Different Day, Same Shit.

Meanwhile...

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:27:00 +0000

- George Zimmerman's father writes an e-book. But not just any e-book. In this book, retired judge Robert Zimmerman Sr. goes in after a laundry list of black leaders and organizations for promoting racist beliefs and behavior against himself, his son and quite possibly the entirety of the beleaguered white American collective. All of this is conveniently packaged in a chapter titled "Who Are The True Racists" (courtesy of Think Progress):

Congressional Black Caucus. “[A] pathetic, self-serving group of racists… advancing their purely racist agenda.” He later adds that “all members of Congress should be ashamed of the Congressional Black Caucus, as should be their constituents.” And finally: “They are truly a disgrace to all Americans.”

The NAACP. “[S]imply promotes racism and hatred for their own, primarily finical, interests” and “without prejudice and racial divide, the NAACP would simply cease to exist.”

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous. “[W]hat I would expect of a racist.”

Trayvon Martin’s funeral director. A “racial activist and former head of the local NAACP.”

Benjamin Crump, Natialie Jackson and Darrly Parks, attorneys for Travyon Martin’s family. “The scheme team.”

I suppose Robert's frustration lies with his son being held to account for his actions instead of being given a pass for offing some "thug." The senior Zimmerman's book is a nice, thick tenderloin steak for the unreconstructed, but it could very well backfire on him as George's trial gets underway.

- Jeb Bush didn't write a book, but he did type the following tweet:

"Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans," Bush said. "Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity."

This speaks to the innate fear of America "as well know it" being "transformed" into "something unrecognizable." At the end of the day and in spite of being close to Latinos by experience and by marriage, he carries these same subconscious fears.

- The U.S. government is now lending its support to Syrian rebels after finding evidence of chemical weapons used by Syrian government forces under President Bashar al-Assad. The promise of aid in the form of light arms to "moderate battalions" comes as a small relief as the Free Syrian Army, Jabhat al-Nusrah and other rebels clash with government forces in Aleppo, but the rebels would really like stuff that's a bit more heavy-duty. Like TOW missiles, for starters.

- Harvey Updike may want to stay out of Auburn after his release from jail. Updike served 76 days following his conviction for poisoning Auburn University's storied oak trees at Toomer's Corner. Meanwhile, Tiger fans are still looking for ways to "roll" those spiffy new concrete poles with toilet paper. They'll figure it out eventually.

- Deric Lostutter, leader of the Anonymous subgroup responsible for exposing the Steubenville, Ohio rape scandal and those involved, was the target of an FBI raid on his home in Winchester, Kentucky. Potential charges for Lostutter's role include "computer crimes," "aggravated identity theft" and "identity theft, attempt and conspiracy." If convicted, it's likely he'll spend more time in jail than the actual accused rapists.

Considering Lostutter's involvement with Anonymous, it looks like the FBI is sending a clear message to the hacktivist collective. Also:

Could it be that the most serious crime, in the eyes of those charged with seeing justice done, is not the harm done to victims by convicted perpetrators, but the more grievous sin of revealing the flaws of the authorities?

Making the authorities look utterly incompetent or corrupt engenders the risk of payback. It explains Edward Snowden's decision to beat feet after uncovering the NSA's surveillance programs.

On another note, I'm glad to hear Raquel Nelson won't be thrown in jail on account of her son being killed in an accident with a drunk driver. A $200 fine for jaywalking is a damn sight more reasonable than a charge of second-degree homicide.

Why charge this woman at all? For the same reason Marissa Alexander was given a 20-year sentence. Certain classes of Americans are fair game for being crapped on for sport in this country:

The idea that Nelson could be convicted of second-degree homicide by a vehicle makes me truly nauseous, because that is passing the buck from Guy to Nelson. Guy was driving the car, Guy was drunk, Guy struck the child and Guy fled. These charges are so, so sadly reflective of America's victim-blaming culture. A child runs out into the street while crossing from the bus stop and is struck by a car and killed. How does it possibly serve anyone to put his mother in jail? She has two other children to take care of.

It's hard to imagine a white mother facing trial in the same circumstance. Then again, it's also hard for some to imagine a white mother in the same circumstance, unless she's poor, and then she too is to be made an example of. Because we're taught in America that if we're not wealthy and successful it's our "fault," and that everyone should want to be an over-scheduled, workaholic consumer, because to be otherwise is unpatriotic. It's un-American to stop feeding the machine. And if you're not feeding it, you're milking it, and that makes you scum. It's immature black-and-white thinking (in more than one sense), but that's what we're best at.

We're best at being assholes, unless you have enough money and prestige to make us fall in line with whatever you wish.

The Rumors Of The Man's Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 06:18:00 +0000

From the 15th of this past month until today, DDSS has been, for the lack of better words, dead. And it's all my fault. Life outside of this here blog's taken up more of my time than I realized and even that's gotten in the way of keeping tabs on Twitter, et al. So if it seems like yours truly is out of the loop on some events, go easy.

Meanwhile, lots of other stuff has happened -- shootings, riots, tornadoes, bits and pieces of U.S. infrastructure crumbling to bits, bureaucratic obstinateness, consternation over some kid pouring Cheerios all over her poor dad, rank stupidity and abject desperation. You know, the usual.

At some point, yours truly will go on to address the above and much more. Feels like I'm playing catch-up here. Hopefully, you'll see plenty more than what you've been seeing. In the meantime, feel free to browse through the archives. Costs nothing except time and...something else. Can't put my finger on it.

Mack

Striking Out.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:14:00 +0000

In the ongoing IRS debacle and Benghazi, the GOP figures it hit a home run, or at least a triple with all bases covered. Something tells me the GOP hit a couple of fouls and is well and truly on its way to striking out.

First, the specter of the Obama administration being responsible for targeting conservative groups through the IRS was swiftly snuffed with the following:

Over two years, IRS field office agents repeatedly changed their criteria while sifting through thousands of applications from groups seeking tax-exempt status to select ones for possible closer examination, the findings showed.

At one point, the agents chose to screen applications from groups focused on making "America a better place to live."

Exactly who at the IRS made the decisions to start applying extra scrutiny was not clear from the findings, which were contained in portions of an investigative report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

After brewing for months, the IRS effort exploded into wider view on Friday when Lois Lerner, director of exempt organizations for the IRS, apologized for what she called the "inappropriate" targeting of conservative groups for closer scrutiny, something the agency had long denied.

At a legal conference in Washington, while taking questions from the audience, Lerner said the agency was sorry.

She said the screening practice was confined to an IRS office in Cincinnati; that it was "absolutely not" influenced by the Obama administration; and that none of the targeted groups was denied tax-free status.

By July 2011, the IRS was no longer targeting just groups with certain key words in their names. Rather, the screening criteria had changed to "organizations involved with political, lobbying, or advocacy."

But then it changed again in January 2012 to cover "political action type organizations involved in limiting/expanding government, educating on the constitution and bill of rights, social economic reform/movement," according to the findings contained in a Treasury Department watchdog report.

In March 2012, after Tea Party groups complained about delays in processing of their applications, then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman was called to testify by a congressional committee. He denied that the IRS was targeting tax-exempt groups based on their politics.

The IRS said on Saturday that senior IRS executives were not aware of the screening process. The documents reviewed by Reuters do not show that Shulman had any role.

In May 2012, the criteria for scrutiny were revised again to cover a variety of tax-exempt groups "with indicators of significant amounts of political campaign intervention (raising questions as to exempt purpose and/or excess private benefit)," according to a TIGTA timeline included in the findings.

The happy scandal balloon deflated even more when two salient facts came to light: that a Bush administration appointee was in charge of the IRS at the time this happened and that the IRS has been without a commissioner since he stepped down. In spite of the presence of an acting commissioner, the big chair remains empty due to the usual GOP obstructionism:

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

Then-Commissioner Douglas Shulman, a George W. Bush appointee who stepped down in November, received a briefing from the TIGTA about what was happening in the Cincinnati office in May 2012, the aides said. His deputy and the agency’s current acting commissioner, Steven T. Miller, also learned about the matter that month, the aides said.

If the GOP still wants to place the blame on the Obama administration since this "happened on his watch," let the investigative processes commence.

Not only is the IRS "scandal" proving to be anything but, so is Benghazi. Courtesy of PoliticusUSA:

After CNN’s Jake Tapper exposed ABC’s report was based on information that was edited in order to make the Obama administration look bad, ABC tried to explain away their lies by claiming that their inaccurate story, and the actual emails are the same thing, “Assuming the email cited by Jake Tapper is accurate, it is consistent with the summary quoted by Jon Karl.”

In the process of trying to defend himself, Karl exposed his own lies, “This is how I reported the contents of that e-mail, quoting verbatim a source who reviewed the original documents and shared detailed notes.” (In his original story, Karl claimed that ABC News had obtained the emails. This obviously wasn’t true.)

Karl also explained that he and ABC News never reviewed the emails, “The source was not permitted to make copies of the original e-mails. The White House has refused multiple requests – from journalists, including myself, and from Republican leaders in Congress – to release the full e-mail exchanges.”

For the sake of getting the scoop first, ABC News managed to trip all over its own shoelaces and get shown up by the folks at CNN. But that's beside the point. What matters is the lengths Republican leaders have gone to paint Benghazi as the next Watergate. It didn't hurt that they had a little help along the way:

Jon Karl wrote that nobody could get copies the emails. If this was true, how did Jake Tapper get them?

The truth is that Karl’s source was likely someone within the Republican House, because these emails were made available to the Republicans investigating Benghazi months ago. (Before Karl came to ABC he was a congressional correspondent at CNN, so connect the dots. Plus, it wasn’t a coincidence that this story broke days before House Republicans held another Benghazi hearing.)

Jon Karl thought he found his "Deep Throat" and well...nah. Had a pretty good metaphor for this one, but it would be a bit uncouth even for DDSS standards. Jake Tapper saw an opening to make himself look good for once at Karl's expense. It's gonna make for a rather awkward meet when they run into each other at the next cocktail dinner.

What's Good Enough For The Magic Kingdom Is Good Enough For America.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Wed, 15 May 2013 07:45:00 +0000

My conversations with Senator Rubio, he happened to share with me that Disney World uses a biometric system to ensure people do not commit ticket fraud. If they are that easy, affordable and good enough for the Magic Kingdom, they ought to be good enough for the United States. Senator Sessions’ amendment would guarantee they would not be eligible for lawful citizenship until there is a biometric entry/exit system.

I do not know how leadership will ever do what Congress mandates them to do unless we use this trigger. It is that simple. I believe this is a constructed — constructive amendment that reaches the stated goals of protecting the United States system and making sure it is fair and workable. If we choose to ignore the 40 percent of immigration where we create a system that can be evaded, we have ignored our constituents concerns and failed to fix the problem.

The above comes from Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, as he explains how Walt Disney World's biometric entry and exit systems can be easily adapted to solve the nation's illegal immigration woes. This comes after fellow Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama proposed an amendment that would do just that.

With nearly 2000 miles of U.S.-Mexico border to look after and hundreds of border crossings along the way, insuring that no illegal immigrant manages to get through is a daunting, if effectively impossible task. Too many places where people and goods can slip through unnoticed and the will of those wanting to get into U.S. is powerful enough to overcome whatever setbacks the GOP throws in their way.

A Disney World security system won't solve any of those problems, but at least it will keep a few contractors well-fed and the GOP's core constituency satiated until the next moral or political crisis rattles their cages. Which leads me to wonder how they plan on paying for it all. With the sequester in full swing and government agencies scrambling to do more with less, it seems a bit foolish to fund something that even by Disney's own admission wouldn't work so well:

“It is true that Disney World used a fingerprint, and then when Disney Land went ahead to use their system they used a picture because it was better,” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said.

Still, the GOP would rather focus their energies on this than figure out a way to keep American children safe from gun violence and accidental gun discharges. Or a way to unfuck the legal immigration process. Or a way to promote economic growth throughout the continent and put a damper on drug cartel violence so people in Mexico and other countries south won't have a reason to risk life and limb to live and work in the U.S.

By the way, Sessions' Disneyland bill wound up dead at the hands of the Senate Judicial Committee in a 12 to 6 vote.

This Is What A Real Scandal Looks Like.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:00:00 +0000

President Obama’s latest cabinet-level nominees are running into deep resistance in the Senate, pitching Democrats and Republicans into another tense standoff over White House appointments.

Just days after Republicans used Senate rules to block two nominees from moving to the next step in the confirmation process despite the fact that both have the support of a majority of senators, Democrats are planning to force committee votes without Republican consent.

If Democrats do push the nominees through to the full Senate, they would almost certainly set off a Republican filibuster, which would jeopardize the confirmations and, for now, leave vacancies at the top of two federal agencies.

Republicans have objected to the nomination of Gina McCarthy to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, citing what they said were her insufficient responses to their questions. They have also sought to block the labor secretary nominee, Thomas E. Perez, a lawyer in the Justice Department, on the grounds that he is too political.

A third nominee, Penny Pritzker, a wealthy hotel heiress and a top Obama fund-raiser who has more than two decades of corporate experience, has run into resistance since Mr. Obama put her name forward this month to be the next commerce secretary. Republicans are promising to scrutinize her family’s financial dealings, including their use of offshore accounts to reduce their taxes.

Nominees at all levels of Washington’s bureaucracy — 117 of them in all, including cabinet secretaries, judges and members of obscure oversight boards — are facing delays. Just last week, the Senate confirmed David Medine, the president’s choice to lead the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The time between his nomination and confirmation was 510 days. Every Republican voted no.

The true scandal isn't at the abandoned consulate compound in Benghazi or at the various IRS offices where selective investigations of 501(c)(4) organizations originated. The true scandal lies deep within the hallowed halls of Congress, where GOP legislators are intent on blocking just about every cabinet and agency appointment possible. It's not just to spite the president and roadblock as much of his agenda as possible, but also in an attempt to fulfill their insistence that "big government doesn't work" by making it stop work:

In doing so, Republicans are not breaking the rules of the Senate. They are, however, breaking the Senate itself, and harming the government. As with all legislative chambers, and in fact all democratic institutions, the Senate runs on a combination of formal rules and informal norms. But Republicans, by refusing to accept those norms, make it impossible for the normal machinery of government to function.

And remember that this is entirely unprecedented. Until very recently, simple majority confirmation was the norm on executive branch nominations with only a handful of exceptions. Not only that, but both Democrats and Republicans agreed that in almost all cases presidents were entitled to their choices when it came to these posts.

Unprecedented, but the GOP's made an exception for President Obama since his first day in office. No surprise here.

The surprise is how this story is getting buried underneath the Benghazi and IRS narrative. Well, maybe that's not a surprise, either. At any rate, you can bet your bottom dollar that those two stories will continue to be pushed hard and often by conservative news mavens. This one, on the other hand, won't rate any greater than typical Capitol Hill background banter.

Smartypants has the GOP pegged:

I suspect that any African American who has had success in this country will be able to relate to what is happening to the President right now. Every single move he makes is scrutinized and if he ever shows his humanity by making a mistake, he is likely to face impeachment.

We should all think about that and let it sink in. I'm sure the President is very aware of that fact. He is cautious by nature and that is probably one of the reasons he was able to become our first African American president.

But in this context, caution is called for. He's carrying a lot on his shoulders...more than is possible for me to even imagine. What he needs from us now is to keeps our heads together, focus on the long game, and remember that "no drama Obama" has always been the winning ticket.

Let the Republicans be the party of hysteria. That's what a beast in its death throes does. And to paraphrase what the President said to Mitt Romney..."Please proceed, Republicans."

So far, President Obama has done a marvelous job of letting the Republicans expose themselves as an obstinate, capricious and hysterical bunch. As long as the president continues on this track, he'll remain untouchable and the GOP will hopefully see itself as the Whigs saw themselves in their twilight years.

Maybe The GOP Will Stop Talking About Benghazi Now.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Tue, 14 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

If Benghazi didn't provide enough fodder for conservatives' sense of victimhood, the following definitely will:

Internal Revenue Service officials in Washington and at least two other offices were involved in the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, making clear that the effort reached well beyond the branch in Cincinnati that was initially blamed, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea party-affiliated groups.

IRS employees in Cincinnati also told conservatives seeking the status of “social welfare” groups that a task force in Washington was overseeing their applications, according to interviews with the activists.

Lois G. Lerner, who oversees tax-exempt groups for the IRS, told reporters on Friday that the “absolutely inappropriate” actions were undertaken by “front-line people” working in Cincinnati to target groups with “tea party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

In one instance, however, Ron Bell, an IRS employee, informed an attorney representing a conservative group focused on voter fraud that the application was under review in Washington. On several other occasions, IRS officials in Washington and California sent conservative groups detailed questionnaires about their voter outreach and other activities, according to the documents.

“For the IRS to say it was some low-level group in Cincinnati is simply false,” said Cleta Mitchell, a partner in the law firm Foley & Lardner LLP who sought to communicate with IRS headquarters about the delay in granting tax-exempt status to True the Vote.

Moreover, details of the IRS’s efforts to target conservative groups reached the highest levels of the agency in May 2012, far earlier than has been disclosed, according to Republican congressional aides briefed by the IRS and the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) on the details of their reviews.

It's one thing to investigate 501(c)(4)s to make sure they stay within the legal boundaries of their status. It's another to laser target 501(c)(4)s based on their political affiliation:

Lois Lerner, head of the IRS unit that oversees tax-exempt groups, noted that the number of 501(c)(4) group applications doubled between 2010 and 2012. As a result of this influx, she explained, low-level workers at the agency’s Cincinnati office had flagged about 300 applications for additional review based on a keyword search. None had their status revoked or denied and the IRS apologized for the mistake.

While it unclear whether the IRS workers intentionally targeted conservative groups — an agency spokesman did not immediately respond to a ThinkProgress request for the complete list of keywords used — the office revealed that two of the terms on the list were “Tea Party” and “patriot.” As such, about 75 Tea Party groups were singled out for additional scrutiny.

The spike in 501(c)(4) groups comes after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision that outside groups may make unlimited political expenditures. Since then, some 501(c)(4) organizations have begun abusing the system. Though groups engaged in some political activity may qualify as “social welfare groups” and receive tax-exempt status under this section of the tax code, electioneering cannot be their predominant activity.

It remains seen whether this all was deliberate or unintentional, not that it matters much to conservative Tea Party-types. This only validates their claims of victimization by the Obama administration and chances are they'll milk it for all it's worth. That includes getting yet another round of "Impeach the Socialist Negro"...ahem..."Take Back the White House."

Where were these guys when the IRS decided to take a peek at the NAACP's books during the Bush administration?

By What Measure Is A Hero?

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Tue, 14 May 2013 01:19:00 +0000

Imperfection is a constant when it comes to the human condition, with perfection a fleeting goal fated to dangle perpetually out of reach. Nevertheless, some people expect those among them who do extraordinary things to be about as perfect as the heroes depicted in Hollywood movies. Charles Ramsey, with the help of Angelo Cordero, did the extraordinary by playing a key role in the release of three women who were abducted, confined and abused in a nearby home for a decade. He could have turned a blind eye and keep walking, but he didn't. That's what makes this so extraordinary.

Charles Ramsey isn't a perfect man. He, like all human beings, has his flaws. He's certainly made some bad decisions in his past. The Smoking Gun made sure to remind people of those bad decisions by digging up Ramsey's criminal record.

Does this make him any less of a hero? It depends on how one views his actions. Advocates in the fight against domestic violence would not be inclined to give Ramsey a pass just because he did something heroic later on, and they shouldn't. Others would say Ramsey's past shouldn't overshadow or devalue the good he's done. Does a heroic act wash away or cancel out an act of violence? It doesn't. Being a "pillar of the community" while engaging in vile behavior is the height of hypocrisy.

Unfortunately, the narrative of the day calls for any hero to be flawless in character, otherwise said hero winds up becoming a target for denigration. Our natural inclination towards hero worship demands heroes with impeccable character and moral grounding. It's part of the reason why "perfect" superheroes like Superman exist on print and film.

But just as there aren't any perfect humans, there aren't any perfect heroes, either. We manage to emphasize and reconcile ourselves with deliberately flawed heroes like Batman and the Punisher, but it seems impossible to use to do the same with flawed people in real life.

It's tough to reconcile the good someone does with the bad and to judge which one outweighs which in a given circumstance. It's even tougher to acknowledge that both can not only exist, but be seen on the same plane at the same time with an objective eye. It's worse when anyone uses the bad in a deliberate attempt to smear and marginalize the good that person's done.

Charles Ramsey is a hero, but he's also a man and a man with his share of flaws, at that.

A Junkie Named Raymond.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Thu, 09 May 2013 21:55:00 +0000

Whatever you're doing, drop it and read this. Courtesy of BuzzFeed's John Stanton and Justin Green at The Daily Beast.

There's Something About Benghazi.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Thu, 09 May 2013 03:21:00 +0000

Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames.

The above video serves as a recap of the events surrounding the five-hour attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Criticisms surrounding the attack included the claimed lack of sufficient security at the compound, as well as why additional Army forces were nowhere to be found when the consulate needed help most.* Some claimed that not only did the White House delay their response to the attack, officials also seemed reluctant to immediately pin responsibility on the usual suspect in the region (Al Qaeda). Republicans attempted to parlay these criticisms into a scandal that would hopefully leave the Obama administration tarred and feathered.

This was supposed to be an impeachable moment for the president. In Benghazi, the GOP saw Barack Obama finally meeting his very own Watergate or better still, Iran Hostage Crisis. So far, that seems about as likely as New Coke being reintroduced on the soft drink market. So Republicans simply changed targets - instead of striking at a lame duck with a seemingly unimpeachable image, they're focused on scuttling Hillary Clinton's possible 2016 presidential candidacy, notably by returning a favor:

The brief period of bipartisan peace initiated by 9/11 ended for good in May 2002. CBS News reported that the president had received an intelligence briefing in early Aug. 2001 that "specifically alerted him of a possible airliner attack in the US."

Th CBS report left much open to question, but that mattered little to Democratic leaders in Congress. They saw an opportunity to attack the president's strong suit--his leadership in the war on terrorism.

The Democrat who most aroused the ire of the White House was Hillary Clinton. She declared, "Bush had been informed last year, before 9/11, of a possible al Qaeda plot to hijack a US airliner." She held up a newspaper headline, "BUSH KNEW." "The president knew what?" Clinton asked.

To the White House, Clinton's remarks seemed calculated to manipulate the narrative concerning who should be blamed for 9/11, trying to shield the legacy of her husband's presidency by shifting blame for overlooking available intelligence away from him & onto his successor.

GOP talking heads suggest that the president had prior knowledge of an impending attack and, for whatever reason, decided to sit on that intel and let the chips fall where they did. Of course, few people asked the magic question: exactly how would the Obama administration profit by allowing such an attack to happen? Even the talking heads over at Fox & Friends are backing away from the conspiratorial mayhem surrounding Benghazi:

On Monday, the morning show hosted cable news all-star Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), for his latest in a long string of attempts to prove that the U.S. government engaged in a massive cover-up of the September 11, 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. Although hosts Gretchen Carlson, Steve Doocy, and Brian Kilmeade are normally happy to promote a good conspiracy theory — for example, they recently seriously questioned whether or not NBC is replacing Jay Leno on The Tonight Show because he made a joke about President Obama — even they’re fed up with Chaffetz’s unsupported claims that “we were certainly misled every step of the way.”

“Are you saying that admirals Pickering and Mullen are complicit because they did the review board?” Kilmeade asked of Chaffetz’s suggestion that the government manipulated the findings of the Accountability Review Board report on the attack. “Are you saying that the CIA is complicit because they allowed their talking points to be edited?”

“What were they trying to cover up?” Doocy asked.

“You had the former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta — who was revered by both sides of the fence — coming out and saying, ‘Hey, we couldn’t have gotten anybody there.’ So you have him on the line. You have former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, President Obama, Admiral Mullen. Would all of these people go to bat just to get President Obama re-elected?” Carlson asked.

If anyone's pondering the motives of the GOP, it isn't to get down to the bottom of whether the deaths of J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods could easily have been prevented. By hitching the current Secretary of State's wagon to the Benghazi conspiracy hobby horse, Republicans like Representative Darrell Issa hope to at least neutralize a potential problem before the 2016 primaries. If Hillary becomes the chosen front-runner for 2016, GOP candidates the likes of Paul Ryan go from expecting a lazy cruise down the boulevard of guaranteed electoral victory to dreading a much-harder slog down a muddy road.

No, it's not about the memories of the four men who died in honorable service to their country. If it were, you wouldn't have Mike Huckabee salivating at the prospect of an impeachment-worthy scandal, nor would you have other GOPers having flashbacks to former president Bill Clinton's impeachment, along with pains of regret at how it didn't result in his resignation or removal from office:

“I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term. I know that puts me on a limb,” the former Arkansas governor said on “The Mike Huckabee Show.” “But this is not minor. It wasn’t minor when Richard Nixon lied to the American people and worked with those in his administration to cover-up what really happened in Watergate. But, I remind you — as bad as Watergate was, because it broke the trust between the president and the people, no one died. This is more serious because four Americans did in fact die.”

Huckabee, however, said his predication about Obama “will not happen” if the Democrats seize control of the House and retain control of the Senate next year.

There's that tinge of bitter regret, that GOP efforts to return the favor for Watergate never panned out the way they wanted. It's also highly unlikely that President Obama will ever face impeachment for a GOP-manufactured scandal, regardless if the House and Senate fall under Republican control. It's the main reason why Benghazi was transformed into a campaign issue to raise Mitt Romney's falling star and a referendum on the administration's foreign policy and military capabilities, then reworked into an abortifacient for Hillary Clinton's possible 2016 presidential candidacy.

As long as the GOP figures it can keep pushing Benghazi as the ultimate trump card that finally flushes President Obama out of office and kneecaps one of the strongest names bandied about for 2016, you'll keep seeing and hearing the likes of Issa and Hucklebee fall over themselves to create something out of not much.

As an aside, attacks on U.S. consulates, embassies and other assets aren't as far-fetched as it appears to be. The U.S. does its best to head off such events in the first place and defend against them when they occur, but there's a measure of acceptable risk involved. The four men who died in Benghazi likely understood that clearly, while the same can't be said for the average American. According to Jeffrey Goldberg, Benghazi laid waste to an often-thought belief that complete and total security of U.S. assets was readily attainable in the ever-volatile Middle East:

Here’s the problem with Issa’s stunning insight: In his desire to cast the administration as incompetent, he does an enormous disservice to the cause of forward-leaning diplomacy and engagement. American embassies are already fortresses. Issa would dig a moat around them. After a point, there’s simply no reason to dispatch diplomats to hostile capitals if they can’t engage with actual citizens. Risk is inherent for U.S. diplomats posted to the Middle East.

The answer to the problem posed by the Benghazi attack isn’t to swaddle our overseas personnel in ever more elaborate layers of security. The answer is better intelligence and a willingness to talk straight about risk.

Our leaders -- of both parties -- have systematically infantilized Americans to believe that perfect security is attainable. This is one reason the White House reacts so defensively to any intimation that its conduct of the war on al-Qaeda is less than perfect. It’s one reason Republicans cynically argue that the administration is incompetent in its prosecution of the war, and in its mission to keep U.S. personnel alive. So long as both parties react so small-mindedly and opportunistically to the terrorist threat, we won’t be able to have a rational, adult conversation about the best ways to wage this war.

If that were possible, Afghanistan and Iraq would still be thought of in terms of "Soviet invasion" and "Desert Storm." After all, having a rational, adult conversation about waging war usually results in reasons not to wage war in the first place.

*CIA forces stationed on the compound, as well as forces sent from Tripoli, were instrumental in saving the lives of other consulate staff.

"Zero Tolerance," Double Standards, Common Sense And You.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Thu, 02 May 2013 06:49:00 +0000

Almost every schoolkid has had the opportunity of taking part in a science project. Ever since the Space Race and the subsequent national imperative to gift kids with "the right stuff" to kick ass in the hard sciences, science projects have practically become the cornerstone of the public (and private) education experience. Yours truly had his fair share of messing with noxious chemicals, dissecting starfish, polishing mirrors and watching stuff get blown up, frozen and knocked around. For science.

Of course, there's always the science project that goes wrong. Most times when it isn't life or property-threatening, it's usually hilarious. Hollywood tells us so. Apparently, the fine folks of Polk County Schools didn't think what 16-year-old Kiera Wilmot did was funny, even if it was purely by accident:

A 16-year-old Bartow High School student was arrested Monday on allegations she detonated a bottle of explosive materials on the school grounds.

No one was hurt in the morning explosion, nor was school property damaged, said Principal Ron Pritchard.

Kiera Roslyn Wilmot* was charged with making, possessing or discharging a destructive device and with possessing or discharging weapons on school grounds. Both charges are felonies.

The girl told authorities she was conducting a science experiment, according to Bartow police, but science teachers at the school said they knew nothing about it. She also said she thought the materials would produce only smoke, not an explosion, police said.

According to the story, there wasn't any malicious intent. Just a 16-year-old kid who didn't think this experiment through. Besides, mixing up household chemicals at 7 in the morning in a sparsely-populated area in the hopes of making a little smoke isn't on par with, say, wiring up a PVC pipe bomb and shoving it under a teacher's desk just in time for homeroom. Nevertheless, she was placed under arrest:

Pritchard said he was standing nearby when the student left the drink bottle behind the cafeteria, near the lake on the school's east side.

"It was next to the gazebo by the lake," he said. "I wasn't standing too far away when it happened. I just heard the pop, and I turned around. I thought it was a firecracker at first."

Household materials were used to create the explosion, said Bartow police Lt. Gary McLin. He declined to say what those materials were, but said the information is available through the Internet.

Pritchard said the girl didn't leave the area after the bottle exploded.

"She left it on the ground, and she stayed there," he said. "We went over to where she was. She saw that we saw her, so she didn't take off."

He said she was taken to the school's office, where police took her into custody.

The explosion occurred about 7 a.m., about the time classes started.

"There weren't a lot of kids there," Pritchard said. "There were maybe half a dozen kids in the area where she was, and nobody was hurt by it."

Wilmot was transported to the county's Juvenile Assessment Center in Bartow following her arrest.

Adult felony charges for blowing the cap off a water bottle, something that grown adults do with a pack of Mentos and a two-liter of Coke.

Not long after Wilmot’s experiment, authorities arrested her and charged her with “possession/discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device,” according to WTSP-TV. The school district proceeded to expel Wilmot for handling the “dangerous weapon,” also known as a water bottle. She will have to complete her high school education through an expulsion program.

Given the likes of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, among others and America's overall skittishness when it comes to anything that could potentially be construed as "terrorism," it's little wonder things are playing out the way they are for Kiera. "Zero tolerance" also has a lot to do with it, too.

Most public schools today are big on zero tolerance policies that punitively punish students in this manner. It's a win for administrators who want to maintain ironclad discipline and remain tough in the face of the "post-9/11" environment. When it comes to zero tolerance, there's no nuance, no exceptions and little, if anything, in the way of considerations - in most cases, school administrators will blindly follow policy because it's the path of least resistance (and liability). It's how victims of bullying end up expelled after defending themselves or how students are placed in cuffs for bringing an aspirin to school.

It's how a student with a stellar academic record and a clean disciplinary record may end up with a felony record, something that'll kneecap her education and career prospects right off the bat. Her induction into the annals of the U.S. justice system may snuff out any sort of spark she had before. You don't need a gun to kill a promising young black person - just shove them into the school-to-prison pipeline using zero tolerance policies and watch as they die an agonizingly slow death.

I can't help but think if any considerations would have been made if she was a bit more "photogenic" in a "mainstream" way. Or maybe if she was a clean-cut male student with a promising future and plenty of remorse for his actions. I just hope that school district administrators and law enforcement officials manage to find some common sense and not railroad a young woman into a bleak future.

*Address removed.

"I'm Not A Bum, I'm A Human Being."

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 14:30:00 +0000

Watch as Ronald Davis tells of his time on the streets of Chicago. As more people find themselves out of work and out of a home, they're left to fend for themselves and struggle on the streets.

Most Americans don't understand how close they are to ending up in Ronald's shoes.

Bombings At The Boston Marathon.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 10:17:00 +0000

At least three people were killed and 144 wounded, with 17 in critical condition and 25 in serious condition. An eight-year-old was among the three killed and eight other children were among those hospitalized, according to CNN. Other reports indicated that several wounded had lost limbs because of the attack, a bitter irony considering the day's event.

So far, there are no suspects, although the peanut gallery is already hard at work assigning blame for this tragedy. I'd rather not and I wish others wouldn't. Let's just try to help those who need it most in this trying time.

Boston Mayor's Hotline for families of victims: 617-635-4500
Boston Police line for witnesses who may have information: 800-494-8477
Google Person Finder
Red Cross Safe and Well

Rick Ross, Rap Lyrics, Rape And You.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 06:05:00 +0000

Today, yours truly will take a look at Rick Ross. No, not "Freeway" Rick Ross, infamous L.A.-based drug dealer with possible but not concretely proven CIA connections. I'm talking about William Roberts, the former corrections officer who appropriated Rick Ross's story and image to launch his own commercial rap career.

I've actually listened to a few of Rick Ross's songs and they come off as the typical formulaic pablum that epitomizes commercial rap music: a few lines of verse about the money you're making, a few more about your material possessions, some mentions about your drug dealing/gangster past and how you still retain the capacity to kill in spite of your current profession, some lines about your sexual prowess and conquests, all topped off with a few shoutouts to your allies in the commercial rap business, packaged to either a machine-generated beat or a "sample" of some 70s/80s/90s R&B or soul tune, slowed down or sped up to invoke "fair use" and avoid royalty payments.

In normal circumstances, Rick Ross wouldn't interest me. Except he's caught some flak over the lyrics in rapper Rocko's "U.O.E.N.O," an onomatopoeia for “you don’t even know.” Crafty wordsmiths, these folks.

In particular, these two lines:

Put Molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it
I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain't even know it

Uh oh. Did "the Boss" just suggest that he slipped something (most likely MDMA or GHB) in her drink and then had sex with her, presumably while she was unconscious or too drugged up to notice?

People say it's just lyrics. He probably meant nothing by it. At least that was Rick Ross's argument at first:

I wanted to come down to the radio station. There is certain things you can’t tweet, you have to verbalize. I want to make sure this is clear, that woman is the most precious gift known to man, you understand? It was a misunderstanding with a lyric, a misinterpretation where the term rape wasn’t used. I would never use the term rape. As far as my camp, hip hop don’t condone that. The streets don’t condone that. Nobody condones that. So I wanted to reach out to all the queens that’s on my timeline, all the sexy ladies, the beautiful ladies that have been reaching out to me with the misunderstanding. We don’t condone rape and I’m not with that.

It's the type of mea culpa that usually comes in printed or online press releases. If anyone was expecting a heartfelt apology, waiting for it would be akin to waiting for Godot. Or for the next C-Tran bus at Southlake Mall.

Unlike that severely-underfunded and ultimately axed bus service, the criticism kept coming. As Talib Kweli and others took Ricky to the woodshed over his lyrics and as Ultraviolet started a concerted effort to shorn the rapper of his promotional deal with Reebok, Ross issued two more relatively weak appeals to his critics and fans:

I dont condone rape.Apologies for the #lyric interpreted as rape. #BOSS
— Mastermind (@rickyrozay) April 4, 2013

Apologies to my many business partners,who would never promote violence against women. @reebokclassics @ultraviolet
— Mastermind (@rickyrozay) April 4, 2013

His fans will forgive him. Chances are they're only upset at everyone else being so hard on Ricky. To understand why, it means realizing how Rick Ross's lyrics (and those of other rappers) are both a reflection and a product of the culture that enables and glorifies the activity described by those lyrics. It's an echo chamber that amplifies itself many times over, with little to no opportunity for any positive message to break the cycle. Not that the people who are actually making money off of this stuff (music executives and their shareholders) mind - it'd probably be bad business to interrupt the cycle.

But interrupt someone must. These lyrics reflect and reinforce a rape culture that promotes an overall view of women as sex objects who are duty-bound to either "give up the pussy" or have it taken, whether by fraud, deception or force. These sentiments echo throughout the rap subculture, to be internalized by fans who live vicariously through the imaginative storytelling of each song or through observing and emulating the actions of rappers and others around them.

In the end, Rick Ross's apologies don't mean much. When things die down as they usually do in today's world of accelerated media cycles, he'll go back to doing the same thing he's been doing and get rewarded handsomely for it. At worst, he might lose his deal with Reebok, but that'll probably be it. Dismantling rape culture won't happen from the top, at least not solely on backhanding rappers who step over the line. On this issue, the line's been crossed hundreds of miles ago.

Whenever the question of how to end rape culture comes about, solutions are always expected to be brought forth and put into play by the womenfolk. That's over and done, as it should have been a long time ago. Asking women to continuously shoulder the burden of preventing rape and blaming them when it happens while giving men implied card blanche on the issue is something that should end, posthaste.

In other words, the beginning of the end of rape culture will happen once us menfolk finally understand and internalize one thing and one thing only: don't rape.

Translation: the pussy is not yours to take.

P.S. If you have kids, don't let them consume commercial rap in their formative years. Yours truly spent most of his childhood blissfully unaware of rap while being exposed to copious amounts of jazz, R&B, soul and soft rock. The impact it made on my growing up was drastically different than the kids next door, who were basically given free rein to listen to commercial rap.

Choose Your Words Carefully.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 09:30:00 +0000

Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!

James 3:5, King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)

Right about now, Alabama State Rep. Joe Mitchell of Mobile probably wishes he had exercised a bit of decorum, now that a comment of his has turned into kindling for opportunistic GOPers and the idiot masses. So what happened? I'll leave that to Redeye:

Let's recap. Retired coal miner and Jefferson County resident Eddie Maxwell sent a mass email to all Alabama Legislators "warning them that even attempting to introduce a gun control bill was, in his opinion, a violation of state law." Oh really?

Instead of ignoring Maxwell's email, or, sending out the standard thank your for contacting my office blah, blah, blab, blab auto reply, Rep. Mitchell chose to respond in the following manner;

"Your folk never used all this sheit (sic) to protect my folk from your slave-holding, murdering, adulterous, baby-raping, incestuous, snaggle-toothed, backward-a**ed, inbreed (sic), imported criminal-minded kin folk."

He's speaking truth to power, no matter how many people would admit otherwise. Lots of people would dismiss the above as a wild, crazy outburst from a race card-waving black guy who needs to sit hisself down somewheres. But Rep. Mitchell's entitled to be as pissed as he wants - as far as I'm concerned, given the history of the Great State of Alabama and elsewhere in the Deep South and its collective track record for racial discrimination and wanton violence, he's earned that right and then some.

However, in an age where saying the wrong things could have a team of Breitbart's best ratfuckers gnaw through your image and reputation like field mice through Australian farmland, something like the above could cost you dearly. I imagine Rep. Mitchell's from the old school, where he's never had to deal with that kind of crap. Until now. He's already being cast as "eccentric," which is about a step and a half away from "crazy" and two from "insane."

Already is his outburst being equated with that of State Senator Scott Beason's "aborigine" remarks. Just part and parcel of the ongoing drive to prove that blacks can be just as racist as white folk. For a brief moment, whites can take refuge from the burning spotlight and show those blacks how it feels to be under scrutiny for racism, for once.

Saying the wrong things at the wrong time has its consequences, as an unnamed commissioner and then-manager Thomas Andrews of the Fulton County Department of Human Services shortly realized during a discrimination lawsuit launched by a former employee. Having fellow colleagues say that there were "too many white boys" on the staff was one of the things that cinched a settlement for the white ex-employee.

I doubt Rep. Mitchell will step down from his position, although state GOPers wouldn't mind one bit if he does. Just another slot for the Grand Old Party to slide a conservative candidate into. I also doubt his constituents would throw him under the bus like his own party is doing. It seems the Alabama Democratic Party is doing more than its fair share to ensure that Alabama remains a defacto one-party state under GOP dominance for decades to come.

H/T to Redeye for his continuing reports on the shenanigans going down back in my home state.

Dear Mr. White Man, I Wish You Understood...

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:16:00 +0000

The above is a collaboration between country-pop singer Brad Paisley and noted R&B/hip-hop artist LL Cool J. Take a moment and listen to the lyrics. If you happen to be of the corn-fed good-ol-boy persuasion, try your best not to shut it off as soon as LL Cool J's vocals appear.

For those not familiar with American history, the above is the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, as used by the primary force of the Confederate States of America. As it became increasingly well-known as the rallying visual of the Confederacy, the red, white and blue heraldic saltire found its way on the second national flag of the CSA sometime around 1863.

For generations after the end of the American Civil War, the battle flag evolved into a versatile symbol for many people. For many, it's the symbol of proud southern heritage. For some, a soothing balm to lessen the historical sting of defeat (i.e. "The South Shall Rise Again"). For others, it's a reminder of the Confederacy's failure as a splinter nation and an encapsulation of the odious practices that went on even before the idea of a confederacy was ever broached. It's also been used as a symbol of rebellion and defiance - take note of Georgia's addition of the saltire to the state flag in 1956 as a "fuck you" response towards Brown vs. Board of Education, for instance.

For black Americans, it's a symbol of white society's disdain and utter hatred of blacks under any capacity other than bonded labor and occasional entertainment. Throughout the Southeast U.S. and even points further north, the battle flag's been the rallying brand of people and groups dedicated to curtailing and exterminating the rights of black citizens, from the Ku Klux Klan to the seemingly innocuous and benign "concerned citizens" groups.

To many black Americans, the battle flag is akin to the old "Whites Only" signs of the Jim Crow era - wherever one's flown, hung, printed or posted, it's simply means one thing and one thing only to most blacks: "You're not welcome here."

That's what "Accidental Racist" is all about - a white guy who wants to show off his southern pride but winds up representing all the ills that come with his choice of symbol. At the risk of "Godwin"-ing this blog post, I'll just say that outside of underground hate groups you won't hear of anyone belting a polemic tome bemoaning the stigma of the Nazi flag when they were only trying to show off their National Socialist pride. He bemoans how people see him whenever he decides to embrace the battle flag of the Confederacy as a symbol for southern pride.

Later in the song comes LL Cool J to not only compare Brad Paisley's suffering of stereotypes to his own, but also to beg "Mr. White Man" to overlook his appearance, disregard stereotypes and see LL for LL himself, similar to what Paisley's asking of his listeners. Speaking of LL's vocals, here are his main verses, courtesy of Sharon W.:

Dear Mr. White Man, I wish you understood
What the world is really like when you're livin' in the hood
Just because my pants are saggin' doesn't mean I'm up to no good
You should try to get to know me, I really wish you would
Now my chains are gold but I'm still misunderstood
I wasn't there when Sherman's March turned the south into firewood
I want you to get paid but be a slave I never could
Feel like a new fangled Django, dodgin' invisible white hoods
So when I see that white cowboy hat, I'm thinkin' it's not all good
I guess we're both guilty of judgin' the cover not the book
I'd love to buy you a beer, conversate and clear the air
But I see that red flag and I think you wish I wasn't here

"Dear Mr. White Man, I wish you understood." That's LL's refrain.

Truth be told, most black Americans have little to no desire to understand their white counterparts' wish to embrace a symbol representing some of the worst excesses of racial antagonism, violence and discrimination, just as Mr. White Man has little to no desire to understand his black counterparts in any way, shape or form that doesn't comply with their own idea of black Americans.

"I guess we're both guilty of judgin' the cover not the book." Doo-rags, gold chains, sagging pants, oversized white T-shirts and expensive designer athletic shoes are attire that's usually associated with "Ghetto culture" and criminal behavior, as far as the majority of white Americans are concerned. Most whites become distinctly uncomfortable upon seeing a black male dressed this way.

Likewise, most blacks become distinctly uncomfortable upon seeing a white male sporting anything with the battle flag on it, thanks in large part to what that symbol represents to them. They have no way of discerning the wearer's true intentions for donning it, nor can they simply take them at their word if they directly ask why they chose to don it. Weary, suspicious looks and a desire for avoidance are a given for both scenarios.

Sadly, "Accidental Racist" goes a ways to equate doo-rags and sagging pants as equal to Confederate imagery, which they aren't, no matter how many black-on-white or black-on-black crime stats anyone throws at the argument to make it stick. Contrary to what today's media and what most white Americans would suggest, there's no black analogue to the Ku Klux Klan. And for those wondering, the Black Panthers and other radical black groups come nowhere close to the Klan's historical track record for violence against blacks and other minorities. LL Cool J punts the ball by claiming a variation of "Both Sides Do It," equating black urban dress to one's embrace of the battle flag. Gold chains do not equal iron chains, LL.

Personally speaking, I wouldn't have minded if the Union made a more concerted effort to disinfect the South and the U.S. as a whole of Confederacy instead of letting bygones be bygones, similar to how it was impressed upon the German government to disinfect the country of Nazism. I genuinely believe Reconstruction was America's last chance to settle the issue of race, namely by honoring its commitment towards freedom and equality when it came to black Americans. By not grabbing the bull by the horns when we had the chance, we have to accept feel-good pablum like "Accidental Racist" that does little to nothing when it comes to confronting racial animosity.

But hey, at least Brad and LL are shoo-ins for a Grammy nomination or two, right?

EDIT: After this, I looked at other responses to "Accidental Racist." Here's a decidedly non-diplomatic take from Illuminati Zozo:

You know what the most fucked up thing about “Accidental Racist” is?

It’s how fucking one-sided it is

It puts the blame for a white man sporting a Confederate Flag as being racist squarely on the shoulders of black people for perceiving it that way instead of “letting go of history”

instead of actually soul-search (well, we know white people don’t have souls, but whatevs) and choosing to relinquish imagery that everyone has a god damn right to judge someone for rocking.

Even worse is LL Cool J’s coonery on that track.

We, as black people, don’t need to apologize for gold chains, du-rags or saggy pants - white people were the ones who arbitrarily decided that shit was bad as a way to demonize. White people are the ones who created a cultural climate where a god damn fucking teenager wearing a hoodie gets hunted down like a dog in the night and fucking MURDERED.

You know who decided the confederate flag was a bad thing? Fucking white people when they decided to fly that shit as they demanded their right to keep slaves. Fucking history teaches us to abhor those symbols.

If that wasn't enough, then I don't know what else to tell ya.

Margaret Thatcher.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:14:00 +0000

Former Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher has died "peacefully" at the age of 87 after suffering a stroke while staying at the Ritz hotel in central London.

David Cameron called her a "great Briton" and the Queen spoke of her sadness at the death.

Lady Thatcher was Conservative prime minister from 1979 to 1990. She was the first woman to hold the role.

She will not have a state funeral but will be accorded the same status as Princess Diana and the Queen Mother.

The ceremony, with full military honours, will take place at London's St Paul's Cathedral.

The union jack above Number 10 Downing Street has been lowered to half-mast while Parliament will be recalled from its Easter recess on Wednesday to enable MPs to pay tributes to the former prime minister.

The "Iron Lady" was by no means a nice person. Her drive to place government under the aegis of private industry, smother union labor and her support of the Apartheid-era South African and Pinochet-era Chilean governments puts her in the doghouse, for all intents. Unfortunately, Brits will now have the pleasure of seeing her legacy rewritten in the same way as done for conservative America's dearly sainted Ronald Reagan.

Still, that doesn't mean anyone has the right to call her the C-word.

The Man Revisits "The True Reasons Why Conservatives Are Against Gay Marriage."

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 09:20:00 +0000

Just as I finished writing "The True Reasons Why Conservatives Are Against Gay Marriage," I found out Bill Schmalfeldt, the man behind the Daily Kos article referenced therein, was banned from the blogging network days after writing his article. As I mentioned at the end, it didn't sit well with a lot of Kos commentators and Schmalfeldt wound up with worse for wear because of it.

It got to the point where Daily Kos readers were actively calling for Schmalfeldt to issue a mea culpa and delete his diary post. Instead of a mea culpa, Schmalfeldt wrote another post that politely told anyone who was offended where they could go, for all intents and purposes.

Was Schmalfeldt's piece offensive? Yours truly didn't think it was, but then again, I'm a guy with an eye towards biting sarcasm and satire. I saw the vast majority of the piece as dripping with sarcasm, especially when it came to the following:

Heck, if you're a man and you're honest with yourself, you LIKE being on the "doling it out" end of anal sex. How many heterosexual men reading this diary right now have never asked their wife or girlfriend to just take a deep breath, relax, "I'll just put in the tip and we'll see how it goes," and then you ram it home like Captain Kidd jamming his sword back into his scabbard while she hollers "takeitouttakeitouttakeitout" and you tell her to just relax and it won't hurt so bad and she starts kicking and screaming "takeitOUTtakeitOUTtakeitOUT youfuckingbastardpieceofshit" and you finally do (because the walls are thin and your neighbors just LOVE calling the cops) and you tell her she should have at least given herself a chance to relax and enjoy it and she (if she's your wife) doesn't let you anywhere near her with "that thing" for weeks and if she's your girlfriend she stops returning your calls?

Some people thought Schmalfeldt was being callous and juvenile. Others thought he actually condoned rough, non-consensual sex, gay or straight. A few commentators pointed out what they thought to be "rape language" and took Schmalfeldt to task. Two commentators who were rape survivors were "triggered" by the prostate exam illustration (yes, the same one that was also posted in "The True Reasons Why Conservatives Are Against Gay Marriage.") The criticism bordered on vitriolic and borderline-slanderous, so much so that one commentator chimed in, worried that defending Schmalfeldt would get him banned from Daily Kos.

I wanted to get some background on the whole thing and find out what Schmalfeldt was all about. Instead, I ran into what reads as a gloat piece from Robert Stacy McCain's blog:

Schmalfeldt created that Photoshop of Palin bleeding with a stake through her forehead to illustrate a post he wrote under his “Bill Matthews” alias at the Examiner, a deceit he perpetrated after his harassment of fellow Examiner contributors got Schmalfeldt axed as the “Liberal in Baltimore” columnist at the Examiner. He returned as “Bill Matthews” of Wisconsin (despite being a Maryland resident not named Matthews) and kept up that charade until getting banned permanently from the Examiner in August.

Photoshopped images of Republicans spattered in blood is a favorite theme with Schmalfeldt, as shown by an image of Allen West he created to illustrate a May post at Daily Kos.
So much for the Schmalfeldt “image integrity” lecture, eh? My apologies for using “Schmalfeldt” and “integrity” in the same sentence.

Schmalfeldt is forever burning bridges behind him as he careens from disaster to disaster caused by his antisocial personality. He never accepts responsibility for his failures, always externalizing blame onto his scapegoated enemies. The classic example of this was when Schmalfeldt, clumsily attempting to smear “homophobic” conservatives, published a May 18 Daily Kos diary about anal sex.

Go ahead and click that link. Double-dog dare ya.

To say that Schmalfeldt’s graphic discussion of what he called “the Butt Stuff” was obscene and offensive is to understate the matter. Perhaps the most adequate description is “Too Disgusting for Daily Kos,” which is really saying something.

And another from Lee Stranahan:

R.S. McCain has been putting the career of Bill Schmalfeldt into proper perspective over at The Other McCain and it felt it was time to highlight another aspect of Schmalfeldt’s work and personality.

Bill Schmalfeldt is disgusting.

That sounds like a petty insult. It’s not. In the case of Mr. Schmalfeldt, it’s true and very specific. He is intentionally sickeningly repulsive and his writings show a sexual obsession that is profoundly disturbing.

I’m not a prude. I’m not easily offended. This isn’t even a liberal / conservative thing. Bill Schmalfeldt actually managed to offend the readers at the Daily Kos so much that he was essentially run off the website back in May of this year in an article entitled The REAL Conservative Case Against Gay Marriage.

Say, where have we heard that name before? Last mention of Stranahan on DDSS was on the "SWAT-Gate" post, where he played a rather significant role alongside Brandon Darby in their complex hit job of political activist and infamous "Speedway Bomber" Brett Kimberlin. These days, the former liberal-turned-conservative feathers his bed over at Breitbart.

After wading through various posts from McCain, Stranahan, Schmalfeldt himself and Matt Osborne, what I found was...a mess. Stranahan claims he's been stalked and harassed by Schmalfeldt, McCain piles on in defense of Stranahan and Schmalfeldt attacks Stranahan by bringing up countless unsavory aspects of his life before touching the helm of St. Andrew's stained garment.

There's little point in trying to sort this shit out except for my own general amusement, so I'll save others the drama and stop here. In short, I thought the criticism aimed at Schmalfeldt's article back at Daily Kos was overdone and borderline malicious. I also thought Schmalfeldt's banishment from Daily Kos was a bit heavy-handed, as well. In a way, it makes me glad to have my own blog, where I don't have to worry about being shut out after posting material that others find controversial.

A Sunday Sermon That Won't Be Forgotten.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:45:00 +0000

"I hear all the time the expression 'the good old days'," Leon said. "Well, the good old days, we forget they have been good for some, but they weren't good for everybody.

"You can't go back, you can't live in the past," he added. "It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling people back...for Blacks to be back in the back of the bus, for women to be back in the kitchen, for gays to be in the closet and for immigrants to be on their side of the border."

"What you and I understand," Leon said, "is that when Jesus says, 'You can't hang onto me,' he says, 'You know it's not about the past, it's not about the before, it's not about the way things were, but about the way things can be in the now.'"

The above comes from a sermon delivered by Dr. Luis Leon at St. John's Episcopal Church on Easter Sunday. It just so happened that the president and First Family were in attendance. You can see where this is going.

Predictably, folks on the right aren't taking Dr. Leon's moment of "real talk" too well - in fact, they're having flashbacks of Dr. Jeremiah Wright's infamous sermon and they're looking forward to seeing the president toss the good pastor under the bus in the same manner. I doubt that'll happen, but you can count on conservatives grinding their axes on this particular stone for the next few months. And you can count on CNN, NPR and other mainstream outlets politely tut-tut the president for encouraging this sort of thing.

Look beyond the consternation and manufactured outrage and you'll see a blinding, glaring truth that very few want to acknowledge or embrace:

"You can't go back, you can't live in the past," he added. "It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling people back...for Blacks to be back in the back of the bus, for women to be back in the kitchen, for gays to be in the closet and for immigrants to be on their side of the border."

Which is what conservatives have been asking for all along, only in various ways that easily pass muster in a polite society where blatant talk is absolutely unacceptable. If it isn't curtailing women's rights by leaving their reproductive faculties under the control of state legislatures via abortion and birth control bans, then its putting an end to GLBT rights, same-sex marriages and fair treatment of illegal immigrants. I won't even mention the designs these folks have for black Americans - needless to say, it ain't pretty.

Thing is, conservatives absolutely hate it when these things are put out in the open. They hate it even more when they get called out on it. Some folks even resort to unabashed projection - anointed conservative mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh called the president "a racist" who "promotes racist behavior whenever he can" and "inspires racism":

“Obama’s presence inspires this guy to go all divisive, all racist. And start jamming on the Republicans for wanting blacks in the back of the bus, women back in the kitchen, when he can’t name a single person who does.”

I think he means the president can't name a single Person That Matters™ who's stupid enough to openly ask for these things - that's something you'd do only via dog whistles and codewords.

Truth isn't something that can be borne lightly; some people can't stand to bear it at all. Nevertheless, offering truth at every opportunity is the key to changing society for the better. If that means conservatives and their mouthpieces catch the vapors over it, then so be it.

By the way, the president looked rather dapper on this Sunday outing.

The True Reasons Why Conservatives Are Against Gay Marriage.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 05:21:00 +0000

Bill Schmalfeldt of Daily Kos penned an article about why Conservatives take a remarkable dislike to gay marriage, which itself was a response to Larry A. Herzberg's piece at Little Green Footballs. Herzberg starts out by pondering the religious aspect of conservative objection to gay marriage and goes from there, eventually coming to the following:

Could this be the correct explanation of the fear? Could it be that conservatives (subconsciously?) believe that if same-sex marriage were to become more accepted and hence more common, heterosexuals would actually begin converting their sexual orientation? Could conservatives really (subconsciously?) believe that gay sex is so much better than straight sex, or that switching one’s sexual preference is, at least for most people, as easy as switching brands? It sounds silly, but you do often hear conservatives fantasizing about gay folks - especially teachers - “recruiting” children who would otherwise be straight, as if changing or determining someone’s sexual orientation - even a child’s - were as easy as giving them the right sales pitch!

The whole "homosexuals = pedophiles" theme was popular among conservatives back in the day, despite how utterly absurd it was to tie pedophilia with sexual orientation. I have a feeling that theme indulged in their idea of homosexuality, which was along the Greco-Roman lines of elder Senators enjoying a bathhouse romp with their catamite companions.

Herzberg comes close, but it takes Schmalfeldt to get a step closer to what's really tweaking conservatives about gay marriage. Schmalfeldt starts by exploring how conservatives have no problem with certain sexual acts, just as long as it's kept within the confines of smoking-hot fantasy lesbianism (and there always has to be an opening for the menfolk to jump in and turn it into a threesome) and the "giving" end of anal sex (with women, mind you).*

So finally, Schmalfeldt hits on his two reasons why conservatives dread "teh gey": either it's because conservatives have repressed their true sexual leanings for so long that they tend to explode in illicit toe-tapping sessions in airport bathroom stalls or because they assume that since homosexuals likely have as much trouble as they do when it comes to keeping their sexual drive in check, they'd just as gladly hunt down some prime straight virgin man-meat:

THAT is the problem with gay marriage. It's not the fact that it's same sex have sex with the same sex (as long as it's only women). It's not that anal sex is disgusting, because who hasn't tried to get away with it at least once in a heterosexual relationship (sorry, honey... I missed!) or that we find oral sex to be immoral and de facto sodomy (which we don't even when we say we do).

The bottom line (giggle) is that stupid straight people are scared that rampaging hoards of GAYS are going to ATTACK THEM and FORCE THEIR wing wangs up their pooter holes and OBAMA SAYS IT'S OK NOW!

Close, but no cigar. Not THAT cigar, damnit.**

Let's back it up to a following passage that got my attention. At least it was one of the things that led to a sort of "Eureka!" moment:

2. You are ignorant heterosexual who -- because YOU would gladly fuck a warm piece of liver if no one was looking -- believes that all gay men will find YOU attractive and want to force their sexual attentions on YOU! Men over 40 don't even like going to the doctor because they know the doc will stick a well-lubricated, gloved finger "up there." The idea of being run to ground by hoards of pantless gay men with their throbbing manhoods acting like divining wands in the search for "virgin ass" terrifies you.

Schmalfeldt was right there...and he walked right past the door. Let's back up by isolating one key sentence from the above:

Men over 40 don't even like going to the doctor because they know the doc will stick a well-lubricated, gloved finger "up there."

Why not? Here's the second piece to that puzzle that helped put everything in perspective:

Ladies and gents, what that gloved finger is pressing against is the male prostate. What does it do? Let's see what good ol' Wikipedia has to say about it:

The function of the prostate is to secrete a slightly alkaline fluid, milky or white in appearance,[5] that usually constitutes 50–75% of the volume of the semen along with spermatozoa and seminal vesicle fluid.[5] Semen is made alkaline overall with the secretions from the other contributing glands, including, at least, the seminal vesicle fluid. The alkalinity of semen helps neutralize the acidity of the vaginal tract, prolonging the lifespan of sperm. The alkalinization of semen is primarily accomplished through secretion from the seminal vesicles.[6] The prostatic fluid is expelled in the first ejaculate fractions, together with most of the spermatozoa. In comparison with the few spermatozoa expelled together with mainly seminal vesicular fluid, those expelled in prostatic fluid have better motility, longer survival and better protection of the genetic material. The prostate also contains some smooth muscles that help expel semen during ejaculation.

It does that, but it also does something else, too:

The male prostate is biologically homologous to the Skene's gland;[33][34] it has been unofficially called the male G-Spot because it can also be used as an erogenous zone.[35] It is located where the rectum joins the colon, about 50 mm (2 in) from the anus, and when aroused it is a walnut-shaped swelling.

Oh dear.

If done correctly the prostate milking or prostate orgasms can be extremely intense-up to 400% stronger and last up to 5 minutes. These intense prostate orgasms from prostate milking are what makes the prostate milking for pleasurably for males.

Oh dear oh dear. It all puts those toe-taps and that "wide stance" under an entirely new perspective.

It's not just that being the recipient of male-on-male anal sex is seen as humiliating (as is any sexual action that involves submissive behavior on a man's part, especially towards another man), it's deriving any sort of pleasure from it that's likely to screw with a conservative heterosexual's head. The concept of "body betrayal" seems just as valid when applied to the idea of an unwilling or hesitant homosexual encounter. The biggest worry of someone with a die-hard heterosexual identity is discovering that being the recipient of male-on-male anal sex...feels good to them.

Or better still, they dread having the option of trying out homosexuality without any legal, social or moral backlash just to see if they like it or not, and if they do...

Combine this with the whole idea of being good-looking enough to have gay guys chasing after our conservative friend. In the conservative's mind, they end up falling into the same position of vulnerability as women when it comes to the issue of sexual assault. No man wants to be in that position of vulnerability, nor does any man want to deliberately put himself in that position. By conservative logic, adopting homosexuality is effectively adopting a woman's vulnerability - you're literally downgrading yourself from a "superior" manhood to a "weaker" femininity.

In other words, hoards of pantless straight men running women to ground with their throbbing manhoods is a socially, biologically and even morally acceptable paradigm, but no straight man wants to see himself being run to ground by hoards of pantless gay men with their throbbing manhoods - they don't want to experience for themselves what the womenfolk experience at their hands. In a way, that'd be acknowledging their own doggishness when it comes to unrestrained sexual behavior. It's why that vivid imagery is effective for keeping conservative men on the straight and narrow - after all, you don't want to be treated like a woman, do ya?

Dave in Northridge provides the kicker that should send conservatives flying off of their barstools:

It's also amusing to consider how many of your ignorant heterosexuals don't understand that gay men may be just as uninterested in them as hetero women are. If we're picky among ourselves, we're not going to be picky in general?

Fear and narcissism. Great motivators.

Ouch. Even the homosexual men who exist in our conservative friend's mind don't think he's all that and a ball of wax. It's something straight conservatives and even straight men in general tend to gloss over - since they'd "gladly fuck a warm piece of liver if no one was looking," they assume that gay men would behave the same way. And with gay men on the hunt for straight virgin anus...

But it doesn't work that way. So men who often end up dead last in the sexual relationship draft picks among females also end up dead last among gay men. That's gotta piss off the narcissists and Casanova wannabes who think they're dripping with sexual desire.

Of course, there's the usual reasoning that conservatives are morally aghast at the idea of gay marriage, as it goes against everything they were taught and everything they know. Allowing gay couples the right to marry one another without incurring social, moral or legislative wrath would go against all convention, conventions that were rigidly held in a "proper" society that respected the status quo. In other words, for all the same reasons sufferage, desegregation and birth control were fought tooth and nail.

Not to mention the implications on the legislative and socio-religious ends. Maybe I'll cover that in a later blog post.

*Yes, I do realize that much of Schmalfeldt's piece was intended as biting sarcastic commentary and that he's caught holy hell from a certain section of Daily Kos readers. Why? I think it's this particular passage that gave people all sorts of hangups:

Heck, if you're a man and you're honest with yourself, you LIKE being on the "doling it out" end of anal sex. How many heterosexual men reading this diary right now have never asked their wife or girlfriend to just take a deep breath, relax, "I'll just put in the tip and we'll see how it goes," and then you ram it home like Captain Kidd jamming his sword back into his scabbard while she hollers "takeitouttakeitouttakeitout" and you tell her to just relax and it won't hurt so bad and she starts kicking and screaming "takeitOUTtakeitOUTtakeitOUT youfuckingbastardpieceofshit" and you finally do (because the walls are thin and your neighbors just LOVE calling the cops) and you tell her she should have at least given herself a chance to relax and enjoy it and she (if she's your wife) doesn't let you anywhere near her with "that thing" for weeks and if she's your girlfriend she stops returning your calls?

Somehow, they thought Schmalfeldt was somehow characterizing rough anal sex with gay sex, period, while insinuating that all gay relationships involve rough anal intercourse. Or at least that's my understanding of the situation. Also:

While your intent may have been to use satire, the way in which you have presented thsi material is dangerous. It gives the impression that all men want to rape their wives anally and that all women should just shut up and take it. They just need to "relax"

If Schmalfeldt was worried about impressions, he surely would have done what so many others would do and soft-pedal the piece into inoffensiveness. Or worse still, not written the piece at all.

**Think clean thoughts...

Long-Term Rehabilitation.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 01:55:00 +0000

Sometime this month, the Bush Center will unveil the George W. Bush Institute in Dallas, a presidential library built and named in honor of...George W. Bush. As evinced by this video and article, Al Sharpton is none-too-happy with the Institute's stated goals:

According to the library’s official website, it will be ”a results-oriented institute that will have an effect on our country and, we think, on the world,” focusing on areas including economic growth, human freedom, and education reform. But it’s tough to say what results can be gleaned from the legacy of the president who turned a budget surplus into a deficit, left us into a major recession, permitted the use of “enhanced interrogation” techniques, and instituted the “No Child Left Behind” education policy that is widely criticized even by Republicans today.

But Bush has a plan to distract everyone from the more negative aspects of his legacy. As one Bush acquaintance told the National Journal, “He’s convinced his achievement in keeping the country safe after 9/11 will get the attention it deserves as the years roll on,” which is why the library’s signature exhibit will be “a 17-foot, two-ton twisted piece of steel from the World Trade Center.” (It’s a strange quirk of historical memory–almost a form of intellectual jujitsu–that Bush has successfully branded himself as the leader who kept us safe, when in fact he’s the president who disregarded an August 2001 memo warning that Osama bin Laden was planning an attack on America.)

It's not out of the ordinary to see former leaders burnish their public image after they've left office. Nevertheless, it will be entertaining to see how a former leader who managed to cock things up so badly around the world manage to rehabilitate his image in the world's eyes, considering the crushing weight of evidence that will forever attest to his true actions and behavior in office.

Then again, there's a chance that the Bush Center will be able to do just that, if only for certain media outlets that'd rather imbibe in copious amounts of false equivalence and civility for civility's sake, even if it means ignoring all of the less-savory aspects of the 43rd president's tenure.

Where Are They Now: The Losers of the 2012 GOP Presidential Primaries

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 03:52:00 +0000

You know, I was starting to wonder where my man Herman Cain ran off to after his campaign's most unfortunate denouement. Turns out he's settling in quite comfortably at Tuffs University, plus he's got his own radio show. Glad he's landed okay, unlike millions of people who are still out of work in a still-uncertain economy.

If you want to know what Rick Perry and those other schlubs are up to, Lawrence O'Donnell is your guy.

Many Men Wish Death On The President.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:49:00 +0000

Many men, wish death upon me
Blood in my eye dog and I can't see
I'm tryin' to be what I'm destined to be
And niggas tryin' to take my life away

It's not every day that yours truly would lead a blog post with lyrics from a rap song, but after listening to 50 Cent's urban lament, it felt somewhat appropriate. After all, many men and women have wished death on the president, from ordinary citizens to militia members and even U.S. servicemen. And now we can add a law enforcement official to that ever-growing list:

A sheriff in Massachusetts is refusing to apologize for joking that President Barack Obama could best serve the country by being assassinated.

Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald, Jr. made the joke during a local St. Patrick’s Day breakfast for Republicans on Sunday. He said that the ghost of Lincoln appeared to Obama in a dream and advised him to go to the theater, where the former president was shot in the head.

Of course, invoking the imagery of Abraham Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre in April 1865 is considered a "joke," one made "in jest," to boot. Perhaps the president should just lighten up and shrug off this latest threat to his and his family's well-being.

Both of Barack Obama's terms as President of the United States have been marked by a thorough and unrelenting disrespect of his being and the office he holds, on both racial and ideological grounds. Through thoughts, words and actions, that unending disrespect constantly oozes out of the pores of people who see the president as an aberration, as someone who neither deserves the office he currently occupies nor deserves to lead a nation populated by men and women of a certain ideological bent. This seething, unrelenting disrespect manifests itself most noticeably in calls for the president's life, his wife's life or (and I shudder at the thought) his childrens' lives.

Sheriff MacDonald should not only be heaved away from his department with great force, he should also be prevented from taking on any more jobs within the law enforcement sector. By all indications, this is what's least likely to happen. If the trials and tribulations of countless men and women are anything to go by, it's a given that those within law enforcement not only tolerate, but also welcome and perpetuate the ideologies and rhetoric that drives people to threaten the president's life. As long as the good sheriff is tolerated by his constituency and the Powers That Be™ above his own pay grade, he and others like him will continue to exist as a part of law enforcement.

It's interesting to note that news of Sheriff MacDonald's "joke" was included in an initial report by the Boston Globe, only for any and all mentions of said "joke" to be scrubbed without so much as an editorial note. Perhaps someone didn't want to become a target of the Plymouth County authorities or perhaps the good sheriff had some good friends in all the right places. Nevertheless, sources like the Boston Globe end up making themselves irrelevant and unimportant to ordinary people as they stray from reporting actual news and gravitate towards issuing stories that read more like the latest public relations news wire.

With a press that's all too willing to cover for the disrespect of others who "don't belong" and the willingness of people to look the other way and remain silent during these fragrant acts of disrespect, it's little wonder the president has to tolerate having death threats hurled his way on a constant basis by people who feel entitled to do just that. At least until the Secret Service shows up.

Speaking of the Secret Service, I hope the sequester isn't hitting them too hard. The last thing we need is for the people who actively seek to neutralize assassination plots to be underpaid.

Mission Accomplished?

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 10:24:00 +0000

Back when the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld trifecta got it in their heads to invade Iraq, I wasn't paying all that much attention to what was going on in the background or any of the nuances involved in the decision-making process. Despite being in college at the time, I wasn't the slightest politically active or even politically interested. But even I knew that whatever thought process that made the invasion of Iraq appealing was one that would have also made swallowing pieces of crystal meth a perfectly sensible activity.

I suspect that just as many Americans, especially those who didn't have any loved ones fighting in Iraq and elsewhere at that time, were just as disengaged and ephemeral as I was during that time. After all, I did have other things much closer to home to worry about. Secondly, I was still somewhat enamored with hardassed conservative philosophy - one that made excuses for hard line positions that, with a bit of critical and constructive analysis, made absolutely no sense for anyone but the most diehard to hold. That took a bit of time to recover from.

At any rate, in spite of solid opposition against the invasion from many corners of the U.S. and the world, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld trifecta were intent on using 9/11 and the opening salvos of the War on Terror as a segue for delivering the shock-inducing and awe-inspiring might of the U.S. Army to Saddam Hussein's front door.

"Shock and Awe." That was the Hitachi Magic Wand of buzzwords that made reporters and journalists shiver with orgasmic delight back then. 10 years later, it still has the same effect. I haven't heard those buzzwords since U.S. troops decamped from Iraq years ago. The supposed point of "Shock and Awe" was to shock the Ba'athist forces and awe them with our impressive military might. Instead, we shocked the Iraqis by dismantling their nation and awed them with our relative ineptitude and general insouciance about what we'd leave behind when the dust settled.

So many reporters were using the words "Shock and Awe" in their retrospects on the Iraq War that I thought about putting my foot into the next nearest TV that dared transmit those words.

To me, there seemed to be no rhyme and little reason for our nation's grand adventure into Iraq. For one, the WMD angle was proven to be dubious at best and a complete fabrication at worst. Again, I bought into the conservative spin over the "missing" WMD by convincing myself that Saddam must have had them relocated to Syria or someplace prior to the invasion. To this day, I still can't understand how I managed to come to that conclusion, although Time and Newsweek weren't of any help on that front.

Come to think of it, maybe it was all of the misinformation circulating about the Iraq War that led people to be a bit insouciant about the whole thing, especially when it was made clear that all the protesting in the world wasn't going to do much, if anything, to stop it.

Ok, so we got Saddam. Junior managed to get the bad guy his old man either couldn't catch or just didn't feel like catching. Not to armchair quarterback, but if the main purpose of the war was to snuff out Saddam and his sons, we could have done that with a good old fashioned CIA-sponsored assassination. Maybe that wasn't the real aim.

Perhaps it was the oil. Antonia Juhasz seems to think so and experts claim Iraq holds what possibly could be the largest reserves of crude oil in the world. After all, we were told that the invasion would literally pay for itself once those petrodollars started rolling in.

Or maybe it was to make Iran a bit uncomfortable by parking a now-U.S. friendly pawn right on their front doorstep. In light of our continuing difficulties with intimidating Iran out of continuing its quest for a nuclear deterrent against U.S. hegemony, it doesn't seem to be working all that well. I'm pretty sure it wasn't to "win hearts and minds" as so many claimed. If we wanted to do that, we wouldn't have sent our troops in the first place.

At any rate, as the war dragged on, more people came to the foregone conclusion that being in Iraq was a bad idea overall. Generally speaking, it became less and less fashionable to cheer on the Iraq War. Even the pundits who made their career riding the "Shock and Awe" orgasm changed their tune when they learned the batteries were just about out of juice.

And what of Iraq itself, aside from the inevitable ethnic/sectarian conflicts that have now popped up without Saddam or any other strongman-type as a definite check? Well, there's this:

Ten years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein and smashed Iraq’s military, the country has become a major buyer of military equipment, spending billions to rebuild its armed forces.

In doing so, Iraq has become a customer of some of the same companies that supplied the weapons used to attack Baghdad’s troops in 2003.(...)

(...)With a security and defence budget of about $16.4 billion for 2013 and a commitment to rebuilding its forces, Iraq offers significant opportunities for defence and security firms.

“From a vendor’s perspective, between the US and Iraqi funding, there’s been a lot of money spent on defence goods and equipment in this country,” said Chris King of Britain-based BAE Systems, one of the companies at the expo.

“They’re buying F-16s, they’re buying M1A1 tanks, they’ve bought equipment from other countries. So, there’s a market here,” King said.

“The Iraqi market is increasing, or at least it seems to be a market that’s gonna continue to spend on procurement at some steady level, if not a larger level over time,” he said.

The Iraqis aim “to rebuild their military, air force and everything, so there are many (areas) to cooperate with them as far as defence companies’ point of view,” noted Sang Choi of Korea Aerospace Industries.

Musab Alkateeb of US-based Honeywell International added that Iraq is “purchasing a great deal of equipment,” and its “procurement activity is sufficient to warrant interest from international firms.”

Representatives of aerospace companies were especially interested in advertising their jet training aircraft, given Iraq’s need for advanced trainers to complement the 36 F-16 warplanes it has ordered from the United States.

Though US troops departed Iraq in December 2011, the United States is still the main arms supplier for the country, which has taken delivery of US military equipment ranging from M113 armoured personnel carriers and M1 Abrams tanks to M-16 assault rifles.

The United States has also assisted Iraq in fielding equipment and training.

So, after 8 years, 4,487 deaths and over $1.7 trillion spent, we've managed to turn Iraq into a client state that's a viable customer for U.S.-made military hardware. Well, not just military hardware, but practically anything that's in need of rebuilding.

Maybe that's what Junior meant when he declared, "mission accomplished."

The Trouble With Drones.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 09:45:00 +0000

Image courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVS), also known as drones, are aircraft either controlled by ‘pilots’ from the ground or increasingly, autonomously following a pre-programmed mission. (While there are dozens of different types of drones, they basically fall into two categories: those that are used for reconnaissance and surveillance purposes and those that are armed with missiles and bombs.

The use of drones has grown quickly in recent years because unlike manned aircraft they can stay aloft for many hours (Zephyr a British drone under development has just broken the world record by flying for over 82 hours nonstop); they are much cheaper than military aircraft and they are flown remotely so there is no danger to the flight crew.

While the British and US Reaper and Predator drones are physically in Afghanistan and Iraq, control is via satellite from Nellis and Creech USAF base outside Las Vegas, Nevada. Ground crews launch drones from the conflict zone, then operation is handed over to controllers at video screens in specially designed trailers in the Nevada desert. One person ‘flies’ the drone, another operates and monitors the cameras and sensors, while a third person is in contact with the “customers”, ground troops and commanders in the war zone. While armed drones were first used in the Balkans war, their use has dramatically escalated in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the CIA’s undeclared war in Pakistan.

- Sourced from Drone Wars UK

The new face of the ongoing forever war to root out suspected terrorists, further cement American hegemony in the Middle East and South Asia and to make the guys running Iran feel rather uncomfortable is what at first glance appears to be an overgrown RC plane with funny-looking fins. It's also an ever-growing bone of contention between the president, numerous Democrats, pundits fascinated with "poutrage" and the art of martyrdom for purity's sake and ordinary Americans who don't want to see some overgrown RC plane loitering over their house while grilling burgers in the backyard. Or get taken off this mortal coil by one.

The president's taken a beating over the use of drone warfare in the War on Terror time and again, mostly on the grounds of what he can and can't do in regards to using them and where. Most recently, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus issued a letter to the administration demanding a little more transparency when it comes to drone use and the declassification of several DOJ memos that discuss the legal ramifications of targeting Americans in the commission of counterterrorism drone strikes. Some Senate Democrats are also asking questions:

President Barack Obama faced a tough question on drone policy from a fellow Democrat during a Senate meeting Tuesday and defended his administration's program, according to sources in the meeting.

The administration's drone program captured national attention last week when Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) carried out a nearly 13-hour filibuster to protest elements of it.

Rand specifically wanted clarification from the White House as to whether it believes it has the authority to use a drone to kill an American citizen on American soil who is not engaged in combat, as it feels it does when a citizen is on foreign soil. The day after Rand's filibuster, Attorney General Eric Holder answered that no, the president does not have such authority.

Senate Democrats were largely absent from Paul's filibuster last week. But on Monday, a group of progressive Senate Democrats pressed Obama on the issue. Details of the exchange so far are scarce.

"There was an exchange, but I don't want to get into the specifics," said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.).

"Basically, the president said that they're doing everything they can to comply with the law and to give information to members of the Intelligence Committee," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who paused for a long moment before answering. "And he said they would continue on that path."

A source in the meeting said one question was posed by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a member of the Committee on Intelligence. A spokesperson for Rockefeller didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

I'm all for a little clarification and a definite restraint on power, in this case. Getting comfortable with the idea of drone warfare opens the doors to drones as a general solution for every "problem." Law enforcement agencies are chomping at the bit for a chance to deploy drones for surveillance and the FAA's accommodating them with a law that will, among other things, open up the nation's airspace to drones. A few states are attempting to put a damper on that fun before it even begins.

The whole idea of drones seems simple, even to the "Our Troops" crowd - instead of keeping thousands of soldiers in Afghanistan to hunt down insurgents affiliated with Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups, let a few soldiers stationed in air-conditioned trailers identify, stalk and snipe at insurgents, right from the comfort of their own bases.

In theory, drones survey and even eliminate high value targets without any U.S. troops or ordinary civilians being put in harms way. In reality, drones have come under fire for causing large numbers of civilian casualties. Pakistani reports put the tally at 14 high-level insurgents and 687 civilians between 2006 and 2009. The Brookings Institution estimates that for every insurgent killed, at least 10 civilians are killed. The New America Foundation puts a more positive spin on the drone death count, attributing over 80 percent of the estimated 2,551 drone-related deaths since 2004 to insurgents.

Civilian deaths draw plenty of outrage on their own, but to yours truly, that's not the real reason most people are taking a distinctly conspiratorial sheen to drone warfare. The big fear comes from drones evolving from tools used solely by the military under combat and reconnaissance scenarios to tools used against U.S. citizens by law enforcement, the CIA and various alphabet-soup organizations. As explained above, LEOs across the country would love to get their hands on yet another piece of military tech-turned crimefighting tool. Imagine the LAPD with a squadron of drones looking down on the activities of ordinary citizens, scoping drivers over the speed limit and keeping tabs on activists during a protest.

Unlike the drones currently in use in Afghanistan and Pakistan, America's homebound drones won't be fitted with missiles. Tear gas canisters, heat-inducing microwaves and other "less-than-lethal" devices, perhaps. But at least you can rest assured that the family BBQ in the backyard won't end up like, say, a wedding party somewhere in Afghanistan.

In this case, I understand where Glenn Greenwald's coming from. He doesn't like drones any more than I do. Neither does David Sirota, for that matter. But both manage to nurture their awe-inspiring hatred of drones through absolutely questionable choices that leave others thinking, "what the hell are these guys about anyways?"

In the fight against drones, both Greenwald and Sirota have hitched their sidecars onto the freewheeling anti-drone motorcycle ridden by a certain Rand Paul, U.S. Senator from Kentucky and son of Ron Paul. As it turns out, Rand Paul doesn't like drones any more than Greenwald or Sirota. Que the lesser Paul's filibuster of John Brennan, the administration's pick for CIA director.

At least he said he didn't like drones. One sad aspect about the War on Drones is that the opportunistic can always latch onto the chance of straddling the aisle and gaining instant respect on a subject that both sides can agree on. The lesser Paul's filibuster didn't just give him plenty of anti-drone cred among the libertarian types who think his dad is a swell guy and conservative militia-types who dream of the president personally ordering drone strikes on their compounds - it also gave him a way to strike out at the president and the administration on a topic that's leaving them a bit black and blue.

From what I hear, lesser Paul's gearing up for a run at the POTUS nomination for 2016.

I believe what Rand Paul is doing is showing how to run for President in 2016.
— Lee Stranahan (@Stranahan) March 7, 2013

Sadly, both Sirota and Greenwald instantly developed the hots for Rand Paul after his "brave stand" against drones. Along with it came a rather rabid defense against anyone who dared to point out Rand's less-than-stellar qualities. Being told that their new man-crush is a bit of a racist prick who's conservative to the bone really, genuinely, truly upsets them. It's the ideological equivalent of a teenage girl being warned about her older, prospect-less, drug-abusing boyfriend, whom she think she loves very much.

In the War on Drones, consorting with the enemy thanks to one common interest is apparently acceptable practice, judging from the number of progressives choosing to #StandWithRand despite having every reason in the world to do otherwise. Neither Sirota nor Greenwald want to admit making a mistake in giving the equivalent of naked pics of themselves to their man-crush, which is why I expect both to continue their man-crush until the public mercifully forgets all about it or until Rand Paul does something that allows both Sirota and Greenwald to publicly repudiate him and move on to their next man-crush.

In the meantime, two more suspected militants were "targeted" in a drone strike somewhere in North Waziristan.

Writer's Block.

noreply@blogger.com (Mack Lyons) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:11:00 +0000

It's 4:05 in the morning and I'm trying my best to flesh out a blog post on Christopher Dorner, and the only words I can think of when looking back at the entire situation is...

"Damn."

Maybe it's the lack of sleep or the attendant lack of focus. Between the day job and other life events, keeping up with every bit of news that comes flying in from media outlets, Twitter and other places is a pain. In fact, it's building up one hell of a mental fog that yours truly can't seem to cut through.

I had several blog posts lined up, but I just can't seem to get any of them put on paper*. I've even thought about taking a nice, long sabbatical until I can get rid of the fog and get my head together.

I'll get over it at some point. For now, crawling into bed may just be the best thing to do at the moment.

*Yeah, I know it ain't really paper, but whatever.