President Barack Obama Sending Dual Messages to Voters in Quest for Reelection (Wikipedia)

The political transformation of President Barack Obama is glaring. He has moved from the “hope and change” candidate we saw in the 2008 election, to the “doing what it takes to win” president fighting for reelection. Every politician makes promises, empty promises, they know they can’t keep, and that’s not the bad part. The bad part is you don’t know who to listen to and believe has your best interests at heart — Barack Obama or Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum or Ron Paul.

Politico: “The first is that every modern president in the fourth year of his presidency resorts to the cheap political stunts, broken promises and truth-fudging it takes to win reelection in what has been and will be a 50-50 nation. The reason is simple: Politics is not clean-living; it’s survival.

The second is that Barack Obama, for all his talk of moving beyond conventional political tricks, is doing just that, which wouldn’t be so glaring had it not been for his incessant call for a newer, cleaner and more transparent paradigm for American politics.

The second is that Barack Obama, for all his talk of moving beyond conventional political tricks, is doing just that, which wouldn’t be so glaring had it not been for his incessant call for a newer, cleaner and more transparent paradigm for American politics.”

You can’t say you are for the people on Main Street when you are secretly yukking it up with the people on Wall Street. I don’t know if President Obama’s actions are transactional more than transformative, but I am just tired of politics as usual in Washington D. C. on both sides of the aisle. I am a centrist and I tend to look at some liberal policies and viewpoints with disdain, but I am for the people on Main Street, who are the ones to jumpstart this ecomony by spending. If you can’t look out for Main Street and truly mean what you say, then you aren’t the candidate for me.

President Obama is playing both sides of the field and you just can’t do that and expect to win big. He has flip-flopped as much as his probable Republican adversary Mitt Romney. I was very surprised when he gave his blessings to Super PACs after vehemently decrying their very existence. He literally gave his blessings to Priorities USA Action Super PAC, to go out and collect lots of money from the affluent.

In 2007, then-candidate Barack Obama said,  “you can’t say yesterday you don’t believe in them and today, you are having three-quarters of a million dollars being spent for you. You can’t just talk the talk. The easiest thing in the world is to talk about change during election time. Everybody talks about change during election time. You have got to look at how they will act when it’s not convenient, when it’s hard. And the one thing I’m proud of is my track record is strong on this and I’ve walked the walk.”

So, I guess that record is of little importance to President Barack Obama in 2012, right? The super PACs are a novel way for the fabulously rich and well-connected to influence politics. Um, that doesn’t jibe with his “love and caring attitude” for the people on Main Street. In other words, since everyone is doing it, let’s not get left out of the game, let’s join in this party!

As for the current conundrum with the Catholics and contraceptives, President Obama is just playing politics, that has the potential for serious backlash. Personally, I think the government and the church should not stick its nose in personal matters, such as a woman’s right to chose what she does with her body. This isn’t a fight about religious liberty. It should be a fight about a woman’s right to chose — personal liberty. That’s my opinion and mine only, but I do respect and understand the position others may hold on this very sensitive subject.

Sorry, but this political transformation of President Barack Obama isn’t the hope and change we signed on for in 2008, but at the same time, who among the Republican slate of presidential candidates is worthy to take the baton? They are all damaged goods. So, here we are, with an enormous problem…..

This article was cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette.

I remember quite well the empty seats in the Los Angeles Coliseum. And believe me, Madonna was perfect for this thing called the Superbowl, although it bears little resemblance to what I remember.

Football game, blah, blah, blah.

No, what I am talking about — divorced from a game that’s still worth watching — was the Roman/Babylonian spectacle that brought to mind not Baseball, Hot Dogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet (although the latter got their product placement in),  but more the spectacular sets of “Intolerance” or of “Cleopatra,” or the chariot race in the Chuckles Heston version of  Ben Hur.

Is this really what we’ve become?

Outside, thousands of protesters spent the week enraged at the stripping of collective bargaining rights in the middle of a deep recession, when so many are hurting, as the iron boot of the factory owner and the electoral martinet comes down on the throats of those who actually do the work.

No normal people are allowed into the Superbowl. If the ticket prices don’t dissuade you, without an “in” you’re pretty much out of luck. It has become the Roman orgy of the Ruling Classes, and I’ll bet there were more private jets parked at Indianapolis area airports than have been seen in a very long time.

The only “normals” inside were the obligatory contest winners, in a spectacle that has become less a super-bowl of football, but, rather, a spectacle of marketing — the only day of the year where anyone writes any serious copy about commercials outside of Advertising Age.

“The single most popular televised event in the country” the BBC announcer is squawking in my ear at this very instant.

It may be a big event, but it is also an unavoidable display of the American Id, the Collective Obnoxious, and that display tends to be unquestioningly accepted, as though it weren’t a lavish orgy for the Haves inside Lucas Oil Stadium and a non-coverage of the Have-Nots outside the stadium.

I saw nothing in the endless pre-game show, but then I might have been getting more chips and salsa when it was. Because NBC is still responsible media, and, having moved all their news, sports and entertainment divisions to Indianapolis, they couldn’t have helped but see it.

Oh, wait.

I want to check and see how many “volunteers” worked the halftime show, and helped to spruce up the party for the ruling class. Tostitos® Über Alles!

No one comments on the strange disconnect that for one of the most lucrative commercial events of the year, the presence of unpaid labor is absurd, but accepted.

I am sure, however, that Madonna’s pagan festival at halftime will be the subject of lectures from the pulpit next Sunday morn.

I kept expecting a golden calf to be carried onstage, but perhaps I missed it, heading to the head to unrent my lone, ceremonial beer.

And yet, over-the-top though it was, it was perfect.

Which is why I wonder what we’ve come to.

I watched Chevrolet trucks survive the apocalypse, cars bungee-jumping, barrel rolling, and parachuting. I watched them traverse dream dimensions to unhorse damsels, create “music videos” by slapping guitars, keyboards and drums, and I watched cheetahs chasing cage openers as a car sped away.

But, I don’t want a skydiving car, a musical car, or  a car that races cheetahs.

So I guess I just don’t get it.

Coca-Cola did their computer animated polar bears, but then, at the bumper just before the second half, the “brought to you by” included this weird endorsement, “brought to you by Coca-Cola,” by the Polar Bears who remind you to open a bottle of Happiness.

(ad language simulated, and inexact).

“A bottle of Happiness”?

Guess Coke is aiming their marketing at the Chinese market.

Or something. Coca-cola is carbonated sugar water with caffeine. It is NOT happiness. It induces a diuretic cycle that NEVER quenches thirst, and the polar bears are unindividuated cartoon characters, without name or personality, and WHO the hell “authority” is that?

It is weirdly tautological for animations created to sell a product to ENDORSE that product as celebrities created by the advertising FOR that product.

Just as it is weird that volunteers worked to help make the Plutocrats’ Bacchanalia better and more spectacular for anyone who can afford a private jet.

I pray to ghod that we are NOT Rome, but nothing I saw today dispelled that opinion.

As I said, I have watched every Superbowl ever played, and from the Amateur Hour of the first Superbowl to the “Jet Pack” at the Sugar Bowl early on, and more and more — NOT less and less — they bear an uncomfortable resemblance to the Nuremberg Rallies.

Babylon set for D.W. Griffith’s “Intolerance”

And that is NOT the America that I know. America is an IDEA, and this is nothing like my idea of America.

But, perhaps coincidentally, we have just passed the infamous “halftime flush” that strains sewer systems across the width and breadth of this increasingly feudal land.

As the superbowel spasms for the last time before the next Superbowl.

Outside, in the streets of Indianapolis, the peasants held silent vigil.

Courage.

====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Arab Spring revolutions created chaos which allowed terrorists organizations to act and obtain heavy weapons. Ironically the UN and NATO’s mission in Libya increased this chaos tremendously and unintentionally strengthened Al Qaeda groups in Africa.

The UN Report explained that “The governments of the countries visited indicated that, in spite of efforts to control their borders, large quantities of weapons and ammunition from Libyan stockpiles were smuggled into the Sahel region.”

We see the results all over Africa where violence has grown dramatically in the past six months. Various terrorists groups are causing havoc across Africa. While the groups are not directly connected, they all have validated links to Al Qaeda in Yemen.

al-Shabab has been operating in Somalia and crossing over to Kenya and Ethiopia. Forces from the neighboring countries of Kenya and Ethiopia are battling Al Shabab along with Ugandan forces and western help.

The map of Somalia tells the story. The country has been without a functioning government for decades, and the southern and central regions are in the hands of al-Shabab.

Nigeria is caught in a series of terrorists’ bombings which target the Christian community of the country. Boko Haram, another Al Qaeda connected terrorist group, is trying to make its point that it cannot live side by side with people from other religions. In their view, Nigeria must become an Islamic state or else suffer endless terror attacks. Boko Haram killed more than 500 people last year and more than 250 this year in Nigeria.

The U.N. report said Nigeria was not the only country worried about the activities of Boko Haram. It said the group also was in Niger, adding that some governments believed Boko Haram members from Nigeria and Chad had received training at al Qaeda training camps in Mali in 2011.

While Boko Haram is currently focusing on Nigeria, it has documented ties to Al Qaeda according to the report – “Although Boko Haram has concentrated its terrorist acts inside Nigeria, seven of its members were arrested while transiting through the Niger to Mali,” it said, adding that they possessed documents about explosives manufacturing, propaganda leaflets and contact details for known al Qaeda members.

These terror activities are of increasing concern to the Western world. The vast deserts and loose governmental control in Africa makes it a perfect base for Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and Al Shabab. A recent attempt to attack US and European ships on the Mediterranean, foiled by Algeria, demonstrates once again that the goal is global Islamic domination and Africa is just a convenient base.

Western leaders and the UN back Nigeria in its war against Boko Haram. Through the U.S. military’s Africa Command, established in 2007, the Americans are already training and equipping armies in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia. On Oct. 14, U.S. President Obama sent another 100 U.S. troops to Uganda in East Africa. Africa has become the front line of the war against terror. Let’s hope 2012 will be calmer than 2011 as stability is crucial in the war against terror.

I’m concerned. More than concerned, in fact: deeply troubled.

How can I say this, diplomatically? Hmmm.

Your new news  shows look like crap!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And by “look” I mean the physical plant that serves as a backdrop for your hosts.

They are an embarrassment, and, much as I’d like to be a fly on the wall for the sessions in which your “look” was rationalized, whoever made the decision was an idiot, no matter what high-falutin’ Manhattan “black canvas” artsy rationalizations were woven from threads of purest coruscating B.S. 

I want to pick up on a thread from yesterday’s conclusion to the “Selling the New Nixon” series: staging matters. Command of your elements matters. How you dress MATTERS. In show business, in politics and yes, even on TV news and opinion shows.

What I’m trying to say is that your presentation looks about as awful as that old cable access (do they still have cable access?) crank who duct-taped the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag behind his coffee table every week as his set on every cable system in the USA. (It was different guys, of course, but eerily the same awful presentation).

Live! Hello from Al Gore’s garage …

There is a DIFFERENCE between cable news and cable access, and, at this moment, Current TV has this dreadful look of a former governor of Michigan (I watched the debut, last night, of THE WAR ROOM with Jennifer Granholm), a former vice president of the United States, and two former MSNBC hosts broadcasting from an abandoned fallout shelter somewhere in the tri-state region.

Seriously?

Much as I would like to take vorpal pen in hand and do some serious snicker-snacking, let me offer some constructive criticism, instead. The rant portion is more or less concluded and you can unstop the eyes of children and impressionable persons, now.

I lived and worked in Hollywood for fifteen years, and I know a little something about media and presentation. Here’s a tale to establish my bona fides and get us into the meat of the matter:

Once, when I was a film critic, I attended a screening at MGM down in Culver City (after they tore the back lot apart and sold off all their memorabilia). And, I don’t recall the film, which was fairly forgettable, but I recall the smallish screening room, which, like all the old screening rooms, had plush seats and ASHTRAYS on the back of the seats, and you could actually often SMOKE in them, even though smoking was illegal in all movie theaters in town (L.A.M.C. Pi R Squared).

Anyway, sitting a few rows away in an uncrowded, small, screening room, was Leonard Maltin, from Entertainment Tonight at the time, and innumerable TV Movie guides, a fancy art book on Walt Disney (I have a copy in the other room and am too lazy to get up and check), etcetera.

A slight, trim fellow, with a ghostly but not ghastly beard, owlish glasses and a pleasant face on a slim frame, as we’ve all seen on television, at one time or another.

The movie ended. As the lights came up, he was easy to spot in his satin Mickey Mouse jacket — probably a freebie from a grateful studio, and definitely a cool bit of apparel — if I might break with heterosexual male convention for a moment and actually acknowledge another man’s clothing.

And then Leonard stood up.

From the waist up, slim, trim fellow with shoulders as narrow as his smile was broad.

From the waist down: The U.S.S. Missouri.

The line from the musical came to mind: “She’s got a pair of hips/just like two battleships.”

But, though he’s been on camera for years, you never see that. He actually looked like one of the leftovers of the zodiac: two disparate creatures welded together at the waist: half a horse/half a man, or half a goat/half a fish.

Here, he was half a slight, bespectacled film critic, half Moby Dick.

BUT YOU NEVER SEE THAT.

That’s called the magic of television, and I will counterpoint that with the brick walls of the “Young Turks” and the “War Room” sets.

Much of the evening consisted of the host talking
to inanimate television sets scattered throughout
the National Guard Armory basement  it was shot in

DO NOT SHOW ME BRICK WALLS that make it look like you’re a bunch of amateurs broadcasting from an abandoned tenement lobby.

This violates the first tenet of motion pictures — which TV news finally picked up from what has been classical animation technique from before the clown jumped out of the inkwell: background movement. A motion picture is just that: it MOVES.

Just having a drunk lurching around with a hand-held camera DOES not make that dead brick move. Nor does a brick wall communicate OTHER than poverty; it may be charming at a coffee shop in Soho, but on video it’s death. It’s every bit as intrusive and not nearly as pleasant as Naked News, where strippers read the news and take off their clothes.

Looks kind of like somebody broadcasting from a garage

At least with that, you watch. Seeing someone in blue jeans, set against a backdrop of a brick wall with a bunch of old political posters prancing between large-screen flat TVs isn’t cutting edge. It looks more like a burglary in progress at BEST BUY.

Keith Olbermann’s set has vanished entirely (rumors of consistent technical errors and malfunctions), but I can’t say that I care for the “Charlie Rose on PBS” black void. It’s far superior to the brickwork derelicts that serve as the other sets, but Keith is a professional, and he pulls it off with aplomb. But, again, losing the tie is a mistake.

(Why? I’ll tell you at the very end. Most of this criticism is aimed at The Young Turks and Granholm’s show.)

Let’s go back to Hollywood: Yesterday, I told you the story of Ronald Reagan and how to hold a phone for the camera. No matter how “authentic” it might look to the method actor to cover half their face by holding the phone as one would ACTUALLY hold the phone, it serves no purpose and is, in fact, counter-productive. The audience already knows what a telephone looks like. They didn’t pay for that. They paid to see Marilyn’s face.

And, in TV news — as in Leonard Maltin’s example — we don’t need to see you from the waist down.

Look: I’m not suggesting that you go the way of Faux Nooz­™ by adopting the video equivalent of the old college debate dictum: if you can’t dazzle ‘em with brilliance, baffle ‘em with BS.

We don’t actually multitask — we just weave endless fugues, combining processes, as when someone knits, watches TV and carries on a conversation about what the lady up the block said — and all that frippery fragments consciousness, rather than focusing it.  But a dead wall is dead space, and that draws my eye FROM the broadcast and gets in the way of my watching it.

Less  CBS News than “Fernwood 2Nite“

TV news looks the same all over the world for a REASON: it imputes authority and gravitas to what is, inevitably, a narrator reading from either a paper script or a teleprompter and looking into the camera.

It’s not meant to be an exciting medium, but it is meant to be a communications medium. Wearing a TIE communicates an underlying ethos and gravitas; wearing a suit, sitting at a desk lend a specific trained credibility to the host.

You see, the FORM of communication is a communication, too. I learned that in typesetting (which I did between writing gigs, and paid a lot better than being a Kelly Girl® temporary typist).

You can set a serious message in a certain typeface and completely destroy the meaning of the message just by the type design. Here’s a sentence:

You never did “The Kenosha Kid.”

And here’s that sentence in three different typefaces (you’re reading this in Georgia, most likely):

What you see here are the three standard typefaces that you see in virtually all commercial printing:

• Fritz Quadrata Bold (usually called “Albertus Bold” on PCs) is popular for commercial logos, and you can see it in the KFC and Safeway logos just about anywhere. You’ll be surprised at how many places you’ll find it if you look.
• Souvenir is the standard typeface for ad and magazine copy and is utterly ubiquitous. ‘Nuff said.
• Helvetica (usually called “Swiss” or “Ariel”) is used in place of Souvenir, and is very popular in instruction manuals and technical documents.

If you have those three typefaces, you’ve pretty much got a typesetting shop. Very little “fancy” type ever gets used outside of those three, with their bold and italic corollaries.

But EACH one communicates a subtly DIFFERENT message. Each sentence is slightly different. Or consider this:

Now, instead of looking at the sentences, all you see are the different sorts of type, each repeating the same sentence, but in a subtly different way. Or, to make it even more explicit:

Right now, the video “typeface” that Current TV is using is the bottom typeface, which gives the impression of a ransom note or a mad bomber, just as the “news” sets gives the impression of somebody who’s snuck into the basement of the local high school.

Somebody in business attire behind a desk, with a green screen background is the Fritz Quadrata of news around the world. And that format and formula weren’t derived by accident. They are used because, after trial and error, they WORK.

And please don’t let me see the cables and wires. This is a no-no from time immemorial. They don’t make you look “cutting edge” they make you look like a bunch of amateurs. And, trust me, conveying the metamessage of “cheap,” “dirty,” and “amateurish,” is NOT the way to present news. The digerati of Manhattan may think it’s kewl, but it is a monumental turnoff AND distraction.

The point is communication, so why undercut your message with an underlying silent communication that you either don’t know what you’re doing, or else you just don’t give a crap. Neither mitigates towards credibility.

And if credibility weren’t an issue, why hire Keith Olbermann? Why hire Jennifer Granholm? Why have Al Gore on primary night analysis?

Serious news show or garage band?

If you want to play news, wear a suit and tie, and if you’re in jeans, fine, but do it behind a desk. Contrary to popular delusion, you don’t need to have a news staff prancing about aerobically to deliver credible, reliable, important news. Consider Leonard Maltin.

All you need, actually, is two faces of a desk (front and top), and a green screen wall behind the desk. I’ve GOT a can of green screen paint from my last video shoot, and you’re welcome to it, if you want it. Bought at the movie supply house on La Brea across the street from the old KCOP 13 studios, it’s industry standard and goes on with a standard roller and brush.  You can slap it on anything you’d like for a flat surface.

JUST that much would improve your programs about 300% and, at a bare minimum, wouldn’t DETRACT from what you’re messaging in the news.

If you can’t afford sets, take the old Hippocratic Oath to heart: First, do no harm.

The story is told that Jimi Hendrix gave two concerts at one of the Fillmores (I forget which) on New Year’s Eve, and, after the first concert, with all the jumping and behind-the-back and playing with his teeth tricks, Bill Graham supposedly said “It sounded like crap, man! You don’t need all the circus tricks. Just play the music.”

And Jimi did the second set stock still, creating a legendary performance. Reportedly, no one in the audience registered offense or walked out because the musician wasn’t jumping around on stage like a cocker spaniel on Meth.

I would commend that approach to you, Current TV. Forget the circus tricks, the phony embrace of the everyman squalor and poverty of what looks like you’re broadcasting from inside the local National Guard armory.

Did they forget to pay their electric bill?

OK. I know this is a bit painful and perhaps kind of embarrassing, but dammit, it’s IMPORTANT that an alternative progressive cable channel succeed. For all the rightie howling about MSNBC, it’s still under the thumb of NBC news, and infiltrated through and through with Joe Scarboroughs and Michael Steeles (and other, impossible rare conservative Black Republicans, who seem to gravitate to MSNBC and CNN like unicorns to a magic spring) and, until he fell off the Kooky Klannish Kliff, Pat Buchanan.

The corporate media are almost COMPLETELY bought, and Comcast, who now controls all NBC and MSNBC content, is run by Brian L. Williams, whose political affiliations are murky. Comcast’s new head of NBC/Universal, however, is a Republican Über-contributor named Steve Burke.

So you HAVE to succeed, Current. Now, buck up, and take a little constructive criticism from someone who doesn’t want to watch you shoot yourself in the foot and then hop up and down squealing while the Sadists of the Reicht howl with guttural grunts and clicks of glee.

If you’re going to show TV screens, just HIDE the damned TVs. This is a perfect metaphor for what’s wrong.

1939 black and white TV

For seventy years or thereabouts, the Cathode Ray Tube television was the standard and only TV available, and became available everywhere.

Same thing seventy years later

But, aside from some weird nerds who built their own HeathKit® color TVs from a kit, nobody actually ever SAW a cathode-ray television.

This is a CRT TV:

Naked Lunch: this is what a TV actually is

We “know” it’s true. Somewhere, we actually saw that “real” TV, but we have always preferred the snazzy package with the magical screen floating in the middle. The REALITY of the CRT TV is ugly and disturbing. So we give it a pleasant or even a non-descript, nothing “set” in which to watch the magic, flicking of the 60 scan per second electron gun zapping rare earths.

Right now, you’re broadcasting shows that are that Naked Lunch cathode ray tube and electronic assembly bolted to a metal (or plastic) chassis.

Do what everybody has done from day one and let that magic screen float in a pleasant box. Heck, you might recall that for “The Situation Room” the big star is the giant modular TV screen. But it’s still an ugly assemblage of wires under that package. Hide them wires!

The star of the CNN program, and Wolf Blitzer

Now, one last little story and then I’ll let you get back to your garage for the next show.

Napoleon said that he’d learned more about statecraft from Talma, the famed French actor than from his contemporary Talleyrand, the famed French statesman and survivor.

Because, he said, he’d understood from Talma — a personal friend — that you have to ACT THE ROLE required of you. When Bonaparte was engaged with the Legislature, he DRESSED as a legislator. When engaged in war, he dressed as a general, and never confused the two. The clothing, believed Napoleon, was essential to playing the role properly. Any actor will tell you the same.

Or, as Ivan Markoda used to teach his acting students at the VANMAR Academy in Hollywood: If you go through the motions of anger, your body will find the emotion, without a bunch of fancy Stanislavsky of Boleslavsky emotional memory crap. Act out the physical manifestation of anger, and the anger will be there in the scene.

If you’re going to play newsman and newswoman, ACT like newsmen and newswomen.

And, if you’re going to play newsman and newswoman, DRESS like newsmen and newswomen.

You might recall the movie “Patton” when George C. Scott’s character arrives to take command of a US Army in North Africa that’s just suffered its first disaster of World War II at Kasserine Pass.

He immediately issues orders that the men are to be in regulation uniforms, shoes shined, ties on, or else:

Gentlemen, from this moment, any soldier without leggings, without a helmet, without a tie, any man with unshined shoes or a soiled uniform… is going to be skinned.

He imposes what might seem a martinet’s version of arbitrary discipline, but there is a deadly serious reason for it, as he explains:

You want to know why this outfit got the hell kicked out of it? A blind man could spot it. They don’t act like soldiers; they don’t look like soldiers; why should they be expected to fight like soldiers?

That is advice to take to heart, Current TV.

Act like credible newspersons and LOOK like credible newspersons, and everyone will expect that you ARE newspersons.

Capisce?

Hey, I love what you’re doing. Just get the Bohemian Rococo out of the picture and run some mildly animated backdrops on the green screen behind the desk. Less setting, more sentience, please.

Florida primary “War Room” — or is it Radio Free Piscataway?

Movies is magic, friends, and if you don’t make that magic your friend, it will surely be your enemy.

Which is, alas, where it currently stands.

Cordially, yer pal,

Hart Wms.

Courage.

===================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov

• Selling the New Nixon, part i (2011/12/01)
• Selling the New Nixon – A Clockwork Luntz (2011/12/05)
• Selling the New Nixon – What Ailes Us (2011/12/07)
• Selling the New Nixon – Pavlov in Action (2011/12/13)

And now, the conclusion …

i. NEWTERED! The New York Times provides one of the keys [emphasis added]:

January 26, 2012, 11:04 PM

Deconstructing a Demagogue

By TIMOTHY EGAN

[...]

The Blueprint.

Back in 1994, while plotting his takeover of the House, Gingrich circulated a memo on how to use words as a weapon. It was called “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.” Republicans were advised to use certain words in describing opponents — sick, pathetic, lie, decay, failure, destroy. That was the year, of course, when Gingrich showed there was no floor to his descent into a dignity-free zone, equating Democratic Party values with the drowning of two young children by their mother, Susan Smith, in South Carolina.

Today, if you listen carefully to any Gingrich takedown, you’ll usually hear words from the control memo….

This has been my point. Politics, as now practiced by the “Republicans” (who have morphed from the progressive party of Lincoln and Roosevelt to something that, even in their wildest paroxysms of Social Darwinism, have always found anathema: a party of low-minded bigotry and racial prejudice, which had formerly been the province of Southern Democrats, the Strom Thurmonds and Jesse Helms’ who became pillars of the modern “Republican” party, a party bearing only a spelling in common with the famed “Party of Lincoln”) as not practiced by Republicans, such AS Newt Gingrich, is confined exclusively to neuro-linguistic programming by repeated Pavlovian Conditioning of key words. Consider “Death Tax,” and “Entitlement Reform” or even “That statement is inoperative.” Or, “Tubercular,” or, most significantly, “failed presidency.”

Watch the entire segment (5:19) at Mediaite or watch on YouTube here

Which brings me to this weekend’s Bill Maher “Real Time” segment.

ii.  SURREAL TIME with Anton Pavlov

I want you to be aware of just how effective this tactic is. And I want to use Bill Maher’s closing monologue “Who The F*** Is Saul Alinsky?” to wrap up this series. If you’ve read up to this point, all the dendrites are properly reconnected and all we have to do is fire up your new neural grid. So, I’ll begin a few minutes previously in that program when the central interrupting shrew (seemingly a fill-in for a last-minute drop-out) was presented with the proper stimulus to activate her Pavlovian conditioning, à la “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”

The discussion came around to religion, and Bill Maher was discussing how ridiculous the notion that Obama was a Muslim, when he obviously had attended a Christian Church.

If you’ve been conditioned using the Key Mechanism, you’re way ahead of me.

INSTANTLY, without an actual thought, the interrupting shrew snorted “REVERENT WRIGHT!”

Location of the Amygdala (“Reptile Brain”) in the Human Brain bottom view; forebrain at top

It was NOT a “debate point.” There was no “there” there. It was a conditioned emotional response. You can troll for it in the blogosphere. Merely state that President Obama is a Christian, and you will INSTANTLY get that conditioned response.

This is real. This is the actual ad copy: Obama Joker Action Figure. Only one per Customer.

But we are NOT rats. That is what I’m trying to warn you against. We have to ACTIVELY fight the rat conditioning. Because, liberal, moderate or conservative; libertarian or communitarian, I don’t think ANY of us wants a nation in which the reptile brain determines national and foreign policy. Certainly there is no doubt that the Founding Fathers didn’t want that. “Mobocracy” has ever been a slander in American politics; not an Ideal. When they say “Death Tax” you have to INSTANTLY say: “No: ESTATE Tax” and, if you’re feeling frisky, or are you in FAVOR of an hereditary oligarchy? You know, actual barons and dukes and earls with or without titles? A permanent, hereditary rich class?

Some serious cognitive dissonance: “NANCY PELOSI Action Figure complete with Water Board” Hunh?

iii. Do words actually matter? Depends on what words.

When they say “Democrat Party” you must instantly stand up for the name of your party (whether or not you are affiliated, the Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the world, and that is a prideful AMERICAN thing), just as you’d stand up if someone called the president a “nigger,” or the Energy Secretary a “chink” or the former Governor of Alaska a “retard.”

If we CARE about language, then we’ve GOT to care about this Skinnerian Conditioning of the Rat-race.

Because when the conditioning kicked in on Maher’s “Real Time,” THE CONVERSATION WAS DERAILED. “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”

And that is intentional. Just as the anti-union Republican congress has gone on strike until and unless their demands are agreed to, so, too, “Conservative” speakers have been tutored in the “run out the clock” school of debate, by actively throwing out little conversation stoppers, as in the story of Hippomenes, who used three golden apples to distract Atalanta during their potentially fatal matrimonial footrace.

Only, what’s tossed out is less akin to golden apples than what’s in that burning paper bag that was left on your doorstep when the kids rang the doorbell and ran.

But Maher puts the argument in a nutshell. Although he uses the trope that the Republicans run against fake candidates, creating them inside their bubble —  like the French War Criminal John Kerry. “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”

My point. Except that I prefer the old “straw man argument” concept brought up-to-date.

GI JOE Action figure box

In front of Rachel Maddow’s Emmy, in her office, there is an Action GI Joe™ Figure box.

Now, if, instead of running against, say, Rick Santorum, you created all sorts of “Rick Santorum” qualities and then ascribed them to the action GI JOE and ran against (you don’t actually have to have anything IN the box), you would bed not merely creating a complete “straw man” argument, but y0u would be engaged in precisely what is being done to President Obama and a lot of other Democratic Party politicians.

“Tax and spend liberal!” fits nicely in that box. “Big spending, big government leftist!” ALSO fits in that box. Everything fits in that box that your serpentine strategist suggests would make the ACTUAL person represented by your rhetorical Voodoo Juju doll repulsive or unappealing to the electorate. Or, rather, to the electorate’s REPTILE brain.

Old Ivan Pavlov would be proud.

It gives the old football term as applied to politics “Getting your bell rung” a new and entirely appropriate meaning.

This is an actual action figure set that was (is?) for sale

And that’s what we’ve got: you “define” the opposition candidate as an Action Figure — the “Failed President” Obama, Socialist Muslim Gun-Grabbing Wealth Redistributionist from Kenya Action Figure. (Burka  and AK-47 sold separately.)

And now, they are relentlessly hammering home the Pavlovian points. Listen for them, and, when possible, reject them.

Actual Obama action figure for sale in 2008 note the multiple hand gestures sets

The fact that they’ve successfully revamped Social Security and Medicare (which we PAY for) as “Entitlement Programs” has put their ball on We, The People’s one yard line. Ask WHAT THE HELL DO MEN “ENTITLEMENT”? I pay my hard-earned cash INTO them. I’m OWED, not “ENTITLED.” Or the absurd (and I mean that literally: 1. at variance with reason; manifestly false 2. ludicrous; ridiculous) notion that’s been sold to everybody that SIMPLER tax codes = FAIRER tax codes.

Simpler criminal codes aren’t necessarily fairer criminal codes. OK: Ten years in prison for every misdemeanor, death for every felony. Simpler, yes. But fairer?

Our tax code is a monument and testament to the eternal craftiness of the Mitt Romneys and Newt Gingriches of the world to find the narrowest loophole through which to weasel out of taxes. And let me tell you, some of the dodges that they’ve come up are required study for anyone preparing to become an Enrolled Agent, licensed by the IRS.

Go to a “flat tax” — overturning a well understood concept of progressive taxation going back over two millennia to ancient Athens —  and watch the weasels literally wallow in orgasmic ecstasy.

iv. More Reptile Brain Follies!

As the battle is lost at the reptile brain level, the whole notion of debate and discussion is subverted. And, as the notion that money buys air time becomes the determinant — barring such douchebaggery that even Republican primary voters can’t be convinced to go along in the name of Jesus Christ, the Founding Fathers and Saint Ronald of Ray Gun — our nation becomes not merely a crippled giant, but, as the world increasingly fears, a RETARDED giant, wandering after wills o’ the wisp amidst the wispy whippoorwills.

Yes. It’s Sarah Palin as a “school girl.”
From the same folks (and page) who
make the Obama Joker action figure.
They’re equal opportunity offenders,
you’ve got to give them that much.

We are in an incredibly destabilized world as of 2012, and pitting childish fantasies against the real and immediate problems of a world economy not-quite-melted-down is incredibly dangerous. If you feel that placing your fate in the Invisible Hand of the Market in all things is the One True Capitalist Religion, that’s fine, but just remember how it bitch-slapped Atlas Shrugged — The Movie.

The mindset is not confined to “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”

But recognize how insidiously you’ve been conditioned via jingles and commercials to prefer Coke to Pepsi, to “The King of Beers,” how drinking Dr. Pepper makes you different and original, or Dr. Pepper for Men is somehow good for chest hair, but antithetical to estrogenies.

Michelle Bachman
action figure.

Bill Maher continues to note that Newt used the choice between Apple Pie Patrioticism Flag-Flag-Reagan and “Saul Alinsky style radicalism” Here is the closing, in text [h/t Brad Blog]:

You know, Republicans have created this completely fictional President.

His name is Barack X and he’s an Islamo-Socialist revolutionary who’s coming for your guns, raising your taxes, slashing the military, apologizing to other countries and taking his cues from Europe — or worse yet, Saul Alinsky!

And this is how politics has changed.

You used to have to run against an actual candidate. But now, you just recreate him inside the bubble and run against your new fictional candidate. That’s how Bush won in 2004: By running against John Kerry — a French war criminal.

And speaking of Bush, I know conservatives are saying, “Oh, Bill, come on, Democrats did the same thing to him!”

No.

Say what you will about the Left’s hatred of Bush, at least we were hating on the real guy. We didn’t invent a bogey-man who tanked the economy, took us to war on false pretenses and tortured prisoners. That was the actual guy!

But run down the list of complaints about Fantasy Obama: He wants to raise your taxes, even though he’s lowered them; confiscate your guns, even though he’s never mentioned it; and read terrorists their rights — yeah, like he did Tuesday in Somalia…

… You see the difference is, the Republicans hatred of Obama is based on a paranoid feeling about what he might do, what he’s thinking, what he secretly wants to change. Anger with Bush was based on what he actually did.

What Bush was thinking didn’t matter, because he wasn’t.

And, in its way, that’s what I’ve been leading up to in all of this. The artificial creation of rhetorical bogeymen is a very dangerous tactic. (And, like that GI JOE box, you don’t need an actual action figure. You just need language to tell your voting audience what’s IN the box.  Which may not exist at all, or is merely a series of gut language conditionings attached to the “action figure” you’ve created.)

Obama Christian?

REVEREND WRIGHT!

Obama American?

KENYA! BIRTH CERTIFICATE!

(And note that I predicted this back in March of 2008.)

Actual (scary as the doll) ad copy:
“The Original Obama Action Figure complete
with sound from his coming out speech [sic]“

These are no more nor less than Skinnerian Conditioning: using language to create specific emotional responses in the architecture of the brain, specifically in the pre-mammalian portion we call the Amygdala, the reptile brain that associates cold beer with boobs, chewing gum and breath mints with kissing, and Marie Osmond with losing weight.

Madison Avenue has had no problem with the disgusting spectacle of this lowest-common-denominator psychological conditioning, and politics has devolved to the same thing. As any quick assay of the current GOP primary TV ads will tell you. “Mitt Romney: Blood Money” is running trailers in time for the Florida primary, Tuesday. But, creepy and plastic though Mitt may be (a plastic action figure, in his case, would be manifestly redundant), this is over the top, unreal and manifestly unfair.

It is not so much any ideology we have to excise from American politics, as it is a sophisticated system of screwing with the preconscious areas of the voters’ brains!

I don’t care for the hit job Brian Ross of ABC News tried to pull on Newt Gingrich last week before the South Carolina primary any more than I cared for his breaking of the “Reverend Jeremiah Wright” story in 2008 (or the Rahm Emmanuel story on Nov. 7, the day after Obama’s election), for the selfsame reason. In neither case did it work, but that’s not the point. Those tactics ought be condemned, and it is a particularly 19th century sort of mud-slinging, technology notwithstanding.

This attempt to subvert our votes via our reptile brain is EVEN MORE OFFENSIVE — no matter which party does it. Because it is extremely dangerous, on so very many levels.

Worse, if you REALLY do it right, some angry “Christian” anti-, say, abortion fanatic will assassinate you in church. The tissue-thin rationalization of “States Rights!” was used to send over 600,000 Americans to their death 150 years ago, and we’re not immune, by any stretch.

I fear, in fact, that Citizens United case may well be the Dred Scott blunder of our age, derailing our nation in a manner that only blood and fire can restore. But refusing to capitulate to this regime of “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” is not only a battle that must be fought, but is a battle that too few seem to realize is even a necessary struggle.

“You deserve a break today … so get up and get away …”

“My bologna has a first name it’s …”

“Fly the friendly skies of …”

“Roto-Rooter, that’s the name …”

“they’re magically de-licious!”

If you heard any jingles in your brain, you’ve been conditioned. If you know all the products not named, you’ve been conditioned, like any lab rat in any third-rate land grant university. And that OUGHT to offend you, at least a little.

v. Actors and poseurs, including a little acting tip from Old Hollywood

Just remember, Richard Nixon started this new Republican emphasis on politics-as-advertising, Ronald Reagan pushed it into politics-as-televised-theater*, and Bush the Smarter and Bush the Dumber took politics into Docudrama Fiction (think of the “mission accomplished” speech) as Newt took it into neurolinguistic programming of the Id.

[* I always appreciated Reagan's Hollywood professionalism, as I equally despised the subterfuge. But he had learned the tricks of the trade and used them seamlessly. An example: one of the things I was taught by Harvey Lembeck was that for film or stage, you never hold an old-style phone as you would normally hold a phone. You cheat it back so that the camera can see your face.

Some  disgruntled hippies maintained that this
was the actual Ronald Reagan, metaphorically

Why? Because, the prop phone generally DOESN'T WORK. And, as with fight scenes, a lot of human behaviors on film require trickery. (There is nothing "naturalistic" about film and video. You get "natural" looking shots by hard work, good light and good framing.)

You can get away with holding an old time phone's mouthpiece all the way back on your jaw, and the audience thinks it looks completely natural. Like doing a two shot, with both actors cheated to three-quarters profile speaking "eye-to-eye" even though they're not looking at one another except peripherally in real life. On film, it looks like a real staredown.

But if you'll watch, a gazillion semi-trained, wanna-be actors grab that old phone and cut off half of their botox'ed puss.

Ronald Reagan, Hollywood veteran, knew exactly how to hold a phone for the camera.

Oval Office phone photo

George W. Bush, on the other hand, was what Washington D.C. THOUGHT Reagan was doing, but without a thousand Boraxo™ and Borateem™ commercials under his belt, he never really understood how to play sincere to the camera, and ofttimes had only three expressions during long speeches, as anyone who watched any of his SOTU's can attest. He was never up to the level of a dinner-theater actor, although he could do the large crowds thing.

And, as Oregon politics taught me, in an age of microphones, it's utterly ATROCIOUS how many politicians have NO IDEA of how to speak into any microphones, let alone the new-fangled chest-high "microphones for idiots," which they insist on getting  right up to their face and yelling into, even as every speaker in Harris Hall crackles from overload.

If you're going to be in front of cameras, learn how to present yourself to them. And if you're going to do political yak for a living, learn about microphones. As in Ancient Athens, rhetoric IS politics, pure and simple. All laws and speeches and transcripts and regulations are words. So, learn about microphones. Please?]

Selling the “New” Nixon – 1968

And Roger Ailes, who runs Faux Nooz™ signed on with Richard Nixon in 1968 at the beginning:

“It’s a shame a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected,” Mr. Nixon is supposed to have remarked to Mr. Ailes. “Television is not a gimmick, and if you think it is, you’ll lose again,” Mr. Ailes is supposed to have remarked to Mr. Nixon. And there the modern conservative movement — not the ideological entity but the telegenic one — was born.

Roger Ailes @ left, unaccustomedly

And Ailes was determined to get GOP news on TV as far back as the Nixon Administration:

Posted at 10:40 AM ET, 07/01/2011
Richard Nixon and Roger Ailes 1970s plan to put the GOP on TV
By Melissa Bell | The Washington Post

[...] A memo entitled “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News,” buried in the the Nixon library details a plan between Ailes and the White House to bring pro-administration stories to television networks around the country. It reads: “Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, than people listen to the radio, than people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: People are lazy. With television you just sit—watch—listen. The thinking is done for you.”

It’s just one 15-page section in a 318-page cache John Cook, at Gawker, pulled out from the Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush libraries….

Karl Rove, Faux Nooz™ commentator and former “Bush’s Brain” now runs GPS Crossroads and related entities. He is planning to spend somewhere north of $250 million conditioning voters to vote Republican in this election cycle. Probably by claiming that Obama “looks French” and “has two black children.”

Karl Rove of American Crossroads

vi: What Finally Ail(e)s the Body Politic

The rational mind had better get ready to face down the Id, or, the savage instinctual brain, if you wish. But the only way that  “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” is defeated is by using language intelligently, even if it means chanting counter-memes.

“Class Warfare.” “Envy.” “Failed presidency.”  ”Tubercular.” “Obama: The most polarizing president.  Ever.” (from today’s Washington Post).

And, MOST disturbing (I heard it twice just this morning , once from Mitt Romney; once from a South Florida Retiree-atrice in the street): “Take him out.”

Which, in every action movie of the past couple of decades means: KILL him. You don’t “take out” an American president. You kick him out of office, or make him a “one-term president” (another conditioning meme), but “take him out”? Retards. (And not the elementary recess bullies who dominate political debate with “I know you are but what am I?” and its close relative “I’m rubber, you’re glue, it bounces off me and sticks to you,” but, rather, the comatose media who does not challenge such outrageous language.)

And, OK, I apologize for the term. Either words are important or they aren’t. Both sides agree that they’re important, but not on WHICH words are important:

“Jeremiah Wright” or “Food stamp president”? “Orientals” or “Asian-Americans”? “Failed president” or “socialist”? “Chairman” or “Chairperson”? “Feminist” or “Feminazi”? “Obama lowered America’s credit rating” or “Tea-partiers nearly brought the nation to a standstill and one jittery credit agency lowered our credit rating from AAA to AA+”?

The only way that  “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” is defeated is by countering that “control mechanism” language. (And, are you noting how “Big Brotherish” that specific title formulation is? Language sometimes reveals more than was intended by its wielder.)

Dig the crazy ’1984′ encrypted message from
almost exactly one year ago

By comparison, Aristophanes’ caricature of the Sophists seems almost noble in contrast:

THE CLOUDS

By Aristophanes 423 BC

[FATHER] Go, I entreat you, dearest of men, go and be taught.

[SON] Why, what shall I learn?

[FATHER] They say that among them are both the two causes—the better cause, whichever that is, and the worse: they say that the one of these two causes, the worse, prevails, though it speaks on the unjust side. If, therefore you learn for me this unjust cause, I would not pay any one, not even an obolus [small coin] of these debts, which I owe at present on your account.

Now, we accept lawyers as a matter of course. But people who intentionally screw with the mechanism of your brain?

Meet Action-Figure Obama, from the people who brought you Action-Figure Bush:

And, just like in the actual historic “surprise” photo-op, the turkey is 100% plastic.

If you ever hear Mitt Romney’s stump speech creating the Action-figure Obama (and I can pretty well guarantee that, eventually, you will), you may be astonished that you don’t recognize the person he’s painting, or that nearly all of his charges are grandiloquently, ponderously, pachydermously false — a form of pachydermatitis or pachyeczema, seemingly.

I began this series when I heard one of the slytherines from the National Review using that term “tubercular” very specifically, if ham-handedly, to create a conditioning repetition in the brains of the listeners about the Occupy protesters. (Based on a single news story claiming that at one camp in the USA, someone had tuberculosis.) November 29, 2011, KCRW, Santa Monica, California:

From the On Point Radio site, hosted by Warren Olney:

RE: Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review, @charlescwcooke

A reader writes:

Plea to the producers and Mr. Olney: Please be prepared to counter slander and unsupported claims from guests, especially when you ask for comparisons. Charles Cooke’s snide, off-hand denigrating of the OWS protestors as compared to the Tea Party because, among other things, “rape” and “murder” and “tuberculosis” accompany OWS, implies that the OWS movement is comparatively unsanitary and unsafe. This sort of generalization is, to say the least, not well founded. Blaming the protesters or their tactics for the criminal actions of one or a small number of people is unfair, as Mr. Cooke acknowledges it would be unfair to blame the protesters for the behavior of someone who is mentally ill. Yet he portrays OWS in a poor light in comparison to the Tea Party on just this basis.

tp_2011-11-29-153115.mp3

Here is the download link for the above-encoded mp3: http://download.kcrw.com/audio/803115/tp_2011-11-29-153115.mp3

Or this from The Ticket via Yahoo news:

How Republicans are being taught to talk about Occupy Wall Street

By Chris Moody | The Ticket – Thu, Dec 1, 2011

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to rejuvenate, strategize and team-build. But during a plenary session on Wednesday, one question kept coming up: How can Republicans do a better job of talking about Occupy Wall Street?
“I’m so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I’m frightened to death,” said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation’s foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. “They’re having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism.”
Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about “income inequality” and “paying your fair share.”

Yahoo News sat in on the session, and counted 10 do’s and don’ts from Luntz covering how Republicans should fight back by changing the way they discuss the movement.

1. Don’t say ‘capitalism.’

“I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’ ” Luntz said. “The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”

2. Don’t say that the government ‘taxes the rich.’ Instead, tell them that the government ‘takes from the rich.’

“If you talk about raising taxes on the rich,” the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But “if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no. Taxing, the public will say yes.”

3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over the ‘middle class.’ Call them ‘hardworking taxpayers.’

“They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the ‘middle class’ and the public will say, I’m not sure about that. But defending ‘hardworking taxpayers’ and Republicans have the advantage.”

… and so forth …

The point is to pound a word or a phrase repeatedly into the minds of the listeners, which will act as a rhetorical virus, constantly coloring the political question as in “Entitlement Reform” …

Kind of like I’ve been doing by repeating this in boldfaced blue:  “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.”

Woof.

“Where all is but dream, reasoning
and arguments are of no use,
truth and knowledge nothing.”
~ John “inalienable rights” Locke

Courage.

===================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

A ruling in spring 2011 by the German Constitutional Court enables dangerous criminals in preventive detention to return to living “a normal life”. And that includes having a place to stay, becoming part of a new neighbourhood. German politicians now have a burden on their hands and residents have serious safety concerns. A look at the recent situation in Hamburg, where two criminals have already been released.

by Stephanie Kopf

Last week the local media in Hamburg, of northern Germany, were once again buzzing on a subject that has been occupying the city’s residents and politicians for months. A sexual offender moved in to a house selected by Hamburg’s senate for released criminals who were in preventive detention. Another man in the same situation moved in to the same house. The building is a former nursing home in a district called Jenfeld. Before that this ex-convict was living in a mental facility. The planned moves have been made public for several months now and have since then been steadfastly met by almost daily furious protests from Jenfeld residents.

The media reported the offender entered the house in blue jeans and a striped orange-yellow jacket, with a black Labrador in tow. He could have been any ordinary man, except for the eight policemen stationed around the house as he walked. Several of them will be doing round-the-clock surveillance of the new tenant. He was driven over in the dark, as a safety precaution, in a column of four police cars. As soon as he entered the apartment, he pulled the curtains shut. The message from locals must have gotten to him. But then, he had been moved from place to place several times before.

Previously some 300 residents had protested against the planned move. They expressed fear for their children in news reports and some said the city had to find another place for cases like these, not so close to or definitely not in residential neighborhoods. Other parents from Jenfeld voiced definite concern since their children pass the house where the ex-convicts now live on the way to school.

Before the sexual offender moved in, residents had manned the driveway up to the house daily. Organizers of the protests mistrusted authorities’ assurances that locals would be informed before the criminals move in to the house.

According to media reports, the men themselves did not want to move to this particular location. Protests have been energetic, since it has become public that the senate planned to move the two men to Jenfeld. But Hamburg’s justice senator, as well as the senator for internal affairs stood firm. Jenfeld was the only available suggestion. Letters were sent to more than 23 000 households announcing the decision, yet protests persisted.

The ongoing discussion was caused primarily by a decision made by the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg, in May 2010. The news website Spiegel International reported with the aggressive headline: European Court Ruling Forces Release of Rapists and Murderers. According to their report, as a consequence of the court ruling in Germany almost 200 criminals could be eligible for release.

The ruling prevented belatedly imposing preventive detention was a violation of human rights. As a consequence, of the 30 dangerous criminals who were in preventive detention in Hamburg’s jails or correctional facilities, 16 could be released until 2018. Among them are 14 violent criminals.

In turn the decision of the Court in Strasbourg provoked a follow-up ruling by Germany’s Constitutional Court in May 2011 that the preventive detention policy in the country was unconstitutional. It is seen as a violation of human rights to keep a criminal who has already served a sentence in such a facility. Yet the very purpose of preventive detention serves to prevent individuals committing another crime.

At the time the website of the Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster, quoted the head of a preventive detention department in Aachen, in the West of Germany, who voiced many of the main questions worrying people: “Who should stay and who should go? And when they are released, where are they supposed to go, where are they going to live? All these questions are not so easy to answer. Our efforts to accommodate prisoners’ progression back to freedom in the past have met with many difficulties. They know what awaits them outside, and what doesn’t await them, and that society doesn’t really want them.”

The plain fact is that the typical resident, or a woman or parents aren’t thinking much about the European Court of Human Rights when they find out a convicted rapist, regardless of whether he has served his sentence or not, is moving in nearby. Survival and safety instincts kick in and they rule the brain.

Usually in Europe during a case the presiding judge decides whether or not to include preventive detention in a verdict, if based on evaluations a criminal is considered likely to prevent a further crime despite serving time in jail. The Constitutional Court in Germany underlines the importance of differentiating between where prisoners serve their sentences and preventive detention, namely that facilities for the latter should be as liberating as possible.

Heated discussions on the issue continue between politicians. Not long after the court ruling Spiegel International quoted Konrad Freiberg, the head of the police union GdP in Germany. Monitoring dangerous criminals released from preventive detention is posing a serious problem, as the police do not always have the resources to continuously do that. It also brings up additional costs.

So this whole thing is far from over. Where do released criminals go? Just how probable is it that they themselves are ready for such a move? How are residents of cities supposed to cope if they find out someone like that is moving in nearby? Isn’t it justified to feel scared and angry? Shouldn’t politicians take those feelings, the protests they provoke, the valid safety concerns in to account? At present it seems like the questions keep piling up and a solution is far from sight.

Stephanie Kopf writes for the blog http://www.trenditionist.com . She has lived in Siberia, New York City and Germany. Her subject areas include anything related to the human psyche, European news, education, communication in all its forms, as well as the interaction of all of these with each other.
Visit us at http://www.trenditionist.com

Graphic via shutterstock.com

But defiant Iran is not getting the point and is refusing to stop its nuclear program. Now Washington and Europe are trying to up the stakes with the EU move to impose an oil embargo and sanctions on Iran’s central bank.

With the new sanctions in place, no EU member state can sign a contract to import crude oil or refined petroleum from Iran. In addition, the EU has introduced a range of financial restrictions, including freezing assets held in Europe by the Iranian Central Bank.

Israel has been calling for such measures for more than 2 years. Even now with the new embargo it will take another 6 months for it to be fully enforced. Prime Minister Netanyahu said yesterday that by the time the embargo will be enforced Iran will possess a nuclear bomb.

Iran is likely to turn to other countries to cover up for the loss of sales of almost 600,000 barrels of oil per day to the EU, 24% of its total exports. In anticipation the US is now looking at Africa to help increase the pressure on Iran.

US diplomats and lobbyists are stepping up pressure to reduce African commercial ties to Iran as part of a growing global push to squeeze Tehran. The US is talking to its allies in Africa in Uganda, in South Africa, in Angola and more to join the embargo and cut ties with Iran.

Now, African countries that once were viewed as distant from the conflict with Iran are getting drawn into the sanctions effort.

President Obama said in regard to EU’s sanctions that it “demonstrate once more the unity of the international community in addressing the serious threat presented by Iran’s nuclear program”.

The rise of Islam across the Arab world is a blessing and a curse for Iran. As an Islamic regime it welcomes the rise of Islam. In the quest for Islamic global domination Iran is putting aside the differences between its Shiite version of Islam and Egypt’s Sunni’s version. But on the other hand an Islamic regime in Egypt is a threat to Iran’s leadership position in the region.

While the west is constantly offering a way out for Iran through talks and negotiation, Iran is not likely to choose that option. The question is will Iran take severe action as a result of these sanctions, one that could escalate the situation dramatically?

The radical Islamic regime in Iran armed with one nuclear weapon is a threat to the whole world. Iran has become a martyrdom-obsessed state run by religious fanatics bent on spreading Shiite Islam throughout the world.

The religious belief in Iran calls for chaos before the arrival of the hidden Imam, also known as the 12th Imam. Difficult as it may be for Western leaders to comprehend, Ahmedinejad believes he is on a messianic mission to create the apocalyptic chaos necessary to lay the foundations for the Coming of the 12th Imam or Mahdi and the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate. A nuclear weapon will serve this purpose.

This threat can be contained only if the world works together to do it. From the US to Europe and Africa, from Uganda to China, for these economic sanctions to work they must cripple the Iranian economy and bring the end of the fanatical Ayatollahs regime. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

L. Frank Baum, author of a series of beloved children’s books, admittedly snuck certain political and allegorical information into his writings. But other information has been included as well. That is the popular version of certain tales from Baum’s Oz canon. But there is another, chilling level to his tales. One that the Federal Government has recognized since the 1930′s at least, and one which confronts us, perilously, on the front pages of America’s newspapers today.

Wikipedia tells us [emphasisadded]:

The Winkie Country is a division of the fictional Land of Oz. It is distinguished by the color yellow; this color is worn by most of the local inhabitants and predominates in the surroundings.

This was the country ruled by the Wicked Witch of the West before Dorothy “melted” her with a bucket of water in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Since then, the Tin Woodman ruled over the Winkies as their Emperor. The Winkie Country is separated only by the Deadly Desert from the underground Dominions of the Nome King. The most famous depiction of the Winkies is in The Wizard of Oz (1939 film) where they appear as the regimental army of the Wicked Witch of the West, marching in formation and chanting“Yo E Oh, Yo Ho” repeatedly.

In the film, the Winkies bear little or no resemblance to their literary counterparts, dressing in blue uniforms and having green skin and pointed noses. The Winkie Country is only shown at night in the film, with the main colors being blue, black and gray. The scenery is very bleak and barren, with many mountains and rock formations.

Indeed, the Winkie menace was real, as Baum and many Washington insiders realized at the time. While all of the principals have since passed away, out of respect for the families of the departed, I will reveal as few names as possible.

However, it IS now known, through the Freedom of Information Act, and the work of library interns at the American Film Institute in Hollywood, that the Roosevelt Administration felt that the “Winkie Situation” was so imminent that they prevailed upon L.B. Mayer at MGM studios to remake the silent film “The Wizard of Oz,” as a Winkie War seemed impending and inevitable. J. Edgar Hoover called the “Winkie Affair”  ”as significant a danger to the health and morality of America and Americanism as the Communists.”[22]

Significantly, however, and as noted, the “green” Winkies were so clearly different from actual YELLOW Winkies that it would seem an unbelievable blunder to make a film INTENDED to psychologically prepare the public for the Winkie Menace with GREEN Winkies!

New documents discovered in the AFI archives now confirm that this was entirely intentional. “The green skin,” Mayer wrote, “will put the Winkies into the same realm of childhood fantasy as the green witch, while very clearly showing the American public what Winkies actually look like.”

Released in 1939, “The Wizard of Oz” produced an Academy Award for “Best Song.”

But phase II, which was to prepare the public for the “over the Rainbow” nature of the Winkie Menace was staged, infamously, by the Mercury Radio Theater under the direction of Orson Welles, in the famous Halloween “prank” that was a national scandal and propelled nearly all of the Mercury Players to long Hollywood careers. I am speaking, of course, of the radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds.

It is no coincidence that both events occurred in the same year.

Now, as most UFO-ologists know, the Winkies allied themselves with the Axis, and, thus, the entire “Winkie Menace” campaign was dropped and resources moved elsewhere to create propaganda posters caricaturing “Nazis and Japs.”

After the end of the war, the few remaining Winkie operatives were very stoutly rebuffed by world governments around the world. And fears of the Winkie menace subsided.

As the years have passed, and other, more modern “UFO” incidents moved through the colon of classified state secrets that the Pentagon excretes regularly, the Winkie menace was all but forgotten.

Now, sadly, the Winkies have infiltrated our government to such a degree that at least one operative is being seen openly in our national media —  absolutely certainly to signal Winkie sleeper agents to “activate.” And, cynically perhaps, sneering that the national news media, chasing old “sex” and “tax returns” scandals, will never realize that the Winkies have already infiltrated the highest levels of American government, and have control of the American Presidency nearly within their grasp.

You heard it here, first.

Happy Year of the Fire Dragon.

Courage.

==========================

[22] There is no actual footnote here. The author just forgot to remove this after sticking it in for no apparent reason, evidently.

[Note: this is a parody. Nothing about this story is true. I am NOT accusing Callista Gingrich of being a Winkie, although I refuse to discount the possibility completely until I can see a full DNA scan of her potentially alien cell structure.]

==========================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Rob Miller is a US Marine Corps combat veteran who served in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. A Charleston native and a graduate of the University of South Carolina, Rob and his family currently reside in Beaufort, South Carolina.

Having served over thirteen years in the United States Marine Corps, from enlisted infantry Marine to Company Commander, serving twice in Iraq to include the Battle of Fallujah in November 2004, I know leadership is the one quality every military service member and veteran wants to see from our Commander-in-Chief.

As Marine Corps Lieutenant General John A. Lejeune said, “Leadership is the sum of those qualities of intellect, human understanding, and moral character that enables a person to inspire and control a group of people successfully.” Leadership requires skill, finesse, and unwavering conviction.

Our Commander-in-Chief, President Obama, has very strong convictions. President Obama never faltered on the war in Iraq. He was against the war in 2002, pledged to end the war as a presidential candidate, and kept that promise by ending the war with honor and bringing our troops home last month. Through his leadership, the United States helped liberate Libya and put an end to the Qaddafi regime. President Obama has upheld his promise to our veterans by passing the Post-9/11 GI Bill, increasing funding to the Department of Veterans Affairs and working tirelessly to put returning veterans to work in the private sector.

President Obama believes in justice, strength, and action. Under his leadership, the United States has decimated the leaders of al Qaeda and critically hampered their global terror network. Still not convinced? Let’s take a quick look at some of the numbers:

Drone strikes under President Bush: 44

Drone strikes under President Obama: 240+

Everyone knows about the special operations raid to kill Osama bin Laden or the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki. But few realize the sweeping success of our military’s more targeted operations and its drone campaign, which have led to the capture or death of scores of top al Qaeda operatives from Pakistan and Iraq to Yemen, Indonesia, and Somalia.

Defense spending, which in 2010 equaled nearly five percent of our entire GDP, has surpassed the peak of Cold War spending and is at its highest level since World War II. In contrast, this new wave of precise, targeted attacks embodies the direction in which President Obama and our military leaders wish to take our overarching defense strategy.

The President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs recently unveiled a new course for our military, a transition away from the two-war doctrine or Desert Storm X2 concept. This change has been a long time coming. In Joint Force Quarterly in Spring 2000 (.pdf), the Brookings Institution’s Michael O’Hanlon stressed the need to transition away from a “two-Desert Storm paradigm” to a more mobile expeditionary force structure that encompassed one war and multiple other threats.

Ignoring the wisdom of our national security experts and military leaders, Governor Romney has been quick to say he would continue to grow our military, even suggesting that he would not be against war with Iran. Romney’s reckless, short-sighted rhetoric illustrates that he is willing to sacrifice the well-being of our military, our economy, and our country to win cheap votes.

In stark contrast, our Commander-in-Chief has diligently upheld his office and executed his duties with conviction and action. As President Obama prepares our forces to meet the needs of the future, his courage of conviction, decisiveness of action, and steadfast leadership will undoubtedly ensure America’s continued success.

Some may recall that Thoreau was an Abolitionist, and that Lawrence, Kansas’ main street is named “Massachusetts Street” and not “Main Street” for the New England Emigrant Aid Society, many of whose fundraisers were held in Massachusetts and some of which were attended by Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, his friend and neighbor. Wikipedia:

The slavery crisis inflamed New England in the 1840s and 1850s. The environment became especially tense after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. A lifelong abolitionist, Thoreau delivered an impassioned speech which would later become Civil Disobedience in 1848, just months after leaving Walden Pond. The speech dealt with slavery, but at the same time excoriated American imperialism, particularly the Mexican–American War.

And so, Thoreau must be pleased in the Hereafter. Gandhi was able to translate Thoreau’s theoretical clarity into strategy and tactics, and King and Mandela were able to perfect them. And those tactics toppled the dictatorships of Egypt and Tunisia last year, before the wave of non-violence of the “Arab Spring” was quashed in the classical gunfire of repression. A more profound wave of world revolution has rarely happened even WITH guns. Without guns, it is astonishing.

It has always seemed odd to me that, in order for that little essay, written in the environs of Walden “Pond” to arrive in Montgomery, Alabama, it had to detour through South Africa and India. But that was its original purpose, fulfilled long after the death of the author.

If you have a moment, read (or, hopefully, re-read) “Civil Disobedience,” as influential an essay as you’ll find in American letters.

And, by the by, the old saw ”That government is best which governs least,” is coined in the first sentence of the essay.

While Gandhi is always mentioned and Thoreau is never mentioned in Martin Luther King, Jr. remembrances, King himself said this:

During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau’s essay On Civil Disobedience for the first time. Here, in this courageous New Englander’s refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery’s territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau’s insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.

—The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

But that’s not the sad irony of this day of observance.

The sad irony is that Martin Luther King was a Baptist preacher in the South, but, significantly, NOT a Southern Baptist preacher:

The Progressive National Baptist Convention, Incorporated (PNBC) is a convention of African-American Baptists emphasizing civil rights and social justice. The convention was formed at Cincinnati, Ohio in 1961, in a separation from the older National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc. (NBCUSA). After the 1954 Supreme Court ruling concerning desegregation of public schools, the NBCUSA followed a policy of official detachment from the Civil Rights Movement. The desire of some members for the Convention’s full support of the movement was a focus of discontent. Other disagreements concerned the election of officers and the length of the Convention president’s term. The old Convention was unwilling to enforce the tenure of officers, and it did not fully support the program and methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. and others in the Civil Rights Movement. The proposal to limit tenure was also related to civil rights issues, as King supported the removal of the president, Joseph H. Jackson. King’s support for and nomination of Gardner Taylor as president of the NBCUSA was defeated at the 1961 Convention, leading to the call for the formation of a new convention.

The Southern Baptist denomination is the #1 Protestant denomination in the USA. It emerged from a schism with the American (Northern) Baptist church in the 1850s, over, you guessed it, slavery. (Historical footnote: the Baptists midwifed the First Amendment —  fearful that the New England Puritans would outlaw them, as had been the case at the foundation of the colony — by insisting that a religious freedom clause be inserted into the Bill of Rights.)

We’ll skip over the long, ugly road that the Southern Baptists took through justifying slavery and then Jim Crow.

By the 1980s, it was fairly mainstream, and then a Texas judge decided that it was getting too “liberal.”

Holy War: Fundamentalists Fight To Capture the Soul Of Southern Baptists
– Purges and Censorship Grow As Zealots Try to Finish Takeover From ‘Liberals’ — Where Women Went Wrong

By Peter Waldman, The Wall Street Journal
March 7, 1988

[...]

What fundamentalists say they are doing now is cleansing the leadership of a small cadre of liberals who have tried to subvert traditional Baptist belief in the complete literal truth of the Bible. These fundamentalists call themselves “inerrantists,” after their position that Scripture contains no error.

It was Justice Pressler who figured out a way to “recapture” control. The Texas jurist realized that less than 5% of eligible delegates usually showed up at the denomination’s annual convention. He says those who came, many of them denominational employees on expense accounts, brought about a “liberal drift” by electing liberal officers who in turn appointed liberal trustees to the boards of church agencies.

Justice Pressler and like-minded fellows became circuit riders, traveling from church to church to exhort inerrantists to attend the annual convention. The strategy worked. Since 1979, fundamentalists have elected every denominational president. And as trustee terms have expired, inerrantists have gained control of the largest agencies.

“What we’re doing here is basically returning the Southern Baptist Convention to the people,” contends Justice Pressler, interviewed on a preaching trip to rural Tennessee. “If return of the convention has a detrimental fallout in some areas, that’s a small price to pay.”

That fallout is everywhere. In January, George Sheridan lost a job with the Atlanta-based Southern Baptist Home Missions Board because of his views on Judaism. He had been the evangelical agency’s ecumenical representative in the Northeast for 12 years, working closely with Jewish groups in metropolitan New York, his home. In 1986, he wrote an article stating that Jews retain a “covenantal” relationship with God, as spelled out in the Old Testament, and therefore shouldn’t be targets of evangelism. Recently the Home Missions Board, in a letter citing Mr. Sheridan’s beliefs about Judaism, gave him three weeks’ notice to accept a non-ecumenical post in Atlanta or resign. He quit.

“There’s a good aspect to my case,” he says. “It was never openly stipulated before that the denomination has official theological positions. At least they finally took a public stand.”

Women are especially affected by the fundamentalist drive. In 1984, the convention passed a resolution stating that because Eve initiated sin in the Garden of Eden, women should be forever subject to men. Accordingly, the Home Missions Board announced it would refuse financial aid to churches hiring female pastors. In Fort Worth, Texas, emboldened trustees of Southwestern seminary denied a faculty appointment for a prominent local pastor because women served as deacons of his church.

The Home Missions Board resolution also prompted the Shelby County Baptist Association’s move against Mrs. Sehested in Tennessee. The local group voted to “disfellow” her Memphis church, Prescott Memorial, for having hired a woman pastor. “It’s bizarre for people to call themselves Christian and act this way,” Mrs. Sehested says.

Many employees have been purged at denominational publications. “There’s been a conscious attempt by Paul Pressler and others to intimidate the {Southern Baptist} media,” says Wilmer C. Fields, a 28-year employee who recently retired as vice president of public relations for the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee. He also directed the Baptist Press news agency, where, he says, fundamentalists two years ago forced a full investigation of their allegations of liberal bias, only to be rebuffed by a committee of journalism professors. Now there is talk of putting the agency through another review, this one before the fundamentalist-controlled executive committee.

[...]

After a century of anger issues that no longer fit with contemporary realities, some Southern Baptists decided that the hate needed to stay, but needed to be redirected at “liberals” and “abortionists.” Which brings us to the sad irony of this long weekend:

Influential Christian leaders look for consensus candidate to stop Romney

By Wayne Slater/Reporter
The Dallas Morning News
4:49 PM on Wed., Jan. 4, 2012

Some of the nation’s leading religious conservative leaders are gathering this weekend in Texas in an effort to consolidate a fractured GOP electorate around a single presidential candidate who best expresses their views. “One thing unites all in this group – Romney is not their guy,” said one of the participants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The meeting at Brenham ranch of Paul Pressler, a former Texas judge and influential Southern Baptist, is part of an ongoing effort to unite social conservatives around a single candidate….

Now, some feel manipulated. Hmmm.

Conservatives feud over Santorum endorsement
Some say Texas weekend gathering manipulated
By Ralph Z. Hallow-The Washington Times
Monday, January 16, 2012

In an evolving power struggle, religious conservatives are feuding about whether a weekend meeting in Texas yielded a consensus that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is the best bet to stop Mitt Romney’s drive for the Republican presidential nomination.

A leading evangelical and former aide to President George H.W. Bush said he agreed with suspicions voiced by others at the meeting of evangelical and conservative Catholic activists that organizers “manipulated” the gathering and may even have stuffed the ballot to produce an endorsement of Mr. Santorum over former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Mr. Santorum, who nearly upset Mr. Romney in the Iowa caucuses, won the first ballot ahead of Mr. Gingrich in Saturday’s Texas meeting but the margin was too slim for organizers to claim a consensus. It was not until the third ballot, taken after many people had left to catch flights back home, that Mr. Santorum won more than 70 percent of those still in attendance and claimed the endorsement….

It seems almost the antithesis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. Then, religious Baptists, men of conscience, stood non-violently to change an unjust government. Here, a Texas judge stood to sweep all tolerance from his denomination, Southern Baptists, and now his multi-denominational collaborators meet in secret at his ranch to sweep all tolerance from a just government.

Ozymandias 2011

Not “Ozymandias,” perhaps, but a more imminent and intimate tragedy.

We have to live here.

Courage.

=======================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Your news media at work: first, obtain the authentic photo of the actual story;
THEN black out anything in the photo that would actually show anything;
THEN slap your video logos and bumperstickers all over it.

• You know what I’m talking about.

• No army that ever marched didn’t have douchebags like these. You know these guys. And so do I.

They were the dumbasses who put the frog on the train tracks; who shot a rabbit and then kept shooting until they were out of ammunition and beer. They were the guys who came out of high school with no prospects, or military service was their only path to college. They were jerks, sure, but they were part of the American landscape. What they did was wrong, but we really need to grow up and understand that just because you’re an American doesn’t mean that everything you do is right, or just because you’re a capitalist doesn’t mean that everything you do is automatically beatified and blessed by the Ghod of the Almighty Dollar.

• How we handle the incident will tell the world more about who we are than these jerks will.

The thing that makes democracies admirable and currently hip is that we deal with crimes, not as a President-for-Life dictator, with a show trial, foreordained and tightly scripted, but a real adversary trial, with the opportunity for a defense, AND the added advantage of filling weeks of talking head shows on the not-quite-state-controlled media.

Since I won’t be serving on the jury, I can state my prejudgment here: it was a stupid thing to do, but there are rules against doing it in the military because such stupidity too often costs human lives, needlessly. That kind of stupid behavior can be dominoes to murder and that’s why it’s a straight up violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

If these dorks get a fair trial and a fair sentence, that will be in keeping with our idea of Who We Are, and, more importantly, what the World thinks about Who We Are. If we let them off easy ‘cuz (insert defense here), or needlessly crucify them to palliate ruffled foreign feathers, etc. that may tell us Who We Are in a way that we probably don’t quite want to accept. That is the nature of trials: everyone is on trial.

Here’s an excerpt from a military trial a few years ago. (I’ll give you the link at the bottom):

Capt. John Riesenberg, assistant government trial counsel, told the jury that their sentence should be aimed at stopping other first sergeants and soldiers from doing what the Company A soldiers did.

“Send a message to the world that this is an army that recognizes that it is different, that American soldiers just don’t do this. They don’t execute detainees in the middle of the night by shooting them in the back of the head when they are bound and blindfolded and dump their bodies in a canal,” he said….

• Do the Afghans know that douches like this exist?

Duh.

• What’s astonishing is that we still don’t.

That’s NOT a “Duh.” When the wars began, it was tantamount to treason to suggest that any American soldier would, at any time or for any reason, do anything stupid like that. In fact, the last time such images showed up on the internet, the web site operator was bullied out of business and the images of “crispy critters” from Iraq (that looks a lot like that urination video, come to think of it) vanished from sight as much as the collective memory of the internet would allow.

Or that trial I cited above.

• What did we expect when we stupidly went to an “all Volunteer” army? That the best and brightest would volunteer?

Another of Tricky Dick Nixon’s evil legacies, along with “The Postal Service®,” Amtrak™, it’s the All-Volunteer Army±.  We have seen how the horrors of our longest wars have been hidden from us, as a steady stream of coffins has come back from the Middle East, and we have learned to tune it out, as we learned to tune out homelessness since it showed up in Modern America in 1983.

And, considering that I was born on the fourteenth anniversary of the LAST TIME AMERICA EVER DECLARED WAR (on Hitler and Mussolini), we now have undeclared wars fought around the world by unknown soldiers. And if that smacks more of the French Foreign Legion than the United States of America, well, it ought to.

• Or kids with zero prospects out of high school.

The problem with the “All Volunteer Army” is that the society is insulated from the effects of war. Draft a couple congressman’s kids, and you get closer scrutiny of the war. If things turn inhuman, craven politicians and mouthpieces say, “Hey! They VOLUNTEERED!” Thus is “stop-loss” neatly rationalized. At the beginning of the wars, a lot of average Joes signed up, for the same reasons they signed up after Pearl Harbor. But the wars dragged on, as forgotten legionnaires trek the far corners of the globe for reasons of empire, and forgotten goals of statecraft. The armed forces have had horrific problems in retaining qualified officers.

And the last time that the United States of America declared war was on December 11, 1941. (When it was still called the “War Department.”)

• You can tell they’re not that bright, just from them being stupid enough to video it, and then someone in their penumbra posting it on YouTube.

Again, duh.

• Now, we will witness the whole breast-beating and the public example-making, as has been necessary since ancient Greece.

There is a reason for the ceremony and ritual of the courtroom, of the trial. Each time it is practiced with fidelity, we either renew our commitment to justice, or we betray our attempts to foil justice. This is a necessary adjunct to a civil and democratic society, and, even held in a military court, an important guarantee of the rights of the accused, and the just punishment of guilt by society.

Statue of Justice outside Bexar County Courthouse,
San Antonio, Texas

• Which is why I call it the Pee Lai Massacre.

We went through an infamous ritual many years ago called the “My Lai Massacre.” You might recall that John Kerry was loudly denounced after his Vietnam service, because he and other Vietnam veterans were revealing incidents every bit a horrific as Pee Lai, and to the order of My Lai, in which an entire village was taken and executed:

The My Lai Massacre was theVietnam War mass murder of between 347 and 504 unarmed civilians in South Vietnam on March 16, 1968, by United States Army soldiers of “Charlie” Company of 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade of the Americal Division. Most of the victims were women, children (including babies), and elderly people. Many were raped, beaten, and tortured, and some of the bodies were later found to be mutilated….  [Wikipedia]

And the America Right or Wrong crowd was out there to screech that Calley was a noble American soldier being scapegoated, etc. etc. Only then, they didn’t have Fox News (and, increasingly, CNN*) for a megaphone.

CNN political analyst Dana Loesch celebrated the U.S. Marines who appear to have urinated on the bodies of dead Taliban members during her radio show on Thursday.

“Now we have a bunch of progressives that are talking smack about our military because there were marines caught urinating on corpses, Taliban corpses,” Loesch said during her radio program on FM News Talk 97.1. “Can someone explain to me if there’s supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a Taliban fighter? Someone who, as part of an organization, murdered over 3,000 Americans? I’d drop trou and do it too. That’s me though. I want a million cool points for these guys. Is that harsh to say? Come on people, this is a war. What do people think this is?”

The My Lai massacred

• Who will be “Lt. Calley”?

For various reasons, Lt. William Calley became the poster boy for Apocalypse Now-style excesses of our long national nightmare in Vietnam. He was eventually convicted, served time, and now runs a jewelry store near an army base in the South.

While 26 US soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at My Lai, only Second Lieutenant William Calley, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but only served three and a half years under house arrest…. [ibid.]

In certain circles, the recriminations and rationalizations continue, just as there are those, like Ann Coulter, who argue that the McCarthy Era and Vietnam were good and noble and honorable endeavors.

Just as there are still those who call the Civil War “The War of Northern Aggression.”

Second Lieutenant William Calley

• We’re about to find out.

You heard it here, first.

I seem to recall that the entire Rightie Blogosmear rose up in 2007 against a lone soldier in Iraq who anonymously chronicled such behavior.

Because, as we were continually screeched by the Industrial-Military-Media Complex:  NO AMERICAN SOLDIER EVER DOES ANYTHING BAD EVER.

His name was Scott Thomas Beauchamp.

His sergeant is now serving a sentence for murder, for execution-style killings.

• That link I promised you at the top is to the Stars and Stripes story about his conviction: NCO gets life for slaying Iraqi detainees.

Courage.

h/t Mac M.

======================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Sarah Palin Calls on Mitt Romney to Release Tax Returns, Show Proof of 100K Jobs Created at Bain Capital (Wikipedia)

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, AKA “Mama Grizzly,” has called for Gov. Mitt Romney to release his tax returns, as well as the data that  could substantiate his claims of having created 100,000 jobs as CEO of Bain Capital. Well, I never thought I would say this, but for once Sarah Palin is right. The only problem is that she’s helping the Democrats and President Obama more than the Republican Party.  It’s no surprise that she is taking this position, since her husband, Todd Palin, endorsed Newt Gingrich earlier this week. In other words, Sarah Palin ain’t backing Mitt Romney one bit and I guess the Tea Party may follow her lead. That’s if they still look up to her. But there’s an even bigger problem with Sarah Palin giving her two cents — she was never transparent herself as a governor or vice presidential candidate. So, it’s a bit disingenuous on her part.

Nobody is attacking the free market system, but if Mitt Romney claims to have created all these jobs, then he should prove it. President Obama had to show his birth certificate, right? Mitt Romney is building all these castles in the air about how he would balance the budget as president and eradicate the “politics of envy” that President Obama is using to divide the haves from the have nots.

Sarah Palin said that Mitt Romney needed to come clean about his record, particularly since the Democrats would probe the tax issue and his tenure at Bain Capital if he were to become the Republican nominee.

This article was cross-posted at The Hinterland Gazette.

Meet fake cowboy and superPAC proprietor Foster Friess (center)

This moment that Rick Santorum’s money backer is revealed is a fleeting moment. The New Hampshire Primary is this Tuesday, followed by the quadrennial South Carolina Confederate Flag controversy a week later. (Don’t laugh. It was that, far more than the “black babies” whispering campaign that doomed John McCain’s candidacy against George Herbert Hoover Bush in 2000. Them Southerners and South Carolinians takes their Rebel flags seriously. Right, proud member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Pat Buchanan?)

Tempus fugit. As I reported HERE, Foster Friess is more than just a big donor, his company (run to his son, who also lives in Jackson Hole, and also attends Koch secret shindigs) makes six figures a year “advising” donors.

That year, Foster gave $8.1 million to NCF
See “The Biggest Foundation That You’ve Never Heard Of “

Got your attention?

Foster’s Son’s company RECEIVED  $870K from the “charity” in the same year
see “Following Foster’s Buddies’ Money”

For those of you who actually care about such things, these people are NOT Christians. (What? Hart, how can you say that?) It might seem tedious, but they have torn up the Nicene Creed, and replaced it with their OWN, quite different “creed.”

And that OUGHT to be important to Christians. (This being, according to M. Bachmann, recently of Waterloo,  ”a Christian nation.”)

Here is a shamefully neglected piece of crackerjack investigative reporting that STILL hasn’t penetrated the thick neanderthal brow ridge of the national media. This is the link, and this is the taste:

Inside The #1 Religious Right Money Machine
By Michael Reynolds
10/29/2006 10:04:19 PM EST

Update: A much shorter version of my investigative report appeared in Mother Jones, Dec 2005. This the full-length version. further note: The National Christian Foundation is now the 29th largest charitiable foundation in the US according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s just released report, the Philanthropy 400.

[...]

“It seems to be a business,” said Hill from her office in Washington.  ”Where does the charity stop and the business begin? It’s unclear. This is the face of modern charity. There may be nothing wrong going on here. But who knows? With this magnitude and density, can the IRS even figure this out?”

Whether you are seeking investors for the Kingdom or the Dow, target marketing is imperative. At the high end is The Gathering, a 400-member invitation-only club of wealthy Christian donors who conference annually and make several retreats a year to consider where to put their money. It was founded in 1985 in Arlington, Virginia and is now headquartered in Tyler, Texas. NCF president Terry Parker is chairman of their board and headlines their monthly newsletter with an “Ask Terry” column. To qualify for an invitation to this elite group ” an individual, family or their foundation should be giving a minimum of $200,000 annually to Christian ministries or have the capacity to do so.”

The second-tier marketing extension for NCF is Generous Giving, which targets those evangelicals populating suburbia and exurbia who can afford to jump into a donor-advised fund with a minimum $10,000 gift.  Generous Giving was bankrolled and is guided by the Maclellan Foundation–one of the top five donors to NCF. Hugh Maclellan serves as chairman of Generous Giving’s board of directors that includes NCF’s CEO David Wills and three other members of the Maclellan Foundation board.

Generous Giving holds annual conferences plus regional gatherings–from Kansas City to Hong Kong–throughout the year. These conferences are altar calls for evangelicals to put their assets into the Christian right money machine. They feature Maclellan, Blue, Wills and Christian Right torchbearers  like Chuck Colson who pump the gathered givers with exhortations titled   “The Church Is at War: The Clash of Civilizations” and “Changing the Culture with Generous Giving.”

NCF relentlessly plows deeper in the fields with Ron Blue’s Christian Financial Professionals Network*; Burkett’s Crown Financial Ministries, The Christian Medical and Dental Association and dozens more. In 2003 NCF sank over $1.115 million into these groups,  with almost all of that going to Generous Giving.

“The pooling of their resources is incredible, said McNab. “These are very smart people who have put together a very powerful network.  This is about multi-layer marketing, kind of like Amway.” [...]

[* See the tax return above "Ronald A Blue and Company $420,635.00.]

Read Michael Reynolds’ piece. I corresponded with Mr. Reynolds, who told me that no one had been much interested, and so he had been forced to turn his investigations towards something more acceptable to paying editors. And yet the thread remains: exposed but not unraveled.

In a year in which secret money is the single most important wildcard in the game show “Who gets to run our country?” why aren’t these people being paid attention to?

This is dangerous stuff, folks.  Please read “Koch Dominionists for Santorum,” if you haven’t already.

It’s short and has lots of pictures.

Courage.

=========================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

END OF DEBATE: Sort of considered a blah debate. Mitt Romney came out unscathed. Look for the band wagon to begin.

6:48: There he goes again. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich attacks the press again. But many Republicans — and Americans — hate the press.

6:52: Rep Ron Paul says he has no plans to run for a third party. Again blasts the press for pressing it. But says he doesn’t know why someone can’t reserve a judgement.

6:55: It’s so sad that so many GOPers have held former China ambassador Jon Huntsman’s stint with the Obama administration against him. He is quite conservative but the kind of thinking conservative who can’t be confused with those who represent the opposite to a “t” (or tea).

6:56. Mitt Romney looks REALLY good in this debate. He comes across quite well on television. Will be a formidable opponent for Romney.

6:59: Rick Santorum (agree with him or not) offers a lot of content in his responses. He doesn’t sound like he’ trying to remember talking points. Hey, the next question is for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. What a coincidence. Perry predict Iran will move back into Iraq and lives will have been sacrificed been in vain.

7:06: Santorum returns to talking points. Obama is a “Chicago politician.” So Obama practices Chicago politics? Since when do pols in Chicago play patticake? I was surprised Santorum didn’t throw in a line about Obama and a teleprompter

7:03 Good answer by Romney again on Iraq. But WHY do people say “in harm’s way” and not “in danger.”

QUICK MEDIA LOOK: ABC News:

Mitt Romney took hits from his Republican rivals on the economy in the New Hampshire Republican debate Saturday night, but the frontunner in the GOP presidential race appeared unruffled by the criticism and laid low as his rivals went at each other.

Rick Santorum, who has portrayed Romney as a cold, calculating, chief executive and not an inspirational leader, continued that line of attack tonight. He charged, as he has in recent days, that “business experience doesn’t match up with being the commander in chief in this country.”

“The commander-in-chief is not a CEO,” he said during the debate sponsored by ABC News, Yahoo! News and WMUR. “Business experience doesn’t necessarily match up with being commander-in-chief.”

Romney responded with a veiled jab at the former senator, saying, “I think people who have spent their life in Washington don’t understand what happens out in the economy.”

“People in the private sector aren’t successful because they’re managers,” Romney said. “They’re successful because they’re leaders.”

Newt Gingrich was also asked about Romney’s record at Bain Capital but largely left criticism in a recent TV ad by a super PAC aligned with his campaign to speak for itself.

The pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future recently teased a forthcoming film it produced — called “King of Bain” – featured interviews with former employees of company owned by Bain but who were later laid off, hammering Romney for having their lives turned upside down.

7:15: I increasingly think Romney looks toprate — one of a handful on the stage who seem (correctly or so) to have Presidential stature.

7:16 RATS! It just isn’t the same watching a debate without Michele Bachmann talking about “Obamacare” or her 28 children.

7:15: Huntsman looks so serious and thoughtful, someone who could bring in independents and some Democrats. Which means he doesn’t have a chance for the Republican Presidential nomination.

7:23: Sad about Rick Perry. He really looks good. He sounds solid. And he blew his moment.

7:24. SIGHT. Huntsman delivers a clearly scripted story about a voter he meant. All he needed to do was to say the phrase “Joe the Plumber.”

7:27: Romney has just delivered enough more boilerplate to serve three tables at the International House of Pancakes.

7:28: Gingrich suggest Romney represents a more establishment model.

7:29: OH NO! Hey, Rick Santorum, YES there are classes in America. He claims talking about classes is wrong. Get away from your $1 million bank acccount and you might see that there are indeed classes out there. A statement like that will chase away independent voter. If he’s nominated the Dems will run that statement over and over. And if Obama is smart he’ll quote Santorum.

Return with us to the thrilling days of yesteryear, where, astride his faithful steed Hedgefund, the fake cowboy/real gazillionaire from Wyoming spurred into the sunset and rode valiantly to Salt Lake City, Utah. The Salt Lake City Tribune takes up the tale [emphasis added]:

V.P. talks Iraq, borders in SLC

BY ROBERT GEHRKE
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 29, 2007 1:58 AM

Vice President Dick Cheney and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney addressed some of the most influential leaders of the conservative movement Friday in Salt Lake City, but their speeches, like the group itself, remain cloaked in secrecy.

The Council for National Policy is a shadowy group comprising leaders in the family values, national defense and ”decency” movements, dubbed “Sith Lords of the Ultra-Right” by the liberal blog DailyKos. Members are told not to discuss the group, reveal the topics discussed in the closed-door meetings, or even say whether or not they are members of the organization.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” said a grinning Foster Friess, who was pleasant but steadfast in his unwillingness to talk about the group….

Who is Foster Friess? I did an entire series on him, which revealed some chilling stuff, and you can read here* if you’re interested. So, let’s just cut to the chase. Freiss is a long-time member and former officer of the Council for National Policy. They were the secret bunch who met in Salt Lake City. Founded by Tim LeHaye when he was running The Moral Majority for Jerry Falwell, and before he hit paydirt with his “Left Behind” apocalypse novel series. (You know, “Twilight” in basic Revelation.)

[* see end of piece.]*

Another member Foster regularly rubs elbows with is Joseph Farah, who runs World Net Daily, makes money off of birther paraphernalia and ghost wrote Rush Limbaugh’s See, I Told You So.

Joseph Farah

Friess is also the guy who sat down over lunch, pulled out his Osmium Visa Card and bankrolled Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel’s The Daily Caller to the tune of $3 million bucks, reportedly.

Friess is cozy with the Goldwater Institute and Clint Bolick, down in Phoenix, Arizona.

And Foster was present at the infamous Koch Brothers secret meeting in Aspen, Colorado a story that the New York Times reported and ThinkProgress broke.

See “They’re Going After The Wisconsin Teachers”

Neil Patel is his Jackson Hole Neighbor and was Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Oh, and Cheney’s a Jackson Hole neighbor, too.

Friess was the largest single donor ($300K) to the Latina Republican Tea Party governor’s race in New Mexico in 2010, as listeners of KVOT in Taos, New Mexico are well aware.

And Friess is one of the TOP donors to Scott Walker’s “Don’t Recall Me, Bro!” campaign in Wisconsin THIS year. ($100K so far.)

Walker’s Out-Of-State Supporters, Opponents
December 24, 2011 – 6:36pm | Bill Lueders

[...]

Nearly half of the $5.1 million raised by the embattled Republican governor since July 1 came from outside of Wisconsin. In all of 2010, when Walker won a hotly contested election that included a primary, just 8 percent of the more than $8 million he raised came from out of state.

[...]

The largest single contributor to Walker’s campaign was Bob J. Perry, a homebuilder in Houston, Texas, who gave $250,000. Perry is a prominent funder of conservative causes. He gave more than $4 million to Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, a group that helped torpedo 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. In 2010, he gave $7 million to American Crossroads, a Republican campaign fund.

The next biggest donors are Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein, who gave a total of $205,000. The couple lives in Lake Forest, Illinois, and own Uline Inc., a shipping and packaging business headquartered in Pleasant Prairie, Wis. (On Friday, Walker attended a groundbreaking ceremony for a new Uline plant set to open in Hudson, Wis.) Foster Friess, an investor in Jackson, Wyoming, also gave Walker $100,000.

Walker’s largest Wisconsin contributors were Thomas and Ruth Schuette of Wausau, who each gave $50,000

Friess is the fellow who spoke at the Tea Party Patriots’ Phoenix wingding last year.

And Friess is the fellow standing behind Rick Santorum for his  20-minute “Game On!” quasi-victory speech in Iowa.

Screencap from Fox News Latino Video is 19 min.

Oh, and he runs Santorum’s superPAC “Red, White and Blue” which just did a big ad buy in South Carolina.:

Pro-Santorum PAC in S.C. for $190k
Posted by CNN Senior Producer Kevin Bohn

UPDATE: Red, White and Blue will run ads in Greenville, Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina supported by $190,000 starting this weekend. The group says it spent a total of $537,000 in Iowa.

[...]

Conservative activist Foster Friess, a major Wyoming investment executive, confirmed to CNN he is one of the major supporters behind Red, White and Blue and vowed to CNN to help increase the group’s ability to put out a message supporting Santorum.

“I have been a fan since I met Rick Santorum in 1996,” Friess told CNN by telephone Thursday. He went to Iowa this week and campaigned alongside Santorum in a pickup truck along with a small group of others and spoke at one of the precinct caucuses on the former Senator’s behalf Tuesday night.

He refused to say how much he so far has donated to the group. “I don’t want my wife to find out,” he joked…

Always with the funny, that Foster.

My father was originally posted to the Jim Bridger National Forest when he entered the Forest Service — the National Forest around Jackson Hole, Teton National Park and Yellowstone — and he taught me something he learned in the forest, fresh from Kansas: if you want to know what’s going on, watch the animals.

If you want to know when a New York subway train is coming, watch the rats.

If you want to know where the odd admixture of Kochian and Dominionist interests is going, watch Foster Friess.

from his website: “Man Atop The Horse.” Friess grew up in Wisconsin
And made all his money in Delaware. But he is now rich enough to play “cowboy.”

Courage.

Note: The J H Underground blog also caught this, and deserves your attention. Kudos.

The Foster Friess Series (all photos are linked and explained there)

• Tucker Carlson is Keith Olbermann; I am Glenn Beck (18 July)
• More Fake Cowboys (23 July)
• The Biggest Foundation That You’ve Never Heard Of (1 Aug. )
• Following Foster’s Buddies’ Money (10 Aug.)
• Foster’s Dominionist Pals (13 Aug.)
• Rubber Baby Buggy Bunglers (18 Aug.)
• Tucker Carlson – Profeshunel Jurnuhlizzum Strikes Agin! (12 Nov.)
• How Friess Fosters Tuckers Out – Conclusion (Dec. 31, 2010)

As I was saying, except for that, I had never spent a night in a hospital bed.

I had walked home from a night shift at a tax office, and as I went to sleep, I began to feel chills, and then into fever dreams, and I knew that I was sick.

Very, very sick.

I managed to phone my wife, and an ambulance was called. Both my lower shins and feet had turned an angry, purple red. They fairly radiated heat. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I’d never been sick like that before. There was a long comic episode where the stairs were too steep for a stretcher, so I gasped down the stairs and THEN they carried me to the ambulance.

The ambulance arrived with dispatch and speed

I cracked wise, as I always do when I’m really sick. Evidently I was funny. I cracked up the ambulance crew.

However, deep down in their eyes I could sense the hidden thought: “This guy is crazy.”

I already knew that.

I was wheeled into the Emergency Room, and, in due time, my carcass came up next on the abbatoir checklist and a triage doctor parted the white curtain.

The doctor took a look, shot me full of antibiotics, put me on a morphine drip and sent me straight to a hospital room. Evidently, it was serious, as we had suspected.

(Hypochondria is not in my nature, although I have to guard against its opposite. In other words, if I say I’m sick, I’m SICK.)

I was parked in that combination jungle gym/transformers hospital bed of current fashion, reclothed in traditional hospital fashion and told not to screw with my IV drip.

More timeless time passed.

A new, non-triage doc came into my hospital room, explained and drew a line on my leg with a sharpie, neatly outlining the twin islands of Infectionia, expanding the Domain of the Bacteriophages at the expense of my calves and upper shins. The Twin Citadels of my Knees were under siege from the advancing hot pink armies. At the microscopic level, an epic struggle was taking place, and I could feel, underneath the opiate haze, each and every sword blow struck or parried, and I was very sick.

I was afflicted, the doctor explained through what seemed like a bathtub filled with water, something called “Cellulitis.”

I was also on the pediatric floor, because there was no room for me in the adult section of Sacred Heart hospital. That would explain the purple saturns and golden stars painted festively on the walls of the hallway. As they had made the journey up from Emergency, my carcass on casters, I had somehow thought I was being taken to a Clown Hospital.

Funny, the things that waft through the brain when you’re sick as a dog and suddenly on a morphine drip.

King of the Clown Beasts

Cellulitis, I eventually learned, is an infection of the ORGAN we call the skin. Now, being a patient and all, they explained it as you’d explain it to an autistic five year old, not expecting any dull spark of cognition, but I got the gist.

It usually shows up in the lower extremities. Right where I got it. But I’ll tell you HOW I learned that, later.

They did explain that, as a Type II Diabetic, I was particularly succeptable to it. And, as the antibiotics kicked in, two processes began. First, that a staffer would come in to take a blood sample. And, the staffer in question invariably had difficulty finding a vein, and managed start a subcutaneous oil spill in the Gulf of My Inner Forearm. I then remembered the sage words of my second wife, the Redhead (who had been a nurse and will soon be an RN and B.S.) “They don’t teach people to draw blood properly any more.” And to “always insist on a phlebotomist.” (The phlebotomist is the person who specializes in finding veins and taking blood.)

I know that I’ve got good veins. I once had a junkie on Sunset Boulevard compliment me on my veins (which is highest praise in lowest company, I suppose), so I didn’t think it was ME. I insisted on the phlebotomist thereafter, but, inexorably, a neat Rapid Transit Map was being etched in purple blotches on my right arm. (I am left-handed, so if they want to stick me, I insist that it’s on the right.) But the new station markers were nowhere as large as the blotches from the botchers had been.

And the second thing was that the doctor would come in every so often, and draw a new topographic line to chart the steady retreat of the Army of the Cellulites to their sneaky hiding places below.

Sometime in the night of the first day, I got a roommate. He was from Washington State, and had been working on a contract job installing lockers at the refurbished community swimming pool.

His name was Rick, and he had one of those short roofers’ bodies: not so much stocky as rangy, with etched muscles from honest work and not from paying to work out. Good shape and not some wrecked hulk like me.

And Rick had cellulitis, too. He’d gotten it from a puncture wound on his leg from a sharp metal sprue that someone hadn’t ground or sand-blasted away at the metal fabricator’s. He hadn’t even felt the puncture. He’d found the dried blood on his sock and seen that he’d bled, but it had scabbed over and so he just washed away the blood, put some Neosporin and a bandage on it and forgot about it.

Until he got sicker than a dog, etc. etc.

Misery loves company, and we had a fine time, except that one of the nuns came, embarrassedly to shyly but firmly remind us that this was a CHILDREN’S floor and our language was not exactly G-Rated.

Rick said something funny that I remember to this day. “I’ll take ‘stuff you never heard about that can kill you’ for two hundred, Alex!”*

Double Jeopardy

I will omit the all-important and hard-won knowledge that most people who die in hospitals die within 24 hours of eating hospital food, or, worse, of their friends and relatives eating hospital food. How I came by this knowledge is not important here.

But it was Easter Sunday, and one of the nice nuns brought me Easter candy.

And I have often wondered what sort of message it actually was? After all, my charts clearly noted that I was a diabetic.

And, perhaps in keeping with the nun’s plot, I ate the candy anyway. There wasn’t much and I’m a big guy.

Was she trying to get even with me for having inadvertently poisoned the impressionable minds of a dozen sick children by casually speaking in workman’s language with a fellow workman? We had meant no offense, but had the nuns taken it that way?

The most ambiguous candy Easter egg that I ever ate.

The topographic lines of the black sharpie tracked the ebb of the Army of the Cellulites like the wave lines of a dried up reservoir.

And, as the rapidly expanding BART map on my arm finally reached its terminus at my wrist, the IV was removed and I was given the all clear to leave.

I was, by hospital rules, required to exit my temporary medical domicile to return to the Land of Streptococci, and I bid the pink unicorns and blue ponies adieu, as I was wheel-chaired from my room in Sacred Heart on Easter Sunday, delivered from the Cellulites and their egregious color sense.

But, thereafter, I have learned that the cellulitis lurks, waiting to prey on me, and I have had annual visitations, like the Grim Reaper taking a pH test strip to my mortality.

Time for your annual test!

I learned what cellulitis actually was when I got back home, by taking my (seriously) autographed copy of the Merck Manual, and looked it up.  (A book is like a Kindle, but the actual pages are made out of very thin paper and you have to turn them manually.)

Here, via Wikipedia is an approximation of what I read:

Cellulitis is caused by a type of bacteria entering the skin, usually by way of a cut, abrasion, or break in the skin. This break does not need to be visible. Group A Streptococcus and Staphylococcus are the most common of these bacteria, which are part of the normal flora of the skin, but normally cause no actual infection while on the skin’s outer surface.

Predisposing conditions for cellulitis include insect or spider bite, blistering, animal bite, tattoos, pruritic (itchy) skin rash, recent surgery, athlete’s foot, dry skin, eczema, injecting drugs (especially subcutaneous or intramuscular injection or where an attempted intravenous injection “misses” or blows the vein), pregnancy, diabetes and obesity, which can affect circulation, as well as burns and boils, though there is debate as to whether minor foot lesions contribute.

[...]

Cellulitis in the lower leg is characterized by signs and symptoms similar to those of a deep vein thrombosis, such as warmth, pain and swelling (inflammation).

This reddened skin or rash may signal a deeper, more serious infection of the inner layers of skin. Once below the skin, the bacteria can spread rapidly, entering the lymph nodes and the bloodstream and spreading throughout the body. This can result in influenza-like symptoms with a high temperature and sweating or feeling very cold with shaking, as the sufferer cannot get warm.

In rare cases, the infection can spread to the deep layer of tissue called the fascial lining. Necrotizing fasciitis, also called by the media “flesh-eating bacteria”, is an example of a deep-layer infection. It is a medical emergency.

Yup. They are normal bacteria, but once they get INTO the skin, they set up little bacteria factories and when that infection gets into the blood stream, it’s bad. REAL bad. Death is one of the nicer things that can happen. Like Rick said, “I’ll take ‘stuff you never heard about that can kill you’ for two hundred, Alex!”

Staphylococcus

But I recognize the stealthy approach of the fever and then the chills and the hot pink skin, and I immediately take Cephalexin, which my doctor and I agree is better than a visit to the hospital. Thus far I have always been successful. But I have to have it with me at all times.

And that brings me to that awful new Federal Regulation. According to NPR, the FDA notes that 80% of all antibiotics sold are used on animals. One type of antibiotic, cephalosporin is at issue:

The [FDA] announcement affects antibiotics called cephalosporins, drugs used widely to treat things like pneumonia or skin infections in people.

Cephalosporins are especially useful for children with infections; unlike other antibiotics, like fluoroquinolones and tetracyclines, there aren’t any restrictions for for pediatric use of cephalosporins. They also are important for treating bacterial meningitis and bone, urinary tract, and upper respiratory system infections.

Cephalexin — the antibiotic I use to keep cellulitis at bay — is a cephalosporin.

Not the actual drug

The problem is that the more drugs are used, the more drug-resistant bacteria are engendered. Thus, the FDA decided that regulation was needed, because so many cephalosporin drugs were being used on chickens, turkeys, cattle, etc. etc.

This turkey required immediate treatment with Cephalexin

Today, the FDA said the drugs remain critically important for humans, so their use should be restricted only to humans.

[...]

An association of veterinarians says the new rule on cephalosporins won’t have a big impact. They can still use these other antibiotics to keep animals healthy.

The new rules will take effect in April.

Now, while I, as someone who depends on a cephalosporin drug to stay a) out of the hospital and b) alive, applaud the new regulation, for selfish and personal reasons, I am certain that harsh ideologues in favor of smaller government and less Big Government regulation will stand right up and decry this absurd regulation that will cost potential (i.e. hallucinated) profits, and undoubtedly cost jobs.

Anti-health care protester and terse prose

Gosh-darned sick people, anyway. (To lapse into Mitt-speak.)

Don’t get them started on the Affordable Health Care Act. (They won’t recognize it unless you call it “Obamacare.”)

Anyway, that’s the story of my first stay in a hospital, and an annoying new Federal regulation, stomping on the neck of average Americans who only lack having their entrepreneurial spirit unleashed by discarding all those pesky rules and sechlike.

Courage.

===================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

MERRIMACK, N.H. — I love watching Republicans engage in class warfare. They condemn it as a sin when Democrats come within 100 miles of even mentioning the sharp and growing class inequalities in the United States. But when conservatives play the class card, they see doing so as a high ethical calling involving the defense of good and moral folk against the depredations of a liberal elite.

Blatant hypocrisy is instructive.

Rick Santorum gave by far the best speech Tuesday night after his boffo performance in the Iowa caucuses. Among the Republicans, he along with Jon Huntsman — and, yes, Ron Paul who is really a libertarian — knows who he is and why he’s running. Santorum has a philosophy (and a theology) that holds his views together. It’s a retro philosophy but no less interesting for that. So comparatively speaking, he comes by his class warfare honestly, even if he panders shamelessly on guns and gays and talks about the straight-laced President Obama as if he embodied the moral sensibilities of Woodstock and Gomorrah.

If the Republicans want to have a genuinely searching debate about the future of their party, they’d send Santorum and Huntsman off for the long fight. Huntsman is a forceful economic conservative, but also resolutely modern. He’s a defender of science, a hard-eyed realist on foreign affairs who rejects Santorum’s neoconservative moralism, and he speaks the policy language of an upper-middle class that likes its politics to focus on deficits and our future competition with China.

Santorum is a Catholic of a certain kind, and it’s the most important thing about him. He’s on one side of a long-standing debate in the church about how to build a decent society. Social justice Catholics (and I’m one of those) represent an older American tradition. We agree with more conservative Catholics on the family as an essential social building block, but see capitalism as in need of regulation and correction if it is to serve the common good, and protect the family itself. Many of us — and here we do depart from the church’s official teaching — see gay marriage not as undermining fidelity and commitment but as encouraging them.

By contrast, Santorum is what Republican strategist Steve Wagner years ago called a “social renewal” Catholic. These Catholics see opposition to abortion as a foundational matter and opposition to gay marriage as essential to “protecting” the family. They view the federal government less as a guarantor of social fairness than as “inflicting harm on the nation’s moral character,” as Wagner has put it.

Huntsman’s core vote, such as it is right now, comes from less intensely religious economic rationalists who do not perceive culture wars as breaking out all over. Santorum reflects the sensibility of the Catholic and evangelical working-class voters whose ballots Republicans have long taken for granted.

Santorum’s surge was easy to see coming. He was the last staunch conservative standing, unscathed by foolish mistakes or by Mitt Romney’s highly efficient and unaccountable manufacturing operation whose product is attack ads. (Bain Capital would have picked it as a winner.) Though Santorum is a Catholic, evangelicals knew he was one of them in spirit, the new ecumenism being more political than theological.

Romney needs to win decisively in New Hampshire. His poll lead is massive, his organization is formidable, and the Republican leaders he has with him here are the sort you want on your side in a fight. But Huntsman is drawing good crowds, and a working-class conservative base in places such as Berlin, Laconia and Manchester that warmed to Pat Buchanan in 1992 and 1996 will find Santorum attractive, even if Buchanan and Santorum are continents apart on foreign policy.

There’s also this: Romney’s super-PAC ads in Iowa created a fierce enemy in Newt Gingrich. The proud former speaker of the House seems determined, for now at least, to do as much damage as he can to the candidate he contemptuously calls “timid.”

This race has come down to the highly disciplined and professional Romney who will say and do what it takes to win, against Santorum and Huntsman who have honest-to-goodness visions of what Republicanism needs to be. Paul will continue to preach Austrian economics (his “We’re all Austrians now” was Tuesday’s most remarkable sound bite), and Gingrich will continue to growl. The pro usually wins these things, but the traditionalist-modernist clash has a lot more to do with the future of conservatism.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne(at)washpost.com. (c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group

Heard before the Iowa Caucuses:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Heard during the Iowa Caucuses:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Heard after the Iowa Caucuses:

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Bleah.

Courage.

====================

A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.

Iowa Caucus Heading to Photo Finish with Ron Paul, Mitt Romney & Rick Santorum Leading the Pack (Public Policy Polling)

The latest Public Policy Polling survey in Iowa shows the three leading contenders all within two points or less of each other — Ron Paul leads at 20%, followed by Mitt Romney at 19%, and Rick Santorum at 18%.  The other candidates: Newt Gingrich at 14%, Rick Perry at 10%, Michele Bachmann at 8%, Jon Huntsman at 4%, and Buddy Roemer at 2%. Is Iowa truly representative of America? Iowa is lily white and the caucus shouldn’t be used as a barometer for the rest of America. The state doesn’t accurately represent the diversity in this great country. In fact, Iowa is as white as the National Hockey League with a low percentage of black, Latino and Asian players. This is a state where 2.9% of the people are African-American, and 5% of the people are Hispanic. This is all about the right wing evangelicals being happy with a particular candidate, who happens to be Rick Santorum in this cycle. For the record, Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton there, but I would attribute that to the polarizing Clinton persona and not because they embraced diversity.

It’s actually a little scary that Rick Santorum, a longshot for the presidency, could see such a meteoric rise in the polls. He moved up eight points since the last PPP poll. He gained from Newt Gingrich implosion and a softening of Ron Paul’s numbers. The social evangelicals are running to Rick Santorum, but this guy was a senator who was rejected by voters in the last election. He claims it was because the Republicans had hit a rough patch during that time. Well, if he was as good as he says he is, then he should have won reelection easily. It seems the Republicans are in a tizzy because they just can’t rally around one candidate at this point because each one is flawed in some way. For what it’s worth, Mitt Romney’s numbers have remained constant but the others have risen and fallen as they continue to play musical chairs.

Among voters who say they decided who to vote for in the last seven days Rick Santorum leads Romney 29-17 with Paul and Gingrich both at 13.

[....]

Santorum’s net favorability of 60/30 makes him easily the most popular candidate in the field. No one else’s favorability exceeds 52%.  He may also have more room to grow in the final 48 hours of the campaign than the other front runners: 14% of voters say he’s their second choice to 11% for Romney and only 8% for Paul. Santorum’s taken the lead with two key groups of Republican voters: with Tea Partiers he’s at 23% to 18% for Gingrich, 16% for Paul, 15% for Bachmann, and only 12% for Romney.  And with Evangelicals he’s at 24% to 16% for Gingrich, and 15% for Paul and Romney. Source

In reality, winning the Iowa caucus doesn’t necessarily translate into a win for the White House. Mike Huckabee won during the 2008 election campaign and John McCain went on to become the nominee. It’s just further proof that these caucuses are a ridiculous way to choose a candidate. We all know Ron Paul, with  all his radical ideas, will not be the GOP nominee. Donkeys would fly first. My bet is that Mitt Romney will secure the GOP presidential nomination or Jon Huntsman will become the nominee by an act of God. This Rick Santorum surge is not for real. He cannot sustain this momentum. That record of accomplishment he brags about is very flimsy and he manages to negate all that with crazy statements such as bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, saying no to same sex marriage and repealing the right for gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Sorry, but I am not convinced Iowa should be used as a barometer for who will be the GOP presidential nominee.

This article was cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette

Note the use of “parasites” below,
cribbed from Ayn, who had rather
questionable racial views herself

Here’s an interesting article that appeared in L. Neil Smith’s “Libertarian Enterprise” in 2007 from Thomas L. Knapp, the Boston Tea Party’s Vice Presidential candidate in 2008 [emphasis added]:

The Problem With Ron Paul
by Thomas L. Knapp

Special to The Libertarian Enterprise [published by L. Neil Smith]

The problem with Ron Paul is not the fact that he’s the Houston area’s most assiduous pork-barreler in the US House of Representatives. It’s not his longstanding associations with racists, of both subtle and not-so-subtle varieties. It’s not even his anti-libertarian positions on issues like immigration and same-sex marriage.

Those things are problems, of course, but they’re not the problem.

The problem with Ron Paul is the uncritical cultism which so quickly took root in the rich soil of a maverick campaign and has since overgrown that campaign like a cross between kudzu and poison ivy.

Libertarians are notably cranky, and as politics makes for strange bedfellows, so, too, Libertarian politics tends to make for freaky bedfellows.

I have delineated the very strange connections between the Libertarians and the Neo-Confederates and other crypto-racists in “The Invisible Empire – to a Blind Media, that is“ [April 10, 2010]. As is often the case, this was way ahead of the curve, and it is extremely timely today … Why? Well, consider the “libertarian” triumvirate of L. Neil Smith, Eric Dondero and Thomas L. Knapp.

i. a circle of jerks

No  official connection, exactly

Today, at the top of Memeorandum, we find  Eric Dondero, former Howie Rich petitioner, former Ron Paul congressional staffer, stating categorically that Ron Paul is NOT a racist, but, rather, somewhat “clueless” on the subject.

Is Ron Paul a “racist.” In short, No…

One caveat: He is what I would describe as “out of touch,” with both Hispanic and Black culture. Ron is far from being the hippest guy around. He is completely clueless when it comes to Hispanic and Black culture, particularly Mexican-American culture. And he is most certainly intolerant of Spanish and those who speak strictly Spanish in his presence, (as are a number of Americans, nothing out of the ordinary here.)

Is Ron Paul an Anti-Semite? Absolutely No…

And so forth. But Dondero* is a relentless supporter of what’s behind Ron Paul (while he vacillates between fawning love and acid criticism of RP):

from thirdpartywatch.com [link no longer works, see here]:

Eric Dondero Says:
July 24th, 2006 at 10:18 am

So much to respond to here… My first comment is to the gentleman who suggested that the Libertarians join the GOP “en masse” and form a distinct wing within the Party. As the guy who founded the Republican Liberty Caucus in 1990, let me assure you, that WE’VE ALREADY JOINED THE GOP EN MASSE.

At the 1989 Libertarian Party National Convention in Philadelphia, there was a purge of sorts. All the “Ron Paul wing” Realists in the LP were basically thrown out by the Bergland/Emerling faction. We wanted to move the Party into the Mainstream, concentrate on elections and campaigns, and not just fundraising gimmicks.

Over the next couple of years, slowly but surely, most of us moved to the GOP. I was the first to leave. In fact, I publicly declared that I was “turning Republican,” right after Michael Emerling “Cloud” purged me…

[* And, in a little aside, you might note the financial engine behind 2008's Rudy Giuliani campaign, as described by Dondero.]

Which brings us to L. Neil Smith, publisher of The Libertarian Enterprise, noted above:

Eric Dondero said…

Wow! I just read [L. Neil] Smith’s piece again. It’s incredibly powerful. Perhaps the most powerful thing he’s ever written.

He nails it about the parasitic class versus the productive classes. I’ve been thinking precisely the same thing for years now. But he so giftedly put it to words.

And he puts up Palin as the Champion of the productive class.

Kind of like, um, Howard Rourke, or maybe even Dagney Taggart.

My opinion of L. Neil Smith has changed dramatically today. As Knapp knows, I’ve been a real skeptic on him.

He’s now one of the Nation’s leading libertarian philosophers in my book. He’s welcome here around these parts from now on.

Attaboy Smith! Attaboy!!

(And here’s hoping your Number One desciple Thomas L. Knapp, gets smart and follows your lead on Palin.)

NOVEMBER 17, 2008 5:52 PM

Which brings us full circle back to L. Neil Smith. Listen …

ii. L. Neil Smith and the Invisible Empire

I wrote this in “The Invisible Empire” in 2010:

The connection between libertarians and neoconfederates is not a tenuous one.

Has the South risen again?

It seems rather astonishing, but the talking heads are already pooh-poohing this whole “Confederate History Month” controversy as just a meaningless kerfuffle, or, in the rightie blogosmear™ just another liberal attempt to smear Southerners or Tea Partiers, Libertarians, Conservatives, etc. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

Here’s a nice quote:

Let’s get this straight once and for all, shall we? The War between the States had no more to do with black chattel slavery than the War of Jenkins’ Ear. The very fact that Frederick Douglass and his fellow abolitionists had to work so hard trying to make it be about slavery — well after the shooting had already started — is more than enough evidence of that. Abraham Lincoln thought black people were subhuman.

But that’s not from last week. That’s from Libertarian and Science Fiction author L. Neil Smith in the Libertarian Enterprise, Number 67, March 15, 2000, in an essay entitled “Stars and Bars.”

Now, Smith’s as mainstream Libertarian as it gets, Eagle Scout, gun freak, Ayn Rand freak, and claims to have joined the LP in Colorado in 1972 (which was founded in Westminster, Colorado on December 11, 1971): “Neil joined the Libertarian Party in 1972 (serving on the national platform committee in 1977 and 1979) and became a life member of the NRA in 1974,” as noted on his website bio. He’s also the author of some Star Wars novels, in addition to his “straight” science fiction. (And a global warming denialist.)

bio pic from Smith’s website

In 2000, Smith also wrote an essay that was reprinted on the Council of Conservative Citizens website, “The American Lenin.”

Here’s an excerpt:

… The fact is, Lincoln didn’t abolish slavery at all, he nationalized it, imposing income taxation and military conscription upon what had been a free country before he took over — income taxation and military conscription to which newly “freed” blacks soon found themselves subjected right alongside newly-enslaved whites. If the civil war was truly fought against slavery — a dubious, “politically correct” assertion with no historical evidence to back it up — then clearly, slavery won.

Lincoln brought secret police to America, along with the traditional midnight “knock on the door”, illegally suspending the Bill of Rights and, like the Latin America dictators he anticipated, “disappearing” thousands in the north whose only crime was that they disagreed with him. To finance his crimes against humanity, Lincoln allowed the printing of worthless paper money in unprecedented volumes, ultimately plunging America into a long, grim depression — in the south, it lasted half a century — he didn’t have to live through, himself.

In the end, Lincoln didn’t unite this country — that can’t be done by force — he divided it along lines of an unspeakably ugly hatred and resentment that continue to exist almost a century and a half after they were drawn. If Lincoln could have been put on trial in Nuremburg for war crimes, he’d have received the same sentence as the highest-ranking Nazis.

• You can find the whole essay on Smith’s website, or
• on the 2000 Council of Conservative Citizens’ site

Supremely ugly stuff. But, as you dig into the literature of the Neoconfederates,right in their mainstream.

Oh, and here’s L. Neil Smith today, from his abandoned blog, The Moratorium (August, 2009).

Dorian Gray?

So, who is the CCC?

In the late 1990s, a kerfuffle arose about Bob Barr (instrumental in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton) and Trent Lott (then-Senate Majority leader) appearing before a seemingly “fringe” group called the Council of Conservative Citizens. (CCC, get it? although they refer to themselves as CofCC, to throw bloodhounds off the scent.)

I wrote about it, posting it on my webpage in those pre-blogging daze:

Representative Bob Barr represented the 7th Congressional District of Georgia* [*whose current flag was adopted in 1956.] Any coincidence between the December 1, 1955 Selma, Alabama incident, when Rosa Parks decided NOT to step to the back of the bus, and Civil Rights in Georgia is entirely coincidental, as the C of CC‘s linked group, the Heritage Preservation Association will go to great pains to tell you.*

“Even though certain ‘civil rights’ groups have started attacking the current Georgia state flag and other Confederate symbols, no one saw the flag change in 1956 as being racially motivated.”*

from the
Heritage Preservation Association’s Confederate
flags page

*you’re kidding, right? Right?!?

After reprinting an AP report that has fallen down the memory hole, I pursued the question of WHO the C of CC is:

But that wasn’t all. It got a lot worse. I had stumbled into the looking glass world of Neoconfederate historical denialism.

The Southern Poverty Law Center did much to expose the crackpot agenda of the C of CC:

Like the original White Citizens Councils, the CCC is made up of local chapters, some of which are active in civic affairs beyond the national group’s racist agenda. And until the 2000s, some of the group’s “uptown” attitude remained, as meetings resembled Rotary Club events more than Klan outings and regularly featured politicians as keynote speakers.

Most Americans learned of the CCC in late 1998, when a scandal erupted over prominent Southern politicians’ ties to the brazenly racist group. After it was revealed that former Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.) gave the keynote speech at the CCC’s 1998 national convention and that then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) had spoken to the group five times, both claimed they knew nothing about the CCC. However, an Intelligence Report investigation, publicized by national television and newspaper reports, made clear what the CCC really was: a hate group that routinely denigrated blacks as “genetically inferior,” complained about “Jewish power brokers,” called homosexuals “perverted sodomites,” accused immigrants of turning America into a “slimy brown mass of glop,” and named Lester Maddox, the now-deceased, ax handle-wielding, arch-segregationist former governor of Georgia, “Patriot of the Century.”

As evidence of widespread association between Southern GOP officeholders and the CCC mounted, Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson took the unusual step in 1998 of asking party members to resign from the group because of its racist views. A resolution moved through the U.S. Congress “condemning the racism and bigotry espoused by the Council of Conservative Citizens,” although it ultimately failed. (Congress had earlier condemned the black supremacist Nation of Islam in a similar manner, but failed to do the same with the CCC. Republican Party leaders, likely embarrassed by Lott’s very public connection to the CCC, managed to defeat the censure effort.)

But six years later, many Southern lawmakers were still pandering to and meeting with the CCC — and still pleading ignorance. According to a 2004 Intelligence Report review of the Citizens Informer, no fewer than 38 federal, state and local elected officials had attended CCC events between 2000 and 2004, most of them giving speeches to local chapters of the hate group…

Bob Barr was the Libertarian Party’s candidate in 2008. His candidacy was one of the reasons that Thomas L. Knapp and the “Boston Tea Party” jumped ship and ran their own ticket, with Knapp as Vice Presidential candidate.

And, L. Neil Smith can’t BELIEVE than anybody would trouble Ron Paul with his old associations with racists! From Christmas Day (in a very Christmasy sentiment) yesterday:

L. Neil Smith’s
THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE
Number 650, December 25, 2011
MERRY CHRISTMAS!

To Al Malmberg, 600KCOL.com

Al Malmberg
600KCOL.com
Fort Collins, CO

Want to understand why Ron Paul left the CNN interview last night? Here it is, right out of your own mouth. You have him saying, for the hundredth time, that he did not write the material in question, that he delegated it to somebody else, and that he did not read it until it was published, whereupon he immediately disavowed it.

Within a minute, you’re asking how does he feel about it now? Would he write the same thing that he did then? That’s exactly the same thing the CNN hireling did to him and he finally got sick of it. He’s a hell of a lot more patient than I am.

Now I understand why the major media would do this kind of thing: Paul is the only Presidential candidate who is willing and able to repair the economy that was destroyed by the bipartisan evil, insanity, and just plain stupidity of his predecessors. He is the only Presidential candidate willing to leave people in other countries alone, instead of dropping bombs on pregnant widows and 10-year-old goat-herds. Unlike his predecessors, Bush and Clinton, starving half a million Iraqi children to death with a naval blockade would never occur to him.

That’s not good for the major news media, bloodsuckers who thrive on misery and death. But Ron Paul’s foreign policy is exactly the policy prescribed by George Washington, who would not have condemned each generation of young Americans to fight a war of their own in the 20th century, in order to benefit criminal outfits like Halliburton, Blackwater, and General Electric.

So the question I want answered is simply this: were you born an idiot, or did you have to study to become one?

L. Neil Smith

Glad we cleared THAT up.

iii. It gets worse

Let me restate the thesis of “The Invisible Empire” the interconnection between self-defined libertarians and the neo-Confederate “lost cause” and White Supremacist underground is exstensive and disturbing. The same characters with the same weird views keep showing up in the same contexts. Take a gander at this:

Too bad nobody bothered reading Jeff Davis on the ‘Georgia Heritage’ website:

… here at the Georgia Heritage Council website. We’ve been brewing tea for the last six or seven years. Those who go back with us will remember what some called ‘grassroots organizing.’

While others make a lot noise rustling their tea bags they should look at who delivered the training sessions for grass roots, the creation and passage of legislation in Georgia more favorable to the proud heritage of Georgians along with protection for their monuments and memorials and perpetual recognition of Confederate Heritage Month. Even more, we have kept the real patriots and conservatives informed of the dangers of those who diminish our liberty and smear our patriots (e.g., the demagogues and frauds at SPLC) by our Hate Watch resource on our web site.

[...]

They falsely claim Lincoln’s devout Christianity when real history and his behavior reveals that his use of Bibical language was merely a tool of persuasion and convenient PR front. They talk about his “charity for all and malice toward none”. GHC has done a pretty good job of revealing hundreds of cases of atrocities, some from Lincoln’s direct orders that either killed or imprisoned thousands of people in both the North and the South … The horrible period known as Reconstruction hasn’t yet ended — second class statehood continues. We’re proud of our tea party that has been going for some time. We hope you like the brew we have concocted.

on the left sidebar of the
Georgia Heritage site

also on left sidebar; links to
theteapartymanifesto.com

And there’s lots and lots and lots more. Like this from their “hatewatch page“:

The collection of commentary, parody and news links below chronicles the “Hate Industry,” including the racial grievance pimps, hypocrites and demagogues in America. Examples of the worst of the Hate Groups we monitor are the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), La Voz de Aztlan, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). We want to hear from you. Please send feedback directly to the author or to GHC Chairman Jeff Davis.

Phone: 770-297-4788 email: ghc_chairman@georgiaheritagecouncil.org

The supposed ‘Hatewatch’ page is populated with a number of PatBuchanan (a ‘notable’ SCV member) pieces, along with Newsbusters, John Stacy ‘the other’ McCain, Joseph Farah at WorldNetDaily, Yid With Lid,  Confederate Yankee,Jonah Goldberg, Operation Pitchfork, Michelle Malkin, and our old White Supremacist friends, the C of CC.

But this “Jeff Davis” character is the “spokesman” for the SCV.

the SCV logo

You see, in this topsy-turvy world, there IS no racism and the TRUE OPPRESSORS are those Blacks and Hispanics who seem coincident with the “parasite” class and stop our Ayn Rand supermen from creating God’s Own Plantation On Earth.

Which brings us to The Missing Interview from Political Cesspool, screaming at the edge of the Libertarian/White Supremacist interface. First, take a look at who “Political Cesspool”s sponsors include:

from the Political Cesspool’s website

Just so’s you know. You see, “The Political Cesspool” has, seemingly, scrubbed an interview with Ron Paul from their archives. An interview, coincidentally, that’s contemporaneous with Thomas Knapp’s “The Problem with Ron Paul” written for L. Neil Smith’s Libertarian Enterprise in 2007 (at the top of this post) — and please recall that Knapp didn’t consider the racist association the REAL problem. No: it was that people were worshipping Ron Paul. (“Those things are problems, of course, but they’re not the problem.”)

Here’s two stories on their webpage, in case you didn’t get the connection:

Lord of the Rings

The Council of Conservative Citizens has provided us with the trailer for the new Lord of the Rings movie, set to be released next year. Radical left-wing groups threatened to sue the film company for discrimination unless non-whites were cast as some of the Hobbits. It looks like the film company ignored the threats and [...]

Ron Paul labeled a racist, projected to win in Iowa

Welcome to the club, Congressman! Ron Paul furrowed his eyebrows before storming off completely during a CNN interview addressing allegations that he made money and won fame with the help of a sometimes racist series of newsletters back in the 1990s. Paul is the same candidate that many have said has been ignored by the [...]

The Political Cesspool Radio Program
is proudly sponsored by …

Little Green Footballs takes up the tale:

The story so far: apparently Ron Paul was scheduled to appear on the notorious radio show “The Political Cesspool,” a talk show in Tennessee connected to the white separatist Council of Conservative Citizens and the Holocaust denial group Institute for Historical Review.

The announcement of Ron Paul’s appearance was posted on the blog of Political Cesspool co-founder Austin Farley: Congressman Ron Paul TONIGHT On The Cesspool.

Friday, August 18, 2006
Congressman Ron Paul TONIGHT On The Cesspool
One of the only truly conservative Congressmen in office today, Ron Paul, will be doing a live interview on The Political Cesspool www.thepoliticalcesspool.org tonight. The show is from 7-8 PM Central time and can be heard locally (Memphis) on 1380 AM WLRM or the live stream or archives if you miss it live will be at www.thepoliticalcesspool.org. No matter what your opinion of the Cesspool is you will not want to miss this interview. I have heard that No Child Left Behind and possible Bush impeachment will be discussed, but I am not 100% sure on that. Tune in to find out.

Austin
posted by Austin Farley Your Hero @ 5:27 AM

If true, this would be the most direct connection yet between Ron Paul and the kind of people who cheer for David Duke. But as Adam Holland and I both discovered, the archives of The Political Cesspool radio show have apparently been scrubbed of this episode.

Here’s the archive page with the missing day.

I hadn’t posted about this previously because I’ve been unable to confirm that the show actually took place. But Ron Paul was clearly scheduled to appear and his interview was announced by one of The Political Cesspool’s resident troglodytes — and that missing day in their archives is very curious. In the context of the renewed focus on Paul’s racist, homophobic, and antisemitic newsletters, this is more evidence of a pattern of disturbing associations with the dregs of America’s racist underground.

And speaking of the dregs, if you scroll down the archive page linked above you’ll see that a week prior to Ron Paul’s scheduled appearance, the guest of honor on The Political Cesspool was none other than the crusty old white supremacist David Duke himself….

iv. Racism is only for Minorities and Democrats

Racist? Of COURSE NOT! Just take a look at the right sidebar on Political Cesspool’s home page:

Wonder what he’d say if he knew
that the blankety-schmankety
formulation comes to us from
Yiddish (them ‘Zionists’)

The Political Cesspool Radio Program PROUDLY ANNOUNCES the publication of a brand new book from James Edwards! James takes a fearless, no holds barred approach as he shows how conservatives have walked right into the liberals’ phony “racism” trap, and he shows us the way out! Every conservative in America needs to read Racism, Schmacism!

And, on the book page at the same site (no, I’m not going to link to this trash):

You see, it’s no accident—it’s happening in city after city, all over America, for one simple reason—because liberals and race hustlers know that tossing out the “R word” is all they have to do to shut down conservative dissent.

If you’ve been to a Tea Party, you know it’s working. Instead of spending all their time trying to roll back big government, Tea Party speakers spend half their time denying that they’re racists….

Edwards is the host of the aptly-named cesspool radio program. Here’s his take on the controversy:

Ron Paul labeled a “racist,” projected to win in Iowa
Category: Racism Schmacism, Ron Paul

Welcome to the club, Congressman!

….

I was already going to cast my vote for Ron Paul. After reading this story, I plan to vote for him twice!

Interestingly, some ideological sites have no trouble linking to both Political Cesspool and L. Neil Smith’s publication:

http://www.reocities.com/fountoftruth/links.html

The Political Cesspool
The Libertarian Enterprise

Which brings us back to L. Neil Smith and his non-racism:

Those tariffs make me so mad! I’ll just beat old
Uncle Tom until I feel better! — S. Legree

Herman Cain, Fugitive Slave
by L. Neil Smith
Number 647, December 4, 2011

Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

I don’t write about race very often, because it’s unimportant to me. But allow me to preface this by admitting I never liked Herman Cain.

[...]

Although he had been an admirer of left-wing radio talker Alan Berg, assassinated by so-called white “supremacists” (an inaccurate neologism I detest as much as “normalcy”), [Ken "The Toxic Avenger"] Hamblin eventually began to perceive that the principal threat to American civilization was not a gaggle of raggedy-assed neo-fascist Bible-thumping rednecks, as the Southern Poverty Law Center, every politician to the left of Dwight David Eisenhower, and the round-heeled socialist media would have us believe, but the Southern Poverty Law Center, every politician to the left of Dwight David Eisenhower, and the round-heeled socialist media themselves.

Hamblin began to see blacks like himself, not as beneficiaries of liberal policies and politicos over the decades, but as their victims. He saw in Democratic Party programs like Affirmative Action and the forced integration of public schools, a clear implication that, in the minds of certain whites, black people were inferior, lost without liberal “help”—”help” that destroyed the black American family, “help” that created the drug- and crime-infested inner cities, “help” that made generations desperately dependent on white “progressive” handouts.

And that was real racism.

Hamblin began to see the inner cities as plantations, vote-farms meant to keep the left in office forever. “Every liberal,” he took to proclaiming in a big, round, Kingfish voice, “ought to have his own Negro.”

Hamblin was right. He, himself, had escaped the New Plantation, the vote-farm of inner city Detroit. To the white liberal establishment in Denver as well as to its black overseers, becoming a conservative made him a runaway—a fugitive slave—and that simply could not be tolerated.

[...]

[Progressives] are this country’s lowest, most despicable and condescending racists, their every policy for the past sixty years a shining and inspirational attempt (to them, anyway) to “lift up the White Man’s Burden”.

For unbending critics of selfishness and private enterprise, they all seem to have exceptionally nice houses, even nicer cars, and piles of money, generally obtained through malodorously mercantilist means—rather than straightforward acts of capitalism between consenting adults—and every bit of which they utterly despise themselves for possessing.

Aargh.

You see, they aren’t racists, because there IS NO RACISM. Just as the Civil War wasn’t about slavery. It was about TARIFFS! Brian Tubbs wrote this refutation of Smith’s “The American Lenin [Abraham Lincoln]” in 2000:

5. He argues that the South seceded over the tarriff issue. Regardless of how much modern southerners (like myself, mind you) WANT to believe that, it is simply not true. All you have to do is read SOUTHERN newspaper editorials and SOUTHERN political speeches of that day (in the state houses and at the state secession conventions) and you’ll see that secession was driven first by slavery and THEN by tarriffs. More to the point, the Lower South seceded primarily over slavery in that they demanded a federal guarantee of new slave states and territories. Knowing that Lincoln represented the direct opposite of that position – an end to the expansion of slavery, they bolted after his election. Granted, the Upper South states seceded primarily over how they perceived Lincoln was handling the situation. Had Lincoln not attempted to resupply Fort Sumter, for instance, it is possible that Virginia would have stayed in the Union. Regardless, any delusions that slavery played a minor or secondary role in the South’s decision to secede (esp. the Lower South) can be put to rest by reading what SOUTHERN political leaders and editorialists had to say in 1860-61. I would point you especially to the Cornerstone Speech by Alexander Hamilton Stephens.

The willful misinterpretation of facts and history to push the commonalities of the libertarian/neoconfederate/lost cause/CCC agenda is perhaps THE salient feature of their collective writings.

Southern Plantation – Thomas Nast, Harpers 1863

Which is why they speak in code SO MUCH. Racism is only the fault of the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Civil War wasn’t about slavery. Big Government oppresses Blacks to keep them on “vote farms” in the New Plantation.

Ron Paul has flitted around this lightbulb for a long time, now, and I am NOT making the explicit connection nor claiming the “smoking gun” that others are currently engaged in a wild scavenger hunt to find.

What IS apparent is that the GOALS of the neo-racist agenda are in harmony with Ron AND Rand Paul’s agenda (see Rand’s fancy tap-dancing on the Civil Rights Act prior to his election to the US Senate from Kentucky in 2010.)

And the stealth Libertarians who flooded into the Republican Party circa 1990 included all wings of the LP.*

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[* this includes Eric O'Keefe's [disgraced former National Director of the Libertarian Party] statement that the Howie Rich/CATO crowd needed to forget the Libertarian Party and work through the GOP in parallel or in concert with Ron Paul/Eric Dondero’s move. As I noted:

It is as Murray Rothbard — the pre-eminant “Austrian School” economist in the Known Universe, arguably, was writing his long, brilliant — and today, debunking of the whole Reagan Myth – post-mortem analysis of Reagan’s presidency from a Libertarian perspective that Eric O’Keefe writes a letter to the editor, which Rothbard publishes in his Liberty Magazine, March 1989 issue:

“Mere Lines on a Ballot” in which O’Keefe says that sticking with the LP is pointless, but that infiltrating another party is the way to go.

See “They’re Going After the Wisconsin Teachers” 6 March 2011 for more.]

There’s more, including Pat [Proud member of Sons of Confederate Veterans and former Nixon speechwriter] Buchanan’s defense of “The Political Cesspool” but this is already probably too long.  (and here at Media Matters, from the Diane Riehm Show.)

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Some further Libertarian reading from this blog:

• “Something for the Eloi” (30 Dec 2009)
• “Not All Mad Dogs Get Licensed” (27 August, 2009)
• “Dangerous Koch-heads Tooting Furiously” (9 March 2009)
• “The Invisible Empire – to a Blind Media, that is” (10 April 2010)
• “Sheer Galt: Randroid Update” (15 March 2010)
• “Going Galt? Ayn Kampf, Revisited” (12 March 2010)
• “Ayn and the Indians“ (11 January 2010)

And the neoclassic paleoputdown:

• “Ayn Kampf” (30 October 2006)

Birds of a feather flock together, and these lunatics fluttering around Ron Paul are some queer birds, indeed.

You don’t have to believe that somehow Ron Paul is utterly linked to them. I am not presenting a legal case here. But I am asking you to take a reasonable interpretation, and the phony “oh, Democrats just call us RACISTS because we’re right” arguments, notwithstanding, the clear intermingling of crypto-racist Neoconfederate and Libertarian players is too disturbing to merely dismiss as another blogospheric kerfuffle.

Helps build strong parties TWELVE ways!

I’ve been on this story since 1998, and, nearly fourteen years later, it seems like I just might be onto something.

Courage.

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A writer, published author, novelist, literary critic and political observer for a quarter of a quarter-century more than a quarter-century, Hart Williams has lived in the American West for his entire life. Having grown up in Wyoming, Kansas and New Mexico, a survivor of Texas and a veteran of Hollywood, Mr. Williams currently lives in Oregon, along with an astonishing amount of pollen. He has a lively blog His Vorpal Sword. This is cross-posted from his blog.