Glass houses

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

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

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

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

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

This Sums it Up

Keeping with the theme of cartoons, here is a card from someecards.com that seems quite appropriate given the media's current obsession. Couldn't have said it better myself.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Octopus will be away for the next week. Volunteers are needed to keep the beach clean.

Passages:
My heartfelt condolences go to Lindsay for the loss of her grandmother, to Rocky for the loss of her cousin, and to Shaw for the loss of her sister.

Swash Zone Group Therapy:
May I prevail upon all Swash Zoners to dissuade Bloggingdino from feeling any guilt for the asteroid that trashed the planet 65 million years ago. It was sudden, unforeseen, and not his fault.

Global warming, however, is another matter. Those filthy, disgusting humans managed to dig up and burn over 350 million years of sequestered carbon ... in a mere 200 years ... making that asteroid seem puny in comparison. Creatures of the Earth, behold! It is time to hold those humans accountable and sequester THEIR carbon before it is too late!

Hot Florida nights, men in tights

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

In nearby West Palm Beach, not far from the homes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, politicians and propagandists were out working the crowds of tea flavoured idiots, some dressed in items of late 18th century attire.

"Yes, we do need change, you can start by giving me my money back!"

yelled Joyce Kaufman, of AM station 850-WFTL.

"I don't care which side of the aisle you're on, if you're taking money away from my children, you've got to go"

said GOP Congressional candidate Edward Lynch who lost the 2008 race to a Democrat. Of course he cares about little else, but who knows whether he really believes our current predicament derives from the expensive attempts of the current administration to keep our economy alive long enough to recover and not from the decades of "debt doesn't matter' and "upper bracket tax cuts boost the economy" and "freedom isn't free?"

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

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

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

HAVE A BLAST!

Or else the dog gets it!

Whither Sarah?

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

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

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

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

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

PALIN QUITS!

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

Can we start singing the Wicked Witch is Dead song, or is it too soon? Is she resigning because Pastor Muthee told her the Rapture is coming? What will this mean for Michael Jackson, the patron Saint of Pop?

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

Oh! The Outrage!

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

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

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

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

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

AN INK-THE-AQUARIUM SPECIAL EDITION: WHAT MAKES (O)CT(O)PUS LIVID !!!

(O) (O) MICHAEL JACKSON ON CNN (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) MICHAEL JACKSON ON MSNBC (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) ABC HAS MICHAEL JACKSON (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) CBS HAS MICHAEL JACKSON (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) BOUGHT A NEWSPAPER (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) JACKSON HERE (O) (O) (O) (O) JACKSON THERE (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) MICHAEL JACKSON EVERYWHERE (O) (O) (O) PLEASE! (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) ENOUGH ALREADY! (O) (O) (O) (O) NO MORE MICHAEL JACKSON NEWS !!!

No lie too big, no mind too small, no lie too disgusting

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

I can say that because the ad will apparently reference the recent intelligence report warning of increased right wing terrorist activity -- which of course proved true: blood, bullets, bodies and all -- as an example amongst many, of how Barak Obama is just like Adolph Hitler.

"As the regime spun out of control, they labeled political opponents domestic terrorists, and warned of confrontations between such groups and government authorities."

Is their view of an all too correct observation. Too damned bad more attention wasn't payed over the howls of offended wingnuts and too damned amazing that they're still howling after the warning was proved accurate.

Of course it takes a special person to see this alleged spin-out of the administration, but the accusation is quite predictable. Indeed every accusation made against Bush, no matter how true, is going to be re-labelled and returned in the same fashion as Watergate was reprised in every word and action and relaunched against Bill Clinton.

"They proposed a civilian security force, and a Congressman warned it was exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany. Opposition heightened after voter fraud by the president's allies, including thousands of bogus voter registration [sic]"

Since I'm personally involved with civilian security (Amateur Radio Emergency Services) I would have to laugh at a bunch of retired engineers volunteering to do emergency communications in a disaster being compared to Storm Troopers, but it's hard to understand why a thousand or two bad registrations, which don't seem to have produced any actual votes could account for the 9 million vote Obama victory. Hard, unless you're up to no good yourself and of course the OCDB PAC isn't. It's the illegitimate child of Howard Kaloogian, the fellow who during his losing campaign to replace disgraced Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham told us that Iraq was safe and almost free of violence and that the fact was being hidden by -- you guessed it -- the Liberal Press who of course support terrorism. Is there any doubt?

"And now the Obama Administration is warning law enforcement to focus their attention on the dangers of conservatives."

says their website. They're not, unless you describe murderers as Conservatives, but I am and I can't help but mention that this kind of rhetoric and this kind of campaign was pioneered by Adolph Hitler himself.

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