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Fall finally falls

Tomorrow is the first day of autumn. Have a happy fall. Be careful if you go deer hunting. Don’t shoot your friend or yourself. Enjoy football. Don’t get a concussion, especially if you are not playing football. And don’t accidentally shoot anyone in the football stands from your deer stand. Don’t get in a fight over football or deer hunting. Don’t get in a fight over the equinoxes. Don’t shoot the zebras, especially the referee or back judge!

Happy Birthday, once again, Sally. Hope you’ve had a wonderful day and though we are 1,438 miles apart, I’ll always love you, my friend.

Have a great weekend, all. Go Texans!

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Romney, cable media making hay while the sun shines

Enough already!

The killings of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three aides is tragic and now seems to compound what madness Sept. 11 evokes. That is why it is sickening that some of those in cable news and Mitt Romney were lightning fast in making political hay out of the senseless violence. It is not surprising that Romney and his lackeys at Fox would condemn the president before knowing all the facts. They would run over their own grandmothers for political advantage. Most irritating is that they did it so quickly and it got so old by the morning news on cable that I wanted to throw something at the TV. (It isn’t my TV so I restrained myself, fortunately.)

Since I don’t watch Fox News I cannot say who the blond-haired twit was on one of its morning broadcasts who asked conservative-leaning political talking head Larry Sabato of University of Virginia: (Paraphrasing) Do you think this will have an effect on the presidential election? I have called on Sabato in a pinch back in the day, apparently I was not by myself. He told the Foxette, without being condescending as I would have been, that it was too early to tell. Of course, that was an understatement since the details at the time were still very preliminary. I suppose that is just Fox being Fox.

Funny I can recognize Dr. Sabato but I can’t recognize the blonde. I think it might have been Megan Kelley but I’m not sure. All the CNN blondies look the same to me.

Romney clearly jumped the gun, putting his first comments out last night which lashed out at the administration for a statement released from the U.S. embassy in Egypt. The message condemned a film supposedly offensive to Muslims which allegedly sparked protests in Egypt and Libya. This is all very questionable right now. What is not questionable is that it also broke what was a gentleman’s agreement that the campaigns would back off politics on 9/11.

If Romney quit while he was ahead — forget saying he was wrong because he is never wrong — it would have been okay. But he keeps getting himself deeper and deeper by affirming his earlier stupidity.

Notably absent from the criticism of the president were the rest of the Republican politburo. At least those who made criticisms made them barely perceptible. Wonder why that is? If I were to guess, Mittens is freaking out.

The cable folks didn’t come off any better in my eyes. So many just wildly speculating, trying to create a controversy where there is none. That is why I say it is just too much. Watching the evening news now on CBS, the latest is that it seems the offensive film may be perhaps the most incidental. It might have been Al-Quida even behind the fatal attack.

And Mitt? To paraphrase news people talking about the spirited speech of former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm at the Democratic National Committee, perhaps this is Mitt Romney’s “Howard Dean moment.”

 

 

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WWTD? The Teddy Bear War heats up

Imagine what Teddy Roosevelt might say — were he alive today — about the heightening tensions between Sweden and Belarus. Between Sweden and what?

Teddy might say “Bully” or he might say “Bullshit!” He reportedly didn’t like the nickname “Teddy.” Of course, were he alive today Roosevelt would be 154 years old and who knows what a 154-year-old ex president or anyone 1.5 centuries old would say or how they would say it. And Belarus? The former president might have known the history of the area known as Belarus, which was under the control of Russia until ceded to Germany during “The Great War.”

Nonetheless, the fuzzy-wuzzy Teddy Bear, a cozy little bear-like companion was named after Roosevelt in the wake of a Mississippi bear hunt. A bear had been tied up and was brought to the president after a hunt in which he yielded no black bear, according to a Wikipedia account. Roosevelt reportedly refused to shoot the animal but asked that the bear be put out of its misery. A political cartoon of the incident in The Washington Post led to the creation of the Teddy Bear.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, almost 1,000 Teddy Bears bearing pro-democracy messages were dropped into Belarus by a couple of Swedish PR executives who flew in a small plane wearing bear masks. Okay, they could have been pig masks but I don’t think they were really pig because they were bombing Belarus with Teddy Bears. Some Synder’s of Hanover logic there, if you please.

Belarus has a man called Europe’s “Last Dictator” and a untold numbers of human rights groups have denounced the nation’s strongman, President Alexander Lukashenko. The country reportedly has a strong air defense system but, luckily, the Swedish (m)ad men from Studio Total flew under the radar. As a result, Lukashenko sacked his generals in charge of air defense and border security. Now, Belarus reportedly has expelled it Swedish ambassador.

What next a full-blown conflict? Meatballs versus dranki (potato pancakes)?

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Cuddly Swedish bear-troopers storm Minsk: Belarus generals s**t-canned

Perhaps the last sight any general heading a nation’s air defense command would want to see is a foreign aircraft entering its airspace without permission. Well … maybe a foreign airplane invading a nation’s airspace and dropping almost thousand Teddy bears might top that last sight come to think of it.

I wish I was, a Teddy bear … Swedish PR gurus strike a blow for freedom with a “beary” unique airdrop over Belarus.

Nonetheless, two generals — one heading air defense and the other border security — in the former Soviet republic of Belarus may not have actually seen the invasion but sure felt its aftermath. They were fired by the man called “Europe’s last dictator,” Alexander Lukashenko. These strange events happened in the wake of what was an acknowledged PR stunt for human rights by the very outrageous and inventive advertising firm Studio Total of Stockholm and Malmo in Sweden.

The nation of Belarus — the 86th largest country in area in the world, according to the CIA’s The World Factbook — gained independence from the USSR in 1991 after seven decades. It still has close ties with Russia, the countries signed a pact for forming a two-nation union in 1999 although nothing serious has taken place between the countries. Perhaps Russia looks upon Belarus as its crazy little brother. Who knows. Lukashenko has, says the CIA, ” … steadily consolidated his power through authoritarian means. Government restrictions on freedom of speech and the press, peaceful assembly, and religion remain in place.” That’s kind of like saying an NFL quarterback is “subject to possible stress and some injury during his career.”

Perhaps Lukashenko would be a nicer man if he had a more normally-shaped head on which to hang his gigantic hat!

Numerous human rights abuse cases have surfaced in Belarus. The abuse includes arrests for those attempting to have their voice heard in what is supposed to be an emerging “republic.” Nothing but a dictatorship exists though in the nation of Belarus with its requisite imprisonment for attempting to speak and assemble freely with some torture thrown in for your trouble.

Pictures of the invasion were taken and posted by Belarusian photojournalist Anton Suryapin on his site Belarusian News Photos. His trouble landed him in jail, facing seven years in prison.

The funny, irreverent, and, yes, cynical, writers of Studio Total found a small airplane and breached Belarus airspace, dumping the Teddy bears carrying human rights slogans over the two cities. All of this took place in an area that supposedly has very vigilant military airspace defense.The “Teddy Bear Airdrop, Minsk 2012” is chronicled on Studio Total’s site in a very funny, but also disturbing story of how the bad old days of the USSR aren’t gone. One also wonders if they are here to stay and even expand.