He Knew

July 1968 - six months after The Tet Offensive put the lie to Vietnam, and 3 months after MLK was killed, and about 40 days after RFK was killed, and kinda in the middle of another whole year of some big bad shit going down in USAmerica Inc. 

LBJ's son-in-law, Chuck Robb, was serving as commander of a combat rifle company in Vietnam. Johnson had asked him to send tape-recorded messages describing what was happening on the ground in what a lot of us came to call "Johnson's War".  This picture is said to convey the anguish of a president as he learns the truth about how political policies play out in the lives of real people.

It's always about more than anybody wants to tell us it's about.  So included in the mix is Johnson's anguish over being remembered as the Accidental President needing to ride the coattails of two dead Kennedys, while struggling to come out of their shadows; the guy who lost Southeast Asia, built concentration camps for black people, and made it almost impossible for Dick Nixon to lose in November of that year.

That's not to ignore some truly big-fuckin'-deal things like Medicare and Civil Rights and Public Education and other good things as well.  I'm just trying to remind myself to see the whole thing - or as much of it as possible; to go back and look at it again once in a while, because there's probably something I missed - like not remembering ever hearing about what was playing on the tape recorder in that picture.

Wasted Weaponry

An unused weapon is a useless weapon.  Could we just stop fuckin' around with this shit now please?

And maybe do something with all that junk that might actually be of some use to somebody?

We really do deserve better than what we're getting out of all this.

It's Just Business

Today's Toon

All Syria All The Time

I'm not gonna say none of this crap about Syria matters - it does.  But when I look at what passes for debate in congress and all over TV and Radio and Newspapers and the Blogosphere, I'll say none of that matters any more than pissin' in your wetsuit.

Nothing anybody says has anything to do with what's really going on because Obama's not gonna tell us everything he knows - or thinks he knows.

Kerry got himself all worked up - to the point where the expression on his face almost changed (I know, right?).  Anyway, the guy's runnin' around all crazy, yelling stating calmly in his best clear-but-stern-Brahmin-esque voice, "I'm not Colin Powell; I am not Colin Powell, dammit".

Meanwhile, Huckleberry Closet-Case and his best old buddy Grampy McDumfuck wanna make sure everybody knows they're on top of things, and that no matter what happens, America is still large and in charge; and 1986 is gonna be a great year for us - amiright!?!!  USA! USA! USA!

I'd call this a circus inside a circle jerk wrapped in a cluster fuck, but that'd be an insult to all 3.

So here's the deal - this is my considered opinion and what I think I should get paid top dollar for suggesting the Prez should do:

Everybody knows 2 basic things.  One is that Assad's gotta go. The other one is that Assad knows he either "wins" this thing or he dies.  Winning is pretty unlikely no matter what happens, but he can't win even in the short-term if he doesn't have big powerful friends - which he thinks he has in China and Russia.

So here's the play:  Obama has to figure out how to get Putin to dispose of Assad.  And actually, he has to get Putin to believe that by taking Assad out, Russia makes strategic gains in the middle east.  That's what Vlad wants after all.  So Putin jacks Assad, and the ensuing mess is Putin's problem.  But Putin knows all that, so...

...long story short - that's the setup, and here's the sting:  We knock off Assad and make sure Putin's fingerprints are all over the caper - a bit of Polonium-210 residue oughta do it.

Better yet - we get Bejing to do it, and they make sure Putin gets the blame.

Or maybe we could get the Israelis to get the Ugandans to get the North Koreans to get the Chinese to get the Russians...

Where's Curtis Lemay when you really need him?

Here We Go Again

From The Guardian:

In a sign that Obama believes he has the legal authority, independently of Congress, to launch a strike, Carney said that allowing the chemical weapons attack to go unanswered would be a "threat to the United States".

It's not at all clear what we're fixin' to do, but when the White House intones a certain combination of magic words (eg: "threat to the US"), then it's pretty clear we're fixin' to do somethin'.  And never mind that some asshole Syrian colonel used poison gas to settle an old score (what? it's as likely as anything else we've heard).  The point is that it poses practically no serious "threat to the US".

(boiler plate): It's never about what they tell us it's about, so we have to assume we don't know what Obama knows.

Let's hope Obama knows a shitload more than I do; and that what he knows includes the very real probability that Assad might have something Russian or Chinese up his sleeve.  A piss-ant like Assad usually won't do what we tell him not to do unless he's got some real backup from some heavy friends.

Obama said he'd do something if illegal weapons were used, and now he has to follow through.  But if he goes in there with a big swingin' dick, he's likely to get a very rude surprise.  Since that's not Obama's style, maybe we can expect to hear about whatever we're planning to do after the fact - and it'll be like Osama bin Laden all over again.

Counting The Costs

We've been hearing a lot lately about the costs of our Stupid Little War in Iraq:
$2.2 trillion - which is the low end of the estimates.
4,500 dead American Uniforms
32,000 wounded - 1,000 Amputees
3,400 dead American civilian contractors
190,000 dead Iraqis of all despcriptions (minimum BTW - could be way more)

That first number - the 2+ TRILLION dollars - that's just for starters.  That's what some folks think we'll end up spending over the next decade or two.  But y'know what?  We can anticipate spending a fuck-load more than that; and for a fuck-load longer time, because we still haven't stopped paying certain survivor benefits dating back to the CIVIL-FUCKING-WAR.

Per NY Daily News (so take it with a good dose of NaCl):

An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records found that the government is still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War veterans — 148 years after the conflict ended.

This bit could definitely be an example of Rupert's Typical Puffery (2 people are getting about $900/year total), designed to make "the gubmint" look bad, but I think the real point here is that once we start this shit, it practically never ends.  We're still paying 50 Large for shit that happened in the Spanish American war, and that one ended 114 years ago.

Current yearly costs:

World War I = $20 Million

World War II = $5 Billion

Korean War = $2.8 Billion

Vietnam War = $22 Billion

In the end, we'll also get to deal with whatever we left behind (and we'll get to deal with it long after the assholes most responsible for it are dead and buried with full honors) - from Amer-Iraqi babies to a totally fucked up environment because of Depleted Uranium and whatever else we haven't been told about, but will likely be denied by the Pentagon for decades.

Somewhere along the line, we have to figure out how to settle our differences without bashing each other over the head with sticks and rocks.  This shit just ain't worth it.

About The Drone Thing

As usual, Hayes gets pretty close to what it's about.



The main thing to remember is that process counts.  The US was set up to put Process in front of outcome.  If we take care in how we get to the conclusion, we stand a much better chance of getting to the right conclusion.  That seems pretty important when we're trying to figure out who's next in line for a Hellfire Anal Probe.

We gotta get this one right, and I'm not convinced Obama's gonna get there for us.  Seems like he's willing to do some good Democrat things (equal rights, gun regulations, etc) but just as you start to think he's really pulling in the right direction, he cuts back and does something like this extra-legal assassination-by-drone shit.

I guess I'm just really hoping he's trying to rearrange the legalities - not to make it easier to blast somebody we don't like - but to be a little more sure that we blast the right guy(?), and to be a little surer about knowing who pulled the trigger and why they targeted any given dude.

Also hoping this isn't just another cynical move to defang the usual Repub attacks on Dems as being insufficiently BadAss.

That Pussy, Obama

He's just a typical Librul wuss - always walkin' around all timid and uncomfortable when it comes to knockin' shit over with his dick.  Except when you look at his actual record of  fuckin' up the bad guys.

From AP/WaPo, via Balloon Juice:
(even DumFux News has this at the top of their page this morning)