#241 SCALIUS INTERRUPTUS! News Flash Nov. 2, 2012--Romney and Ryan WIN ...

 ... Support and Sympathy of Friends and Family as President Obama Is Re-Elected in Landslide Victory over Republican Ticket (AP 11/2/12). As Predicted More Than a Year Earlier by an Obscure Yet Eerily Prescient Blogger in Raleigh NC

The story begins for this Ass Press reporter (but I DO have an ASSOCIATE two-year degree) in the hospital last summer while watching what "The Blogman" called a  teevee Circus Spectacular of some kind, identified by other people as "The Republican Presidential Primaries."  I had to agree that with clown-characters like Mittens, Newt, and T-Paw--How could it be? Before this, he had long-predicted a lopsided win for Obama's re-election ... to unbelieving friends and family. They even made little circles with their forefingers around their temples, whatever that means.

On his deathbed, The Blogman (as he called himself though he hadn't been at it for a "slothful year") screamed in painful prophecy to any pretty nurse who'd listen: 


Obama landslide! ... Froggie ... Obama landslide! ... the rant trailing off with mutterings of Republicans ... crooks and liars ...  the Gremlin has plunked his Magic Twanger ... Klown Kar ... laughable ... no chance in Hell ... Obama landslide ... Ty Warner ... hahahahahaha ... the manic rantings silenced only as the narcotics took hold.

With his faithful Beanie Baby, "'Smoochy' the Frog" (Ty.inc.)***--which in delirium situ he insisted on calling Froggie the Gremlin--some medical whatnot, and caring Friends & Family, the Blogman pulled through, but was now reduced to street-corner perorations not unsimilar to those above ... cane in one hand and Smoochy/Froggie in the other, often shaking the latter in the faces of innocent passersby. Unbelievers all.

As winter came and went away, as do we all, the outbursts continued, directed at anyone who might listen ... but in no way believe. When pretend-human-being W.M.F.T. Romney (his words) confirmed himself consumptive Presidential Nominee for the revived Know-Nothing Party(his words)--the Obama-landslide rants reached ELEVEN on the Spinal Tap scale. The world standard, I take it.

Still the Unbelievers one-and-all said, "Close race," Blogman, "Close race."

Never happen ... crook, liar, tax-evader ... Obama landslide ... hahaha. Then, more lucidly, 60%-40% Obama ,,, Republicans only have the H-H factor ... 20% HATE and 20% HABIT = 40% ... Tea-Baggers and Lever-Pullers ... haha ... Watch Intrade ...

Then, in mid-August, the announcement of Rand Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate was almost too much to bear for the still-recovering Blogman. Paroxysms of jolting JOY and rattling Rapture threw him into a  diabetic coma, lasting at least several minutes on the couch   

How SWEET it is ...Obama landslide ... George's Prodigal has fucked the dog screwed the pooch for good  ... menage a' deux ... another crook and liar ... caught in the act ... Ayn Rand rampant ... Magic Twanger plunked en finale' ... Obama landslide ... 

And so it was to be, and is, a couple of months later, on this day, Nov 2nd 2012. (Ass Press)

***The Blogman claims to have been sophomore frat-boy Pledgemaster over Ty Warner's pledgedom during his freshman year in college ... which was no doubt the reason that the future Ty(coon) "Toy-Boy" Warner dropped out. [see Mosteller Musings soon about this]
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#240 Okay Antonin "Tony Guns" Scalia and You Too Frankie "Dutch" Lautenberg--Let's Talk ... About THE Gun Law of 1791 [UPDATED]

Here is Justice "Tony Guns"  in his youthful gangbanger days sporting a  longer coif, and wearing a single, distinctive and quite becoming earring in the LEFT ear, which I'm told is the secret double-reverse signum of underworld connections (see last post), perhaps even unto the depths of Hell. Or not.

But he sure does love himself them fararms ... and that good ol'-timey Second Amendment of the US Constitution, by which he "justifies" his love. Sweet. Known only to intimates: the mobster-benchman has it tattooed where his tramp-stamp would go. A rite of passage in the organization. And which, lucky for us Patriots, he believes gives us the right to "bear arms" in a delightfully unfettered way.

Now as a "Strict Constructionist" (aka "entomologist") in interpreting the Constitution, he had to eliminate from his decision-making the possibility that the "Framers," or whoever, were NOT thinking of "bear arms" as a noun-noun double morpheme compound substantive as in "bear arms"--that is, weapons to kill bruin-kind (family Ursidae), such ursidicide being a common pastime in Colonial America, especially in Philadelphia, where these quaint gunslingers were meeting. But bears of several species (not including the Koala, which hadn't been discovered yet) can be dangerous for colonial campsites, and pose a threat to New-Nationhood. Proper weaponry guaranteeing Ursine lethality.would have been required of all.  Big long guns. Most antebellum colonists had them anyway. Did the 2ndA restrict firearms to bear-musketry only?

Here's the Original (spelling and all), consisting of one syntactically awkward sentence that "originalist" Justice Mafiabagman had to deal with--tattooed, as I said, slightly north of his hindquarters and tail, making it prima facie difficult for ready reference:

A well regulated Militia, being neceffary to the fecurity of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear armf, shall not be infringed.

Even the fpelling is difficult, as you can see, the Framers being inodinately fond of the alternate orthographic form of "s" (technically, the fistula) at the time. It's an effete rightward slanting "f"-like grapheme (as in parfum, not to be confused with parsum, which is not a word anyway), whose type key the Blogman had installed in the keyboard device for just such an occasion. A curious but meaningless  fact: an unusually high number of Founding Fathers had a lisp, or developed one soon after the Convention ... as would we all.

These minutiae are important to an "originalist" interpreter of our Founding Document and its first ten amendments, because there may be even more. The "textualists" represent the other related approach in the (coinage alert) "Constrictcunnalinctionist" family of two. This branch also sanctifies the words-as-written epistome, but unlike the "originalists" these seditious folk allow for some semantic evolution to be taken into account. Patriotic "originalists" (aka Tea-Baggers) will have none of that. They want to "figure out" what the "Framers" were "actually" THINKING at the "time" they were "actually" WRITING the "words."

Thus the Devil was appropriately in the details for Mr. Justice Uuderworld because he had to come up with the RIGHT (haha) Opinion as he consulted the oft-disputed 2ndA, as nobody affectionately calls it yet. He was deciding a case involving a law prohibiting home hand-gun possession in Wash DC, Difficult. But Antonin came through. This Associated Press headline and lead say it all:
Gun-Crazy*** Justice Scalia Writes Demented Majority Opinion That Strikes Down DC Anti-Hand-Gun Law Based On Delusional Constitutional Right To Bear Armf  Joining Scalia in the 5-4 Decision Banning the Banning of the Ownership of Handguns in the Home Were the Other Barely Humanoid Members of SCOTUS [?]: Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, and What's-His-Name (AP 6/22/12)

It would be hard to make these things up. Anyway, Justice Scalia's "originalist" interpretation began by eliminating something SO elementary that it was beyond even my ken, and barbie's too. Bear armf? thought Scalia, trying to think the thoughts of the great Thinkers-up of the thing. Could the Framers have been thinking of the severed fore-limbs of the Ursine-kind? As weapons? To CLUB a Redcoat into submission perhaps, after a soldier's ammunition ran out or gun jammed? Broken bayonet? Might work, till spoilage set in. Heavy enough. Lots of bears around then. The claws would surely be effective. But noooo, too messy for fussbudget aristocrats like Adams, Hamilton, and esp Dolly Madison, who I've heard wrote most of the Constitution. Problem is: never happened. And the OED cites no instance of  "armf" used for bear parts. 

Then the revelation. He had been painstakingly parsing the ideation of each word separately, but now he remembered the "and" preceding "bear armf" and ...  Epiphany. "Tony Guns" knew right then that he was on to something.

[NEXT: How "Tony Guns" justifies thousands upon thousands of needless homicides.]

 *** Saw Gun Crazy, the movie, at the old Avalon theater (q.v. in several archival posts) in 1950 on a "double-bill" (yes, Virginia, TWO movies for a quarter) and tried unsuccessfully to reach and relate it to Annie Oakley and Hoot Gibson . Re-saw it recently on TCM. Wonderfully trashy/campy noir with moral that gunf make good people into killers. Tsk, tsk, a truth for the ages.
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#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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#237/#212 The Victory Choo-Choo Train--"All Aboard!--for Deja Vu 2010 All Over Again "

 Take a look and a double-take at the following post****** down the page, written March 2010 just after Congress passed the Affordable Care Act, which somehow was replaced with the puzzling term "Obamacare." Here's what you'll shortly discover: it could have been written today! I swear, it's la plus ca change with a vengeance, almost literally. It's as if you and me and the world haven't MOVED that much in the last couple of years. Like woo-woo suspended animation. I expect an alien to burst from my belly any minute.  Geraldo Rivera maybe/ Ouch.

So I'm recycling the "All Aboard" post #212 of 3/25/10, unchanged, to make the point above, ...and another point or two about THIS election year--namely, that the Democrats' strategy should remain unchanged as well (that is, what little there was OF it back in 2010).. SCOTUS, whatever that is, has made the President a WINNER again, and it's still all about the Kids.  With Health Care reform now firmly in place, parent's and grandparents, and aren't we all, are going to vote for The Man who did it--who assured their progeny of  health coverage no matter pre-existing conditions; of coverage to age 26 under the family's insurance; of coverage for themselves for life (no "caps") to see it all happen.. All this is among other good stuff like preventive care and more--the devil has NEVER been in the details. i.e. the specific ACA  provisions, for the clear majority (60-80%) of the Electorate--they're for the good stuff that Team Obama can now put on sale with all-to-hell impunity.  Republicans, or, technically, oxygen users, ain't got nothin' ... 

******Here's "back-to-the-future" 2010 post, updated by bold in brackets--

Or ... sort of continuing from last post, "Go for it"--said President Obama to Republicans (and Blue Dog Dems sub rosa) who would fashion this year's off-year election campaigns [now Presidential and down-ballot] on REPEAL of the new Health Care Act. His version of Clint Eastwood's "Make my day." Further along in his Iowa City presser today [3/25/10] (still here) it was the even more genteel challenge, "Be my guest."

Mr. Obama can afford to be smugly magnanimous in victory [now again this new one] because he knows he's a winner, not only in this recent battle. but most likely now in several wars to come. Why?--because in this and future legislative struggles over social justice the lately extreme-right-wing G.O.P. along with the forever-reactionary, small-state southern Democrats will be RUNNING AGAINST LITTLE KIDS. No win. Battle lost. [Here I was sadly mistaken. Republicans cleaned clock around the country in the 2010 elections.]

First of all, the forces for progressive change will be aided by--to our shame, really--the "band-wagon" effect. A check of the polls reveals that curious fact about human nature: immediately after the HCR bill had passed, more people were for it. The only difference?--it was now a winner [like the SCOTUS victory] What had been disfavored by a slight majority of the American people only a few days earlier was now favored by a slight majority. [SAME DAMN THING ... last week.  Polls already show a "bump."] Evidently, several millions of those originally opposed had set aside the time to read all 3000 pages of the bill ... and were convinced otherwise. Yeah, that's it. But whatever the case, I'm sure these numbers will grow.

For, more importantly, it all comes down to the children--their protection and well-being. The winning side. As for the new health-care program, Republicans on the campaign trail are wildly deluded that "Repeal it and start over"--John Boner's mantra--is going to have any resonance whatsoever with American voters. Correct me, but I believe parents and grandparents make up a sizable voting block. This formidable bunch of ballot-casters (including me) in November are going to vote FOR allowing insurance companies to again deny coverage to kids with pre-existing conditions? Fuhgeddaboudit. Or vote AGAINST children being covered under their parent's policy till age 26? No way. There's even a further incentive for parent-minded citizens in the same bill-now-law re-passed yesterday: it was revised to include a major expansion of the college-loan program. [Again, the down-ballot Electorate didn't buy it in 2010, but it was never really sold aggressively. Still, the People loved the ACA in detail, but somehow not in general. Brainwashed by the Teabaggers, somebody said.]

Other challenges to the status quo ante? Other changes "you can believe in" as the Obama campaign put it? Well, "Yes we can." The re-invigorated Obama administration along with the newly-victorious progressive forces in Congress [Whew, boy] will again have the kids on their side. (more)
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#236 SCOTUS Upholds Obamacare [update 6/30]

The Blogman got misty. But Frogman  the Gremlinesque appeared PLUNK and began  borboryglating about no Public Option ...  Big Med/Pharma  still in control ... millions UNcovered till 2014 ... Medicaid sorely wounded ... ending gravellyly with:"Still ain't no Universal froggin' HealthCare!"

Another PLUNK of his TWANGER  and it was good riddance to Froggy on this joyous day--Caloo! Calay! to beamish people everywhere today! The Jabberwock is dead. Who didst wield the Vorpal Sword of Justice? ... 'T'was Sir John of Roberts at the Court of Supreme.
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Though spectacularly ignored by Republicans time and time again, let's all be aware of an obvious Truth--

Progress => Future => History and conservative/reactionary creatures are always on the wrong side of history. Sentient human being Chief Justice John Roberts was aware, despite his public persona, and that's  why he swooshed the Court into the future ... and made history for himself.

Fuggedabout  the casuistry of his "majority" opinion--he's got his ass covered there--John Roberts was thinking history. And of the legacy of a Court forever named after him.
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#235 The Libertarian-Socialist Party [in progress]

Speaking of the Fifth Dimension, TMZ reports that a new political party is being formed by exasperated Dems and GOPers, and joined by disaffected defectors from both the Green Party and the old Greenback Party (here).

Its proud Mascot is none other than Froggy the Gremlin, for obvious reasons. He has a green back. And even better, he's green just about all over, as the Green Party hopes to be These latter folk are environmentalists too, and he would represent not only the order Anura.that is most notoriously disappearing rapidly in the wild, but stand for all endangered species.

As a quasi-life form, Froggy;s soft-plastic head and mouth can be manipulated to utter in a gravelly voice the Party's official rallying cry "Hiya, kids, Hiya!" and the Party's slogan "I will, I will, I will!"-- ventriloquisticly. (Just as it was done in low-tech close-up on the Smilin' Ed's Gang TV show.) As a bonus, the word frog descends from the Proto-Indo-European root *Vro-, meaning to "jump" or "hop"--just as these ideologue defectors to a new party are doing.. Moreover, the Anurae are amphibious--able to live (-bious) in two (amphi-) worlds at once. Like maybe Libertarianism and Socialism.

The ensign or banner for the party is, no surprise, the good ol' Greenback ... blown up to appropriate size. But here the founding fathers of the new party, in their contrarian and alethristic wisdom, chose a legal-tender THREE DOLLAR BILL in black on brown ... a Brownback, if you will (despite it's cringe-worthy association with a certain deranged state Governor) ... dating from, apropos of the movement, Revolutionary times--

A pretty thing. It's a 1776 "Continental" from back in the day and following when paper currency was au courant, so to speak, printed by whatever Government and any old bank or corporate entity that wanted to--you had to trust 'em it was good. Monetary policy, paper-wise,  was not monopolistic, nor boullion-based (my frenchy-frog favorite), though silver and gold WERE minted and always of course face-value trustworthy. No stinkin' gold or silver STANDARD yet (or Federal Reserve) behind what was later called "specie." This suited the original Greenback Party just fine through its beginnings during the Civil War and after ... up to its official founding in and around the economic recessional periods of the 1870s and 1880s. Keep the money flowing, the Greenbackers said ... keep it "current"--as "currency" logically entails. They were proleptic Keynesians without knowing it ... and as I see it.

Their party platform ******

{to be revisited}

#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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#232 "La Plus Ca Change ... [UPDATE 6/13]

...
 la plus c'est la fucking meme chose."   Some headlines--

Afghanistan: NATO Airstrikes Killed 18 Civilians [half of them children--denied at first for "lack of evidence" but see the next one] (AP 5/27)

Afghanistan War: NATO Apologizes For Civilian Deaths In Airstrike [US Maj General John Allen meets with families and promises cash money] (6/8

Abu Yahia al-Libi Top Al Qaeda Strategist [and undetermined others] Killed In Pakistan Drone Strike (6/5)

U.S. Drone Policy: Standing Near Terrorists Makes You A Terrorist (5/29)  


Yea and verily. It's good that America is still doing the Lord's work as best we can, (and as Yahweh bespoke directly unto Dubya) to wipe out as many of these little brown heathens before the Pashtunese killing fields are are in danger of being closed for good, and we have to look elsewhere ... Iran maybe?  Good prospect.

For. lo. the Deity shall be behind us, aided by our courageous  Chaplain-Corps-crusaders (almost 100% Judeo-Christian, amen), who can use the literal and fundamental Word of God to justify the killing--surely their favorite verse would be Jeremiah's ever-timely, cheer-leading, "Cursed be he who neglects the Lord's work; cursed be he who holds back his sword from blood" (Jer. 48:10). Happily, the Chaplains are able to chose from any number of other fine kill-the-infidel references in the Good Book. Beats the Koran all to Hell.

And back to the newsphoto--just look at how those devilish Talibs cum Qaeda disguise themselves..They look like little children, I know, but that can be soooo deceiving, considering the average height of these non-flesh-color people (to use the traditional Crayola distinction) that we kill around the world are well below the average height of the brave American soldier or airman (the latter too far away to distinguish clearly anyway). And they've all got those baby-faces. Remember the commie Vietnamese with their little-boy looks. And from the air ...? Well you just gotta shoot your rockets and "light 'em up." (more)
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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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#229 Good Libertarianism: On War

This is My Lai, but I make no apologies for throwing it up again as a reminder of the reality of interventionist foreign wars. We just never learn. If there's any doubt that America has gone "back to the future" and is now fully become the militaristic nation it was in the 60's and early 70's, it's should be dispelled by this recent headline and lead:

CASEY: U.S. COULD BE AT WAR ANOTHER DECADE--
General George Casey. the chief of Staff of the Army, said today the United States could face another "decade or so" of persistent conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan. (CBS News 7-8-10 here)

A "decade or SO"!!!!!--welcome to the first half of the American 21st Century. To tangentialize a moment: this guy, George W. (!) Casey Jr., is 61 years old. He's a true "Junior" in that his father was also an army man, a First Cavalry Division commander shot down and killed in Vietnam in 1970. Son George Jr. was born in Korea, where his father was stationed during that ill-advised conflict, only one among ALL OF THEM since WWII, which is to this very day (check the news last month) an uneasy standoff, sixty years on, never having been won or lost. (This is in spite of the old joke that the M*A*S*H TV series lasted longer than the war it depicted. It really, and sadly, didn't) But the General is to the manner born, and his "siege mentality" would seem to be inbred. Isn't it nice to foresee one's security in the latter years of one's career, even unto retirement or death--no matter the tribute paid in thousands and thousands of human lives. In a former age Casey might have been called a warlord, if not surely a mercenary.

Listen, our bloated military-industrial complex, which Gen/Prez Eisenhower warned us about HALF a century ago, drains HALF the national treasury every year, and grabs HALF your annual Federal income taxes paid. Somebody's got to pay General Casey's salary. He mongers the war that he's getting paid to fight. A perpetual motion machine, if ever there was. But nothing new. And haven't they done a god job of it?! Afghanistan is now America's LONGEST WAR, finally surpassing Vietnam, its fraternal twin.

Yes, 50% of your annual tax bill goes to the misnamed "Defense" Department. Why aren't the self-proclaimed Taxed-Enough-Already/Tea Baggers on top of this? They should be all over it like white on angry old white men. Never comes up. Why?--because, also self-proclaimed, they are 80% Republicans, and that's just contrary to the party line. Convoluted irony of ironies: just last week, unlucky, incongruously-African-American RNC Chair, Michael Steele, got in trouble again for being a sleeper-cell Democrat, even though he was directly attacking the President! "It's Obama's War ... let's get the hell out"--or some such. This seriously brassed-off the foreign-interventionists of both parties, including even the anti-war faction of the Democrats, who would rather continue to blame the whole megilla on the two Bushes. They're right, but so too, at the same time, is Michael Steele.

It proves something else about the Tea Baggers. They are far from being classical Libertarians, at least in terms of what has always been a most important foundational pillar of the Party:

3.1 NATIONAL DEFENSE
We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to DEFEND the United States against aggression. The United States should both AVOID ENTANGLING ALLIANCES and abandon its attempts to act as POLICEMAN FOR THE WORLD. We oppose any form of compulsory national service.

That comes right out of the Libertarian Party 2010 Platform (here), but is also right out of the Vietnam War and the American misadventures that followed, and are still going on. DEFENSIVE WARS ONLY, if you please. The platform righteously purloins the very terms another George W. used long ago--foreshadowing Ike many years later--"Beware foreign entanglements" of the military sort, said the Father of Our Country in his Farewell Address, and we wouldn't have to fight wars of any kind. We just never learn. (more)
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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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#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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#220 IrAfPak--"Death to America"

Ah, Kandahar ... land of the pomegranate and the palm- and/or ballistic-grenade (see DM #154-156 for a fulsome rhapsode on that strange fruit's metaphorical and combatical implications) ... you EXPLODE upon the headlines once again--this time in the CIVILIAN MURDER department, apropos of last several posts. We just can't get enough of "takin' pot-shots at the Gooks."

Here's Monday's AP/HuffPost lead:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan--Afghans burned tires and chanted "Death to America" after U.S. TROOPS FIRED ON A CIVILIAN BUS near Kandahar, killing four people and wounding more than a dozen. Afghanistan's president [Hamid Karzai] accused NATO of violating its commitment to safeguard civilian lives. (full report here)

Ah, Kandahar ... of once-lovely place and vowelicious name, you threaten us with irony-overdose. Yes, you are the land of luscious pomegranate and lush-full opium-poppy, but also the fertile spawning-ground of the Taliban, and its major stronghold. You are also the birthplace of "democratically elected" Hamid Karzai, a former/major Talib himself, and will be once again, easily, if things don't go his way. For the execrable Mr. Karzai, as for all his Sunni-Pashtun brothers, Taliban or not, it's simply a matter of power-politics. Party affiliation, no more no less.

Hence the intractable, ultimately irresolvable problem--and why we must get the hell out--put in simple terms and Haiku-form for ease of memorization :

WE KILL CIVILIANS EVERY DAY,
AND SO DO THEY,
BUT THAT'S OKAY.

... because they're "one of us." The Americans, on the other hand, are the murderous foreigners, no matter the "collateral" justification. It was the non-overcome-able problem in Vietnam, and so it is in Pashtunwaliland. The awful fact is that NO AMOUNT of internecine slaughter-of-the-innocents by the Taliban will ever counter-balance the HATRED these people have for us infidel invaders--hatred, in microcosm, that can translate to a father (a Karzai-gov't employee who got off scot-free) stomping his daughter to death for fraternizing with a British soldier (DM #127 and ad nauseum).

All the innocent bloodshed is reflexively blamed on "America." Listen to this Afghani implicitly absolving the militants of any responsibility:

"The Americans are CONSTANTLY KILLING OUR CIVILIANS and the government is not demanding an explanation," protester Mohammed Razaq said. "We demand justice from the Karzai government and the punishment of those soldiers responsible."

Or this one:

"These FOREIGNERS have their enemies [someone/somehow or other], but killing Afghans is not the answer," said Abdul Hadi ... "Better yet, I would like to see them LEAVE Afghanistan," he added.

So might it just be possible that the following contains a grain of truth?--

The attack ... DEALT A FRESH BLOW to U.S. and NATO efforts TO WIN POPULAR SUPPORT [???!!!] for a coming offensive to drive the insurgents from the biggest city in the south. (AP 4-12-10)

The City of Pomegranates, Kandahar the Beautiful.
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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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