As I Was Saying

America has managed to construct an entirely one-dimensional political system. There’s no discernible difference left between left and right, other than in spin language pre-cooked for the sole purpose of faking the concept of elections. There’s very right and ultra right. America is living proof that once money is allowed into politics, the accumulation of it, and of the power it can buy, will and eventually must fully control a democratic system, which in the process, of necessity, suffocates and dies a painful death.

What once was a proud American democracy has been turned into a circus that rolls into town every four years, filled with clowns that pretend to fight each other with over the top grotesque contraptions, but sleep in the same bed once the show is over and the audience has gone home.

Reminds me of my continuing theme, which will be called upon now far more frequently since the networks won't find anything interesting between now and November 2016 except the charade we call the presidential election.

Here's the source of the quotation above.

Andy Bacevich Again

Consider the following claims, each of which in Washington circles has attained quasi-canonical status.

* The presence of US forces in the Islamic world contributes to regional stability and enhances American influence.
* The Persian Gulf constitutes a vital US national security interest.
* Egypt and Saudi Arabia are valued and valuable American allies.
* The interests of the United States and Israel align.
* Terrorism poses an existential threat that the United States must defeat.

For decades now, the first four of these assertions have formed the foundation of US policy in the Middle East. The events of 9/11 added the fifth, without in any way prompting a reconsideration of the first four. On each of these matters, no senior US official (or anyone aspiring to a position of influence) will dare say otherwise, at least not on the record.

Yet subjected to even casual scrutiny, none of the five will stand up. To take them at face value is the equivalent of believing in Santa Claus or the tooth fairy — or that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell really, really hope that the Obama administration and the upcoming Republican-controlled Congress can find grounds to cooperate.

Let’s examine all five, one at a time.

The Presence of US Forces: Ever since the US intervention in Lebanon that culminated in the Beirut bombing of October 1983, introducing American troops into predominantly Muslim countries has seldom contributed to stability. On more than a few occasions, doing so has produced just the opposite effect.

Iraq and Afghanistan provide mournful examples. The new book Why We Lost by retired Lieutenant General Daniel Bolger finally makes it permissible in official circles to declare those wars the failures that they have been. Even granting, for the sake of argument, that US nation-building efforts were as pure and honorable as successive presidents portrayed them, the results have been more corrosive than constructive. The IS militants plaguing Iraq find their counterpart in the soaring production of opium that plagues Afghanistan. This qualifies as stability?

America’s New War in the Middle East

And these are hardly the only examples. Stationing US troops in Saudi Arabia after Operation Desert Storm was supposed to have a reassuring effect. Instead, it produced the debacle of the devastating Khobar Towers bombing. Sending G.I.’s into Somalia back in 1992 was supposed to demonstrate American humanitarian concern for poor, starving Muslims. Instead, it culminated in the embarrassing Mogadishu firefight, which gained the sobriquet Black Hawk Down and doomed that mission.

Even so, the pretense that positioning American soldiers in some Middle East hotspot will bring calm to troubled waters survives. It’s far more accurate to say that doing so provides our adversaries with what soldiers call a target-rich environment — with Americans as the targets.

The Importance of the Persian Gulf: Although US interests in the Gulf may once have qualified as vital, the changing global energy picture has rendered that view obsolete. What’s probably bad news for the environment is good news in terms of creating strategic options for the United States. New technologies have once again made the United States the world’s largest producer of oil. The US is also the world’s largest producer of natural gas. It turns out that the lunatics chanting “drill, baby, drill” were right after all. Or perhaps it’s “frack, baby, frack.” Regardless, the assumed energy dependence and “vital interests” that inspired Jimmy Carter to declare back in 1980 that the Gulf is worth fighting for no longer pertain.

Access to Gulf oil remains critically important to some countries, but surely not to the United States. When it comes to propping up the wasteful and profligate American way of life, Texas and North Dakota outrank Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in terms of importance. Rather than worrying about Iraqi oil production, Washington would be better served ensuring the safety and well-being of Canada, with its bountiful supplies of shale oil. And if militarists ever find the itch to increase US oil reserves becoming irresistible, they would be better advised to invade Venezuela than to pick a fight with Iran.
Does the Persian Gulf require policing from the outside? Maybe. But if so, let’s volunteer China for the job. It will keep them out of mischief.

Arab Allies: It’s time to reclassify the US relationship with both Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Categorizing these two important Arab states as “allies” is surely misleading. Neither one shares the values to which Washington professes to attach such great importance.
For decades, Saudi Arabia, planet Earth’s closest equivalent to an absolute monarchy, has promoted anti-Western radical jihadism — and not without effect. The relevant numbers here are two that most New Yorkers will remember: 15 out of 19. If a conspiracy consisting almost entirely of Russians had succeeded in killing several thousand Americans, would US authorities give the Kremlin a pass? Would US-Russian relations remain unaffected? The questions answer themselves.
Meanwhile, after a brief dalliance with democracy, Egypt has once again become what it was before: a corrupt, oppressive military dictatorship unworthy of the billions of dollars of military assistance that Washington provides from one year to the next.

Israel: The United States and Israel share more than a few interests in common. A commitment to a “two-state solution” to the Palestinian problem does not number among them. On that issue, Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s purposes diverge widely. In all likelihood, they are irreconcilable.
For the government of Israel, viewing security concerns as paramount, an acceptable Palestinian state will be the equivalent of an Arab Bantustan, basically defenseless, enjoying limited sovereignty and possessing limited minimum economical potential. Continuing Israeli encroachments on the occupied territories, undertaken in the teeth of American objections, make this self-evident.
It is, of course, entirely the prerogative — and indeed the obligation — of the Israeli government to advance the well being of its citizens. US officials have a similar obligation: they are called upon to act on behalf of Americans. And that means refusing to serve as Israel’s enablers when that country takes actions that are contrary to US interests.
The “peace process” is a fiction. Why should the United States persist in pretending otherwise? It’s demeaning.

Terrorism: Like crime and communicable diseases, terrorism will always be with us. In the face of an outbreak of it, prompt, effective action to reduce the danger permits normal life to continue. Wisdom lies in striking a balance between the actually existing threat and exertions undertaken to deal with that threat. Grown-ups understand this. They don’t expect a crime rate of zero in American cities. They don’t expect all people to enjoy perfect health all of the time. The standard they seek is “tolerable.”

That terrorism threatens Americans is no doubt the case, especially when they venture into the greater Middle East. But aspirations to eliminate terrorism belong in the same category as campaigns to end illiteracy or homelessness: it’s okay to aim high, but don’t be surprised when the results achieved fall short.

Eliminating terrorism is a chimera. It’s not going to happen. US civilian and military leaders should summon the honesty to acknowledge this.

My friend M has put his finger on a problem that is much larger than he grasps. Here’s hoping that when he gets his degree he lands an academic job. It’s certain he’ll never find employment in our nation’s capital. As a soldier-turned-scholar, M inhabits what one of George W. Bush’s closest associates (believed to be Karl Rove) once derisively referred to as the “reality-based community.” People in Washington don’t have time for reality. They’re lost in a world of their own.  Source

Pretty Much It

I'm no undying fan of the Democratic party, but compared to the alternative, it's far preferable. Basically I think money calls the tune in American politics, and it doesn't give a damn which party is in power. But money likes Republicans better. The Republicans like business, they like large concentrations of wealth, they hate regulation of just about any kind especially of business and industry. The Democrats--well, they're another story. They are more flexible, more in tune with the population that has to work for a living and all of their problems. I know all generalizations are unfair and not even true if there is but one exception, but I would contend that the Democrats tend to be more compassionate in their desire to have the greater society through the agency of the government tend to people's needs when they are in need. For all these reasons and a bunch more I have not enumerated, the Republican sweep in Tuesday's elections is disheartening. The common wisdom says the voters were expressing their disgust with Washington, with Obama, and the status quo, so they voted against the Democrats. But it seems to me that putting the lunatics in charge of the asylum is not quite the right move. There's more than a little truth in the cartoon below.

Not So Fast

As somebody commented, let's not rush into anything. Let's see if this is actually going to last.

Just for Edification

Military budget.  List of countries by military expenditures (in billions of US dollars):

• United States - $640.0
• People's Republic of China - $188.0
• Russia - $87.8
• Saudi Arabia - $67.0
• France - $61.2
• United Kingdom - $57.9
• Germany - $48.8
• Japan - $48.6
• India - $47.4
• South Korea - $33.9

Source: Here

As has been observed time and again, the U.S. outspends the next nine biggest military spenders combined. This country spends almost 37 percent of all the money spent by the entire world for military purposes. With our country coming apart and falling down, doesn't this seem like the basest stupidity? And to think: we've got idiots in Congress saying we don't spend enough.

Ubiquitous Stalker

Have you checked the newspapers lately? Magazines? And most of all cable TV? Have you noticed that there's growing terror about Ebola? Some ridiculous figure like 41 percent of Americans fear a serious outbreak of the disease in the United States? You cannot escape the "continuing coverage" of this story. You may be getting to the point where you can't stand to hear the E-word any longer, but the media is salivating, masturbating over just about anything remotely connected with Ebola. Stories about "Mr. Duncan," the Liberian victim of the disease, who died in a Dallas hospital about 2 weeks ago. And stories about the couple of health care workers he had who have come down with the disease. Aren't we getting tired of seeing people in plastic space suits carrying stuff out of cheap Dallas apartments? Aren't we tired of seeing that NIH doctor talking to yet another talking head about what he talked about yesterday and five times already today?

I wonder how often I have to observe the ignorance and stupidity of the American people. Indeed, I could probably start another whole blog and organize it around that theme. Ever since 9/11 the country has been victimized by a ubiquitous stalker who's name is Fear, surname Unreasoning. I think somewhere in all this clutter I learned that you have a much better chance of being struck by lightening than you do of contracting Ebola in this country. That should be more than enough perspective for most people to apply their brains to. But it ain't.

Our Biggest Public Program

The United States’ biggest public program of the past 75 years, now outstripping the rest of the world combined, is war preparations. The routine “base” military spending, not counting spending on particular wars, is at least 10 times the war spending, or enough to totally transform the world for the better. Instead it’s used to kill huge numbers of people, to make the United States less safe, and to prepare for wars that are — without exception — lost disastrously. Since the justification of the Soviet Union vanished, U.S. militarism has only increased. Its enemies are small, yet it does its best to enlarge them. U.S. Special Operations forces are actively, if “secretly,” engaged in war or war preparations in over two-thirds of the nations on earth. U.S. troops are openly stationed in 90 percent of the nations on earth, and 100 percent of the oceans. A majority of the people in most nations on earth consider the United States the greatest threat to world peace. Source

 The cost of this madness is beyond astronomical; it's almost beyond calculation. We had a presentation in church this morning about the numbers of LGBT kids who are on the streets homeless because they have been thrown out of their homes by their parents. And how the Congress of the United States is cutting to the bone federal funds for providing housing and care for the homeless. We are now engaged in yet another war in the Middle East that's going to suck more of our fast-diminishing sustenance from us for who knows how many years? I cannot for the life of me understand what the American people are thinking about allowing their government to so misuse the citizenry of this country, who have desperate life-threatening needs being ignored so we can play emperor of the world. Take that back: I think if I try real hard, I can understand how the people have been duped into supporting our imperialism. What I cannot understand is how long it is taking the country to get wise to being consistently violated by the mad rapists in the Pentagon and their pimps in the Congress and the Executive department.  

Yes, They Are What You Don't Want to Think They Are

Yes, Indeed They Are

What you see above are "cookies." These are cookies that a kid brought to her second grade classroom as the weekly reward for her classmates' good work. Her mother made them for the class. Her feminist, insane mother. She told the teacher that she thought it would be a good teaching aid for the second graders to learn about vaginas. (No, I am not making this up. How could anybody make up such a thing?) You can read the whole story from the teacher's keyboard right here. Including and not to be missed, the email from the mom to the teacher after the nasty shouting incident in the classroom in front of all the second-graders in which the word "vagina" was used in a loud voice at least 987,000 times, according to the teacher. The email which ended "I hope you end up with an abusive husband that beats on you every night."

We are a doomed people.

Same Formula, Same Result

Sign is from six years ago; the sentiment is timeless

Our Nobel Peace Prize winning president has launched us into another war in the Middle East. I don't know how much more cockamamie the reasoning has to be before somebody with some sense in Congress or anywhere else stands up and hollers "This is bullshit!" All of it. Every last scrap. Haven't we learned anything from the past ten years of war? Here we are embarking on another crusade for truth, justice, and the American way against enemies we've characterized as more evil than Satan. Wasn't this what we said about the communists? Al Qaeda? Every enemy we've ever had?

Now here we are again: committing the country to a war to solve a problem that from the beginning the administration and the Pentagon both say there is no military solution for. In what universe does this make sense? We've been here, we've done this. We're not even fully extracted from the disaster that was the Afghanistan war. And of course you've noticed that the administration and the generals are all being very careful to tell us that this action will not be of short duration. It will take years.

My God. How many more billions are we going to sink into the business of killing? We are an insane people to put up with this while our own country is falling down around our ears.

Here are some links of people who are as distressed as I am: no military solution; apocalypse now; real reason we're bombing Syria.

Cowardly Dissimulating Midgets

The wonderful phrase is James Kuntsler's from his angry blog this week entitled "Barbarism vs Stupidism" which begins thus: "In my lifetime, the USA has not blundered into a more incoherent, feckless, and unfavorable foreign policy quandary than we see today." Notice, he tells us, how the crisis in Ukraine has disappeared from the news and front pages. Why? Because:

The US-led campaign to tilt Ukraine to Euroland and NATO — and away from the Russian-led Eurasian Customs Union — turned an “intelligence” fiasco into a strategic humiliation for the Obama White House. . . . So, the reason that all this has vanished from the news media is that it’s game-over in Ukraine. We busted it up, and can do more with it, and pretty soon the rump Ukraine region run out of Kiev will go crawling back to Russia begging for a little heating fuel.

And this before he sinks his teeth into the incredibly insane policy we've just initiated in Syria.

Does any tattoo-free American adult outside the Kardashian-NFL mass hypnosis matrix feel confident about the trajectory of US policy regarding the so-called Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL)? First, there is the astonishing humiliation that this ragtag band of psychopaths managed to undo ten years, 4,500 US battle deaths, and $1+ trillion worth of nation-building effort in Iraq in a matter of a few weeks this summer. The US public does not seem to have groked the damage to our honor, self-confidence, and international standing in this debacle. . . .

We’ll look back on these weirdly placid years after the 2008 train wreck with amazement. These are the rudderless years of no leadership, of cowardly dissimulating midgets. A people can only take so much of that.  

Although I agree almost totally with Kuntsler, particularly in his disgust for the imbecility that passes for leadership of this country, I'm not sure I agree that the NLF-saturated, smug, overfed gullible idiots who allow their government get away with so many monstrous lies and to perpetrate an unending stream of outrages on common sense without taking to the streets in dudgeon right now will one day be stirred enough to register some massive protest to these crimes. I agree with the general proposition that people can only take so much, but don't you see? We're past the point of doing anything about it. We've let things go too far to get anything changed without a blood bath ensuing. We'll be gunned down like dogs if the national security state decides that we finally get it. And half of us, at least, will be right there with the storm troopers applauding the final crushing of American constitutional democracy, not that we're not well on the road already.

Neighborly Spirit in HI

I cannot believe stuff like this happens. I guess I'm just too old and naive. And she's got her little kid in the car. What's he going to turn out like? I cannot imagine acting like this in front of one of my kids under any circumstances. Lord help us all.

Making the World Safe from Sanity

It turned out so great last time . . . LET'S DO IT AGAIN!

The president got on TV tonight to tell us we're going to war again. But, as if this were just the peachiest news possible, we're not going to employ any American ground forces. What we will do is aid the "moderate forces" in Syria and those Arab states who choose to participate in the ground proceedings with our bombs and our gee-gaa technology. I've made a one of my periodic dips onto Facebook and I'm astounded--no, not really--with the vehemence and certitude of all the good ole American people rattling their swords. Can their memories really be that short? Can they not remember how just two weeks ago they were firmly against any kind of long-term commitment to the madness in the Middle East? I read that 71 percent of Americans are behind the president in his call for action against this latest enemy to civilization whom it's our responsibility to confront and defeat. I note that this time too, the Washington establishment is careful to qualify its call to war with the warning that this will not be a short job. No, we're signing on to possible years of conflict yet. Can anything be more insane? Forgive me if wonder just what in hell people learned from our last Middle Eastern excursion into war . . . you know, the one in Libya, which has fallen apart as a country; the one in Iraq which has spawned IS and thousands of deaths and fragmentation of the "democracy" we helped set up there; and of course, the one in Afghanistan that's not even over yet.

I'm not being crass or unfeeling or in the least bit disrespectful of the pain inflicted on the families and friends of the two Americans who were brutally beheaded by the IS fanatics. But it's interesting how the entire country can fly into bellicose outrage at the execution of two innocent Americans, but doesn't bat an eyelash at the literally thousands of innocent civilian deaths we have caused all over the Middle East with our drones, bombs, and artillery.  

It bears repeating, often and loudly: we are a doomed people. We don't have the sense God gave a grasshopper.

8 Facts . . .

The name of the piece is "8 facts that explain what's wrong with American health care." Wanna know what they are? My guess is, you already do know some of them, if you're a reasonably well-informed American . . . and if you're a knee-jerk reactionary or Tea Partier, you're going to deny the facts anyway. But then again what are the odds, unless you're a government snoop (and I have no doubt you're out there and I'm on a hundred watch lists), that you would be reading this subversive's screed?

So back to the point: 8 Facts that explain what's wrong with American health care. You should certainly read the entire piece. I've just hit some of the highlight language for you here. But the whole read is certainly worth your time.

1. Americans pay way, way more for it than anyone else.

"We spend $2.8 trillion on healthcare annually. That works out to about one-sixth of the total economy and more than $8,500 per person — and way more than any other country."

2. We pay doctors when they provide lots of health care, not when they provide good health care.

The best way for a doctor to make money in the United States right now is simple: prescribe treatments.The American health-care system by and large runs on what experts describe as a "fee-for-service" system. For every service a doctor provides — whether that's a primary care physician conducting an annual physical or an orthopedic surgeon replacing a knee — they typically get a lump sum of money. That's how most businesses work. Apple gets more money when it sells more iPads and the Ford gets more money when it sells more cars. But health care isn't like iPads or cars. Or, at least, it's not supposed to be.

 3. Half of the health care spending goes for five percent of the population.

 4. Our health insurance system is the product of random WWII-era tax provisions.

The health insurance tax break is the biggest in the federal budget; the government loses out on $260 billion annually by not taxing health benefits. The majority of non-elderly Americans get their health insurance at work, and with good reason: the tax-free dollar can buy a lot more medical care.

5. Insurance companies have small profit margins.

As to who makes the most money, it's mostly drug companies and device manufacturers — the people who make the things that insurance companies buy. They typically run profit margins around 20 percent. One reason the cost of American health care is so high is that insurers are so weak. Having hundreds of different carriers, for example, means no one insurer has lots of negotiating power — hence those high prices drug and device makers can charge.

6. Getting health care in the United States is dangerous.

We don't know exactly how many Americans are killed in hospitals each year, but we do know that it is a lot. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine published a seminal report titled To Err is Human, which estimated that at least 44,000 patients — and as many as 98,000 — die in hospitals each year as results of medical errors. Even using the lower-bound figure, that would mean medical errors in hospitals kill more people annually than "such feared threats as motor-vehicle wrecks, breast cancer, and AIDS." A follow-up study published in 2013 argued that the IOM numbers were a vast underestimate, and that medical errors contribute to the deaths of between 210,000 and 440,000 patients.

 7. One-third of health care spending isn't helping.

The United States spends $765 billion annually (about one third of our overall health care dollars) on things that do not make Americans any healthier. "I'm always amazed at these conversations I have with physicians," says Amitabh Chandra, a health economist at Harvard. "They'll openly say that about 50 percent of what happens in medicine is waste, but it's hard to always know which care was waste." Much of the waste in our system has to do with the fact that we run an inefficient health-care system, in which hundreds of health insurance plans all charge different prices for the same surgeries and scans. That requires lots of billing staff: for every three doctors in the United States, there are two administrative staff to handle all the paperwork. That's unique to the US system.

 

8.  Obamacare is not universal health care.

Obamacare doesn't eliminate [people without health insurance] in America; instead, it cuts the number of people lacking coverage about in half. Even after Obamacare is fully implemented, budget forecasters still expect that 31 million Americans will lack insurance coverage — a bigger group than the people buying coverage on the exchanges. Our uninsured rate will still be in the double digits, hovering around 11 percent.

Some Perspective

From Kuntsler this morning:

The US claims to have interests in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya. These nations are respectively 11,925, 11,129, 10,745, and 10,072, miles away from America — not exactly neighbors of ours. All of them, one way or another, and partly due to our exertions, are checking into the homeless shelter of failed statedom. Afghanistan was, shall we say, a special case, since it was being used thirteen years ago explicitly as a “base” (al Qaeda) for launching attacks on US soil. But that was then. No other war or “war” in US history has lasted as long. And it remains unclear whether our presence there yet today is a “nation-building” project or a mere occupation, in the absence of some better idea of what to do.

Got that? Ponder the "national interest" for the United States in all of the named countries. Remember Libya? Quick now . . . why did we overthrow Qaddafi again? Oh yeah, it was so we could turn that country into a seething caldron of Islamic militias with no government at all in the nation. James Kuntsler again:

How many educated, media-marinated professors in their Ivy League turrets can explain in one paragraph what the necessity of overthrowing Muammar Gaddafi was, exactly? Anyone remember? I suppose, like many actions in history, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. If the idea was to keep the oil and gas flowing to western nations — i.e. the “Carter Doctrine” —well, excuse me while I cough into my sleeve. Production is about one-eighth what it was before Mr. Gaddafi exited the scene. That really worked.

Bombs Away!

The Favorite US Solution

The "humanitarian" bombing in Iraq that our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president has declared is an obscenity. Of course, the US is not going to bomb anybody for any other reason but a noble one. Right? In this case it's to save a hapless group of people who practice an ancient religion that predates both Christianity and Islam from the murderous Islamic State militants who are overrunning parts of Syria and Iraq. They are bad people. They do terrible things, hateful things. And in this case they've run these people out of their town and up onto a nearby mountain. They are threatening to wipe them out, every last one. And the people are helpless without weapons or even the necessities of life.

The question confronting the Christian, the follower of Jesus, is what do you do? Well, you offer the suffering all the aid you can. But you do not wield the sword against their enemies. If you are going to be faithful to the gospel, you cannot do violence against another child of God. The command is love your enemies, not kill your enemies. If there's one truth that's been established by the history of our species on Earth, it's that violence begets violence. Always. It never solves a problem. It always spawns new problems, usually worse problems. Killing spawns more killing. War and its hellish fruits must be opposed. All war. Always. There's no other way I can think of that we will ever have peace. Violence must cease.

This is hard stuff. Real hard. It's impossibly idealistic, isn't it? And given our species's love of blood and war, seemingly insane. You would not have trouble finding a lot of people to agree. Pacifists and conscientious objectors are almost universally despised people. They are so far off the reservation, so at odds with the huge majority of humanity, that for that reason alone--they are that different--they must be spurned. But it seems to me there's no other way if you're going to try and model your life of the way Jesus lived his. I'm sorry. There is injustice and suffering the globe over. People are being killed everywhere because they are the wrong color, the wrong religion, the wrong nationality, have the wrong political beliefs, follow the wrong ideology, leader, or movement. Is more killing going to put an end to killing and injustice? Humans have been killing people who are different for centuries on end . . . and has it made us happier, more prosperous, more secure? If you can answer yes to these questions, then stand up a salute our reentry into war in Iraq. 

The Irrepressible JHK

That would be James Howard Kuntsler, author of the brash blog "Clusterfuck Nation," one of my regular reads. Kuntsler is nothing if not opinionated. I like him because you always know where he stands, he writes in a style reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson, and he is right, for the most part. But he does have some curious opinions. He's pro-Israel about almost everything and that goes for the latest abomination in Gaza. And he appears to favor restrictive immigration laws as well. But for the most part, he's got his head screwed on right.

I take my text from his entry of yesterday "All Hell":

Demonic forces are on the loose again now one hundred years after Europe blew itself apart for no good reason. (Why? Because some young Serbian nobody killed the heir to the Austrian throne on a back street in Sarajevo?) Maybe we are making a mistake to think that any sort of rationality applies now. Here in the depraved and disintegrating USA, we pretend that Afghanistan threatens our national interest from 7,000 miles away while denying that Russia has any business with its crumbling next-door neighbor (and former province), Ukraine — the crumbling of which was bought and paid for by the US Department of State and CIA.

Pretty basic understanding of the origins of WWI, which a century later, historians are still arguing about. Of course he's correct about everything else in the paragraph. It's for certain that we've seen the last of rationality in this country. (Did you catch the president the other day and his unforgettable phrase: "We tortured some folks"? I'm speechless that Obama could be so graceless. It's high time we stepped up and called it for what it is, but "some folks"??? Makes it sound like a backyard barbeque. And how many is "some" anyway? Doesn't sound like it could be too many, does it? When we know that number was one hell of a lot.) Rationality has long since deserted us. We've got the KKK now down on the border saying we ought to just be shooting these kids trying to get into the country. And is anybody going to argue that we're not basically depraved and that we're disintegrating before our eyes?

All the media in this country will soon be controlled by five gigantic corporations. NSA knows everything about you and the horse you rode in on. Crazies are out in the woods preparing for guerilla war. We live in a police state.

But don't worry: the NFL season is just around the corner.

Stupid America, Episode 6,451

Why is this man smiling? At the absurdity of it all?

Are you ready for this? Some guy in Utah--the lucky state this time because I can think of about 40 more states at least where this could have happened, Oklahoma not the least of them. Why? Because our stupidity or ignorance, if I wanted to be kinder, is nationwide. It knows no boundaries. (I suspect my friend Bob, who lives in Utah would disagree. When I told him about this, he already knew and informed me that the story had gone viral.) Anyway some guy in Utah who teaches at an English as second language school lost his job because he blogged about homophones. (Check this story out.) Yes, you read that right. And moreover, the reason you think this cost him his job is also correct.

Tim Torkildson told the Salt Lake Tribune that shortly after his lesson went up, Nomen Global Language Center owner Clarke Woodger fired him, complaining "now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality."

"I had to look up the word" Woodger said, according to the account Torkildson published on his personal blog, "because I didn't know what the hell you were talking about. We don't teach this kind of advanced stuff to our students, and it's extremely inappropriate. Can you have your desk cleaned out by eleven this morning? I'll have your check ready."

It seems too ridiculous to believe, but Torkildson's former employer confirmed the incident of homophonia actually happened.

"People at this level of English," Woodger told the Tribune, "may see the 'homo' side and think it has something to do with gay sex."

What more is there to say? This guy still got fired. Even a dictionary couldn't save him.

 

Fourth of July Worship Service

Fenway patriots holding up the monstrous flag over the Green Monster in left

This is what Chris Hedges called his visit to Fenway Park in his latest piece in Truthdig. Subtitled "Kneeling in Fenway Park to the Gods of War," Hedges states plainly what any thinking person has noticed about big-time sports in America. All of them, without exception worship at the shrine of Mars. They never miss an opportunity to trumpet their love for the country and especially the "heroes" in uniform who fight the nation's wars. Here's part of what he wrote:

The religious reverie—repeated in sports arenas throughout the United States—is used to justify our bloated war budget and endless wars. Schools and libraries are closing. Unemployment and underemployment are chronic. Our infrastructure is broken and decrepit. And we will have paid a crippling $4 trillion for the useless and futile wars we waged over the last 13 years in the Middle East. But the military remains as unassailable as Jesus, or, among those who have season tickets at Fenway Park, the Red Sox. The military is the repository of our honor and patriotism. No public official dares criticize the armed forces or challenge their divine right to more than half of all the nation’s discretionary spending. And although we may be distrustful of government, the military—in the twisted logic of the American mind—is somehow separate.

 Precisely. I was talking not long ago to a woman who is progressive in every other aspect of things that I've had occasion to discuss with her, except for the military. She could advance no good reason for not wanting to halve the defense budget. Indeed, she was just vague. There are a lot of bad people in the world, she says. As if that's a reason for bleeding our very sustenance into the military machine that is as rapcious as it is monstrous.

It's an unholy marriage, this coupling of American sports with the manic embrace of all things military. I've thought for a long time that bodes badly for our future. A people mindlessly embracing everything "patriotic" are ripe for exploitation by the most reactionary forces in our society.

If You Need Any Reminder

Here's a snippet today from one of my never-miss blogs, "Some Assembly Required." This guy is a cynic after my own heart, and he's perfected the pithy entry as I only wish I could.

Anyway this is just in case you needed any reminder that we live in a country that is absolutely insane. And what's more, I firmly believe that most of the populace is proud of it.

Math Class: This fall, Missouri schools will be staffed with teachers who, at $17,500 a pop, have received firearms training at a gun range that promises that in an emergency the teachers will only gun down students 10% of the time. Or maybe they meant that the teachers would only gun down 10% of the students.

The story mentioned that the insurance companies in the state refuse to sell insurance to the schools where teachers are armed. Gee, I wonder why?

What Else is New?

. . . in the land of the free and the home of the brave? Nothing really. Another report of a shooting on a college campus. One dead, two seriously hurt. The news doesn't even shock us anymore. What was it they said after the recent killings--was it 7 or 8 dead?--near the campus of UC Santa Barbara--not one more! Well, here is one more and you can be certain this one will be joined by a whole bunch more before the year is over.

I'm typing this on Friday (full disclosure: I sometimes backdate the blog entries), and the big news is that the shooter in Seattle had a history of mental illness. I am really beginning to catch the drift of the coverage of these events now. The NRA line: the problem is not guns, it's all the mentally deranged in society who are not getting treatment. As if the NRA cares! If crazy people didn't have painless access to guns, which is just what the NRA wants and fights to preserve, we wouldn't have so many crazy people shooting others dead everywhere just because they feel like it. Not one more indeed. This is just one more story in the never-ending story of this insane culture.