You heard it first on MilPub

This morning, while enjoying our coffee, the view of the beautiful Agean and reading our emails and news, Mrs Av looked up from her tablet and said, "This article from Reuters sounds just like something you told me that one of your friends on that military blog said a while back."

And so, being a dutiful husband, I switched from reading an delightful email from a high school classmate to my Reuters app, and lo and behold, found that Bill Schneider was saying what either Publius or FDChief had said a few years back.  The GOP's reaction to losing a Presidential election is to immediately begin trying to "nullify" the President, except in Schneider's terms, paint the President as "illegitimate".


In Bill Clinton's case, Ken Starr spend millions to finally expose a truly criminal attempt by Clinton to cover up that he got a blowjob from a White House intern.  Yup, lying about a consensual, adulterous blowjob is a high crime or misdemeanor worthy of tying up the Congress for an impeachment proceeding.  I'm sure that Baylor coeds wished that sexual assault by football players rose to the same level of concern from Mr Starr.

Barak Obama faced the same nullification attempts from the GOP. First was the "Birther" movement.  Then, of course, was Mitch McConnell's infamous statement that it was the first priority of the GOP Senate to insure that Obama was a one term President.  And, of course, the ludicrous claim by the GOP that a President cannot nominate a Supreme Court Justice in the final year of his term.

And now, we have nullification before the election is even held.  John McCain has publicly stated that his party “will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were President, would put up.”  In short, the GOP has openly declared that the legitimate, Constitutional requirement that a President will nominate SCOTUS Justices is null and void when that President is a Democrat.  So it is not the merits of the candidate that should be considered, but the person making the nomination that is the deciding factor.

And, of course, there is the growing chorus of GOP claims that if the GOP candidate loses the election, it is because the system is "rigged", and voter fraud stole it, but if the GOP candidate wins, well that's because there was no fraud.  Claims from the masters of voter suppression and gerrymandering.   Will Ken Starr return from retirement and shame to investigate her if she wins?

So, if Clinton wins, the stage to nullify her Presidency  has already been set.

What a great country.

Watching the Wheels

--Alice considers the matter

But I don't want to go among mad people,
said Alice.
Oh, you can't help that, said the cat. 
--Alice in Wonderland,
 Lewis Carroll 

Ah, people ask me questions
Lost in confusion
Well, I tell them there's no problem
Only solutions 
--Watching the Wheels,
John Lennon 

Our time is limited, we forget that
--Anomalisa (2015)
 ______________________

Subtitle: Lisa in Wonderland.

This week The NYT reported above the fold:

Hillary Clinton Assails James Comey, Calling Email Decision 'Deeply Troubling' By PATRICK HEALY and JONATHAN MARTIN Mrs. Clinton's campaign opened a coordinated attack on Mr. Comey, the F.B.I. director, accusing him of smearing her with innuendo late in the race.

Hillary Clinton assails the Director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and calls his actions, "deeply troubling", as though she is a person of some legitimacy. As though the "investigation" is the problem, and not the problem.

As though even the President of the United States, if he comes under investigation, has the right to shut down a legal investigation into possible criminality associated with his person. (See former President Richard M. Nixon vis-a-vis Leon Jaworski.)

The takeaway is clear: The next President calls "foul" on a police agency for investigating her possible malfeasance. Mr. Comey's action is basically like a gnat on a cow's patootie. A "swoosh" of the Clinton-DNC machine's tail, and it goes away. A done deal.

Just like CNN's Donna Brazile got thrown under the bus for secretly funneling debate questions to Mrs. Clinton, so Mr. Comey's time may be drawing nigh. Lots of people have to exit stage right to pave the way for Mrs. Clinton's ascendency to the Presidency.

Understand: it is not the actuality of the investigation and the very real possibility of serious wrongdoing on Mrs. Clinton's behalf which should trouble any of us. It is the temerity of the F.B.I. director to do his job.

Not allowable! Now, of course, compare Clinton's entitled posture to that of an excoriated Trump who would not say if he would concede the election if he were to lose when asked the question by Mrs. Clinton in a debate.

Mr. Trump is skewered as being a dangerous obstructionist to the result that must occur; he is, in so many words, off his rocker. And of course, the same question is never put to Mrs. Clinton, because we all know she will be/is the next President, right? No election needed.

For perspective, if Mr. Trump is accused of groping by a much lesser preponderance of evidence than that held by Mr. Comey, he simply IS a groper. And that's about the baddest thing a person can be, in this time of Nirvana. Q.E.D.

This is because he has the temerity to run for the highest office in the land without the correct associations.

My liberal friends point out that candidate Trump feels the press is against him, therefore he is paranoid, therefore he is mentally ill, therefore, he is a fascist. It all makes perfect sense to them.

I am reminded of the saying, “Is it paranoia if they really are out to get you?”

I suddenly had a vision of myself like Heinlein's Stranger from a Strange Land, dropped into this country one year ago. I envision myself with antennae with golf balls on the ends; I eat only a food spread, like Nutella or Vegemite -- straight from the jar.

I am familiar with the history of great nations over the past 200 years. I am told to make sense of the news coverage of the U.S. presidential campaign:

It is clear that a man named “Trump” is an unwelcome intruder to the process. There is only one electable candidate, Mrs. Clinton. 

It appears that Mr. Trump has her by the snatch, like an Iron Maiden, and she is trying to escape. He is large and threatening, like King Kong, and the press wonders how he was “created”, much like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster.

He is a Bad Man ® -- a title given to other national leaders who were “taken out” over the previous 13 years. Against the odds, he has crawled out of the primordial ooze to become his party’s candidate (though mostly, they do not recognize him.)

If elected, he will upset the international clock. Planes will fly backwards and the dead will emerge from their caskets, ready to danse macabre in celebration of Klaatu.

The great horror will occur at his swearing in, when he will unzip his human carapace and reveal himself to be one of David Icke’s Lizard People. (Yup, I’m ready to rack muck for Gawker or HuffPo; no pay, thanks.)

Only the voters who favor him see him. However, they are being vigorously prodded to see the light and understand that they cannot vote for him.

This is obviously a time of revanchist goddesses, led by a matriarch with an unfortunate stridulous quality to her voice. The fact that there is only one viable candidate is reminiscent of Stalin's USSR. Oddly, this nation fought a 60+ year Cold War against that Soviet system. 

Well, that was scary. When I re-inhabit my body, I see a country in denial. They have surmounted the last great civil rights barrier in 2015 when gay people achieved the right to marry. There are no more Great Rights Issues to be won. And yet, the country is a far piece from Nirvana.

That unrealized dream may be what irks them the most, and that is why there must be a Trump scapegoat.

So the crusaders must now turn their walrus tears to the inhabitants of other nations. They must act as if the Civil Rights era was a great success. 

Somehow a person called Donald Trump made it through the chicken wire. He is a threat to the simulacrum of the dream, and so he must be crushed. 

Presumptive-President Clinton proclaims in her mincing, screeling voice that she will stomp all over wid her "nasty feet". The image of her and BFF Liz Warren tripping the light fantastic in their sensible shoes is almost too much.

Poor Lisa, in her red, bill-backwards “Trump hat”. Poor, provincial Lisa, drinking the berry Kool Aid. Actually not, thanks.

It is just all very strange to me.

[cross-posted @ Rangeragainstwar.]

Help with historical comparisons

Recently, I got done reading this story about the US government sending 1.4 million weapons to Iraq and Afghanistan in the past decade plus.  While the authors acknowledge that there are conflicting accounts on the exact total, they've got a pretty decent rationale for those numbers.

What I'm most curious about is if folks here would know if that's historically a lot or a little.  Did we ship more to Vietnam for our war there?  Or to Afghanistan and Iraq before our wars there?  Or more to Europe during or after either of the World Wars?  Or if this is a constant amount that varies in where it is directed?

There's a number of historians in this group, so if you have advice on where to find the information, that would also be of use.  I'm thinking specifically about small arms mostly because that's the comparison point, but context on heavier weapons too is welcome.

Thanks folks.

In the Beginning

--Alice in Wonderland,

John Tenniel  

And we'll never be royals

It don't run in our blood

That kind of lux just ain't for us,

we crave a different kind of buzz
--Royals, Lorde

 Then with the boiler about to explode

from eight years of blather and neglect,

Humphery's cold-war liberals could have

fled down the ratlines and left the disaster

to whoever inherited it 

--The Great Shark Hunt,

Hunter S. Thompson 

Television is not the truth!

Television is a God-damned amusement park!

We're in the boredom-killing business! 

--Network (1976)
______________________

After a year of malignant hauteur vis-a-vis candidate Trump the talking heads ask in play-befuddlement of the Republican Presidential candidate: “How did HE happen?”

In their arrogance, the press created a simplistic constituent of angry and bigoted American bumpkins wielding pitchforks across the land who supposedly comprise the majority of Trump’s supporters.  Presumably feeble-minded and easily suckered, their sad domain is the “flyover states”.

Surely fools all, they will fall in embarrassment when we knock their candidate around a bit. Surely he cannot stand up to a "real" candidate, like Mrs. Clinton -- "real" today meaning a lawyer, someone who has earned his bona fides by treading the muck of Foggy Bottom.

That is the sort you may vote for, because, well, they are practiced in the sleazy craft of treading muck, and politics is a dirty business. Not for the likes of you and I. It is heresy to think it might be otherwise . . . and yet, here it is.

The press would have you think the poor sots who think otherwise are the people candidate Obama disdained in 2008 as the “guns and Religion crowd”. (Ironically, then-candidate Clinton called Mr. Obama, "elitist and out of touch" for his disdain.) And those who would feign shock at Mr. Trump’s success? 

They would do well to look to Mr. Obama for the germ of candidate Trump's success.

At a 2011 White House Correspondents’ Association Press Dinner, President Obama slapped candidate Trump down in front of a televised world audience. Lauded as "cool" by the cognoscenti, it was actually an evisceration.

President Obama did not deliver his remarks in the spirit of peer-to-peer bonhomie which such occasions demand. Obama dismissed Mr. Trump in his entirety.

It seemed Mr. Obama (to paraphrase the man's own words) held "antipathy to folks who aren't like him."

This additional moment of un-Presidential hubris consolidated the phenomenon that would deny the nomination to 16 party-sponsored GOP candidates. Trump was supposed to be the provocateur; he was not a favored party son.

So what else has enabled Mr. Trump’s very credible bid for the White House -- aside from the very real sense of deracination among a large contingent of U.S. citizens? 

Hatred bit the Good Liberals on the ass. Personal animosity has no place in national discourse, yet the press's covered has been deeply personal and mean-spirited, often malicious and contemptible. (How someone who produces such grotesque hatred as a Charles Pierce can sleep at night mystifies.)

Further, the attacks have been relentless, fairly toothless, and a sort of “vile fatigue” has set in for many who resent their arms being twisted into voting for what they are told is the only one viable candidate.

Much as bombs and terrorist attacks have become background noise to our daily life, so the single-minded disdain of Mr. Trump is a simmering constant in the media. For a thinking person, this enforced press agenda rankles.

The harridans of the press may talk good, but their bought-and-paid for agenda is transparent to a disillusioned populace. The only ones who follow the bait without suspicion are those inclined to believe as they do a priori – the Party Men.

The President (a haughty skinny Boss Tweed), Mrs. Obama (an angry disparaging one) and Joe Biden (who does what he’s told) have joined in swinging at the Trump piñata on candidate Clinton’s behalf. None convince because we know they have not done what they said they would. The “hopey-changy” thing lies lifeless, like roadkill on the MSR.

(Noteworthy: former President Bill Clinton is in hull defilade, improving his overhead cover, just enjoying life from his Harlem offices.)

And in a sense, perhaps the essential difference between the candidates is expressed in Mr. Clinton’s demeanor: Mr. Trump exudes an enthusiasm born of his success. Contrast that with Mrs. Clinton’s sour, entitled didacticism.

Who feels more like America 2016? Mrs. Clinton, the 1910 school marm hypocritically dispensing recitations from her McGuffey reader ("Do as I say, not as I do"), or Donald Trump, the reality show Boss in a world lived in the simulacra of the hyperreal. You decide.

We are 14 years into a war that leads nowhere, and bodes no good for the U.S. (aside from padding the pockets of military contractors.)

The U.S. supports Iraqi militias and calls them an Army. It fights and Army (ISIS) and calls them terrorists. Our foreign policy understands only war – its continuance and expansion.

We have a Homeland Security apparatus that secures nothing, and we have a Homeland devoid of democratic principles.

Is it any wonder the people want something different?

 [cross-posted @ Rangeragainstwar.]

Sakharov Prize

Nadia Murad and Lamiya Asi Bashar have been awarded the Sakharov prize by the European Parliament.  Nadia and Lamiya are Yazidis both from the same village of Kocho near Sinjar and who both escaped from ISIL slavery.  Lamiya was blinded by a mine explosion during her escape.  The two of them have been speaking out internationally against human slavery and ISIL cruelty and are unofficial spokespersons for the thousands of Yazidi women still in chains.  The wannabee Caliph al-Baghdadi has issued a fatwa against them and threatened them with re-enslavement or death.  In getting the Sakharov award they join the ranks of Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Malala Yousafzai.  Lofty company, but they deserve it IMHO.

http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/10/27/courageous-women-nadia-murad-and-lamiya-aji-bashar-honored-with-top-e-u-humanitarian-award/

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sakharovprize/en/home/the-prize.html

I never understood the attempted genocide of the Yazidis.  The claim by Salafists was that they were devil worshippers.  Not true, and it boggles the mind to think that in the 21^st century that anyone would resort to mass murder, mass kidnappings and rape whether true or not.   Although Yazidis are not <i>”people of the book”</i> mentioned by Mohammed, they are monothiests.  But then all of the world’s monotheistic religions have been murdering each other for millennia.  I am reverting to the beliefs of my grandmother – Jesus maybe, but also leaving tobacco or trinkets or moonshine at the base of trees, in creeks and rivers, and on graves of loved ones.  Color me pagan.

BTW, Yazidi women and even their mothers and grandmothers are fighting back:   

http://www.alfredyaghobzadehphoto.com/-/galleries/gallery/iraq-yazedis/yazidi-women-fighters

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-in-iraq-the-women-kurd-and-yazidi-fighters-that-put-the-fear-into-jihadis-because-theyll-rob-a6977761.html

Group Grope

Dope, peace, magic

and gods in the tree trunks

and a group grope, baby! 

--Group Grope,
 The Village Fugs

Had we but world enough, and time,

This coyness, Lady, were no crime 

--To His Coy Mistress,
 Andrew Marvell

My God, he was like an octopus.

Hands all over the place

--The Gift,

The Velvet Underground

___________________

This Sunday's New York Times Travel section uncovered a threat to female airline passengers so great, the paper was moved to run not just one, but TWO, articles on the matter.

Since it WAS Sunday when I read this -- and one ought operate from a principle of charity -- one imagines the paper ran these out of a spirit of public service, for surely the print taken up by this imminent threat was not cheap.

In a word, Donald J. Trump's small but roving hands may show up in an airline seat near you shortly -- BEWARES, ladies!

Just to make sure you know (in case you have been in Timbuktu): there have been sinister "allegations that Donald J. Trump once groped a passenger" [quote -- see clips below]. I dunno about you, but as a ladyfolk, I'm feeling a darn site better knowing that my national paper of note is hard on the job working for my safety and erudition, right?

Yup.

UPDATE

Recent Incidents Put a New Focus on Sexual Assault on Airplanes

By KAREN SCHWARTZ

Recent sexual assaults — and allegations that Donald J. Trump once groped a passenger — have prompted questions about safety on airline flights.

UPDATE

How to Protect Yourself From Sexual Assault on a Plane

By KAREN SCHWARTZ

To minimize the risk of being sexually assaulted on a plane, book an aisle seat and talk to a flight attendant if someone is making you uncomfortable.

But Ranger wonders: after airline passengers have been pre-frisked so robustly by the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) mashers, how would one know the difference between an offense and a defense grope?

After all, some of those TSA handlers have some hella good fun in executing their appointed duties (all for Uncle Sam, mind.)

Taking people's wallets and loose change, belts and shoes, putting them in plastic boxes and running them through conveyor belts, pat downs and wand scanners. Day in and day out, peering closely at the bodily outlines of the obese and the skinny.

It must be a calling, like being a proctologist, perhaps.

Well, it's like being a member of the government (which they are). And like Mr. Reagan said, Don't worry -- we're here to help you.

Just sayin'.

--Lisa & Jim

[cross-posted @ rangeragainstwar.]

Douglas Munro

US Coast Guard Cutter 'Munro' just successfully completed a first round of acceptance trials.  She is named after Coast Guard Signalman 1^st Class (SM1c) Douglas Munro, who was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry in World War II.  Munro was serving as a coxswain in a Higgins Boat and was killed in action at Guadalcanal 74 years ago last month.  The US Navy took in a lot of Coast Guardsmen during WW2 as they had a wealth of experience piloting small boats in the surf.  Most Navy Sailors were used to blue water and usually the only experience they had as coxswains in small boats were in relatively quiet harbors when the big ship was at anchor.

Munro was lead coxswain in a group of ten Higgins Boats that rescued a 500 man element of First Battalion Seventh Marines (1/7) who were outnumbered and surrounded by 4000 plus Japanese at a beach west of the Matanikau River, Guadalcanal.  It was Rifle Companies only with no heavy machine guns and no mortars and out of range of artillery support.  Chesty Puller was the Battalion Commander of 1/7.  But he was east of the river commanding an ad hoc two battalion task force and separated from those that were surrounded.  With casualties to his comm section, Chesty stood up on the beach wig-wagging with signal flags to the USS Monssen (DD-436) for naval gunfire and directed that fire support himself acting as his own Forward Observer. 

SM1c Munro volunteered to lead a small force of ten Higgins Boats into the beach.  He brought those boats in-shore under heavy enemy fire and got the evacuation started while covering with his machine guns on his boat.  After the majority of the Marines had got aboard, Munro saw that the Marine rear guard was having difficulty embarking due to continued intense fighting.  Sizing up the situation, Munro deployed his and other boats into position to cover the rear guard.  By doing that he exposed himself to even more intense enemy fire and was mortally wounded.  He was 22 years old.  His final words were: ”Did they get off?”.

Munro is buried in his hometown, Cle Elum, in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State.  Every September 27^th many Coast Guardsmen and Marines and Cle Elum residents gather at Laurel Hill Memorial Park to honor him.   I served briefly with 1/7 myself many years later in Vietnam and should have gone to the memorial last month but was not able to make it.  I hope to be there next year for the 75^th anniversary of his heroic rescue.  The new Cutter 'Munro' will initially be stationed out of Seattle when she has finished all her sea trials.