An elephant, by any other name. . . . . .

Sunday/Monday October 11/12 2009

. . . . ."Maybe it's the times. Maybe I cannot rid myself of images of towers burning against a blue sky, the smoke an ugly scorch at 45 degrees, the tree-shrouded neighborhoods of New Jersey just across the Hudson River. Maybe, I see us all inside a maelstrom, past and present and future, the living and the dead and the unborn, all part of one era that is so intense and fierce in it's inception and denouement that it can only be seen correctly inside the mind of a deity".
- James Lee Burke Swan Peak

. . . That paragraph above captures exactly how I see the times we live in. James Lee Burke is a masterful author and his latest in paperback; the latest in the continuing story of his tortured, sober alcoholic, violence prone, passionate, knight errant Dave Robicheaux, of Louisiana, Swan Peak. Again, accurately capturing with his masterful storyweaving the over-arching theme of not being able to outlive or outrun our pasts or our karma, and the deeds we've done, and how even in the darkest moments, the most unlikely and least suspect, rise to the occasion and save others through saving themselves.

. . . .Yes, I read a lot in my travels, as much fiction as non-fiction. My tastes in fiction probably speak for themselves; Burke's continuing adventures of Dave Robicheaux and Clete Purcel, set in my second home, Louisiana. Robert Crais's novels featuring Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, the work of Michael Connelly featuring Heironymous (Harry) Bosch, Dennis LeHane and his ongoing stories of Back Bay Boston with Patrick Kenzie and Angela Genarro and their friend Bubba Rogowski and of course, Robert B. Parker with Spenser and Hawk.

. . . .And for those who know me best, the fact that I can identify with those protagonists speaks volumes as well.. . . .I would hope that you're able to instantly identify the two men in the picture above, taken in much younger days. There is a new book by Thomas Weschler "Travelin' Man: On the Road and Behind the Scenes with Bob Seger", that contains 3 decades of photographs of Bob's life and times as a rock and roll musician.

. . . .I wonder if we truly appreciate what men like Bob and Bruce are? Wonder if we understand the contributions that these men, and men like John Mellencamp, Willie Nelson and Neil Young have made? Do we know and get it, that these men are our Shakespeare's, our Yeats, our Frost's, our Hemingway's and Faulkner's. Do we understand that these men, through the uniquely American art form known as rock and roll chronicled and recorded our lives in the last half of the 20th Century and the first years of the 21st? Cherish their contributions, not them, they're all extraordinarily gifted and humble men, who understand that the spirit of the art moves through them, not because of them.

. . . .And on it goes. In yesterday's (just below this one) little epistle, I listed 9 albums of music that you should be listening to, but probably aren't. I left the 10th off, Michael Stanley's Just Another Night. A brilliant piece of work by someone who just won't stop making music and we are all the better for it. This one is rich, deep and complex and the two absolute must have cuts are the two at the end, Kensington Place and Winter. So. . .that makes the top 10 list complete, and I haven't even listened to Kris Kristofferson's or Roseanne Cash's yet, so this year may be a first, it may be the first time ever that we have a Top 12 Albums that you should be listening to, but probably aren't. Like I said yesterday, hang on to it, and give the music lover on your Christmas list a treat.

. . . . . . There's something we need to get to right away. Amongst many of the undercurrents flowing in the almost-insanity that seems to surround all of us daily is something I detect, a whiff of apocalyptic fever, that some of the actions and bullshit that surround us and people seem to pull daily is the sense that it's OK, because it's all going to end anyhow, that whole 2012 thing, which will only get worse with the release of the movie in the coming weeks. Well. . . .let's set the record straight. I write it everyday in the closing paragraphs, I speak it, there isn't going to be anything bad or good or anything else that will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, not gonna happen! Now, if you don't want to take me as an authority, try getting it straight from the horse's mouth. A Mayan elder, Apolinario Chile Pixtun is fed up and had enough.

"It's too bad that we're getting e-mails from fourth-graders who are saying that they're too young to die," Martin said. "We had a mother of two young children who was afraid she wouldn't live to see them grow up."

Chile Pixtun, a Guatemalan, says the doomsday theories spring from Western, not Mayan ideas.

A significant time period for the Mayas does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.

But most archaeologists, astronomers and Maya say the only thing likely to hit Earth is a meteor shower of New Age philosophy, pop astronomy, Internet doomsday rumors and TV specials such as one on the History Channel which mixes "predictions" from Nostradamus and the Mayas and asks: "Is 2012 the year the cosmic clock finally winds down to zero days, zero hope?"

. . . .Entire piece here. And please read that again. Doomsday theories spring from Western ideas, not the Mayans. So, suck it up, get a grip and buckle up, there's no easy escape hatch opening up on Dec. 21, 2012. We'll wake up, and still have to face all the things in our personal lives and in the world that you just may be avoiding now. Procrastination will only make it worse for you.

. . . .One thing that I believe personally that we're seeing when we look over at our friends on the Right and the schism occurring, the internecine civil war, that they're apparently having is that there are two distinct strains coming out of it, and I really don't think they can be reconciled this time. The true conservatives, the true Republicans, those who trace their philosophies back to Eisenhower and William F. Buckley, the pre-Reaganites, the pre-Bushites, those before Atwater, Rove, Palin, Gingrich, et al have had enough of the wingnut residents of Rushistan, those who are properly identified as Republicanists, trying to hijack their party. They've had enough of the unceasing expansion of Federal Government and Deficit spending and the unheralded jump in federal spending as a percentage of GNP that began with Reagan and continued with the Bushes and the odd neoconservative world view that unlimited federal spending in the name of nation-building across the globe doesn't work. Theirs has been an uneasy alliance for the previous 30 years as it is, and now; now that everything that Barry Goldwater was afraid of for the future of his party, now that all of that has come true and the "religious kooks" (Barry's phrase) have taken over, with Irving and Bill Kristol paving the way for them, there is a true split occurring in front of our eyes. The current crop of extreme Rightists who now put partisanship and party ahead of country, who have become essentially anti-American, as evidenced in their actions is going the way of the Whigs, but unfortunately for that sect of extremists, I don't believe any of them have read enough history to understand what happened to the Whig party, nor how they were eventually historically viewed. I don't believe that McCain and Hatch can rein them back in, and that soon we will see two parties emerge from the wreckage and the rebuilding.

. . . .In the 1984-speak that the residents of Rushistan from the planet Beck engage in now, those conservatives who are true Eishenhower-Goldwater conservatives would be labeled and viewed as "progressives". Isn't language a wonderful thing? And what an ironic twist!

. . . .Oh, how we can only hope for a Palin/LaRouche ticket in 2012! Now, that would be a spectacle.

. . . .Now, as for my newest hero, Alan Grayson. That man is f***** awesome! Time for some more Grayson.

. . . .Check his latest zinger here. "If the President ordered a BLT, the Republican party would want to ban bacon."

. . . .Now, on the same subject, Cenk Uygur on how that same hero of mine, Alan Grayson, and Michael Moore, have in the space of two short weeks, completely changed the dialog, the rules of the debate and conversation, back to what it should be.

It's not the answer that matters, it's the question. So when Alan Grayson suggested that the Republican's health care plan was for people to die quickly, he began a conversation that the Democratic Party couldn't lose and the Republicans couldn't win. Because then the question being debated was: Do Republicans want people to die quickly?

For the whole summer, the Republicans had managed to shift the debate from "should we reform the health care system in this country?" to "is the Democratic plan to reform health care a government takeover?" So, instead of the onus being on the health care industry and their Republican lovers to prove that we should maintain the status quo, the onus shifted to Democrats to prove that their plan was perfect.

This is an old trick of lobbyists (really well demonstrated in Thank You For Smoking). You change the conversation to a battle you can win. So, Rep. Grayson used their methods against them. And now the conversation we're having is whether the health care system is acceptable or if it leads to killing people for profit. Mission accomplished.

Michael Moore is doing the same in his move Capitalism. First, he is changing the conversation on who caused the financial collapse in the first place. Most people are acutely aware that it was the bankers, but not the Fox News audience. So, when he went on Sean Hannity's show the other night, he introduced that idea to them and then Hannity was stuck in the position of defending the bankers and blatantly blaming the victims and the poor. Instead of discussing how government was at fault, Moore started a conversation on how deregulation might have led to this mess.

But more importantly, he started a battle for the heart and soul of Christianity. He proposed in the movie and in his debate with Hannity that being on the side of the rapacious rich is un-Christian. He claimed his position is the more Christian position. For so long, the Republicans have simply claimed that they are more Christian without anything to back them up. They just shouted louder. Now, Moore is shouting just as loud.

By putting them on the defensive on how they are not good Christians if they help the rich crush the poor, he has once again changed the conversation. Are the Republicans bad Christians? It doesn't matter what the answer is, that's a question you can't lose with.

What the conservative movement has understood for a long time is sometimes it takes something a little inflammatory to change the conversation. You have to draw attention to you, so people can start discussing the topic you want.

This was perfectly demonstrated by the wild and angry town hall crowds. They were sometimes saying hideous things about Obama but they succeeded in shifting the burden of proof on to the Democrats. Now, it looks like we have a couple of guys that know how to play this game. And they have succeeded in shifting the focus back to where it should be. It's refreshing to have people who know what they're doing on your side.

. . . .And I believe Uygur to be right.

. . . .On that entire "Christian" thing, The Political Carnival posted this from a Twitter friend of theirs, 42bkdodgr, a 72-year old (I point that out for one reason, older wiser and a lot more experience in life than many of us) who's observed much. But, most potently, this special comment on the Separation of Church and State here in America:

Separation of Church and State

The foundation of this great country is the separation of church and state. It was a principle derived from the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and it made this country different from all other countries in the world at that time.

Over the years I have heard that America is a Judeo-Christian Nation and more recently a Christian Nation. America is neither, we are a nation of believers and non-believers. America is made up of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Baptists, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, other religions, Agnostics and Atheists.

It is the diversity of religions and nationalities that makes America great. Over the years I have seen an attempt to move this country away from the separation of church and state principle.

One of my biggest fears with the growth of right wing Christian Conservatism, is that one day this country will become a theocracy.

The growth of the Religious Right began in the late 1970s with the founding of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, in the 1980s with Pat Robinson’s Christian Coalition and more recently the emergence of Dr. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Their interest is to have more Christian values as part of the public school system and in government.

Over the years Christian conservatives have made statements regarding their feelings about the separation of church and state:

“I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be.” Jerry Falwell, 1979.

“The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that is what is happening.” Pat Robertson 1/11/85

“The public education movement has also been an anti Christian movement…We can change education in America if you put Christian principles in and Christian pedagogy in. In three years, you would have totally revolutionize education in America.” Pat Robertson, September 27, 1993.

“We’re going to bring back God and the Bible and drive the gods of secular humanism right out of the public schools in America.” Pat Buchanan February 11, 1996.

There has been a growth of conservative religious law schools over the years such as; Liberty Law School (Falwell), Regent University Law School (Robertson) where students are taught to evaluate the law and public policy from a Christian perspective.

The goal of Christian conservatives and graduates of Christian law schools is to become involved in school boards, politics and the judicial systems in order to affect change in the areas of abortion, same-sex marriage, death penalty, school prayer and homosexuality issues.

In recent years events have taken place that raised the level of my concern regarding Christian conservatives attempt to remove the wall between church and state.

• Christian proselytizing in the U.S. Air Force Academy.

• The hiring of alumni from Christian conservative law schools into federal government positions during the Bush Administration. It included the hiring of Monica Goodling who was involved in the firing of the U.S. Attorneys, and Kay Cole James, dean of Regent’s government school to be the Director of Personnel Management in the Bush Administration.

• The distribution of the bible and proselytizing to the Afghan people by U.S. Army personnel.

• Texas state law requiring that public schools incorporate Bible literacy into its curriculum.

• “C Street House” revelation.

I write this Special Comment to express my concerns and feelings about the Christian conservatives belief that their form of Christianity should be the religion of choice in this country and government should operate under their values. Should that ever happen, this country would be no different from the Taliban enforcing their version of Islam when they ruled Afghanistan.

. . . .I endorse this piece, and I also want to point out that it concurs with my view about the separation of church and state. One of the greatest fears that I have is that within my lifetime, this great Republic of the United States of America, a democratic republic, will become a theocracy, and destroy the works of Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Paine and Madison. I have many, many wonderful Christian friends, all of whom I support in actively worshipping in the faith of their choice, in their private life. I personally resent the Glenn Becks of the world trying to rewrite a history paid for in blood by some of the greatest people in history, our Founding Fathers, that of a careful, painful and long debate and decision making process about how the governance of this great country should be handled, and how important it was to keep religion and matters of personal faith out of and away from public governance.

. . . Now, onto another one that's sure to have repercussions into this week. The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama. Now, on a personal basis, as anyone who reads this column knows, I've followed Iran quite closely since the first uprising and out of a personal distaste for Ahmadenijad, I think he's a monster, a tyrant and a religious fanatic; a potently deadly combination. As an American, I'm very proud that the President was singled out for this, as I believe any American should be, he is our elected President and the award reflects well on the entire nation. I don't sit on the Nobel committee, nor do any of you, and they are a sovereign body and the only votes or opinions that count are theirs, none of ours. I don't know about that whole work yet to come thing, though. If it were me, I would have awarded the Nobel Peace Prize posthumously to Neda, the young Iranian woman who was shot in the head as she parked her car near the protests this summer, and whose crime was having to drive through the area; or I would have awarded it to Mousavi, who has not given up his hope for a better Iran, nor his desire to overthrow Ahmadenijad.

. . . .But it was that Right Wing outcry and hysterical reaction to the Nobel Peace Prize by the extremists over on the Right that brings this next one out from BuzzFlash and Mark Karlin, and also speaks eloquently to some of the points that I brought out up above:

The latest right wing psychotic hysteria over Barack Obama's Nobel Prize is part of a broader movement of primitivists who fashion themselves "conservatives" because they can't emotionally cope with progress.

Obama represents the reintegration of America into the international community and an effort to move toward peace, rather than conflict.

Both internationally and domestically, as Gore Vidal once noted, the Republican Party is the political equivalent of advocating death; either in permanent wars or in a desire for a lifestyle that runs counter to the evolutionary progress of America and civilization.

When Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or the GOP politicians repeatedly talk about returning to the world of their childhoods, they are repudiating the historical reality that the history of men and women has been one of evolutionary progress. Our heritage as the human species is to build upon the foundation of those who have come before us.

Perhaps that is why the religious right is so latched onto the concept of Creationism, because with such a worldview life is fixed in a glass bubble from the moment of "Divine creation" to today. There is no history, no advancement, no rational enlightenment, no progress; all is in frozen in the "Divine Word."

Of course, the brownshirt media populists (who are just in it for the big bucks) shill for a less celestial -- although interrelated -- concept of going backwards: they evoke an emotional yearning for a white Christian nation when minorities knew their place, and the male was king.

Ironically, as Barack Obama is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, the right wing Goebbel wannabes of the airwaves stir up a cauldron of atavism and Know-nothingism that puts America farther and farther behind the rest of the world, which is continuing to advance without the hindrance of a Neanderthal populism that seeks the reversal of evolution, the denial of evolution itself. (Just look at "Communist China" and India, who are economicaly, industrially and scientifically moving forward full steam ahead.)

It is sometimes so difficult and terribly painful to realize that a nation that came so far on its innovation, free spirit, scientific exploration, and liberation from the constraints of feudal systems in Europe is now hampered by a segment of its population and a large part of its media that wallow in ignorance and dreams of going backwards.

Barack Obama represents hope to the world that we can once again become a nation of enlightenment and international engagement, if we can ever overcome the disabling distraction of an army of fools egged on by multi-millionaire media demagogues who live the good life while dangerously stirring up the prejudices and fears of their listeners for a past that reverses the course of human history.

. . . .But that brings up the whole question that echoed thoughout the media and the blogosphere on Friday, "what has Obama done?". Courtesy of the people over at The Political Carnival, here's a list of what this Administration and this Congress have accomplished so far in 9 months. Do I agree with all of them? Not just no, but Hell No! Specifically, any regular reader here knows my entire beef with TARP bailouts and propping up the monetary and fiscal system, and Cash for Clunkers was an absolute disaster. Note here for casual readers: bailouts are very different than stimulus packages. One was an inevitable result of the disastrous decisions of the other. Instead of just bankrupting the Big 5 banks, AIG and Goldman-Sachs, letting them fail, nationalizing them for a period of 18 months, devaluing everything to 35 cents on the dollar, and suffering those consequences as the nation would have to rebuild from it, the Bush Administration and Paulson decided to prop the system up artificially, the Obama administration and Geithner and Summers decided to do the same. Resultingly, what occurred was depressingly predicatable to anyone who got even a bare minimum passing grade in Macroeconomics 101, private spending dried up. Once that happened, with all the taxpayer money in the monetary system propping those banks up, the only course to prevent worldwide financial collapse was for public spending to take that place of that private spending to at least attempt to keep currency and money flowing in the cycle, thus the stimulus packages. One was forced by a bunch of bad decisions involving the other.

. . . .Thank you, yes, I can present freshman Econ 101 in 30 seconds or less. But I digress, here is what this Administration and Congress have accomplished in 9 months. From The Political Carnival:

This is what President Obama has done from day 1:

FEATURED LEGISLATION

Cash for Clunkers Extension

Signed: Thursday, August 6, 2009

Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act

Signed: Monday, June 22, 2009

Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009

Signed: Friday, May 22, 2009

Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act

Signed: Friday, May 22, 2009

Helping Families Save Their Homes Act

Signed: Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act

Signed: Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act

Signed: Wednesday, April 21, 2009

Omnibus Public Lands Management Act

Signed: Monday, March 30, 2009

Small Business Act Temporary Extension

Signed: Friday, March 20, 2009

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

Signed: Tuesday, February 17, 2009

DTV Delay Act

Signed: Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act

Signed: Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

Signed: Thursday, January 29, 2009

PRESIDENTIAL ACTIONS

In this section you will find official actions by the President that have a significant impact on how the federal government functions but do not require legislation or Congressional approval. See listings below of the official Proclamations, Presidential Memoranda, and Executive Orders that President Obama has issued since his inauguration.

EXECUTIVE ORDERS

10/5/2009
President Obama signs an Executive Order Focused on Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance

10/1/2009
Executive Order-Federal Leadership on Reducing Text Messaging while Driving

9/29/2009
Executive Order Federal Advisory Committees

6/23/2009
Establishing a White House Council on automotive communities and workers

5/12/2009
Executive Order Chesapeake Bay Protection and Restoration

4/8/2009
Executive Order Establishing The White House Office Of Health Reform

3/11/2009
Executive Order Creating the White House Council on Women and Girls

3/9/2009
Removing Barriers to Responsible Scientific Research Involving Human Stem Cells

2/20/2009
Amending Executive Order 13390

2/19/2009
Executive Order: Establishment of the White House Office of Urban Affairs

PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDA

10/8/2009
Presidential Memorandum to the Secretary of State

9/30/2009
Presidential Memoranda, 9/30/09

9/29/2009
Presidential Memorandum to the Secretary of Commerce

9/21/2009
Presidential Memorandum Concerning National Security

9/18/2009
Presidential Determiniation regarding major illicit drug transit

9/17/2009
Presidential Memorandum Concerning Medical Liability Reform

9/15/2009
Presidential Determination regarding trafficking in persons

9/14/2009
Memorandum from the President regarding the Trading With the Enemy Act

9/11/2009
Memorandum For The Secretary Of Commerce The Secretary Of Labor The United State Trade Representative

9/8/2009
Presidential Determination of Assistance to the Maldives

PROCLAMATIONS

10/9/2009
Presidential Proclamation - General Pulaski Memorial Day

10/7/2009
Presidential Proclamation - Leif Erikson Day

10/6/2009
Presidential Proclamation German American Day

10/5/2009
Presidential Proclamation Child Health Day

10/2/2009
Presidential Proclamation- National Arts and Humanities Month, 2009

10/2/2009
Presidential Proclamation-National Energy Awareness Month

10/2/2009
Presidential Proclamation Fire Prevention Week

10/1/2009
Presidential Proclamation National Information Literacy Awareness Month

10/1/2009
Presidential Proclamation - National Cybersecurity Awareness Month

10/1/2009
Presidential Proclamation - National Domestic Violence Awareness Month

to be continued...

goto
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing_room/PresidentialActions/ and
http://www.whitehouse.gov/

. . . .I want to go on record, here in writing, that I do not necessarily agree with all of this legislation, or executive orders, I expounded at length up above on the fiscal and monetary ones, but geez, enough already of "But he hasn't done anything"

. . . .I know, I know, a lot of you were used to the previous administration, which attempted to consolidate all 3 branches of government into 3 men; Bush, Cheney and Rove. I know that you're used to an Administration that doesn't do much except abandon the hunt for the mass-murdering architect of 3,000 people in favor of invading a sovereign nation under false pretenses (that's a word for "lie"), completely subvert and throw out the Bill of Rights on Executive Memoranda signed and thrown in an Oval Office desk drawer and take a Federal Surplus and turn into a record deficit in record time with a $6 billion dollar month war. I know, but remember, we don't live through the Looking Glass anymore, either.

. . . And on that mess from the previous Administration and how it resonates into today, October 2009, Frank Rich in today's New York Times:

Let’s be clear: Those who demanded that America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003 — when there was no Qaeda presence in Iraq — bear responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan that ensued. Now they have the nerve to imperiously and tardily demand that America increase its 68,000-strong presence in Afghanistan to clean up their mess — even though the number of Qaeda insurgents there has dwindled to fewer than 100, according to the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones.

But why let facts get in the way? Just as these hawks insisted that Iraq was “the central front in the war on terror” when the central front was Afghanistan, so they insist that Afghanistan is the central front now that it has migrated to Pakistan. When the day comes for them to anoint Pakistan as the central front, it will be proof positive that Al Qaeda has consolidated its hold on Somalia and Yemen.

To appreciate this crowd’s spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.

What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.

Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term” somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.

He takes no responsibility for any of this. Asked by Katie Couric last week about our failures in Afghanistan, McCain spoke as if he were an innocent bystander: “I think the reason why we didn’t do a better job on Afghanistan is our attention — either rightly or wrongly — was on Iraq.” As Tonto says to the Lone Ranger, “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Along with his tribunes in Congress and the punditocracy, Wrong-Way McCain still presumes to give America its marching orders. With his Senate brethren in the Three Amigos, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, he took to The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page to assert that “we have no choice” but to go all-in on Afghanistan — rightly or wrongly, presumably — just as we had in Iraq. Why? “The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse,” they wrote. “The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again.”

This shameless argument assumes — perhaps correctly — that no one in this country remembers anything. So let me provide a reminder: We already did make that mistake again when we walked away from Afghanistan to invade Iraq in 2003 — and we did so at the Three Amigos’ urging. Then, too, they promoted their strategy as a way of preventing another 9/11 — even though no one culpable for 9/11 was in Iraq. Now we’re being asked to pay for their mistake by squandering stretched American resources in yet another country where Al Qaeda has largely vanished.

To make the case, the Amigos and their fellow travelers conflate the Taliban with Al Qaeda much as they long conflated Saddam’s regime with Al Qaeda. But as Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post reported on Thursday, American intelligence officials now say that “there are few, if any, links between Taliban commanders in Afghanistan today and senior Al Qaeda members” — a far cry from the tight Taliban-bin Laden alliance of 2001.

The rhetorical sleights of hand in the hawks’ arguments don’t end there. If you listen carefully to McCain and his neocon echo chamber, you’ll notice certain tics. President Obama better make his decision by tomorrow, or Armageddon (if not mushroom clouds) will arrive. We must “win” in Afghanistan — but victory is left vaguely defined. That’s because we will never build a functioning state in a country where there has never been one. Nor can we score a victory against the world’s dispersed, stateless terrorists by getting bogged down in a hellish landscape that contains few of them.

Most tellingly, perhaps, those clamoring for an escalation in Afghanistan avoid mentioning the name of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, or the fraud-filled August election that conclusively delegitimized his government. To do so would require explaining why America should place its troops in alliance with a corrupt partner knee-deep in the narcotics trade. As long as Karzai and the election are airbrushed out of history, it can be disingenuously argued that nothing has changed on the ground since Obama’s inauguration and that he has no right to revise his earlier judgment that Afghanistan is a “war of necessity.”

Those demanding more combat troops for Afghanistan also avoid defining the real costs. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the war was running $2.6 billion a month in Pentagon expenses alone even before Obama added 20,000 troops this year. Surely fiscal conservatives like McCain and Graham who rant about deficits being “generational theft” have an obligation to explain what the added bill will be on an Afghanistan escalation and where the additional money will come from. But that would require them to use the dread words “sacrifice” and “higher taxes” when they want us to believe that this war, like Iraq, would be cost-free.

The real troop numbers are similarly elusive. Pre-emptively railing against the prospect of “half measures” by Obama, Lieberman asked MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell rhetorically last week whether it would be “real counterinsurgency” or “counterinsurgency light.” But the measure Lieberman endorses — Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s reported recommendation of 40,000 additional troops — is itself counterinsurgency light. In his definitive recent field manual on the subject, Gen. David Petraeus stipulates that real counterinsurgency requires 20 to 25 troops for each thousand residents. That comes out, conservatively, to 640,000 troops for Afghanistan (population, 32 million). Some 535,000 American troops couldn’t achieve a successful counterinsurgency in South Vietnam, which had half Afghanistan’s population and just over a quarter of its land area.

Lieberman suggested to Mitchell that we could train an enhanced, centralized Afghan army to fill any gaps. In how many decades? The existing Afghan “army” is small, illiterate, impoverished and as factionalized as the government. For his part, McCain likes to justify McChrystal’s number of 40,000 by imbuing it with the supposedly magical powers of the “surge” in Iraq. But it’s rewriting history to say that the “surge” brought “victory” to Iraq. What it did was stanch the catastrophic bleeding in an unnecessary war McCain had helped gin up. Lest anyone forget, we still don’t know who has “won” in Iraq.

Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention. Even if the countries were interchangeable, the wars are not. No one-size surge fits all. President Bush sent the additional troops to Iraq only after Sunni leaders in Anbar Province soured on Al Qaeda and reached out for American support. There is no equivalent “Anbar Awakening” in Afghanistan. Most Afghans “don’t feel threatened by the Taliban in their daily lives” and “aren’t asking for American protection,” reported Richard Engel of NBC News last week. After eight years of war, many see Americans as occupiers.

Americans, meanwhile, want to see the fine print after eight years of fiasco with little accounting. While McCain and company remain frozen where they were in 2001, many of their fellow citizens have learned from the Iraq tragedy. Polls persistently find that the country is skeptical about what should and can be accomplished in Afghanistan. They voted for Obama not least because they wanted a new post-9/11 vision of national security, and they will not again be so easily bullied by the blustering hawks’ doomsday scenarios. That gives our deliberating president both the time and the political space to get this long war’s second act right.

. . . .I'd like to point out that both Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan both attempted to subdue and defeat the provinces that later would become Afghanistan, they failed. 100 years ago, the British empire marched into Afghanistan with what was then the world's finest military machine, attempting to subdue and defeat Afghanistan. They failed and left in defeat. 30 years ago, the Soviet Empire marched into Afghanistan with what was then the world's finest military machine, they left in defeat, and it helped bankrupt their Union and was the linchpin in what would be the fall of the Soviet Empire.

. . . ."Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it"
- George Santayana

. . . .And just because I like to end things with a little humor today, and simultaneously point out , again, as in repeatedly, over and over, what a sputtering idiot Sarah Palin is, this little tidbit. I'm going to cut and paste a little tidbit from an e-mail that members of Sarah Palin's little bunch received today (got it from a spy, there's traitors and turncoats everywhere!) and consequently their little plan, which sounds very, very, very well-thought and well-planned.

(1) Reading a 15-20 page section of the upcoming version of the health care bill that will be released and providing a review of it for the group
(2) Blogging about the group’s findings
(3) Twittering about the group’s findings
(4) Participating in a site-wide PHONE BANK BLAST before Tuesday’s vote

If you have your own outside BLOG and want to blog about the group’s findings, be sure to join the Team Sarah Health Care Review Board!

NOTE: The Phone Bank Blast – Mon., Oct. 12th, 2009 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm EDT

Light up the phone lines before Tuesday’s vote by the Senate Finance Committee!

Call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and let YOUR SENATORS know your thoughts, particularly if they serve on the Finance Committee. Please call ONLY your senators.

. . . .Now, let me point that date up above out again. It says, very clearly, Mon. Oct. 12th 2PM to 3 PM, the members of TeamSarah are to participate in a COMPLETELY AWESOME, OH-MY-GOD, OVER-THE-TOP PHONE BLAST! TO THE CAPITOL!!

. . . .Monday Oct. 12th is the Columbus Day holiday observed by Federal offices.. . . .that would be the Capitol Building. . . .and it's switchboard. . . and the Senate offices. . . . .morons.

. . . .Columbus Day, the holiday that shouldn't exist. Remember, part of my bloodlines go way back on this continent, to people who didn't need to be "discovered", they already knew where they were.

. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.


. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.


. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .