Afghanistan and the eye of the Tiger, oh my

December 2, 2009

 Today I have a few words — fig­u­ra­tively speak­ing — on sub­jects of which I could dis­cuss with thou­sands of words. How­ever, I don’t want that and if you read this blog, you surely don’t want that.

 First off, Afghanistan and the upshot of Pres­i­dent Obama order­ing 30,000 addi­tional troops into what­ever it is we are fight­ing over there.

 Flip a coin. Heads, you approve of the addi­tional troops. Tails, you dis­ap­prove. That is how I look at the announce­ment of addi­tional forces. I ini­tially thought we should have gone into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. Today, I’m not so sure. The only thing I am sure of is that we shouldn’t have invaded Iraq. That war is what one might call unjust, not to men­tion ille­gal. I haven’t heard it called “Bush’s Folly” or “Shrub’s Folly,” but it should go down in his­tory that way.

 If the search and destroy mis­sion for Osama bin Laden and gang should  not have been a fed­eral crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion — with help from the mil­i­tary and CIA — many of the troops and mate­r­ial poured into Iraq (not to men­tion the bil­lions of dol­lars) could have went to Afghanistan.

 I guess the Amer­i­can in me believes that we should find some kind of vic­tory both in Iraq and Afghanistan and leave. We need to fig­ure out what it is we are there to do because I am not sure what our goals are now in those countries.

 As for Obama send­ing more trooops to aug­ment the more than 70,000 already there — and the allies send­ing 5,000 more to help the almost 40,000 NATO and other for­eign forces in Afghanistan — I say: “Let’s see if it works out.” He has offered a timetable, albeit a seem­ingly short one.  So if the sit­u­a­tion doesn’t improve by when­ever it is Obama wants a with­drawal to begin, then we get mad and jump up and down and say: “Bad Obama. Bad, bad Obama.” This seems as good as any­thing else I can imagine.

********************************************************

 Next sub­ject. Le Tigre. El Tigre.  Ang Tigre. The Tiger.

 Tiger, Tiger, Tiger.

 Why is the main­stream media doing sto­ries on what was, initially, a rather odd car crash involv­ing Tiger Woods?  Do view­ers and read­ers of the media have such unin­ter­est­ing lives that they MUST know the details of all the indis­cre­tions of this sports (sports?) star? I have the most unin­ter­est­ing life  imag­in­able, at least at the moment, and I don’t care about Tiger Woods” inti­mate moments. Let me be a bit more spe­cific. I DON’T GIVE A RAT’S RECTUM ABOUT THE TIGER WOODS SCANDAL.

 Tiger Woods has not been elected to great­est golfer in the world or highest-paid sports star in the world. We do not own Tiger Woods. He has no oblig­a­tion to tell the pub­lic zip. Sure, every star of every kind blames the media when things start to go South. But if any­one has a case against the media, this time it is Tiger Woods.

 It makes me both angry and sad to see great news­pa­per and broad­cast­ing out­lets report the lat­est on this scan­dal. Why don’t they report some­thing really earth-shaking, like this?

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Happy Thanksgiving, World leaders!

November 25, 2009

pod_reggie-football_PS-0339

Even those at the high­est reaches of world power need time for a lit­tle relax­ation dur­ing the Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­days.  Here, White House aide Reg­gie Love tosses the Nuclear Foot­ball to Pres­i­dent Obama in the outer Oval Office.

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Don’t judge an unsolicited opinion by its deliverer

November 3, 2009

The idiom “Don’t judge a book by its cover” has been around in one form or another for prob­a­bly, well, let’s just say a very long time.

Nonethe­less, if the adage is cliche to one or the other then all I can do is pro­vide a response with an acronymn, delivered in the pho­netic alpha­bet, kind of like you hear fighter pilots do in movies. My pho­netic mes­sage is: “SIERRA, ALPHA, TANGO, SIERRA,” which is short for “sorry about that s**t. In other words, don’t judge a book by its cover suits my needs inso­far as this — hope­fully — short post exists.

I stopped to talk with a neigh­bor upon return­ing from the store. After a few words or so, he launched into a dis­course about how the elec­tions in Vir­ginia and New Jer­sey today should tell the tale of just how screwed up that blankety-blank Obama is doing.

Now I wrote a line or two about this yes­ter­day say­ing I don’t think these few scat­tered elec­tions are going to tell any­thing about how Obama is doing in office, the state of the Democ­rats or the future for the divi­sions within the Repub­li­can party. So, I told my neigh­bor I didn’t think the elec­tions will mat­ter one damn bit except in those states. He went just right along with his rant.

I have never dis­cussed pol­i­tics with my neigh­bor. He prob­a­bly doesn’t even know I blog or have what some refer to as a “lib­eral” blog. I don’t par­tic­u­larly see EFD that way, but what­ever works. I am a lib­eral in the good sense, but mostly a mod­er­ate and con­ser­v­a­tive on other mat­ters and even lib­er­tar­ian on still oth­ers. The neighbor’s take on mat­ters is rather obvi­ous, a “watch Fox News all-the-time ultra con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can.” This is obvi­ous because he spouts the party line every time I see him.

What puz­zles me is why he thinks I would like to hear his, mostly wrong, polit­i­cal opin­ion. Is it because I look like a red­neck? I get along with some of the red­necks who live around here. I don’t get along with some of the crack­heads. So is that why my neigh­bor tar­gets me as a Limbaugh-boostin’ Obama hater?

The same hap­pens when I am in the wait­ing room at the VA clinic. Some guy wear­ing a World War II GI-rene vet­eran ball cap — thank him for his ser­vice — comes in and starts blast­ing away at how Obama is ruin­ing this uni­verse, not to men­tion the Corps, Sem­per Fi! Of course, at the VA you’re liable to get some long-hair guy wear­ing a biker’s vest with Viet­nam vet­eran patches who either starts say­ing the same type of thing, or else he goes off on the Repub­li­cans, which he blames all the way back to Dick Nixon.

Surely it isn’t just me. My past men­tal health coun­selor labeled me as  hav­ing a nar­cis­sis­tic per­son­al­ity dis­or­der, so that state­ment should be a sign of progress, yes? Well, per­haps not. The point is, why do peo­ple who you really don’t know that well or at all approach you and unload upon you with their opin­ions — or the opin­ions of Glenn Beck, Sean Han­nity, Lim­baugh and Fox News?

The same goes for reli­gion. I don’t mind hav­ing a ratio­nal dis­cus­sion about reli­gion but I don’t like peo­ple who get in my face and tell me I’m going to Hell when in fact they don’t know me well enough to know where I might be going. Ned­er­land, Texas, for instance. I have had very civil dis­cus­sions about reli­gion with Mor­mon mis­sion­ar­ies who neatly parked their bikes out­side my place and were extremely polite. They even gave me a Book of Mor­mon, which I have somewhere.

But I am get­ting out of the octa­gon here. Peo­ple approach­ing me about reli­gion, I think, would be less likely based on how I look than pol­i­tics. The truth  is, though, I have to think that a good many peo­ple who give me their polit­i­cal out­look unso­licited do it because, well, I’m not sure why they do it. I guess the weather became to passé.

Some prob­a­bly do see in me the look of a Limbaugh-Palin con­ser­v­a­tive: Shaved head, over­weight, unhappy look­ing most of the time (although that is from chronic pain and not from fig­u­ra­tive pains in the ass), known to wear ball caps with the Hous­ton Astros logo. There you go.

If that be the case, then I wish peo­ple would cease and desist. Stop judg­ing this book by its cover, or what­ever the hell else it is that’s wrong with you!

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O bitch-slaps Beck and Fox once again

October 1, 2009

  For quite awhile now the loonies of right-wing pun­ditry land have had a pretty free hand in telling lies on their oppo­nents with lit­tle con­se­quence. But no less than the pres­i­dent of the United States is now chal­leng­ing the verac­ity of Glenn Beck and Fox News and friends.

 The White House responded Wednes­day on its blog to charges Beck and oth­ers have made regard­ing Obama’s attempts to gain an Olympic bid for Chicago. White House blog­ger Jessie Lee wrote on a post titled “Real­ity Check: Try­ing to Turn a Point of Pride Into a Moment of Shame” that the Olympics were once a point of pride and unity for the coun­try but …

 ” … once again Fox News’ Glenn Beck pro­gram has shown that noth­ing is wor­thy of respect if it can be used as part of a par­ti­san attack to boost ratings.”

 In the words of some long for­got­ten barfly who sat in the bar stool next to me in Jim’s Lounge back dur­ing my Navy days in Gulf­port, Miss.: “You got that right!”

 Obama’s folks are no longer play­ing nice and let­ting com­pletely absurd untruths to slide by. The White House Blog post noted:

  “RHETORIC:    BECK SAID VANCOUVER LOST $1 BILLION WHEN IT “HAD THE OLYMPICS.”   Glenn Beck said, “Van­cou­ver lost, how much was it? they lost a bil­lion dol­lars when they had the Olympics.”  [Tran­script, Glenn Beck Show, 9/29/09]

 “REALITY:   VANCOUVER’S OLYMPICS WILL NOT TAKE PLACE UNTIL 2010.   Van­cou­ver will host the 2010 Olympic and Par­a­lympic Games from Feb­ru­ary 12 – 28, 2010 and March 12–21, 2010, respec­tively. [Vancouver2010.com, accessed 9/29/09]”

 You can read the rest for your­self and see how the Obama admin­is­tra­tion has a whole new ball­game under way in deal­ing with even its most pow­er­ful critics.

 Obama has snubbed Fox more than once lately and his avoid­ance has been noth­ing if not matter-of-fact.

 More thought­ful pun­dits say Obama is mak­ing a mis­take not talk­ing to the large audi­ence watch­ing Fox News. But the fact is, his elec­toral base is not the typ­i­cal Glenn Beck watcher. Plus, Fox has become increas­ingly even in its over­all news cov­er­age — for­get talk shows like Beck, O’Reilly and Han­nity — more biased toward the right. The ads Fox took out falsely claim­ing other news out­lets avoided cov­er­ing the events of the recent Tea Partyista’s march on Wash­ing­ton are just some of the more bla­tant exam­ples of the cable chan­nel head­ing toward a dom­i­nant role as a right-wing pro­pa­ganda tool.

 I am happy for this bold­ness towards Fox and dem­a­gogues such as Beck. Their lies do noth­ing but obscure infor­ma­tion the peo­ple need about their gov­ern­ment. Likewise, it becomes more dif­fi­cult to gov­ern and to be governed.

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The short and short of it: Mrs. O’s legs.

August 21, 2009

What a week. We saw another round of shout­ing over health care reform. The Scots let the only Locker­bie bomb­ing pris­oner go home because of can­cer and the ter­ror­ist got a hero’s wel­come in Libya. Locally, we had a freak tor­nado that hit Kohl’s, Wal-Mart and the Park­dale Mall. And of course, we had the First Lady’s legs.

Yes. As a “Time” mag­a­zine arti­cle pro­claimed: “Michelle Obama and the Shorts Heard Round the World.” Yes. The golden rule of jour­nal­ism is “Let no news hole go unfilled.” And fill it they did when the First Lady deplaned Air Force One in Ari­zona sport­ing a pair of shorts. Would the world have been any­more shocked had she walked down the steps of the pres­i­den­tial jet wear­ing a wet T-shirt and hot pants? Okay. We will just let that image hang for a minute.

The con­tro­versy was one mostly invented a bored White House media who had noth­ing bet­ter to do while fol­low­ing the First Fam­ily. I mean, I didn’t hear many REAL peo­ple who were up in arms about Michelle Obama’s legs.

“While nobody would make Mrs. O wear cou­ture in Ari­zona in August, the truth is, she just didn’t look par­tic­u­larly good in shorts. Her arms are much admired. Her legs are just, you know, legs,” opined “Time’s” Belinda Lus­combe in her piece about the shorts flap.

The crit­i­cisms of Michelle Obama incensed edi­tors of the “Jamaica Observer” who saw racism as a pos­si­ble motive why the media and Obama crit­ics made her shorts such a big deal.

“That the US first lady cre­ated such a stir though is, in itself, quite remark­able and instructive.

For on read­ing through the streams of com­men­tary, we couldn’t help detect­ing a rather nasty streak of some­thing that bears a close resem­blance to racism.”

Wow. Crit­i­cism and crit­i­cism about the crit­i­cism. All over a pair of shorts.

Although I  sup­port the Oba­mas I must say that I rather admire the First Lady for being com­fort­able in her own skin. With that said, I am also a very big sup­porter of shorts, prob­a­bly more than the aver­age American.

I wear shorts — a lot. The mean annual tem­per­a­ture where I live is 72 degrees. Mean doesn’t mean it is 72 year-round. But it is com­fort­able enough down here on the upper Texas coast that I can and do wear shorts every month of the year. Shorts are my offi­cial pants even though blue jeans were once reserved for that title. If I am not work­ing or at least if I am not work­ing out­side my abode, and if the weather isn’t too cold, you will likely find me in a pair of shorts.

My legs aren’t as shap­ley as Mrs. Obama’s, I must admit, even though the “Time” cor­re­spon­dent doesn’t seem taken with the First Lady legs. But I don’t care. I wear shorts for com­fort not for style. And like Mrs. Obama — to para­phrase ZZ Top — I’ve … “got legs. I know how to use them.”

Quite sim­ply, I walk on them — mostly wear­ing shorts.

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Time to leave the right behind in hc reform?

August 19, 2009

It appears Team Obama is study­ing the aban­don­ment of a bipar­ti­san approach to health care reform. That is prob­a­bly the wise choice although one wishes such a deci­sion would have popped up before Con­gress recessed for the month which would have spared us all the right-wing histri­on­ics and flat-out lies.

What also seems a step behind by the Obama camp is a con­cen­trated effort to refute many of the more out­ra­geous lies which have been spread such as that of Sarah Palin’s “death pan­els.” One has to won­der, though, whether efforts to set the record straight are just preach­ing to the choir no mat­ter that the Oba­man­istas want their fol­low­ers to spread the word. The fact that the answers to the numer­ous lies are doc­u­mented on the pro-healthcare reform Web site and are pretty well spelled cor­rectly would make one won­der if the folks who believe these lies would find such expla­na­tions as suspicious.

Many who buy the lies about pro­posed health care reform also accept some of the most out­ra­geous and unfounded state­ments which the high-powered spe­cial inter­ests are try­ing to foist upon the pub­lic. Such state­ments are what bring peo­ple to shrilly exclaim at town­hall meet­ings before the TV cam­eras that: “I want my coun­try back the way it was before it changed!”

Before it changed? Per­haps you want it back the way it was before a black guy was elected pres­i­dent. Or what about the way it was before white women was allowed the vote?

And social­ism. Hell’s bells. Are those who are say­ing our nation is turn­ing social­ist the ones who sup­port Medicare for them­selves or their par­ents? Are they the ones who want jail sen­tences for those who are caught dri­ving with no lia­bil­ity insur­ance? That is the state mak­ing one buy insur­ance for cars. But the nation will turn social­ist if health care becomes uni­ver­sal. Go figure.

The Democ­rats of the House and Sen­ate should go it alone on insur­ance reform. They will never be sup­ported by their Repub­li­can oppo­nents and the more the right does their bid­ding for the pow­er­ful spe­cial inter­ests our civil dis­course will even more be endan­gered of becom­ing a relic of bygone days.

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