IF YOU LOBBY FOR “SMOKERS’ RIGHTS” AND GET CANCER, ARE YOU A HERO?

Slickety came across this You Tube video, which seems to be a one-off kind of thing.  Judging by the comments, it is also pissing some people off.

We gather that — in its sandpaper across the eyeballs kind of way — this video is attempting to raise a question that just about everyone who is anyone in the world of journalism and politics has scrupulously avoided since Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (a Democrat from Arizona) was tragically shot in the head and miraculously appears to be recovering.

Here’s the gist of its apparent question:  Like many Democrats, Rep. Giffords promoted “gun rights,” apparently sincerely.  She was photographed at some kind of event aiming down the barrel of an AK-47 and said she owned a Glock handgun and was really good at shooting it.

Now at least some people argue that it is precisely the current fascination with “gun rights,” and the widespread political pandering to the NRA and its claque among politicians who once clamored for “gun control,” that has made America the swamp of easily obtained guns that it is today.

Lots of people get shot in the head every day in the United States.

Gun violence is simply rampant in America.

Don’t believe Slickety, see for yourself: just Google the single word “shooting” every day for a week.  Prepare to be shocked at the day in, day out ho-hum gun killing that goes on…everywhere, all across the country, day and night.

Rep. Giffords became a national “hero” for surviving a gunshot wound.  The so-called “gun control” movement has conveniently ignored her previous gun rights advocacy and seized upon her and those around her as a kind of bloody shirt.

Gun rights people dismiss her injury — and the carnage around her — as the product solely of a demented mind, having nothing to do with the gun that made so much bloody work easy.

Tens of thousands of other Americans who survive shootings every year aren’t hailed as heroes.  They aren’t even much noticed.  Nobody writes about them.  They just fade into the fetid anonymity of rehabilitation wards and the antiseptically grim twilight of long-term care facilities.

Is there at least irony in that?

Why has no one in the national news media, especially the progressive darlings, even wondered about this issue?

Because lots of question are hanging in the air.

What, if anything, will Rep. Giffords have to say about all this business of guns, gun rights, and tens of thousands of similar victims, if and when she finally recovers enough to speak publicly?

Will she boost the NRA?

Or will she regret her former fondness for gun rights?

Will she become an advocate for the hundreds of thousands of other gun shot wound survivors in America?

Or will everyone just continue to ignore the gory object floating in the national punch bowl?

Good journalistic taste apparently demands that we pretend these questions do not exist.

THE SS WIKINGS’ GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG: POSTSCRIPT ON JOHN BOEHNER, RICH IOTT, AND NAZI SS “RE-ENACTORS”

John Boehner Walked Into The Line of Fire for SS "Re-enactor" and Failed Republican Candidate Rich Iott

Faithful readers of Slickety will recall the story of Republican candidate Rich Iott, reported in our very first post as an example of the decline of Western culture.

Well, now there is more to contemplate as the mud continues to slide down hill at an accelerating pace — including a sweet postscript on the ignominious end of some of Iott’s Hitlerian icons.

Iott and Friends "Re-enact" the Good Old Days of SS Commie Fighting

Iott was the candidate around whose neck were draped a variety of inconvenient photographs showing him decked out in the uniform of an SS storm trooper.

It would be difficult to invent a more ignorant — not to mention disingenuous — excuse than that floated by Iott and his play-acting yet jackbooted friends pretending to be benign Nazis.

See, you don’t understand:  “re-enacting” the actions of a bunch of Nazi SS storm troopers is a lot different than imitating, or heavens forfend, approving their well-documented history of brutality, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

The particular Nazi SS division Iott and pals “re-enacted” was the so-called Wiking Division.  Here is a “recruitment” video for the “re-enactors” that — to at least some observers — has a troubling and dark subtext.

Iott’s defenders also argued — in addition to the “innocent re-enactment” plea — that the Wiking Division was really all about fighting Godless Bolshevik Commies on the Eastern Front, so whatever they did was basically okay.

Given that fig leaf — the horror of guilt by association and insinuation, as if any more or less normal Republican could break out his SS uniform at any moment just to glorify fighting Commies — now-Speaker of the House of the United States Congress, the honorable John Boehner had no problems campaigning for Iott, even giving him campaign funds.

As Politico reported during the heat of the election battle:

House Minority Leader John Boehner is still soliciting funds for a longshot Ohio House candidate who has dressed up as Nazi officer in historical re-enactment events. And, according to a spokesman, Boehner doesn’t fear any backlash.

Raw Onions Can Do That to a Man

Well, why would Boehner fear retaliation, anyway.  This is a man who walked around on the House floor and handed out cash from corporate interests.

Once he was outed, Boehner professed repentance and — as Homer Simpson might say — found Jeebus:

In June 1995, Boehner distributed campaign contributions from tobacco industry lobbyists on the House floor as House members were weighing how to vote on tobacco subsidies. In a 1996 documentary by PBS called “The People and the Power Game,” Boehner said “They asked me to give out a half dozen checks quickly before we got to the end of the month and I complied. And I did it on the house floor, which I regret. I should not have done. It’s not a violation of the House rules, but it’s a practice that‘s gone on here for a long time that we’re trying to stop and I know I’ll never do it again.” Boehner eventually led the effort to change House rules and prohibit campaign contributions from being distributed on the House floor.

Iott was defeated and the story passed down the rabbit pellet assembly line we call the “news cycle.”  Boehner hasn’t apologized to anybody.

A few points are worth following up in this  postscript.

SS Storm Troopers at Work

One is that it turns out that the Wiking Division was not — as Iott and his storm trooper-aping buddies claimed — just about fighting the Godless Bolshevik.  The division was up to its SS runes in the blood of Jews and other innocent noncombatants as well.

Just for the record — lest we forget — here is documentation about Wiking Division atrocities ( a tip of the hat to the American neo-Nazi hate website “Stormfront” for its link to this story):

The Times

Ex-SS trooper Adolf Storms charged over mass shooting of Jews

The man, named in the German press as Adolf Storms, becomes the latest pensioner to be prosecuted for alleged Nazi war crimes as courts rush to secure convictions before the defendants become too infirm and the witness testimony too unreliable.
…
Mr Storms was a member of the 5th Panzer Wiking Division which fought on the Eastern Front, moving through Ukraine into the Caucasus, taking part in a bloody fight for Grozny and the tank battles of Kharkov and Kursk before wheeling back through Eastern Europe. By most accounts it left a trail of bodies behind.

By the spring of 1945 the unit was heading to Austria with the intention of surrendering to the Americans rather than to the Red Army.

But first the Wiking Division, led in the early days by General Felix Steiner, who is still revered among neo-Nazis, decided to clean up the evidence against it and eliminate the slave labourers who had dug its fortifications and defensive lines.

According to a statement issued by the regional court in Duisburg, where Mr Storms has spent most of his retirement, 57 of the 58 victims were killed near the Austrian village of Deutsch Schuetzen. The mass grave there was excavated in 1995 by the Austrian Jewish association and the bodies given proper funerals.

“On March 29,1945, the accused and his accomplices brought at least 57 Jewish forced labourers in several groups to a nearby forest area, where they had to surrender their valuables and kneel by a grave,” the court said.

“The accused and other SS members then cruelly shot the Jewish forced labourers from behind.”

Then there is this possible corroboration from a web site entitled “axis history.” The post about the Wiking Division follows up on the above story and contains documentation in the form of end notes in the original:

Known war crimes

This division was for a long time regarded as one of the few larger Waffen-SS units not involved in war-crimes however research made public in recent years have shown this to be incorrect.

Soldiers from the division took part in the murder of hundreds of Jews in the castle at Zloczow (Zolochiv) during the first days of July 1941 together with Ukrainian militia. The massacre was put to an end by soldiers from 295. Infanterie-Division at the order of Oberstleutnant Helmuth Groscurth.

On 9 July 1941 soldiers from the division took part in the massacre of Jews in Lviv in revenge of the death of Hilmar Wäckerle, commander of SS-Infanterie-Regiment Westland.

In Zhitomir soldiers from the division took part in the rounding up and killing of commissars and officials July 1941.

Einsatzkommando 11 of Einsatzgruppe D and a mobile gassing van was travelling together with the division in 1942 murdering people seen as undesirable.

Sonderkommando Jankuhn led by Dr Herbert Jankuhn of the SS-Ahnenerbe was attached to Wiking and the division supported them in their plunder of artifacts from the Black Sea area in 1942.

General der Gebirgstruppen Karl Eglseer, commander of 4. Gebirgs-Division, complained about indiscipline and widespread looting by soldiers from Wiking in April 1942 when the divisions served near each other in the River Mius area. The Slovakian Generals Gustav Malár and Jozef Turanec, commanders of Slovak Fast Division that served next to Wiking during this period, also raised the same criticism.

The Finnish volunteers distributed among the units of the Wiking divisions instead of serving in the Finnisches Freiwilligen-Bataillon der Waffen-SS wrote in letters home and in their diaries about how the Soviet POWs and civilians were treated badly or even killed by soldiers from the division during the early phase of the war on the Eastern Front.

Soldiers from the Wiking division were involved in the killing of Hungarian Jews in March/Aril 1945.  On 17 November 2009 Adolf Storms was charged with the murder of 58 Hungarian Jewish forced labourers near Deutsch Schuetzen in Austria on 29 March 1945 but he died before he could be brought to trial.

Divisional commander SS-Brigadeführer Felix Steiner stated about the infamous Commissar Order (that Soviet political commissars captured should be shot immediately) that “No rational unit commander could comply with such an Order” in a discussion with his superior General der Infanterie Gustav von Wietersheim on 4 July 1941 who shared his dislike of the order.

Finally, here is another post that discusses the real-life actions of the division that Iott and friends chose (out of thousands upon thousands of military units in history) to emulate):

War crimes

Members of the division’s bakery column, led by Obersturmführer Braunnagel and Untersturmführer Kochalty, assisted Einsatzgruppe A in rounding up Ukrainian Jews. Witnesses report that the Jewish victims were forced to run a gauntlet formed by soldiers who would beat them as they passed, and when they reached the end of the gauntlet, Einsatzgruppen officers murdered them and their bodies were pushed into a bomb crater. The German 1st Mountain Division is also suspected of being implicated. Between 50 and 60 Jews were killed in this manner, as a part of the larger Einsatzgruppe operation which resulted in over 700 murders

In addition historian Eleonore Lappin from the Institute for the History of Jews in Austria has documented several cases of war crimes committed by members of the 5 SS Division Wiking in her work The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945.

On March 28, 1945, eighty Jews from evacuation column, though fit for the journey, were shot by three members of the Waffen SS division Wiking and five military policemen. On April 4, twenty members of another column that left Graz tried to escape near Eggenfeld, not far from Gratkorn. Soldiers from the 5 SS Division Wiking that were temporarily stationed there apprehended them in the forest near Mt. Eggenfeld and then herded them in a gully, where they were shot. On April 7 and 11, 1945 members of the division executed another eighteen escaped prisoners.

Josef Mengele

The notorious Dr. Josef Mengele, served with the SS Division Wiking during its early campaigns. According to all accounts, he performed the normal duties of a combat medic, even being awarded the Iron Cross for saving two wounded men from a tank. After being wounded, Mengele was deemed unfit for combat and was absorbed into the SS Nazi concentration camp system, where he gained his infamy. Mengele was very proud of his Waffen SS service and his front-line decorations. As the true horrors of the concentration camp system came to light, his former comrades attempted to have his name removed from the division’s roll of veterans.

How can anyone believe that the SS enthusiasts who put together the “recruitment” video above and research the uniforms and combat record of the Wiking Division … could NOT know about its atrocities?

Here’s a final point these fun-filled “re-enactors” might want to add to their “re-enactments:”  The ignominious behavior of SS Wiking storm troopers in the final days of Berlin, when the handwriting was on the wall.

This is from Roger Moorhouse’s excellent book, Berlin at War (p. 363):

Jacob Kronika recorded how a number of his fellow Danes, members of the SS Wiking Divison, pleaded for access to the Danish Embassy’s bunker in the capital, so that they could sit out the remainder of the battle.  As one of them explained ‘The Battle for Berlin will be over in a few hours.  Like many others, I have allowed myself to be exploited by a regime, which is corrupt from top to bottom.  I volunteered in good faith many years ago, but I do not wish to throw away my life for this.’  Such deserters were generally turned away by embassy staff.

Like many bullies, the SS Wiking Division’s members found it easier to murder unarmed Jews than face the consequences in the form of the Godless Bolshevik, personified in the form of armed  Russian soldiers.

WIKILEAKS AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY HOWLER MONKEYS

National Security Howler Monkey in Full Cry

It’s official.

Body bags will be filled.

Allies will abandon us.

Our best friends will be embarrassed.

Our national security has been compromised.

Holy shee-yit, man!

Execrable Leaking Bastards

According to the howler monkeys of the “national security” industrial complex, their various mini-monkeys, and any dozing journaliste who failed to get a piece of the story and/or doesn’t understand a damned thing about the real world, those execrable bastards Julian Assange — WikiLeaks founder — and his pathetic accomplice, American soldier Bradley Manning, have brought The Republic to its knees.

Please, take a deep breath.  This, too, shall pass — probably about as quickly as the latest real threat to civil liberty and all that we hold sacred and dear, i.e., the jack-booted, ham-handed tactics of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).  [Remember that little flurry?  Ah, yes, I remember it well.  But the media’s fruit flies have moved on, and the lowing cattle are happily chewing their Dancing With the Stars cuds.    That’s sooooo yesterday’s story.]

Richard Armitage -- Notorious Leaker of Real Secrets and Accomplice of Dick Cheney, Bird Hunting Chicken Hawk

Nevertheless, one (or two) doubts things are as dark as the National Security Howlers make it out to be.

The howlers range from President Barack H. Obama — who ought to be embarrassed by revelations of precisely how feckless and fantasy driven his Middle Eastern policy has been — to every second lieutenant and Department of Homeland Security sub-contractor who managed to stay awake through the mandatory briefing on Keeping the Nation’s Secrets Warm and Safe before getting their very own Top Secret and Beyond security clearance.

In short, for the higher levels, it’s Cover One’s Ass Time.

For lower levels it’s the same well-drilled instinctual reflex that sends 18-year olds over the top — think Verdun, the Somme, and Iwo Jima.

The difference is getting one’s panties in a knot about the hypothetical and entirely theoretical consequences of these leaks is not the same as actually getting shot at.  The naked truth is that leaks don’t put young men and women near as much in harm’s way as do actual decisions of Presidents, generals, admirals, and field marshals.  And leaks of catty assessments of foreign leaders by pin-striped diplomats are not like leaks of actual operational plans.

Please, the next time you hear or read a rant from some GS-9 or junior grade officer buried in the bowels of the Pentagon, DHS, DOJ, FBI, ABC, or XYZ:  Think about it.  For one minute, please, I beseech you in the bowels of Elvis.  What do these subalterns of the security industry really know about the stuff of world diplomacy?

Holding their precious security clearance allows these bureaucrats — in and out of uniform — to sagely imply that they know stuff that, if only they could tell you, would curl your most intimate hairs.  All of this national security theater  puts one in mind of the statement of French Marshal Pierre Bosquet upon witnessing the charge of the light brigade: “C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre.” (“It is magnificent, but it is not war.”)

One who does know about this secret world diplomacy national security future of the world stuff  is Dr. Bruce Bechtol, a professor at a Marine Corps institution of higher learning.  (Please, no jokes about that being an oxymoron.  I’ve known some very intelligent Marines.  Capable of killing you in a second, but intelligent, nonetheless].  Here is a report from ABC News:

WikiLeaks cables not so damaging: expert

By Mark Colvin and staff

… Dr Bruce Bechtol, a Professor of International Relations at the Marine Corps Command and Staff College, says that information is widely available.

“The only thing in there that is new … is the fact there were cables going back and forth between Washington and Beijing, with Washington seeking Beijing’s help in stopping North Korean proliferation,” he said.

“Everything else that’s been reported on in these articles is nothing new.”

Chicken Hawk, Shotgun Expert, and Accomplished Leaker of National Security Stuff, Dick Cheney

Huh?

Say what?

You mean this is not the absolute end of Life as We Know It in America, Much Less the World?

That can’t be true.  Surely, every country in the world is really, really pissed at us.

Hmmm.

Not so, according to journalists actually covering every country in the world.

For one example, check out the bit from the staid old, America-hating BBC, titled Wikileaks: US allies unruffled by embassy cable leaks.

For another, read this from the Daily Telegraph’s Praveen Swami:

Wikileaks ‘secrets’ reveal the paranoid mindset of internet activists obsessed with conspiracies

Praveen Swami is the Daily Telegraph’s Diplomatic Editor.

For all the column inches of space that are being lavished on the Wikileaks cables, the secrets they contain are spectacularly underwhelming. There’s a lot more to be learned about the world around us from nothing more secret than old newspapers than from the treasures Julian Assange has brought up from the beast’s lair.
…
Its hard not to suspect that headline writers have attempted to sex-up the so-called Wikileaks secrets to justify the hype. The New York Times, for example, claims to have discovered that “the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device”.

It couldn’t have been that much of a secret, because the Washington Post knew about it four years ago. In fact, newspaper readers would have known about US concerns over the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal back in 2003 – and, if they follow The Telegraph, would also know it’s still worried now.

“Underwhelming?”

Then, why are the howler monkeys so exercised?

Could it be … that, like far too many “national security secrets,” this stuff is just plain embarrassing?

Could be.

Consider Barack Obama’s fantasy plan for peace in the Middle East.

Plan Obama has been cooked up by the crew of rank amateurs and One World Dreamers that History’s Most Charismatic Yet Unprepared President brought into the venerable White House to play Stratego.

Plan Obama’s major premise was, is, and ever shall be that if only those damned Israelis would give up Jerusalem and stop acting like a Western democracy and more like an Arab potentate, give in to terrorists, and fade away — why, the Millennium would come and Peace Would Be Upon Us.

The minor premise is that if we only bow and scrape enough to the Saudis, who after all have only financed radical Islam for a few decades while addicting us to cheap and plentiful oil and lining the pockets of many erstwhile and yet-to-be American politicians, why the Saudis will make it all go away.

Hmmm.  Again.  Let us go, gentle reader, to the tapes.

Their Excellencies

In this instance, to a wonderfully insightful weblog called “Mere Rhetoric“:

Wikileaks – Anti-Israel Foreign Policy Experts Got Saudi Arabia, Other Arab Countries 100% Backward On Iran Attack

It didn’t get nearly as much play as it should have, but Obama’s June 2009 meeting with Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah ended with the monarch flying into a tirade and more or less telling the President to get a grip.
…

the King kind of thought he was dealing with a serious person who could separate spectacle from policy. Instead he got the equivalent of an International Relations graduate student enamored with pseudo-sophisticated “insights” he’d gleaned from Arab media outlets. Ergo, meltdown.

…

And of course, all of that was flat…

10. (S) The King, Foreign Minister, Prince Muqrin, and Prince Nayif all agreed that the Kingdom needs to cooperate with the US on resisting and rolling back Iranian influence and subversion in Iraq. The King was particularly adamant on this point, and it was echoed by the senior princes as well. Al-Jubeir recalled the King’s frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. “He told you to cut off the head of the snake,” he recalled to the Charge’, adding that working with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq is a strategic priority for the King and his government.

… wrong:

4.(C) IRAN: King Hamad pointed to Iran as the source of much of the trouble in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He argued forcefully for taking action to terminate their nuclear program, by whatever means necessary. “That program must be stopped,” he said. “The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.” King Hamad added that in light of these regional developments, Bahrain was working to strengthen GCC coordination and its relations with allies and international organizations.

Either Walt, Mearsheimer, Lynch, Chas Freeman, and their ilk don’t know much about the Middle East, or they’re ignoring what they do know in order to push their own foreign policy wishful thinking as objective analysis. Which is fine – everyone gets to have an agenda – but now can we at least dispense with the aggravating hagiographies to their vaunted neutrality and expertise? Because apparently their wrongheaded assumptions are influencing policymakers, and – predictably – that’s not going well.

Wow.  You mean bowing, scraping, and wishing does not work?  Better not let the great lowing mass of cud-chewers learn about this.

Axelrod, activate the Howlers!

The net result of this flap (after it fades within a few days of fruit fly frenzy) is that the National Security Industry Establishment will have learned its lesson, as foretold in this piece in The Washington Post.

Unfortunately, it will be the wrong lesson.

Instead of winnowing down the universe of “national security secrets” to real secrets, the bureaucrats , the Princes, and the Dauphins will try to plug up “leaks.”

With better sharing of data comes danger

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer

… senior administration officials have warned that the WikiLeaks disclosures could affect the balance of weighing the “need to know” versus the need to protect sensitive material, sources and methods.
…

…the Pentagon announced Sunday it had ordered the disabling of a feature on its classified computer systems that allows material to be copied onto thumb drives or other removable devices.

Here is the private intelligence service Stratfor’s take on the matter:

… perhaps the single most important and unambiguous lesson of the WikiLeaks releases of Iraq and Afghan war documents has not so much been a security problem (though obviously there was a very important one) but of how overloaded the classification system has become with information of marginal and short-term sensitivity. So many were accessing so much mundane, day-to-day information that no one noticed when something important (in this case enormous quantities of low-level sensitivity) was being accessed and moved inappropriately: the WikiLeaks releases are a symptom of a classification system that is broken — and not just because someone managed to leak so much.

Meanwhile, the great mass of cow people passively seek the shade, regurgitate what they are told to think, and let the greatest currency of real democracy — information about what our “leaders” are up to — slip away.

Hey, did you watch that new reality show last night?  Uh-huh.  Pass the pabulum.

Some Are More Equally Entitled to the Truth Than Others

CANINE REGURGITATION — HOWIE KURTZ, TOM COSTELLO, AND TSA PASSENGER GROPING

 

Potential Terrorist Gets The Once -- or Twice -- Over

America, take a deep breath.

Get some perspective.

Relatively speaking, your liberties are comparatively safe.  Only a tiny percentage of you and/or your children are getting felt up, bombarded with radiation, or having your colostomy bags exploded.

This we have in a stunningly brilliant column from Howard (“Howie Kneepads”) Kurtz — resident  critique de journalisme at The Daily Beast, an online menage of important stuff.   Howie, who earned his moniker sucking up to the plutocracy whilst simultaneously “critiquing” from The Washington Post and electronically bloviating from CNN, apparently stumped his way over to The Department of Homeland Security and could not wait to get back and reassure America that all is well.

In a scintillating explication titled, “The Media’s Pat-Down Frenzy,” Kneepads fairly crows that … he got to talk to The Man Himself!

“Very few people actually get the pat-down at all,” John Pistole, who runs the Transportation Security Administration, told me. “I don’t know what the impression is” from all the media scrutiny, he says, “but it’s a very, very small number.”

When a journaliste writes that so-and-so “told me,” that’s a subtle hint — well, actually a sledgehammer — for the benefit of the lowing, mewling, puking, dull-witted mass of groundlings  that the author has “access” to power, the people who really run things.

So, listen up!

Unfortunately, access is a two-way street.  And Pistole — about as clueless and tone deaf a bureaucrat as one can get even in Washington under the Obama Administration — appears to have gotten a good, manly grip on Kurtz’s junk and set him, and America, “straight”!  (So to speak.)

In a hissy fit strongly reminiscent of something Andrew Sullivan would throw, Kneepads lets it blow all over his fellow ink-stained wise ones:

No self-respecting man wants a hyperactive security guard touching his junk. But I’ve about had it with media types who insist on turning this into a junk story.

Wow.  That is about as clever a play on words as the world has seen.  Get it?  A junk story about junk?

So, snap out of it, America!  I’ve about had it with your bawling!

All this whining about getting pawed by some potential pervert or dosed up with cancer-causing death rays is  just some … junk … hyped up by “media types.”

God!  I needed that… I feel a lot better now.  Thank you, Howie.

Don’t just take Kneepad’s word for it.

Tom Costello (no, not Bud Abbot’s sidekick…that was Lou) of NBC, MSNBC, and FUBAR, has also had access to “senior government officials.”

To put matters in perspective, Costello tells us in this sock-rocking report, that less than 3 percent of air travelers get pat-downs and less than one percent “opt out” of the death ray machines!

It’s a big relief to know how few Americans are being felt up, bullied, and radiated by TSA.  I get Costello’s point loud and clear.

And, hey, here’s a suggestion:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,  only about 69,800 people were working as “news analysts, reporters, and correspondents”  in 2008.   It would seem a small price — comparatively speaking, affecting only a tiny sliver of our society — to make them all register with the Department of Homeland Security,  get fingerprinted,  have background checks, and turn over all their phone records every week.   Look, just let’s be damned sure that none of them are leaking sensitive secrets about our national security policy.

Will somebody shoot that brainstorm over to John and his boss of bosses, Janet Napolitano?  (Okay, maybe one could find a more clueless and tone deaf bureaucrat than Pistole — Janet N.)

Some might say that Kurtz and Costello are simply engaging in canine regurgation here:

Regurgitation is different from vomiting, and refers to the effortless expulsion of food or fluid from the esophagus. When a dog vomits, it requires effort and heaving; when a dog regurgitates, he may lower his head and the swallowed food will just fall out.

En garde!

The theory of such small-minded and mean-spirited journalistic criticism would be that this pair of chihuahuas are just carrying TSA’s obvious water, the agency’s talking points that have shown up everywhere in recent days:  i.e., shut up, you whining cowards, because only a few of you are being molested.

The minimization argument does have a certain appeal when you think about it, which hardly anyone ever does about anything these days.

I mean, can we all get along?

TSA: Rackin' em Up for The Greater Good

Even if you have to give up some of your rights, or your kid has to be molested by some closet pervert who could only get a job at TSA to begin with, doesn’t the greater good demand you bear the inconvenience so that all of the rest of us who are crammed into these aluminum cylinders can get on with things?

Only a churlish fanatic would point out that virtually all other countries use a more obvious and effective technique — profiling –– to protect their citizens and preserve dignity.  The aforesaid MSNBC reported thusly:

Elsewhere, profiling is preferred method of airport security
In many countries, singling out certain fliers is a matter of course

While U.S. air travelers struggle with strict new security checks, screening is generally less up close and personal at airports in other parts of the world, where preflight intelligence is emphasized. That puts the priority on identifying sophisticated threats in advance so that procedures many people consider personally invasive aren’t the crucial last line of defense.

Security is almost universally considered most effective at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. No plane operating from there has been successfully attacked since 1972, when 24 people were killed in a hijacking by a terrorist group calling itself the Japanese Red Army.

The state airline, El Al, which coordinates security at Israel’s airports, is unapologetic about its use of passenger profiling — making judgments about a passenger’s likelihood of posing a threat based on his or her background, behavior and associations.

Many pilots apparently agree that (1) TSA is run by and staffed with nitwits, and (2) profiling is needed.  Here’s what former The Wall Street Journal editor and The Daily Beast contibutor Thomas E. Weber wrote in a piece titled “Pilots’ Secret Security Doubts”:

One frequent complaint in online discussions is that applying security measures indiscriminately means resources are being wasted. In other words, while TSA workers are patting down the crying child in the YouTube video, the real bad guy might be cruising through. In this view, political correctness and a reluctance to single out subsets of travelers are weakening the system. Profiling need not be racial, some pilots point out, but could instead be behavioral—singling out passengers for extra screening based on suspicious answers to interview questions.

Politico‘s Josh Gerstein talked to actual experts for his piece, “Alternative to TSA pat-downs: More background checks:”

“We’re going to gather information about people we’re going to encounter hours before they arrive. We’ll compare names and travel partners to lists of people, not just no-fly lists, but anyone who’s suspect one way or another,” [Stewart Baker, a top Department of Homeland Security official during the Bush administration] said. “One hundred and ninety-nine people spend 30 seconds in primary [screening] getting an ID check and moved on, but one person in 200 gets an hour of screening, reviewing their personal effects, and an interrogation that’s very free ranging.”

This kind of system might do away with some of the more jarring images at airport security checkpoints – uniformed Transportation Security Administration officers thoroughly frisking nuns and young children. “Grandma from Dubuque is probably not going to get identified as a risk,” Baker said. “She spends 30 seconds and gets waved through.”

“With a little more information on all passengers, and more careful screening of those who raise red flags, the TSA shakedown of pregnant women, small children and nuns in habit could be made less necessary, or at least less intrusive,” Shannen Coffin, a former legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, wrote at National Review Online.

Bring it on!

I hate to throw this bit of factual matter into the punch bowl, but on the question of perspective on groping, it just might be worth recalling these facts — remember them? — about some other “inconveniences” in history that affected only a few and were promoted for the greater good of the many:

• In 1942, the United States interned “only” about 110,000 Japanese and Japanese-American citizens.  The U.S. population was about 133 million, so a relatively small number of us were inconvenienced.
• In 1941, “only” four African Americans were lynched in the United States.  Out of said 133 million, that’s tiny.
• Nazi Germany murdered about 200,000 of its own citizens in the name of “Euthanasia.”  (A “national hygiene” program that preceded the murders of Jews and others on racial and ethnic grounds.)   Germany’s population in 1941 was about 90 million, so the percentage of people inconvenienced was tiny.

So, suck it up, America.  The chattering class and the bureaucrats are only doing this for your own good.

Children to the left, adults to the right. 

Schnell!

Oh, Say Can You See?

BILL MAHER, MOHAMED, AND KNOTTED PANTIES

The infuriating Bill Maher — acerbic, independent, caustic, politically incorrect — has done it again.

Well, that certainly tied the panties of our Glorious Nation’s Most Predictable “Thinkers” into Gordian Knots.

One could hardly find a better case to illustrate Maher’s point about the differences between Western Culture and Islamic Culture than … the reaction to his own point.

Take,  for example, the perfervid scribbling of one Frank Fredericks — said to be the “Founder of World Faith and Conar Records” — at the eminently predictable Huffington Post:

“Bill Maher implicitly proposes that religious observance of Islam is a threat to Western Civilization.”

No, Bill Maher doesn’t propose that.  Nor, as Fredericks of Hollywood’s eminent cluster of blogistas suggests, say or intimate that the name “Mohamed,” or “Muhamad,” or “Mahmoud,” or however one chooses to transliterate it, is in itself bad.

Did you even watch the clip, Frank?  Are you capable of understanding Maher’s point?  Are you disingenuous or just plain stupid?

The equally predictable Andrew Sullivan breaks the crockery of his pathetic little dish, accusing Maher of maliciously singling out one name from a list of many.  But Maher’s point was precisely that the name was the number one name. Not that it was one popular name among many, fool!

Salon’s Justin Elliott resorts to the scurrilous tactic of putting words into Maher’s mouth:

HBO’s Bill Maher had a message for Muslims on his show Friday night: Get out of “the Western world.”

If you think that’s even remotely close to what Maher said, implied, intimated, or suggested … watch the clips again and try to calm down enough to listen to what Maher actually said!

AND RAND PAUL SHRUGGED…

Rand Paul Fan at Kentucky Rally for "Open Carry" of Guns

The Candidate Himself At the Open Carry Rally With Costumed Fan

“I’m not armed today.  But I feel pretty safe.  I feel like I’ve got a private security detail out there…”

Rand Paul, Candidate for U.S. Senate, at Kentucky “Open Carry” Rally

 

A woman who was not a fan of Rand Paul paid the price for not taking a gun to the show last night.

Some of Paul’s typical knuckle-dragging, Tea-bagger supporters — big fans of the Second Amendment, which they claim protects us all from … (wait for it) … violence — objected to the woman’s exercise of her First Amendment rights.  They threw her to the ground, and stomped on her head.

The incident illustrates that the Tea-Bagger right doesn’t want political discourse.  It wants nothing less than a violent, reactionary  revolution from the right.  As Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association has put it:  “The people with the guns make the rules.”

You can see the whole nasty scene here:

 

 

Predictably enough, one of the blond, lip-glossed nitwits at Fox News — I don’t know and hope I never have to learn her name — described this beating as a “tussle” while she was publicly servicing Paul this morning.

Both Blondie and the so-called “libertarian” blamed the event on everything but Paul’s own thug-like followers and his radical incitement.

[See related feature at Le Pissoir Journalistique.]

The truth is that political violence has become a disturbing hallmark of the Republican right wing.  And right-wing sock puppets like Fox’s Blondies have always been around to rationalize, homogenize, and dismiss the violence.  Most recently, of course, there was the shocking spectacle of Tea-Bagger candidate Joe Miller’s thugs in Alaska “arresting” a journalist trying to exercise his First Amendment rights.

Casting -- Get Me a Hicky Sleazeball! Someone Sarah Palin Would Like. And, Step On It!

Miller — who could not look more like a sleazy thug if he tried — took down the mainstream Lisa Murkowski, largely by being the lucky recipient of one of the endorsements that Sarah Palin has been spewing around the darker corners of our society like a feral cat in heat marking its territory.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Palin’s Pretty Boy has been covering up the fact that, in addition to consorting with thugs, Miller is also a liar:

Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, while previously working as a local-government attorney, admitted to improperly using his co-workers’ computers to participate in political activity and admitted to initially lying when he was asked about it, according to documents released Tuesday by his former employer.

But way before Palin crawled out of her den to sprinkle cat wee on the chosen, there was the execrable Richard M. Nixon.  (“Dick Nixon before he dicks you.”)

Quintessential Political Thug Richard Nixon's Assault on America Is Chronicled Here

The whole — well, at least a manageable portion — disgusting history of Nixon and his crew of cretinous thugs has been wonderfully laid out in Mark Feldstein’s new book, Poisoning the Press.

Here’s an excerpt posted on the Daily Beast some months ago.  It pretty well sums up the “character” of the Trickster and his gang, as they plotted not to “arrest,” not to “stomp,” but to assassinate columnist Jack Anderson, who had exposed much of Nixon’s corruption:

In the middle of March, Charles Colson summoned his top clandestine operative to the Old Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House. According to E. Howard Hunt, Colson had apparently “just come from a meeting with President Nixon,” whose hideaway office was next door, and seemed uncharacteristically “nervous” and “agitated” about the message he had to deliver. Colson told Hunt that Nixon “was incensed over Jack Anderson’s frequent publication of leaks,” that the “son of a bitch” columnist “had become a great thorn in the side of the president,” and that it was imperative to “stop Anderson at all costs.” Hunt stated that Colson proposed assassinating Anderson in a manner that would appear accidental, perhaps by using a special poison that could not be detected during an autopsy. Colson suggested various specific ways to get rid of Anderson, Hunt said, and “asked me if I could explore the matter with the CIA,” where Hunt had previously worked as a spy. According to Hunt, Colson explained that neutralizing Anderson was “very important” to the White House and Hunt was “authorized to do whatever was necessary” to eliminate the investigative reporter.

Conservatives — including the amiable but feckless Dubya — have brazenly pooh-poohed the un-American excesses of Nixon’s political gangsters.   They have all been rehabilitated — with the help of the likes of Rupert Murdoch [Fox] and Sun Yung Moon [The Washington Times] and their crowd of faux journalists.

Here’s a great example, also from a column in the Daily Beast:

For Nixon, Colson operated a black-ops program, willing to resort to any means—even planning a bombing and a riot—to destroy perceived White House enemies. But after a seven-month stint in prison for obstruction of justice in the federal investigation of the break-in of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, Colson found a new identity through the wonder-working power of Jesus. To many on the right, his sins were forgiven. He is now, in the words of columnist Peggy Noonan, “one of the heroes of Watergate…He paid the price, told the truth, blamed no one but himself, and turned his shame into something helpful.”

George W. Bush (the aforesaid “Dubya”) himself benefited — hell, got hisself elected Pres-ee-dent — with the help of right wing violence in the form of the infamous “Brooks Brothers Riot” in Florida in 2000.

Here is how Paul Gigot — journaliste  manqué and earnest mouthpiece — jocularly described the event of intimidation in his platform at The Wall Street Journal :

Miami Heat
A burgher rebellion in Dade County.

BY PAUL A. GIGOT
Friday, November 24, 2000

Then the Three Counting Sages repaired to semi-isolation, forcing TV cameras to watch through a window and keeping reporters 25 feet away. That did it. Street-smart New York Rep. John Sweeney, a visiting GOP monitor, told an aide to “Shut it down,” and semi-spontaneous combustion took over.

The Republicans marched on the counting room en masse, chanting “Three Blind Mice” and “Fraud, Fraud, Fraud.” True, it wasn’t exactly Chicago 1968, but these are Republicans. Their normal idea of political protest is filling out the complaint card at a Marriott.

They also let it be known that 1,000 local Cuban-American Republicans were on the way–not a happy prospect for Anglo judges who must run for re-election. Inside the room, GOP lawyers also pointed out that the law–recall that quaint concept–required that any recount include all ballots.

The canvassers then stunned everybody and caved in. They cancelled any recount and certified the original Nov. 7 election vote, claiming that the Sunday deadline didn’t allow enough time to recount everywhere. Republicans rejoiced and hugged like they’d just won the lottery.

Sock puppet Gigot — a living example of the low currency of the Pulitzer Prize, known as the “Wurlitzer” among many real journalists who understand the politics behind it — either did not know or deliberately concealed the fact that his precious “burghers” (an interesting choice of words from the get-go) were in fact Republican staff operatives sent to Miami to disrupt and intimidate.

Paul Gigot's "Burghers" Were Actually Republican Staffers Sent to Violate Democratic Process

Like Nixon’s criminals, this crowd of “burghers” have for the most part gone on to greatness in the party that has spawned the likes of Joe Miller, Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, and their numerous cretinous followers.

How do you like your tea now, people?

They Like Guns and Rand Paul

SHUT UP, I’M BUSY NOT THINKING!

Holy Shit, Can It Really Be This Bad?

Unfortunately, yes.

Here is the reality that the spectacular Juan Williams flapadillo [yes, that’s not a real word…yet…it’s my very own neologism] reveals.

The American “progressive” (nee, liberal)  elite is incapable of thinking about reality.  Especially unpleasant realities.  Give me my chullo hat and a glove that doesn’t fit.  I’d rather think about Lindsay Lohan.

It’s all so … Victorian.

Here is how one of the smartest men American has ever produced described the phenomenon of refusing to think.  Not think clearly.  Just not think.

The Real Herman Kahn

I refer, of course, to Herman Kahn, who was either lavishly flattered or horrendously vilified in the

The Brilliant Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove, For Which Character Kahn May Have Been in Part a Model

1964 Stanley Kubrick movie, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. [Click on the title’s link below to go to the complete excerpt on the website of the Hudson Institute, which Kahn co-founded along with Max Singer.]

 

 

 

 

 

In Defense of Thinking

(From Thinking about the Unthinkable, Horizon Press, 1962; pp. 1- 38; © Hudson Institute)
January 1, 1962 
by Herman Kahn

“Seventy-five years ago [note: this was published in 1962] white slavery was rampant in England. Each year thousands of young girls were forced into brothels and kept there against their will. While some of the victims had been sold by their families, a large proportion were seized and held by force or fraud. The victims were not from the lower classes only; no level of English society was immune to having its daughters seized. Because this practice continued in England for years after it had been largely wiped out on the Continent, thousands of English girls were shipped across the Channel to supply the brothels of Europe. One reason why this lasted as long as it did was that it could not be talked about openly in Victorian England; moral standards as to subjects of discussion made it difficult to arouse the community to necessary action. Moreover, the extreme innocence considered appropriate for English girls made them easy victims, helpless to cope with the situations in which they were trapped. Victorian standards, besides perpetuating the white slave trade, intensified the damage to those involved. Social inhibitions which reinforce natural tendencies to avoid thinking about unpleasant subjects are hardly uncommon.”

Her Majesty The Queen of England, Etc.

Andrew Sullivan, Grim Critic of Virtually Everything in the Empyrean

Kahn then related this phenomenon to the refusal of many “intellectuals” to permit discussion about nuclear war.  [A fluttering critic — sort of an Andrew Sullivan of the day — accused Kahn of “thinking about the unthinkable” in a review of his earlier book, On Thermonuclear War.  So, Kahn impishly titled his next book, Thinking About the Unthinkable.  There were intellectual giants once who walked upon on the earth.]

“By and large this criticism was not personal; it simply reflected the fact that we Americans and many people throughout the world are not prepared to face reality, that we transfer our horror of thermonuclear war to reports about the realities of thermonuclear war. In a sense we are acting like those ancient kings who punished messengers who brought them bad news. This did not change the news; it simply slowed up its delivery. On occasion it meant that the kings were ill informed and, lacking truth, made serious errors in judgment and strategy. In our times, thermonuclear war may seem unthinkable, immoral, insane, hideous, or highly unlikely, but it is not impossible. To act intelligently we must learn as much as we can about the risks. We may thereby be able better to avoid nuclear war. We may even be able to avoid the crises that bring us to the brink of war. But despite our efforts we may some day come face to face with a blunt choice between surrender or war. We may even have war thrust upon us without being given any kind of a choice. We must appreciate these possibilities. We cannot wish them away. Nor should we overestimate and assume the worst is inevitable. This leads only to defeatism, inadequate preparations (because they seem useless), and pressures toward either preventive war or undue accommodation.”

And just so, none dare speak the words “Muslim,” “Islam,” et cetera, et cetera, in any but laudatory terms, lest one be labeled a bigot, racist, et cetera, et cetera.  History, however, teaches quite a different lesson.    Fools who ignore it in the name of “correctness” will come to to rue the day. http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Religion.swf

Progressives Do Not Have A Lock on Queens

JUAN WILLIAMS AND OTHER NEWS FROM THE EMPYREAN

 

Slickety is pleased to announce that a new feature is up:  Yes, We Cant: The Chronicles of Oatmeal.

Yes, We Cant is a continuing review of the hominy grits of current American cultural and political discourse — cant.  Cant’s first posting: the horror of chain stores, big-box stores, and … gag … Amazon.com.  All in the context of the passing of a great Washington institution:  Politics & Prose.

Find out at Yes, We Cant what Peter C. Applebome, chullo hats, Hillel Italie, Slate, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Matt Drudge, Timothy Noah, and Chappaqua all have in common.

And, if you’re really bored and desperate for jejune amusement, click on Le Pissoir Journalistique for our wholly derivative snarking on NPR’s Juan Williams debacle, the similarity between Howard Kurtz’s blathering and mule projectile diarrhea, Jon Stewart’s dip into the tank, and other artifacts of modern journalism.

The Empyrean

USA! USA! Or, Going to Hell in a Band Box

Jesus, could it get any worse?

Yes.

But how would anyone know?

The sentinels of Western Culture — that puffed up congregation of vapid, self-congratulatory, abysmally ignorant lemmings who call themselves “journalists” or whatever (including the so-called “mainstream” and the “blogosphere” alike,  please see Le Pissoir Journalistique for a current specimen) — share in our culture’s core fault:

Ignorance.

Ignoramus

Most particularly, ignorance of history, of context, of remembrance of things and events past. They flit like fruit flies from rot to rot, lacking the ability in their gnat-like cerebrum to ponder, much less explain, the significance of events.

Care for an example?

Take the odious Rich Iott, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress (please also see  our The Honorable Brothel page) in Ohio’s 9th District.

Intriguing Person Rich Iott in Mufti

Here’s a typical effluvium about Iott from something called “Tuesday’s Intriguing People,” brought to the Universe by the World Headquarters of Vapid Verborrhea — CNN:

Rich Iott told The Atlantic this weekend that it’s been three years since he was a member of a re-enactment group called The Wikings.  His involvement dates back to 2003, the magazine reported.

The Wikings re-enact the battles of Germany’s 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking. That division fought along Europe’s Eastern Front, chiefly against the Russians, during the war. The Wikings is a part of the WWII Historical Re-Enactment Society.

Oh, really?  Well, if it’s just about some re-enactment.  OFK!

Rich Iott in Uniform

It never occurred to any of this pack of mile-wide, inch deep sentries of history to explore the loathsome predicates of Iott’s choice — indeed anyone’s choice — to “re-enact” history as a frikking SS OFFICER!

Subject of Iott's Emulation at Work in Lodz Ghetto

Nor have any of this pack of poseurs even scratched the earth around the grave of the Wiemar Republic to suggest what happens to a society driven mad by demagogic exploitation of “national” character and fear of “the other.” (And, yes, we’re talking about Glenn Beck, the NRA, John Boehner, and the whole pack of ignorant, misinformed, cynical right-wingnuts.)

More SS Work in Lodz

Oh, please, no… this screed is neither partisan nor ideological.

Don’t worry, we’ll be back to talk about some of the idiocies of the left wingnuts on another fine Fall day in the collapsing center.