Stuff I Wrote

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So, this ex-member of Seal Team Six, hiding behind a nom de plume, writes a tell all book about the raid that killed Bin Laden. No one made him  do it. He chose to make himself part of a major controversy. I also imagine he stands to profit from his labors.

So, his true identity becomes known by investigative reporters. His real name will lead to an assessment of his motives,  his history, his biases, etc. His real name is also known by lots of others in government and the military. Wouldn’t you think his identity is newsworthy?

The answer to the above question, according to Reuters,  is a definite no. Read this article; you will notice the Bin Laden book’s author is not named. Why? Because some Al Qaida website called for his demise. Imagine, a bunch of jihadists in their pajamas in their Mosque basement  are so intimidating that Reuters intentionally censored the news. By that standard, given Al Qaida’s threats to our President, I suppose Reuters wishes him dead since it regularly publishes not only his real name but his address too!! Has anyone called the Secret Service?

Based on Reuters new policy, we certainly shouldn’t name anyone charged with a serious crime to insure they aren’t attacked by vigilantes. Can’t name witnesses in trials to avoid retribution they may receive, or sports writers penning stories critical of the local football teams who faces the threat of  fan violence..

Photo by Torbak Hopper, subject to this creative commons license

Osama Bin Laden is Dead!

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Sorry, but it’s time for another one of my dismal, tiresome political rants. I’ve tried for days to resist but I find myself at last overwhelmed by my baser liberal, left-wing, godless, bleeding heart, moonbat emotions.

I’m mad enough to spit!!!

Paul Ryan? Really? Paul Ryan!?? You’re kidding me. At this point I planned to make a joke, but realized I couldn’t hold a candle to Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Jay Leno, or Steven Colbert, so forget it. Besides, for the country, Paul Ryan is no joke. A nightmare, maybe – but no joke.

OK, yeah, I’m a nearly fossilized sixties’ liberal (I would have been a sixties’ radical, but that seemed like too much work and dangerous to my future health and welfare). I came of age during what was, in retrospect, the last great age of liberal accomplishment: Medicare, Medicare, civil rights, the success of the anti-war movement, the birth and rise of the women’s movement and reproductive freedom. Liberalism was surging forward like an irresistible tide and I believed that tide would continue far into the future.

How wrong I was! Almost sixty years later that progressive tide has ebbed; liberal accomplishments, even those of a hundred  or more years of age, are facing erosion from cold, corrosive conservative currents. Even the very core of the New Deal, Social Security, is buffeted by the reactionary undertow. Paul Ryan, seen as a serious voice for fiscal sanity, seeks to reform both social security and Medicare and slashing federal spending. We just can’t afford not to, he tells us. The future of our nation itself is at stake! He’s such a principled budget cutter – just ask the mainstream pundits ( except of course when it comes to outlays for defense or the need for new revenue, and the promotion of Bush’s wars, tax cuts and entitlement programs).

Who would have ever thought, even twenty years ago, that the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1913, would come under attack from mainstream Republicans? Animosity to the amendment mandating popular election of senators is no longer confined to the fringe of the conservative movement. Several current Republican candidates for the Senate espouse or support repeal. More alarming, no serious Republican has gone on the record countering the growing move for repeal.

The argument against the dubious 17th seems to be its passage undermined the Founders’ grand scheme of federalism by depriving state legislatures of their original Constitutional power to choose senators. By stripping states of that power, the amendment crippled state sovereignty.

The amendment was passed in the face of rampant corruption. Think politics are shady today? Our age seems pristine compared to the politics of the Gilded Age. Imagine a state legislature, in which a relative handful of politicians, can pick two of a hundred senators; and imagine senators whose only real constituent is that handful. If you think today’s corruption – including outright bribery – is less likely just think Rod Blagojevich (imagine your state legislature with a few score Rod Blagoieviches on the make).

Returning to legislative election of  senators would save corporations, and other special interests, tons of money. Instead of having to pour millions upon millions into thirty-three senate campaigns every two years, they would merely have to cough up sufficient political donations to satisfy a few hundred  greedy pols. Even better, this sort of campaigning could be kept entirely confidential. What the people don’t know can’t hurt them…

I wonder when we will hear the first Republican long for the days when only white male property owners could vote. Seems to me the restricted franchise was a part of federalism too. Why should the unwashed, teeming rabble who have  no real stake in the serious business of government be permitted to dilute their betters’ franchise? Shouldn’t determining qualifications for voters be entirely returned to the sovereign states?

And wouldn’t a real conservative federalist want to repeal the 14th Amendment as well as the 17th? After all, nothing did more to shatter the Founders’ original scheme than imposing the burden of compelling states to respect federal personal rights. Our Founding Fathers never intended, for example, the Bill of Rights to apply to the states. Only the 14th, and the meddling of the Supreme Court, caused such a disturbance in the Scheme of Things. Why shouldn’t the Mormons, for example, be able to establish their religion in the sovereign state of Utah?

Of course, let’s not even discuss the 16th Amendment. Is anything more inimical to liberty than the IRS?

When I came of age in that distant progressive age states were seen as nearly irrelevant and subservient to the federal government. The argument for states’ rights was largely discredited by its adoption by southern racists resisting the crusade for civil rights. The then existing broad scope of the commerce clause allowed the federal government to control virtually every economic and political sphere.

Now we have a Supreme Court together with a conservative movement,  seemingly bent on undoing seventy years of precedent. When lawsuits were first filed against Obamacare based upon an argument Congress could not justify its adoption on the commerce clause the overwhelming consensus in the legal community was such an argument was clearly without merit. A majority of the Court, however,  disagreed and cast an ominous pall over federal powers scrutinized by the Court in the future.

I was in something of a political argument with an acquaintance a few months ago. I jokingly asked him if he would give his life to defend Tennessee, thinking the obvious answer was no. I was wrong; the fellow declared he’d gladly die to save our Volunteer state. I was totally nonplussed. To me it seemed as ridiculous to die for Tennessee as it would to give my life for my county or city (I only regret I have but one life to give for my municipality!) 

Paul Ryan, and perhaps Mitt Romney (who knows what he really believes) are part of the forces seeking to return American to the Nineteenth Century. Perhaps they genuinely believe our country was a better, freer place in 1900. At that time the United States was indifferent to the clamor of women, blacks, workers, immigrants, and other misfits, for political rights and powers. It took the Roosevelt cousins, and the shock of the Great Depression, to shake things up and give the federal government broad powers to promote the general welfare.

Some cynics, myself included, doubt the sincerity of Paul Ryan and his ilk. Like their racist predecessors, I think modern conservatives’ advocacy of state’s rights and fiscal austerity  merely a cloak to conceal their true interests.

That’s what I think and it makes me mad enough to spit!!!

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It’a July Fourth… How many blog posts do you suppose have been (will be) written about our Independence Day? 10,000? 100.000?? 1,000,000???

Anyway, a lot…

Some posts will trumpet American Exceptionalism. Some will lament America’s decline or its descent into barbarism. Some will be funny or cute; and some will be grimly serious. Some will be insightful, some jejune. Almost all of them will cover ground thoroughly plowed   hundreds and hundreds of times in the past.

So I’m going to pass.

I’m not going to scribble any fiery patriotic screed, nor pen any left wing outrage or deeply sorrowful lament. No, I’m just going to lounge around in my underwear, eat burgers, watch some sports, and maybe catch some fireworks. Perhaps I’ll guzzle a beer or two (or more).  Scratch my oversized gut and fly the flag.

But I shallll not pontificate on this the 236th birthday of America. You can do that on your obscure blog and add to the myriad of unread posts scarring the Internet this hot and glorious July day. Have at it.

Just don’t expect me to read it. I’ve read it all before….

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FLICKR GROUPS

American Flag – Fireworks – Hot Dogs – Hamurgers – Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet

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The results from Wisconsin were not good. Swamped by an avalanche of Republican money and an electorate that vaguely disapproved of the recall effort, progressives took it on the chin. Unions took another body blow and in one of the most liberal states in the nation an unpopular right wing Republican won by seven points.

A chilly prediction for this Fall? Combined with the gathering economic storms over Europe and China, the obstructionist havoc wrought by the Republicans in congress, and the tsunami of cash pouring into conservative coffers, it is beginning to look ominous for Obasma and Democrats.

Andrew Sullivan (one of Vision’s favorite bloggers), and other pundits, decry what they see as a suicidal dash to the far right by the GOP.  They predict the GOP will wither into a rump party of aging southern whites. So far these predictions have proved laughably false. Not only is the GOP not dying, it now controls a majority of the states and the House. If the economy continues to worsen, and given the Citizens United flood of Republican campaign money, Republicans could well capture both the White House and the Senate.

If the above prospect comes to pass, do you think the Democratic minority in the Senate will use the filibuster in the same effective way as the current Republicans? Don’t count on it. First, the Democrats are far less cohesive; it will be easier for the Republican majority to pick up defectors. Second, I have no doubt if the minority does attempt the same sort of tactics now used by the Republicans, the GOP will quickly curtail the minority’s right to stonewall legislation.

With the GOP in control of every branch of the federal government, Congress will mirror the right wing controlled state legislatures. If that happens, Obamacare and the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell are doomed. Social Security and Medicare will be gutted. More funds will be thrown into the Military maw. Taxes will be slashed on the well to d (and raised on the middle class). We’ll see an avalanche of legislation aimed at devastating abortion rights, and unions, and the Democratic party itself.  Legislation to prevent voter fraud will place high hurdles minority voters will need to jump over to register or vote (for a preview check out the efforts of Florida Republicans to reform voting).

Then, if the GOP gets lucky, the next few years will see the economy rebound (despite Republican mismanagement) and the Grand Old Party, rather than withering away, will remain in control for the foreseeable future.

Oh, well, we progressives (the politically correct term for us unabashed liberals these days) will be able to console ourselves by drinking our over-priced  lattes, devouring our chilled arugula, reading the News York Times, and watching Rachel and Ed (and Olbermann reruns), at least until the Republicans reform cable television…

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My second cousin Wesley G. Worthliston, III, had his right wing blog Absolutely Right wiped out by a severe rat infestation at the server farm hosting his blog. Out of family loyalty I reluctantly allowed him to post to Visions. His site should be back and running late today…

Andrew Breitbart, RIP

First, I  suppose I should thank cousin Cliff for “allowing” me to post here on his dubious and disgusting blog. He left  out that my dad, the Big Two as he’s called in family circles, a big time hedge fund manager, had to exert considerable financial pressure to get Cliff to do the Right Thing. His omission of that fact is a typical example of liberal sneakiness…

In any event, here’s the Saturday morning roundup…

Scalia’s shocking revelation of the Obama Administration’s secret plot to force broccoli onto every American family’s dinner table has apparently stopped the plan in its green & gruesome  tracks. We must remain vigilant, however; there are credible rumors the government is thinking of mandating that arugula be added to nursing home lunchplates.

Should copies of the  koran carry warning labels?

Kudo’s to SCOTUS for allowing strip searches. The idea now needs to be expanded to applicants for food stamps and unemployment brenefits (at least to those socialist programs are eliminated). Oh, adding women seeking to kill their unborn kids to the mix wouldn’t be a bad idea either!

Has Rush sold out?

Romny’s support for a budget plan that only provides for a modest increase in defense  spending and relatively small decrease in job creators’ tax rates is just another outrageous example of his liberal Taxachusettes views. What we really need is a total elimination of taxes on the top two percent of the population until the Obama recession is clearly over (and then a gradual increase to  maximum tax rate of four or five percent with tax free capital gains). On defense spending, the need for a twenty percent plus percent increase is painfully obvious. Until our defense budget substantially exceeds the rest of the world’s nations’  military expenditures combined we aren’t truly safe.   How to pay for it?  Duh! Root out those socialist giveaways Social Security, Medicare,  and Medicaid!

 Should Iraq become an American territory like Guam?

Nuclear weapons could be the answer to the Iran question…  I suppose for appearance’s sake we should reserve the nukes at first. While I don’t personally agree, I grant the case for exempting Tehran as a target.

An Obama victory in November will be a sure sign of massive voter fraud. The plan to post militia members at “minorty” polling stations in blue states enjoys growing support. I oppose the effort to arm militia members with automatic weapons – small arms should be enough to discourage fraud (unless, of course, Obama’s so called “Justice” department attempts to intervene).

Is Osama really dead?

Thank God Obama failed in his attempt to exterminate innocent civilians in Virginia. Sending a F-18 crashing down onto a defenseless retirement village is merely another example of the muslim Kenyan born fascist’s war on older Americans. Don’t be fooled by the lap dog socialist press’s attempt to call the assault on the elderly an “accident”. Our valiant military is far to good to have one of its first line fighters crash in a residential area. Obama’s vile attack was only foiled by his utter incompetence.

Should labor unions be prosecuted as criminal conspiracies?

Finally, Monday, when hopefully my blog will be back, I’ll be posting two great articles: Should Income Taxes be Voluntary? and Don’t Impeach Obama, Deport Him!

Oh, and I want to make it very clear I am NOT responsible for any pornographic photos posted on this page!

Photo by Unalienable Rights…, subject to this creative commons license

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Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “Everyone is   entitled to his  own opinions, but not his own facts.” The more partisan one becomes the more the quote is forgotten. The partisan starts with a belief and then hunts for “facts” that support her position.

A majority of Republicans believe Obama has raised their income taxes. Of course the opposite is true. The sad part of this is that we are dealing with a simple fact. All one has to do is compare tax rates. It’s not a matter of interpretation. And, of course, the stimulus package was one third tax breaks and Social Security taxes have been reduced. Income tax rates are lower than they have been in decades. This is a simple fact – a matter of arithmetic.

We on the left can fall into the same trap. In the 1930’s, in the midst of the Great Depression,  the ideological allure of communism led many to blind themselves to the brutal truth of the nightmare in Russia and the crippling flaws of socialism. Today too many Democrats want to ignore Obama’s escalation of the suppression of civil rights in his continuation of the never ending War on Terror.

History is slippery business. The simple facts may be relatively easy. We invaded Iraq in 2003. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Over five thousand Americans died in the war. The last troops left in 2011.

The real facts are still hotly debated. The war was – or wasn’t – a legitimate response to September 11. The removal of Saddam Hussein was – or wasn’t – worth the cost in lives and treasure. The Bush administration followed the right – or wrong – strategy in its War of Terror. The messy, chaotic march of history often allows all sides to have their own facts. The Civil War ended over one hundred fifty years ago and what it was really all about is still contested even today. I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t still contentious arguments over the Peloponnesian War.

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The above photo isn’t from Flickr. I found it on a site of vintage photographs. There’s no credit listed since the image is clearly in the public domain (it was taken in 1905).

If we assume the fair maids in the shot were eighteen at the time, they would have been born in 1887 or so. They would each be 125 years old now. For them WWI started when they were 27, the Great Depression when they were 46; their age at the end of WWII was 58. When I was twenty they were 81. Surely by 1990 or so they were all dead.

During their lives they saw the invention of the automobile, movies, the air plane, penicillin, the telephone, radio, television, and the digital computer. They lived through two world wars, the struggle for civil rights by blacks and women, the cold war, Beatlemania, and Watergate.

How many children did each of them have? Did they have jobs or careers? What did they read? What did they believe? Who did they love…?

I wonder what they thought about the tumult they lived through. Did they embrace the vast changes they saw; or did they seek to hide from their future (our past)?

The beach loving ladies below were most likely born somewhere around 1994. Assuming a life expectancy of 80 years, they will live to see the 2070’s. What will they live through? What triumphs and tragedies will they experience; what miracles will they see? Will their lves mirror their great grandmothers’ or follow a  completely different path?

Photo by Jacrews7, remixed by me, subject to this creative commons license 

Why are so many of us so obsessed with the gear we have and the gear we want to have? Half the Flickr profile pages list all the cameras, lenses and other stuff the photographer toats around. Some of those lists are pretty damn impressive and make me drool. My old Nikon d50 is a perfectly adequate camera; I certainly haven’t gotten to the point where it can’t keep up to my skills as a photogorapher. I have to admit, however, that I dream about having a D300 or even a D3 (I’m a Nikon guy; we all know Canons are crap).

The same goes for lenses. I’ve got five very adequate lenses. I do mostly landscape and portrait work. I’m not shooting rabbits half a mile away at midnight or the hairs on a fly’s ass. Still, I want, want, want some of those sexy fast, long and macro lenses most of the pros have. Don’t even get me started on tripods, camera bags, back packs, rain gear and high capacity memory cards.

Will I be a better photographer if I have that D3 with a sexy fast lens up to my eye? Uh, well, maybe not… But that fact doesn’t keep me from lusting for that kind of gear. I think it’s a guy thing. “What’s ya shooting with?” My current answer, “Nikon D50,” only gets a barely noticeable nod from another serious photographer. If I could answer, with a very casual tone as if its no big deal at all, “oh, just a Nikon D3,” the other guy would whistle, immediately feel inadequate and intimidated by my primo gear and maybe even piss his pants. What a rush that would be!

Guys, including me, love gear, particular brand name gear with numbers and slashes and letters in the name. Whether its lawnmowers, rifles, fishing rods, tool boxes, chain saws, bowling balls, audio equiment, golf clubs, tires, televisions, GPS units, cell phones, cars, or, best of all, pickup trucks, those letters and slashes and numbers let us quickly sort out who are the winners with the really boss stuff and who are the losers stuck with that pitiful, plastic budget crap.

The truth is usually the actual difference in utility between that top of the line Ecletrix S9000x and the entry level Ecletrix E90 is very little. It’s also true the pro can run rings around you using that crap budget gear even if you use the   “highest rated” BLT/19000 super-titanium, triple coated, digital, lazer, hemi-headed gear that lists for just under half the GDP of Iceland. Use the best golf clubs in the world and Tiger Woods will beat you with a coke bottle. Send me out with a really good pro photographer – me with a D3 and my choice of top lenses and  the pro with a hundred dollar point and shoot. She’s going to come back with much better photographs than I am. Gear is great. I love gear! I want the greatest gear there is. But the secret of good photography isn’t in the gear, not the camera body and not the lens; its in the eye, that one damn piece of gear I will never be able to upgrade… But I don’t care. Only a handful of you out there can tell I’m at best an average photographer, the rest of you I can dazzle with my bullshit and intimidate with my gear (as soon as I can afford it…!

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Rush Limbaugh is an asshole. A prick. A villain. An all around rotten to the core ogre…

When he was on in the morning on one of our more offensive radio stations, whenever I felt sluggish I’d listen to him for a matter of mere minutes till his outrageous statements would wake me up. “I can’t believe he said that!!”

Of  course he latest outrage was no fluke, just a bit more vile than usual. Everyone is up in arms and for good reason.

But the effort to get him kicked off the air is horribly misguided. He didn’t advocate the overthrow of the government, didn’t call for the assassination of Obama or other hight government officials. All he did was make a vile comment about a woman who spoke publicly about a matter of political concern.

If we all start trying to silence speakers for what we consider comments beyond a certain line,  surely we must grant the same right to those on the opposite side of the political divide. After all, Bill Maher, may no god bless him, does say some outrageous things on Friday nights on HBO. Doubtless countless folks on the right are genuinely outraged by his profane, snide – if  hilarious – commentary.

Political and cultural debate in mass media is already stunted. Some poor TV pundit gets axed monthly, it seems, for making “inappropriate comments”. Juan Williams was dumped by NPR for revealing his fear of Muslims on airliners (a wrongheaded attitude no doubt shared by a big chunk of the flying public).  Lou Dobbs  got eased out by CNN for making inflammatory comments about undocumented aliens.

Strictly speaking, secondary boycotts of those who sponsor some pundit we abhor do not raise First Amendment concerns (the amendment only applies to efforts by government to censor comment). But we are better served by public debate having a wide range of voices. Yesterday’s censored speech may be tomorrow’s conventional wisdom. We must consider all ideas, hear all voices, to advance in the constant process of reforging America.  If we start silencing those whose voices we find anathema, we will end up with a mere exchange of unthinking platitudes and talking points by pundits too frightened of losing their place in the lucrative talking head biz. If each side declares a fatwa on those it considers too obnoxious, if both sides engage in jihad, we will soon be left  with a very narrow range of political discourse on public media. Tweedledum will be vigorously opposed only by Tweedledee.

The remedy for bad speech (I know you’ve heard this before) is more speech. Feel the outrage – speak your outrage – encourage others todo likewise – but don’t try to muzzle your opponent. He may end up muzzling you instead….

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Now here’s a really lunkheaded idea: some sober group or other wants TV and radio stations to refuse to run political ads that aren’t “true”. Imagine the debate and battles that would engender! In politicas truth is in the eye of the beholder…

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes 

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When I was a child, perhaps five or six, I would sometimes stay at my maternal grandparents  home in St. Charles, Virginia. Their white wood house, the largest in the small coal mining town (my grandfather managed the mine), nestled against a steep, heavily forested hill. In the level front yard studded with crab apple trees, halfway to the road and a mere foot or two from the whitewashed wooden fence marking the boundary line of my grandparent’s property, stood a working round, stone and cement fountain some six feet or so high.

In the late fall, as the trees lost their color and the grass withered to a dullish brown, it often rained in the morning. Not a hard rain but a long and drenching one; a rain that roared in a whisper, a constant hissing sound that harmonized with the gurgling of the fountain and was backed by the rhythm of raindrops splattering on the sparse leaves remaining on the apple trees.

Those mornings, after breakfast, I would sit with my grandfather on the wide screened porch. We would sit in old, white wooden rocking chairs and listen to the rain and gaze silently out at the gray, drenched landscape. The air was uncomfortably cool and smelled both wet and sweet. Time seemed to stand still, the rising sun’s light completely masked by the hard, colorless sheets of the morning rain clouds. Nothing moved those mornings except the dying leaves trembling or falling under the unrelenting assault of the rain. No dogs barked. No birds sang. No cars rumbled up or down the narrow road leading to my grandfather’s mine that passed by just fifty yards or so beyond our porch. The only sound was the rain; all else was mute.

Now, some fifty six years later, I recall those gray mornings I spent under the spell of the soft and steady Virginia rain as intervals of damp enchantment. Now, when the rain delays or stops me from accomplishing whatever urgent business I believe, in my aging adult way, must be done, I try to calm myself by remembering those mornings on my grandparents’ porch; those mornings when the steady, autumn rains embraced the world and me in liquid tranquility. Now I try to remember there is nothing more important than the rain.

Photo by Manuel Holgado, remixed by me, both images subject to this creative commons license