throw this one out there now and see if it works...brought to you by the AP commitee to re-elect the president.

It always comes down to Obama, doesn’t it? The man is nefarious. He probably ordered these Marines to make this picture. I bet they’re not even Marines! Why, they’re probably gay homosexual socialist Jewish actors on a sound stage! Will he stop at nothing to get reelected? Ooooh, now I’m outraged. Outraged I tell you!

Acted out of ignorance? This story gets lamer and lamer. If elite snipers are ignorant, why do they have a .$50,000.00 rifle in their hands, they might shoot someone out of ignorance? I cant tell you how much this pi)sses me off. This is how it starts everytime. [sic]

Oh yes, when fascism comes to America, it’ll be in the guise of a couple of Scout Snipers and their lightning bolt flag.

notice how the excited states habitually fails to punish troops who engage in despicable behaviour? [sic]

Where exactly are the “exited states?” Because here in America we do, in fact, punish troops who violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and you don’t have to go very far in this war to find numerous examples. Note that these Marines did not, in fact, actually violate any provision of the UCMJ. Just saying.

Our military is rife with drugs and hate. It's like these men and women go to prison in these foreign countries. When they return there is no assimilation back to civvys. we need some sort of process to keep them in touch with reality. The hate does not have a switch, it's taught. What is learned can be unlearned...[sic]

I’m not really sure what “reality” the commenter is in touch with, but somebody has some serious unlearning to do.

The public school system is responsible for dumbing down our present generation. Symbolism and its importance is lost to kids flashing fake ghetto signs, their pants hanging below their buttocks, and tattoos that need to be financed like a house mortgage. How can we expect them to know the wickedness of SS lightning bolts styled flags from an upside-down five pointed star to a circled inverted cross with the arms broken. [sic]

Maybe we should make them join the military, that ought to straighten them out. Ur, no, wait...

Well, they're not making any bones about it. I guess this is an official police state. Welcome to the homeland.

And welcome to you. Now, take off your shoes and put them on the belt. Say, you’re not a Muslim or an illegal alien are you?

And if Rabbi Hier wants something to be truly concerned about, he should be concerned about the kind of mind that could pen this:

The rape of the republic: The Zionist Fascist Ameikan Empire and the Goyin wars. International Banksters with their puppets Mayor Schwartza Pinocchio Hussein (D SMack Daddy Super Fly), (immaculated to clean the white mess created by the white puppet Mayor War Criminal G. Bush), Lucifer Clinton (High Priestess of the Illuminati and sexual deviant) and the Swindlers list of Timothy Geithner (money changer and knee capper), Ben Shalom Bernake (money counterfeiter and ponzi schemer, head of the Federal Reserve, a private banking cartel that has been designed to systematically destroy the value of our currency, drain the wealth of the American public and enslave the federal government to perpetually expanding debt, bailing out whoever it wants to with no accountability like Citigroup $2.513 trillion, Morgan Stanley $2.041 t, Merrill Lynch $1.949 t, Bank of America $1.344 t, Barclays PLC $868 billion, Bear Sterns $853 b, Goldman Sachs $814 b, Royal Bank of Scotland $541 b, JP Morgan Chase $391 b, Deutsche Bank $354 b, UBS $287 b, Credit Suisse $262 b, Lehman Brothers $183 b, Bank of Scotland $181 b, BNP Paribas $175 b, Wells Fargo $159 b, Dexia $159 b, Wachovia $142 b, Dresdner Bank $135 b, Societe Generale $124 b, All Other Borrowers $2.639 trillion), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Deli Land mouth piece) and a extreme surplus of terrorist Freemasons and self hating leftist jews douche bags replacing head of states, heads of Central Banks and its entire DEBT-based CRIMINAL SYSTEM enslaving present and future generations making the world safe for the international banking cabal and multinational corporations. Why another war? To cover-up evidence of economic crimes: A war would go many miles toward preventing thorough investigation of in-your-face-theft of money invested by Americans in such outfits as MF Global. To solve unemployment: Sending young people into battle means they must be supported by the folks back home who, because of kin in the trenches, will gladly pay higher tribute (taxes) and that, in turn, will fatten the purse of those who profit from the killing of humans with the War Industries. War causes the destruction of people and things. This leads to massive opportunity at all levels for reconstruction to occur benefiting those companies that are part of the cabal. The love of money, the root of all evil. [sic]

I’m not saying that these Marines didn’t do something dumb.

But I think we can safely assume that they are not, in fact, Nazis, neo or otherwise. And the last time I checked, dumb isn’t a hanging offense.

I think we can also safely assume that the chain of command has dealt with the situation as appropriate.

Rabbi Hier seems to forget that engaging in witch hunts and self-righteous accusation is something the people he reviles (with good reason, certainly) indulged themselves in.

Should we be ever vigilant? Certainly.

But there is a fine line between vigilance and becoming the evil we guard against.

And Rabbi Hier would do well to remember that.

As would we all.

Stonekettle Station’s Guide to Election 2012 Terminology

2012-02-02T20:01:00.001-09:00

It’s my honor and privilege to endorse Mitt Romney

It’s my honor and privilege.

It’s my honor.

It’s my privilege.

It looks like English.

It sounds like English.

It’s my honor and my privilege. It’s my political party and I can endorse Mitt Romney if I want to.

And if you read that sentence without attribution or context you might think that it actually was English and accidentally take it at face value, as such:

It is indeed my honor and privilege to endorse this fine fellow, Mitt Romney, whom I admire most highly and who I think will make a most excellent Grand Panjandrum of our humble democracy. He is a right dandy gentleman and I heartily enjoy his dashing good looks and the robust earthy aroma of his manly flatulence. I would most happily award him my daughter’s trust fund and virginity and raise the resulting progeny as my own flesh and heir. He is a good egg. I love him the way a 13 year old girl loves Justin Beiber and unicorns, but in a totally non-gay manly sports analogy fashion.

And if you thought that, Gentle Reader, well, you’d be oh so very wrong.

See, that phrase, it is my honor and privilege, was uttered by none other than the insatiable attention-absorbing ShamWow! of American politics, former faux presidential candidate, Donald Trump (seriously, Colbert’s campaign for president is more legit).

Context, my pixilated electronic friends, is everything.

See, The Donald was speaking not English, rather he was speaking in the Orwellian forked-tongue patois of election year politics. The fact he’s sporting Phyllis Diller’s haircut and channeling infomercial creeper, Vince Offer, should have been your first clue.

What the wispy Cowlick King actually said was:

I cannot believe that I’m doing this. I can’t even look at you, Romney, you with your Donny Osmond hair and your smug grin. God how I hate you, you filthy cult-loving bastard, I’m way richer than you and I’ve slathered on so much illegal Mexican Rogaine that I’m growing tits, but I still can’t get hair like that. You come anywhere near my daughter, you flatulent prick, and I’ll have you buried in the foundation of Trump Tower and covered in fifteen feet of concrete. Mitt, what the hell kind of name is that? Fuck you, Mitt. Well, anyway, here’s a check for your SuperPAC and I’ll drop you a list of legislation that I’ll be expecting your administration to approve.

See?

It’s important to understand that politicians use words that sound like English (or ‘Merican! if you’re reading this in Texas) but really mean something entirely different from the standard Webster’s definition.

Confused? Of course you are. Here, let me give you an example: the phrase “man of the People” is often assumed to mean “somebody like us” or perhaps “just an average Joe.” This is incorrect. In fact this phrase actually means “his net worth is not less than $200 Million, most of which is parked in off-shore tax-sheltered accounts.”

I know, I know, it’s difficult to understand. Don’t despair.

Using the previous example, the trick is to examine the second syllable of the first word, stressors on the vowel indicate… What? It’s politics, of course there are two syllables. The second syllable is unspoken. It’s invisible. See, you have to read between the ... oh, now, stop that. Here, breath into this paper bag. No, no, that’s ok, the barf bags are complimentary. In fact, take two, it’s going to be a long road to November.

Tell you what, never mind the technical gibberish. I’ll make it simple for you, Gentle Reader. As a public service, Stonekettle Station’s crack cadre of highly trained political analysts are here to get you through election season – and by “crack cadre” I mean me and Mr. George Killian, with occasional assistance from our panel of studio experts, Mr. Bushmills on the Evangelical Protestant candidates and by Mr. Jameson when it comes to the Catholics – and Ms Bubbly Pink Champagne, should we find it necessary to discuss Rick Santorum. Since Rick Perry ~~dropped out~~ suspended his campaign (see what I did there? You’re learning) we can dispense with Senor Tequila.

Now, forget about vowels and invisible syllables and help yourself to a cold one and the appropriate Irish – depending on your denomination, Catholics help the Protestants with the booze – and before you know it you’ll be speaking fluent politician. Stick with me and you’ll be all over this election year stuff like a Japanese businessman on a teenage girl in a sailor suit – though you may have a headache and hate yourself in the morning, nothing a handful of Vitamin B and a Bloody Mary won’t fix (speaking of which, be careful with those, you don’t want to end up babbling incoherent Bachmann and burping up celery scented vodka).

Remember, folks, the words only look like English:

Let’s start with an easy one: We The People: You’ve been hearing this a lot lately. Weedapeeble this, weedapeeble that, usually followed by some unintelligible gibberish, spitting, cuss words, and punctuated with “Constitution! Constitution!” and some waving of loaded firearms. “We the People” almost sounds like it means, well, us. All of us. Together. Black and white, liberal and conservative, gay and straight. Us. We. People. It means nothing of the sort, especially when voiced by a true American patriot in a pointy Ben Franklin hat waving a little Chinese made American flag. What “We The People” actually means is: Get out, get the hell out, just get right the hell out of America! Which is, of course, what the Founding Fathers really meant when they wrote the US Constitution. It’s totally true, it’s called the Allen West clause.

Which, of course, takes us to our next phrase, namely Get The Hell Out: Think it means get the hell out? Wrong. It only sounds that way. I know, I know, but it’s ok if you’re confused. Hell, even politicians sometimes get confused when they use this phrase. And they’re professionals.

Congressman Allen West (R-Fl): “We need to let President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and my dear friend chairman of the Democratic National Committee, we need to let them know that Florida ain’t on the table. Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else and get the hell out of the United States of America!”

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien: “I don’t get it. I mean, I don’t understand what you’re saying, you’re telling Obama and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to get out of the United States?”

Congressman Allen West: “No, Soledad. Soledad, absolutely not. And you know that. No, I truly, no joke, I’m not being facetious. I don’t get what you’re saying.”

(The word you’re looking for here is Faceplam, which means exactly what you think it means, i.e. Lt Colonel douchebag. Bonus points if you know what West meant when he said “my good friend.”)

Speaking of getting the hell out, next up is Self Deportation, which sounds a lot like what Rick Perry did when he self-deported himself back to Texas once it became clear that Jesus was just fucking with him, but in reality means an act of chronic self-gratification that will eventually cause Mitt Romney to go blind.

Misspoke: You hear politicians use this word typically a day or so after they made a comment regarding either tacos or poor people. Misspoke sounds like a politician is admitting that he was wrong and he’s sorry. Sort of. What it actually means is: I’m sorry you heard me wrong.

None of this would be a problem if it wasn’t for the Liberal Media, which, of course, is code for “Damnit! I didn’t know that bitch was going to ask me what I read!” Also, “What the hell do you mean somebody recorded it and put it on YouTube? They can do that? Dear God! Tell them I misspoke!”

Family Values: I value my family, all three of them. Plus the maid. And my rentboy. And, uh, damn that liberal media! Damn them.

Obama: See Hitler.

Hitler: See Obama.

Entrepreneurial: Jesus.

Flip Flop: What the other guy does. Me? My position on the issues “matured” (I was going to say “evolved” but I didn’t want to have to come back here tomorrow and admit that I misspoke).

Establish A Moon Colony: Think “Jumped the shark” or “Nuked the Fridge.” Use this in place of either phrase in casual conversation and dazzle your friends with your political hipness.

Then casually mention how you changed your Facebook Philosophy to “Stonekettle Station.”

You’ll be so politically savvy that Donald Trump will be endorsing you next.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I ate a big dinner and I have to go send another politician to Washington, if you know what I mean.

Down And Out On Moonbase Freedom

2012-02-01T20:07:00.001-09:00

Date: June 1, 2019

To: President, United States, Earth

Fm: ~~Governor~~ Acting Governor Pro Tem, Lunar Colony, Moon

Subject: ~~Help us, you rat bastard!~~ Status Report

~~Die Asshole Die!~~ Dear President Gingrich,

Sir, I’m writing in desperate hope that you’ll ~~finally pull your fat head out of your ass~~ hear our plea for assistance. Unless we receive federal funding soon I fear this will be my last status report.

Please don’t get me wrong, we here on Luna do indeed appreciate all you have done for us so far. We really enjoyed the inspirational movie you sent up on the last supply rocket. Really, who doesn’t love Newt Gingrich Saves The World? Personally, Sir, ~~it makes me want to vomit until my space boots come up~~ I could watch it over and over. Brad Pitt’s depiction of you as a child genius who overcomes crippling morality just in time to save the world from ~~Bill Clinton~~ Satan brought tears to my eyes. And I thought Orly Taitz just totally nailed the part of Monica (Honestly, I wouldn’t have guessed that she could, uh, act). On a side note: I don’t want to complain, but it sure would have been nice if you’d thought to have NASA send up a couple of air bottles with the movie. Ah well, I’m sure we can breath inspiration if we have to.

Despite our efforts to live up to your new American Motto, “~~Arbeit macht frei~~ Annoy a liberal, work hard and be happy,” I’m sorry to report that colonization of the moon is not going well. ~~Jesus Christ, get us the hell out of here!~~

The problems are manifold and the men have taken to calling our little outpost “Beano Station” – because there be no water, there be no food, there be ~~no fucking air!~~ … well, you get the idea. Very soon, there will be no people – well, no Americans anyway ~~because there’s no fucking air!~~ The ~~Chinese Base~~ New Yuèliàng Province seems to be thriving and there’s been some talk about joining up with them since most of our moonbase parts and equipment come from China anyway. Now, I know what you’re thinking, Sir, but I can assure you that this kind of thinking is confined at present to only one person. I have to say though, socialism seems a bit trivial at this point. That might sound like selling out, but some people really like breathing, plus the communists give you free pajamas when you sign up. Also, we could use the medical coverage.

I know that you don’t believe in government subsidized assistance unless there’s oil involved, and believe me we’ve looked, but despite the expertise and assurances of Vice President Palin, there doesn’t seem to be any here on the moon. Perhaps you could send her up to show us what we’re doing wrong. I think she’d be right at home, it’s cold as hell and you can actually see Russia from here, terrestrial cloud cover permitting.

Now, obviously, we were supposed to pay our own way, and, Sir, we tried. We mined tons and tons of Helium-3. Unfortunately, as you may know, the market for He-3 is sort of stagnate at the moment, what with there being no actual ~~Ayn Rand perpetual motion~~ fusion power plants having been invented and all. Now, I’m not saying that it’s because you had all the scientists put to death. I’m not criticizing, ~~you idiot~~ Sir, praise Jesus, you understand, it’s just that it sort put a damper on the whole “The Moon Will Be The New Saudi Arabia” thing when your administration fired all the teachers and shut down the public school system for indoctrinating the kids into ~~science~~ liberalism. Turns out colonization of the moon is rocket science after all. Who knew?

Additionally, as you know, attempts to build an He-3 pipeline from the moon to the Lower 48 have repeatedly failed. Personally, Sir, if we must blame somebody, I recommend we blame the homosexual environmentalist agenda for our failure to expand capitalism beyond the bulkheads of our little settlement. I suspect that despite your generous funding of the Bachmann Center for Faith Based Americanism, a few gay environmentalists remain unconverted and at large conducting subversive sabotage of our precious freedoms. Homos hate capitalism, Sir, everybody knows that.

The good news is that with passage of the recent National ~~Life Begins With The First Budweiser~~ Personhood Act, individual spermatozoa are now considered people. Trust me, Mr. President, after eight years up here living in a tin can without getting any action, I’m pretty sure I can push us over the 13,000 person population threshold for statehood all by myself, especially if I can get five minutes of non-censored access to the internet.

The bad news is that it turns out faith-based terraforming is somewhat less optimal than we first hoped. We held a rally to ask God for atmosphere and stuff. However, despite herculean efforts by our prayer engineers, when Colonial Governor Perry stepped into the airlock to go outside and sample our new Garden of Eden he unfortunately exploded. We’re not sure why. Everybody we sent in to scrape him off the walls also exploded. We are now blaming Muslim terrorists. Also, you’ll want to avoid Airlock 3, just saying.

I know you’re busy with preparations for your pending marriage (fifth time’s the charm!) and the war in Iran, Praise Jesus, but I know that we will be ultimately victorious. After eight years of invasion, you’d think they’d just give up, wouldn’t you? I must admit that we do enjoy watching the show through our telescope, I assume the bright blue flashes are the nuclear ones?

Anyway, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d really appreciate it if you’d consider sending up some air and maybe a little something to eat. Also, if you’re looking to get rid of, say, a couple dozen morally questionable liberal types of the female persuasion, we wouldn’t mind. At all. Seriously.

Sincerely,

Acting Governor (Pro Tem) and sole remaining multi-cellular resident of Moonbase Reagan

P.S. I hear gasoline is now over a hundred dollars a gallon, are you sure I couldn’t interest the other Fifty States in some Helium-3?

P.P.S. You ever read Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress? Remember the part about the linear accelerator? No? Pity.

P.P.P.S. Hey, I can see your house from here! Why do I mention it. No reason.

Eagle and Moon

2012-01-29T18:28:00.001-09:00

Busy today, so you didn’t get a post.

In compensation, have some Alaska:

It was about minus twenty Fahrenheit. My son and I were digging giant blocks of ice out of the driveway and moving them with the plow when I looked up and saw this.

The sun was setting and turning the landscape a kind of golden yellow. The air was so cold and clear it was like you could reach out and touch the moon. I grabbed the camera and climbed the hill across from my house and managed to take several dozen shots through the telephoto lens. I didn’t bother with setting the exposure manually, it was too damned cold to fumble barehanded with the camera controls, I just put the Nikon into full auto mode and held down the shutter release with my gloves on.

I posted this earlier today on Facebook and Twitter. For those of you who don’t follow me on social media, well, I wouldn’t want you to think I was neglecting you.

Be patient, actual blog post to follow.

The Special Kind of Crazy

2012-01-26T20:33:00.001-09:00

The frothy hyperventilating began immediately, didn’t it?

I would have been disappointed if it hadn’t.

Last year’s State of the Union address was a bit subdued, what with Gabby Giffords having been shot through the brainpan not long before. When Obama entered the House chamber in 2011, Republican and Democratic lawmakers sat together as a show of bipartisan support arrayed around Giffords’ empty chair. The booing from the opposition was subdued, as were the cheers from the president’s own party. Of course, despite the new seating arrangement and the vague empty promises of bipartisanship, the frothy insanity, finger pointing, blame laying, chest thumping, dick waggling, comparisons to Hitler and the long-awaited Anti-Christ, and dire proclamations of Islamofascicommunazis started even before the President finished speaking.

On a side note, yesterday Giffords’ border bill passed the House by unanimous consent, proving once and for all that Congress can get things done in a bipartisan manner – providing that the bill’s sponsor gets shot in the head and resigns first. So, yay for progress. But I digress.

As we enter into the final fevered ten months of the frenetic spittle-flecked shit-fest that is the modern American version of democratic civilization, I expected this year to be different only in the intensity of the maddened venom tinged rhetoric.

Needless to say, I was not disappointed.

It started with Mitch Daniels.

At first it appeared that Daniels would be, perhaps, a bit more reasoned, more staid, than Paul Ryan’s strident call to arms last year – and vastly less entertaining than Michele Bachmann’s squalling glassy-eyed paranoid Tea Party response. Daniels looks kind and grandfatherly, like he should be seated on a tractor wearing a worn comfortable woolen sweater and hawking diabetes supplies next to Wilford Brimley. It’s only when he starts to talk that you suddenly realize that Daniels is nuts, his vague fixed smile and unblinking walleyed stare are a thin veneer over what looks to be the early onset of senile dementia. Daniel’s “response” resembled an actual coherent rebuttal, but upon closer inspection was actually just a bunch of conservative talk-radio sound bites lifted whole cloth from the usual pundits. The criticism was obviously cut and pasted together long before the president’s address was even in rough draft, and Daniels delivered it like a heavily medicated mental patient triggered by some unseen stimulus into reciting the Gettysburg Address as a party trick.

I think my favorite part was when Daniels lamented Obama’s evil Orwellian plan to outlaw incandescent light bulbs. Oh no! Anything but that! Keep your filthy government hands off of my hot yellow bulbs, goddamnit!

Just one problem, it was actually George W. Bush who signed that into law on December 18, 2007.

That’s a full year before Obama took office, just in case you got your history from Professor Gingrich.

In fact, that particular bill sailed through Congress with broad bipartisan support, 314 to 100 in the House, 86 to 4 in the Senate. It was only after Obama took office that energy conservation suddenly became government overreach. When it was a conservative in the White House, LED bulbs were just common sense, but when it is a liberal occupying the Oval Office suddenly we’re talking about the stark monochromic light of fascism!

Funny thing, last month Obama signed legislation delaying the regulation – at the opposition of manufacturers and importers who have already geared up to sell the new CFL and LED bulbs. You’d like to think a sitting lawmaker would know that, wouldn’t you? If it bothered him so much that he felt compelled to mention light bulbs on national TV in response to the State of the Union address, I mean. You’d also think that if Daniels’ GOP handlers were going to write his little rebuttal in advance, they would have at least done some research – wait, unless that was the day Wikipedia was down due to the SOPA protest, but, hey I digress, as is my tendency.

Yes, I expected bizarre hyperbole and foamy red-flecked froth this year.

I expected bellicose outrage and ranting punditry and pompous bloviating.

And I was not disappointed.

Turns out, Daniels is a piker.

Mitch Daniels was nothing but the warm up act.

For extra crunchy crazy, well, you need to step out into Statuary Hall where republicans gathered to vent their spleens after the address. Universally, conservative lawmakers were offended by the entire speech and testily pointed out how Obama’s optimism is really defeatist hatred of the United States, his praise of the US Military and the US Navy SEALs (who were at that very moment rescuing an American held hostage by pirates in Somalia on Obama’s orders) is really disdain for America’s men and women in arms, his call to bring jobs back from overseas is really contempt for business, and his establishment of consumer protections and regulations on the banking industry is really both a hatred of the free market and white people in general. But for the absolute zenith of the absurd let’s focus on reaction to this line from the President’s address:

Tonight, I am proposing that every state, every state, require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18.

The sheer unmitigated gall of the man! Where does he as President of the United States get off suggesting that American kids get the minimum educational qualifications necessary to compete in our society at the most basic level? How dare he! Why it’s outrageous! What if kids actually did that and managed to get entry level jobs and started working their way up the ladder instead of ending up on welfare and other entitlement pro…. ok, bad example, but I think I’ve made my point here.

Tea Party darling, Utah Senator Mike Lee responded, "That's none of his business! He's not a principal! He's not a public school teacher! He's not a governor, he's not a mayor. These are matters for state and local government!"

Yeah! Damned right! Why…uh, wait, what was that about “he’s not a teacher?” Are conservatives listening to teachers now? Because I thought teachers were liberal commies who hated America. Did that change? Also, point of order, Obama actually is a teacher, or rather a professor of Constitutional Law. Does that count? No, I suppose not.

Arizona Republican Trent Franks was equally outraged, "What are you gonna do, give them the electric chair? It should be handled on the parental level."

Exactly.

Huh? You there, in the back, do you have a question or do you just have to go to the bathroom? Speak up.

Seriously, are you blind? It’s right there! Obviously Obama was saying that he intends to implement a federal regulatory agency that will put kids who drop out of school to death! Duh. How do you not see that?

Georgia Republican Phil Gingrey agreed, "To require them to stay in high school to age 18, those who have absolutely no intention of getting an education or value an education are disrupting the other kids in class. I think it's just a government misguided run amok quite honestly.”

Amok! Amok! Government run amok! Oh stop the Amok! (Sorry, I just like saying Amok! Amok! Amok! That’s a funny word. Amok!)

Here’s my idea, why wait until they’re teenagers? Most kids know if they hate school or not by the time they’re in second grade, I say it’s never to early to drop out! More for the rest of us.

Question, why is it just good old American conservative values (which made this country great, darn it!) to suggest that black people should get jobs instead of food stamps when Newt Gingrich says it, but fascist government overreach worthy of red-eyed outrage when a black liberal President suggests that maybe kids should stay in school?

Say, wasn’t no child left behind a republican idea? So what, now it’s ok to leave some kids behind?

What? Put your hand down, I’m just asking is all. Sheesh.

Do you ever wonder who votes idiots like this into office?

You do?

Well wonder no longer. They’re all over on the Yahoo news forum, lets go check out their comments:

I am not for mandated government control of our schools. Obama is from a system where kids are forced to attend or they get beaten, their father's have their hands cut off, the women are stoned - don't tell me I don't know. I am a Republican

Obama is from a system where kids get beaten for not attending school, fathers have their hands cut off, and mothers are stoned to death for their children’s truancy. Damn, school in Hawaii is harsh.

It is NOT education: It is INDOCTRINATION for the Communist Party.

Oh noes! Communists! Communists! Help us Tailgunner Joe!

Question, the countries that are beating us economically right now? China, for example, aren’t they communist? Isn’t India socialist? Hey! You stop that right now. No spitting.

the Dems only hope to get anyone off the welfare rolls is to force them to stay in school and somehow learn enough to get them to stay out fo prison for dealing drugs or raping someone. Republicans meanwhile take the approcah that we should elt the kids who want to learn, actually do it. Meanwhile, if you wash out you should fend for yourself, instea dof living off the ones who do stay in school [sic].

The logic, it burns.

Burns like trying to piss with a case of the clap.

There’s more, oh so much more, but it hurts me to type it. If you want to read more comments on this subject, you can go Google the Yahoo for yourself.

Snark aside, there may be good reason for Republican outrage. And even better reasons why so many conservatives today are advocating for the right drop out of school.

A new report in LiveScience spells out why.

(Ok, you got me, I didn’t put the snark aside after all. Sorry)

Finally, I think it’s important to note that all things are relative, even stupidity.

There’s never a politician so nuts, that you can’t find one crazier.

Much crazier.

Seriously.

SOPA, PIPA, Good Intentions And The Road To Hell

2012-01-19T18:03:00.001-09:00

Do you get high?

I’m talking about controlled substances.

High. Stoned. Buzzed. You know, like that.

Now, now, relax. Don’t get all paranoid. I’m not asking if you’re a crack-head or heroin junkie. I’m not asking if you’re an addict. I’m not instituting a piss test or anything here on Stonekettle Station. I figure if you’ve got a meth monkey on your back, you’re probably not reading this anyway.

What I’m asking is if you use drugs on, let’s say, a purely recreational basis. That’s what I’m asking.

No, of course you don’t, that would be illegal (so you probably shouldn’t actually answer my question in the comments, for example).

But let’s say, hypothetically speaking, that even though you yourself would never use drugs, you know somebody who does because this is America and we all pretty much know somebody who does illegal substances in one fashion or another.

So let’s talk about your hypothetical friend, the recreational drug user, shall we?

Your “friend” gets high. He smokes a little weed after work (or maybe before work if he’s an airline pilot or nuclear power plant technician). Maybe he pops a little speed once in a while, you know mother’s little helper. Or does a little Oxy (if he’s a politician or a minister). Or whatever. He’s always got a bag of oregano, or couple of those blue pills and a roofie for date night. You know this guy, right?

Where does he get it?

He always seems to have some, doesn’t he?

And it’s illegal, right?

So, where does he get it?

Drug dealers don’t advertise, at least not in the usual manner.

People who sell illicit drugs don’t go around telling people they’re drug dealers, they don’t list “Drug Dealer” as their profession on resumes and tax returns. They don’t wear a sandwich board that says “Lookin’ to get baked? I can help!” They don’t have those little magnetic signs on the back of their cars like the Mary Kay pushers do. You can’t Google your local dealer. They don’t list “blow” in the Yellow Pages. And the cops are looking for drugs dealers. Hell, there is a veritable army of law enforcement actively hunting drug dealers, from cops to the DEA, FBI, NSA, CIA, DIA, ATF, TSA, the Coast Guard, the Navy, the Air Force, and a hundred other federal, state, and international agencies all the way down to the school guidance counselor.

And yet…

And yet, your “friend” has no problem whatsoever scoring whatever recreational chemical he wants, whenever he wants, in whatever quantity he wants. Period.

And if you wanted some, hypothetically speaking of course, well it wouldn’t take you more than a day to find whatever it is that you went looking for even if you had no idea how to go about it.

Those of you who know me, know that I’ve spent some time in the counter-narcotics field. I’ve hunted drug smugglers in South America and on the high seas. I know more than a bit about counter-narcotics. And I’m intimately familiar with the soup sandwich which is the so-called “War on drugs” and the agencies responsible for waging it.

I’m going to let you in on a secret: the war is over, we lost.

The war is over, and everybody is out back smoking a fatty in celebration.

It’s been more than ~~twenty~~ forty years now since ~~Reagan~~ Nixon declared war on drugs. Forty plus years and billions upon billions upon billions of dollars, and what? Nothing. That’s right, nothing. Not a goddamned dent in the drug trade. And in fact, it’s worse now because now we’ve got a bunch of new drugs and our idiotic, disorganized, ineffective efforts to curb the problem have only made the drug makers, smugglers, and dealers more innovative and cunning.

Oh sure, we’ve burned thousands of tons of pot and coke and hash and heroin in DEA incinerators, we’ve killed a few drug lords, and we’ve got hundreds of smugglers (about forty or so I helped put away) and we’ve managed to put tens of thousands of smalltime penny ante drug users in prison.

And yet…

And yet, anybody anywhere in the US can get any kind of illegal drug they want any damned time they want and there isn’t a thing anybody can do about it. And that, my electronic friends, is a goddamned fact.

The so-called war on drugs is a joke. A sick, sad, stupid joke. It didn’t get rid of drugs, it didn’t reduce drug use, or drug smuggling, or drug violence, or drug related deaths. It didn’t, in fact, do a damned thing. All it does is keep a lot of law enforcement types employed chasing their tails.

See, counter-narcotics law enforcement is big business. There’s a lot of money in it. Counter-narcotics operations fund ships and planes and intelligence centers, it buys tactical training and satellite time and banks of monitoring equipment, it funds a dozen three letter law enforcement agencies and government operations and drug sniffing dogs, it pays hundreds of thousands of lawyers and judges and legal eagles and special courts, and it pays the salaries of uncounted thousands of enforcement folks in a dozen different uniforms, it buys the fuel that powers the Coast Guard and Navy ships patrolling the drugs lanes of the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, it pays informants, and it pays billions in foreign aid.

But what the war on drugs doesn’t do is actually stop anybody from using illegal drugs – including the folks currently in prison for selling and using illegal drugs.

And the reason that the war on drugs doesn’t stop anybody from doing drugs is because it attacks the symptoms and not the disease.

Here’s the simple truth: illegal drugs exist because Americans want drugs.

Americans want to get high, they want drugs and they will get them. It’s really just that simple. Prohibition should have taught us that, but apparently we were stoned and didn’t get the message.

Until you fix that, there will be a lucrative illegal drug trade here in the United States.

Just so.

Now, let me ask you something, what makes anybody think that a bill as utterly stupid as the Stop Online Piracy Act or the Protect IP Act is going to actually stop online piracy in any way whatsoever?

Because it won’t.

It won’t even slow it down.

At least drugs are a tangible object that can be detected with a lot of hard work. Dogs can sniff out drugs. You smell some drugs on people, and you can spot the physical and mental effects too. There are piss tests and blood tests for drugs. You have to have a lab to make certain drugs. You need precursor chemicals. Drugs have bulk, weight, mass, they have to moved over the border in trucks and planes and boats or smuggled through tunnels. And you still can’t stop illicit drug use. You don’t even have that basic advantage when searching for illegal downloads. A kid with a bunch of pirated music on his MP3 player doesn’t smell any different than any other kid. Dogs can’t detect pirated movies. We’re talking about a collection of electrons here. What in the hell makes anybody anywhere think that they’re going to stop illegal downloading just because Congress passes a law? Especially one as utterly stupid and ineffective as this one?

At best, SOPA/PIPA will be a momentary inconvenience to online piracy – and a monumental long term headache to everybody else. Just exactly like the war on drugs is a mild inconvenience to drug users and a huge sucking chest wound of a problem to the rest of the country.

And at worst, SOPA/PIPA will mean that for all intents and purposes, the American version of the Internet will become indistinguishable from the Chinese version or the Iranian – and likely worse since we’re currently actively helping the Iranians and the Chinese circumvent their government’s restrictions. Goddamned ironic, that, don’t you think?

Just like drugs, Americans want online content, and they are going to get it.

One way or the other. Legally or not.

Does that mean that I think online piracy isn’t a problem or that we shouldn’t do anything about it? No, of course not. As a creator myself of online content which is routinely pirated, I damned sure would like to see some protection. But SOPA isn’t it. SOPA is a hell of a lot more likely to result in the end of Stonekettle Station rather than its protection.

The simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of Congress doesn’t understand how the internet actually works, just as they have no idea how the illegal drug trade works either.

There are a few, very few, elected officials in this country who have any idea whatsoever about what makes the internet the place that it is. Politicians talk about freedom and innovation and free speech, but real freedom and innovation and unfettered free speech scares the ever living beejeebers out of them. The chaotic uncontrolled untaxed dynamic of the internet is anathema to everything your typical governmental bureaucrat holds sacred. This isn’t particularly surprising considering that over forty percent of the House is made up of people with law degrees, in the Senate it’s well over fifty percent. Most of the rest have business degrees of one flavor or another. There are a few doctors. There’s one nurse. There’s a distressingly large number with degrees in theology. And about thirty members of the House have no advanced education at all.

So far as I can determine, none of them have a degree in computer science, information technologies, or any computer/network related field.

Or any experience at all working in the IT field.

Or much experience in social networking since they usually pay staffers to do that sort of thing. There’s no way to determine how many congressmen download music or shop online, or read blogs, or watch YouTube channels, but it is likely that number isn’t particularly high given the average age and lack of technological curiosity that pervades much of Congress.

Other than tweeting pictures of their junk to random woman, or hiring a rentboy to carry their bags on a trip to Cancun, or surfing for gay porn, it would appear on the face of things that the vast majority of lawmakers who are right now deciding how the rest of us will use the internet have no actual education or experience or expertise in it whatsoever.

So, no, it’s not particularly surprising that SOPA/PIPA has jumped the shark.

Of course, Congress didn’t actually write SOPA. Hollywood executives did. Recording industry executives did. And it shows. SOPA and the Senate version, PIPA, are specifically designed to preserve a dying industry, to perpetuate a model of pre-internet monopolistic studio systems that made a few media moguls very, very rich, but didn’t do much at all for either the public or the creative folks who make the movies, sing the songs, write the stories, and paint the artwork. This really isn’t about piracy at all, it’s about the death rattle of those very same media moguls. Once giants of the media industry, now they are as wrinkled and pathetic as Hugh Hefner whining on about how the internet has degraded the porn industry.

Every time I see some thick-lipped studio exec in Armani talking about how he just wants to protect the rights of the poor artists I want to vomit. On him.

SOPA and PIPA are about forcing people to buy buggy whips long after the world switched up to jetpacks.

Both versions of the bill are fundamentally flawed and demonstrate a profound lack of understanding of network architecture by lawmakers.

Start with the central idea behind both Acts: putting a stop to online piracy.

Now, piracy, i.e. copyright violation and the theft of intellectual property, is already illegal in the United States. You can already go to jail for it, and people have. SOPA doesn’t make piracy any more illegal. The copyright laws of the United States as they exist right now are more than sufficient to address online piracy inside our own borders. If a site within the legal jurisdiction of the United States is found to be engaged in illegal activity, be it content piracy or kiddie porn or terrorism, it can be shut down and its operators jailed just like any drug dealer in the real world.

However, the nature of the internet is such that it ignores political and physical boundaries, and that’s what SOPA/PIPA was designed (poorly) to address.

See, the United States has no authority over sites that operate outside of its territorial borders (I know, shocking, right?) – the most infamous example currently is without doubt The Pirate Bay, a media sharing site based (probably) on servers located in a former NATO Cold War nuclear bunker somewhere in Northern Europe and run by a couple of Swedes. The site hosts links and bit torrent files which allow users to share electronic media. Not surprisingly, the vast, vast majority of those files, more than three million of them, are pirated copies of popular movies, TV shows, music, games, and software.

Despite the fact that the site has been sued repeatedly by both American and foreign parties, and despite the fact that operators were found guilty of copyright infringement and online piracy and fined millions of dollars and given jail time, and despite the fact that the site was taken offline, blocked, and hacked, and despite the death of one of its founders, it’s still up and operating. And thousands of Americans access it every single day to upload and download the latest episodes of their favorite TV shows, music files, movies, and game software.

SOPA and its even more retarded sibling, PIPA, were supposedly designed to address this.

Not by taking down The Pirate Bay or other off-shore pirate sites, but blocking American access to them.

See, under SOPA, anybody, copyright holders or folks just claiming to be copyright holders could report a site for piracy.

Then the US government would have the authority to order search engines and internet providers to remove the names of those sites deemed piratical from their lookup tables. In other words, the domain name of the suspect site becomes invisible. Understand something, the site itself doesn’t go away because the US doesn’t have the power or authority to make it go away, the only thing that changes is just your convenient access to it, i.e. it stops showing up in Google search results and DNS tables.

There are many, many, many things wrong with this approach. So many in fact, that it’s impossible to see all of the ramifications. The more you pull the thread, the more idiotic it gets.

For starters, removing the offending site’s domain name from global DNS tables does absolutely nothing to block access to the site. Domain names are simply easy ways for human beings to remember Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. For example, the IP address of Stonekettle Station is 216.239.32.21, which tells internet routers that the data that makes up this website is physically located on a specific server somewhere in the bowels of a Google server-farm in Sunnyvale, California. When you type “www.Stonekettle.com” into your browser’s address bar, a DNS (Domain Name Service) server somewhere looks up the appropriate entry in the global address book and takes you to IP Address 216.239.32.21.

Here’s the thing, you can still get there even if the Domain Name is blocked, you just have to know the IP address of the site you want to visit.

What?

How will people find out the addresses of hidden sites if the easy names are blocked? Simple, the same way they do right now. Exactly the same way your friend up above always seems to know how to find a drug dealer any damned time he needs a bag of weed. The web is full of hidden sites right now. Addresses not indexed by the search engines. Not in the DNS system. Hidden from the view of the average user, but there if you know where to look. Ask any pedophile or any member of the Aryan Nation.

Blocking the offending site’s domain name does nothing except mildly inconvenience those who engage in illicit activity and it does absolutely nothing to stop piracy itself.

However, for those folks trying to gather information on piracy sites, such as reporters, bloggers, researchers, network security firms, copyright holders, law enforcement, and government agencies to name just a few of the obvious folks who might have legitimate need to search for pirate sites, blocking the domain name takes away the best tools they have, i.e. commercial search engines.

As Homer says on my ~~pirated~~ totally purchased in a store with real money copy of The Simpsons, Doh!

The road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but the traffic on that road is governed by the law of unintended consequences.

Blocking the domain names of illegal sites means that law enforcement and government agencies won’t be able to use standard, i.e. free, tools. Instead they will have to have special custom-built search engines to do their jobs and an infrastructure similar to Google’s. Want to guess what that will cost the taxpayer? Get in on the ground floor now and you likely stand to make billions.

How long do you think it will take before an entire black market arises to provide the exact same software to civilians for basically nothing? (Note, software like this exists now, if you know where to look).

I’m going to make a prediction here, if this law passes and you feel the need to download the latest episodes of Glee illegally, ask any random 14-year old to help you find the secret invisible sites and I strongly suspect you’ll be watching your show within ten minutes. In HD. Without commercials. And 14-year olds work for soda and a bag of chips. Just saying.

Expect off-shore search engines that index blacked out sites to arise almost instantly. Note that American laws cannot touch such sites, and they wouldn’t be illegal anyway, outside of the United States. Certain countries stand to make a tidy profit hosting such enterprises, North Korea or maybe Kazakhstan say. Or, more likely what will happen is that Google, Yahoo, Ask, YouTube, and so on, will simply move their corporate headquarters off-shore. I hear Trinidad & Tobago has a very favorable tax climate and some great beaches. You’ve really got to admire the irony when a bunch of politicians who whine endlessly about government red tape and regulations that make America a shitty place to do business turn right around and dream up a law that will very likely drive our most forward leaning, profitable, and innovative companies either out of business or overseas. Really, well done.

Here’s a funny question: how exactly would the copyright holder, or his lawyers, know if his material is being pirated, if he can’t see the pirate sites in search engine results?

Yeah, you’re going to want to think about that for a minute or two, because it’s just that fucking stupid.

I’m a copyright holder, will I be issued a special search engine? Or allowed unblocked access to foreign sites? Or will the government steadfastly defend my copyrights along with the millions of other Americans who also hold the rights to their material?

Didn’t think of that, did you?

So, where does that leave us?

I’ll tell you where, nowhere.

Just like the war on drugs.

So, we’ll have to go a step further and actually block the IP addresses. That’s a whole different ballgame altogether. See, to block actual IP addresses, you have do what China does, what Iran does, you have to intercept and analyze every single bit of web traffic. That’s right. Basically you can throw the 4^th Amendment right out the window, because every single packet sent from your computer will have to be searched, based on the assumption of guilt without any proof whatsoever that you might, just possibly, be visiting a proscribed site. There are a couple of ways to do this without a fundamental trillion dollar overhaul of every internet device in the world: a) you can force each ISP to monitor all traffic from their customers, or b) you can route all internet traffic through a central hub and monitor that yourself – kind of how a company implements gateway based nannyware, only on a massive national scale.

Option a) would turn your internet service provider into an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, and would require that the ISP be subsidized by the same organization because they would need to install large amounts of very expensive equipment and software and hire a whole bunch of tech savvy folks. Obviously each ISP would have to be standardized and any changes to their hardware and software, i.e. their service, would have to be approved by the government. So much for competition and innovation. Also, given the nature of both people and businesses, I’d expect immediate corruption, i.e. unscrupulous ISP’s providing uncensored access for a certain fee that somehow doesn’t end up on the company’s account sheet. So, then the ISPs will have to be policed. Who’s going to do that? And how much do you think it will cost? And likely that would result in unlicensed pirate ISPs, tapping into the internet undetected. So we’d have to hunt those. And so on. We’re going to need a whole new, very large, law enforcement agency.

Then there’s Option b), which would require all internet data to be routed through choke points, just like in China and Iran. The enormous and exponentially growing volume of internet traffic will require vast, vast, vast resources on a scale never implemented before - for comparison, imagine if you had to monitor the origin, position, speed, contents, and destination of every single vehicle on every road in America every second of every day – times about, oh, a billion. I would expect that wouldn’t be cheap, even if it wasn’t being done by a defense contractor (because who else do you think would be doing it? Seriously?). Also, given my experience in similar architectures in a much smaller setting, i.e. secure military networks, I wouldn’t expect your surfing experience to be anything but horribly slow, painful, and fraught with massive amounts of fail. Just the kinds of things that make innovation and web-based business suffer massive failure and screaming death. All of which is fine, if you like living in 1970.

One other note, also from my military experience, one of the pillars of information warfare is physical destruction. Choke points are points of vulnerability. Route everything through a few choke points, and you give an enemy a vastly simplified target set should he decide to take down your network. Right now, no single physical strike could take down a significant fraction of the internet, route everything through a single point and that is no longer true. A fire, a lightning strike, an earthquake, a flood, terrorism, and no more internet in America. Of course, the rest of the world would go on while we devolved into the stone age. Imagine the impact on the economy, but I digress.

Those are some ramifications of this idiotic law, there are many, many more.

And of course, we really couldn’t implement either Option a) or b). Not that we wouldn’t try. And not that we wouldn’t happily create the same kind of massive, bloated, ineffectual monstrosity that is the current war on drugs.

Here’s a few more things to think about:

SOPA/PIPA would require that sites accused of copyright infringement be immediately shut down, not that content in question be removed, that the site itself be shut down. Note that SOPA/PIPA doesn’t require those accusations to be proven true. The copyright holder, or anybody purporting to be a copyright holder, lodges a complaint and the site host would be required by law to shut down the site while the site operator appeals – if the site operator can afford to appeal, which somebody like me probably wouldn’t. Don’t like what I have to say here on Stonekettle Station? All you have to do is accuse me of stealing your ideas, and Google will have to shut me down (I’m hosted through Google’s Blogger service).

What you’re looking at here is nothing short of a return to Napoleonic Law, i.e. the accused is assumed to be guilty unless he can afford to prove his innocence.

Now, tell me that won’t be abused.

You’re a politician running for president say, and your SuperPAC is running attack ads against your rival in South Carolina and using clips of his speeches. Those speeches are copyrighted material – or could be, easily. See where this is going? Politicians would use this to silence critics and rivals. So would business. So would any jerk attempting to settle a score. Tell me that Rupert Murdoch wouldn’t use this power to shut down anybody who criticizes his media empire, go on, make me laugh. Needless to say, Murdock is one of the SOPA’s biggest fans. Think about that. SOPA/PIPA wants to protect copyright holders at the expense of one of the most sacred rights we Americans have, the right to free speech.

I know, I know, sounds extreme doesn’t it? Sounds Alarmist.

Yeah, look at the political climate in this country, look at the number of frivolous lawsuits in this country, and tell me again why it wouldn’t happen. It will, and it will destroy the internet you are looking at right now. How many irrational trolls do I get here on a daily basis? How much hate mail? I’ve lost track. Just one, just one, of those angry unbalanced goofs would have to make a complaint, and Stonekettle Station goes dark. Ditto YouTube. Ditto Boing Boing. Ditto everything else.

Here’s something I bet those self same trolls didn’t think of: a provision in SOPA makes IP maskers illegal.

Heh heh. Didn’t know that, did you?

SOPA/PIPA prohibit the use of any technologies that are used to interfere with the implementation of monitoring and/or the blacklist. So, any anonymity tool used to mask IP addresses or hide the routing path between your computer and the website you’re viewing becomes illegal. Tools like this are used by trolls to leave nasty comments here without revealing who they really are, or to get around spam and comment blockers. IP blockers are also used by perverts and criminals to download kiddie porn and conduct other illegal activities, but IP anonymizers like Tor, for example are also used by groups worldwide to speak out against corruption, genocide, oppression, and repressive regimes. IP Anonymizers are used by whistleblowers right here in the United States. If SOPA/PIPA goes through, all those sources of information, the information coming out of Iran and North Korea and Syria and from within our own government will go away, because without the ability to remain anonymous who the hell would risk it?

The simple depressing truth is this: SOPA won’t work.

It just won’t. It can’t. It absolutely will not stop or reduce online piracy in any way whatsoever and may in fact increase it by forcing it under the radar of basic search tools and law enforcement. SOPA/PIPA cannot work. Not without a complete and total radical redesign of the internet itself at a fundamental level, a redesign that would create a communication network counter to every basic freedom the United States of America was founded on.

Not that any of that would stop the government from trying.

Allow SOPA/PIPA to pass and what you’ll get is yet another massive governmental bureaucracy, another “war on (drugs, poverty, debt, etc),” another Czar, another endless giant money sucking black hole that does absolutely nothing whatsoever in any way to fix the problem it was created to address. We’ll shut down websites and kill business and innovation, we’ll jail people, we’ll fill the dockets with endless petitions and silly minor court cases, and meanwhile, online piracy will be completely unaffected.

As I write this, it appears that the online protests by Google, Wikipedia, Boing Boing, and other internet giants have finally gotten through to the politicians. But you need to understand that the totalitarian sons of bitches backing this abomination aren’t going to go down without a fight. You need to write your congressman, you need to write your senator, and you need to voice your opposition to this UnAmerican nonsense in the strongest possible terms.

And you need to keep doing it until Congress listens.

The truly sad part about the whole thing is this: There is obviously, obviously, a massive insatiable legitimate market for online media. If the recording industry and the movie makers would stop clinging to an outdated studio based concept that only benefits a tiny handful of selfish greedy backward looking bastards and got into the modern internet market whole hog themselves, the issue of online piracy would become moot. And we’d all get rich doing it. But it would take innovation on their part. It would take dropping woefully outdated business models. It would take acceptance of the fact that artists are going to finally get much greater control of their own work and not be routinely bent over the barrel by studio and network executives. It would take an understanding that people are sick and damned tired of having to wait for media to be released weeks and months and sometimes years after it first débuts. It going to take an understanding that people simply will not put up with bullshit like DRM. People want to enjoy media their own way, not how some studio exec thinks they should enjoy it.

It’s going to take understanding of this simple fact: People want online media, and, just like drugs, they will get it.

One way or the other.

Again, don’t get me wrong. Piracy is wrong. And we need to do something about it. But SOPA is most emphatically not the way to go about it. SOPA was designed to protect a handful of very rich people in a dying industry. It most certainly wasn’t designed with your best interests in mind and it certainly wasn’t designed to protect artists, innovators, or the folks who actually make the internet the vital future core of our economy and I say that as not only somebody who enjoys the internet as it exists right now, but as an artist, a writer, a blogger, and one of those people who create content.

SOPA and PIPA are bad, bad ideas. They are fundamentally contrary to the core concepts of liberty and justice we Americans hold dear.

Anybody who believes otherwise is high.

Write your congressman.

Write your senator.

Do it now.

Freedom Fried

2012-01-14T08:39:00.001-09:00

What do you call a man who speaks multiple languages?

A polyglot.

What do you call a man who speaks two languages?

Bilingual.

What do you call a man who only speaks one language – and poorly at that?

An American.

Goddamned right. There’s only one language worth knowing and that’s ~~English~~ American.

Speak it loud, speak it proud.

Speak it really slowly so that that natives will understand.

Turns out that Mitt Romney speaks French.

Can you believe it?

French.

Of all the languages that are not the biblically musical angelic language of Heaven, i.e. ~~English~~ American, Romney chose French. The language of beret wearing socialist surrender monkeys. The Romans who killed Jesus? They were speaking French, that’s a fact and you can look it up on the internet. While you’re at it, look up French in the dictionary, there’s a picture of Adolf Hitler French kissing Chairman Mao. It’s totally true.

And Mittens croaks like a froggy Frog eating a little gay croissant.

French is probably the language of the Anti-Christ himself – well when he’s not speaking Chinese that is.

French!

See, it turns out that during his college years back in the socialist hippy 60’s, Mitt Romney spent two years in France as a Mormon Missionary. Two years! And get this, instead of proudly wearing a huge cowboy hat and a Chinese made T-shirt with a picture of US Marines eating actual French babies covered in ketchup, and instead of demanding in a really loud voice that all Frenchmen address him in God’s ~~English~~ American while serving extra double bacon cheeseburgers as is the inalienable right of all Americans abroad, Mitt actually learned French and actually conversed with Frenchy French people in French!

Probably while eating French Toast with a side of French Fries dipped in French Dressing while wearing a French Tickler!

What real American would do such a thing?

And would you really want him in the White House?

I mean, honestly, what kind of American President would speak French?

Besides George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, William Henry Harrison, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt. Turns out Ben Franklin spoke French too, he wasn’t the president, but his face is on our money so it’s pretty much the same exact thing. Ok, so besides those anti-American Frenchy-loving socialist traitors, what kind of President would speak French? Did Reagan speak French? I don’t think so because Ronald Reagan was as American as the Statue of Liberty! You damned right he was. Did George W. Bush speak French? Hell, he could barely speak ~~English~~ American (Texan being his native tongue), but darn it he tried and that’s what matters.

You know who else speaks French?

Liberals!

That’s right, filthy America-hating socialist Nazi moderate limp-wristed wussy liberals speak French:

And he speaks French too…

Mitt couldn’t have a couple of bastard children out of wedlock with his undocumented nanny, or a couple of extramarital affairs, or a history of ethics violations, or a conviction for snorting cocaine out of a gay prostitute’s shaved ass crack in a public restroom, or claimed a personal endorsement from Jedi Jebus, or have put out a bunch of racist and bigoted newsletters, or consulted for the very organizations what destroyed our economy, or even have a couple of pictures from his college days sitting on a Kegerator smoking a doobie and wearing a Party Naked T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off like a real patriotic conservative American hero of Patriotic America. Mitt hasn’t even molested one Congressional Page! Oh, no. No, Mitt has to go and learn French.

Why, I bet he listens to the Dixie Chicks!

Mitt Romney is the kind of guy who would have an autographed poster of Anthony Weiner tacked up on the wall in his garage!

Oh you think that’s going too far, do you? He speaks French! French! He’s bilingual! And bilingual sounds a lot like bisexual! Which is only about one slobbery French man kiss away from just being out and out a flaming rainbow colored sparkly homosexual!

Bilingual, sounds a lot like two-faced to me.

He speaks French, just like John Kerry! John friggin’ Kerry. What’s next? Are we going to find out Romney was awarded a Silver Star and a couple of Purple Hearts? Who the hell would want a guy like that as President. Honestly, you’re talking about somebody that isn’t even smart enough to arrange something as simple as a draft deferment for patriotic conservatism. Now, how would a Commander in Chief like that have the fortitude to be able to send other people’s kids off to die in a foreign land? Seriously. Think about it.

In the name of Fulminous Angry Bearded Capitalist Jesus, what else is a man like Mittens capable of?

Why, he might even know math!

Imagine a President who believes in that science crap! Why he might believe that the earth is more than 6000 years old! You ever talk to somebody who knows math and science and stuff? First thing they do is start in with all that totally unsupported gibberish about how it would have been impossible for Noah to have brontosaurs on the Ark while the Deluge was creating the Grand Canyon. They’ve got all those equations and radioactive decay things and fossils and stuff that supposedly shows that the Earth isn’t the center of the universe like it says in the Bible. People like this think they’re smart because they know math, but they don’t even know what the word “theory” means! Honestly, people like this would believe anything. Why, why what if Mitt Romney believes in Global Climate Change? Holy Mackerel!

I heard that Romney once gave a homeless illegal alien a sandwich!

That’s right. Shocking, I know. Just gave a hobo a sandwich. Didn’t make him earn it. Didn’t tell him to get a job and stop dragging down America. Didn’t tell him to go back to Mexico. Didn’t force the man into indentured servitude on his family’s Texas ranch where the filthy bum could learn about American capitalism from the example of his betters. No, just gave the man a big old socialist sandwich. Then, of course, he probably gave the man healthcare too! And a voucher for a free abortion!

Honestly, where does this end?

He speaks French, there’s no telling where that leads – honestly what if it turns out Romney believes that the Constitution applies to everybody, even gay people?

French is the gateway drug to liberalism, Folks, mark my words!

If Romney was a real Conservative, he’d learn to speak a good capitalist language.

Like German.

Update:

Oh Sweet Baby Peas!

And you thought I was crazy.

Instead, it turns out that I am most insightful blogger on the net.

Look here, it’s Romneism! Romney is redistributing the wealth! Just out and out socialism, right there. Is this what we can expect from a Romney presidency?

Not on my watch, folks, not on my watch.

I’m Stonekettle Station, and I totally approve this message.

And So It Begins. Again.

2012-01-04T23:11:00.001-09:00

And we’re off and running.

Well, perhaps “running” is the wrong word.

More like “careening wildly downhill while waving little pipe-stem arms in the air and screaming manically.”

Three hundred and fifty million Americans, and these chuckleheads are the choices?

Seriously?

I am, of course, talking about the Iowa Republican Caucus last night.

I didn’t have high hopes for this show in the first place, and in that regard it lived up to those expectations perfectly. As the pilot episode for the upcoming reality TV series, America’s Dumbest Electorate 2012, there was nothing original. Same predictable plot, same unlikable characters, same humorless formula, same tired laugh track, same lame jokes, same lowbrow studio audience. As I said on Facebook last night, it is during events like this where I really miss the slapstick antics of Herman Cain, because if ever there was a TV show that needed some gratuitous nudity, ribald shenanigans, and crass sexual innuendo it is certainly this one.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of jiggling boobs and ass grabbing on TV last night, but unfortunately not the kind to keep your eyes on the screen.

The show could have used a car chase and some Kung Fu.

And a monkey in a little silver vest playing a harmonica or a clever Jack Russell terrier riding a unicycle.

Maybe both.

The comedian Paul Rodriguez used to do this bit about how war was God’s way of teaching us geography.

…two week ago I didn’t even know what a Kuwait was! I thought it was like a fruit from New Zealand!

I think he might have been on to something. It’s entirely possible that presidential primaries exist solely in order to teach us where the silly people live. By the time it’s over there are nice color coded charts that map out the places I should probably avoid for the next four years (Coincidently enough, those charts often tend to correspond to a geographic plot of this blog’s readership. For example, I don’t have a lot of fans in Iowa. Go figure. Maybe I should write about corn more. Of course, perversely that doesn’t explain why a significant fraction of my readership apparently resides in Texas. I can only assume those folks are the secret underground resistance movement. Either that or they are fuming and plotting my untimely demise). It sure would be nice if you could print those charts out in handy wallet size.

Now, Standard & Poor’s grades each state according to its financial viability. Here at Stonekettle Station we perform a similar service, i.e. we rank each state’s level of douchebaggery according to the SFMS – i.e. the Speculative Fiction Movie Scale (Battlefield Earth to The Princess Bride) – and last night I was forced to officially downgrade Iowa from The Postman to Pluto Nash. I’m sorry to take away the dubious balding chick-movie honor of your Costner and levy a Murphy on you, Iowa, but it’s not like you haven’t been asking for it. Keep this up, and I’ll be forced to suspend your Shatner too (props if you catch all the references in that. You’re also a complete nerd).

I know, I know. Pretty severe. Be glad I didn’t downgrade Iowa all the way to Bicentennial Man, because I could have.

No, it’s not because Iowa republicans exercised their democratic right to vote for whichever idiot they chose, it’s because of the idiotic reasons they gave for voting for said idiots.

In the hour before voting started, I heard a dozen interviews with Iowans who still had no idea who they were going to vote for. They’d done no research. They had no idea of each candidate’s position. The only thing they were sure of was that they hated Obama and the country was going down the crapper. After it was over, and Romney, Santorum, and Paul were declared The Winner, The Other Winner, and third, respectively, the interviews seemed to come in three basic flavors of Kool-Aid:

a) “Well, I really really really really really dislike Romney, I really like [Gingrich, Perry, Bachmann, Joker From Batman], but I voted for Romney because I hope he can beat Barack Obama even though I don’t really think he can.” The logic apparently being, I’d rather have a Republican I don’t like and with whom I disagree and who I think belongs to some weirdo non-Christian cult in the White House than a Democrat I don’t like and with whom I disagree and who I think belongs to some weirdo non-Christian cult even though I consider Romney a slimy progressive elitist who probably can’t win anyway because the only thing that matters in the whole world is that I hate Obama. Go team.

b) “Well, I really really really really really dislike Romney, so I voted for this guy ~~Sanitarium~~, ~~Sanitation~~, ~~Sarsaparilla~~, Santorum. I don’t really know anything about him, but, um, well, um, Mormon! Cult! Babies! America! And I heard that he loves the Jesus and hates the homos. Good enough.” The logic apparently being: no way in hell he’s going to beat Obama, but hey at least he’s not Romney. He’s also Catholic and not Gringrich, or a woman, or from Texas. Go Jebus.

c) “RON PAUL 2012!” The logic being, RON PAUL 2012! Frankly, I just don’t understand the infatuation with this guy. He’s 76 years old and apparently doesn’t understand how the internet works – but about a quarter of Iowans think it would be spiffy if he was sitting in the big chair helming the most technologically advanced economy in the world. He talks up the whole personal responsibility thing, but won’t take personal responsibility for newsletters and tweets issued under his own name. They hate Obama, but embrace a spoiler whose only real position is to siphon off half the independents and about twenty percent of disgruntled conservatives. Go Ross Perot.

Look, I’m not saying it was all bad. Every show has its high points. Hell, even X-Men Origins: Wolverine had its moments (none of which involved Hugh Jackman, but still).

Michele Bachmann got voted off the island. I’d consider that worth the price of admission alone. Her I’m-a-real-person speech last night after it was announced that the only candidate she’d managed to beat was the one that didn’t actually show up for the caucus was just plain hilarious. I’m a real person? Really Michele, you’re a real live person? So are gay people. So are non-Christians. So are liberals. So are the rest of us. Screw you, I hope you choke on your defeat. Go somewhere else and cry, you nasty selfish bitch. Don’t let the door hit you in your skinny white ass on the way out.

Edit: You know, on second thought, Iowa’s rejection of Bachmann changes things. I’m going to bump you back up to The Search For Spock. You’re welcome.

Gingrich was doing what he considers humility. Before the vote, when it was already apparent that he hadn’t been able to bullshit his way into Evangelical hearts despite a personal endorsement from God, he started lining up his excuses. It’s never Newt’s fault. “It's probably that I'm too reasonable," Gingrich said. "And I should've responded to the negative ads sooner." I’m too reasonable? That’s why I lost. I’m too reasonable. I fooled around on two wives because I loved America too much. Jesus Haploid Christ, and he calls Obama arrogant. What a pair of stones this guy has. I’m too reasonable. It’s not fair. Romney ran attack ads. Boo hoo. Newt seems to forget he’s the guy that invented this form of political campaign. He stormed out of Iowa headed East, you won’t have Newt to kick around any more! If only that were true.

So far, Pray For Rain Perry’s hanging in there like a chad on a Florida punch ballot, but man if he can’t win in Jesus’ home state of Iowa, he doesn’t have much of a chance in New Hampshire. Probably why he decided to skip it altogether and head for South Carolina. Frankly, if I was a South Carolinian, I think I’d be insulted by the insinuation.

Here’s the thing, normally predicting the outcome of primaries this far out is a sucker bet – Obama himself is a pretty good example of that. But, I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that the Santorum Surge is a flash in the pan. Romney is going to win New Hampshire. And he’s going to win pretty much everywhere else too. Romney’s going to be this year’s Republican candidate. Bet on it. And he’ll most likely name Marco Rubio as his running mate because even if he does manage to secure the nomination he’s a weak, weak candidate at best – not even as well liked by Republicans as John McCain was. The only thing he’s got going for him is that Conservatives hate Obama. Romney had better not make the same Veep mistake McCain did.

In the end, Romney beat Santorum in Iowa by a total of eight votes.

Eight.

And he only got that because there weren’t any better choices.

It’s going to be a long, long year.

I just hope I don’t have to downgrade the entire country to Waterworld come November.

2011 in Review

2011-12-30T18:58:00.001-09:00

And so here we are again.

On the eve of yet another shiny new year in this, the glorious future.

Is it just me?

Or was 2011 some kind of a disappointing year?

I mean, come on, it was 2011. It’s supposed to be the future. All bright and shiny and futurey smelling.

Sure, there were some good things.

For example, we’re now more than a decade into the zippy George Jetson 21st Century and there still aren’t any flying cars, for which as I’ve mentioned before I am eternally grateful. Flying cars. Bad idea. So good on on Detroit for not inventing any yet.

But, still, the first year of the second decade of the 21st Century was, well, lame.

Frankly, I expected more.

Turns out Obama isn’t an alien reptile terminator in a rubber human suit from some Future Liberal Hell of Evil sent into our past so that he could be born in Africa and then smuggled into the United States to renounce his citizenship so that he could then study abroad in a school full of Muslims which would somehow then facilitate his sneaking back into the US to become President in order to destroy Capitalist Jesus with his Socialist-Darwin White-Baby Abortion Ray powered by the sparkly rainbow emissions of same-sex marriage and the white-hot lies told by global climate change scientists (Well sure, when you say it all together like that it is a seductively persuasive argument). Heck, as it turns out, he’s not even really black. As conspiracies go, the sullen whimpering end of Birtherism turned out to be pretty damned disappointing – though admittedly the mascot was fairly entertaining in a wild-eyed, crazy-hair sort of way. Wait, am I thinking of Orly Taitz or Donald Trump? Man, can you imagine what the offspring of such an unholy union would be like? Actually, no need to imagine, that question answered itself – and seriously, look at the picture, Dom Deluise in drag channeling Glenn Beck, or is it just me? Just when you think it couldn’t get any sillier.

Those Swiss bastards at CERN turned on the Evil Large Hadron Collider of Mega Death and ran that sucker up to full power. Whoopie Tee friggin doo. My unbalanced washing machine was more exciting. No earth destroying black holes. No anti-matter explosion that cracked open the crust of the planet. For a minute it looked like there might be some kind of faster than light evil beam of evil, but it turned out to be just your standard stream of high energy exotic particles. Ho hum. Just cutting edge physics, insights into the very fabric of the universe, nothing to see here, move along. Not even a giant lightening-wreathed rift in space-time wrenching open a glowing portal that allowed monstrous blood swilling Hell-demons to cross into our world from an alternate Evil Dimension of Evil. Nothing. It didn’t even affect cell phone reception. No God Particle, no Son of God Particle, not even a Minor Deity From An Obscure Cult Particle. Apparently all that happened was some “invisible” particles that cost a lot of money and only physicists can see went whooshing around in a big circle. Not even one evil Hell-demon. Woooo. Exciting.

The much ballyhooed Rapture turned out to be just as big of letdown as the End of Days always turns out to be. Always. Two thousand years they’ve been telling us Jesus is coming back Real Soon Now and, man, this time he’s pissed. Two thousand goddamned years, folks. You’d think they’d be right at least once just out of random chance. But they’ve been right exactly never. I mean, damn, the Cleveland Indians have a better win/loss record. They’ve predicted the Second Coming what? A hundred, two hundred, five hundred times? Hell, I don’t know, I’ve lost track of how many times Jesus was coming over, but then he stood us up, again – you’d think people would start dating somebody else. But no. This time, man, this time for certain. Read your Revelation, Dude, totally for sure this time. Bible Math don’t lie, Sinner. Hell, they even had two shots at it this year. What happened? Nothing. Not one Rapture Balloon. I didn’t even get in any skeet shooting. The Rapture sucked big hairy donkey balls. Again.

They Repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Coincidently enough, that was the last New Year’s Eve post. It’s now okay to be totally gay in uniform. And what happened? Anarchy! Chaos! Insanity! Sparkly queer carnage in the streets! Babies fell screaming from the fiery orange sky like taut little water balloons filled with chunky spaghetti sauce! War! Terrorism! The hideous undead rising ravenous from their moldy graves to lick tomato sauce from the sidewalks! What? What’s that you say? Oh. Right. Heh, sorry, I get excited. My mistake, I was thinking of the Iowa Republican Caucus. So, DADT. Gone. Gays serving openly in uniform. Two hot gay queer homosexual lesbians in uniform shamelessly kissing on the pier upon return from extended combat deployment. It was on the national news. Turns out lesbians are just like normal people. And they like to kiss. And now I need a cold shower. And what? Right. Nothing. No sparkly carnage. No exploding babies. No rampaging Hell-demons. Talk about your basic letdown. It was so gay.

They got Osama. Blam! Bullet in the brain pan. US Navy SEALs dropped out of the sky like winged death incarnate and gave him a little double-tap fuck you from America. Turns out he wasn’t twelve feet tall. He couldn’t shoot lightening bolts and killer bees from his dagger-like fingers. He wasn’t living in a cave in Tora Bora making nuclear bombs out of goat skin and coconuts like the Taliban version of the Professor from Gilligan’s Island. He wasn’t cranking out blueberry Slurpees as the night manager at a 7/11 in Palm Springs either. He was just some unwashed asshole living like a mange-ridden rat trapped in a box. The accounting was a long time coming, but when the cold-eyed Navy snake-eaters kicked in the door of his bedroom he didn’t go out fighting – instead he cowered behind his wife like the frightened little rat he always was. In the end, the US Navy dumped his dead ass into the sea along with the rest of the day’s garbage. Adios, Stinky, say hi to the fishes.

The war in Iraqi is over. At least for America. The president promised that our troops would be home for Christmas. And they are. Damn that Obama for keeping his word. As most of you likely know, Iraq is personal to me. My opinion on the end of the conflict is here. By setting a date for withdrawal, Obama was supposedly setting us up for our own Dien Bien Phu. American troops were going to get slaughtered on their way out. Jesus Haploid Christ! You can’t set a date! Why, Evil Insurgents of Evil, twelve feet tall and shooting killer bees from their eyes, will lay ambush to our convoys on the road to Kuwait! Except, of course, nothing happened. We handed over the keys, showed them where the circuit breakers were located and reminded them to water the plants. Then drove to the airport. Yawn. No ambush. No killer bees. No journalists asking Hairy Perry, the Military Genius of Texas, how come his dire end-of-the-world (oh noes!) predictions on the Iraqi withdrawal were exactly as accurate as Harold Camping’s Rapture Launch Date – this despite Perry’s vast, vast military experience as a junior Air Force reserve C-130 cargo plane pilot with no combat experience or knowledge of the situation on the ground. Oh well, there’ll be another war, I’m sure conservatives will get that one right. Practice makes perfect.

Hell, it was a bad year for dictators everywhere, wasn’t it? Moammar Gadhafi died in a drainpipe, again just like a sewer rat in a trap. After forty years of raping the Libyans, he ended up with a stick shoved up his own ass. Really can’t say that I blame the Libyans for getting some violent payback – half a century of pent up rage, Gadhafi was lucky he took a bullet in the head before he got violated with a telephone pole, instead of the other way around. Not that it bothers me either way. Again, Gadhafi was personal to me and I won’t miss him. Of course, it happened on Obama’s watch and he didn’t fuck it up, so it only took about five minutes for the crazies to come out of the woodwork. That Obama, how could he betray our friend Moammar like that? Oh noes! Now Libya will become Muslim! And an Evil Terrorist State of Evil! Muslim Brotherhood! Ook! Ook! Libyans will shoot Mohammad-Shaped Killer Bees from the their eyes! Oh noes! Egypt. Nigeria. Syria. The Arab Spring is breaking out all over, and what in the hell is the deal with that? Why, it’s like those filthy Muslims want liberty and freedom too. But, of course, that can’t be right – they couldn’t be just like us! That’s preposterous! Besides, they wouldn’t know what to do with a democracy if they had one. No, no, better they live under a dictator. Makes you wonder what the civilized countries thought back, oh, about two and half centuries ago when the filthy American colonists had their own little spring – Good Lord! Those damned uncouth peasants! How will they live without a king? What if the Capitalist Brotherhood takes over? Next thing you know, they’ll be over here demanding that we recognize their crappy lice infested country, spreading their filthy democracy. Like they’ll ever amount to anything. Quick, turn out the lights and let’s pretend we’re not home! The one bright spot is that it looks like Vladimir Putin will be Czar for life of Russia, so at least the conservatives still have one dictator they can cozy up to. Maybe they can get him to build a wall across Germany if they ask really nice. Question: if conservatives think dictators are awesome and they think Obama is a dictator, why then don’t they… oh, you know, fuck it. Never mind.

Yep, 2011 was pretty lame alright.

No Armageddon. No Zombie Apocalypse. No Hell-demons. No Anti-Christ. No Rapture, Rupture, or Raptors. War in Iraq over. Terrorists dead. Dictators toppled. Economy improving. Jobs slowly coming back. Housing market finally on the upswing. Steve Jobs died, but the iPad II was released. We got Super-8 and The Debt in theaters, A Game of Thrones on HBO, and The Walking Dead and Terra Nova on TV. Justin Bieber did minimal damage. Astronomers discovered about a billizion new planets orbiting other stars and at least one of them is bound to harbor some kind of weird alien Hell-Demons who thirst for the blood of our babies. We got a good look at Vesta, which is cool because part of the novel I’m writing (intermittently) is set thereabouts. NASA launched Curiosity towards Mars where it will join Spirit and Opportunity – still functioning years after they should have died – and with any luck we’ll find weird alien Hell-demons in our own backyard, or fossilized evidence that little hell-bacteriums once existed on our red neighbor. Facebook turned the sparkly fair dust of the internet into billions of dollars in the real world and made Mark Zuckerberg fabulously wealthy. Americans are still infatuated with the talentless antics of the Kardashian Sisters – and in that regard perhaps the elusive Hell-demons do walk among us after all.

No, 2011, wasn’t terrible per se, but I’m hoping we can do better in 2012.

I’ll have some suggestions on this very subject tomorrow, they may involve Hell-demons.

In the meantime, here’s hoping that 2012 treats you all better than 2011.

And remember, no flying cars. Ever.

Things That Chap My Ass About Christmas

2011-12-23T12:35:00.001-09:00

It’s Socialist.

Really, think about it for a minute.

Christmas is just a big old pile of steaming liberalism.

Take this guy, Santa Claus.

Santa was never elected, he apparently just took over the whole process when nobody was looking.

He wears a red suit. Duh.

Claus sounds a lot like Claws. And a claw looks a lot like a sickle, which as everybody knows is the symbol of communism. He’s got the population under continuous surveillance, and he keeps lists of people based on some arbitrary socialist measure of good and bad. People stand in line to see him, in fact there are queues everywhere during the Christmas season – and standing in line is one of the defining pillars of socialism.

Then there’s the whole gift thing. He apparently sneaks into your house at night - without a warrant or probable cause or any kind of Constitutional controls, I mean you don’t need to be sent to a reeducation camp to see this do you? And he leaves presents for the “good” kids based on some kind of arcane request system – which to me sounds a heck of a lot like “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” – and the presents are made in some kind of collective factory run by an oppressed ethnic workforce. And the “bad” kids? They get a lump of coal – the very symbol of the lumpenproletariat – it’s like he’s just rubbing your face in it, isn’t it?

Next there’s the whole green vehicle thing. Santa’s sleigh runs on hay and grain like something Ed Bagley Jr. would drive to his weekly party meetings at the Al Gore I Hate America Sustainable Headquarters. And reindeer? Where do they come from? Right, exactly, Russia!

And this entire political apparatus is propped up on the backs of the workers, who are expected to support the power structure with the fruits of their labor – i.e. they are forced to give up a portion of their grain and dairy production in the form of cookies and milk – in support of the entire society. What’s next, socialized healthcare? My God, before you know it, we’ll be living in Canada!

You have only to look around, shake off the shackles of oppression, to see it:

Music: Heroic music has long been a tool of the power elite. Designed to lull the masses into a malleable state of submission through endless repetition. Two months of Joan Jett’s Little Drummer Boy and Dogs Barking Jingle Bells will turn all but staunchest anarchist into a pudding-brained drone. People will band together in collectives and go door to door spreading the propaganda of socialism through the vehicle of “Christmas carols.” The more easily influenced will actually leave their homes and join the mob of carolers like Bolshevik peasants joining the October Revolution.

And speaking of the the Mob: Have you been in the stores during the holiday season? The shelves are stripped bare by crazed crowds driven to a frenzy by the sounds of Carol of the Bells blaring from every speaker in the nation. Let the rumor spread that Wal-Mart might have a new shipment in from the state factories and mile long lines form almost instantly. What is it? Zhu-Zhu Hamsters? Fisher-Price’s Elmo Live Encore? Toilet Paper? Shoes? Cabbages? We don’t care! Get in line! Wait, what’s that? black market Twilight Barbies sold from the back of a nondescript truck? I’ll take two, Comrade!

The Secret Police: If mind numbing music wasn’t enough, while you’re standing in line for hours on end you get to listen to the endless ringing of little bells. It’s the Salvation Army, Santa’s intelligence gathering arm. They’re everywhere, on every corner, in every store, always watching like the pervasive surveillance system they are. Shaking you down, demanding a cut, all in order to “redistributing the wealth.” They wear red jackets for crying out loud, could it be more obvious?

Socialist Art: The symbols of this Socialist Season are everywhere. Armies of giant inflatable Frosty The Snowmen and Santas dominate the landscape like those concrete statues of Marx and Lenin that once filled the squares of Moscow. Yesterday I saw a pickup truck that had its “Truck Nutz” replaced with two large red mirrored balls and a garland of tinsel – my friends, when the state comes for your testicles, you’re living under the jackbooted heel of communism.

Propaganda: The socialists are piping their message directly into the minds of our children. The airwaves are filled with TV specials like that one with the Island of Misfit toys, a not so subtle reference to Gulags and the fate of those who don’t fit in. Who can fail to see the subliminal message in the final climatic battle scene when the imperialists subvert The People’s Heroic Heat Miser into a decadent display of dancing? Or how about when that communist Charlie Brown attempts to convince the gang that his miserable substandard shrub is really a beautiful Christmas tree? For the love of the Almighty Dollar, people, open your eyes!

Fruitcake. Yes, I know, you were wondering where the hammer in the “hammer and sickle” was. Look no further than this abomination. When the revolution comes, it will be fruitcake that smashes the windows and staves in the head of the free man, mark my words.

And finally:

Coincidence? Not bloody likely, folks, not bloody likely.

An Open Letter To The Lady In the Center Lane

2011-12-23T10:57:00.001-09:00

Dear fellow driver,

Question:

What’s it going to take?

No, seriously, how bad does it have to be?

Just how outright silly stupid dangerous do things have to get before you put down your cell phone and pay attention to the road?

I left Anchorage last evening, headed for the Valley on the Glenn Highway.

I suppose that requires some additional description for those of you who don’t, in fact, live in South Central Alaska. See, it was about 4 PM, the sun had set and the sky was turning pitch dark. It was snowing. No, strike that, it was snowing like a bitch with intermittent whiteout conditions driven by strong winds along the highway. In fact, it had been snowing all day in your standard issue Alaskan blizzard. The road itself was coated in an uneven, two to three inch thick, layer of packed snow interspersed between patches of black ice – because apparently ADOT no longer feels the need to actually get off their fat asses and do the job we pay them for, i.e. clearing the damned roads and putting down some sand. It was rush hour and despite the horrible conditions, homeward bound commuters were moving along between fifty and sixty miles per hour, which of course, caused even more blowing snow and reduced visibility even further.

Then there was you.

You were doing about thirty in the middle lane, drifting back and forth from side to side.

Cars were piled up behind you for a hundred yards.

Angry and frustrated drivers were recklessly swerving into both the inner and outer lanes trying to avoid the backup you were causing.

As I came up the inner lane, cautiously watching out for drivers dodging out from behind you and in front of me while fishtailing on the icy roads, I thought perhaps you were having trouble handling the conditions. I thought maybe you were one of the those idiots who doesn’t bother with winter tires, or maybe you were like the guy I saw the other day at the intersection of the Parks and Glenn Highways with three “limper tires” and one headlight. I realized that I was being uncharitable. Maybe, I thought, you were old, or had poor eyesight and maybe you were scared of the horrible conditions and simply being cautious. Less charitably, I thought that despite your (presumed) justifiable caution, you like most Alaskan drivers were pathologically incapable of understanding Left Lane Fast, Right Lane Slow or simply didn’t care that you were making an already dangerous situation worse.

But, of course, it wasn’t because you were being cautious. Was it?

No, you were texting.

As I pulled alongside your 4x4 SUV, I could see you staring intently down at your steering wheel oblivious to the road, the blizzard, and the traffic piled up behind you. You face was under-lit by the white glow of your phone. Your thumbs were moving madly back and forth over the screen like a kid caught in a Chinese finger puzzle.

Perhaps you remember me? I’m the guy in the green truck. The one that blew his horn at you when you began to drift into my lane.

Or perhaps not, since you just jerked the wheel to the right and never bothered to glance up.

So, back to my question.

How dangerous does it have to get?

Icy roads. Darkness. Blizzard. Three lanes of rush hour traffic. Even combined, that wasn’t enough to make you put down your phone and pay attention to the road.

How many lives do you have to endanger before you start paying attention?

You own life obviously isn’t worth it.

Nor was the life of the small toddler you had strapped into the child seat behind you. And indeed there might have been two kids back there, I couldn’t see the entire back seat clearly, just the one small hand drawing patterns on the fogged window facing me.

Nor was my life worth it to you. Nor the other twenty or so lives within your immediate vicinity.

So, one life isn’t enough. Twenty lives aren’t enough. So, how many lives do you have to endanger before you start paying attention? Thirty? A hundred? Is there a number that matters to you more than whoever it was that you were chatting with online?

Ice, snow, whiteout conditions. None of these things seem to be important enough to make you pay attention to the road. What would? An erupting volcano maybe? A forest fire. The return of Bearded Angry Jesus? A herd of enraged charging elephants ridden by crazed robot polar bears armed with machine gun lasers? What?

I noticed that your tailgate had two stickers on it.

One said, ironically, Watch For Motorcycles. Where? On YouTube?

The other one, even more ironically said, Abortion Is Murder. Let me ask you something. What do you call it when a clueless idiot like yourself kills her kids because she was driving through a fucking blizzard on a dark icy highway while staring at her goddamned phone? Would you call that murder too? Or just negligent homicide? What if you kill yourself and your kids, is that murder/suicide? How about if you kill me, would I be just collateral damage? How about if you killed twenty of us in a massive pileup? Serial murder, or would that be genocide?

You are a danger to everyone around you. You don’t deserve to have a drivers license. And if it was up to me, I’d take away your goddamned kids and charge you with reckless endangerment. If I could have gotten your license plate I would have filed charges against you for endangering my life. If I had been facing you on the side of the road I would have kicked your fucking ass. The fact that you are a woman bothers me not all, you deserve a good and thorough ass kicking – because there is apparently nothing else, short of cutting off your goddamned thumbs, that will get through to you.

You’re an asshole, a selfish, ignorant, stupid fucking asshole.

Sincerely,

Jim

This country needs to implement a Federal law making texting while driving a felony on par with Reckless Endangerment and subject to severe penalty. The states are too damned stupid to get it done. It needs to happen at the Federal level, and it needs to happen right now. I’m talking immediate loss of license, substantial fine, and jail time for starters. I’m getting damned sick and tired of having my life and the lives of my loved ones endangered by these jackasses.

If This Goes On

2011-12-22T20:10:00.001-09:00

Note: I had most of this post done and was conducting my usual futile pre-posting search for typos when Congress announced that they’d finally struck a deal on the payroll tax holiday extension. Which, of course, required that I rewrite some of the post. I’m pretty sure they did it on purpose. Because they are dicks.

Remember the Cold War?

Sure you do.

You know, the Cold War, the fifty year long battle over ideology that damned near ended the world?

Basically the Cold War was a big pissing contest between the United States and the former Soviet Union. The best summation of which was probably the so-called Space Race. For thirty years the US and the Soviets tried to one up each other. Both spent vast, staggeringly unbelievably vast, fortunes in blood and treasure to be first in space. First satellite. First dog in space. First monkey in Space. First man in space. First woman in space. First into space twice. First old guy. First left handed guy. First to eat in space. First to piss in space. First to sleep in space. First to die. First to orbit. First to make a hundred obits. First to make a hundred and one. First rendezvous. First docking. First around the moon. First unmanned lunar landing. First manned landing. First probe to Mars, Venus, Jupiter. First space station. First this and first that. First!

Oh, yes, we – both the Russians and the Americans – cheered every first, no matter how small, by our own respective teams and booed the other side and called them cheaters.

The Russian beat us to orbit. They were first with their Sputnik and then first with their cosmonauts.

We caught up. Then we blew up and they took the lead.

Then they burned up on reentry and we took the lead back.

In the end we beat them to the moon and so we won. Yah! Yes, that’s right, America won. Ha! In your face, Soviet Bastards! In your face!

Except, well, what did it get us? What did we win? Really?

What was the prize? Bragging rights?

Four decades later and who cares? I mean who really cares who was first? Russians were first to orbit. Boo! Americans were first to the moon. Whoopie! And then what? How many of the current generation do you see wandering around with an “Apollo XI, We’re Number One!” sweatshirt on? By 1972 and Apollo XVII we’d already lost interest. To the current generation, the whole Space Race is little more than a not very interesting historical footnote and some ancient primitive hardware gathering dust in a museum somewhere. See, the thing is, neither country got a sustainable space program out of all those trillions of dollars and rubles, out of all those lives, out of all those firsts. Sure, both societies benefitted from the technology and the science, and we still do, every day, but after all of that, after all of those lives and all of that expense and all of that effort and all of the tears and all of the cheering, after all of the chest beating and flag waving and dick waggling and bragging rights, well, after all of that, twelve men walked on the moon forty years ago and we couldn’t go back now even if we actually wanted to. We never made it to Mars, or the moons of Jupiter, and the dreams of living among the stars that I grew up with are mostly dead in this the newest generation. We went, we came back. Whoop Tee Doo, put that in the history books next to Kitty Hawk – if they still teach Kitty Hawk in history class anymore. I haven’t checked lately, more than likely the Texas Board of Creationism has substituted angels and Ezekiel's Wheel for Orville and Wilbur by now.

And yet, if you step outside right now and look up at the night sky in just the right place and at just the right time, you’ll see a space station. The International Space Station. The largest, most complex, most technologically advanced, and most successful sustained long duration mission ever lofted by the hand of man. Americans didn’t do that. The Russians didn’t do that. The Europeans didn’t do that. We did it. We did it, Americans, Russians, Canadians, Europeans, Japanese, Israelis, Indians, all of us working together.

We don’t cheer now when Americans go into orbit. But neither do we cheer when the Russians fail or have a setback. And the same is true with them. We’re in this together. Americans ride Russian rockets into orbit, Russians live in Japanese built modules lifted into space in the bellies of American built Shuttles and assembled with a robot arm made in Canada. American ground control oversees the mission in conjunction with their counterparts in Kazakhstan. Russians and Americans take turns commanding the station. The first billionaire tourists have bought their way aboard that station in a Russian capitalist venture, and within a year a civilian rocket lofted by an American company will dock with the station. And you know what? That’s a good thing. A damned good thing. Because it demonstrates very, very clearly that we, all of us, can work together if we want to. And the more we work together, the more we understand each other, the more we speak each other’s language.

When I was growing up, during the Cold War, the Russians were the enemy. There was a time when our differences almost ended the world for all time. Now? Now they are the people we build space stations with.

Sure, we’ve got our differences.

So?

Sure trust is sometimes hard to come by. Sure there are fights and bickering and bad days and sometimes we don’t know how we’re going to pay for things. Again, so? So what? This generation? The one growing up right now? They have a pretty good chance of not dying in nuclear fire. Tell me that’s not a good thing. Tell me that’s not what matters. The more we work together, the more we realize the things we have in common, the more we accomplish. You have only to step outside on a clear night and look up to see it. And no sane person, Russian or American, wants it to go back to the way it was.

One day, if we keep on like this, we will go back to the moon and to Mars and maybe even further, and we’ll do it together.

It’s ironic, then, don’t you think?

Ironic that we Americans can work with our former mortal enemies easier than with other Americans?

Funny how we can compromise when it comes to building a trillion dollar space station with people we once called “the Evil Empire.” Funny how we can work to build a future for our kids with people we spent the better put of a century locked into a mutual murder/suicide pact with, isn’t it?

Funny how we, Americans, can’t seem to find that same spirit of compromise and teamwork when it comes to working with Americans.

Funny sad, funny stupid, not funny ha ha.

Sad and stupid that we can’t seem to work together when it comes to something simple, something we all agree needs to be done, something that we all want.

I am, of course, talking about the mess in Congress.

You know it’s not about the tax breaks.

It’s not about class warfare. It’s not about the rich and not about the poor and most certainly not about the middle class.

It’s not about the economy, or jobs, or the national debt.

It’s not about the upcoming presidential election, well not totally anyway.

It’s not even about ideology.

It’s about face.

It’s about hubris.

It’s about bluster, and chest beating, and who can piss furthest into the wind. It’s about pride.

This latest congressional deadlock over extending the payroll tax holiday was about one thing and one thing only. It was about dicks – and like most matters of this nature, this entire adolescent pissing contest is nothing but locker-room theater by a bunch of spoiled selfish arrogant immature pricks who are worried that somebody, somewhere, somehow, might think that they have a wee little one.

Here’s the bald simple truth of the matter: This congressional Cold War? It’s all a farce.

There was never any doubt that Congress would pass the payroll tax holiday extension, or that the president would sign it

Anything else would have been political suicide.

The Speaker of the House knows this, you bet he does.

John Boehner painted himself into a corner. As a result, he had to bend over and take it right up the poop chute. He knew it. And he’s got nobody to blame but his own lousy leadership. Boehner has spent the last year showing us what he is, this last week he was just haggling over the price.

The House deserves no credit for reaching a deal. None. It’s not an accomplishment to dodge a rubber bullet you fired at your own self.

Here’s the thing, the economy is in the toilet. It may not be circling the drain anymore, it may have crawled out of the dirty water and may be inching its way up the filthy stained porcelain, but the economy is still in the crapper. You know it, I know it, and every single voter in America knows it. So do the politicians. Americans are pissed off. They’re tired of this bullshit, most of them anyway. They want this endless bickering to stop. They want congress to stop acting like children and start doing the job they get paid handsomely for. Americans, most of them, have had just about enough of this nonsense. They’re out in the street. They’re out of work. They’re out of money. Half of them are out of their damned minds. They’re a year out from a major election. And they’re out of patience.

As a result, it’s a damned dangerous time to be a politician.

Luckily, for these preening jackasses, the worst thing that is likely to happen is that they’ll get voted out of power – instead of being dragged from their ivory towers and stood against a wall. On a side note, a number of these congressmen, including the most intransigent of the current bunch of strident obstructionists, would do well to remember that they are the primary reason so many very angry Americans are heavily armed and equipped for violent revolution. But as usual, I ironically digress.

If congress allowed taxes to go up on the poor and middle class, especially going into an election year, they’d be cutting their own throats.

And they know it.

Boehner and his Tea Party masters have been trying to sell this as a war of ideology, the political Cold War version of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nobody wants taxes to go up, they claim. But that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t let it happen if they could somehow be sure that the blame would fall squarely and unambiguously on the President and the other guys. But they can’t guarantee that. Voters are fickle. They may be unhappy with Obama, but you raise their taxes by $150 per month and let unemployment benefits expire in this economy and see what happens. Instead of the Cuban Missile Crisis, House conservatives would have been looking right down the barrel at the political equivalent of the Bay of Pigs.

And they know it.

And so, after much bluster and chest beating and dick waggling, they signed the Senate version of the tax holiday extension plan.

And there was never any doubt that they would.

Because, see, this really isn’t about ideology, or doing the right thing, and it sure as pluperfect hell isn’t about us, you and me, the insignificant middle class getting dirty-dicked by these arrogant pricks. Because if it really was about ideology, if it was about principle, if they really thought that they were right – then they would have let taxes go up and damn the consequences.

But it isn’t about that.

It’s about face.

Everybody has already agreed to the basics. The tax holiday must be extended. Ditto entitlements (long term unemployment benefits included). The only argument is how to pay for that. Tax the rich? Or cut something else out of the budget. Or a little of both? The senate hammered out a deal with broad bipartisan support – over ninety percent of the forum approved the bill.

A two month extension gives both the House and the Senate time to work out a permanent long-term deal.

John Boehner himself initially agreed to this deal.

Yet, House conservatives balked - and Boehner folded like a cheap suit when his Tea Party masters yanked sharply on his choker chain.

House Conservatives suddenly swore that they couldn’t agree to a two month extension, they wanted a longer deal. Really? Then why in the hell didn’t they complete a bill and forward it to the Senate a month ago? It’s not like expiration of the payroll tax holiday was a surprise. It’s not like we didn’t know that long term unemployment benefits were due to expire on December 31st. If this was really about a long term deal, then they should have done their goddamned jobs two months ago. Instead, they deliberately let it come down to the wire, and they did that specifically because they thought they could use this issue to make Obama look bad and for no other reason. They weren’t expecting conservatives in the Senate to show common sense and put the needs of the country over politics.

They gambled, and they lost. That’s what happens when you bluff, sometimes you get called.

But instead of manning up and taking their lumps, they’d acted like petulant children and tried to hold onto the pot.

Ever try to reason with a mad child?

Same thing.

Unfortunately, we can’t send these brats to their room for a timeout.

This morning, House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor (R-VA), insisted that the differences between competing House and Senate 12-month plans could be resolved “within an hour.” Really? Then why the fuck wasn’t that done two weeks ago? I’ll tell you why, because Cantor and his pals are a bunch of spoiled privileged childish dicks. That’s why. He’s exactly the kind of guy who would play poker in a game where the stakes are the lives of one hundred and eighty million Americans. And he’d do it solely in order to advance his own political agenda and for no other reason.

Think about this for a minute. For whatever reason, these sons of bitches waited until the last minute. Now we’re talking about taxes and budgets and entitlements (and an oil pipeline for fuck’s sake, which is included in this mess for some stupid assed reason that makes no sense whatsoever). There’s about five working days left to go. What kind of bill do you think you’re going to get? Seriously? Two days before the holiday break? A week and half before the deadline? A bunch of political hacks all pissed off and panicked and worried about if people will think they have a little dick?

Honestly, do you really want to live with whatever they managed to throw together at the last damned minute?

Here’s a thought, wouldn’t it make more sense to sign a quick two month extension, make sure Americans have some breathing space (You know, the people you’re supposed to be looking out for) and then take that time to sit down and deliberately hammer out something we can all live with? I mean, wouldn’t that make sense considering that they screwed around playing politics instead of doing the job and now it’s a thing?

Well, yes, of course that would make more sense. And yes, sure, we could do that. Sure. But …

We could do that but the payroll accounting software most companies use isn’t designed for two month increments.

No, seriously, that was the argument. Payroll accounting software is designed for quarterly adjustments to taxes and withholdings and etcetera and so on. So? Think about that for a minute. Why bring this up at all? No, really, why bring that up at all? Unless somebody is actually thinking about raising our taxes. Funny thing, nobody has mentioned that, and what passes for journalism in this country hasn’t bothered to actually ask. So, what’s the deal? This is only an issue if House Republicans are thinking that they might be raising your taxes in two months (or lowering them, I suppose, if you’re a millionaire).

Next, of course, was the standard GOP canard, i.e. a two month extension raises uncertainty for businesses and thus they won’t create jobs and invest in America and the sky, you know, it will fall. Oh noes, not uncertainty! Let’s just say that’s true, and not the same old tired Chicken Little bullshit excuse that has allowed these same businesses to go on for ten years now without creating any jobs despite tax breaks and huge piles of bailout money. There’s an easy fix. It’s called leadership. Sign the two month extension, then House, Senate, and Executive all stand together on neutral ground and sign a fucking pledge to the American people guaranteeing that they will hammer out a deal by February that doesn’t change the tax and entitlement rates that exist right now. Period.

House Republicans should have no problem with this idea, since according to their leader, Eric Cantor, it’ll only take an hour or so to work out the differences between existing plans.

That should give business the assurance they need to invest in the future and create all those jobs they keep promising us in exchange for our tax money. Tell you what, while they’re at it, how about Congress pledge to raise taxes on Corporations who don’t start hiring Americans – and by Americans, I mean people in this country. And if they don’t, then they can not only start paying taxes, they can pay back all those tax breaks and bailout dollars they’ve taken from us – that ought to pay for extending the payroll tax holiday. Conservatives love pledges, this should be a natural for them – though, of course, making a pledge to the American people instead of a rich lobbyist would be something new. Hell, they can even sign it in Grover Norquist’s blood if it will make them happy.

Well, sure, we could do that, but …

If there’s one maggot in the GOP apple that I detest over all others, it would have to be that pale flaccid worm, Karl Rove. Yet, I was forced to agree with him when even he said House conservatives needed to sign the extension. And of course, wherever the slimy trail left by Rove goes, the rest of the conservatives follow. Most of them anyway. Hell, even the king of obstructionist partisan politics, Mitch McConnell could see which way the wind was blowing by squinting through his Coke bottle glasses.

So, what was the hold up?

Dicks.

Cantor and the rest of these self-centered children didn’t want to agree because they were afraid that it would be a “win” for Obama.

Of all the childish, stupid, moronic nonsense.

They don’t give a damn if one hundred and eighty million of their fellow Americans lose, so long as Obama doesn’t “win.” This should be no surprise to anybody, this is the same math plugged into the same equation that these Creationist peckerwoods use for everything of importance. These are the same selfish bastards who would let forty million women and children go without health insurance or medical care so that one poor woman doesn’t get an abortion on the government dime. These are the same sons of bitches who would let a hundred million people die of AIDS in order to prevent one woman from using a condom. These are the same ignorant fuckers who would cut funding for millions of textbooks and school lunches and science program, so that they can continue to fund high school football in Texas and failed abstinence-only faith-based bullshit.

This is about dicks and nothing more.

Frankly, if it was up to me, I’d line them all up and have them drop trousers. Then we can get out a ruler and … smack them right in their useless shriveled nuts.

What?

Oh, you thought I was going to say measure up and settle the issue once and for all? Wrong. I don’t care who has the bigger dick. This isn’t about congressional dick. This is about doing the right thing, because it’s the right thing. It’s about not reliving the stupid Cold War in our own back yard. If these people really cared about the economy and business and the people who elected them, then they’d start working together.

Forty years from now, nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to give a damn one way or the other. Like the Cold War and the Space Race and the first guy to use a urine bag in orbit, nobody will give a damn which one of these people had a bigger dick.

The only thing they’ll remember is that these people were dicks.

If we can work with our erstwhile enemies, we ought to be able to work with our own goddamned countrymen.

Are You Crazy? Is That Your Problem?

2011-12-20T19:49:00.001-09:00

Ever see the movie Big Trouble In Little China?

No?

That’s too bad, because it’s great fun.

It’s one of my favorite movies. Hell, the one-liners are worth the prices of admission alone.

About midway through the movie, there’s a scene where the everyman hero, Jack Burton, (played by Kurt Russell doing a hilarious over the top impression of William Shatner channeling John Wayne) confronts the two thousand year old evil Chinese warlord and sorcerer, Lo Pan (the always outstanding James Hong). Long ago, Lo Pan struck a bargain with the God of the East, Ching Dai, who imposed upon him a horrible curse of no flesh and condemned him to walk the earth as the “ultimate evil spirit.” To fulfill the deal he made with Ching Dai, Lo Pan must find and marry a special girl. Lo Pan has been searching for that girl, a girl with green eyes, for more than two thousand years. When he finds her, and appeases Ching Dai by sacrificing her on their wedding night, he will be granted his wish – and his wish is, of course, ultimate power. Over the years, Lo Pan has found and sacrificed a number of likely girls, but none have been the right one to mollify his demon. Lo Pan, reduced after two millennia of cursed life to a palsied wizened basket-case in a wheelchair, explains his plan to conquer the world:

Lo Pan, his reedy voice rising with monomaniacal fanaticism, “I must find a special girl, Mr. Burton. A girl with green eyes. One brave enough to embrace the burning blade! And when I find her, I will marry her! Then Ching Dai will be appeased and my curse will be lifted!”

Jack Burton, brow furrowed in understanding, “And then you can go on to rule the universe from beyond the grave!”

Lo Pan, gleeful that Burton understands, “Indeed!”

Jack Burton, sarcastically rolling his eyes, “…or check into the nearest psycho ward, whichever comes first, eh?”

It’s my favorite scene in the movie, especially the part where Jack Burton looks Lo Pan right in the eye and, heedless of the vast power once wielded by the ancient sorcerer, asks him point blank, “Are you crazy? Is that your problem?”

You’ve already figured out where I’m going with this, haven’t you?

What gave it away? The guy willing to sell his soul for ultimate power or the serial marriages?

Back in October, Newt Gingrich opined that federal judges who made unpopular, or as he put it, “radical,” decisions should be made to answer to Congress.

Back then, that silly comment barely broke the surface of Newt’s, then, moribund campaign.

With his recent surge to the forefront of GOP presidential hopefuls* however, instead of backing off on this bizarrely unconstitutional position, Newt doubled down.

Last Sunday during an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, Gingrich told Bob Schieffer point blank that the Capitol Police or Federal Marshals should be sent to arrest judges who make “radical” decisions. Note that Gingrich did not actually specify who gets to decide when a judge’s decision is radical – presumably President Gingrich will tell us when it’s necessary.

Schieffer: Let me just ask you this and we’ll talk about enforcing it, because one of the things you say is that if you don’t like what a court has done, the congress should subpoena the judge and bring him before congress and hold a congressional hearing. Some people say that’s unconstitutional. But I’ll let that go for a minute. I just want to ask you from a practical standpoint, how would you enforce that? Would you send the capital police down to arrest him?

Gingrich: If you had to.

Schieffer: You would?

Gingrich: Or you instruct the Justice Department to send the U.S. Marshal. Let’s take the case of Judge Biery. I think he should be asked to explain a position that radical. How could he say he’s going to jail the superintendent over the word “benediction” and “invocation”? Because before you could — because I would then encourage impeachment, but before you move to impeach him you’d like to know why he said it. Now clearly since the congress has....

Schieffer: What if he didn’t come? What if he said, “No thank you, I’m not coming?”

Gingrich: Well, that is what happens in impeachment cases. In an impeachment case, the House studies whether or not — the House brings them in, the House subpoenas them. As a general rule they show up. I mean, you’re raising the core question — are judges above the rest of the constitution or are judges one of the three co-equal branches?

Are you crazy? Is that your problem?

Gingrich seems to have a particular hard-on for Judge Beiry, the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. Biery made a number of rulings regarding religion in Texas schools, specifically the inclusion of prayer in graduation ceremonies, that offended the hell out of Newt Gingrich – and a number of other folks who we’ll get to in a minute.

Gingrich doesn’t agree with the judge’s decision (no kidding, right?), which was to ban officially sanctioned prayer by teachers, administrators, members of the school board, or other officials during public high school graduations – note that this subject would never even have ended up in Biery’s court if the fanatical evangelical creationists involved hadn’t been assholes about it in the first place, but I digress. So, instead of filing an appeal, or living with the judge’s ruling, or attempting to change Federal law to allow for prayer during ceremonies, or any of half a dozen other options available under our law and Constitution, Gingrich instead thinks that the judge should be subpoenaed to appear before Congress and account for his decision – note that there is no Constitutional or legal precedent for this.

If the judge declines to appear, President Gingrich would send Federal Marshals to arrest him.

Then, Gingrich would have the judge impeached. Something Gingrich knows a bit about, but I digress. Again.

Question: What do you suppose Gingrich and other conservatives would say if the current occupant of the White House proposed such a draconian tactic? Or how about if, say, a federal judge struck down portions of Obamacare and Nancy Pelosi had that judge jailed for his insolence? What? I’m just asking. I’m sure Gingrich would totally support that.

You don’t have to be an ancient Chinese sorcerer to see what Gingrich is up to with this.

Besides pandering to Evangelicals in atonement for his previous sins, I mean.

See, Biery is on pretty solid Constitutional ground with his ruling. Gingrich knows it, and so do the Texas Creationists.

You bet they do.

Call the judge to account, and he would very likely be able to repeat chapter and verse supporting his decision – and that’s exactly what will happen should this go to the Supreme Court. That’s why Gingrich doesn’t want it to go before experts in the law and on the Constitution. That’s exactly why he wants the judge accountable to congress or better yet the president (providing he or another fanatical Christian is the president). A congressman or the president can use their religion and their bigotry and their personal beliefs for guidance – a judge can’t (or isn’t supposed to anyway, but yet again I digress).

Hauling a judge before congress as Gingrich demands, jailing a judge who makes an unpopular decision, would undermine our entire method of government.

And that is exactly what Gingrich is proposing.

Are you crazy? Is that your problem?

Now, I think the thing that astounded me most about Gingrich’s CBS interview was Shieffer and his “some folks” say that’s unconstitutional but I’ll just give you a pass. Wait. What? We’ll just let that go?

Are you kidding me?

No seriously, are you kidding me? We’ll just let that go?

What the hell?

That rumbling sound you hear is Edward R. Murrow spinning in his grave.

Honestly, this is what passes for journalism at CBS? Schieffer should be relegated to interviewing Paris Hilton and reading the scores from last night’s Dancing With the Stars. You have wonder how many CBS executives a half-assed excuse for a journalist like Schieffer had to blow to get his job.

We’ll just let that go for a minute? Forever, actually, since Schieffer never did come back to the question.

And that question is the crux of the entire matter.

Congress should have the power to arrest members of the Judiciary based not on violations of the law, but on a whim? Because some congressman thinks the judge’s decisions are “radical?”

The President should be able to detain and arrest Judges because they make decisions he doesn’t agree with?

What’s that you say? Newt didn’t say the President should be able to arrest members of the Judicial Branch? Newt was talking about judges having to answer to Congress? I’m exaggerating? Yes. Perhaps you should go back and check which branch of the Federal Government the Justice Department and the Federal Marshal Service are actually part of. See, either Newt doesn’t himself know (which I find unlikely), or he intends to give the office of the President virtually unlimited power. Once you start arresting judges for making decisions you don’t like, where does that stop? Gitmo?

Of course the third possibility is that Gingrich just thinks we’re all too damned stupid to know the difference. Not an unreasonable supposition I suppose, given that Bob Schieffer and the folks are CBS certainly are.

Let’s just let that go?

I don’t think so.

It’s not “some folks” who find Gingrich’s nonsense unconstitutional, it’s the Constitution itself, it’s the Founding Fathers, it’s two and a half centuries of the United States of America that declare this idiotic third world despotic idea unconstitutional. Separation of Powers and the constitutionally mandated system of checks and balances are the very heart of our republic.

Jailing judges who disagree with the government is what happens in dictatorships, in theocracies, and in fascist states.

Imagine the kind of country we would be living in if the Framers hadn’t made the Judicial Branch independent.

Civil rights. Equal rights. The right to vote. The end of slavery and Segregation. The Right to Representation and the rest of your Miranda Rights. All of these were “radical” at one time. Did you know that there was a time when a State could prevent married couples from buying or using contraception? And it would still be that way if it wasn’t for a couple of “radical” judges.

Of course there are gong to be rulings you don’t agree with. Do you think the men who wrote the Constitution didn’t know that? Of course they did, and they were willing to live with it because it’s one of those things that come with freedom. If you always get your own way, you’re not living in a democracy.

If it wasn’t for the independence of the Judiciary, America would be a very, very different county.

But, of course, that’s the point.

That’s exactly the point. Isn’t it?

Some folks, such as the members of the American Family Association, who today endorsed Newt Gingrich for President, want exactly that, a different America.

They want an America radically different than the one we have now.

The AFA is an organization of fanatical evangelical Christians who, according to the organization’s current director, Bryan Fischer, believe that non-Christians should not be protected by the Constitution. Yes, you read that correctly, the AFA publically professes that the Constitution of the United States and the rights it embodies only applies to Christians. (Fischer has also opined, with the endorsement of his many followers, that the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor, has been “feminized” by liberals because during the current conflict it has been awarded primarily for saving the lives of fellow soldiers and not for killing people. I know, I know, I’m digressing again).

These are the people who would unashamedly turn America into a militant evangelical version of Iran – and have in fact declared their intention to do exactly that, starting with making non-Christians into non-citizens. These are the kind of professional double-thinkers who claim to stand for “family” values and then endorse a serial adulterer, these are the folks who speak of Christian morals and then endorse the only Speaker of the House to ever be sanctioned on ethics violations – violations he admitted to by the way, and which eventually led to his resignation from office.

But, of course, all is forgiven now because God apparently conveniently absolved Newt of his transgressions – well, at least according to Newt anyway.

Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, founder of the AFA said today, “Newt Gingrich recognizes the threat to our country posed by judges and lawyers imposing values upon the country inconsistent with our religious heritage, and has proposed constitutional steps to bring the courts back in balance under the constitution."

I strongly suspect Wildmon has never read the actual Constitution.

You know, the staggering level of hypocrisy displayed by people like Gingrich and evangelicals like Wildmon never ceases to astound and disgust me. These are the same assholes who, like former President George H. W. Bush, claim that non-Christians cannot be moral or ethical people (and in Bush’s case, non-Christians in the service of their country shouldn’t even be considered patriots), because they lack the guidance of the evangelical’s version of God. But then they turn right around and use God as an excuse to justify their own immoral and unethical behavior. All somebody like Gingrich has to do is make the completely unverifiable and utterly unsubstantiated claim that he’s been “forgiven” by his deity, and evangelicals start falling to their knees in order to give him sloppy oral gratification.

These are the people who make up Newt Gingrich’s base.

Gingrich accepted the AFA’s endorsement, calling Wildmon “one of the most important leaders in the country in the battle to uphold our founding principles.”

If that doesn’t scare the hell out of you, you’re not paying attention.

If CBS was actually a news organization and Schieffer was actually a journalist he would have turned the klieg-lights on Gingrich and looked him right in the eye and asked point blank, “Are you crazy? Is that your problem?”

Instead, CBS literally gave Gingrich a pass.

The independence of the Judicial Branch of the US Government exists for a number of very good reasons – chief among them is preventing people like Donald Wildmon and his band of yellow-eyed fanatics from turning the United States into Jesusland. These people relentlessly condemn Islam as violent and evil, and Mormons as a cult, and atheists as immoral, but don’t you think for one damned minute that people who believe that Constitutional protections only apply to Christians wouldn’t be out lopping off heads, burning non-believers at the stake, and running the Holy Inquisition Sausage Grinder at full power if they could get away with it. It sure isn’t God who keeps them from doing it, it’s the Constitution of the United States and the power of independent Judges.

The independence of the Judiciary is the primary thing holding them at bay. No wonder they want destroy it.

I’ve heard it said that that Newt Gingrich is what stupid people think a smart person looks like.

Smart or not, Gingrich, like the ancient sorcerer Lo Pan, is certainly cunning.

I don’t think he means what he says. I don’t think he sincerely intends to see the Judicial Branch brought to heel. I think his outrage is carefully calculated and about as real as his first two marriages. I think he said what he said, and used Judge Biery for a specific reason. And you saw that reason today. I think Newt said what he said, and continues to beat this drum, specifically to get the endorsement of Evangelical Christians. And they were just dumb enough to fall for it.

Hell, if I was a betting man, I’d bet that Newt Gingrich isn’t even a believer, not really, not in private. I doubt that he believes in anything bigger than himself. Not that I really give a damn one way or the other.

In the end, of course, Jack Burton defeated Lo Pan and saved the world, but frankly I’m starting to think that the character we need isn’t Jack Burton after all.

I’m starting to think we’re going to need Snake Plissken.

* What’s the word for a group of presidential candidates. Pride? Like a pride of lions? Murder? As in a murder of crows? Maybe clamor. A clamor of candidates. A bloviate? A rectum? No, wait, I’ve got it! An embarrassment of candidates. Yeah, that’s it. Remember, you heard it here first, folks. Thank you and drive safely.

Everybody’s So Different, I Haven’t Changed

2011-12-10T12:36:00.001-09:00

I call it being disconnected from the timestream.

It started when I joined the military.

Thirty years ago, I left home and the Midwest where I grew up and went off to find my place in the world. I was gone for more than a year that first time, boot camp and technical school, before I came back home for a visit. Things had moved on while I was away, but not very far. I left again after a few weeks of leave and went off to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. It was almost three years before I came back again. More things had changed, and so had I. I left again, and was again away for years. I always intended to come back permanently, but somehow I just kept going. There was always another hill, another horizon, another distant shore. And so it went, the years turned into decades, the world changed, there were a couple of wars, I got married, I had a son, and somehow there was always one more battle to be fought, one more hill to climb, until finally when I came back I hardly recognized the place where I grew up.

And few folks there remember me.

Now, when I return, briefly, to Michigan I am a stranger in a strange land.

My folks still live there, and my mom tells me about people I haven’t seen in a very long time or have never met. She tells me about the children of my cousins who now have children of their own – and I can’t get past the fact that in my mind those second cousins are only four years old, how could they have kids?

See, for me, time stopped when I left home.

I expected to return and find things the way I left them.

Instead, the children I remember are pot bellied and balding and talking about mutual funds and mortgages and what college their kids are failing out off.

I am adrift in the timestream.

I suppose it happens to all of us, in one degree or another.

Of course, the reverse is also true – for those people, and the many others I’ve met over the years and lost touch with, I am the one who has changed radically.

With the advent of social media, I have reconnected to a number of those long unstuck people in recent months.

Inevitably they all say the same thing (with varying degrees of either joy or aghast), Good Gravy, you’re a liberal! When did you change sides?

This seems to be happening more frequently of late.

Every time I write something like the previous post on same-sex marriage, people I haven’t seen in years, hell decades – acquaintances, former comrades in arms, people who I knew long ago – see it on Twitter or Facebook or Google+ or some other link and write to ask when I went over to the dark side. It’s never a flood, but the nature of social networking is that it grows exponentially like neurons in some vast global brain, and when I write something that gets a lot of play people who knew me back in the day write to find out if I’ve been kidnapped by sparkly gay environmentalists and spirited away to their lair beneath an abortion clinic in San Francisco or something.

When did you change sides?

I’m not big on introspection, I am who I am and I like it that way just fine – sharp edges and all – but the fact that I keep getting asked this question made me wonder: have I changed? Inside? In my conviction. Where it counts?

Have I really changed so much that people I haven’t seen in years think that I have switched “sides.”

I believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and I always have. I believe that all people have those inalienable rights. All people, every single one, and I always have. I believed in it so much that I went off and spent most of my life defending those ideals. And so, when people whom I haven’t seen in a very long time say, “when did you change sides?” it makes me wonder.

There are things that define Left and Right, that define the line we Americans have drawn in the soil of our nation. Abortion. War. Peace. Guns. Homosexuality. Creationism. Evolution. Big Business. The Environment. Race. Sex. Religion. Entitlements. Poverty. Wealth. Government.

Things like this bumper sticker:

In case you can’t read that, it says, “Tolerance is for the person who has no conviction.”

This bit of sound-bite Christianity is taken from Christian Apologetics. It’s the sentiment of certain evangelicals, if you don’t believe as we do, you don’t count. This is an odd philosophy to embrace when you profess belief in a religion whose founder said, “turn the other cheek.” Don’t you think? For me, this sentiment brought things into sharp focus.

Have my views on those fundamental divisions listed up above changed in the last thirty years?

I believe strongly in tolerance, have I no conviction?

To answer that, I’d have to look at where my viewpoints came from in the first place.

Growing up, I was bullied – mercilessly, tenaciously, relentlessly, day in and day out, from grade school to the day I graduated from high school. It took me a while to get over it. It’s not something I dwell on these days. Time lends perspective, and while I don’t much miss the place where I grew up I realize that I wouldn’t be who I am without it. My experience is tempered by the fact that I had good family and a few good friends who were always there for me, and by the things I’ve seen since in the dark and dangerous corners of the world – no matter how wrong you think you’ve been done, there are always those who are far worse off and you’d do well to keep that in mind.

I have no compelling need to either get even or prove anything to people I haven’t seen in decades and who likely don’t even remember either me or their cruelty, but I suspect that experience during my formative years explains a number of things about why I see the world the way I do. Back then there wasn’t much I could do about it except endure – these days, I do not suffer a bully to live (which, if you’re paying attention, might help you to understand my commenting rules), nor will I stand idly by and let somebody else be victimized. Period. This is non-negotiable.

When did I become an advocate for gay rights?

I never did.

I’m an enthusiastic advocate for civil rights. I’m a passionate and unrelenting advocate for human rights, regardless of race, creed, color, sex, age, origin, station in life, or any of the other bullshit categories people use to exclude others from full participation in our society, and that most certainly includes sexual orientation. Give me one good reason why anybody should be made to hate themselves. Give me one good reason why one person should be able to define another. That’s what bullies do, you know, define others. Put them in a box. Limit who they can be. Force them into categories: Fatty, Fag, Geek, Nerd, Retard, Stupid, Ugly, Loser. Bullies make their victims hate themselves. Well, I won’t stand for it. The single most fundamental of all human rights is the right to define yourself, that’s exactly what the Founders meant when they said, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness… Noting more and nothing less. Either we are all free, or none of us are. And I am fully willing and able to stand up to any son of a bitch who says different.

When did I become so anti-war?

I never did.

I have always held that viewpoint. You think that odd for someone who spent their entire adult life in the profession of War? Willingly? Heh, you don’t know many professional military folks then. War. Violence. I was born the year the world nearly ended because a bunch of lunatics came within minutes of lobbing nuclear missiles at each other over a shitty worthless speck of an island in the Caribbean. I grew up during the Cold War, every single day pundits and politicians speculated not if we would destroy ourselves, but when – every kid in my generation grew up with the realization that the world could end at any moment because a bunch of assholes we’d never met couldn’t get along with each other. Every single evening during my childhood the TV was filled with the bloody images of Vietnam, pictures of dead and wounded soldiers and burning helicopters and body counts. The streets were full of protestors and haunted shattered warriors. I remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and a couple of folks I only vaguely knew bragging about how they’d cornered an Iranian student in the parking garage of the local junior college and beat the hell out of him in revenge. There, that would teach those goddamned Ayatollahs. And I thought, what the hell? How is assaulting some random Muslim, an Iranian attending an American college and who might grow up to take back his country, how is that in our best interest? How does that make any sense? Contrast that against the tales of honor and glory and duty told by the likes of Pournelle, Heinlein, Drake, Kipling, Hemmingway, and the other books I read and the stories my dad told of Korea and my uncles in WWII. It seemed to me then that war might be a necessary evil, but an evil nonetheless, an evil that takes a terrible toll on both the winners and the losers. Two decades of military service, two wars of my own later, and my opinion hasn’t changed. Until there is a fundamental change in human nature, war and conflict will be a necessary evil. But it is not something to be entered into lightly or for false reasons or because of hysteria or without due diligence and thorough consideration and an understanding of the consequences. Every single life lost, on both sides, is a waste of humanity – in both senses of the word. Stand before the Vietnam memorial on the Mall in Washington D.C., run your hands over the 54,000 names inscribed there and tell me that I’m wrong. I’ll be 50 years old in a couple of months, during my life we’ve been at war for more than half of that time. All of it if you include the events of the Cold War. That’s insane. We could have remade our world into a paradise for all, we could have fed every soul on the planet, we could have raised the standard of living for every single man, women and child and erased poverty forever, we could have cured diseases and afflictions and genetic defects, we could be halfway to the nearest star by now – if we had put one tenth of the energy into ending the causes of war as we do finding excuses to kill each other. How many Einsteins, how many Galileos, how many Rembrandts are laying out there dead on the battlefield? How many Sagans and Salks starved to death in Africa this year? How many Bill Gates and Steve Jobs died of cancer and AIDS? Lost before their genius could be realized? How much of our potential have we as human beings pissed away in war and conflict and burning death? My son is now a teenager and for all of his life, every night the TV is filled with bloody images of dead and dying soldiers, burning helicopters, and body counts. Americans are still beating up Muslims in parking garages and my son hears my stories of Iraq and Libya and Beirut. Our streets aren’t filled with protesters this time around, but there are plenty of those haunted shattered warriors out there and more every day. When did I become anti-war? Wrong question. The correct question is why the hell aren’t you?

When did I become pro-abortion? When did I become anti-gun? When did I become anti-religion? And so on?

I never did.

It’s all part of a set piece. The world is full of dying children, here and abroad. They starve to death every day in unlamented tens of thousands and rot in a hundred thousand unmarked graves. They die of disease and neglect and war and poverty and abuse and slavery and a thousand other horrors. I’ve seen them. I’ve walked among their shattered bodies. Those folks who bleat so loudly about God’s will and God’s love should go out and see with their own eyes what God’s will and God’s love has wrought in the dark corners of the world – and right here in the United States. People like the Pope pray and sing and enjoin his followers to save a handful of cells unattached to the uterine wall. That pompous hypocrite. Children? You’re goddamned kidding me. There’s a place in hell for that guy, yes there is. See, I’ve walked through his home too. He lives in a palace of gold surrounded by a city-state of riches while real live living children are abused under his very roof, while tens of thousands more starve and struggle and cough out their lives on parched soil. Mega-Church pastors stand before millions of TV viewers every Sunday and lament their poverty, while surrounded by billion dollar empires of glass and steel and silver. They talk of peace and wage war. They speak of sacrifice and live like kings. They praise truth and yet decry science. They preach love and inclusion but practice hate and exclusion. They offer salvation, at a price. They speak of humility and arrogantly try to impose their will upon the world. When did I come to hate bullies? For just as goddamned long as I can remember.

When did I change?

The simple answer to that question is that I never did.

So what changed then? Because something sure did.

What has changed are the labels, the boxes people keep trying to put me into.

I tried to visualize it and this is what I came up with (Maybe those classes the Navy paid for with Tufte at Yale weren’t wasted after all):

You can click on the graphic for a larger image.

I attained the age of majority during the Carter Administration. Back then I was defined as a traditional conservative. Balanced budget. War only when necessary. Mom. Apple pie. Conservatives were doctors, engineers, scientists, the guys with the buzz cuts and white shirts who worked at NASA and got us to the moon and back. They smoked Pall Malls and drank Pabst Blue Ribbon. They worked on the assembly line at Ford and GM and they BBQ’d in their backyards in the suburbs on the weekends. You didn’t have to ask, you knew they were veterans. If they went to church on Sunday, that was their business – they never talked about it. They were Boy Scouts and Little Leaguers and members of the Elks Club. Live and let live. They were the folks who said “I don’t agree with what you say, but I’ll die to defend your right to say it” and they meant every word of it.

By the time Reagan came along, people dropped the “traditional” and just referred to my position as just “conservative” with a lower-case “c.” Most everybody I knew was the same. The first warning signs came when people started referring to something called compassionate conservatism. Compassionate? As a opposed to what? Condescending conservatism? Intolerant conservatism? Screw you conservatism? Seriously, why would you have to qualify a political position in a such a manner? Unless of course, there was some indication that your beliefs were increasingly less than compassionate. Unless, you yourself, believed that your ideology was increasingly one of selfishness.

Eight years later when George the First took office, people had added the prefix “moderate” to my version of conservatism. Moderate? Again, as opposed to what? Extremism? Yeah. Funny thing, that, as it turns out…

Clinton took office and the noun “conservative” disappeared altogether leaving me with just the modifier like fractional division where certain values just cancel out. That’s what happened to me, I got cancelled out right out of the Republican party.

When George the Pinheaded ascended to the throne, we moderates were relabeled “progressives.” I thought that was an improvement. Progressive. Progress. That’s a good thing? Right? Yeah. Funny thing, that, as it turns out…

And now, under Obama, I am, of course, a homo-lovin’ red-commie anti-capitalist liberal-traitor rat-bastard who hates America (insert the label of your choice here, Fatty, Fag, Geek, Nerd, Retard, Stupid, Ugly, Loser, and so on. Go on, you know the words) – as are all Americans who don’t cling to their guns and their bibles and their militia uniforms. The entire republican party has shifted right and thrown people like me over the fantail into their wake. You’re either with us or against us. Conservatives who used to be the serious men in white shirts and buzzcuts, the men who got us to the moon and home safely again, the ones who once taught science and engineering and medicine in the colleges, are now the party of Creationism and Rapture and screw you I got mine. Live my way, or don’t live at all. I don’t agree with what you say, so I’ll have to kill you until you’re dead dead dead because you have no right to say it. None.

My views have not changed. I’m still the same guy you used to know.

I stood fast, firm in my conviction and the war flowed around me and the battle lines shifted like flowing mercury.

One day I looked up and realized that I was on the other side.

And you know what? I’m just fine with that.

Uncivil Righteousness

2011-12-06T20:09:00.001-09:00

We all have the same civil rights.

That’s what Michele Bachman said to a group of Waverly High School students in Iowa last week.

We all have the same civil rights.

Isn’t that nice?

We all have the same civil rights.

Of course, it depends entirely on what you mean by “we.”

Bachmann told the teenagers, “We all have the same civil rights…”

“Then why can’t same-sex couples get married?” asked student Jane Schmidt, who is also the president of Waverly’s Gay-Straight Alliance.

Bachmann’s answer?

They can get married.

Just not to the people they love.

Clever, huh?

SCHMIDT: One of my main concerns is government support for the LGBT community. So my question is what would you do to protect GSAs in high school and support the LGBT community?

BACHMANN: Well, number one, all of us as Americans have the same rights. The same civil rights. And so that's really what government's role is, to protect our civil rights. There shouldn't be any special rights or special set of criteria based upon people's preferences. We all have the same civil rights.

SCHMIDT: Then, why can't same-sex couples get married?

BACHMANN: They can get married, but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they're a man.

SCHMIDT: Why can't a man marry a man?

BACHMANN: Because that's not the law of the land.

SCHMIDT: So heterosexual couples have a privilege.

BACHMANN: No, they have the same opportunity under the law. There is no right to same-sex marriage.

SCHMIDT: So you won't support the LGBT community?

BACHMANN: No, I said that there are no special rights for people based upon your sex practices. There's no special rights based upon what you do in your sex life. You're an American citizen first and foremost and that's it.

ELLA NEWELL (a junior at Waverly High School): Wouldn't heterosexual couples, if they were given a privilege then, that gay couples aren't, like given that privilege to get married, but heterosexual couples are given a privilege to get married?

BACHMANN: Remember every American citizen has the right to avail themselves to marriage but they have to follow what the laws are. And the laws are you marry a person of the opposite sex

According to Bachmann’s convoluted logic and staggering condescension, gay people have the same right to marry as straight people, they just have to be not gay.

Got that?

Opines Bachmann, allowing gay people to marry somebody of the same sex would be conferring special privileges on a select group based on their (presumed) sexual practices. Because, as I’m sure you all know, gay people only want to get married to each other for the squicky gay rainbow sex and not because they actually love each other and want to commit to spending their lives together like normal people do. It’s totally true and you can look that up.

In replying to Ms. Schmidt, Bachmann gave a total of six responses – and those six paragraphs clearly demonstrate why this ridiculous goof should be kept as far from public office, any office, as is possible. Not only should voters, all voters especially including conservatives, soundly reject her bid for president, they shouldn’t even elect her to be the town dog catcher – let alone a United States lawmaker.

The paragraphs above demonstrate not just a cognitively challenged viewpoint but a sharply bounded intellect as well. But, Hell, you know maybe she was just having a bad day. Too much cold medicine and not enough hetro bang bang jungle monkey sex or something. But both in the context of the conversation above and in the broader context of 21st Century American society, Bachmann’s responses add up to a big fat intellectual zero.

Her statements are neither internally consistent nor do they make any sense whatsoever in the context of her own stated political positions. It’s nothing more than gibberish, the kind of internal bizarro-world rationalizations given by an un-medicated psychotic.

Well, number one, all of us as Americans have the same rights. The same civil rights. And so that's really what government's role is, to protect our civil rights. There shouldn't be any special rights or special set of criteria based upon people's preferences. We all have the same civil rights.

All of us have the same civil rights.

Except, of course, the part where we don’t.

What? You want a non-gay example? Bachmann, as a high ranking member of the government, has the right not to be strip-searched at the local airport. You and me? Not so much.

Civil rights are those inalienable entitlements that each American is given by his or her supposed creator (or by the happy accident of just being an American, whatever), i.e. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the specifics of which are partially delineated in the Constitution.

The key words in Bachmann’s statement above are “us,” “we,” and “our.” Bachmann’s use of those words is not all inclusive, when she says “us as Americans,” she is not talking about everybody. She barely acknowledges that gay people are human, let alone American. It’s the doctrine of extremism and increasingly of mainstream American conservatism itself, i.e. you’re either with us or you’re against us. There is us, and there is them, and that’s all there is. Period.

In Bachmann’s clearly stated worldview, Americans are Christians and Christians aren’t gay. Period.

But then how does Bachmann explain gay Americans who are both clearly gay and clearly American? Simple, according to Bachmann, gay people aren’t really gay, they’re just wrong, broken, defective. At best they are the result of incorrect choices and the victims of uncontrollable lusts and dangerous behavior. At worst, homosexuals are the work of the literal boogieman. Bachmann’s husband has made an entire career and a tidy living based specifically on that exact view of homosexuality – i.e. it’s not a sexual orientation, it’s a disease, a sin.

A disease like alcoholism or drug addiction. A disease which can be cured.

A sin like avarice or gluttony, a sin for which the sinner can repent.

The rights Bachmann alludes to up above include, but are not limited to, the specific rights spelled out in the Constitution and its various amendments. And, according to Bachmann, government’s role is to protect those rights. Unfortunately, while each human being may be entitled to the same civil rights, what the Constitution fails to define in any but the most general sense is what, exactly, constitutes an actual American – or what constitutes a human being for that matter. Apparently, that definition was a truth the Framers thought was self-evident enough that it didn’t require formal description (well, except for that part about slaves being only three fifths of an actual human being, but I digress). Because of this, for the last two and a half centuries, senators and representatives exactly like Michele Bachmann have used their religion, bigotry, and shameless lust for power to define who exactly gets to be a human being in America and who doesn’t. We’ve used this exact reasoning to exclude all kinds of people from full realization of their civil rights. People who are the wrong color, people who worship the wrong god or none at all, people with the wrong political view, people who lack the proper reproductive organ, people who can’t read, people who have funny accents, people without land or means, people whose ancestors came from the wrong country (including those whose ancestors came from this country before it was this country) and so on right up to this very day.

Americans have civil rights. Gay people aren’t American. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

And it’s really just as simple as that.

That’s what Bachmann means when she says that we all have the same civil rights. We. Us real Americans. We all have the same civil rights. Those other people? They aren’t really Americans, so they don’t count.

That’s why in Bachmann’s mind equal rights means special rights.

If she, and those like her, actually saw all people as people, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place, would we?

They can get married, but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they're a man.

Try something, substitute the racial designator of your choice for the gender nouns in that statement, i.e. They can marry a Caucasian if they’re a Caucasian. Or they can marry an Asian if they're an Asian. Or they can marry an African American if they’re African American. And so on. How’s it sound now? Think it would stand up in court? They can only marry if their ancestors came from the same European culture. They can only marry if they are both of the same religion or attend the same church. They can only marry if they own land or have jobs. They can only marry if they can both read. They can only marry if they both love tractor pulls and lite beer. They can only get married if they are both liberals, or both conservatives, or both independents. They can only get married if the wife casts her vote same as the husband. They can only get married if the woman is a virgin. They can only get married if they are of the same socioeconomic caste. They can only get married if they plan on having children – and only if they are both capable of producing children together. They can only get married if they don’t have any genetic defects that they might pass on to future generations.

Oh, hey, I know, they can only get married if they are both blond haired and blue eyed and a card carrying member of the master race…

How about now? How’s that sound? Too far? Too extreme? Of not extreme enough?

Don’t try to tell me that it’s not the same, because it is.

It is exactly the same.

Now, this is typically the point where people like Bachmann, or her mouthpiece, start bleating the standard slippery-slope warning, i.e. if we let gay people marry other gay people of the same gender, then we have to allow people to marry animals and farm equipment and the Eiffel Tower.

That’s true.

Just as soon as dogs, milking-machines, and French landmarks are sentient self-aware beings who have attained the legal age of majority and are responsible for their own decisions under the law.

This is the same exact legal precedent that gives people with Down Syndrome, Autism, or other cognitive impairments, the right to get married, i.e. if they are of legal age and are legally responsible for themselves no matter their particular impairment, then nobody can prevent them from getting married – even if the thought of mentally challenged people having sex makes others squicky and uncomfortable. Just as it is conversely illegal to have sex with somebody who isn’t legally able to give consent, such as a child or a dog, or to marry somebody who can’t understand what they are doing, such as a person in a coma and no more aware or legally responsible for their own actions than a potted plant.

The admonishment “but but but then we’ll have to let people marry animals and so on” is a logical fallacy and a specious idiotic product of somebody who simply doesn’t have an actual argument other than “I don’t like it.”

The inalienable civil rights of others are not determined by what makes you uncomfortable.

You deal with your own squick on your own time, you have no right whatsoever to force your logical fallacies on others. If the thought of homosexuality makes you uncomfortable, too damned bad, that’s your problem, you deal with it. Just as if the thought of a black man marrying a white woman bothers you, or people of different religions bothers you, or people with Down Syndrome. It’s your problem, and that has no bearing whatsoever on other peoples’ civil rights.

According to Bachmann, the purpose of government is to protect civil rights for all citizens. Bachmann is also a vocal advocate for small government, maximum individual sovereignty, and minimal federal meddling in people’s lives.

So how come Bachmann, as a sitting United States lawmaker, is going around telling a bunch of high school kids who they can marry?

[Why can’t people marry who they want to?] Because that's not the law of the land.

There was a time when the law of the land didn’t allow people of Bachmann’s gender to vote. Or own land. Or hold a job. Or run for office.

There was a time when the law of the land considered people of color property and less than human.

There was a time when the law of the land herded people of certain ethnicities into internment camps for no reason other than they had slanty eyes or their last name was Eichmann or Frazetti.

There was a time when the law of the land allowed a government committee to destroy your life simply because an anonymous accuser alleged that you might be a communist – or a terrorist.

There was a time when the law of the land sterilized people deemed undesirable.

There was a time when all of these things were the law of the land. That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t make it moral. And it doesn’t mean we can’t fix it.

Times change. Society changes. Laws change.

Bachmann knows this, else why is she fighting so hard to change the law of the land that allows all woman access to a safe and affordable abortion?

Times change. The men who founded this country knew it and expected exactly that, and that’s specifically why they incorporated directly into the fabric of the Constitution a method for changing it as society itself changed.

It is blindingly obvious that Bachmann is a coward, a moral coward, who instead of answering a teenager’s question honestly and directly, i.e. instead of giving her real reason for opposing same-sex marriage, hid behind a specious sound bite. And make no mistake, Bachmann knows exactly what she is, i.e. a coward and a hypocrite, otherwise she would have answered this question directly. We’ll come back to that in a couple of paragraphs.

A great many of the horrors of our past have been perpetrated under this same exact moral cowardice.

The Red Man doesn’t feel the same way about his kids as we do.

Negros are better off as slaves in America than as savages in Africa.

I was just following orders.

I didn’t know what was happening inside Abu Ghraib, the CIA was in charge.

We can’t change the past, but we can damned sure change our future.

They have the same opportunity under the law. There is no right to same-sex marriage.

There it is again, they.

And the truth of the matter is that in many cases they don’t have the same opportunities under the law. They don’t have the simple right to see a loved one in the hospital – if that loved one is their same-sex partner. They don’t have the right to insurance benefits or next-of-kin notification or joint ownership or medical decisions or tax breaks or any of the veritable host of rights that come with traditional relationships. In a lot of cases, they don’t have the right to adopt children if they so choose to do so – or, in some cases, gain custody of their own biological offspring. In fact, there are a lot of rights they don’t get – including the right not to be discriminated against when it comes to fair and equitable representation of their civil rights and interests by their own Goddamned Representative.

Bachmann says that a man is free to marry a woman and vice versa. True. But, ask yourself something, if same-sex marriage is allowed, how does that change – in any way whatsoever – a man’s right to marry a woman and vice versa? How does same sex marriage in any way, any way whatsoever, affect traditional male/female marriage? If men can marry men and women can marry women, can’t men still marry women and women still marry men and will not one goddamned thing be any different for Michele Bachmann in any way whatsoever? Assuming that you’re heterosexual, your rights, my rights, your marriage, my marriage, Bachmann’s marriage, will have changed not one iota. If you’re straight, same-sex marriage affects you, whoever you are, in no way whatsoever, other than the fact that you will have to come to terms with the idea that some people you don’t know, somewhere that has no impact on you, are maybe doing something that you don’t like.

LGBT people aren’t asking for special rights, they’re demanding the same rights that any American is entitled to, i.e. life, liberty, and the pursuit of goddamned happiness. Nothing more, nothing less.

And to be clear here, it’s not just gay people making this demand, a hell of a lot of straight people, say like yours truly, demand the same. Not because we either approve or disapprove of who you have sex with or who you love, but because in America either we are all free or none of us are.

[Will you suppose the LGBT community?] No, I said that there are no special rights for people based upon your sex practices. There's no special rights based upon what you do in your sex life. You're an American citizen first and foremost and that's it.

No. That’s the only truly truthful statement Bachmann made. No. You can depend on me not to represent your interests as long as I am in government. No, despite the fact that I swore to support and defend the Constitution and civil rights for all Americans. No. Fuck you.

Here’s a thought, a hell of a lot of heterosexuals perform the exact same sexual acts that homosexuals do. In fact, heterosexual sex only has one combination that homosexual sex doesn’t have. I’m not going to spell it out for you, being as this is a family blog and all, but you should be able to figure it out. If you’re having trouble, type the word “sex” into Google Image search and educate yourself on how the naughty bits fit together in various combinations.

Every single American should fully understand the implications of this line of reasoning: Given that there is only one thing heterosexual couples can do when it comes to sex that homosexual couples can’t, and people like Bachmann have stated fairly specifically that that one act is the only form of sex they believe to be sanctioned in the eyes of their God, then their actions indicate that they believe that they have the right and the authority to dictate how you have sex – and quite likely the position you have it in. Here’s the kicker, Bachmann and her ilk believe they have the God-given right to dictate why you have sex, not for pleasure or intimacy or love, but for the sole purpose of reproduction.

That’s what this is all about.

Now, you want to talk about governmental overreach?

Bachmann not only wants control of your bedroom, she wants to decide how you think.

And that’s why Conservatives should send this woman packing sooner rather than later.

If there are no special rights for people based upon their sex practices, then there should be no special prohibitions either.

Now, this is typically the point where people like Bachmann bring up how gay marriages don’t produce children, or don’t produce children without help. This is an asinine argument. There is no requirement whatsoever, under any law or regulation at the Federal, State, or local level for a marriage to produce children as a requirement for validity. If you require that gay people produce children as a result of their particular sexual practices in order to be married, then you must apply this requirement to all marriages regardless of the genders of those involved. This argument is invalid. It also doesn’t apply even within the context of traditional pairing. It’s also stupid. Fail. Try again.

As to that bit about being an American first and foremost, well, we’re back to a United States Representative telling American citizens who they are. And I have to wonder what Bachmann’s reaction would be if, say, President Obama told this girl that she was an American first and foremost – and thereby implying that Schmidt was a Christian second. I’ll leave the imagining of that outraged response by the usual rightwing pundits as an exercise for the reader.

Remember every American citizen has the right to avail themselves to marriage but they have to follow what the laws are. And the laws are you marry a person of the opposite sex

While the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act does specify that marriage is between one man and one woman, the actual implementation was left up the individual states. DOMA has no Constitutional basis at all and is quite likely to be repealed upon Supreme Court review – especially since the White House has declined to defend it. As to the Constitution itself, House Resolution 56, the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment, was introduced before the House of Representatives on May 21, 2003. Ratification of this constitutional amendment would have overridden state law and defined marriage as between one man and one woman in the US Constitution. So far, it hasn’t even come close to getting out of committee, let alone passed the House or Senate and gone to the states for ratification. The question at this point is of course, how someone who strongly advocates for State’s Rights and smaller Federal interference, and in fact is campaigning for president on this exact issue, could possibly be for an amendment that is directly counter to those stated positions – unless she is, in point of fact, a flaming hypocrite who simply wants her way.

In Iowa, where Bachmann made this condescending proclamation, the law specifically says that you do not in fact have to marry somebody of the opposite sex. But, I digress. Again.

Here’s the thing: The plain and simple truth of the matter is that aversion to same-sex marriage here in the land of the free and home of the brave is based entirely on religion.

Just so.

Take religion out of it, and there is not even one legitimate reason why any mentally competent adult should not be able to marry any other mentally competent adult regardless of gender – and especially despite what some politician thinks. (Don’t. Just don’t even go down the road of, “Gay is a mental illness so gay people aren’t mentally competent. Because that just makes you even more of a douchebag than you already are. You’re also wrong).

Same-sex marriage deprives nobody, not one single person, of any right that they have at this exact moment.

Same-sex marriage cannot be shown to have negatively affected any traditional marriage in any way whatsoever, ever – even if that was a factor for basing a law on. Which it isn’t. And so-called defenders of traditional marriage should be damned grateful that we don’t start implementing laws based on what might or might not impact good old-fashioned hetro marriages, because booze, gambling, sports, money, work, porn, children, and religion are a far, far, far bigger threat to traditional marriages than any random pair of queers minding their own business in the privacy of their own bedroom.

Same-sex marriage in states that now allow it has had zero, repeat zero, impact on the lives and livelihoods of people who oppose it. No church has been forced to perform marriages that they oppose, just as they didn’t have to perform marriages they opposed prior to the legalization of same sex marriage – hysteria not withstanding. Marauding bands of sparkly homosexuals don’t roam the streets waving guns and wearing tri-corner hats. Law and order and life seems pretty much the same now as before. National security remains unaffected. The earth’s orbit hasn’t changed. Now, it’s true that a lot of lives and livelihoods have been degraded to some extent nationwide in recent years – but that has everything to do with the immoral actions taken in the boardrooms of Wall Street and nothing whatsoever to do with gay marriage (If you want to go all Westboro Baptist and argue that God is punishing America for Teh Gay, I will listen to you – just as soon as you can prove what you say using accepted mainstream scientific methodology and empirical forensic laboratory evidence to the legal standards in the US state of your choosing).

Now, this is typically the point where people like Bachmann bring up the final ultimate idiotic argument: If gay people get married and raise children, those children could turn out to be gay help us lord jebus oh noes! Gay parents might make for gay kids. So? What do you care? Seriously, one way or the other, so what? Question, without resorting to pseudo science or Jesus, explain where gay people come from now.

Here’s the thing, so pay attention: In America we don’t make laws based on religion, yours or anybody else’s. Period.

And no, American law is not, in point of provable fact, based on the Christian bible. No, it’s not. It only looks that way if you cover one eye and ignore pretty much most of the bible. Sure there are some superficial similarities, the bible forbids murder and theft for example. Hardly surprising since most human societies generally frowned upon killing people and stealing their shit long before Moses went up the mountain. Thou shalt not murder people and steal shit isn’t something you should need God’s guidance on. But the bible also says that rape is fine, providing the rapist marries his victim afterward – I’m curious why Michele Bachmann doesn’t advocate for changes in our law to reflect this biblically endowed civil right: Rape + marriage afterward = God Happy. It would certainly have a far, far greater impact on our society than if one man lays with another don’t you think? (Here’s a question, what if one man rapes another? Can they get married then? Whoa. Sorry, somebody slap Jesus on the back there. My bad) How come Bachmann isn’t advocating for the abolition of divorce? After all, dissolution of a marriage is forbidden in both the New and Old Testaments. How about adultery? Why hasn’t Bachmann demanded that Newt Gingrich be stoned to death as specifically directed by God? There wasn’t any of this vague “lays with” crap either, God said commit adultery, die motherfucker. Period. Speaking of Children, God recommends that if a man dies childless, his widow must have intercourse with each of the man’s brothers in turn until she bears her deceased husband’s male heir.

There is plenty more where that jackassery came from, but I think that’s about enough silliness at the moment.

And yet, this is exactly what Michele Bachmann and the religious Right would have. And that is exactly why Bachmann refused to answer Jane Schmidt’s question directly and instead choose to hide behind an inane and idiotic sound-bite like “it’s the law of the land.” Her answers are motivated entirely by her religion and her un-American attempt to force those religious views on everybody else in this country. She knows it. She absolutely knows it. And she knows why it’s counter to everything this country stands for.

And that’s exactly why she tried to hide her real intentions.

The law of our land is that our laws are not based on religion.

Nor should our law be based on hate.

Give me one valid argument against same-sex marriage that isn’t, ultimately, based on either religion or just plain bigotry.

Bottom line: We may not all have the same civil rights, yet, but we all have the right vote against dimwitted hypocrites like Michele Bachmann.

Please do so.

Commandment #1: Speculation about Marcus Bachmann’s sexuality is not relevant to the conversation. Whether or not he is straight, bent, closeted, confused, or a piece of farm equipment is his business. Does that or does that not make him some kind of hypocrite? Who gives a fuck? He is not running for office. Should he become First Dude and lead the charge for Teh Gay Cure, then you may have at him. Until and such, mocking, ridiculing, or belittling any person for his or her supposed sexual orientation is the tactic of the hater and the bigot. Don’t be that person, at least not here. Any comment that engages in such douchebaggery will be deleted immediately and without notice.

Commandment #2: This post is in no way whatsoever an attack on religion in general or Christianity in particular. It is a blunt assessment of one Christian and one form of Christianity. If you take that personally, that’s your problem. Don’t make it mine. If you feel that this is directed at you and your beliefs, then you should go back and read the post again, carefully. Sound out the big words and get help if you need it. If you still feel that this article is a condemnation of your personal brand of Jesushood, well then it probably is. Go somewhere else and think about that. Any comment attempting to turn this into a discussion of my supposed intolerance of your particular religious viewpoint or about the much ballyhooed persecution of the poor, poor American Christian will likewise be removed without warning or comment.

Failure Is The Plan The Plan Is Death

2011-11-28T17:05:00.001-09:00

As it turns out, failure was an option after all.

And, in point of fact, it turns out that failure was the only option.

Failure, it seems, was hardwired into the plan right from the very start.

Try to imagine my surprise.

Back in the early 70’s, writing under the penname James Tiptree Jr., the haunted writer Alice Bradley Sheldon penned a sad and chilling story.

It was intended, this story, as a cautionary tale, a terrible example of instinct and biology over reason and intelligence.

Now, there is nothing particularly unusual about that per se, given that Dr. Sheldon wrote many subtly chilling stories in the 70’s, arguably some of the most chilling and subtle tales ever put down on paper (seriously, read The Screwfly Solution sometime, that goddamned thing still gives me the willies, especially when you realize what Sheldon was really getting at). Sheldon herself was a deeply troubled and tragic figure whose life ended in a manner right out of one of her dark and terrible nightmares, but in spite of – or maybe because of – her demons she was also a complex and fascinating storyteller and an absolute master of disturbing cautionary tales – unsurprising given that her docorate was in psychology and that she had been many things in her strange life, from a wealthy Hyde Park socialite on safari in darkest Africa to WWII soldier to Cold War CIA spook to chicken farmer to award winning writer and finally to cunning murderer and a suicide (the noun, not the verb).

In Love Is The Plan The Plan Is Death, Sheldon told the story of a spider-like creature doomed by inexorable biology to first a gradual loss of its intelligence and self awareness, and then ultimately to violent death – squint your eyes and think Alzheimer’s victim crossed with a praying mantis’ sex life dropped into the middle of a war zone and you’re in something resembling roughly the right ballpark. Imagine how terrible a life-cycle that would be for any sentient being. Self destruction is hardwired into the creature’s genes. In the story, the pitiful protagonist is fully aware of what is happening and struggles heroically against its fate, having come to believe that love can indeed conquer all – even genes.

Sheldon wasn’t a happy person and her stories rarely, if ever, had a happy ending. At the end of Plan, the poor creature succumbs to the mindless unthinking individual tragedy of its species’ fate – for in Sheldon’s world brutal biology cannot be denied, even by love (and here there is a truly horrible parallel to Alice Sheldon’s own fate, but I’ll leave that as an exercise to the reader*).

I couldn’t help but be reminded of Love Is The Plan The Plan Is Death last week when the so-called Congressional Super-Committee emerged at last from its spider hole and announced triumphantly that they had succeeded in failing – exactly as planned.

Like most Americans, I suspect, I was disgusted but not surprised.

As I wrote in the previous post, the committee’s failure to reach any kind of agreement on debt reduction is a surprise to absolutely nobody, except perhaps the aforementioned lovesick spider.

The committee itself was born of failure on the part of Congress – failure to do the job that Congress was elected to do in the first place, failure to keep their oath so help me God, failure to place their duty to country above their personal agendas and politics, failure to listen to all of their constituents and not just the ones with the open checkbooks, failure to perform their Constitutionally and legally mandated function, failure of leadership, failure of reason and intellect, failure of democratic government, and a complete and utter failure of moral courage.

The Super-Committee was designed to fail by a Congress that is itself an utter failure. It was stocked with men and women who swore to fail – how different would our situation be today if only these same disingenuous sons of bitches had fought as steadfastly for their oath to the people and the country and the Constitution as they do for their non-binding promise of allegiance to a rich lobbyist?

Sadly, the creation and ultimate inevitable failure of the super-committee is itself not the disease, it’s a symptom of a much deeper malady.

Because, see, ultimately the mere existence of such a congressional super-committee is an expression of abject failure on the part of Americans to maintain and operate their democracy in any but the most mindless and instinctual manner.

Failure, it would seem, was hardwired into the committee’s genes right from the day of its birth.

I’ve written about the inexorability of fate before.

But here’s the thing: as I said in The Inexorable White Whale, the simple truth of the matter is that I don’t, in fact, believe in fate or destiny or pre-ordination. You can change your fate. You can. There are a thousand places, more, where we can change the course of our history.

We know what has to be done.

We are not Sheldon’s alien spider.

Failure is not hardwired into our genes.

The super-committee didn’t have to fail. It could have worked. It could have worked if its members had placed the nation above their own childish politics. It could have worked if those who formed the committee and selected its members actually wanted it to succeed. It could have worked if Americans demanded that it succeed and held its members responsible for failure.

But of course, the very same thing could be said of Congress itself – and should be. Every single day.

The super-committee is an admission by Congress that they, both the House and Senate, are unable and unwilling to avoid descent into mindless savagery.

Every single member of congress knows what has to be done. We must cut spending. We must raise taxes. We must do both. It’s like losing weight, the only way to take it off and keep it off is diet and exercise. There is no other solution. Everything else is just window dressing. You know it. I know it. And every single member of the government knows it. The solution is painful, just as losing weight is painful and difficult and hard, but ultimately if you don’t do it, it will kill you.

Unlike Sheldon’s poor alien, Congress has a choice.

And they choose this path. The path of moral cowardice. The path of failure.

As I have said on numerous occasions, I spent my entire life in the military and despite now being retired from active service I continue to hold my oath to the county and Constitution dear. I am opposed to violent revolution. I am opposed to smashing windows and lighting the country on fire. I’ve been to war, I know what it looks like and I don’t think it’s necessary here. Yet. I believe that the system is damaged, bent and battered and sore used, but I still have faith in the country and the system our forefathers designed.

I believe in America.

I believe that unlike Sheldon’s unhappy alien spiders our fate can be changed.

I don’t believe that we must be victims of our political biology.

But I will say this: while I would neither condone nor encourage it, and would likely actively fight against it, if the members of Congress are ultimately dragged from their ivory towers and hung from the nearest lampposts I’ll be neither surprised nor will I shed a tear for their fate – for they have well and truly earned it.

Hopefully such won’t be necessary to change our destiny.

I read with sour amusement political analyst Charlie Cook’s comment this morning,

“Voters hardly seem inclined to reward either party, instead, we may well see many incumbents – those wearing blue Democratic jerseys as well as those wearing red Republican ones – thrown out the window, not so much because of their uniforms but because of their proximity to windows…”

I certainly hope so.

* If you want to learn more about the fascinating and tragic life of Dr. Alice Bradley Sheldon, AKA James Tiptree Jr., AKA Racoona Sheldon, an excellent place to start is Julie Phillips’ meticulously researched and gripping James Tiptree Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon. Highly recommended, even if you’re not a fan of science fiction and have never heard of Tiptree before. Printed versions are available from the usual sources, and it’s now apparently available on the web.

Childish Labors

2011-11-22T18:19:00.001-09:00

Update: Gingrich released a clarification of his child labor comment from yesterday, and I thought oh God damn it, I spent an hour writing this snark and he torpedoed me. Turns out I needn’t have worried, his clarification is just as stupid as his original comment. Thanks, Newt, you’re a piker.

It’s been an entertaining week, hasn’t it?

And by entertaining I mean entertaining like getting tazed in the onions, sure there’s dancing and wild hooting involved but you’re going to be sore as hell the next morning.

A bunch of drunken rednecks booed the first lady on national TV in an outstanding show of classy Southern sportsmanship while she was at a NASCAR race to promote jobs for veterans returning from war. In defense of these mouth breathers, corpulent swollen carbuncle in the sweaty ass-crack of humanity, Rush Limbaugh, called the nation’s first African American First Lady “uppity” and then tried to pretend as if that statement wasn’t blatantly racist. Here’s a question for you, if “uppity” isn’t racist then how come you’ve never heard anybody, ever, refer to a rich white man as uppity? There’s a word that always follows “uppity,” whether it’s spoken out loud or not, it starts with an N. Ten points if you can figure it out, Good Ole Boys help the Yankees. Rush fans claim his words were taken out of context. Heh. Maybe they should be taken that way, because taken in context it’s abundantly clear that he was defending the hecklers specifically because an educated black woman had the unmitigated gall to suggest that their overweight diabetic chicken-fried butter eatin’ and soda swilling kids should maybe have a salad or two and, you know, exercise.

Probably a good thing she didn’t suggest that they read a book or stop doing drugs, Limbaugh might have had to organize a good old fashioned non-racist lynching.

Students at UC Davis got a painful lesson in the abuse of power. Creepily cadaverous Anne Coulter, without a shred of self-conscious shame publically suggested that the campus police should have just shot a few of the student protesters instead of hosing them down with military-grade pepper-spray. Apparently the mere sight of young Americans exercising their constitutional right to assembly and speech was so gut wrenchingly offense to Coulter that summary executions for sitting on a sidewalk are in order. She should move to Alaska, Lurch and Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan could rub hot sauce on each other and be best friends forever. Here’s another question for you, how come a great American patriot like Anne Coulter, who talks endlessly about freedom and liberty and the Constitution, suggests that the correct response to unarmed peaceful protesters is the same one employed by the Communists at Tiananmen Square? When did it become morally acceptable in America to shoot people as an example to others?

Here’s something I’d like cleared up: how come it’s terrorism if a guy named Muhammad suggests shooting Americans, but it’s not terrorism if you’re a conservative?

The Congressional Super Committee deadlocked. Afterward, certain members of the committee admitted that they never actually intended to reach an agreement anyway. In fact, for the last month they mostly watched football and tossed off to pictures of Grover Norquist. This was a surprise to absolutely nobody, since the conservative side of the table was manned by people who think that “compromise” is defined as: give us what we want or we’ll start shooting the hostages. You can not reason with people who are not reasonable people, it’s really just that simple. These are folks who hold their oath to the Constitution and the United States secondary to a promise they made to a self-serving lobbyist who was never elected to any position by any American citizen. These are the kind of people who shoot hostages just to make a political statement and then don’t have to live with the consequences. Besides, it’s important to note that this congressional failure is somehow apparently the President’s fault. Question: Where you work, if you were assigned a critical task, nay, strike that, you volunteered for the task, and you not only failed to complete it in a timely fashion you actually took the job under false pretenses never intending to finish it at all and in fact actively prevented anybody else from completing that task while goofing off on company time, should you still get paid? Or should you be terminated immediately and escorted to the door by security even if you blamed the CEO?

Another question, what should happen to the supervisor who is such a lousy manager and poor judge of character that he assigned a self-serving disingenuous scumbag like you to a critical task?

In a stupefying bit of irony, Michele Bachmann accused NBC of sexism after Jimmy Fallon’s band played Fishbone’s Lyin’ Ass Bitch during her appearance on the show. Granted it wasn’t the classist move Fallon could have made but sexism? Please. Bachmann should be thrilled that they finally found a band other than Ted Nugent who isn’t offended to have their music associated with the Tea Party. Besides, it’s Jimmy Fallon on late night NBC, honestly who besides his mom actually watches the show? Question for all the folks outraged over this: why isn’t it sexism when Michele Bachmann says that God wants women to be subservient to their husbands? How come Jesus gets a pass on misogyny?

And why the hell isn’t it sexism when Rush Limbaugh calls a black woman uppity? No really, since he didn’t mean it in the usual racist fashion, he must have meant it because she was a women, right? What? I’m just asking is all.

I could probably have written full post mortems on any of those things, because honestly, when Rick Santorum is the second Tea Party candidate to call Africa a “country” in less than two months and Mittens Romney claims that the only way to prevent Iran from getting nukes is to elect him president, the jokes pretty much write themselves (see the previous post on Rick Perry, talk about taking candy from babies, or rather millions from lobbyists to use a more apt metaphor).

Yep, I could have written about those things, but then Newt Gingrich rolled out his jobs plan and it was like a pure divine white light from Heaven split the clouds and illuminated the landscape to a holy chorus of hot naked angels singing I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.

I tell you, if nothing else I’m grateful this Thanksgiving for politicians like Newt, because he makes political humor fun.

Apparently, according to Newt, America’s current economic woes stem from two sources: greedy middle school janitors and unemployed children.

Newt’s solution? Fire the janitors, hire the kids.

Like chocolate and peanut butter, or feeding the homeless to the hungry, kids and janitorial work naturally go together. It’s just so, so obvious when Newt points it out, isn’t it?

Fire the janitors, hire the kids.

Brilliant.

First we recoup billions in janitor salaries.

Those goddamned janitors and their outrageous salaries. Who can forget those greedy maintenance men commuting to school each morning? Their private helicopters landing on the roof of the gymnasium, flying in from the Hamptons after a weekend of booze, blow and hookers? Their chauffer driven limos blocking the school bus loading zones? Oh yes, let us never forget who caused this financial disaster, them with their 24K gold handled mops and gilded toilet plungers while our children could barely afford to chew gum and stick it to the bathroom mirrors? I tell you, nothing chaps my ass more than when those key-twirling broom jockeys took billions in taxpayer bailouts and then gave themselves millions in bonuses. Personally I think it’s a Goddamned outrage that they get taxpayer funded lifetime pensions and golden parachutes even after being found guilty of ethics violations and forced to resign from their jobs. Honest to God, folks, how many more countries could we have invaded if these jumpsuit wearing sons of bitches weren’t bleeding us dry? How many more faith based programs could we have funded? How many high school girls had to graduate because those damned janitors stole money for abstinence only birth control classes? How many aircraft carriers could we have built? Ask yourself this, how many more tenured history professors could we have hired if we hadn’t had to pay those stinkin’ greedy Janitors? Hell, we could have filet mignon and caviar in the Congressional lunchroom three meals per day instead of, well, ok bad example, but I think I’ve made my point here.

Next, says Newt, we put kids to work.

Nothing says First World Superpower like child labor, boy howdy. Think of the valuable lesson those kids will be learning – say like how even if you work really hard in a thankless job for shitty wages and do your best, some rich greedy asshole in a Brooks Brothers suit and a thousand dollar tie will inevitably dream up yet another shiny business model which somehow always seems to involve outsourcing your job to a labor pool that consists primarily of children. The lesson being, steal whatever cleaning supplies you can now and sell them on Craigslist, because it’s every man for himself. Learn that lesson well, kids, and you too can be a former Speaker of the House some day.

Now, at first blush, Newt’s idea to throw school janitors under the bus appears to be self-serving election year bullshit that solves a problem that simply doesn’t exit, instead of actually addressing, you know, the actual problems faced by actual Americans in the actual real world. But let’s not dismiss Newt out of hand, frankly, there are a lot of advantages to putting kids to work. Like say if they were working after school they wouldn’t be under foot all of the time. So, and I’m just spitballing here, there would be more time for getting to know their MILFy moms – say if you were looking for a fourth wife or something. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Think about it, if the little parasites started paying into Social Security and Medicare in, say, tenth – or maybe even second grade depending on how patriotic their parents are – that would go a long way towards making a down payment on the next war.

Here’s something I bet you liberals didn’t think of: kids in the workforce could commute on the school bus, freeing up valuable space on the highway and saving gasoline. Why that’s downright Green. Put that in your Prius, Al Gore, you tofu smoking hippy.

Now, if the whole janitorial pilot program works out, I’ve got some ideas for other places kids could start filling in:

Flight Crew: Airlines could eliminate unionized employees in favor of children. Sure. They’re small, they could squeeze around the drink cart a lot easer than a full sized Stewardess. Plus they could sleep in the overhead bins during layovers and subsist on a bag or two of peanuts, saving the airlines money on hotel and lodging fees. They can get in tight spaces easier than adults and they’re fascinated by shiny parts, airline ground maintenance seems like a natural fit.

Likewise, companies should hire kids as business travellers. Think about it. They’re small, you could get two of them into a business class airline seat, or maybe they could even ride for free on the laps of other travellers. Huh? Huh? Seriously, airlines could attract business travellers by calculating business fares based on weight. This in turn would drive the next business trend towards smaller and smaller businesskids. Leading in turn to little tiny business hotels and smaller conference rooms. Everybody wins.

Computer Programming: Programmers are paranoid anti-social types with poor hygiene who think the way to meet members of the opposite sex is to sit around dark basements in pajamas drinking Mountain Dew and talking about Star Trek. Anybody who has a teenager knows what I’m talking about here. It’s a natural. Trust me on this, I’ve got a degree or two in computer science, I’m going to let you in on a little secret, computer programming is really mostly just gibberish anyway.

Sex Workers: I know, I know, but bear with me on this. Child sex workers can learn a valuable skill which would then allow them to move directly into paying internships with collegiate sports, the clergy, or conservative congressmen.

Child Soldiers: Once you wrap your head around the sex worker thing, sending kids into battle is easy. Plus, we wouldn’t want to say that a third world country like Africa has us beat in the number of miniature Marines would we? It’s the missile gap all over again! Plus, kids are small and hyperactive, they’ll be harder to hit than full sized soldiers and they’ve been playing Gears of War since the womb, we won’t even have to send them to boot camp. Hand them a BFG and drop them out the back of a C-17 into the warzone. Hell, once the Republicans outlaw abortion we’ll have an unlimited supply.

Whoa, here’s an idea! How about Congress? It’s a perfect fit! Kids are good at arguing, avoiding responsibility, making a big mess, blaming somebody else, spending money, and they think they know everything. Take the Super Committee, they sat on their asses for a month and couldn’t agree to anything. Mostly all they did was lay around playing video games, watching TV, and eating junk food. Hello!

What? Ok, just think about it, that’s all I’m asking.

Of course, there’s a downside – I mean besides the whole eventual Logan’s Run thing where the kids kill off everybody over twenty-one and take over the world.

Sooner or later, kids will take over all jobs, putting Newt Gingrich out of work.

Maybe he can find a job sweeping up.

In fact, maybe if Newt spent some time as a high school janitor he’d learn a little humility and then maybe he’d be a little less uppity.

Then again, maybe not.

The Ballad Of Rick Perry

2011-11-18T18:52:00.001-09:00

Ever heard of Irving?

You know, Irving. The Kosher Kid? The Jewish gunfighter? Big fat Irving? Ranked 142nd among professional pistoleers? Faced down Bad Max and the James Boys? Famous for his bovine art and impeccable table settings? You know, Irving.

Not ringing a bell, eh? Really? Well, obviously your education in American history is sadly lacking. Sigh. You never studied, did you? I pity you and your poor wastrel childhood, I do.

The Doctor would be so disappointed.

What do you mean, what doctor? No not that doctor, not that prissy Englishman and his silly call-box. I’m talking about a true American and the most brilliant doctor of them all, Dr. Demento, of course.

Since you haven’t done your homework, here, listen to Frank Gallop. Go on, I’ll wait. Hell, partner, tell you what, I’ll listen with you, I love me some heroic western storytellin’:

I was reminded of poor old bumbling Irving this week. To be honest I spent pretty much the whole day caught in between fits of giggling interspersed by singing various stanzas from the Ballad of Irving.

Why?

Rick Perry challenged Nancy Pelosi to pistols at twenty paces.

He was mean and nasty right clear though, which was kind of weird because he was yellow too!

Perry is like one of those dudes from “back east,” the kind of sarsaparilla cowboy that the real cowpunchers used to make fun of in the old Wild West. He fancies himself a steely-eyed gunfighter and he was King Shit back in whatever little cow town he’s from. He’s got himself a fancy rig: big horse and a genuine silver trimmed western saddle (made in China), chrome plated spurs, shiny belt buckle and an embroidered Brooks Brothers fringe-sleeved shirt. He’s got the biggest hat he could afford with a fancy leather band, and he spends his nights twisting the brim into the perfect Cowboy curl. He practices his patented Man With No Name squint in the mirror every morning and he’s got that pointy-toed gunslinger swagger down pat. There’s one of Colonel Colt’s equalizers slung low on his hip with the sere filed down and the trigger wired back and he spends a lot of time practicing slappin’ leather and fanning the hammer in front of a life-sized pasteboard cutout of Ronald Reagan as Farrell in Cattle Queen of Montana.

Just one problem, ol’ Hair Trigger Perry can’t shoot for shit.

Every time he goes into the saloon, the other cowboys knock his hat off and tape a kick me sign on his back and he can’t seem to get a shot off.

They’re out there, the wild bunch, the notorious Norquist Gang, in the street, waiting for him right now.

There’s Herman The Harasser Cain, who sprays hot lead in all directions and about half the time accidently guns down members of his own posse. There’s Crazy Horse Bachmann, she wears a faded saddle blanket like a poncho and holds her huge heavy pistol in a splayed legged two fisted grip, she screws her eyes shut and spastically jerks the trigger … and fires randomly into the crowd. Slick Mittens Romney, the grifter who runs the local poker game and kills men with a concealed Derringer he hides in his sleeve next to the spare aces. John The Ambassador, he’s an enigma, he doesn’t talk much, he just slouches in the back cradling his shotgun and stroking the trigger like it was a woman. There’s the Santorum Kid, he’s just an cowhand who was done wrong and fell in with a bad crowd, he rode with Quantrill’s Raiders during the war and now his soul is owned by the Devil. Doc Paul, pale and wizened, tubercular, a dangerous unpredictable loner, the ranch hands say he’s killed a hundred men (mostly uninsured renegade illegal Mexicans). And, of course there’s The Newt, disgraced prewar Congressman, now he’s a fast talking snake-oil salesman and proprietor of The Salamander Medicine Show, wanted by the Pinkertons in ten states and the Indian territories for horse thievery, robbing the stage, and serial buggery, rumor has it that he came out west after he got caught diddling a powerful Senator’s wife, he’s dying of the Pox and it makes him mean.

And there’s Rick Perry, looking for all the world like Marty McFly in Back To The Future III.

That’s what Perry’s fellow Texicans call All Hat, No Cattle.

Rock bottom in the polls. Mocked by bloggers (hello!) and late night comedians everywhere including foreign non-English speaking countries without cable TV. Contributions suddenly nonexistent, funding drying up. Campaign workers sneaking out the back door for other candidates. Every time Perry pulls out his piece he either shoots himself in the foot or it turns out that he forgot to load the damned thing.

Like Clint Eastwood-McFly hiding improvised body armor under his shirt, Perry needs a gimmick to keep from getting killed.

So he cooked up an idea to create a part-time Congress and hire Kelly Services temps to work the Supreme Court. On Perry’s Big U.S. Spread, the President will be the undisputed Cattle King. The Rail Tycoons are already rubbing their hands in glee and eying the homesteaders’ paltry few acres. The prices are up in the General Store and likely to stay that way and they’ve dammed up the river. Perry’s suddenly shaking hands and making the rounds of the bars and brothels shopping his plan. Apparently the logic being that since he just completely sucks giant fuzzy donkey balls at real live debating and can’t even hold his own against the likes of Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain (see? Thus the giggling) let alone Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney – and since he obviously has no chance whatsoever against the very eloquent Doc Brown Obama – he’s decided to go looking for somebody smaller and weaker that he can beat up.

He walked into Sol’s Saloon like a man insane! And ordered three fingers of two-cents plain…

Unfortunately for Perry, he picked on the town school marm – and just never mind the fact that she’s not even running for President.

Pelosi’s response? Her public response? On Twitter? Read by millions so far? Priceless: “Re: Gov. Perry – Monday I’ll be in Portland. Later visiting labs in CA. That’s 2. I can’t remember the third thing…”

He was sittin’ there twirlin’ his gun around, and butterfingers Irving gunned himself down…

Believe me when I say that I am not a fan of Nancy Pelosi. But, dude! She not only owned Perry in a 140 character double-tap, she saddled him and drove him around the internet like a little pastel pony-shaped squeaky toy. The only way Perry could have pantsed himself any worse would be if Pelosi did agree to the debate and then showed up wearing chaps and spurs and rode him around the stage waving her giant hat and slapping Perry on his bare pink shaved bottom. Gittyup! Little Perry!

Honestly, what was he thinking?

That Pelosi would be an easy mark? That debating her would have some relevancy to his sagging presidential campaign? Because conservatives hate her? Because Perry’s Texan base hates her? Because she’s a girl? He can’t hit in the big leagues so he figured he’d go down to the batting cage and knock out a home run there – and instead got himself beaned by the pitching machine. What? What was the reasoning here?

A hundred and forty-one could draw faster than he, but Irving was looking for one forty-three…

Who’s Perry going to challenge next? A ham sandwich? Seriously, if he can’t beat Pelosi, who I remind you again isn’t even running for the office and isn’t exactly the wittiest cowgirl at the dance, in a twitter dust-up of all things then who can he beat?

I saw a comment suggesting that he take on that talking baby from the E-trade commercials. I dunno, that kid was day trading at nine months, it’s a good bet the little curtain-climber can count to three. Seems like an awful risk for Perry. I’ve seen that kid on TV with a smartphone, he’s probably got a twitter account. What? I’m just saying that’s a sarcastic little drooler is all.

Bad Max said draw and draw right now! And Irving drew, drew a picture of a cow…

The problem is that Perry chokes in the clutch. Look, the bar girls down at the town saloon don’t call him Powder Burns for nothing.

What he needs to do is start small and work his way up to progressively harder debates.

Think Karate Kid. What I’m saying is that Perry needs to walk before he can stagger home from the bar. He needs to work on basic skills:

Establish a Clear Message: You can’t be a good debater if people don’t understand what you’re saying. Perry gets flustered when he has to deal with contrary people face to face, so he should start out by getting a little emotional separation from the other side of the debate. He needs to depersonalize it. He should start by debating a drive-thru speaker (takes a minute to start, be patient, it’s worth it. Thank you again, Dr. D). Start with something simple, say a happy meal and a juice box. Next, a special order like extra onions on the burger or no pubic hair in the Lo-Cal sandwich wrap. Once he can order for the entire campaign bus - from memory – at three different drive-thrus on the same food run and get everything he asked for correctly including the weird PR chick’s small hot water and extra ketchup packs, he’s ready for the next exercise, i.e. actual face time in a live training environment. Say like getting coffee for everybody at Starbucks. Simultaneously dealing with the baristas’ scornful contempt and the hostile remarks from those standing in line behind him while they wait impatiently for his huge order to be filled will be excellent practice for a real debate.

Understanding The Question: ~~Sociopaths~~ ~~NeoConservatives~~ ~~Texans~~ Politicians have a hard time with empathy. They just aren’t good at listening to anything other than their own oversized throbbing ego. Perry needs to learn how to listen to constituents. He can practice by debating Rusty The Talking Dog . This is a timed exercise, if Perry can’t figure out what Rusty wants within a limited amount of time he’s going to need a roll of paper towels and a steam cleaner. Either way, he’ll learn a useful skill and if his presidential aspirations don’t pan out he can always find a job cleaning up the local park. Once Perry can walk the dog, he’s ready for the real skill challenge: Cats in tanks.

Dominate the Stage: In order for Perry to stand out in a presidential debate, he has to rise head and shoulders above some pretty big egos. He needs to learn how to boldly seize the moment and hang on unashamedly. Blatant self promotion is just another arrow in the political quiver and if Perry doesn’t stand up for himself, who will? For practice, Perry should debate Kanye West. When he can keep control of the microphone for more than thirty seconds, he’s ready to stiff-arm that candy-assed Wolf Blitzer and take control of the debate agenda like a boss.

Dress for Success: Since Perry isn’t very good at talking under pressure, he needs to appeal on a non-verbal level to the diverse bunch of folks who make up the core conservative base (the innovative entrepreneurs, the college educated, and Wall Street Executives). Perry should practice by debating as a street mime.

Wax on, wax off.

Once Perry has mastered the basics, like a gunfighter in a Dodge City saloon he needs to focus on his individual opponents. He needs to practice against the unique strengths and weaknesses of each member of Biff Norquist’s outlaw gang. The followed training scenarios should help:

Ron Paul (in this simulation, Paul is the one on the left)

Herman Cain (in this simulation, Herman is the one who says, “Well, of course I’m on drugs.”)

Michele Bachmann (not safe for small children, people with heart conditions, or those susceptible to cults)

Newt Gingrich (This simulation is not safe for work,but then neither is Newt. Newt is the blond)

Rick Santorum (Go on, push the button. I saved the best for last)*

The Ballad of Rick Perry, The Hundred and Forty-Second Best Debater in the West

- With apologies to the late great Frank Gallop

He was tall and tan and came out the west

With open pit BBQ smoke on his breath

He was smooth and slick right clear though

Which was kinda weird, ‘cause he was a douchebag too.

They called him Rick

Slick Rick

Slick Botoxed Rick

Slick one percent Rick

The hundred and forty second best debater in the West

He came from the old Bush Family Spread

With a ten-million dollar campaign contribution under his bed

He always followed the evangelical’s wishes

Keeping the queers from getting married was just plain delicious

Rick

Big Rick

Big Bigot Rick

Big Gay Rick

The hundred and forty second best debater in the West.

A hundred and forty-one could debate better than he

Tongue tied Rick couldn’t even count to three.

Challenged Pelosi to a fight and said winner take it all

Got his ass kicked on Twitter and went home with only one ball

Rick

Big Rick

Big Stupid Rick

Big Girl Rick

The hundred and forty-second best debater in the west

One day drought happened in the town

It was so bad it threatened to bring all of Texas down

The people said we need relief oh can’t you see?

Perry prayed to Jesus … and then blamed D.C.

Rick

Big Rick

Big Christian Rick

Big fat hypocrite Rick

The hundred and forty-second best debater in the west.

A financial crisis was coming because of what Wall Street had done

The townsfolk were hurting, they lost their homes and mutual funds

Make me the president, I can fix it Perry coo’d

The first thing we’ll do is cancel unemployment insurance because, fuck you

Rick

Big Rick

Big Oil Perry

Big Rick the Dick

The Hundred and forty-second best debater in the west

Well finally Perry took three slugs in the belly

it was just outside the Tea Party rally

MIlitia man had an AR-15 and was foolin’ around

Second Amendment solutions, that’s what went down

Rick

Big Rick

Big Target Rick

Big he’ll live, he just won’t hold water Rick

The Hundred and Forty Second fastest Master Debater in the west.

Thank you and good night.

* What? Rick Santorum? Rick Perry? Don’t act like you didn’t see the Rick Roll coming. There’s a joker in every deck.

NPR, Ayn Rand, And The Zombies From Outer Space

2011-11-16T23:09:00.001-09:00

Who is John Galt?

That was the bumper sticker on the truck in front of me this morning.

Coincidence? Perhaps. Given that this week NPR has been running a three part special on influential economists, which I’ve been listening to on the way into Anchorage each morning.

Today’s segment was about John Keynes.

Yesterday it was about Fredrick Hayek.

And Monday, it was about, wait, what? Ayn Rand?

One of these things is not like the other.

Not at all.

John Maynard Keynes was a brilliant British economist and mathematician. In fact, he was the son of another brilliant British economist and his intellect was backed up by an impeccable education, credentials, and a lifetime of experience. Keynes spent his entire life working in the field of macroeconomics, teaching macroeconomics, reading about macroeconomics, writing about macroeconomics, and developing what is now one of the major modern theories of macroeconomics. Along the way he was: an editor and contributor to numerous prestigious economic journals and publications, an officer of the Royal Treasury specializing in international wartime credit, specifically called by the Crown to advise the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British version of the government’s comptroller), financial representative for the British government to the Versailles Peace Conference at the end of WWI, an internationally known and respected financial consultant, the impetus behind Britain’s abandonment of the gold standard, the guy that invented modern (Keynesian!) macroeconomics with the publication of his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, served on the Court of Directors for the Bank of England during WWII, designed a way for England to pay for her WWII war debt without collapsing into depression after the war was over, created a post war global economic system designed to prevent the exact financial crises we find ourselves in right now (it wasn’t adopted because England was overruled by the United States, but Keynes’ ideas did contribute to the creation of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and, later, the European Union). Keynes’ theories continue to have a direct influence on nearly every government and financial system in the modern world. Agree with his theories or not, you can’t argue that Keynes didn’t know something about economics (well, you can, if you’re a C-student governor from Texas who nearly flunked economics, but I digress).

Likewise, Friedrich Hayek was a brilliant economist with massive influence on modern economies. His education, credentials, and experience were also impeccable. He held two doctorate degrees, one in law and one in political science, and also formally studied philosophy, psychology, and economics. He was a polymath of extraordinary ability. He is considered to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the last century. He was a protégé of the famed Ludwig von Mises and one of the principle designers of the Austrian School (Theory) of Economics – and he won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for it. During his lifetime he: founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research, taught at the London School of Economics, taught at the University of Chicago, taught at the University of Freiburg and then at the University of California, trained some of the most notable economists in recent history – along with a number of notable industrialists and world renown scientists – and wrote extensively about a variety of topics centered on economic theory. His seminal work, The Road to Serfdom, continues to influence liberals, libertarians, and conservatives alike, from European kings to American presidents and congressmen to Glenn Beck. Like Keynes, you don’t have to agree with him, but you do have to admit that Friedrich Hayek knew more than a little about economics.

Then there’s Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand? Novelist. Playwright. Screenwriter.

Ayn Rand.

Seriously?

On the same economic plane as John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek?

You’re kidding, NPR, right?

That’s like comparing Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and L. Ron Hubbard – or maybe Jesus, Mohammed, and L. Ron Hubbard. Or maybe Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and L. Ron Hubbard. Okay, anybody and L. Ron Hubbard.

Seriously, NPR, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Sure I’m being mostly snarky with the L. Ron comparison, but I didn’t come by that comparison accidentally. Like Hubbard, Rand was basically a mediocre science fiction writer who started to believe in her own press releases and ended up founding an anti-religion composed of garrulous glassy-eyed fanatics.

According to the lead-in by NPR correspondent Andrea Seabrook, Rand was given equal time with actual economists because a number of folks seem to think that Atlas Shrugged is somehow on an equal footing with the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money and The Road to Serfdom instead of the depressingly painful piece of schlock science fiction that it really is. Sure she sold a lot of books, so? So did L. Ron Hubbard. What folks take Rand’s crap seriously? Folks like Congressman Paul Ryan and Texas Governor Rick Perry, Speaker of the House John Boehner, not to mention certain Tea Party types who repeatedly paraphrase Rand’s silly nonsense about taxes being the same as a government mugging citizens at gunpoint – not that most said Tea Party types have actually read John Galt’s endless excruciating sixty page long monologue on the virtue of being a self-centered bastard flavored bastard with bastard filling and little bastard sprinkles on top at the end of Atlas Shrugged (How do I know they haven’t read it? Simple, they haven’t jammed knitting needles through their eyes).

Before we go any further, please understand something: I’m not saying your can’t, or shouldn’t, read and even enjoy Ayn Rand if that’s your thing. Hell some people actually like tofu, Justin Bieber, and the Ewok Christmas Special. Me? Given a choice I’d rather be forced to sit with a hemorrhoidal badger in my lap through every single George W. Bush and/or Al Gore speech ever recorded than to have to read either Atlas Shrugged, or please God no Anthem, ever again. If you like reading Rand as entertainment, as science fiction, as something that makes you think, well good on you. However, and this is my point, while you might enjoy reading an Alan Dean Foster knock off Star Wars novel, you probably don’t think we ought to run the country by the Jedi Code. At least I hope not.

I can, at first blush, understand why right-wing and libertarian extremists love Ayn Rand – she was a bitter self-centered paranoid Bourgeois egotist who was desperately afraid every single day of her unhappy life that the commies and/or the dirty unwashed rabble were going to come in the middle of the night to kick down her door and take all of her stuff. She might even have had a legitimate reason to feel that way given her escape from the Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet Russia, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to live with that fear gnawing wormlike at our brains. Rand thought service to your fellow man was a sucker’s game, charity was for saps, and that society should be based on every man for himself. She was terrified of socialism in any form, including things like Unemployment Insurance, and her entire economic philosophy can best be summed up as “I got mine, fuck you” or maybe “Get a job, Hippies!”

Rand’s Objectivism is little more than angry sullen masturbation.

So, yeah, you can certainly see why, on the surface, she would appeal to the likes of Paul Ryan, John Boehner, and the (various) governors of Texas.

Now here’s the really ironic part, Rand’s biggest fans in government are, without exception, full frontal whole hog Jesus freaks.

Of course, that’s not particularly surprising given that Creationists by definition peek out through their blinders to selectively cherry pick little bits and pieces in order to support their fantasy while ignoring anything that inconveniently contradicts their worldview. Like say the fact that Ayn Rand was an atheist to a degree that makes PZ Myers and the folks over at Pharyngula look like born again snake handling Pentecostals. Somehow, despite the fact that these same people are so obsessed with the supposed godlessness of the immoral Left, not to mention the supposed question of Obama’s Christianity, they don’t have a problem with Rand’s loudly outspoken scorn of all things faith based. Rand was also loudly outspoken when it came to a woman’s right to an abortion, funny how the Right doesn’t embrace that philosophy, eh? Rand intensely disliked homosexuality, but said repeatedly that all laws denying gay people full and equal rights should be repealed. She was also a speed freak, not the kind that goes bang bang fast, the kind that pops amphetamines like Milk Duds and turns into an exhausted emaciated paranoid. She was against war in any form and one wonders what she would have made of the current conflict and her loyal adherents’ condemnation of Obama ending it (the same observation could be made about Jesus, I mean as long as we’re on the subject and all). Of course, she did support Israel and had a habit of picking losing Republican candidates for president so maybe that’s why so many conservatives love her. In the end, after she’d driven away all her rich egotist friends with her obnoxious selfishness and after the Objectivists had abandoned her and as she lay destitute and sick she accepted Medicare and Social Security and other such socialist safety nets in order for the taxpayers to treat her lung cancer – which she brought on herself through decades of chain smoking – instead of accepting the consequences of her own actions by simply dying a painful death as she and her libertarian followers enjoin everybody else to do. Funny how Paul Ryan never seems to mention that bit of hypocrisy. Do as I say, not as I do.

Oh yes, you can certainly see why the folks in bed with Wall Street bankers think Ayn Rand is just the most spiffy cupcake ever.

The simple truth of the matter is that Rand’s economic theories are brilliant because Rand wrote the story that way. Just like Jerry Pournelle’s ultra right wing military strategy is always successful in the Falkenberg series or his laissez-faire libertarianism and ad hoc free market worked perfectly for the Rimrats in Birth of Fire. Just like Kim Stanley Robinson’s Eco-economics worked so elegantly and successfully in Blue Mars. And both Robinson and Pournelle spent a hell of a lot more time and effort designing their respective economies than Rand ever did. When you control the story, of course your economic system works brilliantly. However, the real world tends not to be so simple, unlike Pournelle’s John Christian Falkenberg you can’t just shoot all the liberals and then fly away into space – well I suppose you could, but it’s bound to get you talked about (note that Dr. Pournelle has an extensive background in matters military, political, and economic. He has advised more than one president and when he talks you should probably listen even if you don’t agree with him, plus he’s a hell of a writer and not just of military science fiction. Also, I love the Falkenberg’s Legion series).

Here’s the thing: learning macroeconomics from reading Atlas Shrugged is like learning psychology from Battlefield Earth.

But, hey, as long as we’re on the subject of running the country based on a second rate science fiction novel, why not L. Ron Hubbard? No really, at least the Church of Scientology knows how to make boat loads of money. Sure we’ll all end up wired to the electronic version of a mood ring waiting for Xenu to suck out our engrams or intestines or whatever those goofy bastards believe, but no debt so we’ll have that going for us. Just saying. Plus, free screenings of Mission Impossible IV: Tom Cruise, Still Crazier Than A Shithouse Rat. Also, I think John Travolta has to bake you a fruitcake or give you a non-homoerotic baby oil neck rub or something when you sign up.

Of course, you know it doesn’t have to be shitty half-assed pulp fiction. I mean if we’re going to base our economy on a scifi novel why not the good stuff?

I’ve already mentioned Pournelle and Robinson, so how about Frank Herbert? We could run the government like they did in Dune. Techno neofeuldalism, mystic drug addicts predict the future, giant sandworms. The spice must flow. Sting in a big man-diaper*. What’s not to like?

What, Herbert is too monarchist for you?

Ok how about something more libertarian? Say like Heinlein’s Starship Troopers? Hey, it doesn’t get any more non-socialist than that. You have to earn the right to vote and hold office through voluntary military service – oops looks like that rules out about 99% of Washington on both sides of the aisle. Yeah, we’d better skip the Heinlein.

Or maybe not.

Hang on here a minute. Just hang on, not so fast. Heinlein was a vet, a conservative libertarian, a staunch advocate of gun rights, small government, and individualism. And he was an avowed nudist, so there’s something in there for both conservatives and liberals. He wasn’t big on taxes or free medical treatment either. Maybe one of his other works? Unlike Rand’s two and a half novels, Heinlein wrote eighty something books, there’s got to be one we can use.

Let’s see, Farmer in the Sky? No.

Between Worlds? Podkayne of Mars? No.

Citizen of the Galaxy? Oh yeah, the anti-UN types would have a field day with that one.

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress? No, ~~but we’d probably better keep that one away from the Occupy crowd, I’m just saying. Don’t need them dropping rocks on us from lunar orbit.~~ Scratch that, maybe Moon is exactly what OWS needs, I know I’d like to drop an asteroid on the Berkeley PD right about now.

Space Cadet? Probably not, even though it would be almost worth it just to watch the New World Order conspiracy nuts dance around screaming like cannibals infected with the Mad Cow. Ditto The Puppet Masters.

Farnham’s Freehold? Closer. It sure doesn’t get much more laissez-faire than the end of Freehold. Can’t say I’m a big fan of shacking up with my dead daughter’s best friend in the middle of a minefield and raising mutant babies in the midst of a post-nuclear war wasteland though.

Ah ha! I’ve got it: Stranger in a Strange Land. Woohoo! Free love for everybody. Booze! Gambling! We’ll all be eternally saved. Can you grok it, man?

What’s that?

Now I’m just being silly?

Well sure. But it’s not my fault, NPR started it.

*Yes, if you must know, I did write this entire thing just so I could use the phrase: Sting in a big diaper. You’re welcome.

Colors

2011-11-12T13:55:00.001-09:00

You didn’t get a blog post yesterday because I spent Veterans Day in Hatchers Pass.

Hatchers Pass is one of our favorite places, we spend a lot of time up there.

Hatchers Pass, for those of you not familiar with Alaska, is a BLM area near Wasilla. It’s on the old gold rush and supply trail that once snaked its way from Seward to Fairbanks. Before the modern Glenn Highway the pass was the quickest way north from Anchorage. Nowadays, the road over the top and through the actual pass itself is closed in the winter, buried under yards of snow and used only by hearty souls on snow machines and skis.

In the summer the pass is a great place for hiking, gold panning, and exploring.

In the winter, it’s a popular place for snowboarders and skiers.

For years, developers have been trying to get their grubby hands on the place, so they can charge us to do what we now do for free. There’s a certain mindset that just cannot stand the fact that people are enjoying themselves without having to pay for it. So far, any attempt at development has been unsuccessful and that suits us just fine.

I don’t snowboard. I’m in enough pain most of the time without tempting fate any further. My son does the downhill stuff, I mostly just take pictures.

The skiers, sledders, shredders, and boarders all start at the bottom of the pass. Since there’s no lift, they hitch rides up the mountain from passing vehicles. They line up like brightly colored birds along the guardrail and wait for a ride. Nobody ever has to wait for long. Since we didn’t bring the dog this time, we gave rides to as many kids as we could pack into the back of the truck.

It’s several miles to the top. There are a number of trails down the mountain, but most of the snowboarders like to start at the very top, mile 16 on the pass road.

They gear up and head off down the mountain. This is a shot of my son strapping on his helmet (this picture was actually taken last weekend and was posted on my Facebook page. But I like it, so I’m reposting it here).

Here’s a panorama taken from the 16 Mile parking area. This is seven shots stitched together using Corel’s Paintshop Photo Pro. Clicking on the image will take you to a bigger version in my public Picasa album. If you look really carefully, you can see my house down there on the flats. It’s that little dot.

Once you drop off your passengers, you drive on back down the mountain to pick them up and do it all over again. After a day of this, you have one very tired kid, so, you know, it’s totally worth the half tank of gas.

I hiked up the trail at the bottom of the run and snapped a few pictures while trying to avoid getting run over. I thought the colors made a great contrast against the white snow. And that dog was having a blast, chasing its owner down the mountain and barking like mad. The dog was plenty smart and experienced enough to avoid getting run over. In typical Alaskan fashion there are actually a lot of dogs on the slope, all having fun (and we counted at least two moose). Just another reason to avoid development, can you imagine your local ski lodge allowing dogs on the slope?

I thought to myself as I took the pictures, man, I sure wish I could do that. But then I realized that to board Hatchers Pass you need skill, experience, and an athlete's physique. I would have thought about it more, but at that very moment, I had to leap out of the way of a little pink blur which whooshed past me in an icy spray of mocking girlish laughter. She waved and grinned like a tiny maniac as she whistled past, ponytails flying.

I figure she was about eight.

Veterans Day 2011

2011-11-11T11:13:00.001-09:00

To all of my brothers and sisters in arms, those of you who have stood the watch and patrolled the dark and dangerous corners of the world:

Be proud of who you are and the uniform you wear.

Hold your head high, hold your honor dear, be true to your oath.

Stand steadfast by your duty even when there is no one to see.

Follow those who lead, and lead those who will follow.

Leave no one behind.

Remember the fallen. Always.

Thank you for your service and your sacrifice on this day, and every other.

//Jim Wright, Chief Warrant Officer, United States Navy (Retired).

In Memorial

2011-11-08T06:36:00.003-09:00

I belong to a small online circle of friends.

We call ourselves collectively The UCF.

We are a diverse group of folks scattered across North America. Many of us have met in the real world. We come together to share the pain and the joy and the humor of our lives. Most of us are bloggers, and you can find the other UCF blogs listed down on the right hand side of this page.

This last weekend one of our non-blogging members passed away unexpectedly.

She often commented here on Stonekettle Station as Wendy_B09. Her wit and great humor will be sorely missed.

If you happen to see a Viking longboat afire off the coast, raise a glass and think of our friend.

Fair winds, following seas, Wendy, we’ll see you again in Valhalla.

Occupy Stonekettle Station, The Follow Up

2011-11-05T12:10:00.001-08:00

Niven’s Law: The Universe doesn’t care if you’re having fun

Well, as expected, I managed to thoroughly piss off a number of you with the previous Occupy Wall Street post.

As a result, some readers won’t be back.

Sorry about that.

Don’t get me wrong here, it does bother me to lose regular readers, however if we all agreed on everything all the time, well, we wouldn’t be the people we are, would we?

Now, because I would like to keep most of you around, at least those of you without personal hygiene issues, I’m faced with a decision every time I push the publish button, to wit: I can either keep doing what I’m doing, or start writing fluffy cotton candy bunny posts solely in order to blow rainbow flavored smoke up your ass.

I hate losing you, but you should know right up front that I’m unlikely to choose the later opinion.

See, while I do care what you think, I write for myself first.

I’d write Stonekettle Station exactly the way I do now even if ShopKat and I were the only ones reading it. If I was writing for you, I’d charge you more. If I wrote to attract readers and sell page counts, well, I’d write porn.

That doesn’t mean that I go out of my way to offend you.

For what it’s worth, it wasn’t intentional.

And I did warn you first.

It’s too bad you’re leaving, we were just going to open a bottle of 1608 and go out on the patio to soak in the hot tub with the naked cast of … ah, never mind, you’re not interested in that. If you gotta go, you gotta go. I understand.

For those that do choose to stick around however, a couple of things:

First, thank you, Pissed Off Regular Readers. Thanks for being reasonably polite in your comments and correspondence despite being unhappy with the post. I’ve been accused of cultivating sycophants in the comments section, thank you for loudly disagreeing with me. (Hah! Sycophants? In your face! And you know who you are. pthffffft!)

Second, thank you, Shiny New People, for actually reading the commenting rules. And in fact you’ve managed to drive this week’s hit count on the rules page to an all time high. It would have been cool if that huge green spike on the page load graph had been on, you know, an actual article and not the crummy old rules page, but, hey, hit count is hit count. Now if I could just get somebody to pay me for it.

Third, thank you, Warty Skinned Troll People, for continuing to send me finely crafted hate mail. It’s cold here in Alaska, and your burning dislike warms the cockles of my flinty black heart. In return, and as long as you already think I’m a condescending prick, allow me to offer this helpful tip: You can choose not to be offended. You can. Or not. But deciding not to be offended does wonders for clarity of thought – not to mention your blood pressure and spelling ability. Just saying.

That said, some clarification to the previous post is obviously in order:

- I never said that Occupiers are stupid or should go home.You may have read it that way, but that’s not what I said. In fact I said just the opposite. Here’s the quote (note the underlined part):

So what am I saying? Occupy Wall Street is stupid and futile and everybody should just go home? No, not at all.

- I never intended to insult Occupiers by comparing them to Tea Partiers, that was an unexpected bonus. If it’s any consolation, the Tea Partiers who wrote to me were massively insulted by being compared to you. Not to be a dick or anything, but that’s something else you both have in common.

- I’m not going to apologize for being a capitalist. I’ve already explained why and, really, at this point I should be charging you for it.

- Yes, I understand that there may, may, be reason to believe there are agents provocateur inciting the OWS crowd to violence. Then again, there may not be. So what? When the agitator says, hey let’s go light some shit on fire – you have the option of saying no. Hell no. You also have the option of sitting on the son of a bitch until the police show up.

Here’s the thing: since you can’t see my email, look at the comments under the Occupy post. Take them as a whole. Now, go read the comments on the various Occupy websites, and the ones under the numerous news articles. And the ones on the Twitter feeds. And the ones on Facebook. Read them objectively, without emotion. Look at them as an intelligence analyst would. Look at them as data.

Taken in the aggregate, what do you see?

Tell you what I see:

1) The violence, it wasn’t us. It was caused by a) a few bad apples, or b) agents provocateur.

2) besides, you have to light shit on fire and break some windows to get the Man’s attention.

See it?

See the logical fallacy?

You don’t have to look very hard to see those two reoccurring themes - often they appear in the same comment, sometimes in the same sentence. If you agree with the violence, then the agitator isn’t really an agent provocateur is he? He’s actually one of you.

Either you endorse violence, or you don’t. Make up your damned mind.

- Now, a number of you, including my most excellent friend, the sissy pacifist socialist liberal, Eric, do seem to believe that in certain cases violence against the machine is a justifiable method of getting the Man’s attention. Albeit reluctantly. A number of you pointed out where that exact method worked to force change. You are correct.

Eric did an eloquent job of describing precisely why I’m wrong to deplore violent protest over on his own blog, Standing On The Shoulders Of Giant Midgets (and on a related note, if you’re not reading Giant Midgets, you’re missing out. Seriously. Go there right now. You can thank me later).

Would it surprise you that I agree?

I do think that there is a time and place for violent protest, and even violent revolution. I do think that in some cases, violent protest is the only option left to a people – and I’ve written sympathetically about some of those violent revolutions right here on Stonekettle Station, as recently as last week.

I can even see the conditions that would drive me to join in.

We. Are. Not. Anywhere. Close. To. That.

You’ll be hard pressed to convince me that lighting shit on fire, smashing out bank windows, and breaking into buildings is in any way justified at the moment. You’re welcome to try. Give me a list of all the alternatives short of violence you have actually tried and an objective and reasoned justification for the violence and vandalism that has occurred so far. Please try to avoid the logical fallacy described in the previous paragraph and/or the street gang logic of “They dissed us, now we’re gonna bust some heads.”

Some of you took exception to being compared to the Tea Party. You’re the same folks who deplored the Tea Party’s talk of armed overthrow and secession and revolution. You’re not seriously going to try and tell me that your talk of revolution and their talk of revolution are different just because they talk about Second Amendment solutions and you talk about throwing Molotov cocktails, are you?

Then again, not to be a dick or anything, there’s yet another thing certain extreme members of both sides seem to have in common. Just saying.

- I do think that protest has its place in the daily maintenance of democracy. Peaceful protest.

There’s an old adage about training a dog that goes something like: It is never, ever, necessary to hit a dog – but sometimes you’ve got to rap that bone-headed son of a bitch across the nose to get its attention. That’s exactly why the Framers put the right to peacefully assemble into the Constitution.

End government corruption. End runaway greed. Those are the basic messages of OWS, yes?

Those are things that every single American can get behind. End government corruption, end corporate greed (or at least put some limits on it). We can all agree to those basic ideals (well all of us except for corrupt politicians and greedy bankers but that’s just a quibble). Left, right, conservative, liberal, OWS, Tea Party, black, white, brown, red, yellow, Jew, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, East Coast, Left Coast, Mid Westerner, meat eaters and Tofu twiddlers – we, all of us, can agree to that. End government corruption, end the greed that tanked our economy and screwed us all.

So how come we don’t all agree?

Look, let me give you another example: Be kind to animals. Most of us can agree to that, yes? Be kind to animals. Hell, even folks who eat meat and hunt can agree, in principle, to that, be kind to animals even if we don’t agree on exactly what “kind” means.

Here’s another example: Don’t shit in your food supply. Anybody object to that idea? Don’t shit in your food supply.

So why, when some Green Peace Nazi calls me a murderer and screams her bean sprout scented breath in my face to give up my gas guzzling truck, do I have the overpowering urge to go home and fill my gas tank with the rendered fat of little fluffy harp seals and eat a steak carved from the tenderloin of an endangered baby polar bear?

Ask yourself this, why do so many people just goddamned hate those PETA people? Or the folks from Green Peace? After all, most of us agree with their basic ideals, be kind to animals, don’t shit in the food supply.

Answer that question, and then do something about it, and Occupy Wall Street will actually change things.

You light shit on fire, you smash windows, you throw rocks at the cops and get yourself arrested and you’re not the 99%. Because 98.9% of us don’t agree with your methods – including the unionized cops who might be on your side if you’d rethink your strategy.

If you really were 99% of the country, you wouldn’t need to light shit on fire to change things.

So, figure out how to get 99% of your fellow citizens on your side. Hint, lighting their property on fire isn’t it.

- Finally I asked you to do some research. Up above I asked you to go read the comments on the previous post. I asked you to read the comments on the OWS sites and under the OWS news articles. I asked you to check social media sites. I asked you to look at that information objectively, without emotion, as data.

I asked you to filter it for commonalities.

What did you find?

What is the one single unifying thread that ties it all together (and incidentally, is also yet another point of congruency with the Tea Party)?

Did you see it?

I liked @andrewwnygard’s comment best:

Seriously? Go out and vote?

A stunning majority of you seem to have an astounding level of contempt for the basic institution of democracy.

An overwhelming majority of you seem to feel that, for various reasons, your vote doesn’t matter, that voting will not and cannot change anything.

You’re wrong.

Niven’s law: No technique works if it’s not used.

You cannot say that voting doesn’t work if you don’t vote.

You cannot say that the system is broken if you don’t use the system.

A lot of you said that you do vote and I’ll take you at your word, but it’s a good bet that some of you are fibbing because the simple truth of the matter is that a lot of Americans don’t.

In no election since 1944, have more than 65% of eligible Americans actually voted in presidential elections, and more often than not it’s closer to 45% – though 100% bitch about the results – and it’s even more dismal in the primaries where the actual candidates are chosen. Want to know who the worst ones are? Young people, liberals, the very same people out in the street with OWS smashing windows right now. They’ll rally and they’ll sing and they’ll shout, but they won’t go vote.

It was the same thing in the 60’s. The raggedy assed hippies would hold love-in’s and sit-in’s and anti-war rallies, they’d shout and sing Kumbaya and hand out flowers – and then on election day they’d all go get stoned, tune-in, and drop out. I’m not saying they didn’t effect certain changes in our society, but Nixon was the president and nobody remembers McGovern and we’re sure as hell not living in the Age of Aquarius now are we? And the really, really ironic part is that an overwhelming majority of those hippies are now conservatives. Why? Because if you really want to effect change, you have to be part of the system.

One hell of a lot of you have allowed yourselves to fall into voter apathy. One hell of a lot of you have declared that you won’t vote in the upcoming presidential election – for whatever reason.

No technique works if it isn’t used.

If you really are the 99% and you all vote, then it won’t matter if some of your votes aren’t counted and some of your chads dangle– you’ll still win. You damned well did in 2008 despite one hell of a stiff opposition. And don’t give me the standard canard about the Koch Brothers either, you’ve got billionaire movers and shakers of your own, stop lighting their shit on fire and maybe they’ll help you out.

I keep coming back to the Tea Party for a reason – in the last election they got themselves organized, they knocked on doors, they made phone calls, hell, they bought themselves a robo-dialer and they used that sucker, they handed out flyers and petitions and buttons and email. They used social networking and the internet – and some of those tri-corner hat wearing blue haired old geezers had never sent an email before in their lives, but they damned well learned how and spammed every inbox they could reach. They were in front of every Wal-Mart and Target and in the malls and their front yards were full of campaign signs. They lost a few, but they won the House and the Congressional Tea Party caucus is shaking up the halls of power right now. They are half the Republican presidential candidate line-up and you can damned well see even old Mitt Romney kissing their wrinkly gray asses. I don’t agree with most of what they’re doing, but there they are nonetheless. And they’re there because they got more votes than you did. And they got more votes than you did because you stayed the fuck home.

No technique works if it isn’t used.

Your franchise, your vote, is the very foundation of our republic.

Your vote is the core, the very heart, of the country and the people that are the United States of America.

Your vote is the very source of freedom, of liberty, and of democracy.

It’s not guns, it’s not the right of assembly, it’s not freedom of speech, it’s not religion or lack there of – those things only ensure the right to vote. That’s why those things came later, in the Bill of Rights and the other amendments that gave the right to vote to all Americans. The right to vote itself was enshrined in the Constitution from the beginning.

The only thing, the only thing, that makes this a country of the people, by the people, and for the people is your vote.

That’s the one right that must be protected at all costs – or America is no longer America.

Now here’s the thing, so pay attention: If you really, really, believe that the system is broken, if you really think that your vote has been stolen, then why isn’t that Occupy Wall Street’s number one message?

Instead of “Death to Capitalism” and “End the Fed” why isn’t “My Vote Goddamned Well Matters!” on those banners in Oakland? Why do you have this bullshit about ending the Fed or dumping the free market on your banners?Those things aren't what you're mad about. Fix the voting system, get people to exercise their franchise and actually elect candidates who are beholden to the people and not corporate interests and those things will fix themselves. Ending the Fed isn't going to give you a voice in your government. And for Goddamned certain dumping capitalism for fucking Marxism sure as hell won't.

If you truly believe that the voting system is broken, then that should be the number one item on the OWS agenda. That should be the clear and unambiguous message of the movement.

You need an agenda that 99% of America can get behind? Start there.

Everything else follows.

And have some faith in the United States of America.

Occupy Wall Street, Lessons From The Tea Party, and Niven’s Law

2011-11-03T21:36:00.001-08:00

Never throw shit at an armed man

Over the years, I have found that to be excellent advice.

A lot of you have written wondering why I haven’t yet said something about the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In fact, this is probably the single largest amount of correspondence on any single subject I’ve yet received – excluding, of course, the steady and reliable trickle of misspelled bitter hate mail generated by the America posts, that’s a gift that just keeps on giving.

Some of you expressed surprise that I haven’t yet commented on this subject. Others wondered if I would ever comment on this subject, and if so, when? Some writers expressed disappointment that I haven’t either a) enthusiastically embraced power to the people or b) forcefully rejected these torch and pitchfork waving rabble – the former being from folks who only know me online and the later being from folks who know me in real life. Some of you who don’t know me very well at all expressed extreme disappointment that I haven’t pitched a tent on the Alaskan muskeg and joined the protest. Some of you sent me polite invites to OWS events, others of you continue to flood my inbox with a continued deluge of missives both for and against the protests and have made sure that I’m aware of every outrage, both pro and con, Australia to Zucotti – and thanks for that because you helped make it easier to research this post. One person shat all over my Facebook account with fanatical verbal diarrhea, outraged that I dared make a smart Alec remark perceived as critical of certain OWS supporters – and after I blocked her nonsense, she continued to spam my email until she was blocked from that as well. She was far from the only one to email me in outrage – and the funny thing about that were the emails from people, again both for and against the protesters, who were outraged about the inflammatory articles I’ve posted here on Stonekettle Station regarding OWS (Astute readers will note that I haven’t actually written or posted any such articles, not that that technicality appears to matter. I could have and that’s what counts).

I don’t expect that this post will do much to stem the tide, and in fact I suspect that the volume of “you’re so wrong wrong wrong, you’re wrong” email to increase. I have started this post now every day for a week, and then erased it and started over – in hindsight, given the events in Oakland last night, I’m glad I waited.

I’ve exchanged correspondence with a number of you over the last few weeks as OWS took form and I know that a lot of Stonekettle Station’s regular readers are enthusiastic supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement. As such, this is a difficult post for me to write and I fully expect to lose a number of readers over it.

So be it.

I’m not in the habit of pulling punches or tempering my words and I don’t intend to start now.

Niven’s Law: Anarchy is the least stable of social structures, it falls apart at a touch

I haven’t commented on the Occupy Wall Street movement for a number of reasons, but mostly because I’ve been waiting to see how things shaped up. I wanted to see what message eventually emerged, if any.

I had certain expectations and I wanted to see if I was right.

And I was – we’ll come back to that in a minute.

I like to know who I’m getting in bed with, one way or the other.

The first and foremost reason I haven’t written about, or joined, OWS is this: I don’t like mobs.

In point of fact, I have a deep-seated aversion to large groups of angry people waving signs.

I remember the race and anti-establishment riots in the 60’s. I’ve personally been in the midst of Cold War anti-NATO riots in Europe, some violent, some just overly enthusiastic. I’ve been on the receiving end of anti-war protests here in the United States because I wore a uniform and have a military haircut. I’ve had shit thrown at me by animal rights protesters because I happened to be wearing leather boots and I received death threats from crazed PETA fanatics after I wrote a couple of articles they found offensive. I get daily hate mail from incensed Tea Party types and the religious loonies (or is that redundant?), mostly as a result of things I’ve written, such as the aforementioned America series. And I spent a lot of time in the Middle East and Africa where violent angry mobs are a daily event, very dangerous violent angry mobs.

I don’t like mobs and so far OWS has done little to convince me that the movement is anything more than just that, a large unruly mob.

I spent almost all of my adult life in the field of Intelligence. I’m a highly experienced expert in Information Warfare, which includes among other things the study of group perception and group think, mob psychology, group dynamics, information evolution in stressed populations, and especially the deliberate and/or unintentional manipulation of perceived reality both in individuals and groups.

Almost inevitably, groups tend to create their own reality, especially those that are driven by strong emotions instead of being led by clearly defined goals and strong clearly visible unified leaders. This happens with trained personnel who are supposed to be alert to the dangers of group think, such as the decision makers who convinced themselves to declare war based on a false reality that they themselves created. It happens with trained military personnel, such as those in jail for the things that happened at Abu Garrib and those currently on trial for thrill killing and head hunting in the war zone. And it is almost inevitable in large groups of emotional people without such training or leadership – especially in this age when false, corrupted, fragmentary, and manufactured information can propagate like a blast wave though the mob at the speed of social networks and cellular communications.

In many cases, joining a mob is the same as taking a mind altering drug.

The reality that exists within the mob is an altered state, and too often that state is volatile and highly unstable. Depending on a number of factors, the likelihood of a bad trip increases exponentially with the size of the mob. Large groups of emotional people without stable controls can disintegrate into violence and chaos with the slightest of triggers. Humans in groups operate far differently from individuals. Like intoxication, group-think often removes social inhibitions – add mob mentality to actual intoxication and all bets are off.

It is far too easy for large groups of angry people waving signs to turn into large groups of angry people waving sticks and throwing rocks and lighting shit on fire – as last night’s riot in Oakland demonstrates.

What?

Oh, yes, that, i.e. the angry people waving sticks and throwing rocks and lighting shit on fire, not to mention vandalizing banks and businesses and barricading public streets and attempting to annex private property, don’t represent OWS.

Wrong.

Folks, unfortunately for a large majority of the watching world that violence and mob mentality does represent OWS – and it’s exactly what a lot of people were expecting, including me. Like it or not, that violence is now the public face of the Occupy movement, those are the images on every news channel from Oakland to London to Sydney to Moscow. And you don’t get to blame the media for publicizing those pictures, you light shit on fire and behave like common hoodlums and you have no right whatsoever to expect the media not to make your jackassery public. OWS is going to have to own those people and the consequences of their actions, just the same as the Tea Party gets to own the beer bellied bigots and the rednecked curbstompers waving AR-15s and misspelled signs at their rallies. If the Tea Party has to own its racists, the Occupiers have to own their anti-Semites.

Niven’s Law: No cause is so noble that it won’t attract fuggheads

I fully expected OWS to devolve into rioting at some point, I think it was inevitable and I think it will likely get worse.

At its core, OWS is about the Haves verses the Have-Nots.

Fundamentally this conflict, the one between the Haves and the Have-Nots, is the very heart of every violent revolution throughout history. From our own American Revolution to the French Revolution to the Bolshevik and Communist Revolutions to the Arab Spring. The greater the perceived disparity between the Haves and the Have-Nots, the greater the probability of violence – and that gap, the one between privileged and poor in America, widens further daily.

Now it can be argued that at least some of the Have-Nots are really Haves. I don’t know if I buy that argument completely and I think the source is certainly questionable, but even if true the conclusion misses the reason why those Haves are down in the street with the Have-Nots. It’s because they’ve read the writing on the wall and fear that they too will become the disenfranchised. Revolutions are always full of these people, they often become the leaders.

This is the fundamental difference between Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. OWS is opposed to unfettered business, the Tea Party opposes unfettered government. The Occupiers want business out of government, the Tea Partiers want government out of business. These things may appear similar but they are in reality Yin and Yang. The only workable way for OWS to achieve its stated goal of reining in capitalism is through more government. The only way for the Tea Party to achieve its stated goal is less government. Both groups feel disenfranchised from the so-called American Dream, and both consider themselves the Have-Nots – the difference being that the Tea Partiers still think they’re going to become the Haves someday if somebody doesn’t take the opportunity away from them, the Occupiers believe that opportunity is already gone.

Ultimately that’s why the Tea Partiers aren’t rioting in the streets, they aren’t part of the power structure but they want to be. The Occupiers don’t, they want a new system, one that automatically includes them. The Tea Partiers believe that any American can become a Have, if only government would get out of the way. They believe that those who don’t become Haves must be lazy – even if many of them never seem to rise above the level of Have-Not, otherwise they wouldn’t be members of the Tea Party in the first place. The Occupiers believe that the system is rigged and that the Haves will ensure that they always remain Have-Nots.

The Tea Party blames other Have-Nots for the state of the country.

The Occupiers blame the Haves.

Same coin, different sides.

What’s that? Yes, certainly some Occupiers are communists – in the most fundamental sense of “commune.” They don’t want more government, or more business. They want everybody to live together without such things, making group decisions and cheerfully sharing the chores of civilization. Heh. This only works in Science Fiction stories (and usually not even then, otherwise it would be a damned boring story). People have been trying this since the Garden of Eden. You would have to alter the fundamental nature of human beings beyond recognition. Utopia is not for men. The cracks are already showing in Zuccotti Park, increasingly there are those that take without giving and there are jobs nobody will do. Note that up above I said that that the only workable way for the Occupiers to achieve their stated core goal of limiting capitalism is more government, whatever form that government takes – even if an unfortunate number of them don’t seem to realize the ultimate consequences of what they are demanding.

When the conflict is about the Haves verses the Have-Nots, violence is very likely and it doesn’t take much to set it off.

The Tea Partiers, for the most part, have been scrupulous about obeying the law. They’ve gotten permits and observed curfews and, usually, cleaned up after themselves. If they brings guns, it’s in accordance with ordinance and the law – even if they adamantly don’t agree with those restrictions. Again, likely this is because Tea Partiers see themselves as part of the system, they’re older, they’re conservatives, they see themselves as good law abiding citizens exercising their patriotic rights. The Occupiers want to kick over the apple cart. They don’t want to obey the laws of what they see as an unfair and unjust system that exists to keep the Haves in power at the expense of the Have-Nots. Occupiers regard breaking the rules as not only acceptable, but desirable.

They regard being arrested as a badge of honor.

Niven’s Law: Never throw shit at an armed man. Corollary: Never stand next to someone throwing shit at an armed man

The problem with this is that it makes violence and riot inevitable.

When Occupiers refuse to follow the law they put authorities in an untenable position – especially those whose job it is to enforce the law.

People wrote to me outraged when Washington DC police cracked down on Occupiers. What they failed to mention was that the Occupiers were attempting to enter the National Air And Space Museum. It should be obvious why that is unacceptable. More, the Occupiers cut off and threatened a security guard who attempted to block their entrance into the building – and that’s where they jumped the shark.

In New York, protesters blocked public roads. One Occupier defecated on the hood of a police car. A group of veterans in uniform attempted to block access to the New York Stock Exchange.

In Oakland last night, protesters blocked the port in an attempt to shut it down. Shouting protesters broke into the former Travelers Aid building in order to “reclaim the building for the people.” They blocked off public streets with barricades made of dumpsters and wood and trash – and eventually they lit those barricades on fire.

Now honestly, what did you think was going to happen?

There is no way that the government, any government, can stand by and allow that to happen. Period. The protesters were asked to cease and desist. They refused. Tear-gas and rubber bullets are inevitable at that point. And sooner or later, there are going to be real bullets – because once you start throwing shit at armed men, once you start breaking into buildings and blocking roads and lighting things on fire, you are no longer exercising your right to free speech. At that point you are a riot and you’ve given the authorities no options whatsoever. Remember, it’s not just your rights they must protect. When you smash the windows at the Oakland Wells Fargo Bank or block access to it, when you attempt to force your way into national landmarks, or block public roads, then you put the cops and the military in the position of defending the people you dislike. And they will, even if they agree in principle with you, because that’s their job – just as they will defend you when you burn the American Flag on the courthouse steps. They’re already facing the mob, they’re already having to do things they don’t want to do, they’re scared and pissed off, and if you throw burning shit at them they will bust your fucking head, or worse, because you’ve made it about us and them.

Yes, in a number of cases the police did use unreasonable force for no apparent reason – we’ve all seen those pictures of the woman being pepper sprayed in New York. And, if the reports are accurate, the cops were absolutely wrong, but smashing windows and arson are not the correct response – that leads to a cycle of escalating violence that will have only one outcome, see the previous paragraph.

And on that note: many folks wrote to me about Scott Olsen, the veteran who got hit in the head with a gas canister and ended up in the hospital with his brains scrambled. I might sympathize with his injuries and wish him a speedy recovery, but again, what the hell did you think was going to happen? You start a riot, people get hurt. That’s how it goes. If you’re worried about people getting hurt, then obey the damned police when they tell you to disperse or reap the whirlwind. I mean, shit, haven’t you been paying attention these last ten years? And if you don’t want to knuckle under to the cops, then don’t start whining when somebody gets their head busted – even if it is a vet – that’s the cost, you made the bed, lay in it. Speaking as a veteran of the same war as Scott Olsen, I just don’t see what the hell his military service has to do with anything. Does it make it more egregious because he was a vet? Shouldn’t you be just as outraged if a limp-wristed peacenik got his skull cracked? A number of those cops were likely veterans too, do you have any sympathy for them?

Ask Scott Olsen this, as a grunt on patrol in the dangerous streets of Mosul, what would he have done if faced with an unruly mob who refused to obey orders to disperse? He’d have fired tear-gas, or worse, you goddamned right he would have. So let’s just save the hypocrisy, shall we?

Niven’s Law: No technique works if it isn’t used

So what am I saying? Occupy Wall Street is stupid and futile and everybody should just go home?

No, not at all.

First and foremost, movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are indicators of the same problem, the same issues, the same malaise. The movements may be opposite sides of the same coin, but they are the same coin and it’s important to remember that. Those occupying the gilded seats of power in Washington and Wall Street should be scared shitless right now, the savvy ones. Because what comes next are those people getting dragged from their ivory towers and hanged from the nearest lamppost.

What’s that? That would never happen here? Yeah, that’s what Gadhafi said.

The gap between the Haves and the Have-Nots is increasing, dramatically so.

For many, both here in America and elsewhere, times are tough (of course, tough times are relative, there are many, many, many people in the world who would look upon the most miserable American with unbridled envy. But that’s a different post entirely).

Increasingly our dreams of something better are receding.

People are angry. They feel disenfranchised. They feel that their leaders have let them down. They feel that government is corrupt and doesn’t listen. They feel that Wall Street is stealing their future and growing fat on their sweat.

Are they wrong? Are they wrong to want something better? Or to want things the way they used to be (even if things never were really that way)?

No, of course not.

At its core, the basic beliefs of the Occupiers are something I can get behind. End corruption. Reform Wall Street. Remove excessive influence by big business. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Everybody gets the same opportunity for life, liberty, and happiness. Ironically, near as I can figure those are the basic tenets of the Tea Party movement as well.

It’s the methodology that I can’t abide.

I asked several dozen people associated with the Occupy Wall Street protest what is it that they want. Their answers, and the actions of their comrades last night in Oakland convinced me that I want no part of this movement. Here’s why:

Capitalism: Yesterday the Occupiers in Oakland were waving a banner that said “Down With Capitalism!” A lot of Occupiers seem to share this view point. Including those that responded to me.

OWS lost me right there.

I’ve seen dictatorships and communism and socialism up close. I believe strongly in the Free Market. However, I’ve said here and elsewhere many times that I believe, and I think history is on my side here, that capitalism must be regulated, otherwise a handful of Haves end up owning everything and the Have-Nots get to pay them for the privilege of living on the scraps. Because I’ve seen unbridled capitalism too, and it isn’t pretty. Without government regulation of capitalism there would be no middle class. Period. Don’t believe me? Go read up on the America of the Rail Tycoons and the Timber and Steel Barons, the Trusts, JP Morgan and the Rockefellers and get back to me. Take a look at our own history and see what happens to the average Have-Not when government stays out of the way of business.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m not a full-fledged flaming capitalist at heart. I believe in an America that can produce a Bill Gates and a Steve Jobs. I think America works best when there is a balance between government and business and while I think there’s certainly room for improvement in our current system, if you think I’m going to go throw Molotov cocktails in the street with the Marxists, well you don’t know me at all. You’ll see me at a Tea Party rally before that happens.

End the Fed: I find it ironic as all hell that Occupiers are waving signs that read “End the Fed.” I initially wondered if they borrowed the signs from their Tea Party neighbors, but then I saw that the signs were all spelled correctly (Heh heh, sorry). End the Fed? Seriously? The Federal Reserve exists for a number of very good reasons – not the least of which is the fact without it this recession might very well have become another Great Depression. But never mind that, if there was no Fed, then the United States would have to keep its money in regular banks, say like Bank of America or Wells Fargo – you know, the same banks the Occupiers are pissed off at. You think Wall Street is powerful now? Imagine if they really were the actual bank of America and without accountability to the citizens. Honestly, are you goofy?

Now, does that mean that I don’t think the system needs closer scrutiny? Better oversight? Tighter regulation? Much greater accountability to the citizens of the United States? I think there’s plenty of room for improvement. I’ve risked my life in the combat zone and I’ve been known to tilt at windmills, However I’ll tell you what I’m not willing to do, I’m not willing to take a round in the forehead for improved banking laws or Wall Street overhaul. I think there are much better ways to achieve that goal, ways that don’t involve a stay in intensive care or eating pudding through a straw for the rest of my life.

The answers I got from the OWS folks are many and varied:

They (the banks) took bailout money paid for by our tax dollars. We’re hurting, they’re paying their executives million dollar bonuses. We lost our houses, they took our money and now they’re living in the lap of luxury in the Hamptons. We lost our jobs, they took our money and outsourced our jobs to Asia. They get the best healthcare money can buy, we’d better not get sick. They get richer, we get poorer. They gave business the same rights as people, now people have no rights. They took away our right to bargain collectively, then threaten to send our jobs overseas if we don’t give up benefits and pay. They demand tax breaks in order to create jobs, then they create jobs overseas. They want to increase what we pay for Social Security and Medicare, yet they pay no taxes. They hold students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education but then refuse to hire us so we can pay off those debts. They control the courts, and government is in their pocket. They have sold our privacy as a commodity. They control the media. They wage war for profit.

There’s more, but those should give you the basic gist.

Maybe I agree with some of those things. Maybe I think OWS has a point when it comes to certain complaints. Maybe I think the Tea Party does too.

But here’s my question: how does lighting shit on fire fix any of that?

How does sleeping in tents on the sidewalk change anything? How does getting yourself arrested over and over help you find a job? How does shitting on the hood of a police car increase the accountability of Wall Street bankers? How does shutting down the Port of Oakland in any way whatsoever help the situation – other than to foul up shipping schedules and increase costs for already strapped consumers and deprive port workers of a night’s wages? How?

Here’s the thing: those assholes? The ones that caused this? The John Thanes. The Bernie Madoffs. The Stan O’Neals. Ken Lewis. Rex Tillerson. The 1%. They don’t care. You can chant and dance and sing and protest and throw rocks from now until the sun burns out and they will not give a shit. You can burn down Oakland and Detroit and Central Park. They live in gated communities and work fifty stories above the street and they can’t even hear you. These are people who stole billions. These are people who took the life savings of widows and orphans and foreclosed on crippled veterans without a shred of remorse. And they did it for decades. These are people who lost trillions of dollars and then held out their hands to the taxpayer for more. These are people who took government subsidies and and cleared $41 Billion in profit in three months, and then charged you $4.50 a gallon at the pump. These are people who took $25 Billion in taxpayer bailouts, and then tried to charge people $5 dollars a month to use their own money.

If these people had any shame whatsoever, if they could be influenced in any way by the wailing of the little people, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

They don’t give a fuck what happens to you.

They don’t care how loud you cry. Or how much you suffer.

So then what? Is there no recourse? Can we do nothing? Why then not riot in the streets? Yes, why the hell not burn it all down?

Because we are Americans, Goddamn it.

We have better ways to change things than rioting in the street like third world rabble. Your ancestors died to give you that.

You want to change things? Really change things? Then get off your ass and do something that actually matters.

You’ll turn out to chant and wave signs, you’ll turn out to throw rocks and burn dumpsters full of trash, you’ll spent a month sleeping in a tent in on a sidewalk, you’ll sing folk songs and hold hands – but you won’t turn out to vote.

People keep electing the same assholes over and over – my own state of Alaska is a perfect example. Biggest vote of the year, our boy Don Young goes fishing. No worries, he’ll get reelected until he dies and maybe even then.

Look at the last midterm elections. You wonder why you have a gridlocked Congress?

In Wisconsin, people were outraged at the government. Outraged that the governor took away collective bargaining rights. They were so outraged they demanded a recall election. They could have changed things, instead far too many folks stayed home, I guess they weren’t that outraged after all.

How many of you have said, well, you know, I probably won’t even vote this time around. I’ve lost faith in Obama. I don’t like the Republicans. I’m staying home. Or maybe I’ll write in Bozo The Clown, it’s like getting arrested, it makes a statement. What statement? Nobody give a shit if you get arrested and nobody gives a shit if you write in Bozo the Clown.

Niven’s Law: Not responsible for advice not taken

You want to do something?

Use the Occupy rallies to educate people instead of lighting shit on fire. Stop getting people arrested and educate them on the issues. Make sure they’re registered to vote. Demand a voter registration card as the price of admission. Encourage them to vote. Encourage them to encourage their friends to vote. Encourage them to encourage their families to vote. Over and over.

Clearly define your goals. If you don’t know what you’re fighting for, you’ll never win. If you don’t have leaders, if you don’t have goals, then you’ll never be anything more than a mob.

Obey the law and make damned sure everybody else does too. If you don’t like the law then elect people who will change it to be more the way you want.

It’s not enough to decry the violence. You have to stop it. Now. Period. You want people like me to join your cause? Not likely, not while you’re lighting shit on fire. I spent my whole life protecting this country, I’m not going to let you burn it down.

You want to get the banks’ attention, you want to make them notice you? You can withdraw your money, sure, and put it in a credit union. But it won’t make a damned bit of difference. Banks lose that much money in ten minutes, they don’t care. You want to make a real dent in Chase’s bottom line? Get business to close their accounts. Only you won’t win over many businesses if you’re smashing out their fucking windows and blocking their driveways or blockading the port through which they move their products.

You want to make a difference? Then stop trying to tear down the system and use it the way it was designed to be used.

You want to know why the Tea Party won the last election? Because that’s exactly what they did – and it worked.

It worked exactly the way the people who founded this country designed it to work.

You want to make a difference?

Then have some faith in the United States of America.

Update: Follow up post is here: Occupy Stonekettle Station, The Follow Up

Attention: I know some of you are very passionate about this subject. I know that some of you will strongly disagree with this post. That’s fine. You are allowed to speak your peace, but remember the commenting rules, disregard them at your own peril.

For folks surfing in who are not familiar with Stonekettle Station, read the commenting rules first. Heed and obey. I mean it.

Victory In Iraq And The Real Questions We Should Be Asking

2011-10-25T21:53:00.001-08:00

The Wikipedia says that the US invasion of Iraq began at 05:34 on March 20^th, 2003.

That’s incorrect.

It also says that “Polish commandos captured the oil platforms near the port [of Umm Qasr], preventing their destruction.

That’s also incorrect

Or rather, that second bit is only partly correct. I certainly wouldn’t want to diminish the role of the GROM, the Polish special forces, but they were only part of the story. A significant part to be sure, and a proud historic moment for the GROM who had not fired a shot in anger since the early 1940’s. I had the privilege to serve with a few of them and they are fine soldiers, but they were only part of the story and a small part at that. The inaccuracies in the Wikipedia article do great disservice to those other forces who were there in the coastal oil terminals of Southern Iraq on the night the war began.

Whoever wrote that bit obviously wasn’t there and didn’t bother to do any actual research.

How do I know the writer wasn’t there?

Because I was.

I was there on the night it all began, 2300 hours local time, March 19^th, 2003 in the Northern Arabian Gulf.

Honestly though, it began long before that night.

We, those of us in the military, knew what was coming. Of course we did. War is our profession. It is our business to know. In 2003, the images of 9/11 were still fresh and raw in our vision and America was thirsting to make somebody pay. We’d been fighting in Afghanistan for a year and we were winning, but Afghanistan was like chasing chickens in a barnyard. A vocal majority of the American people wanted revenge and a real enemy and a standup fight, not a bunch of raggedy-assed terrorist shitheads hiding in mountain caves. Oh sure, nowadays, nobody admits that they wanted war, but back then a lot of people did. President Bush had the support of a nearly unanimous Congress and an overwhelmingly large majority of the citizenry.

I know it’s hard to believe now, but back then George W. Bush’s popularity was off the scale.

And in a way, Saddam Hussein was just asking for it.

By 2003, Saddam had painted himself into a fatal corner.

He had been playing a very, very dangerous game since the end of the Tanker War, what most people nowadays call the Iran-Iraq Conflict, which kicked off on September 22, 1980 when Iraq invaded Iran. That was a hell of brutal conflict, more than half a million soldiers died in trenches like a rehash of First World War France, complete with poison gas attacks and suicidal bayonet charges. The war went on for eight years and left wreckage strewn from the Straits of Hormuz all the way to Turkey. When it was over, there was no victory, not for either side. Mostly the war just petered out in a sullen fog of lingering hatred and hostility – and it has stayed that way ever since.

Of course, the sullen peace lasted only a couple of years, then Iraq invaded Kuwait and ended up fighting America and her allies in what became known as the Gulf War. You might have heard of it. The opening engagements of the current conflict were fought back in 90 and 91. A lot of folks thought we should have gone on up the Highway of Death right into Baghdad and gotten rid of that son of bitch Saddam Hussein back then, instead of stopping at the Kuwaiti border. Woulda shoulda coulda. It was what it was. And so we, the US Navy, stayed when the Army and Marines shipped out for home. And we’ve been patrolling the waters of the Persian Gulf ever since, enforcing the UN sanctions, interdicting, boarding, searching, and seizing suspect vessels bound to and from Iraq. Chasing pirates and smugglers and shitheads. It was, and is, dangerous as hell, we lost a number of good people doing it. The Air Force stuck around too, flying out of Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Turkey enforcing the no-fly zones, they lost people along the way too.

And so, there was Saddam. Two disastrous wars in less than a decade – surrounded by mortal enemies (enemies of his own making, but enemies nonetheless).

Now, here’s the thing so pay attention, Saddam did, once, have weapons of mass destruction and programs to eventually develop more. There is no doubt about that whatsoever. He once had large stores of war gases and he used those weapons against Iran and against his own people. And Iran remembered, oh yes they did, they still do. In the Iran-Iraq war, those weapons were used to support Saddam’s army as a force multiplier. Now, at the end of Gulf War, they were even more important – as a threat, as a weapon of Information Warfare. See, it didn’t matter if Saddam actually still had chemical weapons, or biologicals or even nukes – so long as his enemies, especially Iran, believed that he did. His army was in shambles, many of his troops dead or fled, his equipment and armor smashed and burned, his war industry and production facilities destroyed. Iraq was under interdiction, they couldn’t sell the one thing they had plenty of, oil – at least not easily or in large enough quantity to matter, though there was plenty of smuggling. He couldn’t trade oil for weapons and he didn’t have the cash, not in the amount needed to rearm and rebuild.

Worse, he’d burned all his bridges.

Saddam had no real friends anywhere (including us, oh yes, that’s right. See, back during the Iran-Iraq conflict, we were his pals. Look up the pictures of one Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam shaking hands and yukking it up in Baghdad following that conflict. But I digress). If Iran invaded Iraq there would have been absolutely nothing to stop them. And Iranians remembered Saddam, oh yes they did.

Would Iran have invaded Iraq?

Beats me. But Saddam sure thought so. And so he walked a tightrope, balanced precariously between bluster and bluff. He played a very, very dangerous game. He needed those UN weapons inspectors. He needed Hans Blix to complain loudly and voice suspicions in front of the Security Council but without any out and out proof – at least not enough to goad the UN into action. He needed Blix and the UN and most especially the United States to convince Iran that he was still armed. For almost a decade, Saddam played us all.

And it worked. The UN weapons inspectors and the CIA ate it up and danced to Saddam’s little tune. And it would likely have kept working too, because the only way to call his bluff would have been to invade. And nobody, especially the UN was going to approve that – not with China and Russia and France playing spoiler on the Security council.

Then 9/11 happened.

9/11 was horrifying for the United States, but it was a disaster for Iraq.

The terrorists who perpetrated 9/11 wounded us, but they killed Saddam Hussein.

Bluffing only works if your adversary doesn’t call – or doesn’t just kick over the table and start shooting.

And so, on the night of 19 March, 2003 I was onboard the finest warship ever to put to sea, the Aegis Guided Missile Cruiser USS Valley Forge, in the Northern Persian Gulf, a hundred yards from the massive Iraqi Mina Al Bakr Oil terminal – commonly called MABOT. US Navy SEALs operating from Valley Forge and supported by her helicopters, weapons batteries, communications, and intelligence operators, took the terminal in a surprise assault without a shot fired or a life lost on either side. Simultaneously, several miles away, also supported by Valley Forge’s helicopters, guns and C3I systems, the Polish GROM took the smaller Kwor Abd Almaya terminal (KAAOT), again silently and without casualties. My part and that of my team is something I can’t talk about, but that operation kicked off the war and opened the way for the Navy amphibs and Marines to reach Iraqi shores without giving Saddam warning that we were coming – and despite being enormously complex and difficult, it may have been the only operation of the war to go down 100% as planned.

Despite all that has transpired since, I am still enormously proud of my role and that of the men I led. We did what we were ordered to do, and we did it extremely well.

But the reason we went into Iraq was a lie. We’ve known that for a long time. It would, of course, be easy to blame George Bush, or Dick Cheney, or that arrogant little pissant prick Rumsfeld, or any of a dozen others. And certainly that motley cast of characters deserves much of the scorn and derision that’s been heaped upon them these last eight years. Sure Saddam was playing a dangerous game of information warfare, but the administration had the best intelligence network in the world and it was their job to get at the truth. Perhaps they lied on purpose. Certainly they did to some extent. But, saying that Bush wanted war is a massive oversimplification, he already had a justified war – and the kind of invasion we waged in Iraq takes a lot more than just a war maddened President to pull off. The whole nation was in on it. Personally, from my own experience in Washington D.C. and twenty years in the intelligence community, I think they fell victim to hysteria and politics and the artificial fantasy world that is the self-licking ice cream cone inside the Beltway. If we are to be charitable, they allowed themselves to be fooled, they wanted to be fooled, they wanted a scapegoat for 9/11 and Saddam made an easy target. Americans needed to hate somebody and Saddam was easy to hate. They figured four weeks to Baghdad and the population would cheer us in the streets. We’d be home victorious by the fourth anniversary of 9/11.

It would be easy to blame Bush and his cronies for that, and many of us do, me included (remember, whatever else, it was us who got used as pawns in this idiotic affair). However, reality is always more complex and less emotionally satisfying. Ultimately a lot of people bear responsibility for this war.

Saddam himself bears the lion share of responsibility for the events that led to war – he could have opened his arsenal to the Inspectors. He would have had to bear the consequences of that, but hell, he could have demanded UN protection from Iran. Of course, he would have then appeared weak to his own people. Such is life. He made the decision to bluff it out.

The UN bears responsibility for not doing a better job. Russia, China, and France bear responsibility in part creating some of the conditions that led to war, if they had supported the UN sanctions instead of actively helping Saddam to circumvent them, war might have been avoided. Then again, it might not.

Ultimately of course, George W. Bush as president of the United States bears full responsibility for giving the order, for sending us into battle – as do the leaders of our allies who went along and gave their own orders to their own troops.

The American people are responsible in part for keeping it going. They reelected the president who took us into this conflict, they could have given a vote of no confidence in 2004. They didn’t. And they elected and reelected the senators and representatives who actively assisted in perpetuating the conflict – as is their right.

The Iraqi people are to some extent responsible for keeping it going. So are the Iranians. So are the insurgents, whatever their allegiance.

There’s plenty of responsibility to go around.

The reason we went to war was a lie certainly. And because it was a lie, the objectives for ending it were never defined. The goals kept changing.

When we went into the oil fields that night, it was in search of weapons of mass destruction, weapons Saddam could sell to terrorists or could use himself to threaten another, worse, 9/11. Saddam didn’t have those weapons, we didn’t know that then, but we found out in fairly short order.

We achieved the objective of the war as initially stated. Mission Accomplished.

Then the objective changed. Get rid of Saddam Hussein. And we did that too. And we turned him over to the Iraqis and they hung him and good riddance.

And then the objective changed. Suppress the insurgency. And then again. Democracy. And then again. And again.

The simple truth of the matter is that there is no objective.

And without a solid objective, victory becomes a chimera. A shimmering mirage, just out of reach, always shifting, always changing, never clear, never achievable.

For example, the objective is now defined as a stable Iraqi government (and not be an asshole or anything, but Iraq had a stable government until we blew it up. But I digress). Who defines stable? How do you measure it? What are the parameters, i.e. how much are you willing to spend and how long are you willing to wait? Stable for who, every Iraqi? Or just some of them, and if so, which ones? And so on and so forth. When Americans think of victory in Iraq, they picture WWII – cheering crowds, victorious troops marching through the streets of Paris, beautiful girls getting kissed in Times Square, streamers, ticker tape parades, and Johnny Comes Marching Home Again.

That’s the first question we should be asking: what is victory?

Victory? Hell. You are not going to get that little WWII victory fantasy. The question is, what can we live with?

The reason for the war was a lie. The responsibility for that lie was shared by many. The responsibility for keeping it going is likewise shared by many.

The next question then becomes, how do we end it?

How do we end it when our own government can’t agree to anything? Not even the simple stuff?

The real question is, who will take responsibility for ending it?

Obviously the answer to that particular question is Barack Obama.

And justly so, it was the President who gave the order to attack. It is the responsibility of the president to end it. No other.

But I would like to see these questions put to the candidates at the next presidential debate.

Ron Paul has already answered that question. He says that he would make the same exact decision that Obama just did. End the war. In fact his complaint regarding the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq is that Obama isn’t doing it fast enough. I suspect Paul fails to grasp the scale of the evolution and the complexity of bringing home 30,000 troops and their gear. But then I’m still trying to figure out how Paul has managed to disagree with Obama on this matter even though the President did exactly what Paul claims he would do in the same position.

Not surprisingly Paul’s disagreeable agreement with Obama is the minority opinion. The rest of the opposition wants to keep the war going.

Mitt Romney says he opposes withdrawal. He says he would defer to the military. A number of things come immediately to mind, 1) Romney assumes that Obama didn’t ask the military. There is no evidence of that. 2) Romney assumes the military would recommend staying. With the exception of certain retired generals, that may very well not be the case. 3) Wait, what? President Romney would abdicate his authority as Commander in Chief to the military? You wanna run that one by me again? We let the military decide? Uh, speaking as a retired military officer, bad, bad, bad, bad idea there, Mittens. There’s a reason why the Constitution didn’t put that power into the hands of the generals.

Michelle Bachmann says we’re being kicked out by the very people we liberated. She thinks Iraq should pay us back for blowing up their country. I don’t think she understands how extortion works. You get the money before you burn down the building.

Two days before Obama announced the end of the war, Gingrich said that we should withdraw. A day after Obama made the announcement Gingrich said Obama was wrong and we must stay. I don’t know about you, but I think whether or not we continue to wage war should be based on something a little more objective than the Monty Python Argument sketch.

Rick Perry says he would withdraw, but he’d keep it a secret. He wouldn’t tell the American public or the Iraqis or the soldiers. I’m not sure that how that would work. If you’re going to move 40,000 troops and all their equipment in the next two months, you’re going to have to tell somebody – like maybe Congress for starters, so they can maybe plan next year’s budget which is due, oh you know, now. Seriously, how you keep this a secret is beyond me and it used to be my job to keep secrets.

Rick Santorum says Obama is responsible for Iran’s influence in Iraq in the first place. Obama, the magic time travelling Negro, is there no end to his power?

Herman Cain thinks ending the war is just “stupid.” He didn’t go into specifics.

All the opposition candidates have said or insinuated that withdrawal from Iraq is a defeat. I think their views are best summed up by a Yahoo commenter who said:

USA lost another war. USA lost ALL wars after 1945

Lost?

And so, we’re back to the real questions: what is victory?

These are the questions I want answered by those who would be President:

As president, how would you define victory in Iraq?

Please clearly state the objectives of the mission in measurable terms. Hand waving and undefined terms are not allowed. State the objectives of the mission and how you will determine, as President, if they have been met.

As president, would you be willing, now, to end this war?

If not, then how much are you willing to spend on it? Vietnam cost us 54,000 lives, will you spend that much? We’ve got 50,000 to go. If not 54,000, then how many? 30,000? 20? 10? Another thousand? Five hundred? One? How much is your vision of victory worth? In lives, in years, in dollars. Be specific. Don’t look away, answer the question. How much?

If not where Barack Obama drew the line, then where? How many more of other people’s children are you willing to sacrifice?

Is the only way to prevent Iranian influence in Iraq by occupying Iraq? If so, for how long? Specifically how long? We stayed in Germany for fifty years after WWII in order to contain the Soviet Union, is fifty years in Iraq a reasonable timetable? Yes or no. If not, then how long? Another ten years? Another twenty?

Here let me make it simple for you: Yes or no, do you believe that Iran should dictate how long we stay in Iraq?

If not Iran, then should Iraq have a say in how long we stay? You claim you believe in self determination, does that only apply to American states or does it apply to sovereign nations as well? Iraq would have allowed our forces to stay only if they were subject to Iraqi law, perhaps even Sharia law, would you have allowed that to happen or would you have overridden Iraqi sovereignty and self determination by fiat and military force if necessary?

If the answer to the previous question is yes, then as President of the Federal Government could states expect you to exercise the same action against their right of self determination? If not, why not?

If the answer to the previous question is no, then the only options for maintaining troops in Iraq would have been to subject them to Iraqi law, withdraw, or topple the Iraqi government, what would your choice be? Please face the audience and speak directly into the microphone. Address your answer to the families of the troops.

Now, let us discuss Afghanistan.

I’m not a candidate for President, but I’ll tell you how I define victory.

Thirty thousand America troops home by Christmas.

The war is over and it’s about goddamned time.

Gadhafi Is Dead And I Feel Fine

2011-10-21T21:06:00.001-08:00

Me and Moammar Gadhafi go way back.

I knew him back when we spelled his last name with a “K” in the official government reports.

See, I spent a significant fraction of the mid-1980’s parked on his doorstep.

Hell, to be honest, the old bastard deserves some credit for how my life turned out – which, so far, has been pretty good thank you very much.

Back then, I was a junior intelligence technician in Ronald Reagan’s Navy, stationed in Rota, Spain, and riding warships of the US Sixth Fleet patrolling the azure waters of the Mediterranean. Of course, in those days the Cold War was in full hysteria and the only enemy that mattered was the Soviet Union, AKA The Evil Empire. This was 1985, and nobody was talking about Perestroika or Glasnost (remember when both of those words were used daily on the evening news? What? Both concepts came and went before you were born? Yeah, stick it in your fahrvergnügen). Nowadays, people wonder what all the fuss was about, after all the Russians eat Pizza Hut and dig capitalism and watch Jersey Shore and we buy their oil and old nuclear bombs. But back then, those filthy Slavic bastards were the enemy.

They hated us and we hated them and like the guy said in Red Dawn, most of us figured it was just a matter of time.

Problem was, they weren’t allowed to shoot us, and we weren’t allowed to shoot them. So we mostly glared at each other over the barrels of our guns and the rails of our missile launchers (yes, in those days ship-borne missiles were fired from rails, not out of vertical launch silos. It was a wondrous, primitive time). Sometimes our planes dumped fuel on their ships when they got too close to the carrier, or we buzzed their superstructure shaking their crappy Russian fillings loose. Upon occasion our ships banged into each other, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (it was often hard to tell if the Soviets were just lousy seamen or deliberate shitheads, or both). And sometimes we just mooned them, when our vessels closed to visual range (it’s entirely possible that my own bare white ass decorated the cover of Red Star. See, there was an incident in the Black Sea involving a Russian BE-12 photo reconnaissance plane. But that’s another story).

Our respective governments would make noises about peace and Détente, limiting strategic weapons and nuclear missiles. They’d sign treaties and everybody would shake hands and smile for the cameras.

Then the politicians would go home and arm us to the teeth and point us at each other.

But as I said, they wouldn’t let us shoot.

Instead, we fought a bunch of idiotic little brushfire conflicts through proxies.

One of which happened to be Libya.

And if these conflicts were like kids in a pushing match, Gadhafi was like the bully’s little sycophant toadie, the one that sneaks around behind your back and kneels down so that when the other guy gives you a shove he’s there to trip you up.

Few adversaries vexed Ronny Rayguns more than the Crazy Colonel. Gadhafi was a burr under the American cowboy’s saddle blanket. No matter what we did, no matter all our power and military might, he just wouldn’t go away.

Gadhafi was Reagan’s Castro.

Which is how I ended up spending a couple years as a junior analyst in certain aspects of Libyan air defense.

Instead of spending the 80’s lounging around the Costa Del Sol, we kept getting sent down to North Africa to show the flag and put the fear of God into the Libyans.

Then one day, Gadhafi claimed a chunk of the ocean for himself and we just couldn’t have that.

I was on USS Yorktown when we sailed across his so-called Line of Death into the Gulf of Sitre (back then we spelled it “Sidra” but like Khadafi/Gadhafi, the translations changed over the years, that’s how you know you’ve been around too long) and provoked the Libyan military to a fight. It wasn’t much of a fight in actuality, but it was the best Reagan was going to get. We spent the next month lobbing missiles at each other. Well, ok, it was mostly us doing the lobbing and them doing the blowing up – but there were some real tense moments (and some fairly bizarre ones, like the day we watched in utter disbelief as Libyan air defense batteries shot down a Libyan helicopter that was trying to rescue Libyan sailors from a Libyan patrol boat our strike aircraft had sunk. That incident taught me something about perception and hysteria and the fog of war, lessons I remembered many years later when I was in charge of certain combat operations in another war). Less than a year later I was back, this time onboard USS Ticonderoga, as part of the strike group sent to punish Gadhafi for the Berlin disco bombing and other acts of flagrant terrorism. We struck at the Libyan military bases near Tripoli and Misrata (and “accidentally” dropped a bomb on the French Embassy. Whoops, sorry about that, hold on to your escargot, boys! Liberty in France later that month was a little testy) – and lost two Air Force pilots and their FB-111 in the process – in an operation dubbed Eldorado Canyon.

Things were quiet after that, we’d taught old Daffy Gadhafi a lesson by George.

For a few days anyway.

Then Gadhafi sprung his surprise.

He’d gotten himself a couple of SS-N-1’s, the naval variant of the infamous scud missile, from the Soviets. And one night he launched them straight at the US Fleet – likely with the assistance of Russian “advisors.” I’m not going to discuss the details because I’m not sure if they’re still classified or not. Suffice it to say that we didn’t know at the time, as we watched those missiles rise on the radar screen, that they were woefully outdated weapons, with guidance systems that couldn’t hit a barn from the inside and warheads that were unlikely to do much to modern American warships unless they hit dead on – a remote possibility given the aforementioned guidance systems. For very good reason, we thought they were something else. I’ve never been as frightened as I was that night.

But, see, there was this Warrant.

That Warrant set the example. He was calm and cool and despite the fact that we were all pretty sure we were about to die, he cracked wise and poured himself a cup of good navy coffee and calmly ordered us to our duty. And so we did exactly that, our duty, and waited for the end. At that time I was just a junior petty officer, as green as green can be and had no idea whatsoever what a Navy Chief Warrant Officer even was. But after it was all over, and we lived through it, I realized that he was who I wanted to be.

I’ve never been scared since. Never. Though I’ve been in far worse situations.

Two years later, four days before Christmas, 1988, I was onboard a US Navy P-3 Orion, flying from Sembach Kaserne in Germany, to Keflavik, Iceland. As chance and air routes would have it, just after dark we flew over Scotland on our way to the North Atlantic.

The P-3, being a propeller driven Navy patrol craft, had great endurance but it didn’t fly at any great altitude.

And so we had a clear view of the fires burning below as we flew directly over the town of Lockerbie.

We knew then that we were looking at a horrific disaster – you couldn’t be on that air route and not know. In the following week we learned that 270 people died that night, 178 of them Americans. In the month that followed, we learned that Libyans were responsible for a terrible act of terrorism. We always knew Gadhafi was involved, but it took until 2011 and the defection of a high ranking member of the Libyan government during the height of the Arab Spring before we would learn that Moammar Gadhafi himself had personally ordered the downing of Pan Am Flight 103.

I had always intended to get out of the military after that first tour, but after Lockerbie I re-upped. The world was a dangerous place, bastards like Gadhafi and his friends were killing my countrymen. A life in the military seemed a worthwhile endeavor.

And so it was.

Fifteen years and many, many adventures later, well, I was that Chief Warrant Officer.

So, yeah, maybe in some small way Gadhafi is responsible for where I ended up.

It seems a little weird that he’s not there anymore. Like that bad tooth in the back of your mouth, the one you got in that bar fight in that little town on the French Riviera after your Air Force buddies accidently bombed the wrong building, the one you chew carefully around. It’s not quite bad enough to get fixed and not quite good enough to ignore. Some days it causes you grief, and some days it’s hardly noticeable, but you always know that it’s there, ready to inflict pain for no damned reason at all.

And then one day after decades of this nonsense, you finally get the root canal, and the pain goes away and it’s just weird that it’s not there anymore.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to miss Gadhafi, anymore than I miss a toothache – or the old Soviet Union.

But he’s been such a fixture of my life, it’s weird that we won’t see the Crazy Colonel on TV making some crazy proclamation any more. It’s weird that he’ll never again come to the UN, actually here on the soil of United States – and stay in a tent in Donald Trump’s backyard. It’s weird that news commentators and intelligence analysts will no longer have to struggle to make sense of his rambling speeches full of fire and hyperbole and wackiness.

And it’s weird that after all this time, after all the blood and bombs and terrorism, the Cold Wars and the proxy wars, after revolution and Arab Spring, Libya is finally rid of that crazy rat bastard.

It’s as strange to me as the day I watched ordinary people pull down the Berlin Wall.

In the end, it was ordinary Libyans who pulled Gadhafi's miserable ass from a drain pipe and finished him off.

And today, after all this time, the United States of America is spoken of in the streets of Tripoli and Misrata with gratitude again.

Yes, again. We were friends once, you know, we Americans and the Libyans. We fought side by side against the fascists. And later we were welcome in North Africa when other Western powers were not. There are still living US Air Force veterans who once flew sorties from Wheelus Air Force Base outside of Tripoli – the same base we bombed in operation Eldorado Canyon. Hell, there were once so many Americans there that Wheelus was informally dubbed “Little America.”

Imagine being friends again.

No, really, imagine what that means. Imagine what a free Libya means without that madman at the helm.

Libya has vast wealth in the form of oil reserves and a population long denied freedom and democracy. The country is intact and so is most of the infrastructure. They want what we have and they have a means to buy it. And, and pay close attention here, that oil is not trapped behind the Straits of Hormuz and the Suez Canal – in other words, for those of you not good with geography even after all this time, access to Libyan oil can not be controlled or threatened by Iran.

Oh, the light comes on, does it?

Why do we care about Libya? Because damned near every other major source of oil on the planet is either in the hands of crazy people, or threatened by powers hostile to the United States and her allies.

Gadhafi is dead, and today the price of oil per barrel is falling.

Falling.

Falling without a single well having been drilled the Arctic or an American life lost.

There is little that will help restart the world economy faster than lowering the price of energy. Every American will benefit from having Libya as a friend again. It is in our best interest, hell it is in the best interest of every human being on the planet, to encourage what is happening in Libya right now. And it would be even if there was no oil there. Encouraging the revolution in Libya and the downfall of the dictatorship is the morally correct thing to do. Period.

The President played this one exactly right in every regard.

And whether or not you love him or hate him, Obama deserves full credit for having done so.

He won’t get it of course.

Here’s a sample from the usual source:

You Hussein Obama worshippers are the biggest joke out there. Hussein Obama did nothing but create a power vacuum that radical Islam fascists will fill. But you are all to busy sucking your muzzies dick to see that.

Note that “muzzie” is apparently the new hate word to describe Muslims. It appears quite commonly in comments on Yahoo, Fox, and Tea Party forums.

I’ve seen this exact notion expressed in a dozen different places, both from commenters and pundits and politicians. Better the devil you know, I guess. I find it hugely ironic that those who so worship the memory of Ronald Reagan rail against the death of a vile dictator, the very gadfly who taunted Reagan himself and generations of American presidents, and who gave the order to kill Americans in the sky over Scotland and in Berlin. They are loath to cheer the dawning of democracy and freedom for fear that it might, just might, create a so-called “power vacuum.”

Hell, if they are so frightened that Muslim extremists hostile to the West might take over, then they should be encouraging us to get involved, to render aid and goodwill, and to do every damned thing we can to protect and nurture the fledgling Libyan democracy. We’ve got a head start, you know, because, you know, turns out Obama did just the right thing.

Korea. Cuba. Vietnam. Iran. Iraq. Afghanistan. Come as advisers or come as invaders. Topple the dictator or prop him up. Send troops. Kill people. Blow stuff up. Pay for it for the next decade. We’ve been doing this since before Eisenhower – it’s the basic formula that defines our foreign policy and it’s the reason half the world hates our bleeding guts.

To paraphrase a certain politician, how’s that gun-boaty diplomacy thing working out for ya?

This time, this time, we have a chance to do it differently. Do it right. Because Obama took the proper measured response.

The UN and Nato will never let Africa develop. Period. Libya had the highest human development index on the continent.

Uh, what? I’m not exactly sure where this guy was getting his data regarding human development on the African continent, unless it was the same Wikipedia entry the aforementioned politician got her Paul Revere background from. However, even if you take this comment at face value, which you most definitely should not, i.e. that Libyans were better off under Gadhafi than on their own, this is the same asinine argument used by those folks who think the slaves were better off living in bondage in the Antebellum South than free in Africa. It’s such a stupid comment that it doesn’t deserve anything but contempt.

Funny how soon many Americans forget that for the past few years our political relations with [Gadhafi] were actually improving and he was turning into an ally. Then we decided to stab HIM in the back and support muslim terrorists in taking over Libya.

The cognitive dissonance in that comment is as stunningly bizarre as something Gadhafi himself might have said. Conservatives suggesting that we take Gadhafi at his word? Seriously? Muslim terrorists. As opposed to Moammar al Gadhafi? For fuck’s sake, I hope this idiot stays home and watches NASCAR on election day.

Anyone who would find this to be good news would be a Obama fan. El Gaddafi was a hero to the Tea Party and GOP for how he fought Obama.

“El” Gadhafi? El? Mexico, Libya. potato, potatoe, fuck it, it’s all the same to me. Gadhafi fought Obama, he’s a Tea Party hero. What does it mean that he also squabbled with Reagan, the Bushes Big and Small, Clinton, England, France, Italy, Egypt, Chad, and Israel? Hello? Is this thing on?

I have no objective info regarding him, only what my country wants me to believe. I'm inclined to think the only reason we keep ousting these dictators is because we want the ensuing unrest as a pretense for more excuses to be over there...

If he could have worked in “New World Order” and the face on Mars he’d really have something there. At least he admits he has no objective information, but then again why should that stop him?

It is to soon to tell if the freeing of Libya if that is what it is will be a benefit or a detriment to the U S. My fear is that they will be another terrorist state we will have to deal with.

Another terrorist state? As opposed to what? Libya? Somebody really, really hasn’t been paying attention. Since about 1970.

And finally, there’s this little gem:

I suppose we could credit Stalin for defeating Hitler too.

I can’t even work up a snarky comment. The level of self righteous jingoistic ignorance is appalling on just so many levels.

The bald truth of the matter is this: Conservatives who today are bemoaning the death of Moammar Gadhafi instead of cheering his richly deserved demise have jumped the goddamned shark. Their hatred has exceeded all rational bounds.

Ask the relatives of those who died in the sky over Lockerbie if Gadhafi deserved his fate.

Ask the loved ones of those who died in Berlin.

Hell, ask the Libyans.

Moammar Gadhafi is dead, and I feel just fine.

Things That Chap My Ass About Customer Service

2011-10-15T09:14:00.001-08:00

Business is bad.

That’s what you hear, everywhere you turn.

The economy is in the crapper, people are out of work, customers don’t have disposable income, and so on and so forth. Woe, woe is us.

That light at the end of the tunnel? Not only is it an onrushing juggernaut, it’s an overloaded circus train driven by Curly, Moe, Larry, and their idiot cousin, Shemp.

It’s bad, business is. Bad and getting worse. I’ve written about business before, and specifically things that you shouldn’t have to tell business leaders, but do anyway apparently.

Today, lets focus on customer service.

Now, in this climate, you’d think business would be doing all it can to woo, attract, keep, satisfy, cosset, pamper, spoil, indulge, cater to, humor, dandle, mollycoddle, green stamp, suck up to, appease, mollify, placate, soothe, and otherwise kiss the big bulbous ass of each and every precious customer. In fact, if business wants to see me and my money on a regular basis, it really ought to be coming over to my house and washing my car, raking my leaves, calling me Mr. Selleck and asking if I’ve lost weight.

And, you know, it sure wouldn’t hurt if business swung by my favorite coffee stand and picked me up a large triple-shot latte on its way over.

Instead business seems hell bent on pissing off just as many customers as is humanly possible.

As a business model, that’s generally a bad idea.

Especially in this climate.

What?

Oh, you think that would be obvious?

Well, you are so wrong.

You do have to tell business. You might even have to beat them about the head and shoulders with it.

Whoa, now hold on there, Jim, I hear you say in that contemptuous voice you use when you’re looking down from the 53rd Floor of the BOA Tower and the Occupy Wall Street Rally below finally makes you understand that what people really want is an additional monthly fee to use their own money. Just settle down there, don’t make us get out the pepper spray. This is America, we can do that, you know.

Yes, I know. But the joke’s on you, I’ve been pepper sprayed before.

Several times.

And frankly, there are days where I’d rather be maced than spend my money in your damned store.

Here’s the thing, if your business is so good that you don’t need my money, well, you know that’s your choice. But if you want me as a customer here’s some advice:

Stop trying to be hip. Seriously. Just stop it. It’s embarrassing. It’s midlife crisis gets hair-plugs and a Camaro and cruises past the local High School embarrassing. You ever see the movie Better Off Dead? Remember that part where Lane’s dad reads the book How To Talk To Your Teenager? You’re really bringing me over, man. Like that. Exactly like that. That’s what you look like when you try to be groovy. Look out there. See those people? The hip ones with the black eye shadow and shitty attitudes who smell like a combination of burning rope and ass? Sure they’re hip, but they don’t have any money. They’re unemployed. That’s why they’re hanging out at the mall.

The Sound Track. I was in three different businesses yesterday:

- The phone store was playing speed metal at high volume, either that or somewhere behind the counter an angry baboon was humping an air raid siren in a rock crusher. We went in to talk about a billing error. This particular billing error has been going on for three months despite repeated requests for correction. It does not surprise me. Because it is utterly impossible for anybody to concentrate on business or perform any cognitive function more complex than imitating an aquatic plant with that noise grinding out from the speakers.

- In the bookstore they were playing Frank Sinatra at a level that made me want to punch Old Blue Eyes right in the throat and watch him choke to death on his crushed larynx. I came in to look at books not catch a show at the Copacabana. You know how I feel about modern bookstores anyway, Frank yodeling over my head was the final straw. I went home and in the peace and serenity of my own living room, downloaded the half dozen books I wanted in electronic format from the store’s online competitor.

- The restaurant was playing Air Supply. There’s a reason why people hated the goddamned 70’s, and no, it wasn’t Nixon or tie dyed jeans or the Ewok Christmas Special. It was Air Supply. It was Chicago. It was Journey. It was Abba. It was disco. Honest to God, man, it’s a restaurant, you’re playing music that causes intestinal cramps. I mentioned it to the waitress. Yeah, everybody hates this crap she said, everybody complains about it. Duh. Well, let’s just keep it on permanent loop then, why don’t we?

Don’t Let Morons Answer The Phone. Everybody hates those damned automated answering systems, but you know what’s worse? When you finally do get an actual live person on the phone – and that person is an idiot. I’m not talking about tech support. I’m not talking about billing or something complicated. I’m talking about calling a place to find out if they have what I’m looking for and and the toad who answers the phone knows less about your inventory than the aforementioned idiot cousin Shemp. Gas is five goddamned dollar a gallon, before I drive fifty miles I’d really like to know if you have what I’m looking for or I’m going to order from Amazon and wait a week. However, to be completely fair, I will come by your place later – for the going out of business sale.

Speaking of the phone, if the person waiting on me stops to answer the phone in the middle of our transaction, you’ve lost me as a customer. This is non-negotiable.

Of course, it doesn’t surprise me that your cashier doesn’t know how to focus on the customer. It doesn’t surprise me because about half the time the manager is standing next to her discussing something other than keeping me happy.

Free Samples. There is nothing I hate so much as those people who hand out free food samples in the grocery store. No, strike that, I don’t hate those people, I hate the herd of eager bovines clustered in front of the sample cart. It’s a tiny little cup of some crap that you’d never buy, but these people act like they’re handing out free Viagra. It could be liver flavored asbestos coated Brussels sprouts in Satan’s ass sauce and people will get into a shoving match for a free cup of it. Once they’ve got a sample, they wander slowly through the store, elbows resting on their shopping cart, ass sticking out, licking their little wooden sticks and making smacking noises like Homer Simpson, mmm, I love you free sample, nom nom nom. But here’s the thing, nobody ever buys that crap, all you’re doing is blocking the damned aisle. Between the free sample cart and the giant display boxes every three feet and the shelf stocker, it’s a wonder anybody can actually get through the store – and when did we start stocking shelves during business hours anyway?

The help. Ten percent of America is out of work. Ten percent. There are literally millions looking for employment, and these chowderheads are the only idiots you could find to hire? Look, I have serious doubts regarding the advice offered by your employee when he’s a forty year old guy with a fauxhawk, pieced tongue, and flip-flops. Ditto the gum chewing girl with the bare midriff and a whale tail. I’m not asking that your people be in tuxedos, but is it too much to ask that they keep their underwear on the inside of their clothing? Or that they wear underwear at all? Seriously, what’s with the recent outbreak of asscrack?

Ever go in a place and get the Stink Eye? You know, the place where they follow you around like you’re going to steal something? Boy, that makes me want to come back.

How about the Grumpy Greeter? I’m talking about the mean old guy who meets you at the door. Hi, welcome to Wal-Mart, Dickhead, don’t steal nothing. Here’s a sticker for your ugly kid. (Ok, I can sort of sympathize with this guy, and, yes, I’ll probably be him some day).

It’s bad enough when you can’t find an employee, but too much help is even worse. I spend a lot of time in hardware stores. I used to love the little hardware stores that you could find on any Main Street in America. There was always a helpful middle aged guy behind the counter, he knew everything there was to know about hardware and knew exactly what you needed before you could even ask. He also knew when to leave you the hell alone. Unfortunately, those places were all eaten by Big Box stores filled with clueless morons, and you know how I feel about that.

True story: I’m looking at bins full of nuts, bolts, and washers:

1st Guy: Hi! Can I help you?

Me: Thanks. I’ve found what I need.

1st Guy: Ok! Just ask if you need help!

Me: I think I can handle it.

I start counting out bolts. … nineteen, twenty, twenty-one…

2nd Guy: Hi! Finding everything you need?

Me: I’m good.

2nd Guy: Ok! Just ask if you need help!

Where the hell was I? Twenty? Damn it. One, two, thr…

3rd Guy: Hi! Let’s build something together!

Me: Fuck. Off.

3rd Guy: I think that’s in aisle three, this way!

Grrrr. One, two, three, four…

4th Guy: Hi! How can I help you!

Me: Stand right there.

4th Guy: What?

Me: Stand right there. Shut up. Don’t move. Every time another vest wearing idiot comes along, you wave ‘em off.

4th Guy: I, uh…

Me: You asked how you can help? That’s what I need. Defense. Stack up a couple of those display boxes and barricade the aisle.

Business is bad.

Frankly, I can’t imagine why.

What chaps your ass about customer service these days?

Consequences

2011-10-04T22:30:00.001-08:00

Arabs call it Rub’ al Khali.

The Empty Quarter.

Most Westerners have never heard of this place.

Few outsiders, very few, ever venture there.

The Rub’ al Khali is a vast, vast forbidding sea of sand and searing brown rock, a desolate lonely place that takes up more than a third of the Arabian Peninsula, including a large part of Saudi Arabia itself, along with parts of Oman, the UAE, and Yemen. It is the largest sand desert in the world. During the day temperatures can reach 125°F or more and the ground is so hot that it will literally burn skin and raise blisters. It is as if the sun is somehow closer to surface of the earth here than elsewhere in the world. And then, at night, under a vast milky river of crystalline stars the likes of which are rarely seen anywhere else on earth, you can die shivering of hypothermia. The air is thin and as dry as the surface of the moon, you can feel it sucking the moisture right out of your body leaving your nose bleeding and your skin cracked and bleached like old leather.

It smells of flint and powered cement.

On the southern edge of the Empty Quarter lies the Yemeni administrative province of al-Jawf. It’s cooler here and sometimes it even rains, there are small towns in the central highland desert, dusty places where people still herd camels and tough little goats. In the wet years there is enough rain to plant crops of wheat and barley and to scratch out a living from the poor soil. During those years, runoff from the crops forms into streams that will evaporate before they reach the sea, leaving behind a crust of salt and a poisonous rime of chemical fertilizer. The people there have this look, as if they are one and all ancient, raised whole from the hardscrabble by malicious djinni and weathered by wind driven sand, desiccated, carved from beef jerky and left to dry in the sun.

This forsaken place has always been a fairly lawless land, a natural base for pirates, criminals and cutthroats, bandits and pissant warlords.

It is fitting then, that in recent times al-Jawf, on the edge of the great Rub’ al Khali, has become a hiding place for terrorists.

Last Friday morning, in the desert five miles outside of a small al-Jawfi town called Khashef, a party of men stopped alongside the dusty road. Muslims, they knelt in the desert and made their mid-morning prayers. Then, while it was still reasonably cool, they ate breakfast. Figs perhaps, strong coffee, hard cheese and bread maybe.

This would turn out to be a mistake.

They should have kept going.

Al-Jawf is a dangerous place, even in the best of times, and lately it’s become even more deadly. New predators patrol the skies alongside the sharp eyed desert hawks.

Perhaps they heard their death approaching. The American drones are ghostly silent – sometimes though, if the wind is just right, you can hear their thin keening buzz from a distance. Or maybe they saw those slim black silhouettes outlined like the grim reaper’s shadow against the blinding blue sky. Of course they would have been alert for just such an attack. They were, after all, some of the most wanted men in the world, dangerous and cunning and experienced. They had all been hunted from the sky before. They would have watched for those deadly raptors the way a desert mouse watches for a hawk. And so, somehow, they sensed death approaching.

Like the mouse, they ran.

Four of them made it to an SUV and attempted to reach the relative safety of Khashef.

Another mistake, and the last one they would make.

The AGM-114 tactical missile is small, comparatively cheap, accurate, and deadly. They’re designated Hellfire – named for the weapon’s original mission: HELicopter launched FIRE-and-forget. They were designed to kill tanks – later it turned out they worked pretty well against a wide variety of targets, including SUV’s.

Hellfire, if ever there was an appropriate nickname for a weapon, that would be it.

Two of the missiles dropped off of the drones’ munitions hardpoints and streaked towards the fleeing SUV – and the end was inevitable at that point. Once the missiles are locked on, it’s all over but for the bang.

Four men died in the explosion.

And in that moment, in that hellfire, the world became a measurably better place.

Those men were terrorists, committed, enthusiastic, and unrepentant. They were terrorists in the purest sense of the word – in that they deliberately created, encouraged, promulgated, and enabled terror. Terror was not a byproduct of their campaign, it was the very reason for its existence. It doesn’t matter why. It doesn’t matter if they felt justified or moral or compelled by God. They were terrorists and they reveled in it. The only argument is in the details and the degree.

These men were not only the self-proclaimed and sworn enemies of America, they were the nemesis of civilization everywhere, including and especially in Yemen.

Quite simply, these men declared war on the entire world and thus made themselves the enemies of every single man, woman, and child on the planet.

Two of them, as it happens, were also Americans.

And therein lies the rub.

President Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, was once pilloried for saying, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” (often misquoted as “never let a good crisis go to waste”). Crass? Maybe. Maybe it was just crass to say it so bluntly (Oddly, Emanuel’s enemies are the ones who pride themselves on speaking plainly and who eschew political correctness, perhaps they simply couldn’t abide seeing their own thoughts reflected back at themselves. But I digress). Crass or not, Emanuel was simply stating a basic tenet of all politics, Left, Right, and other.

Never let a crisis go to waste.

Here’s the corollary: If there is no crisis, create one.

And here’s the rest of it: Never, ever, let a victory by your political opposition go unchallenged.

In some cases, it is hard to tell if the pundits and the politicians calling for the impeachment of Barack Obama today truly believe what they are saying. In other cases, the intent, and the astounding hypocrisy, is perfectly clear.

I spent three days reading comments from people across the political spectrum, the general response to the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki seems to fall into four basic categories: A) USA! USA! B) Ok, but I don’t like how we did it, C) Boo, we shouldn’t be engaged in targeted killing, period, and D) Al Whosis now?

I think category (A) is self-explanatory.

Let’s take the rest in reverse order:

D) If you’re an American of draft age or older, don’t suffer from some form of debilitating brain damage, and can eat pudding without help and you don’t know who Anwar al-Awlaki is, you’re a big part of what’s wrong with America today. Don’t comment, don’t offer an opinion, don’t stand on the corner waving a misspelled sign demanding the resignation of the president, and for God’s sake please don’t vote. Get yourself another fudgesickle out of the freezer, go back to watching SpongeBob and be quiet.

C) Targeted killing. I have never understood the moral objection to this. Oh don’t get me wrong, sure it’s immoral. So what? Killing is killing, you can gussy it up all you like, it’s still killing and it’s all immoral. That’s the way it is, you’re just arguing over semantics. If you’re on the receiving end, it doesn’t make one good goddamned bit of difference if death finds you from some random bit of shrapnel or if the bullet has your name written on it. Dead’s dead. Trust me on this, I’ve been there. After a decade of war, so have a hell of a lot of us. Killing people on the battlefield, zapping them in the electric chair, putting poison into their veins, or dropping hellfire on them from the sky – it’s all killing. Morality has got not one damned thing to do with it. Frankly I fail to understand how it was more moral or honorable or even economical to let thousands of people die during the revolution in Libya, for example, than to just drop a Tomahawk on Khaddafi on day one. Bang! There, the asshole’s dead. Toss his body over the balcony railing and let the mob use it for a piñata, we brought sticks, no pushing there’s enough for everybody. War’s over. Long live the Arab Spring and don’t forget who your friends are.

How many lives would that have saved? How much good will would that have bought us with the Libyans and the revolutionaries? What kind of message would that have sent to other America-hating, terrorist-sponsoring dictators?

Yes, I know, where does that end? Tehran? Pyongyang? Austin? There need to be boundaries, there needs to be oversight, there needs to be checks and balances and accountability. There needs to be very clear rules of engagement. But then this is true of any executive power – including wiretaps and detentions and renditions and no-fly lists. We’ll come back to that.

Yeah, but what about targeted killing of Americans?

We’ll come back to that too.

B) The President ordered the killing of an American, that’s unconstitutional, he should be impeached.

The basic argument being The Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to wit:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

The Americans making this statement fall into two basic categories, those who have only recently discovered that the Constitution has parts other than the Second Amendment, and those that have been sounding the alarm for the past ten years.

If you’re a member of the first group, i.e. if you’ve spent the last decade calling the second group enemies of America and weak on terrorism and limp-wristed sissies, if you’ve spent the last ten years telling us why waterboarding and rendition and naked body scanners and warrantless wiretapping and warrantless property searches and no-fly lists and the secret provisions of the Patriot Act were such spiffy ideas, well, all I can say to you is, welcome to the party.

This is exactly what we’ve been warning you about. If you give a rightwing conservative Christian America-lovin’ Texas patriot the power, you’ve automatically given his successor, the tofu-eating sissy socialist Muslim Kenyan-born Commie America hating Liberal, the power too. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself, you stupid silly bastards. What the hell do you think we’ve been telling you? Now? Now, you’re all upset? Now you want a fair trial? (question, say we caught al Awlaki instead of blowing him up, could we have his terrorism trial in your state? Since he’s an American? Hello, is this thing on? Hello?). Now you’re all worried about the Constitution? Now? Because the President blew up a couple of avowed terrorist shitheads who were trying to kill the rest of us? Seriously?

That’s rich, it really is.

Get yourself a fudgesickle, go sit on the couch and just shut the fuck up.

Honestly, after a decade of watching Americans give up their rights one after the other, the fact that President Obama dropped the hammer on Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan bothers me about as much as stepping on a couple of cockroaches.

Frankly, I think both of them gave up any claim to Fifth Amendment protection long, long ago – they were no more Americans than Osama bin Laden. They renounced their membership in our society and pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda. They swore to bring down the United States and her allies and to kill as many of us as they could. Should they have been captured and brought to trial? Sure, in a perfect world. But in the real world it just wasn’t possible, not without risking even more American lives. And I’m going to remind you right here that the people complaining most bitterly about this are the same folks who complained bitterly about risking the lives of US Navy SEALs to capture bin Laden or rescue Rangers. How many more of their lives would al Awlaki have been worth to you?

The CIA had a shot and they took it. They liquidated a major terrorist without risking a single soldier’s life. Good on them.

Yeah, but…

There’s always that but, isn’t there?

Something I’d point out to you, this isn’t the first time.

We’ve killed Americans on foreign soil before. You grandfather did it. In Europe.

That’s right.

Those Americans, the ones we killed, didn’t look like filthy Muslim terrorists either.

In fact they looked just like blond-haired blue-eyed all-American boys, because they were.

They were the American Free Corps, known as the George Washington Brigade – a unit of the Wafen SS.

What’s that? Yes, I see your surprised face. You didn’t know Americans fought for the Nazis, did you?

Some of them came from America of their own free will in answer Hilter’s call for all true Aryans to return to Germany, many others were turncoat American soldiers recruited from POW camps. And some were out and out traitors, like 2nd Lieutenant Martin Monti, an American pilot who defected from the US Army Air Corps by stealing a P-51 Mustang and flying it to Axis territory. He then joined the Wehrmacht and was commissioned a Lieutenant in the German Officer Corps. He was assigned to make anti-American propaganda broadcasts under the pseudonym Martin Wiethaupt – not at all dissimilar to al-Awlaki or Samir Kahn (except for the fact that Awlaki was much more effective, by most accounts Monti was a shitty propagandist).

A number of Americans fighting against America for the Axis were killed by Americans, and nobody shed a tear. Monti? He survived the war, surrendered to the allies, was tried as a deserter and sentenced to serve a hitch in the US Army (I swear I’m not making this up). In 1948 the FBI caught up to him, and he was tried for treason and sentenced to prison, where he remained until 1960.

The simple truth of the matter is that these people, Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan, John Walker Lindh, Martin Monti, the George Washington Brigade, and, hell, the citizens of the Confederate States of America gave up their rights, including any claim on the Fifth Amendment, when they declared war on America.

Whether or not we give them back those rights is our decision, or rather that of our elected leaders – and if you don’t like that, maybe you should think carefully about who you elect. And maybe, just maybe you should think very, very carefully about the kind of power you want to give them. Just saying.

These men were terrorists, but they were also Americans. That makes them our responsibility. They were hiding in Yemen, and Yemen asked for our help in apprehending these criminals.

Robert Anson Heinlein, American writer, veteran, libertarian, patriot, once wrote: “A man shoots his own dog, he doesn’t farm it out. That doesn’t make it better, it makes it worse.” He was absolutely right. These were our dogs, and our responsibility.

Bottom line, they could have surrendered. They could have surrendered at anytime, right up until 9:55AM last Friday morning. Even then, they could have faced the Predators, threw down arms and raised their hands and claimed their rights as citizens of the United States of America.

They didn’t.

They chose to die.

They chose to die as martyrs to a cause hostile to their own country. They welcomed it.

They chose to die as terrorists, not as Americans.

They made their choice, let them suffer the consequences.