Impeach Obama, Court Martial Bergdahl

Damn the troops, Damn everything.  We're the Republicans

Didn't you see it coming?  The release -- let's call it a rescue -- of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from the clutches of the Taliban after 5 years should have been a feel-good story for all of us as well as his friends and family in these days of supporting the heroic troops, but a country pleased with anything,  even for an afternoon,  just can't be allowed by the party that has long made it it's business to tell us just how awful things are  and just how it's Obama's fault.  As you know, some Guantanamo "detainees" yet to be tried for anything, were taken custody of by agents of Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl's release.  Even an old cynic like me went looking for a flag to fly.

Before the rest of us had finished saying "welcome home,"  Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sternly warned America that this would have dire but unidentified consequences for all of us and of course "the troops."  Let the Inquisition, the disgusting denunciations and fear mongering begin. What did you expect? 

That Obama, said Oklahoma Jim, “clearly violated laws” that require him to notify Congress 30  days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay.  He betrayed us all, as is his wont, by failing to explain to Congress how the threat of releasing the satanic horde had been substantially mitigated before uncorking the Guantanamo bottle and thus denied the Grand Old Bastards the opportunity to filibuster, stall, vilify and ultimately prevent the recovery of Bergdahl, who, up until now, had been an illustration of Obama's uncaring negligence.

So stop your anti-American celebrating, Jodi and Bob Bergdahl and the town of Hailey, Idaho.  This is an impeachable offense, and your favorite son be damned.  And don't you dare bring up the sale of arms to our enemy Iran to bargain for the release of hostages because that's entirely different. Reagan was a Republican and it's OK when we do it.  Besides Obama has deprived the depraved party of their ability to denounce him for neglecting Americans in captivity and that's unforgivable.

And of course, say some of  the True American Patriots: sometimes our sainted troops aren't worth supporting.

"Bergdahl is a stank-ass hippie who accidentally joined the Army and decided to smell some Afghan flowers one night"

So he wasn't worth the time and effort even searching for him and it was, as when that Communist Clinton tried to punish al Qaeda with his "Monica Missiles,"  all a cover up for the Benghazi scandal, or the VA scandal or whatever scandal we are selling this week.

 "And, oh, yeah, Bergdahl will be treated as a hero instead of the little coward deserter that he is. If he makes it to a court martial, he’ll get slapped on the wrist, get an honorable discharge and go on his merry way to co-write a book." 

He's a traitor and deserter for sure say the patriots in and out of the military, proving, if proof is needed that there is no God who punishes those who need so badly to be punished.  Of course the punishment of living in a country that doesn't punish the Republicans is punishment for the rest of us.

Stupid, stupid, STUPID

It's probably true in most states:  leaving your keys in your car is illegal as well as irresponsible.  Ohio statutes for instance, state that:

  "No person driving or in charge of a motor vehicle shall permit it to stand unattended without first stopping the engine, locking the ignition, removing the key from the ignition, effectively setting the parking brake, and, when the motor vehicle is standing upon any grade, turning the front wheels to the curb or side of the highway." Ohio Revised Code 4511.661(A)

One might think the same logic would apply to leaving a loaded gun lying around and particularly where unauthorized people and children might get to it. One would be right, at least in Homestead, Florida where Juan Manuel Martinez, Jr. described as a hard working truck driver and part time volunteer youth baseball coach handed his father a loaded AK-47 at a party and just to show it off.

For no sane reason, here was a 7.62X39 round in the chamber and the safety was off  when Juan Sr. put it down on a picnic table where his six year old grandson saw it and pulled the trigger. Grandpa Juan Sr. was dead before he got to the hospital.  According to the news, alcohol and perhaps some other drugs were involved as one so often hears when idiotic and ignorant things pertaining to firearms and cars are done.

Yes, this is a huge country and one in a million is a big number,  but one still hears too many stories like this.  It's not superfluous to say that according to the time honored principle of always treating any firearm as loaded even when you know for damn sure it isn't, the thing never should have been anywhere near a minor or displayed where there's a party and people are drinking -- or displayed at all in the opinion of this writer.

Again, Florida law holds Martinez Jr. responsible and he now faces charges of culpable negligence of a firearm with easy access to a minor.  I'm sure he wasn't aware of the law and wasn't thinking about it, if in fact, he was thinking anything beyond "hey look at my cool toy"  Which makes me wonder how effective laws are when practically no one reads or understands or knows about them.  We constantly hear there aren't enough of them and simultaneously that there are too many of them but the most heated proclamations of that sort rarely involve specifics.  Neither side of the great gun divide really likes specifics because those lead to reason and interfere with the zealotry.

Now Martinez didn't need any kind of permit to own that weapon and wasn't required to take any kind of training or pass any kind of test.  If he had, perhaps he might be surprised like so many are, by how difficult the laws are to understand even for lawyers, but he would, even with the meager level of education for a permit in Florida, been aware that to do what he did was illegal even if he didn't realize it was massively stupid.

In fact although I'm licensed to carry a concealed weapon, I'm scared to do it because of laws that can make it illegal to use a gun to frighten an assailant or to display it in anger -- but not to kill him with it.  You'll recall the Florida woman sentenced to 20 years for using a gun to warn off someone against whom she had a restraining order.  Is it so awful to think that requiring someone to learn the relevant laws and rules of safety might not really run afoul of the second amendment -- and might just increase public safety? 

But I'm not going to get into the need for more or less in the way of legislation, I'm going to argue against ignorance and for teaching the public about what they can and cannot do, about what they should and shouldn't do with a dangerous thing like a gun.  The people who used to make it a business to teach safety have gone rogue and turned paranoid -- the other side is also often so paranoid that it fears safety education will interfere with their mission and in a nation so well armed and poorly informed there is a need no one is there to fill.

Of course there is far less sturm und drang when it comes to the equally tragic weekly stories of kids left in hot cars to die, strangled by pet snakes, drowned in pools and swimming holes, beaten, neglected, poisoned and starved.  Our concerns about guns are too choreographed and involve so many stereotypes and straw men and political shibboleths to leave us room to consider that child safety has so much to do with informed and responsible adult behavior.  Reducing the stupid factor might just be an effective way to reducing such tragedy whether it's about pools, hot tubs, hot cars and hot lead and it is something we can start to do right now and without having to resolve our passionate differences.  Can't we all agree?

Let's see if I have psychic powers.

I'll admit that I didn't know enough about Maya Angelou. I'm really not a huge fan of most poetry. It's just not how I'm wired.

But she died last night at age 86. From what little I knew about her, she was a wise woman, and a lot of people liked her poetry. She was widely honored, with a Pulitzer, a Tony Award nomination, three Grammys, the National Medal of Arts and several other awards.

But here's my point. Despite all that recognition, I foresee a coming dark cloud.

See, she was awarded the Lincoln medal by GW Bush, but then recieved the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama. She didn't always agree with his policies (she initially supported Hillary Clinton), but she and Michelle Obama corresponded, and Barack Obama quoted her in speeches; they might not have been close friends, but they knew each other.

Given that, it will not be unreasonable for Obama to speak about her death. And now I'm going to make a prediction. When he does so, there will be an outcry on the right that Obama is racist because he only honors black people. (The word might not be "honors" - I'll give them credit for knowing what a thesaurus is.)

Hear my words, you wise men; listen to me, you men of learning. What I foresee will come to pass.

I predict

Yeah, sure.  If there's any thing we do that is more likely to be wrong than our political predictions I don't know what it might be.  If we ever get the impression that someone is good at prediction it's usually because we've forgotten or never examined the vast matrix of failure the occasional success is imbedded in. The best we can do is to give odds but somehow that 30% chance of rain never seems to mean much or be of much use when deciding whether to take the boat out today.  That national speed limit was sure to save lives, that drug law was supposed to make life safer and it must be someone's fault or someone's failure when it didn't. Just whose fault you say it is, says much about who you are. Whether it's Obama, the NRA, women, men, the Liberals or the Tea Party, our predictions and the predictions we choose to believe give us away.

Of course the purpose of many predictions isn't to predict, but to scare, to inflame, to mislead, to further a cause and of course to generate ratings. The public loves being inflamed and scared and to be the first to know something scary and all to the point where the authority and veracity of the predictor is ignored. Hell, we passionately adhere to predictions that have proved wrong for thousands of years, telling ourselves "any day now" and we find enough to satisfy ourselves in predictions that "there will be a storm, an earthquake, a war" to keep the fantasy going. 

If anything sums up the human condition I'm not sure it isn't the story of Chicken Little and when a prediction that a giant asteroid would kill us all on March 35, 2041 appeared on CNN, the cackling started before many dumb cluckers bothered to notice that no such date is currently possible or even questioned the authority of the prophet: Marcus575.  NASA says it's a hoax but of course nobody is going to forgive that buzzkill bunch of liars, and after all they're lying about climate change and that face on Mars. Like most thwarted predictions it will end in a witch hunt by angry and ever more intransigent denialists.  I predict.

I will go to heaven - he will go to hell, my enemies will be defeated, truth will prevail, peace and justice will arrive and Congress will make sensible gun laws that will make the number of  suicidal rampages vanishingly small and "not one more" innocent will be killed by a madman. If only we "raise awareness" there will be no more misogynists, if only we shut down their websites.  If only we can identify the witches, these horrible and horribly eternal animosities will go away in the pure land to come. No our problems are not diverse products of  the large spectrum of human nature, our culture, our unwillingness to identify madness in ourselves, there are specific things; large magazines, specific cartridges, certain materials and there are vague, hazy and slippery legal solutions that sane people must agree upon even without being able to define them.

The "world," whatever that means, didn't end in 1982 or 2012 or on any of the countless and continuously predicted dates before or since, but it's nearly always because of some minor miscalculation or some misunderstanding about what world means or what the end means or some conspiracy of  liberals/conservatives/Jews/etc and some prophets go on predicting and making careers out of it, succeeding only when the prediction follows some random event: "that storm hit New Orleans because God doesn't like this or that."  The laws get stricter, more complex, more contradictory and more punishment-oriented but mayhem persists. The laws get more liberal and don't dictate whom we marry, yet the end is still only nigh and God's wrath increases. We wear more rubber bands, say more prayers, hunt more witches -- and we turn to violence.

So to avoid such depressing thoughts about the difficulty in preventing the horrors that have defined human history since before human history we demonstrate, we make up inspiring slogans, we walk around and run around and wave signs and chant hey-hey ho-ho. We hide in our feeling of community and nostalgia for the good old days of protesting real things we could really do something about and we wear rubber bands and ribbons the way we used to sacrifice goats to Yaweh -- and usually we're wrong when we think we're affecting the random nature of existence.

We go to Church, we pray for peace and for aunt Lucy not to die and for rain or for the rain to stop or for our team to win. We punish the sinners, we expel the unbelievers, because without them we'd have to consider our efforts hopeless and our passions vapid.  So sure, assemble in the stadium and shout and pretend some simple "sensible" move will end the pain and when you can't really define what that move, that law, that policy, that program might actually be, why you can just trot our the witches, the straw men and line them up in the blame gallery. After all there is an ample supply of idiots, liars and idiots out there and we must be so right because they are so wrong.

Making Political Hay out of the Misfortunes of a Supposed Hero

Earlier this month, I told my friend Mikeb302000 about a former U.S. Marine from Florida who unfortunately and perhaps accidentally crossed the international border at San Ysidro into Mexico with all of his worldly possessions in his Ford F-150 pickup truck. Unfortunately, these possessions included three legally owned firearms. Understand that guns are illegal in Mexico. I accepted his version of events in his own words. He just got lost looking for a restaurant off of I-5, trying to meet his friends. Even if you do believe his story, the fact that he was driving around with unsecured weapons in the cab of his pickup truck in the city of San Diego makes him a careless scofflaw. Bear in mind that he is a soldier suffering from PTSD, a form of mental illness. I unfairly speculated that he might have been slightly under the influence of alcohol given the fact that he simply continued driving south all of the way to the border without noticing any of the signs about the approaching international border, the last freeway exit into the U.S.A. and even a last ditch U-turn designed to give drivers one last chance to remain upon U.S. soil. Mike was kind enough to create a post from my tip. I was hoping that the regulars would get worked up about the injustice of it all. They did not completely disappoint. Now, three grueling weeks later, FOX has decided to release their take on all of this nonsense just in time for the Memorial Day Weekend. The headline is “Leave No Man Behind.” Obama has abandoned this poor soul, when just one phone call from the DOJ or the American Consul could have released this defender of freedom from the ravages of the Tijuana penitentiary system. The article by a FOX contributor does not seem to agree with the earliest press release from the San Diego Union-Tribune which reported that he attempted an escape and then subsequently attempted suicide while incarcerated. He was reported to have been doing much better in his incarceration when the prison provided him with an English-speaking chaplain. I am sorry, but it is difficult to view the U-T article without a paying subscription. Since there is really no way of confirming or denying any subsequent facts, FOX has chosen to say that originally he was chained by both arms and legs to his bed, and that now he only has to be chained by one leg by the Mexican prison guards. I mean, why not lie, if there is no way to check the facts? Much as the leftist blogosphere thrived under the sadistic presidency of GWB, FOX has no apparent reason to exist other than to spread hatred and lies about our president. This was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. Make hay while the sun shines!

Gregg Who?

It's the Fox Look. You know, like you've just been prepped for your open-casket viewing or in the case of Andy Ann Coulter, for her loonie drag queen episodes on Fox.  Hey, don't laugh, it's a Republican thing.  Gregg Jarrett, like Lyin' Bill and Insanity Hannity and a host of hosts on Fox have that look. Way, too much makeup and perhaps a bit of Botox for that touch of zombie.

I'm sure one needs a shot or two (hypodermic and otherwise) to keep a straight face on the air, but apparently, off camera you'd hardly recognize them.  That's probably something else that's deliberate and particularly useful for guys like Jarrett who get drunk and disorderly in airport bars.  You might remember the same Minneapolis airport and fellow Republican 'Wide Stance Larry' Craig, but I digress.

Are we looking at the same dude here?    Yep, some yellow journalism lighting, some paint, a shave, the fake hair and a fake air of seriousness and he's ready for prime time again -- or will be as soon as the public forgets or a Fox Fable can be concocted about how it's Obama's fault or the Liberals or something.   He's got some personal problems says the Fox and he certainly does, especially now, despite the smile. Perhaps he's fed up with being a subversive and just can't take it any more.  Who knows?   But don't feel sorry for the Fox. Sure they've got a president to slander, a government to undermine, an economy to sabotage, fables to fabricate, Benghazi to shout -- but there are plenty of  others to fill his shoes and desk and with the right light, the right make-up and a full moon the Fox will make a seamless transition and the show will go on.   Gregg who?                                         

THIS JUST IN:

Seems Jarrett had just left rehab where he's been for a while.  I don't want to make light of a drug and alcohol problem and rehab is just where he should have been -- and apparently still should be.  All snark aside, I wish him well and hope he can redeem himself, medically and ethically.

Never Forget?

It's hard to find a coherent picture of Barack Obama in the roar of inflamed rhetoric.  The rhetoric itself is incoherent, mixing accusations and metaphors with the most bizarre results -- and such is the passion for defamation it's probable that no consistent pattern will emerge for a generation.  He is what he is, somewhere behind the halo of  howling hate that surrounds him. 

Whatever you might think of him, it's tempting to plug other presidents of another party and another color into the equation just to test for mendacity and absurdity: such as perhaps to assume Reagan were president during an embassy bombing ( he was) or W.  ( he was) and it's tempting to reverse it by assuming it were president Obama not showing up at the dedication of the 9/11 Memorial Museum last week instead of the notably absent Bush whose 8 year career was floated on the attack and the subsequent War on Terror. 

George W. Bush deliberately stayed away for reasons, possibly good reasons, of his own and was in Arkansas attending a ceremony for Medal of  Honor recipients, but anyone with an unfoxed memory remembers how the Republicans jeered, howled and hooted about flag pins and the size of the flag on Obama's airplane and posted endless doctored photos and forged documents designed to attack his patriotism -- anyone with a sense of irony would wonder what those dancing devils would have done to Obama and snicker at what they certainly are not doing to Bush for staying away. It would have been a three ring, twin tower circus for weeks and months and years if not cause for impeachment.

And of course, I had to find out about this from the foreign press, the mis-titled Liberal American Media being far too concerned with other trumped-up Obama scandals, racist comments by team owners, Benghazi bullshit and other ridiculous attacks on Hillary Clinton, missing airplanes and the various and ever-changing apocalyptic horsemen wearing Obama masks.

Never-Forget George probably didn't forget and he's probably right not to make the dedication all about him, about his going to war with an uninvolved country and permanently giving up important civil rights in the process instead of being about the dead.  Still, it  makes one wonder at all the "never-forget" passion that was and is as transient as the all the "never-forget" events -- but then, forgetting, like false remembering is part of  the game and it is a game after all.  The only real goal of that game is winning.

The myth of competition

I don't think I need Thomas Piketty to point out that massive conglomerations of  Capital and the drive toward monopoly are one of the failure modes of Capitalism in which consumers have not only fewer choices but less money to fuel the system.  Perhaps it's a bit like Stellar evolution where using up all the hydrogen causes bloat and eventual implosion. 

The traditional anthems sing about competition and opportunity, but in truth any capitalist enterprise wants to stifle competition and give competitors as little opportunity as possible and when the enterprise in question is control of information and opinion and even of desire and ambition in the public -- well the prospect of  media consolidation  in a country that depends on that industry for its information and opinion is simply frightening.   We might as well just hand over the keys to the Capitol along with our proxies when elections here become as much of a one party farce as those we used to laugh at in other countries.

AT&T plans to buy out DirecTV in a 67 Billion dollar deal and while current DirecTV customers like me will probably start to worry that my current $170 a month bill will escalate further and my service will decline to U-verse levels of not giving a damn, our real worry should be, as Professor Picketty would doubtless agree, that it's beginning to look a lot like Orwell.

Isn't it time to suggest that all this blather about Obama the Socialist is a smokescreen put up by interests with no other interest than to monopolize the country and reduce us all to penury, inescapable debt and serfdom? struggling to pay for what they want to sell us?  I think it is and I think our biggest danger as a free and prosperous country is to protect what they, the media, the voice of monopoly tell us is our freedom. 

TFN

Seems as though I'm alone in worrying more about Russian aggression in Europe than about rooting out and punishing obnoxious racial opinions expressed in private.  But still -- I'm starting to worry about freedom of speech and it's de facto abuse even though that abuse isn't coming from the government.


Wolfeboro, New Hampshire Police Commissioner Robert Copeland was overheard  sounding off in a restaurant last March, complaining that he hated watching television, because every time he turns it on, he sees “that f-cking n-gger.”  TFN, of course, being the president of the United States Barack Obama.   There has been, as you might expect, a call to have him resign or be fired, but the town just isn't having any part of that and a fellow commissioner claims he's a "very nice person." No doubt he is on matters other than insulting our country and its president, our citizens of African ancestry and basically everyone else who finds such public speech to be unacceptable and particularly by an elected official entrusted with public safety.

Am I the only one who finds that far more egregious than a private phone conversation, taken out of context and without permission and involving a businessman acting jealous with his would-be girlfriend?  It won't get the publicity of course, because it doesn't involve one of the sacred games our nation cares about more than anything else, but whether or not Copeland decides to step down with or without the support of his peers, perhaps the people's right to censure, if not censor such speech will be exercised at the polls and TFR that f-cking racist will have to find an honest job somewhere else.  I strongly defend the right to hold an opinion as well as I defend my right to use any legal means to make sure the holder thereof  isn't on the public payroll.

Honey, we never had kids!

Someone told me that the Church of the Latter Day Saints is the fastest growing religion in the world, but it isn't -- not if one can call a family of beliefs that share the philosophy that nothing you hear is true a religion.  Of course when it comes to Sunday Supplement health and nutrition articles and the books that make diet Doctors rich, little of it may actually be true, but there is no end of things that are really beyond reasonable doubt and should largely be beyond unreasonable doubt too.  I wasted some time last week for instance with a fool who insisted no airplane could have hit the Pentagon because of the "ground effect"  although I certainly know better than to do that.

But no, the winner, the fastest growing most universal faith is Denialism and I think it's time to stop looking at it as anything but a Religion.  It has a canon and a catechism, albeit simple:  Whatever happened didn't happen and I have a conspiracy to explain it.  I have proof that nobody ever went to the moon because the pictures they took would have been ruined by the Van Allen belts.  The pyramids were built by aliens because how else?  The World Trade Center must have been sabotaged because steel doesn't melt at the temperature of burning jet fuel. . .  No, don't go away, I'm not going to explain why this is the purest of bull, I'm more interested at how nothing true is exempt from Denialist interpretation  any more.

Sure, it's a big country and you can find a few people who think anything and deny anything.  It makes them feel important, but like most religions in today's America, they have their preachers and politicians and lobbyists spreading the faith like it was Ebola.  Think nothing is true and they're coming for your shotgun?  Who ya gonna call?   Rand Paul!  

Imagine someone calling you up and insisting that not only did your daughter not die in the school shooting at Sandy Hook, but she never existed!  Birth certificate?  Hey we know about birth certificates, don't we?  And we know about Photoshop too - you can't fool me with your pictures!  Hey, it was all a scam to allow the government to take our guns and you know they have no other purpose than to take your guns!

Rand Paul thinks so too, or at least he wants the nutjobs, nitwits and whackadoodles to think he does because after all, lunatics, idiots and devout Denialists need representation too.  Nope, nobody died, it never happened and if you know somebody who died, you're a liar, because they never existed. 

Stunning, isn't it, but that's the world of Denialists, or "truthers" as they often like to be known.  Who says they're immune to irony?  They're good at it, even if they can't see it.