Best Laid Plans

I was going to start posting all my political rants here, but my beloved wife passed away yesterday, so the world is on hold for a while.

Back in the Political Saddle

It's been a hell of a long time since I've posted anything here, but I've decided to reduce my political commentary on Facebook, and use the blog for the extended political stuff.

 

Novelist Alistair MacLean is known primarily for his thrillers like Ice Station Zebra and The Guns of Navarone, but, to me, one of his best passages is near the end of The Secret Ways, in which a British Secret Service agent meets up with two Hungarian resistance heroes in an attempt to repatriate a British scientist who had defected to the Soviets.

Jansci, the Resistance leader is talking to Jennings, the scientist:

“Tell them, tell your people at home, that our lives and the lives of generations to come lie in their hands. Tell them that there is only one thing that ultimately matters on this earth, and that is peace on this earth. And tell them that this is a very small earth, and growing smaller with every year that passes, but that we all have to live on it together, that we all must live on it together.”

“Coexistence?” Dr. Jennings raised an eyebrow.

“Coexistence. A terrible word, a big bogeyman word, but what else could any sane man offer in  its place – all the nameless horrors of a thermonuclear war, the requiem for the lost hopes of mankind? No, coexistence must come, it must if mankind is to survive, but this world without spheres, the dream of that great American, Cordell Hull[i], will never come if you have impetuous fools, as you do have, Dr. Jennings, shouting for big results now, here, today.

MacLean wrote this in 1959… yet here we are, 58 years later, with Trump shouting for the “biggest,” the “greatest” and claiming that “I alone” can deliver.

“Most of all, it will never come so long as our leaders and governments, our newspapers and propagandists teach us incessantly, insistently, that we must hate and fear and despise all the other peoples who share this same tiny world with us. The nationalism of those who cry ‘We are the people’ – the jingoistic brand of patriotism – these are the great evils of our world today, the barriers to peace that no man can overcome. What hope is there for the world as long as we cling to the outmoded forms of national allegiance? We owe allegiance to no one, Dr. Jennings, at least not on this earth.

He predicted the Tea Party and Fox long before they crawled out of the slime.

“And that, I think, is the real answer – not the proposing of courses of action, as Dr. Jennings suggested, but in creating the climate of good will in which those actions can flower and bear fruit. Ask the rulers of the great nations who should be leading our sick world to a better tomorrow what their greatest need of today is, and they will tell you scientists and still more scientists – those luckless brilliant creatures who have long since traded in their birthright of independence, buried their consciences, and sold out to the governments of the world – so that they can strive harder and still harder until they have in their hands the ultimate weapon of destruction.

[snip]

“The governments of the world may not be mad, but they are blind, and their blindness is but one step removed from insanity. The desperate, most urgent need this world knows or will ever know is the need for an effort without parallel in history to get to know ourselves and the other people of the world even as well as we know ourselves, and then we will see that the other man is just as we are, that right and virtue and truth belong to him as much as they do to us. We must think of people not as a conglomerate mass, not conveniently, indiscriminately, as a faceless nation: we must always remember that a nation is made of millions of little human beings just like we are, and to talk about national sin and guilt and wickedness is to be willfully blind, unjust, and unchristian, and while it is true that such a nation may go off the rails, it never goes off because it wants to, but because it can’t help it, because there was something in its past or in its environment that inescapably made it what it is today, just as some forgotten incidents, some influences that we can neither recall not understand, have made each of us what we are today.

“And with that understanding and knowledge there will come compassion, and no power on earth can compete against compassion – the compassion that makes the Jewish Society issue world-wide appeals for money for their sworn but starving enemies, the Arab refugees, the compassion that made a Russian soldier thrust his gun into Sandor’s hands, the compassion – a compassion born of understanding – that made nearly all the Russians who were stationed in Budapest refuse to fight the Hungarians, whom they had come to know so well. And this compassion, this charity, will come, it must come, but men the world over must want to make it come.”

Jansci’s statements about the Communists could be repeated equally well today, by merely substituting “far-right-conservatives” for “Communists.” The world MacLean wrote about is the world that Trump and his ilk want to recreate, not in Eastern Europe, but here in the United States, a nation where criticism of the government sentences you to a labor camp, where secret police round up and execute dissidents, where the Party, rather than the government, holds ultimate power.

---

[i] Hull was Secretary of State under FDR, from 1933 to 1944, and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for his work in establishing the United Nations.

'Nother Little Rapist Gets Caught...

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, please look at the defendant over there, in the orange jumpsuit.

 His name is Daniel Holtzclaw, but his street name is "The Claw." He is accused of sexually abusing eight -- count them, EIGHT -- women of color here in Oklahoma City.

Look at those piggish, dull, little eyes:

You can tell, just by looking at him, that he's nothing more than a muscle-bound thug.

He had his own peculiar little way of committing his crimes. Instead of just a normal, "legitimate" rape, The Claw just wanted each woman to take his penis in her mouth. He didn't have to ejaculate or anything, he just wanted to degrade them, to demonstrate his power over them. He would often re-visit and re-assault his victims.

Oh, you may be asking yourselves, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how this little bastard was able to gain control over his victims.

This is how:

Yes, The Claw was a police officer. Sworn to protect and defend us, he instead used his authority to oppress and victimize.

His family is demanding "the same rights under the law as any other citizen," which means w.e can shoot his ass, I suppose.

I'm In The Mood...

... for In The Mood...

... and for In The Mood...

... and for In The Mood...

Law Enforcement

 

Ferguson, MO, 2014

Those three hard-hitting All-American Military Fighting Men are fro--- what? They're not active military? They're cops?

They're police officers?

Crap, they look like Marine Expeditionary Forces guys heading into Baghdad.

No wonder they're busy killing dogs and 90-year-old women and 19-year-old kids. They think they're playing G.I. Joe.

They get all this high-falutin' military hardware from Uncle Sam as part of the "War on Terra" -- despite the fact that Ferguson, MO, is not a terribly likely target for Haji al-Kahbuum -- so they feel the need to play with it when they get bored.

Kinda like the bad old days:

Birmingham, AL, 1963 

 

I guess I was really lucky: my stint in law enforcement came between these two periods, during the 70s and 80s when most cops -- not all, but most -- tried to be decent citizens, and tried to respect their fellow man.

 

Yeah, we had some gang issues and drug issues and of course the tail end of Vietnam and Watergate, but for the most part, the cops tried to be decent.

 





Gimme That Old Time Music

Coming back -- slowly -- from the dark places.

 

Taking a Break

See you all later. Maybe.

Gimme That Old Time Music

I saw a piece in The Week (no link cause they don't have it on their website yet) about a guy who got a brain implant to control his OCD. According to the article, the guy became "a fanatical Johnny Cash fan."

Of course, that made me think of this:

What JP Sez...

... here...

(And if you have some coin to spare for JP and his missus, please feel free to help them out.)

Only in America...

... where the religious right-wing whackjobs are getting closer and closer to absolute power...

... would we have a moronic game show...

... based on the Holy Bible...

... and hosted by Jeff "I'm Dumber Than a 5-Year-Old" Foxworthy.

Gimme That Old Time Music

More from the Master...

Should be one of my anthems...


And here. For you, such a bonus I have...

Gimme That Old Time Music

THIS IS MUSIC... not like the crap kids listen to these days...

That's also real live honest-ta-God dancing, not the spasmodic seizure activity today's kids call dancing.

The full show -- all 1:36:00 of it -- is here.


(I liked the one comment on You Tube that said, "One of my friends thought Jump Jive and Wail was Drunken Driving make Bail")

Gimme That Old Time Music...

... because music is a serious business.

A very serious business.

Yup, Mnozil Brass.

Strength

Strength, my friends, is finite. Yes, I suppose it is possible to rebuild strength, but that takes a village. There are no villages left, just cities where millions live cheek by jowl, never knowing their neighbors, never seeing the poor and disadvantaged. 

There are those among us who are strong, who are bastions of hope when the entire world is turning to shit. There are those we turn to for comfort, for a friendly pat on the back, for a warm hug that says “things suck right now, but they will get better.” 

We expect these men and women to be better than we are, to have the strength of Superman and the wisdom of Solomon, to overcome all the obstacles, to be immune from the things that terrify us. We expect them, often, to protect us from ourselves, and to save us when we do immensely stupid things. We ask them to put others ahead of themselves (and their families), we expect them to drop everything when they’re needed, yet we also expect them to be invisible when they’re not needed. 

But these people are not automatons, they’re not robots. They’re human, like us, but they’ve seen and heard and smelled things no normal being should ever be exposed to. They’ve seen charred lumps that used to be children, they’ve held friends screaming away the last few seconds of life as their blood drains onto the ground, they’ve heard the anguished cries of new widows and orphans. 

Yet these protectors are not allowed to show emotions. They cannot show terror or disgust, they must “be strong,” for us. They must sublimate their feelings, their very humanity, for us. They must be more than human, for us. They must be the adults, comforting us in our fears, for us. 

And when these pillars of strength have exhausted themselves, when they can no longer go on, when they cannot bear to see one more tiny corpse, we abandon them. We say, “You were strong for others, now you must be strong for yourself.” Sometimes, we are even worse: “What have you done for us today?” 

When they have reached the end of their rope, when we find them whimpering in a corner, or hanging from a beam, or with a gun clenched in a cold, stiff hand, we ask, “What happened? He was so strong!” 

It’s simple, really. We asked a human being to be more than a human being, to be an immortal, to be a god. 

They tried, you know. Lord knows, they TRIED. 

But when THEY needed help, when THEY needed strength, when THEY needed comfort…

 

… the well was dry.

Tell Me Again Who REALLY Supports Our Troops?

There is yet another picture going around the internet, showing 6 big-name Republicans who declined to serve their country in the Armed Forces:

That reminded me of this list, showing Dems and Repubs, and their military service history (or lack thereof). I added the amazing Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs (and was still called a "slacker")

MILITARY SERVICE RECORDS
DEMOCRATS:

• Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
• Tammy Duckworth: Army National Guard, 2004; Purple Heart; lost both legs, may lose right arm.      
• David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
• Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
• Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
• Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g . Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
• Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
• John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with Combat V, Purple Hearts.
• Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
• Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam. Paraplegic from war injuries. Served in Congress.
• Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
• Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
• Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
• Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
• Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars,and Soldier's Medal.
• Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
• Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
• Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
• Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
• Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
• Chuck Robb: Vietnam
• Howell Heflin: Silver Star
• George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
• Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311.
• Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
• Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
• John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and AirMedal with 18 Clusters.
• Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.

REPUBLICANS (and these are the guys sending people to war):

• Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
• Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
• Tom Delay: did not serve.
• Roy Blunt: did not serve.
• Bill Frist: did not serve.
• Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
• Rick Santorum: did not serve.
• Trent Lott: did not serve.
• John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
• Jeb Bush: did not serve.
• Karl Rove: did not serve.
• Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.
• Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
• Vin Weber: did not serve.
• Richard Perle: did not serve.
• Douglas Feith: did not serve.
• Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
• Richard Shelby: did not serve.
• Jon Kyl: did not serve.
• Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
• Christopher Cox: did not serve.
• Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
• Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
• george w. bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate.
• Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non- combat role making movies.
• Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
• Phil Gramm: did not serve.
• John McCain: Vietnam POW, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
• Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
• John M. McHugh: did not serve.
• JC Watts: did not serve.
• Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem, " although continued in NFL for 8 years as quarterback.
• Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
• Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
• George Pataki: did not serve.
• Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
• John Engler: did not serve.
• Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.

PUNDITS and PREACHERS:

• Sean Hannity: did not serve.
• Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
• Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
• Michael Savage: did not serve.
• George Will: did not serve.
• Chris Matthews: did not serve.
• Paul Gigot: did not serve.
• Bill Bennett: did not serve.
• Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
• John Wayne: did not serve.
• Bill Kristol: did not serve.
• Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
• Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
• Clarence Thomas: did not serve.
• Ralph Reed: did not serve.
• Michael Medved: did not serve.
• Charlie Daniels: did not serve.
• Ted Nugent: did not serve. (He only shoots at things that don't shoot back.)

I'm NOT Lovin' It...

Over the years, I've commented now and then on some of the legal issues facing McDonalds. I guess, in many ways, they're no better and no worse than many other large corporations.

Except a lot of them -- perhaps most -- support their local emergency services.

Not McDonalds.

A McDonalds franchisee in upstate New York fired an employee for paying for firefighters' meals out of her own pocket.

She didn't steal the food, she (and a couple of other workers) paid out of their own pockets.

 

 

Food's better at Burger King, anyway.

 

McDonalds management is claiming that the firing had nothing to do with the firefighters; they're claiming Levia swore at supervisors and was otherwise insubordinate... possibly by pointing out that management often gave free meals to police officers.

 

So now, MickyD's has lost an 8-year veteran employee, pissed off the firefighters in the area, pissed off the cops (cause now they're not gonna get freebies, either), the franchisee has been exposed as a hypocrite, and McDonalds has yet another black eye.

 

I will not patronize McDonalds until this mess is straightened out, and I would ask you to do the same.

 



Gimme That Old Time Music... or... Paddle Faster, I Hear...

Tubas?!?

Because someone has to do it.

Day Late and A Dollar Short

Talk about being out of it... Yesterday marked my ninth anniversary as a blogger.

Still not the Great Orange Satan or Mr. Heh, Indeed, but I'm still having fun, folks are still stopping by and commenting, and we're all still fighting the good fight.

To the folks like Badtux, Jurassic Pork, Mustang Bobby, the Dark Wraith, skippy, Firestarter 5 -- the ones who gave me encouragement early on -- thank you for your support.

To the folks who left comments -- even those critical of my posts, as long as they were thought out -- I appreciate the feedback.

To the emergency services bloggers I've linked to more recently, thank you as well.

If it weren't for you folks, this blog would have perished years ago, as so many others did.

What TPM Says...

... via Attaturk at Rising Hegemon:

As many as 17,000 Americans will die directly as a result of states deciding not to expand Medicaid under Obamacare, according to a new study.

Researchers from Harvard University and City University of New York have estimated that between 7,115 and 17,104 deaths will be "attributable to the lack of Medicaid expansion in opt-out states" in a study published in Health Affairs.

"The results were sobering," Samuel Dickman, one of the authors, said, according to the  Morning Call. "Political decisions have consequences, some of them lethal."

My wife will be one of those 17,000.

Ask me again how I feel about Fat-Ass Paul LePage, he of more chins than a Chinatown phone book.

 

Yes, please, Fat-Ass... hold your breath till you turn blue,

then die, you miserable murdering scumbubble.

Gimme That Old Time Music

Found these young ladies -- "The Four Quarters" -- while looking for something on YouTube. This is the music I grew up on, but with prettier voices. It's good to see kids keeping the a capella tradition alive.

Gotta admit, they sound a lot better than we did, harmonizing in the boy's room...

And since I have girls doing songs made popular by male singers, it's only fair to have the guys doing girl band songs...

 

 

"The Coats"... who are obviously secure enough in their masculinity to be this foolish...