Everything You want To Know About Accommodation Within Kiev
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Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
PT and Supplements
This post will be more of a practical post than have been my recent attempts at sophistry and out-loud public thinking. I hope you find some value in this post.
A few years back, I started running. I ran and ran, mainly in the hills where I lived at the time. Running has always come naturally to me, in spite of the Army's best efforts to make it miserable. Running in cadence, in formation, and on concrete is rough on a natural cross country runner.
Things were going fine until I got hurt and had to quit running altogether for quite some time. Used to physical activity, I went outside and brushed the leaves off my old weight bench. I didn't have many weights, so I used a log and some surplus five gallon water cans for resistance. Eventually, I was able to scrounge around on Craigslist and at the transfer site (it's an Alaska thing) for more. Time went on and my injury healed, but by this time I was hooked on the rush that comes with lifting, addicted to the feeling of being utterly crushed after a session, completely sore the next day, and hooked on the feeling of accomplishment putting another plate on the bar gave me.
All I had to go on was a cheesy old book I had been given in the Army, with "before" and "after" photos that were obviously not the same guy. It was a start, though. It gave me a basic program to build on. Since then, my "program" has been largely a creation of my imagination. I prefer to lift alone, drowning in a tempestuous sea of loud music. I've had some help along the way (see my last post on benching, for example), but mostly my program is a unique oddity I've created. It works for me.
Any lifter will tell you that the body makes amazing gains in the first few months, seemingly in spite of beginner mistakes and inexperience. The body is desperate to be strong! It takes more than lifting day in and day out to continue to progress. The act of lifting is only planning to grow. Eating (the right food in the right amounts) is giving your body fuel to grow, and sleep is when the body actually does its growing.
Eventually, I started looking for ways to help my body get stronger. I began with eating a lot of natural fats, carbs, and protein, as well as drinking protein shakes immediately after working out (as soon as I can without throwing it up). That did well for me. Then a friend introduced me to supplements. I had stepped into a whole new world.
I think many supplements are meant to just take your money. To be completely honest, all of the "hardgainers" I have met can fix their problems through diet or intensity adjustment. To gain weight, strength, and/or size, you have to use low rep, high weight (to failure) sets, and eat. A LOT. Most folks are unwilling to put away the food in sufficient quantity. It's repetitive. It gets bland. Every three hours. Protein, carbs. Chicken, rice. Tuna, rice. Beef, potatoes. Veggies. Over and over, a lot. This is, however annoying and laborious, an absolute. Taking supplements without eating and sleeping right and busting your butt in the gym is a waste of time and money. When the basic are covered, however, supplements give a person a decided edge, in my opinion.
My first supplements were from USP Labs. I had very good results using the Asteroid Stack, consisting of Prime, Pump, and Powerfull. Added to this was their BCAA drink for recovery (Amino Acids), and, for a while, some "Jack3D". Jack3D is something you have to experience for yourself. It is a niacin rush like you've likely never felt, and puts you in the right state of mind to punish the body. Seriously. The stuff is like a legal Speed drink. Here is an "AP friendly" Amazon link for USP Labs
products.
USP Labs has outstanding customer service. I once bought a bottle with some fragile pills. A few were cracked. I called them, and they sent me a new, fresh bottle, a hat, and a t-shirt, as well as some samples, all free. They stand behind their products. I did notice gains while on their products, but my experience is subjective, hardly scientific. Their stuff works. Some people say there are other positive side effects for males their products can have. I cannot confirm or deny this.
Cons to USP labs products- The full Asteroid stack gave me headaches once in a while, as well as...gastrointestinal distress. The runs. Some people get hit with them, some don't. You take your chances, I guess. The company has outstanding customer service and an effective product, but the physical, uh, side effects...are what made me look elsewhere.
The other company I can recommend is AnimalPak, I believe a subsidiary of the long-lived Universal Nutrition, a pioneer in the lifting supplement field. Here is an "AP friendly" Amazon link for Animal Products.
Animal products I have tried include:
Animal Pak (Multivitamin, good all-around)
Animal Stak and M-Stak
Animal Test (A HEAVY DUTY testosterone booster)
Animal Pump
Animal Nitro
Animal Rage (an...energy drink...comparable to Jack3D, but better)
Universal Nutrition Sterol Tablets
The most effective mass/strength combination I have tried is Pak/Stak/M-Stak/Test/Sterol/Rage. This combination is a lot, both physically and financially. They come in horse-pill sized pills, and there are a lot of them to put down. I buy all of them at the same time once in a while from the least expensive option, Amazon (budget and wife dependent...), and combine it with a very high-intensity program. This combination will get you going, and it will motivate you, believe me. Buyer beware, this isn't a cheap combo, and it will increase your general aggression level. You will want to hit the gym on this combo. Hard. The good thing is, you will be able to. If you time the ingestion of the supplements as directed, you will hit the weights in a aggressive, focused, and ready-for-pain manner. Trust me on this. Or, if you can, try it for yourself.
My favorite Protein drink is the GNC Pro Performance® AMP 100% Whey Protein
line, but I can't always afford it. It's available at Amazon, at GNC stores and online. I usually get whatever is available and affordable these days. I look for the highest protein-per-serving, and go with it. A good weight gainer is either Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass
or Universal Nutrition Real Gains
. You will gain weight with these, and if you're not putting the work in during your PT, you will get fat on these. You'll gain some fat with these, anyway. That can be addressed with cardio, or a fat burning, light weight, high rep lifting cycle.
Supplements are not cheap. They are not even necessary, to be perfectly honest. Intensity, dedication, rest, and nutrition will carry the day. Supplements will, however, give you an extra edge and allow you to maximize the gains from your hard work and pain.
These are my subjective opinions and thoughts on optimizing a weightlifting regime with supplements. Take them or leave them. If you decide to try any that I've mentioned, consider using the Amazon links I provided. For that matter, if you need to buy knitting supplies or anything from Amazon, consider using them. I'll receive a small portion of the price in the form of an Amazon credit (at no cost to you) of any products you buy after clicking on them. (Disclosure: This Amazon store credit will immediately be put towards books or supplements to fuel my two primary addictions: lifting and reading.)
A few years back, I started running. I ran and ran, mainly in the hills where I lived at the time. Running has always come naturally to me, in spite of the Army's best efforts to make it miserable. Running in cadence, in formation, and on concrete is rough on a natural cross country runner.
Things were going fine until I got hurt and had to quit running altogether for quite some time. Used to physical activity, I went outside and brushed the leaves off my old weight bench. I didn't have many weights, so I used a log and some surplus five gallon water cans for resistance. Eventually, I was able to scrounge around on Craigslist and at the transfer site (it's an Alaska thing) for more. Time went on and my injury healed, but by this time I was hooked on the rush that comes with lifting, addicted to the feeling of being utterly crushed after a session, completely sore the next day, and hooked on the feeling of accomplishment putting another plate on the bar gave me.
All I had to go on was a cheesy old book I had been given in the Army, with "before" and "after" photos that were obviously not the same guy. It was a start, though. It gave me a basic program to build on. Since then, my "program" has been largely a creation of my imagination. I prefer to lift alone, drowning in a tempestuous sea of loud music. I've had some help along the way (see my last post on benching, for example), but mostly my program is a unique oddity I've created. It works for me.
Any lifter will tell you that the body makes amazing gains in the first few months, seemingly in spite of beginner mistakes and inexperience. The body is desperate to be strong! It takes more than lifting day in and day out to continue to progress. The act of lifting is only planning to grow. Eating (the right food in the right amounts) is giving your body fuel to grow, and sleep is when the body actually does its growing.
Eventually, I started looking for ways to help my body get stronger. I began with eating a lot of natural fats, carbs, and protein, as well as drinking protein shakes immediately after working out (as soon as I can without throwing it up). That did well for me. Then a friend introduced me to supplements. I had stepped into a whole new world.
I think many supplements are meant to just take your money. To be completely honest, all of the "hardgainers" I have met can fix their problems through diet or intensity adjustment. To gain weight, strength, and/or size, you have to use low rep, high weight (to failure) sets, and eat. A LOT. Most folks are unwilling to put away the food in sufficient quantity. It's repetitive. It gets bland. Every three hours. Protein, carbs. Chicken, rice. Tuna, rice. Beef, potatoes. Veggies. Over and over, a lot. This is, however annoying and laborious, an absolute. Taking supplements without eating and sleeping right and busting your butt in the gym is a waste of time and money. When the basic are covered, however, supplements give a person a decided edge, in my opinion.
My first supplements were from USP Labs. I had very good results using the Asteroid Stack, consisting of Prime, Pump, and Powerfull. Added to this was their BCAA drink for recovery (Amino Acids), and, for a while, some "Jack3D". Jack3D is something you have to experience for yourself. It is a niacin rush like you've likely never felt, and puts you in the right state of mind to punish the body. Seriously. The stuff is like a legal Speed drink. Here is an "AP friendly" Amazon link for USP Labs
products.USP Labs has outstanding customer service. I once bought a bottle with some fragile pills. A few were cracked. I called them, and they sent me a new, fresh bottle, a hat, and a t-shirt, as well as some samples, all free. They stand behind their products. I did notice gains while on their products, but my experience is subjective, hardly scientific. Their stuff works. Some people say there are other positive side effects for males their products can have. I cannot confirm or deny this.
Cons to USP labs products- The full Asteroid stack gave me headaches once in a while, as well as...gastrointestinal distress. The runs. Some people get hit with them, some don't. You take your chances, I guess. The company has outstanding customer service and an effective product, but the physical, uh, side effects...are what made me look elsewhere.
The other company I can recommend is AnimalPak, I believe a subsidiary of the long-lived Universal Nutrition, a pioneer in the lifting supplement field. Here is an "AP friendly" Amazon link for Animal Products.
Animal products I have tried include:
Animal Pak (Multivitamin, good all-around)
Animal Stak and M-Stak
Animal Test (A HEAVY DUTY testosterone booster)
Animal Pump
Animal Nitro
Animal Rage (an...energy drink...comparable to Jack3D, but better)
Universal Nutrition Sterol Tablets
The most effective mass/strength combination I have tried is Pak/Stak/M-Stak/Test/Sterol/Rage. This combination is a lot, both physically and financially. They come in horse-pill sized pills, and there are a lot of them to put down. I buy all of them at the same time once in a while from the least expensive option, Amazon (budget and wife dependent...), and combine it with a very high-intensity program. This combination will get you going, and it will motivate you, believe me. Buyer beware, this isn't a cheap combo, and it will increase your general aggression level. You will want to hit the gym on this combo. Hard. The good thing is, you will be able to. If you time the ingestion of the supplements as directed, you will hit the weights in a aggressive, focused, and ready-for-pain manner. Trust me on this. Or, if you can, try it for yourself.
My favorite Protein drink is the GNC Pro Performance® AMP 100% Whey Protein
line, but I can't always afford it. It's available at Amazon, at GNC stores and online. I usually get whatever is available and affordable these days. I look for the highest protein-per-serving, and go with it. A good weight gainer is either Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass or Universal Nutrition Real Gains. You will gain weight with these, and if you're not putting the work in during your PT, you will get fat on these. You'll gain some fat with these, anyway. That can be addressed with cardio, or a fat burning, light weight, high rep lifting cycle.Supplements are not cheap. They are not even necessary, to be perfectly honest. Intensity, dedication, rest, and nutrition will carry the day. Supplements will, however, give you an extra edge and allow you to maximize the gains from your hard work and pain.
These are my subjective opinions and thoughts on optimizing a weightlifting regime with supplements. Take them or leave them. If you decide to try any that I've mentioned, consider using the Amazon links I provided. For that matter, if you need to buy knitting supplies or anything from Amazon, consider using them. I'll receive a small portion of the price in the form of an Amazon credit (at no cost to you) of any products you buy after clicking on them. (Disclosure: This Amazon store credit will immediately be put towards books or supplements to fuel my two primary addictions: lifting and reading.)
Doo-Occupy
Ariel Zevon is Warren's daughter. And she's done a great job in putting the foreclosure crisis to song. The more I watch it, the more I love this video!
Spring is almost here and that means the Occupy Movement will be back in full force. Tomorrow they'll be confronting the Willard Wall Street campaign at the Waldorf Astoria. Keep in touch with what's going on there at the Mr. 1% Facebook page. But Ariel's song was done for the Doo-Occupy! Bail Out America project, which is all about community organizing for eviction protection, student debt relief and the other economic democracy causes motivating the 99% since the banksters and their politician cronies were caught with their hands in the till. Their statement is clear and as enticing as the song:
Our hope is to provide focus and capacity to the emerging populist uprising. We wish to help amplify its power through inspiring movement building campaigns that can are rooted in communities and deliver victories that make a material difference in people's lives.
Through this we will grow our movement from the power we have to the power we need to transform society and establish a new social contract based not on citizenship or property, but on universal human rights.
Doo-Occupy! Bail Out America is an intensive "Learning by Doing" action training that will deliver tools to take home, including stories and lesson from a couple of the hottest actions you'll ever experience. Thanks to all our allies for joining the fun.
If you sign up for the training these are some of the things you can expect to learn:
* Grand strategy & creative tactics for building movement power
* Flash mob design and performance
* Giant banner building
* Projection as protest
* Nonviolent direct action training
* Imagery design and construction
* Eviction protection organizing strategies
* Campus organizing for student debt relief
* Web streaming and internal media
* Swing Dancing!
If you're in NYC tomorrow... don't forget to show up at the Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue (11am). Romney is celebrating coming in third in both Alabama and Mississippi tonight at his suite in the Waldorf.
Bench Program
An absolutely brutal, but amazing bench press program.
Add some dumbbell flies, some triceps work, adequate sleep, large amounts of protein and nutrition, and a lot of steel in the heart. (Not to mention hard training on the other muscle groups...your body grows best as a complete unit.)
It's a recipe for success. This program led me to smash through the 300# mark, and is what I plan to follow to hit 400# by 2013. Follow the heavy program, then alternate to the lighter program as shown below.
If there's interest, I could do a quick write up on (legal) lifting supplements as well. Some folks blow them off, but they work. Diet is another biggie.
Show your body who's in charge today.
Resist.
Add some dumbbell flies, some triceps work, adequate sleep, large amounts of protein and nutrition, and a lot of steel in the heart. (Not to mention hard training on the other muscle groups...your body grows best as a complete unit.)
It's a recipe for success. This program led me to smash through the 300# mark, and is what I plan to follow to hit 400# by 2013. Follow the heavy program, then alternate to the lighter program as shown below.
If there's interest, I could do a quick write up on (legal) lifting supplements as well. Some folks blow them off, but they work. Diet is another biggie.
Show your body who's in charge today.
Resist.
Says it all...
...Created online. Not cheap, but could be made a statement when placed on a car with an OBAMA 2012 sticker on it...
...Free North Carolina covers other ways to poke the Bots...
Apps ahoy! (One of these days, almost for sure)
No, I didn't take this picture. Even if I knew how to take pictures with the thing, I could hardly have taken a picture of it, could I?"[M]aybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous. For all these reasons I quit Facebook about two months after I'd joined it. As with all seriously addictive things, giving up proved to be immeasurably harder than starting. I kept changing my mind: Facebook remains the greatest distraction from work I've ever had, and I loved it for that. I think a lot of people love it for that. Some work-avoidance techniques are onerous in themselves and don't make time move especially quickly: smoking, eating, calling people up on the phone. With Facebook hours, afternoons, entire days went by without my noticing."
-- Zadie Smith, in a November 2010 New York Review
of Books essay, "Generation Why?"
of Books essay, "Generation Why?"
"[O]n Twitter you find yourself doing all sorts of things you wouldn't otherwise do. And once you've entered the Enchanted E-Forest, lured in there by cute bunnies and playful kittens, you can find yourself wandering around in it for quite some time."
-- Margaret Atwood, in a new NYRB blogpost,
"Deeper into the Twungle"
"Deeper into the Twungle"
by Ken
I just dug up the New York Review of Books piece that contains the above quote from the almost-always-stimulating Zadie Smith. It's an essay that took as its jumping-off points the Aaron Sorkin-David Fincher film The Social Network and Jaron Lanier's book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. The quote, once found, turned out to be very much as I remembered it. What surprised me is what a small portion of the piece this quote represents.
Somehow I had forgotten how generally, and even alarmedly, negative Smith (left) was in the piece with regard to Facebook and the kind of social, or antisocial, mindset it embodies. I can see now that this didn't surprise me back in November 2010. Probably what surprised me then was learning that she had actually been through a period of Facebook addiction. From my own experience, I just couldn't understand how this was even possible, not for someone with such seemingly strong connections to nonvirtual reality as Smith.I had recently come through a brief period of trying, at the recommendation of (once-trusted) friends who assured me that Facebook would open a new world to me, to find some reason -- any reason -- for hanging out on Facebook. I was never able to figure out how or why anybody would spend more time there than the couple of minutes it takes to whiz through the latest maunderings posted by the person's "friends."
I still can't figure it out. Even now, I keep receiving regular e-mails from Facebook claiming that I have new "notifications," which always turns out to be a lie. The first couple of times I went scrounging all around the damned site in search of these new notifications, until I found a screen that told me in no uncertain terms that I had no new notifications. That at least relieved my anxiety that I was missing some desperately important communication. Now when I get one of those fib-mails, I do sometimes check into my account, just to peek at the graffiti scrawled over my "wall." I've accepted a bunch of "friend" invitations, if only out of politeness, and some of these are people I actually wouldn't mind hearing from, or at least about. Every now and then I pick up a scrap of information, like the death of a parent or the birth of a new grandchild. I've never timed it, but I think I usually get in and out of the site in two or three minutes.
I SHOULD EXPLAIN THAT TWO OR THREE (MAYBE FOUR)
WEEKS AGO TODAY MY SMARTPHONE WAS DELIVERED
Partly I can't remember how many weeks it was (I just remember it was a Monday, because I wasn't expecting it to arrive till maybe Wednesday) because after the couple of days it took to get the thing activated and straighten out a number of details with my provider in order to get my online account set up, I haven't so much as turned it on.
I admit, I'm a-scared of it. I don't know how to do a darned thing with it, and it scares me to be that clueless. Now, I'm not constitutionally technophobic. There was a time, notably when I was first making my way in the computer world, when few things gave me more pleasure than ripping open the package of a new item of hardware or softward and attacking the manual to get the thing up and running and teach myself how to manage at least its basic functions.
No more. Somewhere along the line I lost confidence in my ability to make head or tail of the manual. This goes back at least to the time I boldly ordered a SCSI card to expand my fairly primitive Mac, so that I could have such unimagined newfangled devices as a CD-ROM drive, and was so intimidated by all the intricacies I had heard and read about that I don't think I ever even opened the package. (I outwaited myself. Eventually I bought a new computer that had all that stuff taken care of internally.)
At the moment somewhere in my apartment I've got the package containing the Elements of Photoshop software I ordered sitting safely (I assume). Even if I found a window of courage for installing it, I would first have to find the package.
With regard to the smartphone, I've written before about my resistance to this whole world of "apps." But I faced a decision. I literally wasn't using my old dumbphone at all, partly because it wasn't working so well anymore, and would have had to be replaced if I hoped to get any use out of it, but also because I just didn't seem to have any use for it, with the exception of when I was traveling, when it was a fabulous thing to have -- but I hardly ever travel. I really only broke down and got the damned thing because there came a moment during my mother's long decline, 1500 miles away, when I simply had to have a way to be in regular contact with her onsite caregivers. (I was being hassled at work for using my office phone.)
It's now more than two years since my mother died, though, and for month on end my "usage" month after month was zero. Not zero above my allotted minutes, but zero. Not a great return on my montly $50-plus investment. I faced the choice, it seemed to me, especially with my phone itself in need of replacing, of either down- or upgrading -- either giving the thing up altogether or seeing how much it would cost to upgrade to smarphone service and see if I might actually use it.
Before my phone even arrived, I had found and downloaded the manual, and then printed the whole 200 pages out. And then carried them around in an envelope back and forth between home and work every day, hardly daring to peek inside.
I thought, as last weekend approached, during which I would be doing three walking tours and might well want to write something about them, that this would be a great time to figure out how to use the camera function. (My poor old dumbphone took pictures, but I never found a way of extracting them from the device.) In the days preceding I kept thinking this would be a good time to crack open that printout of the manual. No go.
Even when I set out on Saturday morning, I had with me both the envelope containing the printout and, safely tucked I away (I hoped), the contraption itself. I had about a 45-minute ride on the M100 bus to the meeting point for my Municipal Art Society walk from Harlem into the Mott Haven area of the Bronx. I found other occupations to fill that time. As I wrote here, I had about a 50-minute subway ride from the Bronx to the Park Slope area of Brooklyn for my MAS walking tour there. Again, I found other ways to fill the time.
It's true that much of the time from my return home Saturday to my departure for my Sunday MAS walking tour of Downtown Brooklyn was filled with work on my Sunday Classics post, but I could still have cracked open the smartphone manual on the subway ride to Brooklyn. But I didn't. I did wind up writing a post, but had no pictures of my own to add to it.
The reason I'm going into all this just now is that not long before I started writing this post I stumbled across the new NYRB blogpost by Margaret Atwood from which the second quote at the top is taken. Here's a little more of what the distinguished writer -- not a grand passion of mine, but someone I certainly take seriously -- has to say:
[On] Twitter you find yourself doing all sorts of things you wouldn't otherwise do. And once you've entered the Enchanted E-Forest, lured in there by cute bunnies and playful kittens, you can find yourself wandering around in it for quite some time. You might even find yourself climbing the odd tree -- the very odd tree -- or taking refuge in the odd hollow log -- the very odd hollow log -- because cute bunnies and playful kittens are not the only things alive in the mirkwoods of the Web. Or the webs of the mirkwoods. Paths can get tangled there. Plots can get thickened. Games are afoot.
When I first started Twittering, back in 2009 -- you can read about my early adventures in a NYRblog post I wrote two years ago -- I was, you might say, merely capering on the flower-bestrewn fringes of the Twitterwoods. . . .
[Editor's note: The above photo of Ms. A appeared with the 2009 NYRB blogpost she cites, which was titled "Atwood in the Twittersphere." The 2009 caption read: "Margaret Atwood, tweeting aboard the Queen Mary 2, August 2009."]
Really? "You can find yourself wandering around in it for quite some time"? Huh? Like where? Hey, I yield to pretty much no one in my ability to woolgather and timewaste, but I do have my limits.
As it happens, I was recently exhorted by yet another once-trusted friend on the subject of the usefulness of Twitter. (I won't name him, but he knows who he is, and you know him too.) To the point where, with no little trepidation, I signed myself up, and in the process was forced to choose 15 or 20 people or things to "follow." My once-trusted friend had assured me that if indeed I found, as I put it to him, that I was being swamped with urgent news like somebody having just made a sandwich, I could just ditch such tweeters, as he does frequently when people he follows devote too much attention to subjects like sports.
Since I signed up, I've only ventured back onto the site a few times. Talk about useless! What I found there hasn't encouraged frequent return visits. I suppose I could be devoting time to rooting out the rot and hunting down more informative or entertaining sources. Maybe I'll put that on my "to do" list.
First, though, I'm going to have to turn my phone again. I'm too cheap to be shelling out what I'm going to be shelling out each month (I've paid my first bill but because of the extra stuff it included I'll need to wait for the next one to see what the actual monthly total will be with all taxes and fees added) for something I don't use at all, and I'm way too cheap to even consider shelling out those big contract-buy-out bucks.
I guess one of these days I should start trying to figure out which apps might actually do something for me. I don't suppose anyone has any useful suggestions.
#
A Problem in a Black Robe
“Federal law does not recognize actual innocence as a mechanism to overturn an otherwise valid conviction.”
U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison
Yeah, that might be a problem.
U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison
Yeah, that might be a problem.
Wonder how Shumlin pulled off his from behind win in 2010?...
...WONDER NO MORE.
...Raise your hand if voter fraud and the destruction of the rule of law in Vermont is your key to your future...
from Project Veritas
Project Veritas Investigates: Voter Fraud III (Vermont)
Quote;
"On Vermont Primary Day, Project Veritas sent a team of investigators into polling places throughout the state with a list of both deceased and still-living voters to see if they would be permitted to vote without presenting a photo ID.
Our team tested multiple polling places, simply walking up and stating the name of the registered voter and in all cases -- they were offered ballots.
While our investigators cast no votes and returned the ballots, there was nothing stopping our team, or anyone else, from illegally influencing the outcome of a presidential primary.
In fact, as shown in the video, Project Veritas investigators insisted on presenting identification in order to vote, but were told repeatedly, "you don't need it."
One investigator was eerily told, "We believe you."
In contrast, Project Veritas' team also tested the integrity of other establishments in Vermont: Bars and Hotels. Our investigators were repeatedly turned away for their failure to present a photo ID."
(Read More)
...Remember one thing;
...Pete Shumlin won Vermont by 200 votes after being behind Dubie in every measurable metric.
...So now what?
Republican Vote Rigging... Helpful To Marcy Kaptur Too?
I have to admit I don't get all that worked up over the fact that the GOP Establishment has been stealing the nomination for Romney in state after state. But I should be worked up-- and not only because they're likely to also tamper with election results in November's general election when it will matter more. It's all part of the Republican Party War Against Democracy. Rachel gets into it a bit in the video above-- not the vote rigging, but the barriers the GOP is putting up to keep poor people and students and others likely to vote for Democrats from voting. At the same time, the BradBlog is looking at the vote rigging. And the part that did get me most interested was the vote rigging that seems to have played a role in depriving Dennis Kucinich of a seat in Congress.
It started with a venal Republican state legislature gerrymandering his district in such a way that he was forced into a primary with Democratic colleague Marcy Kaptur, who was given a larger share of the new district. Brad was astounded by the results in Lucas County (Toledo), where Kucinich only won 3.7% of the vote. Is that even possible? Sure it is-- when voting is done on easily hackable Diebold machines that offer no verification whatsoever. And, as Brad warns, "Some 20 to 30% of voters across the nation will still be forced-- shamefully, even after all that we now know about these oft-failed, easily-hacked machines-- to cast their ballots on the very same and other similarly 100% unverifiable voting systems on Election Day during the 2012 Presidential Election."
Here's a 10 page document, evidence of algorithm vote flipping in GOP primary elections, much of it in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida. I spoke to a Member of Congress about it, mostly because of my concern that if Republicans can do it now-- and it's rare that anyone ever gets punished for it-- they'll do it in November as well. He responded with an article by Robert Kennedy, Jr, for Rolling Stone (impossible to access there, so here's a link to the article preserved by Common Dreams). Here's the part that deals with Lucas County:
Blackwell authorized only one investigation of registration errors after the election-- in Toledo-- but the report by his own inspectors offers a disturbing snapshot of the malfeasance and incompetence that plagued the entire state. The top elections official in Toledo was a partisan in the Blackwell mold: Bernadette Noe, who chaired both the county board of elections and the county Republican Party. The GOP post was previously held by her husband, Tom Noe, who currently faces felony charges for embezzling state funds and illegally laundering $45,400 of his own money through intermediaries to the Bush campaign.
State inspectors who investigated the elections operation in Toledo discovered "areas of grave concern." With less than a month to go before the election, Bernadette Noe and her board had yet to process 20,000 voter registration cards. Board officials arbitrarily decided that mail-in cards (mostly from the Republican suburbs) would be processed first, while registrations dropped off at the board's office (the fruit of intensive Democratic registration drives in the city) would be processed last. When a grass-roots group called Project Vote delivered a batch of nearly 10,000 cards just before the October 4th deadline, an elections official casually remarked, "We may not get to them." The same official then instructed employees to date-stamp an entire box containing thousands of forms, rather than marking each individual card, as required by law.) When the box was opened, officials had no way of confirming that the forms were filed prior to the deadline-- an error, state inspectors concluded, that could have disenfranchised "several thousand" voters from Democratic strongholds.
The most troubling incident uncovered by the investigation was Noe's decision to allow Republican partisans behind the counter in the board of elections office to make photocopies of postcards sent to confirm voter registrations-- records that could have been used in the GOP's caging efforts. On their second day in the office, the operatives were caught by an elections official tampering with the documents. Investigators slammed the elections board for "a series of egregious blunders"' that caused "the destruction, mutilation and damage of public records."
On Election Day, Noe sent a team of Republican volunteers to the county warehouse where blank ballots were kept out in the open, "with no security measures in place." The state's assistant director of elections, who just happened to be observing the ballot distribution, demanded they leave. The GOP operatives refused and ultimately had to be turned away by police.
In April 2005, Noe and the entire Board of Elections were forced to resign. But once again, the damage was done. At a "Victory 2004" rally held in Toledo four days before the election, President Bush himself singled out a pair of "grass-roots" activists for special praise: "I want to thank my friends Bernadette Noe and Tom Noe for their leadership in Lucas County."
The very basis of right-wing politics-- greed and selfishness-- makes it impossible to separate conservatism and corruption. Historically, they have always been bound at the hip and today there is virtually no difference between corruption and conservatism. They are, in effect, the same. (Take a look at the wikipedia page for the above-mentioned GOP Lucas County Chairman, Tom Noe, if you'd like to see the way the Republican Party has turned itself into a criminal operation. Or, better yet, spend an hour going through the DWT archives from 2005, when we were looking into how the Republicans managed to steal the 2004 election for Bush-- mostly in Ohio.
The Capitalist/Marxist Coin
First, I am not an economist. Forgive me if my terminology is not straight, if I make use of nonstandard terms, and if I attempt here to use terms in nonstandard ways.
Also, keep in mind that this is just the beginning of a (somewhat tortured) line of thinking on the subject, one that I am perfectly aware is not going to bear any fruit in the real world in any case. It's just that- thinking, and maybe misguided or in error to boot.
*****
The first (that I am aware of) wide use of the term Capitalism to denote a financial system was by Marx.
Strike one. We've allowed (an) enemy to define the terms of the debate. But this isn't debate. It's life or death.
Anyway...
Perhaps I am too hung up on words, and perhaps it irks me that the father of Marxism more or less coined the term that Americans use (quite accurately, too) to describe their economy. One way or the other, I think that raw and/or pure capitalism is one of the biggest sources of the US
Productive businesses need many things to survive. Capital is only one component of the many things needed by a productive endeavor, including labor, raw materials, and leadership-to name but a few- to be successful. I say that again- capital is an important part of a successful endeavor, but is coequal with many other components. Ask any small business owner -someone who actually produces- if money itself is enough to make a business "go".
Capitalism's big oversight is that it emphasizes capitol to the exclusion of other factors. Likewise, Marxism's big oversight is that is emphasizes labor to the exclusion of the other factors. Labor, by itself, is not enough, either.
A capitalism based economy, as compared to a productive enterprise/business based economy, needs few things to survive and flourish. Marxism and Capitalism rely on too much of a component of economic activity, as well as government force to lessen risk.
Marxism relies on an abundance of labor, and an abundance of government force to protect and maintain its labor pool (lessen risk). Leadership, efficiency, pride, or risk-management skills these are unnecessary and dangerous to the Marxist. All he needs is a government gun to make up for his bad decisions and mistakes.
For Capitalism, an abundance of capital is the first necessity, and a second necessity is-you got it, an abundance of government force to protect and maintain its capitol pool (lessen risk). A capitalist does not need leadership, efficiency, pride, or risk-management skills, either. All he needs is a government gun to make up for his bad decisions and mistakes. Examples of this are the various QE steps taken recently, bailouts of too-big-to-fail capitalists, so-called "corporations" funded by the government (by you) that are meant to protect capitalists (Fannie and Freddie) funded at your expense, ultimately through government force.
A Marxist government is not more violent to its people in enforcing its economic policies, it is more honest about its violence than a Capitalist government. While it is true there are no Gulags here, violence is violence whether it is slavery and murder or debt slavery and theft.
Ultimately, the dichotomy of Marxism and Capitalism is a false one.
They're not really that far apart.
I cannot accept that profit and money are the highest goals in life, or even in an economy.
I cannot accept that the people are merely “consumers”.
I cannot accept that the people should serve the economy, rather then the economy serving the people.
I most definitely cannot accept any worldview or system that reduces man down to a simple economic unit.
Turning Hardship into Tragedy: The Destructive Consequences of “School Turnaround Policies” for Neighborhoods and Children
One of the cornerstones of the Obama Administrations “Race to the Top”program is its “school turnaround” initiative. In order to qualify for Race to the Top funds, a state must agree to shut down “failing” schools, as determined by test scores or, in the case of high schools, graduation rates, replace at least half of their teaching staffs, and put a new school in its place, either a reconfigured public schools with new leadership, or a charter school.
As a longtime community organizer and coach, and someone who has spend the last eight years doing community history projects in Bronx schools, I am astonished and appalled by this policy. If low income communities, battered by factory closings, job losses, drug epidemics and over aggressive policing are going to create an environment conducive to educational achievement for the majority of its young people, schools are going to have to play a role in educating the entire neighborhood and helping relieve its economic distress. Instead of closing down failing schools on the basis of test scores and graduation rates, those schools should be given additional resources to run after school and night programs for both students and neighborhood residents, and hire parents along with teachers to help staff them. Such a policy would make everyone in the community look to the school as a beacon of hope and transformation, would make teacher/student/parent relationships less adversarial, and would give parents additional resources that would allow them to stay in their homes and apartments and avoid three outcomes which absolutely cripple educational engagement and performance- homelessness, taking in boarders, and constant moving from apartment to apartment. Any teacher or coach who works in a working class or poor neighborhood knows what I am talking about. Unfortunately, education reformers with a “no excuses” philosophy write off student living conditions, or family income, as irrelevant to educational achievement or as something that can be overcome with superhuman effort by teachers who are presented with financial incentives if they succeed, and termination if they fail
Now lets look at the school turnaround model. Here the only variable that matters is teaching and administration. Schools are given no extra resources to make the community welcome in the school, or give extra income to the neighborhood’s struggling families. Teachers and principals are simply presented with an ultimatum- improve test scores and graduation rates or you are fired!
As someone who has spent the last 45 years teaching, and who spent more than 15 years coaching and running youth programs in North Brooklyn, I will tell you flat out that trying to improve academic performance, or any other performance, on the part of young people in poverty and on the edge of homelessness without making additional resources available to them and their families, building on the cultural capital of the community they live in, and giving them love, mentoring and respect, is impossible. No amount of homework and stress filled drilling for tests will accomplish that. The inevitable result of that will either be cheating by school officials or subtle, and not so subtle pressures to push young people in the most difficult circumstances out of the school.
I am not pessimistic about young people in difficult circumstances achieving great things. In the youth organization I worked in the 78th Precinct youth council, a small group of coaches and referees had great success taking young people who were in deep trouble in school, who had difficulties with the law, and who had families that had drug and alcohol problems and getting them through middle school, high schools and into college. But what did it take? We gave them money for food and clothing. We paid for tutors to help them in subjects where they were weak. We got them jobs, and sometimes helped get jobs for their parents. When they were kicked out of their homes, we let them stay with us. We sent them to high schools where we knew there were coaches who looked out for them. We organized reading groups for them featuring books that talked about issues in their families and neighborhood. We exposed them to music we grew up with and let them expose us to the hip hop music which was the sound track of their lives, And when all else failed, we were available to them 24/7, no questions, whether they called us on the phone, or knocked on our door.
Using those methods, we didn’t lose a single child. But if we did anything less, we might have lost all of them!
No lets go back to the schools. There is no way, I repeat, no way, that destabilizing schools environments, and playing musical chairs with teachers and principals, is good for young people such as the ones I had the privilege of working with. They need teacher/ mentors who will be there for their entire lives, not ones who will try to teach them measurable skills for two and three years and then leave. They also need the school to provide them with additional resources that will help stave off the most damaging dimensions of poverty, and to incorporate the cultural traditions of their neighborhoods into the school mission and culture.
But that means reconfiguring schools a institutions that serve neighborhoods and families, not as way stations for the lucky and ambitious that will enable them to leave behind the hardships that surround them
The “school turnaround path” we are on now is tragically flawed It will leave the neighborhoods such schools are located in worse shape than they were before, and undermine long term chances of reducing class and race inequities in education and economic status.
But if you don’t believe me, why don’t you do something revolutionary and actually ask young people what THEY want a school to provide. And then develop a school transformation policy that incorporates those suggestions. I would be very surprised if they didn’t want some of the things from their schools, that we, in the 78th Precinct Youth Council, offered some of our players, along with some great ideas that we never thought of.
March 13, 2012
As a longtime community organizer and coach, and someone who has spend the last eight years doing community history projects in Bronx schools, I am astonished and appalled by this policy. If low income communities, battered by factory closings, job losses, drug epidemics and over aggressive policing are going to create an environment conducive to educational achievement for the majority of its young people, schools are going to have to play a role in educating the entire neighborhood and helping relieve its economic distress. Instead of closing down failing schools on the basis of test scores and graduation rates, those schools should be given additional resources to run after school and night programs for both students and neighborhood residents, and hire parents along with teachers to help staff them. Such a policy would make everyone in the community look to the school as a beacon of hope and transformation, would make teacher/student/parent relationships less adversarial, and would give parents additional resources that would allow them to stay in their homes and apartments and avoid three outcomes which absolutely cripple educational engagement and performance- homelessness, taking in boarders, and constant moving from apartment to apartment. Any teacher or coach who works in a working class or poor neighborhood knows what I am talking about. Unfortunately, education reformers with a “no excuses” philosophy write off student living conditions, or family income, as irrelevant to educational achievement or as something that can be overcome with superhuman effort by teachers who are presented with financial incentives if they succeed, and termination if they fail
Now lets look at the school turnaround model. Here the only variable that matters is teaching and administration. Schools are given no extra resources to make the community welcome in the school, or give extra income to the neighborhood’s struggling families. Teachers and principals are simply presented with an ultimatum- improve test scores and graduation rates or you are fired!
As someone who has spent the last 45 years teaching, and who spent more than 15 years coaching and running youth programs in North Brooklyn, I will tell you flat out that trying to improve academic performance, or any other performance, on the part of young people in poverty and on the edge of homelessness without making additional resources available to them and their families, building on the cultural capital of the community they live in, and giving them love, mentoring and respect, is impossible. No amount of homework and stress filled drilling for tests will accomplish that. The inevitable result of that will either be cheating by school officials or subtle, and not so subtle pressures to push young people in the most difficult circumstances out of the school.
I am not pessimistic about young people in difficult circumstances achieving great things. In the youth organization I worked in the 78th Precinct youth council, a small group of coaches and referees had great success taking young people who were in deep trouble in school, who had difficulties with the law, and who had families that had drug and alcohol problems and getting them through middle school, high schools and into college. But what did it take? We gave them money for food and clothing. We paid for tutors to help them in subjects where they were weak. We got them jobs, and sometimes helped get jobs for their parents. When they were kicked out of their homes, we let them stay with us. We sent them to high schools where we knew there were coaches who looked out for them. We organized reading groups for them featuring books that talked about issues in their families and neighborhood. We exposed them to music we grew up with and let them expose us to the hip hop music which was the sound track of their lives, And when all else failed, we were available to them 24/7, no questions, whether they called us on the phone, or knocked on our door.
Using those methods, we didn’t lose a single child. But if we did anything less, we might have lost all of them!
No lets go back to the schools. There is no way, I repeat, no way, that destabilizing schools environments, and playing musical chairs with teachers and principals, is good for young people such as the ones I had the privilege of working with. They need teacher/ mentors who will be there for their entire lives, not ones who will try to teach them measurable skills for two and three years and then leave. They also need the school to provide them with additional resources that will help stave off the most damaging dimensions of poverty, and to incorporate the cultural traditions of their neighborhoods into the school mission and culture.
But that means reconfiguring schools a institutions that serve neighborhoods and families, not as way stations for the lucky and ambitious that will enable them to leave behind the hardships that surround them
The “school turnaround path” we are on now is tragically flawed It will leave the neighborhoods such schools are located in worse shape than they were before, and undermine long term chances of reducing class and race inequities in education and economic status.
But if you don’t believe me, why don’t you do something revolutionary and actually ask young people what THEY want a school to provide. And then develop a school transformation policy that incorporates those suggestions. I would be very surprised if they didn’t want some of the things from their schools, that we, in the 78th Precinct Youth Council, offered some of our players, along with some great ideas that we never thought of.
March 13, 2012
Blue America Welcomes Dr. Lee Rogers (D-CA)
Dr. Lee Rogers with his daughter Lily, age 4 minutes
In the last few weeks Dr. Lee Rogers has been talking a lot with us about ending the occupation of Afghanistan, ending the use of bodyscanners by the TSA and about ending the occupation of American politics by the 1%. But what first drew our attention to his race was his approach, as a renowned surgeon and author, to health care reform.
The incumbent in this newly redrawn Los Angeles district, CA-25 (Santa Clarita, Porter Ranch, Simi Valley and the Antelope Valley), is Buck McKeon. McKeon, notorious as one of the Mormon financiers of the hateful, homophobic Prop 8 jihad, is now drowning in several scandals and under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. A devout and dedicated warmonger and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, McKeon may be one of the worst Members of Congress-- and one of the most strategic targets to defeat in November. But it wasn't McKeon that has caused Blue America to endorse Dr. Rogers. It was Dr. Rogers; let's call him Lee from now on.
When Digby, John and I first met him in person we were intrigued by his opposition to healthcare bill. He was one of the Democrats-- and a doctor no less-- who felt it should be better, much better. "The current version of health reform," he told us at our first meeting, "while an improvement in some areas, leaves much to be desired in the way of affordability and accessibility. We need caps on insurance rate hikes. We need protections for women's health. We need aggressive comprehensive coverage of preventative medicine for expensive avoidable diseases."
Later, he did a guest post for DWT on the societal problem of prescription drugs, urging the idea of replacing the failed "War on Drugs" with a more rational "War on Addiction." His own prescription sounds very much like a commonsense solution: "Drug addiction is seen as a legal problem and not a medical problem. Addicts have a disease that needs to be treated my health professionals, not corrections officers. Keeping addicts out of prison will save money that can be used for treatment programs. Without criminal histories, addicts can be employable and get back to a productive life. Plus, if we can treat the addiction and reduce the number of customers for drug dealers, we prevent money from going into criminal organizations."
A fellow podiatrist he knows-- albeit a Republican-- just defeated Mean Jean Schmidt in Ohio. That doctor and Lee agree on almost nothing politically but they do see the need for a single payer system, even if the Ohio doctor will never admit it to Republican audiences. Lee talks eloquently and realistically about it:
There are many fears of a single-payer system, from insurers, doctors, some patients, and certainly many Republicans. A single-payer system will drastically reduce the amount of profit going to big insurers, who are big campaign donors. But the single-payer system will increase the number of covered patients seeking care from doctors and hospitals which will be reimbursed. It will reduce the numerous insurance middlemen who impede the productivity of health providers and syphon off large profits that should be going into actual care. Patients will have seamless coverage. Employers will eliminate their second largest expense, health insurance. No system is perfect, but when one truly evaluates all the benefits of a single-payer healthcare, it is a desirable system where most come out winning.
That's not a polemic; that's a motivation for Lee getting into the race against an incumbent with more money from war contractors and armaments manufacturers than anyone else in the House. Lee knows it's a tough race but he's an energetic and idealistic young father-- he and his wife, Susan, just had his second daughter last week-- who is determined to try to make this country and this world a better place. He'll be joining us today at Crooks and Liars (11AM, PT) for a live blogging session. We sure hope you can come over and meet him. And if you'd like to help his grassroots campaign, please consider a contribution here at the Blue America ActBlue page.
Another Non-Argument
Another non-argument encountered recently (it may be a perfectly valid one, but if valid, it seems rather pointless)...
Make a claim that is unsubstantiated.
When asked for information or proof, say (basically) "If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you." (Used by my daughter with stunning regularity and effect on her siblings, until they learned to call her on it.)
Another way of saying this is to claim that said understanding is beyond the reach of the average man, and exists only at the highest and most esoteric levels in academia-land (which is almost, in itself, enough to make me discount it out-of hand).
Even in my lowly undergraduate studies, I am forced to cite my facts using reputable and verifiable sources. Surely someone at the highest levels of Academia would do so as well. Then again, when I think about what I just said...
Backing up a fact by saying "only really smart folks understand" doesn't fly in lowly undergraduate school, and as a result, I find it very contradictory that a person claiming to have reached and studied at the highest and most esoteric levels of academic study would expect anyone (even a lowly undergrad such as yours truly) to accept such a statement.
I don't expect links and google-searchable info bytes for every claim and fact, but if a certain type of knowledge is in fact real and substantiated, a starting point or two would be a great idea.
I mean, really, here's an example...
Statement: "X is trying to take over the world. X will use you for his ends, and then kill you"
Reply: "Who is X? What are his ends? How can I know so I might better fight X?"
Stetement: "Normal people cannot discern the identity of X. It is a matter of deep and highly academic study."
Reply: "Really? Can you help me? I'd like to know who X is, and see enough proof to convince me so that rather than study X, I'd like to put a brick in his face. You intellectuals who claim to know who X is sure are doing a horrible job at fighting him."
Statement: "If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you. I will continue to refer to X in broad terms rather than giving anyone actionable or useful information."
Ok. You academicians keep "studying" X. Meanwhile, there is a whole world of crap out there that is based in objective evidence.
Make a claim that is unsubstantiated.
When asked for information or proof, say (basically) "If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you." (Used by my daughter with stunning regularity and effect on her siblings, until they learned to call her on it.)
Another way of saying this is to claim that said understanding is beyond the reach of the average man, and exists only at the highest and most esoteric levels in academia-land (which is almost, in itself, enough to make me discount it out-of hand).
Even in my lowly undergraduate studies, I am forced to cite my facts using reputable and verifiable sources. Surely someone at the highest levels of Academia would do so as well. Then again, when I think about what I just said...
Backing up a fact by saying "only really smart folks understand" doesn't fly in lowly undergraduate school, and as a result, I find it very contradictory that a person claiming to have reached and studied at the highest and most esoteric levels of academic study would expect anyone (even a lowly undergrad such as yours truly) to accept such a statement.
I don't expect links and google-searchable info bytes for every claim and fact, but if a certain type of knowledge is in fact real and substantiated, a starting point or two would be a great idea.
I mean, really, here's an example...
Statement: "X is trying to take over the world. X will use you for his ends, and then kill you"
Reply: "Who is X? What are his ends? How can I know so I might better fight X?"
Stetement: "Normal people cannot discern the identity of X. It is a matter of deep and highly academic study."
Reply: "Really? Can you help me? I'd like to know who X is, and see enough proof to convince me so that rather than study X, I'd like to put a brick in his face. You intellectuals who claim to know who X is sure are doing a horrible job at fighting him."
Statement: "If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you. I will continue to refer to X in broad terms rather than giving anyone actionable or useful information."
Ok. You academicians keep "studying" X. Meanwhile, there is a whole world of crap out there that is based in objective evidence.
Some Random Thoughts
I had a rather "enlightening" "conversation" on facebook recently. (No, it wasn't about Iran or Israel.)
(Translation- I hijacked my wife's facebook page and engaged in dialogue with some folks of a differing worldview, just for fun. It's a hobby. My poor wife.)
The discussion was interesting, and I learned a lot about the other side on this subject, even if I do still think "the other side" is dead wrong. Most of it was rational (as in, calm and subject-oriented), which was surprising to me for a facebook discussion.
I have an observation, for whatever it's worth.
If a person is making an argument, and a major part of the line of logic goes like this...
- You said ___.
- Hitler said that, too (or, more accurately, someone said he did, or I think he might have).
- Hitler was (insert name or negative attribute here).
- Therefore, you are wrong (because, the implication goes, everything Hitler did/said/thought, to include petting his dog was wrong, just 'cuz), and, if you continue making that argument, you are (insert name or negative attribute here), just like Hitler!
...there might be a problem.
The problem is, the person using the Hitler comparison, in eight or nine times out of ten, has absofreakinglutely no clue or basis in fact upon which to make the Hitler statement. I have been guilty of this myself, in the past. Look around on this site in the past, and you'll see it.
One day, I was called on it, and I realized that I was wrong. Thus began a personal journey of mine to learn what I can about a man who is most likely the most demonized and propagandized man in all of History. I'm no Hitler expert. I find that finding an objective book on the subject is next to impossible. Few books treat him as he was- a man.
Hitler lived in a unique time, and in unique circumstances, and in order to understand anything he did or said, a study of the general milleu or context in which he lived and moved is necessary. I find it disingenuous to try to deal with Hitler in an out-of-context manner, just as it is disingenuous to deal with any historical person out of the context in which they lived. Blind, out of context demonization of Hitler is just as intellectually dishonest or willfully blind as is blind deification of our founding fathers.
I have learned enough to see through the majority of made-up or off the cuff Hitler arguments. It's interesting when one is thrown in your face and you're able to deconstruct it from fact and objective truth, rather than Soviet and American propaganda. When you take the time to do that in a discussion where the Hitler analogy has been used, prepare for an even more shrill, bigoted, and unreasonable attack. You dared talk about Hitler in a rational light. You're a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
That, in itself, smacks of thought control via propaganda, and I find that I am therefore pushed further into the study of this man and the context in which he lived, operated, struggled, and was defeated.
Because a "truth" or "history" that cannot bear factual and critical examination and criticism, a "truth" that must be backed up with attacks and (in some places) government force, is no truth or history after all.
It is the vilest sort of lie, and the worst form of creeping tyranny. Opposing it is a thoughtcrime.
Heresy. Resist.
Truth needs no force, no inquisition, no attack to defend it. These things are the lifeblood of a lie, and the desperate lashing out of a dying falsehood coming to an end.
Many people suffered for the belief that the earth was not the center of the universe. Heresy. Thoughtcrime. Burn them.
Many people suffered for the belief that the earth was not flat. Heresy. Thoughtcrime. Burn them.
Many Protestants suffered during the Reformation. Heresy. Thoughtcrime. Burn them.
Many Anabaptists suffered under the hand of these same protestants. Heresy. Thoughtcrime. Burn them.
Just some thoughts.
Resist.
(Translation- I hijacked my wife's facebook page and engaged in dialogue with some folks of a differing worldview, just for fun. It's a hobby. My poor wife.)
The discussion was interesting, and I learned a lot about the other side on this subject, even if I do still think "the other side" is dead wrong. Most of it was rational (as in, calm and subject-oriented), which was surprising to me for a facebook discussion.
I have an observation, for whatever it's worth.
If a person is making an argument, and a major part of the line of logic goes like this...
- You said ___.
- Hitler said that, too (or, more accurately, someone said he did, or I think he might have).
- Hitler was (insert name or negative attribute here).
- Therefore, you are wrong (because, the implication goes, everything Hitler did/said/thought, to include petting his dog was wrong, just 'cuz), and, if you continue making that argument, you are (insert name or negative attribute here), just like Hitler!
...there might be a problem.
The problem is, the person using the Hitler comparison, in eight or nine times out of ten, has absofreakinglutely no clue or basis in fact upon which to make the Hitler statement. I have been guilty of this myself, in the past. Look around on this site in the past, and you'll see it.
One day, I was called on it, and I realized that I was wrong. Thus began a personal journey of mine to learn what I can about a man who is most likely the most demonized and propagandized man in all of History. I'm no Hitler expert. I find that finding an objective book on the subject is next to impossible. Few books treat him as he was- a man.
Hitler lived in a unique time, and in unique circumstances, and in order to understand anything he did or said, a study of the general milleu or context in which he lived and moved is necessary. I find it disingenuous to try to deal with Hitler in an out-of-context manner, just as it is disingenuous to deal with any historical person out of the context in which they lived. Blind, out of context demonization of Hitler is just as intellectually dishonest or willfully blind as is blind deification of our founding fathers.
I have learned enough to see through the majority of made-up or off the cuff Hitler arguments. It's interesting when one is thrown in your face and you're able to deconstruct it from fact and objective truth, rather than Soviet and American propaganda. When you take the time to do that in a discussion where the Hitler analogy has been used, prepare for an even more shrill, bigoted, and unreasonable attack. You dared talk about Hitler in a rational light. You're a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
That, in itself, smacks of thought control via propaganda, and I find that I am therefore pushed further into the study of this man and the context in which he lived, operated, struggled, and was defeated.
Because a "truth" or "history" that cannot bear factual and critical examination and criticism, a "truth" that must be backed up with attacks and (in some places) government force, is no truth or history after all.
It is the vilest sort of lie, and the worst form of creeping tyranny. Opposing it is a thoughtcrime.
Heresy. Resist.
Truth needs no force, no inquisition, no attack to defend it. These things are the lifeblood of a lie, and the desperate lashing out of a dying falsehood coming to an end.
Many people suffered for the belief that the earth was not the center of the universe. Heresy. Thoughtcrime. Burn them.
Many people suffered for the belief that the earth was not flat. Heresy. Thoughtcrime. Burn them.
Many Protestants suffered during the Reformation. Heresy. Thoughtcrime. Burn them.
Many Anabaptists suffered under the hand of these same protestants. Heresy. Thoughtcrime. Burn them.
Just some thoughts.
Resist.
DC Blue Dogs Show Their Hand In North Carolina
Few Democrats-- and none from North Carolina-- voted more frequently with the GOP since the 2010 elections than fumbling Blue Dog Heath Shuler. It made him so unpopular among Democrats in his western North Carolina district that polls showed that he would be defeated by progressive Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell. So, Shuler, a bigot and religious fanatic who voted with Republicans against equality for women and against equality for the LGBT community, decided to scale back on his plans to become Speaker or senator or governor or something big. Instead he'll settle for something rich-- as he trundles over to K Street to take up the mantle of a sleazy lobbyist. Lee Fang wondered yesterday if Shuler is engaging in bribery by negotiating for a lobbying job with the corporate shills at the Majority Group while he's still in Congress. It's one of several Blue Dog-oriented lobbying firms that launders corporate cash into political campaigns for Democrats who will get in bed with anti-family interests-- perfect for Shuler.
One way corporations and special interests rule Washington is by promising lucrative salaries to lawmakers and their staff members. Once a public official makes a deal to go to work for a lobbying firm or corporation after leaving office, often with the promise of a million dollars or more in salary, he or she becomes loyal to the future employer. Thus, a special interest can essentially buy out the lawmaker, gaining not only access but the ability to influence votes and other policymaking power while the lawmaker is still in office.
...Congressman Heath Shuler (D-NC) is a prime example. Shuler, a leader of the Blue Dog caucus of big business-friendly Democrats, announced that this term will be his last a few short months ago. As Politico notes, he is already talking to lobbying firms that may want to hire him as an influence peddler:
Shuler, for one, isn’t wasting any time assessing his options. The conservative North Carolina Democrat has met with several groups with Washington offices in an effort to see if he might be a good fit. [...]
One of the organizations taking a serious look at Shuler is The Majority Group, a lobby shop founded by former Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho), according to sources. Rob Ellsworth, a former legislative assistant of Shuler’s, is a co-founder of the boutique lobbying firm.
The Majority Group, one of the lobbying firms courting Shuler, currently represents the beef industry, a foreclosure servicing company called FCI Lender Services, as well as bank holding companies with business in health, life, and real estate insurance.
And while Shuler meets with lobbying firms openly interested in hiring him, the congressman continues to play a pivotal role in shaping the laws we all live under.
At least he's out of Congress-- or soon will be. Shuler's ProgressivePunch score this session is 38.55. That means crucial votes during 2011 and 2012 he voted with Cantor and Boehner over 60% of the time. And he has a chief of staff he wants to leave in his place to continue his work against the middle class and working class families who live in the district-- and, of course, to be available for all the lobbying he plans to do.
Shuler endorsed his staffer, Hayden Rogers, and last week the Blue Dog caucus came right in after him. That means the countdown for a check from Steny Hoyer and the nod from the DCCC can't be far behind. The flawed theory behind conservative Democratic support for Rogers is that the district is very conservative and that Rogers will have the best chance to beat the Republican. The problem, of course, is that conservatives in the district will support the Republican and that the only way for a Democrat to win in the newly gerrymandered district is to offer a vigorous alternative to the toxic, failed Republican agenda. But conservatives would rather lose with Rogers than win with Bothwell.
Democratic voters showed their regard for the Blue Dogs in 2010 when more than half of them were either defeated at the polls or forced to retire rather than be defeated. Since then, many of the most extreme right members of the Blue Dog caucus have announced their departure from electoral politics-- like Shuler. Rogers was Shuler's campaign manager before he was his chief of staff. Before that he was roommates-- at Princeton-- with Lyle Menendez, who was convicted with brother Eric in the 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents in Beverly Hills, Calif. Rogers worked for Lyle Menendez at the restaurant he bought after getting his parents’ life insurance money. Rogers hasn't been indicted for being part of the murder plot and he refuses to discuss his relationship with the Menedndez brothers.
Rogers may not be a murderer but he's a typical corrupt conservative careerist hack. The Democrat likely to beat him in the primary is Cecil Bothwell, who has been endorsed by Blue America . They couldn't be further apart on issues or approach. Last week Bothwell addressed women's health issues, issues where Rogers finds himself in bed with the Republicans (of course). Bothwell:
I am the only candidate for congress in North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, in either party, who has taken strong positions in favor of women, women’s rights and women’s health.
I entered the primary race in March of 2011, when the incumbent Blue Dog Democrat Heath Shuler voted to defund Planned Parenthood. Though I had taken exception to many of Shuler’s votes against our President’s proposals (and continue to be disappointed), his vote against an organization that provides essential health care services to tens of thousands of women in North Carolina alone, and to their families, was my last straw. To add insult to injury, during that same week I learned that Rep. Shuler was co-sponsor of an amendment that would have redefined rape under our health care laws to only include violent rape by a stranger. Date rape, marital rape and incest would no longer qualify.
I had to wonder what planet he came from.
(Note: In September I was honored to serve as the volunteer auctioneer for an art auction to benefit Planned Parenthood here in WNC.)
In a larger sense, my view is that human beings have a right to make their own health care decisions, and only a woman has a right to make reproductive choices for herself. It is a wonderful thing when two parents make those decisions together and the man involved elects to stick around and share responsibilities, but we all know that model fails over and over again.
More than half of the babies born to women under age 30 find themselves in single parent households. And the biological truth is that a man’s involvement in baby-making is very brief. It is the mother who endures nine months of pregnancy with its attendant risks. It is the mother who is almost universally the principal caregiver and nurturer, and often the nutrition source as breast feeding has come back into general popularity. It is the mother to whom courts have historically assigned custody in the event of divorce. (Though the law has swung toward shared custody, in no small part because many men prefer not to pay child support.)
Women must be accorded the full right to determine their future plans. Men should attend to their own responsibilities around baby making and then sit down and shut up. The all-male panel of experts convened by Republican legislators, to testify concerning contraceptives would be laughable if it weren’t so frightening. Old men seem ever eager to tell young women what they can or cannot do. And as a woman I met in Bryson City observed, “If they can prevent you from having an abortion today, they can just as easily force you to have an abortion tomorrow.”
Another of my proposals goes further in the area of valuing families. I believe we should provide a stipend to a mother for the first three years of her first two children’s lives. The parents would be required to participate in self-organized parenting groups (somewhat like current baby-sitting co-ops) in which one of the parents and the children would participate on a regular basis-- to share ideas, information and skills. The intent is to permit more time devoted to nurture and interaction during those critical formative years when much of our socialization occurs.
To those who’d argue that this is too expensive, my reply is that it would let one parent step out of the work force, thus opening up employment for the unemployed who are currently receiving benefits. Better socialized children are better students, less likely to disrupt the education of others in their classes, more likely to finish school, and less likely to end up in prison. My argument is that we are shifting the expense to where it actually does some good, instead of simply paying people who are out of work, or paying to imprison people later.
Sunday Cecil Bothwell's younger brother died suddenly and Cecil is spending some time with their 90 year old mother trying to comfort her. Please help Blue America keep the small donations coming in for his campaign while he's grieving and off the trail. Last week the Bothwell campaign held a Family Fun Night Funder in a small town in District 11, with three bands, jugglers, face painting, balloon animals, pizza and beer with a suggested $15 donation at the door (kids free). One farm couple showed up with empty pockets, but offered two dozen eggs in lieu of admission which the campaign happily accepted. Meanwhile, Hayden Rogers was hosting a $2,500 a plate steak dinner, 250 miles east in Raleigh, the state capital. Bothwell quipped, "I guess with WNC ranking #3 in hunger in the United States, we both felt a need to feed our constituents."
More CRT...
In November 1985, the Harvard Law Review published an article by Derrick Bell that was a "classic" in the development of Critical Race Theory. The article was edited by then-student Elena Kagan, and was cited by Prof. Charles Ogletree in support of her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in 2010. The article makes clear that Critical Race Theory sees the U.S. Constitution as a form of "original sin"--a view later embraced by Obama as a state legislator, and reflected in his actions and appointments. The following is an excerpt from the non-fiction portion of the article; much of what follows is a fictional story that Bell intended as a parable of racial "fantasy." (99 Harv. L. Rev. 4)
Read the rest here.
Stay safe.
Monday, March 12, 2012
TP Crisis!
It would seem that Trenton, NJ is facing a crisis of sorts.
Here's an idea...
Bring your own coffee cups to work.
There's $4,000 dollars that you don't have to steal from folks.
I wouldn't recommend skimping on the toilet paper, though. Anywhere with that many politicians likely needs a lot of it.
Here's an idea...
Bring your own coffee cups to work.
There's $4,000 dollars that you don't have to steal from folks.
I wouldn't recommend skimping on the toilet paper, though. Anywhere with that many politicians likely needs a lot of it.
Willard Likes Grits And Outhouses, But Outtakes... Not So Much
The latest polling in Alabama and Mississippi-- the heart and soul of the modern, unreconstructed Republican Party-- shows that the presidential nomination is too close to call. Their hearts are with Newt or Santorum or Palin or Rick Perry but they are so blinded by hatred and rage by the black guy in the White House that they seem willing to hold their noses and support the Mormon... from Massachusetts. Watching tomorrow night's returns should be fun.
Gingrich and Santorum are both more popular than Romney in each of these states. In Mississippi Gingrich's net favorability is +33 (62/29) to +32 for Santorum (60/28) and +10 for Romney (51/41). It's a similar story in Alabama where Santorum's at +32 (63/31), Gingrich is at +26 (58/32), and Romney's at only +13 (53/40).
The reason Romney has a chance to win despite being less popular in both states is the split in the conservative vote. In Mississippi 44% of voters describe themselves as 'very conservative' and Romney's getting only 26% with them. But he's still in the mix because Gingrich leads Santorum only 35-32 with them. In Alabama where 45% of voters identify as 'very conservative,' Romney's at just 24%. But again he remains competitive overall because his opponents are so tightly packed with those voters, with Santorum at 37% and Gingrich at 31%.
It's not really clear who, if anyone, has the momentum in these states. In Mississippi folks who've decided in the last few days go for Gingrich over Santorum 37-29 with Romney at only 15%. But in Alabama the late deciders go 38-29 for Romney over Santorum with Gingrich at 23%.
About all we know is that Ron Paul won't win any of these states on Tuesday...the other three candidates all have a shot in both of them.
Among the non-horserace questions in the PPP survey that most intrigued me among the Alabamians (aside from the one that shows that 21% of likely Republican primary voters think interracial marriage should be illegal):
Ryan Lizza's column in The New Yorker this week focuses on Romney's conundrum of what to do about the nice endorsements he's gotten from conservative newspaper editorial boards that happen to mention "those things" that the campaign is trying to play down-- like health care reform and great personal wealth and awkwardness in relating to real people. And the Mormon thing. This afternoon Noah dealt with the awkwardness thing and these other unfortunate attributes that burden Romney but there's no reason for the Willard For President campaign machine to send concern itself about that. But the endorsements... what a problem! They want to persuade someone that someone somewhere, even famous and important someones like the editors of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Arizona Republic looked at Romney and actually liked what they saw. But then they have to leave out this kind of stuff, some of which sounds almost as though Noah might have written it (albeit then discarded it as too milquetoast):
1. “Mr. Romney may not be the debater that Mr. Gingrich is (although he’s getting better). And he doesn’t have the same social conservative credentials as Mr. Santorum.”
—Savannah Morning News, March 1, 2012
2. “He is the son of former Michigan Gov. George Romney, attending the prestigious Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills before receiving his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University in 1971. He also is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, both in 1975. Following his graduations he worked for Bain & Co. before starting the highly successful Bain Capital, a venture capital and investment firm, in 1984.”
—Midland Daily News, Michigan, February 26, 2012
3. “Perhaps that is why he sometimes appears so awkward in public, especially when talking about himself and, in particular, his personal wealth.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 3, 2012
4. “Yes, out-of-context declarations like ‘I enjoy firing people’ and ‘I don’t care about the poor’ contribute to the caricature of a rich swell, akin to that of Donald Trump. Really? Where are the trophy wives? The ostentatious lifestyle? The garish displays of life among the rich and famous? You will have to look hard.”
—Arizona Republic, February 24, 2012
5. “We have our issues with Romney, to be sure. His opposition to the Dream Act for illegal-immigrant children raised in the U.S. is not one we support. And his effort to position himself as the ‘toughest’ GOP candidate on immigration issues is a concern.”
—Arizona Republic, February 24, 2012
6. “In fact, this newspaper does not embrace many of his ideas on taxation, which give too great a reward to the wealthy and not enough help for the poor and middle class.”
—Times Daily of Florence, Alabama, March 9, 2012
7. “His stance against government interaction to revive the domestic automobile industry is disappointing. Also disappointing are inconsistencies in his message…”
—Grand Rapids Press, February 22, 2012
8. “Consistency is certainly a problem for Romney. The one-time moderate has adjusted his positions on so many issues-- including abortion and gay rights-- that his core beliefs are a mystery. In this campaign, he has tried so hard to prove his conservative bona fides that he has undercut one of his greatest selling points: the pragmatism that enabled him to get things done as a Republican governor in one of the nation’s most Democratic and liberal states.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 3, 2012
9. “That has been just one example of some of the shape-shifting Romney has done to appeal to conservative primary voters who believe he is too moderate. So, it’s not unfair to wonder who the real Romney is.”
—Birmingham News, March 7, 2012
Now The New Yorker is not New York Magazine and Ryan Lizza is not Frank Rich. And Rich was also recounting the woes the Republican Party has run up against in its quest to reclaim presidential power and get the ole toxic agenda moving again. The national circus, even apart from the death of one right-wing operative and the near-death of another, has rebounded poorly on Willard last week:
After Super Tuesday, the Romney campaign said it’s over and he’s won. It’s mathematically impossible for any of his rivals to pile up the delegate count needed to win. So when will it truly be over?At the height of the Vietnam quagmire, the comic Milton Berle joked that the best way to end the war was to put it on ABC-- then the lowest-rated network-- because it would be canceled within thirteen weeks. We may finally be reaching that stage with the GOP race. Of the broadcast networks, only the lowest-rated, NBC, even bothered to air any returns on Tuesday night. Overall, viewership for Super Tuesday coverage was down almost 40 percent from 2008. The contest may keep going-- bouncing around like a chicken head recently severed from its body-- but if no one is watching, the last act may have no more consequence than the final episode of NBC’s The Playboy Club.
Wasn’t it thrilling to stay up for those final precincts to be counted in Ohio?
To get to that ambiguous resolution you had to slog through speeches by Santorum, Romney and Gingrich that in length and tedium would rival anything in the Politburo prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
And a reminder for Wednesday-- yes, this Wednesday (I had wrong information before)-- a "pop-up occupation" will confront Willard as he arrives in New York for a fundraising lunch with the Wall Street banksters and hedge fund criminals at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel at 11am.
This event targeting the presidential hopeful and his fundraising base of special interest lobbyists is one of the first in a series of actions some occupiers are calling "The American Spring."
...With growing concern over the blurred line between corporate lobbying and campaign finance many activists have honed their focus onto landmark corporate personhood rulings like Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, underscoring that these rulings further erode the mainstream democratic process activists use to influence policy and social change. Mitt Romney has made himself a champion of this corporate personhood argument and this has drawn fire from activists and occupiers alike.
"Creative visuals like a hula hoop flash mob will highlight Romney's all-too-creative use of tax loopholes while large placards reading 'Mr. 1%' will draw attention to the governor's cartoonish wealth and incestuous relationship with his corporate sponsorship," says Brendan Burke of Occupy Wall Street "New Yorkers will converge at the Waldorf with a simple message that democracy is not for sale, that money is not speech, and that corporations also need to pay their fair share."
Among the multimillionaires and billionaires who will be at the Waldorf trying to buy the White House for Willard are criminals like Jamie Dimon, John Paulson and this list of freaks and dangerous sociopaths.
Critical Race Theory...
Last week, Breitbart.com released video demonstrating Barack Obama’s close relationship with Derrick Bell, the father of Critical Race Theory (CRT). And we’ve seen Soledad O’Brien try to twist the definition of critical race theory in order to protect Obama by grabbing a quick definition from Wikipedia. But just what is CRT? Why is it so dangerous? And what role does it play in President Obama’s thinking?
Read the rest here.
Stay safe.
Say, where's Charlie? (And other illustrated meditations on celebrity)
WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?
First off, you can click on it to enlarge it. And then if you're just crazy wild to hobnob -- excuse me, make that to exchange ideas -- with prominent thinkers like Emilio E, here's the link. (But admit it, the thinker you really want to, er, exchange ideas with is his brother, Marty S's idiot son Charlie. Am I right?) -- Ken
CHARLIE'S PROBABLY GOT IT ALL WORKED OUT
CELEBRITY APPLIED TO OTHER WALKS OF LIFE
ROZ CHAST ISN'T TARGETING CELEBS, BUT HER
VISION OF CRIME & PUNISHMENT CAN BE ADAPTED
#
Don't know what to think...
A few thoughts bouncing around in my head today. I apologize if they seem disjointed and out of order. Or make no logical sense.
I'm angry. This has really set me off.
The soldier who went outside the wire in the middle of the night and murdered 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children...
The first thought that went through my mind is that you don't just go out and kill non-combatants. Every soldier knows that. There are so many reasons why it's wrong.
Then I thought about how I would feel if it happened here, to my family. Not pleasant to consider. How would I respond? What "justice" would I wish for?
I have no idea what was going through his mind. I can't even imagine. He was serving his fourth combat tour. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often when soldiers are forced to serve combat tours again and again. It has to wear on a person. It has to change a person. Yes, I realize that they're all volunteers. Perhaps that's part of the problem. Fairly decent pay and benefits. (not great, I know) A shitty job market and a shitty economy here at home. Whats a guy to do, right?
He volunteered for sniper training after he returned from his last deployment to Iraq. He passed the psych eval for that training. He then suffered a brain injury, recovered from it, and again passed a psych eval.
We still had a draft when I served. Perhaps we should have it again? Spread the load. Share the love. "You get lower quality soldiers with bad attitudes who don't want to be there so they don't perform". Yep, some of them. You have some of those in the volunteer ranks, too. The vast majority shoot back when being shot at, though. That "self preservation" thing. That's another topic for another time. :)
There is a good article here regarding this man and this incident. Read the entire article. It isn't very long. Pay special attention to the last paragraph.
E-6 with 11 years of service. 4th combat tour. Some have served more time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some less. Some none at all. Wife and 2 kids.
He will be charged with murder and other crimes in the next few days. The charges will be levied in Afghanistan. I don't suppose that's unusual. The Afghan government has already stated that they want this soldier brought to "justice" in Afghanistan. They don't want this soldier taken out of their country to be tried in America. They do not trust the Americans to come to the right verdict in America. Afghanistan is a different world. They don't do things the way we do.
I believe that it will now become a political circus. We don't want to piss our Afghan allies off any more than we already have. We have to satisfy their need for justice. It's their country, their citizens who were murdered, after all.
I can see the trial taking place in Afghanistan. They won't listen to any defense regarding mental illness. They want blood. That's the way it works. I'm not saying whether that is right or wrong. I'm not judging that at all.
No person in their right mind would do what he did.
I'm afraid that if it happens this way, if he is tried by Courts Martial in Afghanistan, he will be found guilty. No extenuating circumstances. No insanity defense. Guilty plain and simple. What he did was wrong by any normal standards.
Except that we continue to send these people over there time and time again to satisfy a political need. This man's actions, no matter how abhorrent, no matter how uncivilized, no matter how wrong, are an indictment of the system that put him there. Like the psychiatrist in the article said... His leaders knew or should have known that there was something wrong. He didn't snap. He berserked.
Again, I firmly believe that what this soldier did was wrong, based on what little any of us know about the incident.
I'm concerned that this soldier's fate is already sealed. And that it is a political decision. Our government is going to send a message on this one. They are going to appease our Afghan allies.
10 years at war in that country. The same small group of people serving. Multiple tours. War and more war. We have no idea how it's going over there. I'm sure that there are successes, but we rarely, if ever, hear about those. Whenever an American soldier screws up we hear about it.
I had a young Second Lieutenant who became my platoon leader straight out of Officer Branch Basic during my second tour in Germany. I was the Platoon Sergeant at the time and we became friends but lost touch after I came back home. He retired as a Colonel and then became a civilian contractor. He is back in Afghanistan right now. (3rd or 4th time) He's there for the money. Wife, kids, grandkids back home in Ohio. Actually, I think he's there for something more than the money. He's a believer. Always has been. Anyway, he emailed me one morning last month and said that two American officers were executed in an Afghan government building. Shot in the back of the head. This was the day after the koran burnings. A few hours later it was all over the news. He said it's getting crazy over there. And dangerous. He never said that before. That it was dangerous. He's too old to be doing the shit he's doing :)
Anyway...
I have a bad feeling about this one. I believe that Eddie Slovik was the last American soldier to be executed by the US Military. Desertion. If he wasn't the last, he was one of the last. Doesn't matter. The only soldier executed for anything other than rape or murder since the War Between The States. Message sent.
102 soldiers were executed during WWII for rape or murder. 35 in WWI. Slovik is the one you hear about. Not that it matters.
You have no idea how much I hope I'm wrong about this. No idea.
I'm torn. I don't know what to think. Don't even know why I think this way.
He went through the wire. He pulled the trigger. He set the fires. He alone is responsible for his actions.
Or, is he?
Your thoughts?
Stay safe.
I'm angry. This has really set me off.
The soldier who went outside the wire in the middle of the night and murdered 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children...
The first thought that went through my mind is that you don't just go out and kill non-combatants. Every soldier knows that. There are so many reasons why it's wrong.
Then I thought about how I would feel if it happened here, to my family. Not pleasant to consider. How would I respond? What "justice" would I wish for?
I have no idea what was going through his mind. I can't even imagine. He was serving his fourth combat tour. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often when soldiers are forced to serve combat tours again and again. It has to wear on a person. It has to change a person. Yes, I realize that they're all volunteers. Perhaps that's part of the problem. Fairly decent pay and benefits. (not great, I know) A shitty job market and a shitty economy here at home. Whats a guy to do, right?
He volunteered for sniper training after he returned from his last deployment to Iraq. He passed the psych eval for that training. He then suffered a brain injury, recovered from it, and again passed a psych eval.
We still had a draft when I served. Perhaps we should have it again? Spread the load. Share the love. "You get lower quality soldiers with bad attitudes who don't want to be there so they don't perform". Yep, some of them. You have some of those in the volunteer ranks, too. The vast majority shoot back when being shot at, though. That "self preservation" thing. That's another topic for another time. :)
There is a good article here regarding this man and this incident. Read the entire article. It isn't very long. Pay special attention to the last paragraph.
E-6 with 11 years of service. 4th combat tour. Some have served more time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some less. Some none at all. Wife and 2 kids.
He will be charged with murder and other crimes in the next few days. The charges will be levied in Afghanistan. I don't suppose that's unusual. The Afghan government has already stated that they want this soldier brought to "justice" in Afghanistan. They don't want this soldier taken out of their country to be tried in America. They do not trust the Americans to come to the right verdict in America. Afghanistan is a different world. They don't do things the way we do.
I believe that it will now become a political circus. We don't want to piss our Afghan allies off any more than we already have. We have to satisfy their need for justice. It's their country, their citizens who were murdered, after all.
I can see the trial taking place in Afghanistan. They won't listen to any defense regarding mental illness. They want blood. That's the way it works. I'm not saying whether that is right or wrong. I'm not judging that at all.
No person in their right mind would do what he did.
I'm afraid that if it happens this way, if he is tried by Courts Martial in Afghanistan, he will be found guilty. No extenuating circumstances. No insanity defense. Guilty plain and simple. What he did was wrong by any normal standards.
Except that we continue to send these people over there time and time again to satisfy a political need. This man's actions, no matter how abhorrent, no matter how uncivilized, no matter how wrong, are an indictment of the system that put him there. Like the psychiatrist in the article said... His leaders knew or should have known that there was something wrong. He didn't snap. He berserked.
Again, I firmly believe that what this soldier did was wrong, based on what little any of us know about the incident.
I'm concerned that this soldier's fate is already sealed. And that it is a political decision. Our government is going to send a message on this one. They are going to appease our Afghan allies.
10 years at war in that country. The same small group of people serving. Multiple tours. War and more war. We have no idea how it's going over there. I'm sure that there are successes, but we rarely, if ever, hear about those. Whenever an American soldier screws up we hear about it.
I had a young Second Lieutenant who became my platoon leader straight out of Officer Branch Basic during my second tour in Germany. I was the Platoon Sergeant at the time and we became friends but lost touch after I came back home. He retired as a Colonel and then became a civilian contractor. He is back in Afghanistan right now. (3rd or 4th time) He's there for the money. Wife, kids, grandkids back home in Ohio. Actually, I think he's there for something more than the money. He's a believer. Always has been. Anyway, he emailed me one morning last month and said that two American officers were executed in an Afghan government building. Shot in the back of the head. This was the day after the koran burnings. A few hours later it was all over the news. He said it's getting crazy over there. And dangerous. He never said that before. That it was dangerous. He's too old to be doing the shit he's doing :)
Anyway...
I have a bad feeling about this one. I believe that Eddie Slovik was the last American soldier to be executed by the US Military. Desertion. If he wasn't the last, he was one of the last. Doesn't matter. The only soldier executed for anything other than rape or murder since the War Between The States. Message sent.
102 soldiers were executed during WWII for rape or murder. 35 in WWI. Slovik is the one you hear about. Not that it matters.
You have no idea how much I hope I'm wrong about this. No idea.
I'm torn. I don't know what to think. Don't even know why I think this way.
He went through the wire. He pulled the trigger. He set the fires. He alone is responsible for his actions.
Or, is he?
Your thoughts?
Stay safe.
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