Side Show Slam

True confession: I have found further evidence that I am easily distracted from serious matters by loud, fast, shiny irrelevancies. And I do so hate that admission, since it eye-rolls in the face of my self-image--the serious, duty-bound, research-loving, non-fiction reading, television abhorring me. (I blame Slutticia, my alter ego, who sneaks Amy Winehouse's "Amy, Amy, Amy" onto my iPod between my "On Point" podcasts from NPR.) Specifically, I refer to the Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin ado-about-nothing in Anchorage last night. I get it. I was hooked by the hoochy-koochy show at the fair. I bought the snake oil. I'm a dupe for diversion. I got the side show mixed up with the big tent.  For the last time.

Hat tip to Octopus, who warned that we should follow the serious money, the Kochs and Murdoch, if we want to know what's hauling the conservative voting pool toward the ranting right.

So dazzled and distracted was I that I actually went looking this morning for the big announcement Beck promised from the Anchorage...um, performance. I can't call it a rally and it wasn't a political fundraiser, although Beck announced that his speaking fee, an undisclosed amount, would be donated to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. That's the same organization that lent its name to the Beck/Palin rally on the Mall and that insisted the speakers stick to non-political topics, according to Time Mag.

 Remember that the fundraising efforts for the August 28th rally (which restored an honor that hadn't gone missing except at Fox News) went first to support what Mother Jones calls, "Beck's tribute to himself." Only the remainder, after all costs were paid, went to SOWF. Disingenuous of Beck and Palin.  Because, of course, all of us are clueless about their politics, so we don't assume that they might represent any particular political viewpoint, right children? Anyone? Anyone?

Time Mag thinks there's genius in Beck's plan to link his appearances to SOWF, a non-profit that pays the college tuitions of the children of special operations personnel who died in training or battle after 9/11. Beck would find the job too important to be left up to the US government. But the G.I. bill was expanded by The Marine Gunnery Sergeant John David Fry Scholarship, which pays in-state tuition for the children of ALL military personnel killed in the line of duty after 9/11, regardless of age or marital status; Public Law 111-32, sponsored by Democratic Congressman John Boccieri of the 16th District of Ohio.

 Beck's announcements in his gatherings would lead his audience to believe that it is by his efforts and his alone that the children of the deceased special ops veterans receive an education, when, in fact, the SOWF organization only supplements the amended G.I. Bill, only for children of deceased special operatives, and only expands it to private colleges...not an unworthy goal, but not critical in a country with outstanding state university systems. Time Mag may think it genius on Beck's part, but I call it disingenuous...again.

So what was Anchorage all about? Nothing...if we still care, and even if we don't.

The Alaska Dispatch reported that Beck didn't seem aware that he was insulting the state when he complained about how long it took to get there and essentially said that he and his wife had thought of vacationing in Alaska, but chose Idaho instead. He made a crude reference to Palin, saying she had just come back from caribou hunting and still had blood under her fingernails. And he said it all made him feel "like a girl again."

Read that last line one more time. Yep, I think going after that, as the Dispatch did, would produce some copy at least as interesting as the stuff I read on Mr. Obama's wedding ring. In fact, I'll let the Dispatch write about Glenn and Glenda a bit:

He was at turns bombastic, self-effacing, philosophical, funny, historical and even tearful as he prowled the stage lamenting the collectives that rule American politics today, stressing the value of the individual and suggesting, without ever actually saying so, that those in the attendance form a new collective. Stand together, he said; take strength from each other; and take back America.

The mostly white crowd loved it. Not that Beck's message wouldn't have had something for any race or nationality. There were, as is often the case with Beck, so many messages scattered through the presentation that there was something for anyone.

He said to find God, but then he stressed it could be any God, even a mountain top. He attacked the bureaucracy, something with which almost [every] American has had a run-in at some point, although he referred to them as the "administrators.''

He said everyone should read their history, though his livelihood is dependent on people watching an electronic box instead of reading. He said he'd already made enough money to be set for life, but that he was carrying forward his message for the good of the country.

It was very good theater. Those leaving had all kinds of reactions to the message, although they seemed mainly to have gotten the theme that they should find the Christian God and fight to shrink government.

Beck's last pitch was to call on them to join his 40 Days/40 Nights campaign of self-awareness, which includes the search for God, after which "our politicians will be replaced." The new ones, he suggested, wouldn't fight so much, which would probably be a first in American's cantankerous political history.

Would that mean that they wouldn't fight each other so much? Those darn democrats just insist on governing when they have the majority and the presidency.  Or does that mean they wouldn't fight other countries so much? Oh, brother; let's don't even go there. And the 40 days and 40 nights? No shame to his name.

So, with their special genius, Beck and Palin managed to co-opt a second significant calendar date--August 28th, the anniversary of Dr. King's death and 9/11/10, the ninth anniversary of the death of America's sense of security and 2,976 innocents--and turn it into another paean to...well, if they are to be believed and it ain't about the politics, it must be just another performance of the Glenn and Sarah Show. Not the main event, after all.

Politico Sinks to New Low in Non-News Reporting

The main stream media has been receiving a lot of harsh criticism over the last couple of years, decades maybe, for using bad news judgement, most of it well deserved. Politico just beat the crap out of them by sinking to the bottom of the cesspool.

Are these non-entities serious? Where is the news worthiness in this banal non-news story? Has all judgement been flushed down the toilet? Another time of the year, I would think it was an April Fools joke or that I had landed at the Onion by mistake - or at Fox News.

In what is undoubtedly the most inane news story I have ever had the misfortune of reading, reporters

Patrick Gavin and Amie Parnes (requires two to write this garbage?) take the president to task for - hold your breath - going ringless at today's "presser." Oh my God! Rates right up there with jobs and medical research don't it?

Sometimes, a White House press conference can be a chance for a president to take some weight off his shoulders ... but weight off his fingers?

Eagle-eyed reporters noticed that President Barack Obama wasn't sporting his wedding ring during Friday's White House press conference.

"big to-do over potus not wearing his wedding ring today," Tweeted The Hill's Sam Youngman, who was at the presser.

Presser? Please, somebody tell me this is a joke. I actually read this piece of shiitake three times to make sure I wasn't missing something. The comments indicated it was meant as an honest-to-God news story.

Jim in Houston:  Which ring, the one for his finger or the one in his nose? Big Meshell leads him around like a dog on a leash.

MAC59: He is probably getting it adapted to fit in his nose. 

maxovrdriv: I just figured he wanted his favorite verse from the Quran put on it.

But this conservative says it best:

zjak10: BFD! I mean who the heck cares, really?

So, why do I care? I don't.

Your media narrative is going to kill us all

In case you've been living in a cave for the past several months, Terry Jones, relatively unknown pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center and Yosemite Sam impersonator, burst onto the world stage by threatening to burn Qu'rans on 9/11. Well, now he's cancelled that event, although he isn't clear on the reason: at first, he said he'd cancel if plans to build Park51 were scrapped, or perhaps if he got a call from the president.

Despite that, it seemed only fair to call it off, since he was told that this was a bad idea by pretty much everybody in the world, from both sides of every political and religious spectrum: from President Barack Obama to professional quitter and loudmouth Sarah Palin, to the Prime Minister of Canada; from every possible Islamic organization, to a major group of atheists and free-thinkers, to the National Association of Evangelicals and even the fucking Vatican.

The thing is, this wasn't something that should ever have been seen in the national news. This self-important pastor was a self-aggrandizing lunatic, known to create potentially newsworthy controversy, simply to increase his own notoriety. There were only fifty people in his congregation! How did he become an international headline?

It was the media who felt that his voice should be amplified, to be heard by the entire world. Terry Jones should have been ignored, except that "news" organizations, desperate for ratings, saw conflict in his story. Had he been simply overlooked, like some random racist screaming "nigger," he would have faded away as nothing more than a blip on the world radar screen.

(In a rational world, you could even ask why the burning of a group of bound pages would make anyone angry. Then again, ask PZ Myers why the "desecration" of the Eucharist would cause death threats and controversy. So we'll just take that argument as a given.)

Of course, as each voice spoke out to tell him he was wrong, Jones gained power. The President of the United States should have had nothing to say about some minor ruckus involving a redneck Florida lunatic with a bad mustache. But, by exaggerating Jones's profile, the media forced Obama's hand. (And god knows Obama seems more than willing to jump in whatever direction the media is pointing this week.)

Really, with every word Jones spewed out onto the public scene, this jumped-up Florida firebrand proved that he didn't even care about his own religion, much less the random mythology of the Middle East.

After all, he'd been denied a permit to burn anything. In order to perform his ignorant display of bigotry, Jones would have to break the law. And, just for giggles, what does the Bible say about that?

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. (Romans 13:1-2 NIV)

Of course, if you're going to be rude enough to go to the Scripture, you should also consider words from earlier in that same book.

Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. (Romans 2:1-2 NIV)

But it hardly mattered that Jones was a crappy Christian; he reflected the media's narrative about the "holy war" between Islam and the western world. And even better, this was a new slant - instead of a radical imam screaming "Death to America!" this was a radical priest screaming "Death to Islam!" (Sadly, a philosophy echoed far too often these days).

So the news networks gave Terry Jones his unjustified fifteen minutes.

In the end, the problem is simple. Radical adherents to any religion are dangerous. They don't need to have their voices heard - they need to be ignored. If Terry Jones hadn't been elevated to an international stage, he would have been considered a random lunatic with a minor cult following him. Instead of a flashpoint inciting riots.

But sadly, because of the current, violently partisan political scene, where the most insane people are considered newsworthy, there's a good chance it will happen again.

The best option? A counter-protest. But a relatively peaceful one (emphasis on the "relatively"). Terry Jones wanted headlines for burning the Qu'ran, and he got them.

So, with the news media in full force, you have to wonder what the reaction have been if he was met by a small group of people with no weapons and no combative attitude. Just fire extinguishers.

People willing to spray down everybody in the neighborhood with non-toxic white foam.

Sure. There would have been some danger - these aren't just idiots, they're armed idiots. But sometimes, your only choice is to change the narrative.

It's just a thought.

Things that ring in the night.

If there is any part of "our freedoms" that must be defended more than the right to risk irreparable disaster for profit, the right to sell fraudulent securities, bogus debt reduction plans and to buy election results, it's the right to harass people at all hours of the day and night in their homes, in their cars and at work in the process of fleecing them.

Yes, there are laws regulating telemarketing: no call lists, restrictions on times called, restrictions on robocalls that tie up the line until they're through telling you how evil Nancy Pelosi is or how they can get you out of debt by lending you more money at 400% interest. These laws are scrupulously ignored and lawbreakers are carefully protected by the phone companies who in turn are allowed to buy the privilege of ignoring not only the law, but common decency. Virtually all these calls, including the call that woke me at 3:33 this morning are untraceable. "Hell-O - are you late in your mortgage payments???" I was ready to kill someone, but thanks to an FCC that is owned by the telecommunications industry, I'm not allowed to do what I would be allowed to do if someone in a black ski mask showed up in my bedroom at the same hour. That I don't have a mortgage and am not in debt adds a certain edge to the anger. That I only got 4 hours of sleep hasn't allowed it to dissipate.

I may have to give up my land line. Even in a non-election year, I average about 8 telemarketing calls every day, usually most frequent at 8 O'clock AM, again around dinner time with a late peak at 9 to 10 PM. It rings when I'm in the shower, in the pool, up on a ladder trimming trees or under my car changing the oil. Of course it's nearly twice as bad this year.

My number is registered on that most pathetic of places, the Federal no-call list. I wonder why I bothered to register it. So is my cell phone and yet every loan shark and financial con man sends me text messages and calls me at the most inopportune times, so I have to remain unreachable, which largely defeats the purpose of owning one. Yes, this continues when one is overseas and for some reason, candidates all over the country continue to call me even when I demand to be removed.

Of course, I'm just a crank with no knowledge of how evil Liberals are and no proof that the ever further to the right corporate shills still calling themselves Republicans aren't the cause of our woes. After all, it's just freedom I'm objecting to and the will of the proletariat is that the will of the corporations be the law -- and isn't it typical of loser liberals like me to promote such Communo/Fascist ideas like a right to be left alone by scam hawkers and sleazemongers and political flim flam artists who have a far greater right to use a service I pay for than I do.

Masturbation, Mutilation and Tea

Apparently, my feelings about the Tea Party are very funny over in Trollhattan, because I'm regularly accused of stupidity and dishonesty and the entire list of standard calumnies when I mention the evidence of insanity in the house of Tea. "Proof" is the usual demand of the rightly accused and of course there's never proof of insanity; but not only do most people know it when they see it, they also know the preponderance of evidence when they're drowning in it.

Take Christine O'Donnell -- please. Masturbation, says the Delaware Tea Party Express candidate soon to appear on primary election ballots, is the same as adultery and as "proof" she offers the Bible. Yes, the same book that tells us that a cheeseburger is an abomination and damnation results from using cotton thread to sew a linen shirt.

"the Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust."

Of course when she says "the Bible" she's referring to a Gospel and it's inclusion under the biblical rubric is a matter of dispute and a matter in which proof has no place. It's also a document which, like the Koran, has no legal status in our country, yet she rolls on with rapturous certainty:

"When a married person uses pornography, or is unfaithful, it compromises not just his (or her) purity, but also compromises the spouse's purity. As a church, we need to teach a higher standard than abstinence"

she told MTV, some years ago. Of course we're a secular Republic and not a church, but can you think of something of a "higher standard" than abstinence that doesn't include genital mutilation? I can't, but one does not expect the words of a Tea Party candidate to mean what they say any more than one expects Biblical cosmology to reflect reality.

One does expect however that when one refuses to list one's place of residence while running for Representative, using the excuse that her house was broken into, when in fact it wasn't, one will be called a liar as well as a nutjob. Please feel free to do so with my blessing.

Again, I'm sure I'll be called names and "proof" will be demanded. I'm sure I need not remind you that it's the guilty party that demands proof of their guilt, while the innocent often has more faith in the evidence. If there are more nuts in that misbegotten party than in the fruit cake you threw away last Christmas, perhaps this will serve as one more chewy bit of that evidence.

Prank Nation

If I never hear again that foul-mouthed bloggers killed the news media, it will be too soon.

In a stunning media error, the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart referred to “California Republican Congressman Jack Kimble” in a post last night. Problem is, there is no Congressman Jack Kimble:

The fictional Kimble claims to be from California's 54th district -- California only has 53 districts -- and his twitter page is adorned with corporate logos including Cargill, Fidelity Investments and Toys R' Us. At first glance, Kimble's posts appear to be in line with conservative ideology, but they are in fact subtle digs at the conservative movement.

I almost feel sorry for Capehart except that this embarrassing incident was completely self-inflicted. How many times have we DFH’s bemoaned of our national press, “can’t you people Google?”

The typical rejoinder one gets is that news is now a 24/7 business and deadlines are awful and no one pays for fact checking or copy editing blabbedy blah blah. Yeah I hear you, it sucks, we’ve all made mistakes, I’ve made some bad ones but the thing is no one is fucking paying me for my blog, this is something I do on my spare time for free and if I fuck up it’s my own fuckup, not another scar on fast-eroding 130 year old tradition. I mean seriously, if you can’t take the time to Google the Congressman and his district and realize it’s a parody then what the hell are you doing writing for the nation’s oldest newspaper?

This story is stupid, and trivial; Keith Olbermann and Jon Stewart will have a moment of fun at Capehart’s expense and we'll all move on. But I wanted to talk about it because the problem is bigger than Jonathan Capehart. This incident points to a larger issue. All around us our institutions are proving themselves completely inadequate to the task at hand, be it educating our kids or fixing our economy or fixing our levees and roads or fixing our politics. And if anyone ever wonders how the nation got dragged into a war of choice in Iraq, it's because we’re a nation of incompetents and low standards.

I’ve often thought that 9/11’s biggest impact on America was that it struck a major blow to an already wounded national morale, and we keep taking hits. Sept. 11 came at the completely wrong time (if a “right” time could be said to exist), since the national psyche was still reeling from the Clenis fallout: all of that angst over a presidential blow job that should never have been international news yet somehow was.

This was followed by the botched 2000 election which cast a pall of doubt over our entire electoral system. It was the kind of thing you read about happening in third world countries and places like Iran, not here. And then some guys armed only with boxcutters hijacked three airplanes and launched an attack on the U.S.? And then the crash of the Columbia space shuttle, followed by invasion of Iraq which, it would soon become clear, was based on misinformation and lies -- I mean, even if you believed it was the right thing to do, that it was totally worth it, where are the WMD’s? Still? To this day? And then the Northeast power grid failure, the levees failing in New Orleans and the major Hurricane Katrina failure and then a bridge collapses over the Mississippi River in Minnesota? And then the financial collapse and the real estate bubble bursts? And an oil well spewing filth into the Gulf of Mexico for months on end?

(And what am I forgetting? Anything else sucky about the past 10 years I’ve overlooked? Doping by sports heroes? Political philandering?) America sure has had that merde touch for the past decade, n’est ce pas?

Against this entire backdrop we’ve got people like Glenn Beck selling crazy juice to the nation. I mean no wonder the nation feels like crap. This kind of stuff used to happen to other countries, not us. America the mighty and strong, America the first to walk on the moon, America whose interstate system and military might and radical yet peaceful regime change every few years were the envy of the world!

It all hit the shitter at once, didn’t it? We the people are completely demoralized; now we have reporters who can’t even hit the Google and Vice Presidential Candidates pwned by Canadian comedians. What in God’s name happened? (And no, I ain’t blaming this on teaching evolution, gay marriage and abortion. Be real.)

I’d like to say Mercury has been retrograde over America for the past 15 years, but I suspect this national lowering of standards happened long ago and we're just now reaping that harvest. Our education system has been crumbling for years yet we ignored the warning signs of falling test scores and Why Johnny Can’t Read reports and our national cluelessness about geography. This is an empire in tailspin, and I suspect it’s been happening a lot longer than any of us realized.

How we get out of this mess is anyone’s guess. I suppose we could all try a little harder to be our best (fill in the blank...). Maybe some great national project, a manned mission to Mars or something. I dunno. Electing our first black president sure got everyone feeling hopey-changey, until the Republicans decided to stick their feet in the mud and answer “no you can’t” to every “yes we can” cheer. Honestly I have the feeling that one group of Americans just wants to wallow in feeling really really crappy right now while another group is wanting to think happy thoughts, which is really hard to do when you’re given bad news at every turn.

So I don’t have any answers. I know the nation is turning its hopeful eyes to a lot of someones and somewheres, but everywhere we look we see just a spectacular fail.

London Blitz

Listen to the air raid sirens in this first video while reading the introduction. It creates a realistic backdrop for the eerie horror Londoners experienced during the Blitz in World War II.






INTRODUCTION: The Blitz began on the night of September 7, 1940 with the non-stop bombing of London by the German Luftwaffe. This first onslaught lasted for 76 consecutive nights and would destroy many towns and cities across the country before ending on May 10, 1941. Over 43,000 civilians, half of them in London, were killed by bombs and more than a million houses were destroyed or damaged in London alone.

The London Blitz, 1940*

The appearance of German bombers in the skies over London during the afternoon of September 7, 1940 heralded a tactical shift in Hitler's attempt to subdue Great Britain. During the previous two months, the Luftwaffe had targeted RAF airfields and radar stations for destruction in preparation for the German invasion of the island. With invasion plans put on hold and eventually scrapped, Hitler turned his attention to destroying London in an attempt to demoralize the population and force the British to come to terms. At around 4:00 PM on that September day, 348 German bombers escorted by 617 fighters blasted London until 6:00 PM. Two hours later, guided by the fires set by the first assault, a second group of raiders commenced another attack that lasted until 4:30 the following morning.

This was the beginning of the Blitz - a period of intense bombing of London and other cities that continued until the following May. For the next consecutive 57 days, London was bombed either during the day or night. Fires consumed many portions of the city. Residents sought shelter wherever they could find it - many fleeing to the Underground stations that sheltered as many as 177,000 people during the night. In the worst single incident, 450 were killed when a bomb destroyed a school being used as an air raid shelter. Londoners and the world were introduced to a new weapon of terror and destruction in the arsenal of twentieth century warfare. The Blitz ended on May 11, 1941 when Hitler called off the raids in order to move his bombers east in preparation for Germany's invasion of Russia.

"They came just after dark... "

Ernie Pyle was one of World War Two's most popular correspondents. His journalism was characterized by a focus on the common soldier interspersed with sympathy, sensitivity and humor. He witnessed the war in Europe from the Battle of Britain through the invasion of France. In 1945 he accepted assignment to the Pacific Theater and was killed during the battle for Okinawa. Here, he describes a night raid on London in 1940:

Shortly after the sirens wailed you could hear the Germans grinding overhead. In my room, with its black curtains drawn across the windows, you could feel the shake from the guns. You could hear the boom, crump, crump, crump, of heavy bombs at their work of tearing buildings apart. They were not too far away.

Half an hour after the firing started I gathered a couple of friends and went to a high, darkened balcony that gave us a view of a third of the entire circle of London. As we stepped out onto the balcony a vast inner excitement came over all of us-an excitement that had neither fear nor horror in it, because it was too full of awe.

You have all seen big fires, but I doubt if you have ever seen the whole horizon of a city lined with great fires - scores of them, perhaps hundreds.

There was something inspiring just in the awful savagery of it.

The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen's valor, only to break out again later.

About every two minutes a new wave of planes would be over. The motors seemed to grind rather than roar, and to have an angry pulsation, like a bee buzzing in blind fury.

The guns did not make a constant overwhelming din as in those terrible days of September. They were intermittent - sometimes a few seconds apart, sometimes a minute or more. Their sound was sharp, near by; and soft and muffled, far away. They were everywhere over London.



Into the dark shadowed spaces below us, while we watched, whole batches of incendiary bombs fell. We saw two dozen go off in two seconds. They flashed terrifically, then quickly simmered down to pin points of dazzling white, burning ferociously. These white pin points would go out one by one, as the unseen heroes of the moment smothered them with sand. But also, while we watched, other pin points would burn on, and soon a yellow flame would leap up from the white center. They had done their work - another building was on fire.

The greatest of all the fires was directly in front of us. Flames seemed to whip hundreds of feet into the air. Pinkish-white smoke ballooned upward in a great cloud, and out of this cloud there gradually took shape - so faintly at first that we weren't sure we saw correctly - the gigantic dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.

St. Paul's was surrounded by fire, but it came through. It stood there in its enormous proportions - growing slowly clearer and clearer, the way objects take shape at dawn. It was like a picture of some miraculous figure that appears before peace-hungry soldiers on a battlefield.

The streets below us were semi-illuminated from the glow. Immediately above the fires the sky was red and angry, and overhead, making a ceiling in the vast heavens, there was a cloud of smoke all in pink. Up in that pink shrouding there were tiny, brilliant specks of flashing light-antiaircraft shells bursting. After the flash you could hear the sound.

Up there, too, the barrage balloons were standing out as clearly as if it were daytime, but now tey were pink instead of silver. And now and then through a hole in that pink shroud there twinkled incongruously a permanent, genuine star - the old - fashioned kind that has always been there.

Below us the Thames grew lighter, and all around below were the shadows - the dark shadows of buildings and bridges that formed the base of this dreadful masterpiece.

Later on I borrowed a tin hat and went out among the fires. That was exciting too; but the thing I shall always remember above all the other things in my life is the monstrous loveliness of that one single view of London on a holiday night - London stabbed with great fires, shaken by explosions, its dark regions along the Thames sparkling with the pin points of white-hot bombs, all of it roofed over with a ceiling of pink that held bursting shells, balloons, flares and the grind of vicious engines. And in yourself the excitement and anticipation and wonder in your soul that this could be happening at all.

These things all went together to make the most hateful, most beautiful single scene I have ever known."

References:

This eyewitness account appears in: Pyle Ernie, Ernie Pyle in England (1941), Reprinted in Commager, Henry Steele, The Story of the Second World War (1945); Johnson, David, The London Blitz : The City Ablaze, December 29, 1940 (1981).

*Source: "The London Blitz, 1940," Eyewitness to History, 2001

GALLERY:

 

TROOPS AT RISK

Once again a pseudo-Christian group is about to engage in an act of terrifying idiocy that will needlessly endanger the lives of thousands of our service men and women. Story HERE.

I am talking about the plans by the Dove World Outreach Center to burn the Quran. The book considered by Muslims to be the holy word of God. They want to do this to commemorate the Sept 11th terrorist attacks. 19 al-Qaeda terrorists committed heinous acts on American soil but this group of mental midgets believe they should insult millions of people over the acts of a few extremists. As much as I am sickened and angered by the attacks that day, I certainly don’t accept the premise that a religion and all its followers should be held accountable for the acts of a few.

The Dove World Outreach Center has been denied a permit for a bonfire but they intend to break the law and proceed. Just the rumor that they are intending on burning the Quran has sparked violent protests in Indonesia and Afghanistan but they intend to proceed.

Gen. Patraeus has warned, "Images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence." But they STILL intend to proceed.

Like that moron from wikileaks, it appears that no amount of human lives is too much to pay so they can have their publicity and notoriety. Many of us have had or still have son, daughters, nieces and nephews overseas in harm’s way. And the Dove World Outreach Center wants them to pay with their lives for their actions – for which they will then take no responsibility, citing their right to freedom of speech.

I am so sick of people right now…

UPDATE: There is an Op-Ed piece in the Maimi Herald HERE that is worth a read.
(H/T to Capt Fogg)

Bullshit

"The wheels of commerce are greased with bullshit"

I don't know who first said it, but it's been passed down in my family for at least a couple of generations. It's true, of course, and it's doubly true of politics. Americans seem to have more fondness for the substance than an African dung beetle and far more ability to swallow huge quantities of it. Bullshit is perhaps the one thing you can have and eat and you certainly can do both and pass on more. Despite our horror of wealth distribution, we do love to share it.

A local souvenir shop made the papers over the weekend, for a huge display of Obamahate items, including an alleged explanation by the president of why Michelle hates the flag. Of course he never said it and it was long ago exposed as having been invented by the Bullshit machine formerly known as the Republican party. Yet it's too precious to let go and the dung beetles formerly known as Republicans are still eager to rub it all over themselves, smear their own walls with it and share it with you without any concern for facts.

Remember the headless bodies Arizona Governor Jan Brewer talked about - the rising crime rate that necessitated 'special handling' for anyone appearing to be of native American descent?
You guessed it, like Saddam's WMD, it's all bullshit and unlike the perpetrators of that disastrous hoax, she's willing to admit she made the whole damned thing up to get votes. Think that's the end of it? Surely not and the headless Mexicans will be talked about long after Washington Irving's tale of Sleepy Hollow disappears into the past -- and they'll be blamed on Obama. It will all be blamed on Obama and more so because more aliens are being deported than by the previous administration, fewer are getting in and crime associated with illegal immigration is going down. Why drink the watery light beer of fact when that Bullshit brew is so much more filling?

Does it matter that the President is not a Muslim? Not as long as Fox is out there spending millions, contributing millions, to tell you he is and that they are doing it is Obama's fault anyway. Bullshit sells the worse it smells.

Think Climate change has nothing to do with human activity? Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but what you think you know about it has much to do with the Oil Tycoon Koch Brothers who spend a fortune fighting the idea and financing the "Tea Party." Why does that tea taste so much like bullshit?

Think those Climategate e-mails were proof of a vast conspiracy? Sure you do and sure you don't care that they were edited and redacted to make them seem to say something they didn't. Rupert Murdoch and his Arab Oil allies spent more millions to produce enough bullshit to roll in to make all the dogs in America happy.

Those incriminating ACORN pimp videos --- smell that warm bullshit! Why give it up just because it was another right wing media hoax? Since Fox never bothered to tell you that, you can pretend it's still true and you can just keep rolling in it.

I could go on, because the bullshit never stops, but I'm tired of the futility of living in a country where "if it feels good, believe it" is the state religion and where people will fight for their beliefs to the death. We don't live in an information age, we live in a bullshit age. We love Bullshit because it fertilizes the egos of the uninformed.

If these are indeed at last the end times, we can be sure it will not all end with floods and it won't be by any divine agency. It will end with bullshit and it will be your own damned fault.

Happy Labor Day Weekend to Alaska from the AFL-CIO

[Just had to re-post this (with a Hat Tip to LeftLeaningLady) from CNN's Political Ticker].

Richard Trumpka - President,  AFL-CIO

"What is this crazy magnet that’s pulling people to the right? I mean, look at your former governor….

Who is she, anyway?

Sarah Palin?

She used to have a job, your governor…. You knew her…. Or thought you did…. I know I thought I did. She seemed like a decent person, an outdoorswoman. Her husband’s a steelworker. She seemed to take some OK stands for working families.

And then things got weird. After she tied herself to John McCain and they lost, she blew off Alaska. I guess she figured she’d trade up…shoot for a national stage. Alaska was too far from the FOX TV spotlight.

I bet most of you, on a clear day, can see her hypocrisy from your house.

I think Sarah Palin quit so she wouldn’t have to be accountable… so she wouldn’t have a record that could be scrutinized…

Instead, she’s hanging out on cable TV, almost a parody of herself, coming out with conspiracy theories about Obama and his “death panels….” Talking about “the real America.” Talking about building schools in “our neighboring country of Afghanistan.” Writing speech notes to herself on her hands.

Sometimes – about Sarah Palin – you just have to laugh…. But it’s not really funny. In this charged political environment, her kind of talk gets dangerous. “Don’t retreat… reload” may seem clever, the kind of bull you hear all the time, but put it in context. She’s using crosshairs to illustrate targeted legislators. She’s on the wrong side of the line there. She’s getting close to calling for violence. And some of her fans take that stuff seriously. We’ve got legislators in America who have been living with death threats since the health care votes.

And down in Tyler, Texas, she’s talking about—and I quote— “union thugs.” What? Her husband’s a union man. Is she calling him a thug? Sarah Palin ought to know what union men and women are.

Oh, she goes to great pains to talk differently about unions and the working people who belong to them, knowing full well we’re one and the same.

But using the term “union thug.” That’s poisonous. There’s history behind that rhetoric. That’s how bosses and politicians in decades past justified the terrorizing of workers, the murdering of organizers….

To me, it just doesn’t seem OK to go where she’s going…. It sits wrong with me…. The Mama Grizzlies, Sarah Palin says, just sense when something’s not right. Well… I wonder if those Mama Grizzlies can sense something’s just not right with her.

Quite frankly, America works because lots of people contribute lots of ideas—that’s good—even when some of them are just plain wrong. But people need to come to the table in good faith. That’s not Sarah Palin. She’ll go down in history like McCarthy. Palinism will become an ugly word.

Who is this woman, anyway? What happened to her?"