Kokesh and the Marching Morons

When you look into the career of Adam Kokesh, you realize that he's pretty much just a media whore, who bases his entire schtick on anarchy and "government bad!" In his opinion, governments shouldn't be able to stop people from doing whatever they want to do. That's pretty much the extent of his philosophical depth, as far as I can tell: "you're not the boss of me! I can do what I want!"

I'm pretty sure he isn't married: he couldn't share the spotlight. Life with him would be one constant tantrum-fest.

He likes to stage random events where he can demonstrate that the government is power-hungry and out of control. But most of his problems seem to stem from his own inability to accept authority. He's been reduced to social media and YouTube, since, ironically, even Russia Today (a Russian-funded propaganda channel) got tired of his bullshit.

In the larger sense, I guess I have to appreciate that Kokesh is happy to piss off both sides equally - I can't find a mention of him on any right-wing website that doesn't call him "paid Russian agent Adam Kokesh." But in the end, that isn't enough: he's too busy marketing the one product he has - himself - to be anything more than a self-absorbed yutz.

His latest gag, though, is exactly what a disaster looks like in the fetal state: it's a bad idea waiting to blossom into a nightmare.

On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.

There's a remote chance that there will be violence as there has been from government before, and I think it should be clear that if anyone involved in this event is approached respectfully by agents of the state, they will submit to arrest without resisting. We are truly saying in the SUBTLEST way possible that we would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Really, Adam? You design an event to appeal to the paranoid lunatics with a penchant for violence, and you don't see where it can go horribly, horribly wrong? So I thought I'd make a suggestion.

The DC Metropolitan Police Department has a contact email address right their on their site, so I used it.

You guys don't get enough respect to begin with, and now you have to deal with an internet-celebrity drama queen and his planned act of "civil disobedience." On behalf of the sane people of America, let me apologize to you. You're put in the unenviable position of dealing with a man who wants to attract paranoid gun nuts to try and start a confrontation.

This is an unsolicited suggestion, so take it for what it's worth, but perhaps what you want to do is not treat it as a show of force, but simply an act of crowd control and mass processing.

They've published their planned route, which starts by marching across the Memorial Bridge. Now, that goes right into the mall around the Lincoln Memorial, which is going to make this a logistical nightmare anyway. But if you close the Memorial Bridge off to vehicular traffic and use a lot of crowd-control fences to block them off when they're distinctly in the District, you'll have already disrupted their plans. Then you set up a bunch of folding tables and chairs so that you can process 40 or 50 at a time, and a person with a loudspeaker advising them "Are you aware that you're breaking the law? This is your opportunity to turn around." Then, for any of them that continue, have a smiling officer direct them to the next open table where they can sit for the initial processing.

The Facebook page for the march says that they want it to be "a non-violent event" and "if anyone involved in this event is approached respectfully by agents of the state, they will submit to arrest without resisting." So take them at their word.

You'll probably want to have some quick reaction teams nearby, but don't have them visible to the idiots. Just professional uniformed police officers.

Borrow a lot of gun racks from the National Guard, and do the minimum processing on the scene, including, obviously, confiscating their weapons ("Oh, no, sir. You'll get a receipt, and you'll get it back when this is all over.") Two-part receipt, with half tied to the weapon and the other half given to the owner. Quick frisk to find any other weapons, basic paperwork at the table, hustle them out of sight into GP Large tents set up on either side, and when you have good-sized group, put them on buses to finish the processing elsewhere.

Mostly, you want to break them into manageable groups, get the ringleaders shipped out fast where they can't make a spectacle (that being Kokesh's big plan), and keep them moving. And anybody who wants to go back across the bridge to Virginia? Don't stop them. Once a few of them decide they don't want to get arrested today and start walking back, more will join them.

Everybody you arrest gets fined, run them for outstanding warrants, check that the firearms are legal somewhere, and let them go. They get the various weapons back after all the checks are done and you know that everything is clean, if the owner goes to a specific location (a National Guard armory, for instance - someplace you can secure that many weapons), Monday through Friday from noon to four. (You're under no obligation to make it easy for them, are you?)

Like I said, mass processing. Break up their momentum. Let their "statement" fizzle out. Anyone who wants to be arrested gets their wish. Everybody wins.

But mostly, good luck.

The cops can't let the march happen, and a show of force is just a mistake. I have no idea what they'll do, but with any luck, Kokesh will end up looking like more of a fool than he usually does.

The Dumbing Down of the Right

Rush Limbaugh, never one to shrink from looking like a complete douche and already angry because he had to cancel his annual trip to the Dominican Republic to avoid their cholera epidemic, vomited up another spittle-flecked rant against all that is good and decent. Or, to be more accurate, showed his hatred of anyone with an IQ higher than 40.

Shortly after Obama’s speech at the memorial for the victims of the Tucson shooting, the Fox “News” show Special Report had a panel of bloviators (Brit Hume, Charles Krauthammer and Chris Wallace) who had the unmitigated gall to suggest that Obama had given a good speech. Limbaugh, practically choking on the bile rising up in his corpulent throat, spewed the following fascinating statement.

”They were slobbering over it for the predictable reasons. It was smart, it was articulate, it was oratorical. It was, it was all the things the educated, ruling class wants their members to be and sound like.”

Now, Krauthammer, who looks a bit like a cartoon child molester, didn't really appreciate that statement. But he actually managed to make sense in his response for once.

"As one of the three slobberers...I find it interesting that only the ruling class wants a president who is smart articulate and oratorical in delivering a funeral oration. It's an odd and rather condescending view of what the rest of America is looking for in their president.”

Unfortunately, there’s a portion of the American people who feel exactly that way. It’s a strain of anti-intellectualism that’s all too common in the right wing.

Joe (the "Plumber") Wurzelbacher, known liar and serial wife beater, got his fifteen minutes of fame based on a complete lack of understanding of government, taxes, or pretty much anything else. Sarah Palin, an articulate but sadly undereducated woman, seems to appeal to the great unwashed because she's "one of them" (despite having all her teeth and a seven figure income).



Ignorant of history, opposed to science, they hate anyone who seems to be "better than us." Which, for the most part, is anybody who can read at better than an eighth-grade level.

You know, I wasn’t particularly impressed by ABC’s recent revamping of “V”, but I used to watch the original show avidly when I was a teen. Still, there was one plot device that I never liked (I thought it was a little weak): one of the tactics employed by the aliens in their quest to enslave humanity was to demonize scientists and educated people as "enemies of the people."

But looking at America today, I’m suddenly seeing it in a whole new light.

Sometimes an opinion is just a lie

It's going to get harder for Fox News to hide behind the giggles, the puffed up pretense to being offended and accusations of insanity if more of the other networks begin to fight back against Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes's lie machine. Brad Blog covers CNN’s Rick Sanchez's, slapdown of Fox. Sanchez, who seems of late to be more willing to speak up against injustice went after Fox's Washington Post ad claiming they were the only network to cover the 9/12 "tea party" in Washington.

It's good to see someone get mad at the ever increasing torrent of lies, distortions and false claims emanating from Fox. It's going, as I said, to get harder to call the few vocal opponents like Olbermann and even Jon Stewart crazy or inconsequential if CNN is willing to run ads as they did yesterday evening, accusing Fox of "Distorting Not Reporting."

The people who send me wingnut e-mails about things that are designed to outrage the ignorant, often preface them with "why isn't the MSM covering this?" although usually, they are and have been. Fox's WaPo ad seems to have been the "enough is enough" trigger and even ABC declared it “demonstrably false.” The claim that no other networks were there was deemed by the Post to be an expression of an opinion not a lie, which of course doesn't help their credibility, regardless of what they claim the meaning of the word "is" is. Sanchez, concluding his diatribe said this:

“Let me address the Fox News Network now, perhaps the most current way that I can — by quoting somebody who recently used a very pithy phrase. Two words, that’s all I need. ‘You lie.’”

Lets hope it becomes a movement. Let's hope the Glennbeckery, the outrageous liberties taken with the news have finally pushed the timid competition into speaking out for the truth - they way they're supposed to.

This Sums it Up

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

Dear Mr. Blitzer

If you would kindly stop "looking for the fingerprints of al Qaeda" and limit your wild speculations about who is doing this, we might have a better chance of understanding what is actually going on in Mumbai and of taking you to be a serious journalist.

At this point there is no evidence that points more toward Qaeda than toward the enemies of India, yet you go on and on and on trying to coerce an endless string of experts into backing up your obsessive conjecture while "Possible Al Qaeda connection" scrolls across the screen. It's quite possible that this is not primarily about us at all.

Please remember that it isn't terrorism unless we are terrified and your hysteria serves only to blow this incident up disproportionately. Were you screaming about the human tragedy while we were blowing the hell out of Baghdad? No, you were like an excited schoolboy asking "Is this the shockinaw? Are we in the shockinaw yet?" Your credibility with regard to the dramatic lament over lost American lives has long since been sullied.

When you have nothing to say, which is a good deal of the time, please shut up.