#238 The Two Or Three Faces of Mitt, Or "Lies My Father Told Me" ...

... about TELLING THE TRUTH,.

How's this for a headline:

Honesty All But Destroys Governor Romney's Presidential Campaign  Presumptive nominee's admission of being WRONG costs him GOP major support. Primary battle now shifts in favor of ...

Richard Nixon ... Gotcha. Now you must adMIIT to being totally and completely fooled by my fake/true/fake headline, Or not. But boy-golly it's a tangled web, as Somebody once said, or said was said. The WRONGITY for Romney pere, as it turns out, was about the VIETNAM WAR--he discovered he was against it, In 1965. A Republican fercryinoutloud.. What. A. Guy. Cost him the Presidency in 1968 and his (incumbent) Michigan Governorship later that year, if he'd been running for it. .

Headlines like the one above reflected the Gov's changed attitude about THE war of our time as early as mid-year 1965, when  by now the former auto executive and Michigan CEO appeared already to be the man to run against LBJ in '68. But he had zero foreign policy experience. He decided, alone among presidential hopefuls, to take a look, 'Nam-wise. Result? "I was FOR, but NOT ANYMORE or some such dramatic stuff. Before TET, Cronkite. An epiphany.

He saw the shambles--the literally and etymologically abattoir of bloody failure of US intervention--and declared the so-called "progress" bullshit. Or something like that in Mormonese When he got face-to-face with the Generals directly in charge of the Vietnamese killing fields ... he knew. Their so-ridiculous-sounding-now protestations of "light at the end of the tunnel"--standard issue phraseology memorized from the Officer's Code, or something, as it is today--cut no shit with the Michigan/Mormon Elder. And he said as much, on record, in late-'67:

When I came back from Vietnam, I'd just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get. I no longer believe that it was necessary for us to get involved in South Vietnam to stop Communist aggression in SE Asia. [No kidding; this is how a lot of grownups really talked back then]

Ah, soooo ... the Brainwashing. Sinatra's Manchurian Candidate was still fresh in every brainwashed American mind, as it should have been. But Frank got George W. (hmmn) in big trouble when all of this soundbite baggage concatenated up into the newslines of 1968. And the Primaries.

The Chicken-Hawks of the GOP got fugacious ("fug-" to fly; flee; ult. fr. Latin fugere "fuck you"). Yes, they abandoned him in flocks, and prez hopes fluttered away for one of the first unlikely doves, lo unto Zolub, of the anti-Vietnam-war cause.

Naive; i.e. HONEST ... George W. (hmmn) Romney was NOT a dumb guy. He SAVED American Motors Corp,(irony alert) a struggling Detroit auto company on the verge of bankruptcy after buying out the venerable Nash and Hudson brands. He innovated. My first legal motorcaraage, in fact, was via our family's  AMC/Hudson Rambler "Cross Country" model which was CEO Romney's precursor to the modern mini-SUV! No kidding. Great car. It came with--guess what-- a built-in dog-carrier rack on the rear top of the little wagon,

No, not a dumb guy--later, Mitt's father had done a good enough job as Gov of a difficult state to be elected for three 2-year terms. Guess whose  first legal ballot was for George  to serve the second of those terms? Here's the headline:

Noted Future Blogperson Casts His Vote for Romney in 1964 Gubernatorial Election Gov Wins by Single Vote

[more]
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#234 Blog Hard or Die II--Back from the Fifth Dimension

"The more things change,, the more they stay the same."--translated from the old French adage leading off my #232 on "collateral damage"--i.e. slaughter of the innocents-- from the skies. When will we learn? When will we stop?  Scroll down to my last post of 2010 and you see there's hardly a gap. The "meme chose" of civilian casualties in the Middle-East murder zones goes on ,,, and on. Did I hear in a daze someone say something about ... ten more years?

I promised a return at summer solstice. Well, the sun "stood still" this last Wednesday ... and POOF the Daily Mosteller (perforce with Weekly added) is back, along with its evil culture-grubbing twin, Mosteller Musings. Only a year late--a year pretty much wasted on health issues that I'm still getting over ... and as a result: medical-bill-issues that I may NEVER get over (see "headline"  #2 below).

Would that the big lacuna in my bloggery were a kind of  Rip Van Winkle experience for me ... and life on this planet as we know it.. After a couple of years of  peaceful sleep, hey, we wake up--or "plunked" back to reality with Froggy the Gremlin's magic twanger if you will--to a world  where the current-event headlines we read are less like the gruesome realities of my re-inaugural DMW #232 ... and more like the following:

US Involvement in Middle-Eastern Wars Over Troops and treasure home after 5000 deaths and thousands more injured and maimed for life ... trillions of dollars wasted ... leaving behind insurgent and civilian deaths in the hundreds of thousands ... OR

Health Care Reform Affirmed  Full coverage now for 30 million uninsured ,,, children with pre-existing conditions, college-age young people, the elderly, and all other Americans now covered only at the whim of  their employers ...OR

Economy Back On Track Under President's Jobs Bill millions of workers building,/repairing roads and bridges and schools (oh my) ...  workers getting fair minimum wage ,,, women's paychecks equal to men's for equal work  ... police, firefighters, teachers back on the job with federal subsidies ... unemployment down ... OR

Civil Liberties Assured Congress and the Courts end discrimination against all ethnic groups, esp "illegals" ,,,  other marginalized citizens including gays and WOMEN, esp the latter's reproductive rights ... OR

Social Justice For All "Safety-net" intact for the unemployed, elderly, poor, infirm, disabled ... Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security secure and strengthened ... OR

US  Congress Non-Partisan Accord Law-making bodies across the country ... federal and state legislatures ... passing non-partisan laws in cooperation with their Chief Executive ... White House, Capital Hill, Supreme Court put aside party politics and agree to  legislation promoting General Welfare of country as mandated by Constitution  .. OR.

Obama Overwhelming Choice for Re-Election A polling majority of Americans cite the President's  outstanding record (see "Long List ... with Citations" here)  ... taking into account the fact that he inherited a nation laid waste by over a decade of Republican malfeasance at home and abroad  ... electorate prefers current occupant of WH to what some refer to as an "empty vessel" and a "gaseous state" ... OR

Republicans Revealed: Sane, Smart, Caring Human Beings  ... BUT

Nooooo: None of  the Above ... quite. Lots to talk about, In fact, it's almost like I never left. If anything, 2012 seems eerily deja vu 2008, when this blog was launched, and when you interpret the underlying issues in the quasi-fake headlines above. Anyway, POOF the DMW magically returns to do its take on current affairs with an edge, a twist, a smile--like the one on the face of the deceptively benign "Silver Age" middle-incarnation of Mr Myxyzptlk pictured above. No cigar yet. He's back in 4D space-time here, but sitting in mid-air, defying natural laws as usual and ready to confound, confuse, confront, with his other-dimensional skills.

So too, this blog (whatever that means)--one among many in the vast punditsphere of  amateur internet journalism. Humbling, but expect no deference here. I'll attack anything that moves ... the wrong way, that is, as I see it..  But always I hope putting on a measure of Hamlet's "antic disposition." Playing the Trickster--irony, paradox, satire, ridicule, and so on ... good fun.  After all, you're invited to sit down, as the masthead motto says, to a mess/meal of memes AND mummery.. It's a daily served up weekly. Makes perfect sense in the fifth dimension. (Full disclosure: at this stage of life, I couldn't possibly keep it up every day, anyhow, Oops.)
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#233 Blog Hard or Die--Return of the Blogman Avenger

Mr Myxyzptlk will always be my favorite supervillain. Against Superman, he don't need no stinkin' Kryptonite, because he could simply disappear at will--POOF--back to his alternate existence in ...  the FIFTH DIMENSION! ... well beyond Superman's space-time universe. Yet he could "virtually" cause all sorts of mischief, and, worse, he couldn't be stopped!

Using his superior abilities. the Man of Steel would reliably prevail over brainy supervillain Lex Luthor and others of his 3D ilk, hauling them off to some good ol' 4D jail-time. But his powers, we might say, are merely super-- i.e.extraordinary human attributes of strength, speed, and flight. That's right: Superman's ability to fly was on occasion "explained" in the early Action Comics as a super-benign "side-effect" of  certain differences in gravity, atmosphere, blah, blah, between his home planet and Earth (no indication e.g. that Kryptonians had such powers). Normal, terrestrial humans of Olympic ability can "fly" for instance at a little over seven feet; Superperson Clark Kent, however,  simply raises the bar quite a bit. X-ray vision aside, he is after all a completely humanoid.ET or ALF,  subject like us all to forth-dimensional  natural law and its vicissitudes, plot-wise, including the ultimates: love and death. Not so for Mr. Myxyzptlk..

In the late 40s and early 50s when I bought Superman comics at the Corner Store--an urban forerunner of today's convenience store, whose merchandise included those pre-pubescent-male essentials of comic books, candy bars, and squirt-guns---thirty-two pages of fun cost a dime. And Mr. M at the time was equally modest in appearance.  I was never acquainted with his futuristic avatar pictured above--love the in-your-face cigar-puffing though.. Here's the Myxyzptlk I grew up with in what is called "officially" the Golden Age of comics:

                                   
Supernerd! A daunting uber-villain, indeed. But that was the genius-part of Mr. M's first incarnation, now sadly gone. His Disneyesque appearance belied his almost unlimited powers and sometimes malicious nature, making him all the more sinister ,,, and most interesting. Some nice comic irony for a kid back then. And this super-imp could daunt. Through pure mischief and mostly harmless mayhem, he would annoy, confuse, and confound our superhero with some sort of incomprehensible interference that defied physical  laws. ... before HE was "tricked" into returning to his 5D .world.

Not to get all mythic on you, but  Mr. Myxyzptlk epitomizes the Trickster archetype ... as in Norse Loki, Anglo-Saxon Unferth (in Beowulf, and btw in my doctoral dissertation), Prometheus, Br'er Rabbit, a bunch of others that you can think of, and my nostalgic favorite: Froggy the Gremlin, from the radio and then TV program, Smilin' Ed's Gang. When it was time for hijinks on that kiddie show, after a story or a clip from an "old" western, old Ed would summon up Froggy with this stentorian call: "Plunk your magic twanger, Froggy!" And somehow POOF the squat little grotesquely bug-eyed gravely-voiced frog-puppet (no Kermit he) would appear (imagination-wise on radio) ...  in a self-made cloud of smoke as he puffed away on a giant CIGAR stitched to his puppet-lips! See first picture above. Coincidence? I think not.  Anyway, hilarity would ensue as Froggy did his magic mischief--I remember the late, late can't-hold-a-sneeze comic Billy Gilbert as a frequent guest bearing Froggy's brunt of practical jokes. Another plunk of his magic twanger, however (you are free to utilize this expression in other, creative ways, as us kids were wont to do) ... and POOF he was gone. As if to another dimension.***

Speaking of creativity, you've got to give credit the Action Comics guys for anticipating some of the current quantum-physical fooferah about extra dimensions (It's now up to eleven!) and multiverses of one kind or another. Of course they used this bit of science esoterica for good fun, but what fascinated me as a kid was that it severely challenged not just our hero's superpowers but his common-sense, intellect, and even identity, much like the crazy world of quantum theory does for us today. This antagonist was not only invincible, but in ways that the super-guy couldn't understand. (Okay ... he's non-common-sensically super, but his powers are enhanced anthropic attributes [again, aside from Xray vision], otherwise we would have a had time identifying with him as an archetypal hero ,,, as potentially one  of us. Remember, his flying ability is sort of explained as extra-good high-jumping.)

"I thought I was the only one who could fly?" says the Man of Steel questioning his very identity in his first encounter with Mr. Myxyzptlk--in his oriiginal supernerd guise--when he apparently jumps to his death out of a window.. (I had to "wiki" this to get an example--plaudits to those rich folk who saved their old comic books--because it's been a long time.) Using his 5D powers, the little guy wreaks other mischief on Metropolis and its citizens including getting fatally hit by a truck and then shockingly coming back to life ... giving the Mayor a donkey's voice ... scattering important documents all over town, Pranks. Great kid-stuff,  In fact, he lets slip to superman at one point that he is a court-jester by trade, back on his 5D home planet--explaining everything.

Of course Mr. Myxyxptlk has to be "vincible" in some way for Superman ultimately to prevail. Well, here it is (or was)  ,, he's stupid. Or at base terminally childish .. and why our super-smarter hero can always plunk the little guy's twanger and outwit him back to his fifth dimension world for--get this--a minimum of 90 days. Time to prepare the next issue, presumably..Here's the trick: Mr. M inadvertently reveals to Superman that if Mr.M hisownself pronounces or spells or writes his name backwards ...to wit: Kltpyyxym--then POOF he;s gone. And Superman in extremis is able to get him every time with some ludicrously simple stratagem. "How do you spell that name backwards again?"--I'm making that up, but the ploys were on that level, as I remember. And POOF once again  The play of wit and language and magic ... great fun. (I'll get more  to the point of my return in next post, but this is just such fun.)

***More on Chicago's radio & TV personality Sm+ilin' Ed McConnell and the the death of a childhood hero in Mosteller Musings, as soon as I get the little-sister blog cranked up again..
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#230 The Bush/Obama War Exposed Again

Okay, back to Obama's War and the current counterpoint to Vietnam's My Lai Massacre, last entry. I posted the above atrocity back in April (DM #219-220), and I'll repeat it here, again courtesy of WikiLeaks, which gave it the headline "Collateral Murder." Scroll down to read, view, hear the whole abhorrent story of wanton civilian killage, including terminal child abuse by 30 mm aerial cannon fire.

Light 'em all up. Come on fire ... Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.

BECAUSE ... Wikileaks is in the news again TODAY, big time, as they have pulled a back-to-the-future "Pentagon Papers"-style coup of massive proportions, exposing over a period of a half-dozen years the blood-drenched futility of our doomed AfPak Adventure. The so-called "Afghan War Diary" is a compilation of 90,000 U.S. military records that "give a blow by blow account of unreported civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures"--what the British press has already characterized as "a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan." (See full AP story here.)

The earlier Wiki-"leak" above had its Keystone-Cop-esque consequences of its own--a la Vietnam Whistleblower Dr. Daniel "Pentagon Papers" Ellsberg forty years ago--early on as the alleged Leaker, one Army Spec. Bradley Manning, 22, was chased down and arrested in early June, and now faces 52 years in a military prison.

Meanwhile, the FOUNDER of WikiLeaks, an Australian bloke exotically named Julian Assange, has faced a virtual fatwa put on him by the Pentagon, ever since the "Collateral Murder" video surfaced. He's in virtual hiding. After Bradley's arrest, Ellsberg, himself a Vietnam Marine veteran who saw the light, recommended in an interview he'd best stay that way (here).

(Should it be at all surprising that events will continue to prove the incontrovertible parallels of the Middle East Wars with Vietnam?--as those in the know have known to be there all along.)

NOW, after Mr. Assange somehow got hold of an unbelievable 90,000 Pentagon documents and released them on WikiLeaks today, he'd best head for the wastes of the Outback. And find a Hussein Hole somewhere. For their content is altogether rather bad P.R. for the U.S. of A. Among other disclosures:

The leaked records include detailed descriptions of raids carried out by a secretive U.S. special operations unit called Task Force 373 against what the U.S. officials considered high-value insurgents and terrorist targets. Some of these raids resulted in unintentional killings of AFGHAN CIVILIANS, according to the documents. (AP)

For example: the AP cites one operation in June 2007 which "resulted in a death tally [!] that the U.S. military document said include SIX enemy fighters and SEVEN noncombatants--ALL CHILDREN." Shirts and skins ... the innocents win.

And the White House response to all this? The usual. It condemned the document disclosure, saying it "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk."

Good. The more the better in the righteous cause of getting us the hell out of there.
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#228 Have the Tea Baggers Killed Libertarianism?

In a "word," yes. Sadly, thanks to them, along with Fox News, Shock-Talk Radio. and wing-nut Congressional Republicans who have promoted and embraced them, it's a seven-syllable polymorpheme best buried in a time-capsule of good intentions.

I dasn't use it in mixed company anymore (ptui!), even when prefixed with "left"--as in Left Libertarian, my house-brand blend of the two Thomases: Jefferson's ideas of PERSONAL freedom and pursuit of happiness mixed well with Paine's SOCIAL consciousness that looks out for the freedom and happiness of others. Two sides of the same Libertarian coin, I've always believed, one dependent upon the other.

But, noooooo ... these creatures masquerading as historic Tea Party patriots are society's sociopaths, if anything, pariahs who will roundly cheer as millions of unemployed Americans, for example, were written off once again last week by the self-serving Republicans and Blue Dog Democrats in Congress. This points up not only the extreme selfishness of these people toward their less-fortunate fellow-Americans, but also their incredible self-delusion--ironically to their own detriment For an overwhelming majority of economists on both left and right agree that the extension of unemployment benefits is best thing for the ailing economy right now. Unlike the "Bailouts" to basically middle-men of the Economy, unemployment money gets immediately back into the "free market" that the Tea Baggers purport to love so much.

Moreover, who in good conscience could want to be associated with political terminology that is, au courant, so thoroughly associated in the mind of the public, media-wise, with the likes of Tea Bag figurehead Sarah "The-Constitution-Is-Bible-Based" Palin; or KY primary-winner Rand "Dismantle-The-Civil-Rights-Act" Paul; or the highly-publicized, would-be Senator from AZ Sharron "No-Abortion-Even-For-Teenage-Incestuous-Rape-Victims" Angle? (The first and last baneful banshees fully answer the obvious question, "Does one need actual anatomical and sexually functioning BALLS to be a Tea Bagger?")

And I haven't even mentioned the pestiferous purveyors of Faux-News Tea-Bag/"Libertarian" propaganda like O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity, and Stossel. What right-minded (in the good way) person would want to be identified with these people? Or, heavens forfend, the odious Rush "Rant-Radio" Limbaugh, supporter and hero of every mother's Tea-Bagger son. They've ruined it for us all.

Pity, too ... because Libertarian ideals once offered such a nice alternative to the dysfunctional two-party monopoly of the Late-Sixties and Seventies. What was unique and defining in those days, and NOT shared by either/other political party in power, was the Libertarian position on TWO WARS--total opposition--going on at the time (and still going on): the Vietnam War and the War on Drugs. (Yeah, just replace Vietnam with Afghanistan--as if you didn't see that coming.) The former was destroying American lives overseas; the latter, here at home. Relevance right now, today? You betcha, gosh darn it--with apologies to you-know-who. (more)
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#227 Tea Baggers V--Sandbagging the Court

Eighty-percent of the Tea Baggers identify themselves as Republican; 100% of Republicans and 20% of Democrats in Congress (Southern Blue Dogs) are Republican; ergo: Socrates is a Tea Bagger.

That the Tea Bag "movement" (and you are free to assume cheap-shot connotations of the feculent kind in my use of that word) is an extension of the Republican Southern Strategy of racial hatred--especially as the 2010 elections start to heat up--we have only to look at the despicable attacks on the bete noir (literally) of school-desegregation, Thurgood Marshall, by way of his former law-clerk, Ellen Kagan.

The objections to this woman--it also doesn't hurt their bigoted cause that she's sexually "suspect," innuendo-wise--are shamelessly presented as "constitutional." She's linked to remarks that the late, great Supreme Court Justice and premier Civil Libertarian made about the founding document--that "as originally drafted and conceived" the Constitution was "defective." C'mon, of course it was. The Framers themselves knew that before the ink was dry on the original Articles. Result: the first ten amendments--the Bill of Rights--had to be solemnly promised before some of the States (like NC) would sign off on what might be called the "first draft" of the thing. More amendments would follow, including the 13th which abolished slavery, eliminating the major "defect" of the original, as everybody knows, and the one that Thurgood Marshall was talking about.

But it was upon the 14th that Thurgood rode to fame as a civil-rights lawyer for the NAACP. And Southern Strategists like the loathsome Jeff Sessions, Junior Senator from Alabama, who gave the Latina Sotomayer a racist going-over and once described the NAACP and other civil-rights groups as "un-American," doesn't want his Tea Bag constituents to forget that. As ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee (why is this former KKK sympathizer even allowed human congress, much less the halls of Congress?) he can do it, through Kagan. For under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment the good Justice Marshall had won Brown v. Board--the landmark Supreme Court (9-0) decision of 1954 desegregating public schools, a tipping point in American history that led to the Civil Rights Act (parts of which Tea Bagger Rand Paul would like to dismantle) ten years later, along with other anti-discrimination laws of recent times.

Local "color" sidebar: Thurgood's war is not yet won. Right here in Raleigh, Tea Bagger types from the suburbs and the predominantly white sections of town, supported by Americans for Prosperity and other radical-right-wing groups, helped take over the county school board (by a 5-4 margin) last year. The slim majority was able to vote out the decades-old "socio-economic diversity" (read: desegregation) policy that required some forced busing, and passed the euphemistic "neighborhood schools" (read: REsegregation) policy. The long-time, and beloved, Superintendent resigned in disgust. Protests began, sit-inners were arrested, NAACP and others filed a class-action suit. All this: ongoing and unresolved. Just like the good old days. Okay ... but obviously eternal vigilance on the part of right-thinking people is still required to preserve civil liberties for all our citizens. Especially when threatened by such strident and dangerous anti-social factions like the Tea Baggers.

And especially in deference to Independence Day just past, this writer GAGS (sorry) on their preferred moniker, Tea Partiers, as it represents a profound desecration of those brave and righteous acts of the freedom-fighters back in 1773 America. Good News, though. General approval of all that is Tea Bagging ... is flagging, so to speak. Always a minority, 39% of Americans (a drop, but still too high) view them favorably, while 50% of the population has an unfavorable view lately, according to a recent (post-Rand-Paul) WaPo/ABC poll (here). Even better news: there's now a strong disapproval rate among younger people. Only 27% of Americans 18-29 view the Tea Baggers favorably, while a healthy 60% don't. Things are beginning to look like--here's hoping--that they just might have to simply ... bag it.
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#226 Tea Baggers IV--One Malicious Bag Full

As in "Baa, Baa, BLACK sheep, have you any wool?" that is. Yes, lots of wool-gathering going on, i.e., lots of paranoid daydreaming amongst these rabble about how they were cheated out of the Presidency by the Democrats with of all things a Negro--nay worse: Mulatto--at their head. Not only is Washington controlled now by a bunch of secular communists who'd mingle the races and muddle the genders on the Supreme Court, but worse, these folk are Blacks, Jews, Latins themselves. That's what the Tea Baggers are all about.

Meet Dale Robertson, founder of TeaParty.org showing (along with his educational level) the organization's true "colors."

For when you take away their empty points of contention, the Tea Baggers true baggage is there to see. Out-and-out BIGOTRY. Nothing new, really. Just more violent and less covert (spitting, name-calling. signs like these or with monkey images) than the extension of the infamous Republican "Southern Strategy" to the McCain-Palin campaign of 2008 (see my DM #21, 45, 90). Now, not surprisingly, SHE'S at it again as the honorary (no, I didn't say titular, though tempted) pin-up girl of the Angry Old White Man movement.

(Maybe they're just Horny Old White Men at bottom, their angst generated by that primordial and subliminal FEAR of sexually-prowessed black men seducing lily-white virgins. Chief-of-State Obama has a beautiful African-American wife, but you never know when he'll stray outside the tribe and exercise his droight de seignior on some Caucasian wench. His father did it, after all.)

Bob Cesca has it just about right in his well-wrought HuffPost article on the Tea Bag Nation this March:

This isn't an epiphany by any stretch. From the beginning with their witch doctor imagery, watermelon agitprop and Curious George effigies, the wingnut right has been dying to blurt out, as Lee Atwater famously said, "nigger, nigger, nigger!"

The latter fellow being that karmically-deceased architect of the forever un-dead, race-baiting Southern Strategy of the Reagan-Helms-Bush-Rove-Bush-McCain campaigns. Cesca goes on to say that when you "boil away all of the weirdness"--

... all of the nonsense and contradictions, there's nothing left except race. There's no other way to explain why these people were silent and compliant for so long, and only decided to collectively freak out when this "foreign" and "exotic" president came along and, right out of the chute, passed THE LARGEST MIDDLE CLASS TAX CUT IN AMERICAN HISTORY--something they would otherwise support, for goodness sake, it was $288 billion in tax cuts!--we're left to deduce no other motive but the ugly one that lurks just beneath the pale flesh, the tri-corner hats and the dangly tea bag ornamentation. (full article here)

Tea Bagger and WINNER of the KY Republican primary for the US Senate Rand Paul has since put the proof to it with his faux-Libertarian ideas about, in essence, re-segregating lunch-counters everywhere. Doesn't he know that the term is one half of the phrase, Civil Libertarian? (more)
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#225 Tea Baggers III--Empty Baggage

So, really, this is about all they've got. (Notice the Glenn Beck T-shirt.) Somewhat less than a null set.

But, okay, he's a Muslim. It's in his genes, of course. His father was not only guilty of the heinous crime of miscegenation, but of Islamization of the gamete. Don't these far-right religious Fundies know how good they've got it with Obama. He's altogether waaay too Christianist for most people who know better. Remember the President's more-than-cozy connection with the execrable Rev. Wright, and Candidate Obama's sucking up to the Prop #8 guy, Rick Warren. Or his continuation of Dubya's Christian-skewed,"faith-based" federal programs. Etc.

Okay, he's a Marxist too. He'd like to keep Social Security and Medicare the way they are, even though they represent precisely and socialistically this: "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need." We have a progressive income tax in this country--though right now at the lowest level (unfairly so), progressive-percentage-wise, in history. Substantial amounts of these revenues indeed go to those according to their need: the unemployed, unwell, and un-young. The retired folk among the Tea Bagging rabble accept this implicitly, even when they distractedly hold up a sign that reads, "Keep your gov't. hands off my Medicare." And don't they know, too, that 4o% of Americans get their paychecks, directly or indirectly, from public funding of one sort or another? Yes, we're downright Maoist.

Again, they don't know how good they've got it with the increasingly centrist and even--some would say--right-leaning Obama. Health Care Reform, because of far too many compromises, could be called a Republican and Big-Med victory in disguise. Same thing with the back-pedaled Financial Reform package. As for the Middle-East Wars, he's been cloning G. W Bush all along. This last being THE heartbreaking disappointment of an otherwise A-level game for our new President, for, against all odds, he has pretty well got the trains running on time, and in the right direction.

Likewise, the Tea BAGGERS' faux-historical nod to the original Boston Tea PARTIERS (lets all try to use the two terms to distinguish the latter from its illegitimate descendant), including the cute acronym T.E.A. = "Taxed Enough Already," won't wash either because

1) as mentioned already, these angry old white men are NOT being TAXED by some foreign power (oops, I guess they view Obama that way) across the pond, but by their duly elected local, regional, and federal REPRESENTATIVES whom they can, of course, vote in or out of office;

2) any and all taxes on personal income of Americans presently total a paltry 9.2%--the LOWEST SINCE HARRY TRUMAN (according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis);

3) as promised, 95% of Americans have seen their income taxes DECREASE under President Barack Obama--the BIGGEST TAX CUT SINCE RONALD REAGAN.

So where's the beef?--that is, beef? in either sense: substance ... none, valid complaint ... none. One thing is clear: there is certainly and a priorily NO connection at all with those "brave" tax-protesters of 1773, except perhaps in some little flamboyant costumery.

Ironically then, and fittingly too, the Tea Baggers' strongest link to any sort of external reality whatsoever is with that (now) infamous act of mutual oral/genital sex. (more)
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#224 Tea Baggers II--Mad Hatters

Yeah, they're nuts. And justifiably subject to ridicule, especially when the off-color connotations of "tea-bagging" became known to everybody but apparently themselves. Pundits on the left turned punsters quickly enough, making fun of TB slogans like "Lick the Liberals" and , of course, their incredibly-named leader, former congressman Dick Armey. Irony overdose. And visual puns too: look at this typical Bagger with tea-sack dangling from his "cocked" tri-corner hat. Even Rachel Maddow missed that little treasure trove of paronomastic fun.

My favorite is Bill Maher's quip of some months ago (can't locate exactage) that went something like this: "The Tea Baggers have taken something meant to be loving and beautiful [the oral-genital thing] and turned it into something ugly and hateful." As their pseudo-Libertarian darling Rand Paul proved with his Jim Crow remarks last week.

Point is ... you can throw all of the Tea Bag outrage "into a cock'd hat." And it would still be devoid of content. The original thought no doubt was to compare the Boston Tea Party protests of 1773 against the Tea Act, which imposed import duties/taxes that the colonists opposed. But since they were unrepresented in the British parliament, they had nothing to do with it's imposition, nor did they have the means, other than strenuous petition and boycott, to repeal it. Taxation without representation, and all that. The historical analogy is nothing more than mad-hattery around a crazy tea-table of empty cup-rattlers. (Whew.)

We're verging on almost geologic time here, I know, but for well over a hundred years the colonists had been PAYING various and sundry TAXES voted on and imposed by duly elected LOCAL and independent representatives of the separate colonies. The British were actually very enlightened imperialists in this respect. And 99% of "Americans" before the 1760s were proud to be called "Englishmen" because of it. (Incidentally--can't resist--the legendary call-to-arms for Lexington and Concord, "The British are coming!" ... "The British are coming!" would not have made sense. Everybody was British. More likely the word, if any, was "Regulars" or "Redcoats")

Here are the important differences. First of all, and most obviously: the Tea Baggers ARE REPRESENTED. Local and federal taxes are imposed by their/our elected officials. Duh. But the original Tea Partiers decidedly WEREN'T represented when it came to Parliament, and had no say-so nohow about any of those additional taxes/duties voted upon way across the pond and executed by His Majesty's gub'mint. Except in the that one fulminatory case, ALL of these were repealed during that contentious decade and, to be fair, the rate of taxation was minuscule, especially when compared to what residents of Great Britain had had to pay all along.

The Motherland was heavily in debt, due to the long war with Napoleonic France, some 0f which was fought on American soil. Just ask Col. G. Washington about that. Somebody had to pay for this expensive overseas war, and who better than the Afghans--sorry, colonial Americans--whom the British had been protecting from those nasty French and Indians. (Feel free to substitute Taliban. We never learn.)

But King George et alia decided finally to make a stand at the Tea Act. Big mistake. And the rest is history. (more)
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#223 Tea Baggers-- A Dirty Joke

After my two-week "spring-break" it's time to get back to some politics. The subject if this post was already in the hopper, when, behold, it has now exploded upon the national headlines in a new light--a light last week that exposes them in their true colors--with the primary-election of Republican Rand Paul of KENTUCKY. Just love these cosmic connections--because this poster-boy for the Tea Baggers is now called by many, by reason of his Jim-Crow, anti-civil-rights views, the "Kentucky Fried Candidate."

So I bring up these execrable beings for several reasons, not the least is that Mark Morford did (DM #221), and he compared them invidiously with that culinary masterpiece called the KFC Double Down. I feel protective. That aside, I'll just go ahead and agree--and make it a "double-down" bet for sure--that the so-called Tea Party "movement" (the scatological possibilities are endless) is the worst, gag-reflexive, vomit-inducing thing that has come down the tract, or back up, reverse-peristalsis-wise, since the John Birch Society.

But wait, those knuckle-draggers have already joined the Tea Baggers. Go ahead, lift up the fundament-bestained coattails of the latter and you'll see other racist rabble, including the anti-Semitic Lyndon LaRouchies and the white-separatist Council of Conservative Citizens scuttling about in the dark. In fact, none other than that Sta-Puf-Boy of the right wing, Karl Rove hisveryownself, has warned Republicans to "disassociate" themselves from this movement if it continues to prominently attract other such "cranks and conspiracy nuts"--

This includes 9/11 deniers, "birthers" who don't believe Obama was born in the U.S., and militia supporters espousing something vaguely close to armed rebellion. (WSJ 2-19-10)

But at least these creatures have a cause in common with Republicans. They don't like black people very much. Or most any other variously-colored Americans but white. Especially those people of color who recently had the "audacity" (Obama's apt word from his book) to take over the gub'ment of these United States. That's really what the Tea Baggers are all about, Kentucky-fried to a turn, and proven time and time again, at rally after rally. The N-word flies freely, and sometimes spit. And without this, they are rebels without a cause at all. The rest is bogus.

Take the name, "Tea Bagger" They're all drama-queenly offended by it now, reacting almost as if N-worded ... but they started it. I make much of this for the following reasons. First, these folk are so CLUELESS as not to know--or not to have anyone in their ranks who knew or could do a little research in the Urban Dictionary to find out--that the term is used in oral-sexual parlance to describe the placing of the man's scrotum in the mouth of his partner. Well, everybody knows it now (including me). But April 15-"Tax-Protest-Day" a year ago you had lily-white, little-old-ladies-in-tennis-shoes with tea bags festooning their hats running around with signs reading, "Tea Bag the Fools in D.C." and "Tea Bag the Liberal Dems before They Tea Bag You." Meanwhile, conservative pundits like Neil Cavuto and Charles Krauthammer had been blithely throwing around the term all of last year. (See Crooks and Liars 5-6-10)

Point is--as Forrest Gump's mama used to say, "Stupid is as Stupid does"--they rather embarrassingly mucked-up the title of their own organization right of the bat. It's only symptomatic. Except for their bigotry and racism, which has a kind of despicable logic, the public, sanitized reasons behind their "protests" are similarly moronic and, moreover, utterly without foundation. But these ignorant and hate-filled folk are a clear and present danger to all of us, nonetheless. (more)
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#222 Sloth

Yeah, this glorious summer-like weather has got to me, I guess. More to do than just write web-log entries ... or less. Can't hope to compete literally with those other "diurnals" in the blogosphere by the likes of Tina Brown or Markos Moulitsas, anyway. Or John Stewart on TV for that matter. I'd have to hire a staff. (Make your contributions payable to my nonprofit organization, Concerned Americans for Superior Homeblogs, by simply making out your check to C.A.S.H.)

It's been too late to re-title ever since I began this blog two years ago, and lately its twin. So look at "daily" this way: current posts and the wonderful archival treasures can be read at any time of day or night. By sunlight, even. Most often the bloggage is produced during daylight hours as well, co-terminus pretty much with my circadian bio-rhythms, too. The latter (and quite recent) compound-coinage is, by the bye, almost pure Latin: circa = "about" + diem (acc. sing. of dies = "day"), modified slightly for adjectival use. Aha. Now there would have been the ideal mast-head: The Circadian Mosteller--i.e., "about" or "approximately" daily. Too late, alas.

So much to write about--and lately it seems, as Hamlet said, "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions"--yet sometimes ... you gotta just "hang."
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#221 Mark Morford Un-Foodied but Tasty

Since I picked on him peckishly a couple of weeks ago over at Mosteller Musings, let me give this SFGate guy a soupcon of time on this more topical/polemical wing of the family bloggerage. Though wildly off-menu in his food-nannyism about the "toxic zoo" at left (MM #48-50), Mark Morford doth rant often and well about other issues of more consequence, and closer to my heart ... in the non-cardio sense.

An opportunity for him to do so was afforded last week by the explosive reaction to that same anti-KFC-Double-Down article I attacked. The respondents to Morford's original column were overwhelmingly in support, of course, except for a "few oxygen-deprived souls" who only weakly (out of fan-loyalty, I must suppose) suggested to him that the Colonel's sandwich just wasn't all that bad, and that there were "far worse things out there" to get his animus animated about. No, no, says he to those few: you've missed the more important,"larger picture" (told you so). And here he admits to his true target(s) all along:

... all the pollution, animal abuse, INDUSTRIAL FARMING, chemicals, synthetic, antibiotics, hormones and just plain insidiousness of a company [losing syntax in mid-rant] concocting something this greasy and disgusting in the modern age. (full article here)

But while he's at it, okay, Why not admit rhetorically that there are indeed "those things that are worse for you than KFC's fistful of karmic hate"--and get some of them off his chest? So the remainder of "37 Things Worse Than a KFC Meatwich" does just that.

But first, a moment with Industrial Farming. If, Mr. Morford, saving the lives of millions of CALORIE-deprived souls around the world is of any consequence, then scientific agri-business must continue going about its business for years and years to come. Cute little organic "victory" gardens in everybody's utopian backyard--which even so canny a food-pundit as Michael Pollan seems to get misty-eyed about--just ain't gonna feed the SIX BILLION people, and counting, on Planet Earth. Thanks to "industrialization," the developed countries, including mainly us, have indeed been able SHARE our surplus groceries with the rest of the world. Moreover, our friendly neighborhood supermarket offers the most inflation-resistant, bargain-priced product you can buy in these hard economic times, or any other time for that matter. So very, very fortunately--think about it--it's THE product we can't live without.

However, here is a buffet of Morford's top seven, a tasty mix the sublime and the ridiculous, which I've seasoned with a sampling (in quotes) of his pungent prose:

1. Tea Parties. A recent rally featuring Sarah "Queen of Duh" Palin reminded him of the Lollipop Guild serenading Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz"-- "that bizarre acid-trip of a scene ... the moment just before a very stoned Dorothy skips away to hook up with her crazy gay pals and traipse through a giant Pink Floyd album, the moment when those three adult dwarves stumble out of the Munchkinland horde wearing little kid outfits, and sing their little surly song, replete with surly, out-of-sync leg spasms." Nicely done.

2. Floating garbage. Referring to that recently reported and news-piced "giant, rancid, thousand -mile swath of plastic collected over a period of years in a huge swirling vortex and choking off sea-life as far as the eye can weep." No bun needed.

3. Military spending. No argument from me, of course, about that vomit-inducing 53% of our annual tax bill. "We have the largest, most bloated war machine in the world. We SELL more guns, tanks, jets, and warheads to more dictators, regimes, and drug cartels than anyone on the planet. Are your local schools crumbling? Public hospitals failing? Entire state dumber than Glenn Beck's fact-checker? Blame the military ..."

4. Miley Cyrus. The ridiculous.

5. The Catholic Church. Worthy of quoting his full, sardonic treatment: "Sure, sure, the Double Down will enrage your colon, toxify your blood, disfigure your heart, greasify your skin, shrivel your genitalia, and dumb you down to the level of slug shoelace. But that's nothing compared to 2,000 years of abuse, lies, oppression, lack of sunshine and dead leathery skin that accompanies handing over your soul to the sinister clan of old men who run the Vatican. As for the Pope, well, it would appear the "holiest" man in the Christian empire cares more about PR than child rape. You know, just like Jesus wanted." More from me about all of that in a later post.

6. "Jersey Shore." For him it's the TV version of the Double Down, I guess. Why has Morford risked his gastro-intestinal health by watching even a moment of it?--one might ask. I suppose it's meant to be , like Miley Cyrus, another example of America's Double-Down-and-out sense of TASTE.

7. Republicanism. No argument here either. For me, the once proud party of Lincoln has become a weird religious cult of cold-eyed shamans leading a bunch of wild-eyed Kool-Aiders. For Mark Morford, the party "has devolved into a shrill, shrieking puddle of Glenn Beck's crocodile tears, Rush Limbaugh racists and surly white men who hate the fact that you might [in future?] have decent access to health care, can marry someone you love, and don't hate [as the Republicans do at present?] everything and everyone not inbred near a Texas football stadium." (The guy's rhetorical outrage doth betimes befuddle the plot of his sentences.)

8-37. Here he fudges. Morford put out a call on his FaceBook fan-page for suggestions to finish out his 37 "non-food items deemed far worse for you than a KFC Double Down." Check 'em out. They too range from the important to the inane--from Ann Coulter to a dioxin enema, from the Bible to unprotected bestiality (?!). Fun readage.

Okay, Mark Morford, time's up. I guess I'm a fan, too, because ... De gustibus non est disputandum. And you can Double-Down on that.
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#219 Another "Fatal Vision" UPDATE--Video

Well, Karzai is still threatening to turn the color of his coat, and now yesterday exploding in the media is more damning evidence of "collateral murder"--WikiLeaks' headline--in our occupied territories. I'll admit to sensationalizing a bit when I anchored a post last week with a classic photo of the My Lai Massacre, but, really, so little has changed. And this video just come to light from 2007 Iraq proves it.

Reuters had been trying to get the scoop on on why two of their Iraqi journalists (arrows) among a totally non-combatant group of men were inexplicably killed in an attack by an American gunship. And, wow, did they finally get a scoop. It's fuzzy here, but quite clear in the full video, photographed and narrated by the killers themselves--"Light 'em all up. Come on, fire"--that we still can't resist "taking potshots at the Gooks" four decades after Vietnam. "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards," says one hero after the fact.

(See three versions of the WikiLeaks video/audio here, along with commentaries.)

All these guys in the picture are strafed and eventually killed. A wounded Saeed Chmagh tries to crawl away to safety but is sky-stalked and re-strafed. That's gut-wrenching enough, but here's the heart-breaker: an "innocent" van pulls up ... adult jumps out ... looks up at gunship ... proceeds anyway to rescue one of the wounded ... both strafed and killed ... gunner asks permission to open fire on van ... permission granted ... van strafed.

Moments after the attack was over, ground troops report to the gunship that there are TWO CHILDREN in the bullet-riddled van, now lying severely wounded by the helicopter's 30 mm cannon fire. Still on video and audio, one of the crewmen responsible for just killing their father responds:

Well, it's their fault bringing their kids to a battle.

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#218 IrAfPak: Obamas Fatal Vision IV--the Kids Again

But first, an I-told-you-so, news-flash update: "Afghan President Hamid Karzai Threatens To Switch Sides"--scream the headlines today. If his political situation doesn't improve, he and his minions may do what comes naturally, and turn their coats. Nothing new. Scroll down and take another look (#216) at those stolid guerrillas of a hundred years ago, turning on their British allies.

Karzai was once a staunch Talib, after all. And like them, a hard core Sunni-Muslim-Sharia-Pashtunwali-Tribal Pashtun. The Taliban may be a little stricter in their practice of of Sharia Law--cutting off heads instead of hands, and blowing up Buddhas--but they throw no fewer stones at an adulterous woman to get the deadly job done. They represent NOT some invading army--as I'm sure vast numbers of naive Americans believe--but an indigenous political movement borne out of reaction to foreign encroachment, and dedicated, in their militant-insurgent incarnation, to driving the Big-Boy Imperialists out. That's us, no matter how much we try to propagandize otherwise. We kill kids just like the Taliban do.

But let it be said, as ad nauseum I have: the adults aren't worth it in the first place. Not nice people. (I won't repeat it again, but for a refresher-in-microcosm revisit the father-murders-daughter story, DM #176) Our Vietnamese allies had at least entered the nineteenth-century in terms of cultural progress and (almost) social justice. These folk are no more than benighted barbarians emergent from some worm-hole-in-time connected to the fourteenth. Like the rest of the Middle East. Setting aside 9-11, if they weren't connected tangentially to the Great Oil Debacle that IS the Middle East, we would look at the AfPak-Pashtun people, if at all, with little more than scorn or pity.

However, the sins of the fathers must not be visited upon the children. Keep in mind a statistic that I will repeat: WE KILL TWICE AS MANY CIVILIANS as the "enemy" does. Their devious suiciders just can't top infantry operations and air strikes (incl. robo-planes) for killing innocent people. The child pictured above was caught in the latter. There is simply NO WAY to avoid it if the Bush/Cheney approach is followed by President Obama, and it seems to be. A military "solution" will NEVER "gain the loyalty of the people," much less "bring the insurgents to the negotiating table" (last post). How breathtakingly absurd is that direct quote?

If innocent "collaterals" are not killed or wounded willy-nilly from the sky, they're simply gunned-down deliberately. In a New York Times article ignored by other mainstream media, Obama's "man-on-the-ground" General Stanley McChrystal admits as much:

We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.

Great P.R. The article as redacted by HuffPost (here) continues:

According to the military's own figures, American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but as McChrystal noted, NONE OF THE VICTIMS PROVED TO BE A DANGER TO THE THE TROOPS. [Called in Vietnam: "taking potshots at the Gooks"]

Despite new rules put in place by McChrystal, aimed at REDUCING [not eliminating] THE KILLING OF INNOCENTS, such shootings have not dropped off. Although fewer than deaths from air-strikes or Special Forces operations, their continuance ... "has led to GROWING RESENTMENT among Afghans fearful of Western troops and angry at what they see as the impunity with which the troops operate--a friction that has TURNED VILLAGES FIRMLY AGAINST THE OCCUPATION."

So ... "Who ya gonna call?" The Taliban, of course. They're "one of us," after all, might reason the Afghan villager who has just lost a little daughter in an air-strike, or heard of Mohammed Yonus, a local teacher whose chest was ripped open by shots fired from a passing military convoy as his two sons sat in the bullet-riddled car (NYT). And the Taliban's WAR CRIMES, he might further think to himself, are no worse than the Americans'.
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#209 Vox Populi--Rep. Dennis Kucinich?

Love this little guy, with the giant babelicious wife. St. Dennis of Cleveland was martyred again last week in the House of Representatives, just like his avatar, St. Denis (> Dionysius, right) of Paris, some 1750 years ago by Druid priests for preaching the gospel to the Gauls. Kucinich was beheaded too, by a negative overkill-vote of 365 to 65. For what? For simply preaching the gospel of turning the other cheek, a bedrock Xianism that the pagans in the Lower House just didn't want to listen to, vis a' vis Afghanistan.

Of course, what kind of "cheek" is in question. You guessed it. The other, other one. Let's turn around and get our ASS the hell out of Afghanistan, before we get 'em both shot off. The Congressman's defeated Resolution would have mandated the withdrawal of all troops within 30 days of passage. The consensus press is arbitrarily labeling it out-of-hand a "symbolic resolution" (e.g. WashPost here), and as usual for Kucinich's quixotic efforts he gets a big round of ha-ha from most everybody. But NOT from Reps. Ron Paul and Patrick Kennedy who voted in favor--nor from the "silent majority" that I'll speak for in a minute.

Mid-Note: Paul and Kennedy?! Talk about strange bedfellows. Well, they're both talkin' true Libertarianianism--not the greedy, solipsistic Ayn-Randianism of the Tea Baggers--rather that all-the-way-round-the-circle meeting point of right and left political wings ... at least when it comes to WAR. Defensive ones only, etc., etc. We've blogged and blogged enough about that. Worth watching the Kennedy rant (here). Apoplectic. But he's right on target in condemning the mainstream media for saturating their time with gossip about Rep. Eric Massa's "groping" escapades rather than paying attention to the ongoing bloodshed in the Middle East--as occasioned by the Kucinich Resolution.

Anyway, it's about that totally futile sacrifice of a thousand American lives so far, and the unconscionable martyrdom of untold thousands of civilian "collaterals" (another horrendous case headlined last week)--that the Voice of the People can still be heard. And the "Kucinich Sixty-Five" speaks for them, granted only symbolically, perhaps. But according to the polls, over 50% of Americans STILL oppose the 100.000-troop "surge" that President Obama is STILL proceeding with, and will no doubt continue to get funding for. Of course I wish there were a higher number of us in the majority opposed to IrAfPak altogether--but what's with the lopsided majority in the House of Representatives opposed to the Voice of the People?!--as can be seen in the "symbolic" beheading of Kucinich et al. and their good intentions. In this case, and in their continued funding of a wasteful war, the members of the House are just not "representative" at all.

A final note. The "little big man" from Ohio is also eligible for sainthood by dint of his opposition to the health-care reform bill in Congress. What? Yes, I want it to pass, despite it's flaws. Obama needs it; and by association the country needs it if we're EVER going get ANYWHERE toward real Reform of our blighted system. Non-passage, I fear, will delay our joining the rest of the civilized world for years to come. However, Kucinich hasn't cast his vote yet (the Prez is lobbying fiercely), but if it's a "Nay" we'll know his martyrdom is based on principle. Inevitably, this country's health-care will be a public, tax-payer-driven, single-payer program modeled on Medicare. You heard it here. Problem is ... St. Dennis wants it NOW. Let the beheading begin.
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#168 Hung Up ... on the Cross of Blue

The official heraldry disturbs, of late. Haven't checked with BC&BS on this (though I'm sure that not a single BlogManFan has any doubts as to where this is ultimately going)--but I assume the logo is meant to invoke DaVinci's famed drawing, "Vitruvian Man" (itself a little weird), in a highly stylized and minimalist way. Too minimal. We don't get to see the hands and feet, where the NAILS have been driven in.

Okay, not in DaVinci either. But what follows are a few things that have pointedly waxed me wroth about the Health Insurance giant over the past several weeks--even as Congress, too, continues to be "hung up" on Health-Care Reform legislation. Could have picked any of the Big-Med offenders, I guess, but Blue Cross of North Carolina is so eminently typical, and seems to have such an inordinately large and particularly malign influence over our local TV channels, and apparently over their advertising budget, as well.

Two weeks ago a Blue Cross P.R. flack got some air-time decrying Reform in any form, especially, of course, what he called the "government-run" option. This is news?! A complete simpleton can understand that it would cut into the profits of a profit-driven outfit. But spokesman Bob Greczyn--a handsome, avuncular, very white man, including hair--couched his opposition in familiar user-(un)friendly terms: "Oh yes, the consumers would ultimately suffer. It would cost billions and billions of dollars and raise OUR taxes by over 68% [?], and we'd have to pass that along. Insurance rates would definitely go up."

Two days ago ... what happened? You guessed it. Blue Cross filed for an 11% rate increase with the NC Insurance Commission. I must have missed the news report that Congress had passed the Public Option.

Was Bob Greczyn back on the tube? Nope. The NC State Employees Association, a quasi-union (we're still in the South, after all), got wind of it--along with some other BC&BS under-the-table shenanigans--and made the news. State workers are for the most part insured (read: monopolized) by Blue Cross--in fact, it insures more people overall (70%) than any other company in North Carolina--and they called a news conference to protest.

But here's what really got their goat: they discovered that, at the same time it was asking for a rate increase, Blue Cross was spending money on postcards sent to its vast roster of insurees, urging them to oppose the Public Option. By phoning up their Congresspersons, or some such. Which amounts to increasing rates to subsidize lobbying, or so it seemed. Outrage ensued. In fact, the State Employees Association announced their own web-site in rebuttal (closest they could get to a picket line) called, defiantly, stopbcbs.com. After the rally, a not-at-all-chastened Blue Cross guy was interviewed, and denied everything, saying in the process--get this--"What's happening in Washington is gonna cost 'em a lot more than a few postcards."

He's right about that ... and so very wrong. Postcards are a pittance compared to the exorbitant prodigality of the Big-Med expense account. Has nothing, not now or ever, to do with Washington. As mentioned in an earlier post (DM #120), a non-profit Public Option would save 20-30% right off the top because it would be NON-PROFIT. A tautology, forcryingoutloud. StopBCBS.com was quick-on-the-page to point out that "the virtual monopoly of Blue Cross of NC earned $186 million in profits for 2008--and paid their CEO nearly $4 million." They might have added that this in no way includes the "overhead" expenses for lobbying, marketing, and advertising--costs that the Feds wouldn't have to worry about at all. I'm reminded again of the quote by the overmuch-wooed Republican Senator Olympia Snowe (now there's a name) when asked why she couldn't support the Public Option: "Well, the Insurance companies might go out of business; they couldn't compete." She was serious.

And finally, speaking of advertising--Blue Cross occupies the most air-time on local channels than any other business. (This is what really got me started.) It's about equal to car dealerships. During the half-hour segments on our 24-hour news channel where the above stories were aired, for example, you might see two or three 2-minute spots for Blue Cross. Over and over. And targeted at the un-insured--"Those of you out there who need to buy your own insurance," the ad goes. Evidently seventy-percent of the insurance business in North Carolina can never be enough. Ironically, one the pitches in the ad is that "together we can help keep health-care costs down." By spending millions on advertising. Bruxism time.

With apologies to William Jennings Bryan, that's not really a blue cross up there: untold millions of Americans are being crucified on a cross of gold.
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#160 An Obama Report Card

Dave Letterman hosted two Presidents last week, on two successive nights. Quite a coup, and the security, over which much was comedically made, was tight. More so for sitting President Obama, who had all three segments before the usual guest-musician close. Less so the next night for former President Clinton, a frequent guest, who had only two segments, and was followed anti-climactically with basketballer LeBron James before the close. Maybe the difference was deferential--ceremonial protocol of sorts. Whatever, Obama has got to get his grades up--it's almost "midterm"--especially when compared against head-of-the-class Clinton.

But can you beat either one for what in my day was called "comportment"? ( I always flunked that non-academic category.) Two well-behaved fellows indeed--about the most human, honest, intelligent, and nice-guy-est Presidents since Carter. They truly embody the "wouldn't-mind-having-a-beer-with-him" cliche'--in fact, Obama allowed just that to happen literally in "The Professor and the Cop" show he put on just a few weeks ago.

And ingratiatingly entertaining. Clinton bragged on how well his wife is doing in her new job, and downplayed his recently successful "damsel-in-distress" mission in North Korea--a genuienly heroic effort in the Carter tradition--and was more content to make fun with Dave about their mutual cardiac-pathologies. Amazing! It's been five years since your surgery? ... Yes, Dave, but you know when we reach our age, everyday is genetic roulette. And on "smarts"--It's always such a pleasure having you on, Bill, but I just wish, I don't know, that I was smarter ... You're always saying that, Dave, but you're a lot richer than me. And on Social Action: much of the ex-President's air-time was spent on his Global Initiative, which has raised billions in foreign aid of one kind or another. But he deflects graciously and skillfully when Dave expresses regrets that HE hasn't done enough in that area--You've got a five-year old, right? Listen, anybody who can raise a five-year-old is doing all the social good we need.

Daddy Dave got right to the kids with Obama, as he does with his guests more than ever of late--How they were holding up under the spotlight; How they spent their summer vacation. Well, we thought about summer camp and such things, but basically they just goofed off ... [long pause for the punchline] ... which I couldn't do. Much laughter and clapping followed, acknowledging the allusion to Obama's Summer of Hell on the domestic front. Picking up on that, Letterman brought up the subject of angry tea-baggers and raucous Town Hall meetings via Jimmy Carter. He mentioned that the ex-President had speculated that a lot of this animosity and unsavory behavior is rooted in racism. Obama had a grabber ready--First, it's important to remember that I was black before the the election ... Which, after the laughs and appreciative applause, put Dave in the same Steve-Martinesque mode --Just how long have you been a black man?

Inevitably casting a unfortunate pall over all this warm and fuzzy by-play about fathers and kids and family was, however, THE WAR. For all of 30 seconds at the end of the Obama interview. We'll have all of the combat troops out of Afghanistan by 2011. Well and good maybe, but how many soldiers will be killed, wives widowed, children orphaned ... in the meantime. Not to mention the horrendous civilian casualties. How well has Obama been doing after all? What kind of grade has our fledgling President earned so far? (more)
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#155 Strange Fruit, Dead Marine, Body Counts II

... In fact, I feel like I haven't stopped writing about the films of Luis Bunuel (see last several MM's)--so very surreal is the reality of our presence in the Middle East slaughterhouse. Nightmare dream-sequences indeed, but nothing ultimately funny about them.

Certainly not the death of Cpl. Bernard. So don't get me wrong. Living in the state of North Carolina, which tops the nation in number of military installations, I see the killed-in-action faces of Fort Bragg soldiers and Camp Lejeune marines flashed across the TV screen every single day on the local news. I mourn the fallen warriors ... and even more poignantly because--let's face it--THEY DIED UTTERLY IN VAIN. Nonetheless, the obituaries get longer and longer as the war intensifies. Bernie's photo was no doubt in one of those TV segments on or about Aug. 14th, the date he was killed by that missile-grenade, in that most cruel of months.

No smiling TV faces of the enemies he killed, of course. Or of the civilians he and his company--not to mention covering air-strikes-- "collaterally damaged" in their "clearing" of Dahaneh. Look back again at Bernie locked and loaded in front of that darkened doorway. I'm sorry, but I need to drumbeat once again that aforementioned statistic: WE KILL TWICE AS MANY CIVILIANS AS THEY DO. But the main-stream media continues to be swindled by the wrong numbers: villages cleared, militants killed. Or, as in my earlier post, Baitullah Mehsud (and family) murdered long-distance by flying robot bomb. As if it made any difference in the world.

For we've been through all of this before. We couldn't "win the hearts and minds"--that was the phrase--of the Vietnamese with the very same military strategy, and we can't in Afghanistan. (And the Vietnamese were much better people.) Deja vue: Cpl. Bernard's village-clearing operation was called, euphemistically, "pacification" during the Vietnam disaster. The "body-count" mentality was in full-force then too, day after day, year upon year in that longest of America's wars. (Obama may be out to set the record, however.) Today, 842 Americans killed or wounded; 28,000 gazillion Viet Cong and North Vietnamese dead ... "and that's the way it is," Walter Cronkite would tell us, credulously, as if this "good news" could be construed as anything other than downright, blood-drenched ghoulishness. Just like today. Maybe Obama's just too young. To remember.

Here's a footnote that should jog anyone's memory, at least those who bought a ticket for Apocalypse Now or Forrest Gump. Let's go back to to the pomegranate grove. Just before the attack that killed Lance Corporal Joshua "Bernie" Bernard, the Associated Press reporter tells us that the patrol already had a tip that Taliban fighters were lying somewhere in ambush. One Marine had some sort of incendiary weapon trained on the very trees in question, some 70 yards away. The reporter quotes the field commander's orders: "If you see anything move over there ... light it up." Language sound familiar? This guy could easily have been a stand-in for Gump's "Lieutenant Dan," or Robert Duvall's helicopter-cowboy in the Coppola movie, who gives forth with that most memorable line--"Just love the the smell of napalm in the mornin'!" (more)
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#149 THE WAR and Your Friendly Neighborhood Dope Dealer

They connect on a literal level, of course: Afghanistan provides 90% of the poppy-derived opium distributed to grateful nations around the world. The Emerald City that Dorothy spied in the distance across that poppy-blossom landscape, which put the pilgrims in such a pleasant slumber, was no doubt Kabul. And recently the U.S. has finally bowed to reality and abandoned its efforts to shut down their ancient opium trade. What other crop but poppy could give the Afghan farmer such a rate of return . The Taliban know that, and reversed their anti-poppy policy some time ago. You can't win the minds and hearts of country by shutting down its #1 industry. Why, that would be as ridiculous as trying to stop North Carolina farmers from growing the state's #1 cash-crop: marijuana. Oh, wait ...

The "War on Drugs" (a term now officially excised from the lexicon of our new political leadership) in this country has been about as effective as its counterpart in Afghanistan. That is: totally not. But I really want to use this kind of FAILURE, due primarily to a deluded view of reality (I'll leave to a later post the case for drug-legalization) as an analogy for our miserable military failures already in the Middle East, and for our inevitable defeat by the "insurgents" and assorted militant types in Afghan/Pakistan and Vietnam. (Sorry, you're free to cross-out that last one.) THEY JUST NEVER GIVE UP. For illustration, let's look in a minute at an ostensibly upbeat news report from "the front" which purports to signal some progress in our "War on Terror" over there (another term on the politically-incorrect list). When really it turns out to be exactly the opposite.

But first, aren't you often amused as I am by the self-aggrandizing bloviations of law enforcement officials when they make a drug bust? AS IF it were going to make any difference at all. "Yep," says the Sheriff, "this time we done broke the back of drug traffic in our county. Seized almost 12 pounds of stuff worth 12 billion dollars on the street. Put the Kingpin of the operation under the jail. Y'all can sleep easy." Or some such. Do you know what they call the "arrest of a Kingpin" in the underworld of drug-trafficking? I don't either, so I'll make one up: it's called a PROMOTION. There's always somebody ready to take his place. The money is just too good ... because we make it so.

Likewise, "we make it so" for the insurgents in the Middle East. For, as long as our forces are THERE, providing the incentive, their ranks will never be depleted. Somebody will always step up and take over from a fallen "Kingpin." The power is just too good. The fallen militant-leader in question is the late Baitullah Mehsud, confirmed killed earlier this month in a drone-missile strike on a Taliban stronghold (actually, eating dinner at his father-in-law's house) in Whothehellcares Pakistan. Via the Associated Press (8/25) we are told in bloated terms, with no attribution, that "Mehmud's death is a victory for the U.S. and Pakistan"-- ain't-no-I-reckon-about-it. And further:

Pakistan considered Baitullah Mehmud its main internal threat, and his death was a significant blow to the militancy ... He and his NETWORK were suspected in dozens of suicide attacks, including the 2007 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

His death was also a boost for U.S. efforts to take out militants in Pakistan's wild northwest, where al-Qaida leaders including Osama bin Laden are suspected to be hiding out, and where Taliban from both sides of the border are believed to have plotted attacks on U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

The very first "dead" giveaway that all of this is an aromatic load of bullshit is the PHOTO attached to the news story, and reproduced upper right. No, it's NOT the dead guy. It's his very photogenic successor, Hakimullah Mehsud (no "relation" indicated)--a tacit admission that the new guy is already a star, in a tabloid sort of way. "The Kingpin is dead; long live the Kingpin"--if you will. Next, notice that the very propaganda statement itself is riddled with unconscious "tells." The first paragraph starts with one man, but ends with a "network." And this network has obviously operated all over the place, for many years, and with great effectiveness. One dead guy at the top is going to make difference?

The answer to that is conceded in direct contradictions throughout the report. We're suspicious already when we are told that earlier reports after Baitullah's presumed death had his would-be successors "locked in a bitter power struggle" and that the top two contenders, Hakimullah and Waliur Rehman--get this--"had been killed in a shootout during a meeting to choose an heir." Not so. On Tuesday they were on the phone together with the AP and others in a very "cosmopolitan" conference-call, outlining politely their plans for the future. In cozy, chat-room style, "They handed the telephone back and forth to each other at an undisclosed location."

A former Pakistani security-chief, Mahmood Shah, dismissed all of this as "a public relations exercise to satisfy themselves." Well, that's a telling point, isn't it. These folk are so well-organized that they've got their own P.R. Department! The report also speculated that there was "infighting" among the job-seekers. So what? This can only indicate that there is a sufficiency of candidates to take over the position.

And finally, despite all the report's futile disclaimers, the best man got the job. Mahmood the ex-security-chief gets it right after all. The news-report ends with his last words, unwittingly confirming all of the above, and thus completely undermining the propaganda value of the piece:

Shah said Hakimulla's rise might lead to EVEN MORE TERRORIST ATTACKS as he attempts to prove himself. But he added that the young chief's lack of experience RUNNING LARGE ORGANIZATIONS could make it hard to maintain order. "He is a very TRIGGER-HAPPY individual," Shah said. "I think he will show no restraint." [emphases mine]

Perfect. If he shows restraint, get rid of him. There are other gunslingers waiting in the wings who can out-un-restrain themselves with the best of them. How about this: Let's get the hell outta Dodge.
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