The Devil wears Camouflage

Phil Robertson -- you know the formerly beardless frat boy / football player who learned to cash in on American savagery to the tune of at least $15 million, simply hates everything a free country is based on.  Sure he squeals like a pig when called to task for hating other people's freedom but somehow finds those who don't share his horrifyingly sexually perverted ideas about religious tyranny something to be mocked.

Most disgusting to me is the support he gets from Southern Country Folk who don't see past the camo shirt uniform of  Bible based solidarity to the seething sulfurous evil of his bigotry camouflaged as that old time religion.  Speaking in Vero Beach, Florida yesterday he erupted like Satan's pustulant anus with a story about how atheists could see their wives and daughters raped and beheaded and their penises cut off and not know whether it was right or wrong because, apparently, they don't believe the stupidest, most absurd lie ever told.

Sadly I have to support his "right" to sell evil, to promote evil, to incite to evil, but sadder is that all you "good" Christians out there are silent -- if not praising, yet still supporting him by such faint damnation as he gets. No one has the right to talk about evil without mentioning Phil and the millions of demons who admire him overtly or covertly. We get outrage when a cosmologist suggests that we can understand the universe as well without mythology, when we offer proof of the age of the planet or of the origin of species.  A silence falls over the voices of the Saved as evil rings out like a church bell.

Saddest of all is that those like me who hate him enough to see him drawn and quartered and disemboweled like Babington in the public square -- and all those good and moral and kind and decent people his kind have murdered since the beginning of time -- of all of them, among those least likely to shove hot pokers up his ass, put his balls in a wringer and immerse him in a tub of red, fuming Nitric Acid as he truly deserves, are Atheists.  Yeah, Phil, I know it's wrong.

But it's so tempting.

The Bibi-Boeher Connection - Seditious Acts

Less than 24 hours after my last post on the Bibi-Boehner connection, a Wall Street Journal report reveals the hidden devil in the details: It appears Netanyahu used Israeli intelligence resources to spy on P5+1 negotiations (full text here):

“The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said … The espionage didn’t upset the White House as much as Israel’s sharing of inside information with U.S. lawmakers and others to drain support from a high-stakes deal intended to limit Iran’s nuclear program …

“If you’re wondering whether something serious has shifted here, the answer is yes,” a senior U.S. official said. “These things leave scars.”

Spy versus Spy: It is not uncommon for one ally to collect intelligence on another; but what makes this revelation unprecedented is that Israel fed this information to Congressional Republicans in an effort to alter the course of U.S. foreign policy. If intelligence gathering is considered standard operating procedure – even among allies – direct interference in the internal affairs of governments raises the stakes.

Double Trouble. More troublesome is the fact that Congressional Republicans acted as co-conspirators to gain partisan advantage. Never before in the history of the United States has an opposition party colluded with a foreign power - in direct violation of constitutional norms and protocols. The time has come to put teeth into the Logan Act: Mutiny against the Commander-in-Chief is an act of sedition. If ‘sedition’ is one operant word, the other is …

Impeachment. Unfortunately, impeachment is a political process requiring passage by vote in the House of Representatives and a trial by vote in the Senate. Since accused criminals rarely admit to their crimes and never sit on their own juries, the prospect of 47 Senators impeaching themselves is highly unlikely.

The only other option is to weigh the evidence in the court of public opinion. Bring it on, I say!

GOP Shadow Government and the Bibi-Boehner Connection

by (O)CT(O)PUS

In a last minute blitz of opportunistic electioneering, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wrestled ignominious victory from the jaws of defeat.  Invoking fear and xenophobia, Netanyahu nullified decades of diplomacy, antagonized allies, and inflamed regional tensions.  His last minute retractions and recalibrations were so stunningly cynical, it leaves us wondering:  Are Israeli voters now having buyers’ remorse?  For many, the answer is yes:

The day after elections, columnist Ben Caspit wrote an article in the Maariv daily newspaper titled "Two States." He was not referring to the two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to Israel's own cultural divide (source: Associated Press).

In America, Europe, and the Middle East, the election outcome in Israel will have profound consequences; and the American public is well advised to pay attention.

Ides of March.  Earlier this month, House Speaker John Boehner breached constitutional protocol when he invited Netanyahu to address both chambers of Congress without notifying the White House.  Weeks later, forty-seven GOP Senators breached protocol again with an infamous letter that challenged the foreign policy prerogatives of a sitting president in the midst of sensitive negotiations. Last week, an aid to House Speaker Boehner announced a two-week trip to Israel starting in April. This sequence of events is no mere coincidence.

In victory, Netanyahu proved his mettle as a triumphant demagogue, and Speaker Boehner would like some of Bibi’s success to rub off.  His trip to Israel will be more than a mere courtship ritual between far rightwing allies. Hardly a state visit, this trip has the appearances of a political strategy session.  After all, next year is an election year in America; and the rightwing parties of Israel and the U.S. have a mutual stake in the outcome. Will the GOP and Likud join forces?  Follow the trail of sound bites for clues:

Representative Steve King (R-IA):  “I don't understand how Jews in America can be Democrats first and Jewish second and support Israel along the line of just following their President" (source).

More Jewish than American Jews, more Catholic than the Pope, with a mouth the size of cantaloupe, Steve King never speaks alone.  He serves as an ugly mouthpiece for the GOP, and his outrageous remarks often presage the drift of GOP tactics and taking points.

Wedge politics is the dark art of stoking fear, suspicion, and resentment with appeals to bigotry and xenophobia in order to break apart coalitions and strip away votes. For decades, Jewish voters have consistently returned outsized majorities on behalf of Democrats:  78% for Clinton in 1996, 79% for Gore in 2000, 76% for Kerry in 2004, and 78% for Obama in 2008.  Clearly, the GOP sniffs an opportunity to bring these voters into the Republican fold … along with Sheldon Adelson's money.  Where demagoguery and diplomacy converge, the Bibi-Boehner connection represents a new low in American politics.  Will this unholy alliance bear fruit for Republicans?  Not according to Jon Stewart who lampooned Netanyahu for having the audacity to speak for all Jews (and for stealing a favorite GOP campaign tactic).  Not according to this commentary across Cyberspace (representative sampling):

“That's why more than 2/3 of American Jews are Democrats - because we know what happens when dangerous demagogues like you preaching hatred and exclusion are allowed to take power."

"They conveniently forget that Obama was awarded Israel's highest honor, the Medal of Distinction, by Shimon Peres, Israel's president."

"It's the Dolchstoßlegende.  Any Jew can recognize it instantly."

Meanwhile, where is Cyanide News Network?  Is CNN MIA ... again!  Are there any savvy reporters bold enough to ask these questions: Is the Speaker’s trip to Israel an official state visit, a vacation, or a partisan junket? Who pays the tab? Will American taxpayers, or the Republican National Committee?  Pay attention, damnit!

Big Brother and the Targets of Public Outrage

Idiotic and often disgusting stunts by college students and at college fraternities and sororities seem as regular and inevitable as stupid statements by politicians and questionable actions by police officers and if we were so inclined, we might spend our days ranting and raging about it.  Sometimes we do that, but what we choose to obsess about seems chosen for us rather than a spontaneous reaction to circumstances. The American public is an orchestra, a chorus, a marching band and those things have their conductors, their choir leaders and drum majors to produce and direct passion on demand, outrage on cue.

So the University of Houston suspends Sigma Chi for hazing practices so dangerous as to be criminal whether or not the pledges voluntarily submit. The District Attorney may press criminal charges.  You didn't hear about it through the week long din of  gnashing and wailing and rending of clothes over rude comments made on a bus at another university. Boys will be boys and at least they're not racists. We're only accepting racism outrage this month and next month will be reserved for Hillary's e-mail.

So two cops walk into a house in Dallas.  There's a man standing there with a screwdriver.  His mother tells the cops he's mentally ill and wants help getting him to the hospital. "we don't have time for this" says one of them.  They shoot him repeatedly until he's dead.  That's right, CNN is not covering this round the clock, there are no nationwide demonstrations reminding us that bipolar lives matter. Call me a racist, and some have, but the struggle for justice and equality for all isn't well served by ignoring anyone's liberty and civil rights. Human life matters.

So a guy gets a phone call from a neighbor.  His house is surrounded by 40 police cars, SWAT team with rifles and battering rams. There's a remote control bomb disposal robot, there are armored assault vehicles.  Returning home, the parents of the teenager inside are told not to enter "the kill zone."  Later they're told the kid "is deceased."  They could only get details from the TV news the following day.  It was claimed the kid had a long police record.  He didn't.  A neighbor saw the plainclothes officers approaching the young man and thought they were robbers. It's likely the victim did too.  They jumped the fence, tackled him and when he defended himself, they killed him.  Happens in Phoenix all the time: the mentally ill, the poor, the Hispanic, the innocent, the harmless. We tend not to demonstrate round the clock, not to burn cars, rob liquor stores, loot businesses. We tend not to notice. The conductor's baton is pointing elsewhere. This is what it means, all that it means and nothing else is pertinent, anything else is out of line and racist.

 Last year the police story about the homeless New Mexico man who pulled a small knife when ordered to move along and had to be killed, was contradicted by video that shows he was complying, not resisting. His life mattered and his "white privilege" availed him not.

The U.S. Justice Department issued a report last year documenting that the Albuquerque Police Department  has for years engaged in a pattern of excessive force that violates the U.S. Constitution and federal law. The mentally ill, ethnic minorities, the homeless, the poor, the helpless: 

     officers too frequently use deadly force against people who pose a minimal threat, said the report.

     Albuquerque officers use “less lethal” force, including Tasers, on people who are non-threatening   or unable to comply with orders. 

     Encounters between APD officers and persons with mental illness and in crisis too frequently result in a use of force or a higher level of force than necessary. 

Police brutality, excessive force -- it seems to correlate more with helplessness than with anything else, but that observation departs from the official line, deflects anger from the target we're given. It flirts with racist thoughts. It admits shades and colors into our prescribed, black and white arguments.  In fact we have a problem with the way the police sometimes treat people in general. and for those without such effective advocates and agitators, their plight is worse. Black, Brown, Indigenous and indigent people all suffer from  official brutality as well as from official lack of concern and it's time to step out of line and take a stand against the incompetence, the bias, the anger and increasing militarism of our police. But for the love of justice, let's stop forcing our force-fed examples to monopolize the news while ignoring the real problem.  All lives matter!

The Next American Civil War

Earlier this week, I called the office of Senator Marco Rubio – one of two senate representatives from my home state of Florida - to express concerns over the ‘Dear Tehran’ letter signed by 47 ‘unguided’ missiles of the GOP.

An aid to Senator Rubio took my call.  When I mentioned the Logan Act and the word “sedition” in due course, the conversation ended - with an abrupt disconnect.  Apparently, the aid did not like my drift and hung up the phone. How rude!  Do we wonder why citizens no longer believe their so-called “elected” representatives represent them!

Let's face facts:  The GOP is now an insurgency that no longer knows how to participate in a two-party system of government.  Republicans have crossed constitutional boundaries - with reckless disregard for centuries of tradition and protocol.  They disdain the free exchange of ideas and information in a democracy.  They are openly intolerant of any viewpoint and utterly contemptuous of any opposition.  They disrespect the parliamentary art of compromise and consensus and choose legislative hostage taking over governance.  In short, the GOP has morphed into a sovereign entity hell-bent on domination and suppression.

Between 2003 and 2005, three European allies negotiated a deal that would have frozen Iran’s nuclear breakout capacity at a very early stage.  At the time, Iran operated 164 centrifuges with a nuclear breakout capability at least ten years away.  Acting through the British government, the Bush/Cheney administration scuttled the deal.

Unbound from treaty obligations and a regimen of inspections, Iran has expanded its nuclear program to 19,000 centrifuges with a breakout capability of less than a year away – no thanks to a neoconservative administration that failed to seize an opportunity under far more favorable conditions. Right now, P5+1 negotiators have one more chance to freeze Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  Yet again, GOP neoconservatives are hell-bent on sabotaging this last and final opportunity (source).

In this debate, the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.  In a single ‘Dear Tehran’ letter, the GOP shredded the Constitution and upended American diplomacy.  From this day forward, our nation will no longer be considered a trustworthy partner in world affairs.  Every international accord may be held in doubt – held hostage to the whims and caprices of partisan politics.  Shall we dismantle NATO?  Nullify the non-nuclear proliferation treaty?  Scuttle all trade agreements?  The fallout is already clear:  Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany described the letter as “not very helpful.”  Having been burned by American duplicity in the past, the Supreme Leader of our implacable adversary has concerns: "Of course I am worried, because the other side is known for … backstabbing" (source). 

Backstabbing, indeed!  Republicans have been backstabbing the American public for a very long time - holding us hostage to partisan ambitions with deception, defamation, demagoguery, legislative trickery and treachery, and blackmail.  The government shutdown of 2013 compromised the creditworthiness of the nation.  In failing to fully fund Homeland Security, the GOP left us vulnerable to terrorism.  In states across the land, GOP legislators have sponsored bills to:

• Suppress voting rights and disenfranchise citizens along partisan lines;
• Enlist the powers of government to serve as Enforcer of religious doctrine;
• Impose religious teachings and taboos upon the general population;
• Legalize discrimination and deny citizens their full rights under law;
• Assert the sovereign right of states to violate human rights.

Of all enemies, foreign or domestic, today’s Republican Party is by far the more dangerous of the two.  As a result, we are less safe and less free.  In a landmark essay originally published in 2011, former Republican staffer Mike Lofgren exposes the hidden agenda of his party:

“It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe …

If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America’s status as the world’s leading power.”

I consider the ‘Dear Tehran’ letter our Fort Sumter moment – the first shots fired in a second American Civil War. Consider this post a wakeup call.

47 Senate Republicans Violated the Law

How low can the GOP go?  Just when you thought Netanyahu’s invitation to address Congress (without consultation with the President) was bad enough, you can thank Senate Republicans for breaking with two centuries of tradition and legal precedent – in a breach of protocol that effectively breaks our system of government.

I refer to 47 Senate Republicans who dispatched a letter to Tehran that undermines P5+1 negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. The letter states that any negotiated settlement should be considered non-binding because any future president or Congress can reverse it. More than offensive as another example of partisan insurrection, the letter is downright dangerous and reckless:

Violation of Constitutional Law. The language of the Constitution is clear:  “[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur” (Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2).   Justice Sutherlin of the United States Supreme Court wrote this precedent in 1936:  “[The President] makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude, and Congress itself is powerless to invade it." 

Violation of Federal Law.  Passed in 1799, the Logan Act states: “Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."

Violation of Trustworthiness.  The letter undermines the full faith and trustworthiness of the U.S. government in matters of foreign policy.  In a White House statement yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden said:  “In thirty-six years in the United States Senate, I cannot recall another instance in which Senators wrote directly to advise another country -- much less a longtime foreign adversary -- that the President does not have the constitutional authority to reach a meaningful understanding with them. This letter sends a highly misleading signal to friend and foe alike that that our Commander-in-Chief cannot deliver on America’s commitments -- a message that is as false as it is dangerous."  

Borrowing a page from the GOP playbook, it means the foreign policy initiatives of any future Republican administration can be similarly sabotaged.  If war is what Senate Republicans want, then they should be damn careful what they wish for in more ways than one.  How about two wars - one foreign and one domestic!

The ‘Dear Tehran’ letter represents nothing less than a hypocritical and unconstitutional coup d’etat against the Executive Branch … deserving of prosecution under the Nolan Act.  Traitors, the whole damn GOP Senate! 

Smile, you're on Candid Camera

(and nobody's laughing)

"Frat Boy" isn't a term used in praise or admiration or affection very often and if you went to college where fraternities flourished, you'll know why.  Perhaps you have embarrassing memories. Fortunately for us old folks, none of it is likely to have been recorded for posterity in the days when nobody had a video camera in their pocket.  Boys will be boys you know, and by "boy" I mean drunken irresponsible idiot.

I have no way of knowing whether the SAE brothers at the University of Oklahoma will look back 40 years hence with embarrassment or anger at the day when their fraternity was shut down following the surfacing of a video showing some of them on a bus chanting: “There will never be a n***** in SAE.”  Perhaps that's a self fulfilling prophecy as the University immediately closed the fraternity despite the formal apology by the fraternity.

I never pledged a fraternity although I investigated a number of them, preferring the increased freedom, or license if you prefer, in finding my own housing off campus.  I do clearly remember visiting one frat and hearing the song "There'll never be a Jew in Sigma Nu" which, as you might expect, disappointed me a bit, even though I still suspect the implied anti-semitism wasn't all that deep.  But there were no consequences back then, in the tumultuous early 60's.  There were only short term consequences when some black students ran into similar and worse attitudes in other places, but the repercussions were short lived and involved deep snow drifts and frat boys in their underwear, but I won't elaborate.  The school took no actions I'm aware of.  Of course there were plenty of  fraternities free of such retrograde nonsense and with diverse memberships as I'm sure there are at Oklahoma.

But things are not the same, despite the bizarre assertions by some that Selma changed nothing with regard to racism, our tolerance for it and the consequences of  racially motivated actions. Of course today, conversations about race and many other issues across the political spectrum are dominated by institutions, which seem to demand that we use only certain terminology, accept certain axioms and discuss things only within a certain framework before beginning.  I'm sure someone reading this will already be writing something about how I'm just an old white man and don't understand my privileges -- or copying it from some pamphlet or tract. I'm too old to care, but old enough to remember well when the consequences of  racist epithets and actions were few to none and denigrating jokes were many and frat houses mostly Caucasian.  

Face it, it's better now.  It's a lot better and if progress threatens those who prosper by protesting the lack thereof, perhaps it's time to shut down other fraternities on and off campus.

Net-N-Yahoo Trolls Foggy Bottom

If you've been following this story as assiduously as I have, then you probably have some very strong opinions ... as I have.  Consider this an open thread.

High for Today - 84 Degrees

Perfect beachcombing weather to make frozen landlubbers jealous. Remember, there are two zones on any given beach: The Swash Zone (where waves break upon the sand – the zone of turbulence and emergence) and the Wrack Line (where flotsam collects at the high tide line). Just in case any of you decide to head south and visit your intrepid Captain Fogg or your fishy and slimy cephalopod, here is a Wrack Line poster to keep you busy:

Click on image to enlarge

So what does it mean

Not to "love" America?  The question is unanswerable without asking what is meant by love, because in the era of accepted error, of laissez faire definitions, it can mean anything. So why ask? Certainly the intended audience of the assertion that Mr. Obama does not "love" the country that elected him aren't asking because their reasoning is circular, or perhaps because their ability to question things has been eroded by the linguistic dumbing down of our speech. In the mouth of Rudy Guiliani, I'm deducing that love means something rather nebulous and involves jingoistic nationalism, selective memory, denialism, a dash of megalomania and a psychopathic lack of conscience. 

During the Vietnam years, the trope: 'loving America,' became a euphemism for blindly supporting the war, its conduct, it's stated goals, it's dishonest reasons against any and all criticism. It included defamation of all those who did not blindly follow. It included death threats, sometimes implemented against those who had doubts.  According to a large number, you either "loved" America or you were advised to leave the country. Some of us did. 

Many of us who were raised in the post war atmosphere of America as the savior of freedom and the leaders of the "free world" began to smell something as the flag marched by and the bombs fell and a generation was decimated and thought of Orwell.  Love is hate, war is peace and freedom is slavery.  Indeed, when people fling loaded words around like irritated apes fling dung, that famous quote from 1984 seems less cynical than it once did and more of a sad acceptance of hopelessness. Language has to change as the needs and wants of the oppressors and exploiters require it.  Freedom fries, pre-owned cars, processed foods, assault weapons: define and conquer.

Indeed anything can mean anything and so language no longer guides our thoughts or acts as a structure or armature upon which to build and with which to communicate the truth. Perhaps it never has been otherwise.  Arbeit macht frei, after all and it's our manifest destiny to take whatever we can get away with taking.


"Obama doesn't love America" is a statement without reference to evidence, dependent on idiosyncratic and plastic definitions and without any hint of supporting evidence.  It's so much like statements insisting he's a Muslim, or that he's just like a king or that he hates white people.  Such things depend on what the meaning of is is and nobody is asking.  Is is as likely to mean isn't as bad is to mean good.

Of course Rudy and many of his compatriots simply have so little in the way of valid criticism that they must keep their maledictions on the level of the subliminal. The half-unconscious associations that words are surrounded by become definitions. Just ask your kids' English teacher. Ask the people who tell you pornography is rape, who call a trailer an "estate Home" who call that package of bread mix artisinal.

Murdering two million civilians becomes a noble cause and we do it out of love. We love America, the greatest country that ever was, is or will be! We kill, exploit, deport and impoverish under the rubric of love and freedom.   Freedom?  Well it's what we support in any military activity. Hence  anything done to make our country safer, healthier more decent or anything else we associate with a loving attitude is by accepted definition: Not Loving America. No real explanations are needed, because love means anything the abuser intends it to mean. Language just has to change and if you question that?  Why, like that colored fella in the White House, you just don't love America!