#239 Hey Justice Scalia, "Ba Fungule"--Are You Talkin' To ME? About Gun Laws?

Three things about this picture of  6-yr-old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, resident of Aurora, Colorado:

1) She's missing a front tooth (I sympathize);

2) She loves ice cream;

3) She's dead;

4) She was killed by Justice Antonin Scalia.

Now, three questions directed to this so-called A.Scalia, by all accounts with a full set of teeth and breathing in and out. 

1) You are quite fond of the 2nd Amendment, as are we all, because it was after all a pretty good law for its time, and you like the "for-its-time" thing don't you, being what they call a Constitutional "originalist" or something. True?

2) Qualifying as an audible life-form, you were appointed to the SCOTUS Corporation, owned by Ronald Reagan at the time, based on your fondness also for the Tridentine Latin Mass (sponsored by a famous chewing-gum company) and GUNS. Right?

3) As one of the known mobsters on the Court, you are sympathetic to the proliferous gun-lobbies and to organized crime, who reject any kind of Federal regulation of guns and ammunition of any kind. Including assault rifles. Yes?

4) Your ties to the Mafia are not only indicated by #3, but also by your last name, your religion--clandestine rites in a dead language--and the Soprano-perfect sign you are wont to use when annoyed by reporters asking about these biased decisions:

This photo captures the secret gesture midway between first cupping your hand under the chin and full-out FLICK of hand and fingers, does it not? The visual mummery represents the underlying code in Italian "Ba(va) Fungule(fan culo)"--meaning literally in English "Go find an ass (your own, to fuck, implied). Abstracted meaning, of course:  "Fuck you." And Mr. Scalia, you would be up on your Latin/Italian roots, based on your old-timey Roman church experience, would you not? ***   

 5) You are responsible for the murder of this young lady, Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who while doubtless finishing her dental-friendly ice cream and waiting for The Dark Knight Rises to appear on the screen of  her local Cinema ... he did. Movie cancelled for Veronica. New front tooth mooted.

This innocent was slaughtered by an angry white man in a black suit carrying an AK-47 assault rifle--a Weapon of War. Unless this was a SOLDIER run amuck, suffering from PTSD, i. e. Particularly Terrible Something or other, thinking in a crazed state he was firing at terrorists in Saskatchewan--you might be off the hook. Right? But no ... he WAS a civilian! Because of your gaseous gun decisions, and in particular your fatal deconstuction of the 2nd Amendment, the shooter possessed a weapon of war, "legally." You put it in his hands. The AK-47 was the ONLY way that the shall-be-nameless boy could have killed and wounded the incredible amount of people he did. Is this not all true Justice Scalia?

[more]

***Look for my Mafia connections soon in Mosteller Musings.
************

#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]
************

#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)
************

#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.
************

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.
************

#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.)
************

#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..
************

#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)
************   .

#231 Returning Sooner or Later

... but most likely soon after the SUN reaches the point on the celestial sphere opposite the Summer Solstice (right ascension: 18 hours; declination:--23.5 degrees), at which the ecliptic is furthest south, the SUN appearing in the noontime sky at its lowest altitude above the horizon. See you then.

Likewise for Mosteller Musings.

#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.
************

#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)
************

#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)
************