We Need To Steer Our Own Ship

Bernie Sanders talks about “Citizens United” in an interview with Salon. Like many in the political discussion, he claims that it is the root cause of political polarization, that it is catastrophic for American governance, and that this nation cannot be governed until it is overturned.

“Yes. I am not unconfident that it will be overturned. And I’ll tell you why, because the vast majority of the American people do not agree with the Republican leadership that buying elections constitutes free speech. Very few people agree with that. So it’s not just progressives like me, it’s not just moderates, it is conservatives as well. We just put up something on our Facebook which came from Barry Goldwater talking about the same issue.

So the bottom line is, I think the vast majority of the American people believe that we need real campaign finance reform and that billionaires should not be allowed to buy elections.”

He then proceeds to debunk his own argument and embrace the claim that I have made many times, which is that the voting public can render “Citizens United” irrelevant by simply ignoring the television spot advertisements that the money pays for, letting the rich bastards waste their money as much as they want to, and voting as informed citizens.

“The answer is yes, and I’ll tell you what makes me optimistic: Neil Abercrombie is a friend of mine, [so] I’m not happy to tell you this. Neil is the governor of Hawaii. He outspent his opponent by 10 to 1, and he lost his primary bid by 2 to 1.

If you look at Eric Cantor: Eric Cantor had so much money he couldn’t even spend it, and as you know, he lost his primary bid. If you look at Andrew Cuomo, he ran against a candidate [Zephyr Teachout] who nobody knew, who had no money. She won half the counties in New York state in the recent primary. [Cuomo] had all the name recognition and all the money and she had very little.

So I think what we are seeing now is a profound anger at the corporate establishment, at the political establishment, at the media establishment. I think people want change. So to answer your question, yes, money is important, I don’t deny it for a moment. But I think people are paying less and less attention to ugly, 30-second ads and are prepared to hear from people who want real change in this country.”

Add to that list Carley Fiorina, who tried to purchase a Senate seat and Meg Whitman, who tried to purchase the governorship of the state of California in the 2010 election. Neither one of them even came within hand grenade distance of succeeding.

We need to get off of our fainting couches over this silly legal decision, quit demanding that the government take care of this issue for us, and simply take charge of our own damned government, as the constitution and existing laws fully permit us to do.

Death on the Dirt Track

For those of you who haven't heard, the New York State Grand Jury determined that Tony Stewart will not face criminal charges for the incident in which his car struck another driver who was out of his car and standing in the racing lane during a dirt track race. A factor contributing to their decision was that the driver who was killed had a level of marijuana in his blood which was "clearly sufficient to impair judgement."

Like alcohol, marijuana is legal in some places, but one should be aware that you use it at your own risk.

New Definition for "Terrorist"

I suspect Obama is going to need to form a coalition to stop the Crimson Tide, and he will need "boots on the ground" to do it, and probably heavy armor. There was a certain Keystone Kops flavor to the first half, but even essentially giving up three touchdowns to the Florida defense, Alabama still won the game 42-21. Well, yes, Florida's offense did score twice; on two drives after turnovers, of 16 and 31 yards, totalling five plays.

LSU is rebuilding, especially in the defensive secondary, and lost to a really good Mississippi State team. At times I wondered if the Tigers were even awake back there, but... The less said about San Diego State the better.

Why I'm Not Boycotting Burger King

The guy who runs the local Burger King in my neighborhood is a local businessman. He bought that franchise some dozen years ago and spends about 12 hours per day in it. He spends his day behind the counter hustling orders and directing his employees. He comes out to bus tables, clean the drink machine, and do everything else that his employees do. It is clear that his employees like him. He is friendly to his customers and thanks them for coming in.

He invested his life savings to own his own business and needs the income from the store in order to pay his mortgage and feed his family. I've seen him leave work driving a six year old car.

This is a typical Burger King store, since 99% of Burger King fast food restaurants are not owned by the corporation which bears the name, but are owned by individual small businessmen who hold franchises to own their own businesses. I will not boycott these hard working people in a self righteous expression of anger over the action of some faceless corporation over which they have no control.

"Tell Me How This Ends"

The title quotation is attributed to General David Petraeus but, as with most of his wisdom, it does not originate with him. It comes from studies performed by the military following the war in Vietnam to assure that we do not get dragged into quagmires of endless war again, and became an element of the Powell doctrine, in which he says that we should never enter a war without having a clear “exit strategy.”

Of course that went by the board in 2002 with George W. Bush, when they thought that Iraq would throw flowers at our tanks and that no exit would be required because we would just be passing through. The eventual exit was based on at least a pretense that the country had reached a position of stability; a pretense which has now been thoroughly debunked.

We are exiting Afghanistan later this year, for no reason that I can discern other than that Obama has decided it is time to leave. Our original entry was supposedly for the purpose of capturing Osama bin Laden, but we failed in that effort within a couple of months. We then were supposedly driving out Al Queda, which we effectively did within a year, at which point our mission seemingly changed to defeating the Taliban. No one can even really pretend that we have done that, but we are leaving anyway.

So now we are starting a war to destruction with the Islamic State, and are not even talking about when or how that one ends, other than admitting that if it ends at all it will be “a long time” before it does. We don’t even have any assurance that it will end at all.

So “how does this end” is no longer a question to which an answer is required before we enter a new war, it is a question which we no longer ask.

How Did They Do That?

Either how did the Chargers beat the Seahawks, or how did they lose to the Cardinals? Wtf? It was, in any case, a great football game. The Chargers made me nervous, though, with the way that, while controlling the ball on offense for 42 minutes against only 18 for the Seahawks, they allowed the Seahawks to hang aroung close on the scoreboard. With that kind of ball control, the difference in score should have been greater than a mere six points when 1-1/2 minutes remained in the game.

The Chargers defense attacked like a pack of wolves on a crippled moose, and I hope John Pagano made a note of how that worked out. He has a tendency to "sit on" a six point lead, which not infrequently causes that lead to disappear.

Another "Long War," Part 3

Obama seems finally to have united the nation, having come up with a plan for destroying ISIS which absolutely everyone thinks is utterly stupid. Since he announced it Wednesday, I have not read one single article in support of his plan, and have read dozens which slam it for various reasons ranging from the plan not being sufficiently violent to the fact that it exists at all.

Rosa Brooks punks Obama for violating his promise to avoid “dumb wars” and lists several reasons why this war is even more dumb than was George Bush’s Iraq war. The article is behind a pay wall which grants one free visit per month, I believe, so you might be able to read it. If not her reasons pretty much run along the lines of the ones I've posed earlier, with a couple of additions.

She points out that Obama’s “fatwa of jihad” against the Islamic State is a marvelous recruiting tool for them. Just as jihadists flocked to Afghanistan to throw Russia out of that Islamic homeland, they are surely going to flock to the Islamic State to throw the Great Satan out of the Islamic State desert. If there are 30,000 fighters there now, you can bet there will be 50,000 there in a year or two.

Part of Obama’s eleven dimensional plan is to prevent foreign fighters from joining the fray, of course, but good luck with that for several reasons. It’s not going to happen.

She also points out that Syria is a Russian client state and that bombing in that nation without its permission is not only a violation of its national sovereignty and of international law, but is fraught with a significant risk of bringing us into direct conflict with Russia, which has nuclear weapons and the capability of delivering them to every part of the United States.

I would add that it risks bringing us into direct conflict with Syria, but of course for Obama that is a feature, not a bug.

Obama does not acknowledge the concept of "national sovereignty," of course, and he is not concerned about Russia because he regards them as a “regional power” (apparently nuclear missiles don’t count) which is afraid of picking a fight with us because of our much larger military. He must not have been listening when General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the JSOC, told him that our military is currently so badly broken that it would “shatter” if Obama got us into another war.

Obama’s comments about Russia sound like the same arrogant schoolyard bullying that George Bush engaged in, except that he uses somewhat more refined language. The attitude, however, if you listen beneath the smoother words, is pretty much the same, as is the policy.

Obama admitted in his speech that ISIS does not currently present any threat to this nation, but that there is a chance that it might someday do so, albeit even then not particularly deadly threats, and that he is therefor launching military strikes against it in two countries. Preventive war against possible future threat. He was appalled when George Bush was doing this, but now that it is his turn to do it…

Someone posed the question, “Does this mean that we are going to be at endless war forever?” My reaction was that it was a remarkably silly question.

This Is Going To Be Brutal

The Chargers play the Seahawhs in San Diego Sunday. That in itself would make one pity the Chargers, but the forecast is for a high of 96 degrees, 90 at the beaches, and the game is at 1:00pm. The temperature in the stadium will be well over 100 degrees. Yikes.

Another "Long War," Part 2

An interesting aspect of Obama’s declaration of war on ISIS was when he said that the plan is one which “we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.” If those two nations, especially Somalia, are his definition of success, I would certainly hate to see his definition of failure. And I’m not sure than anyone who has more than two functional brain cells would equate the strategies; massive and frequent bombing attacks with manned aircraft does not really equate to aiming at individual “suspected terrorists” with missiles fired from unmanned drones.

I had to wonder what he had been smoking when he said that “It is America that has rallied the world against Russian aggression, and in support of the Ukrainian peoples' right to determine their own destiny.” Except that when the people of Crimea held a vote to determine their own destiny we called it illegal and demanded that the vote be declared void.

Obama has redefined “leadership” repeatedly during his time in office, and he did so again during this speech. After talking at great length about our strength and leadership, and how urgent it is to destroy ISIS for American security and because two Americans had been beheaded, he then said that we are unwilling to risk our own soldiers to do it. What kind of nation wants other nations to risk their troops to achieve its own security? Especially while boasting about its own strength and leadership.

Someone else, Obama says, will have to do the dying on the battlefield in order to win the war that Obama is starting. That game of “let’s you and him fight” gives new meaning to his penchant for “leading from behind.”

Form a “broad coalition” to start a new war and then say “we’ll provide the leadership, you provide the dying.” American exceptionalism at its best.

Another "Long War"

My reaction to Obama’s speech was basically, “Wow, I skipped The Big Bang Theory for that?” I was, to say the least, underwhelmed, but at least it was mercifully short. I threw up in my mouth a little bit at the “our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden, but as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead” part. Tell that to the people who still don’t have jobs and parents who have lost children on the battlefield.

Pat Lang has an excellent analysis at Sic Semper Tyrannis, and I suggest you read it. The colonel served as an intelligence officer in that area of the world for many years; he knows his stuff, and he writes clearly and understandably on the subject.

I would only add my own commentary on the part of the plan that calls for “arming the Syrian opposition.” For one thing, Obama’s insistence on deposing Assad regardless of the conditions is absurd. Secondly, when you have three groups fighting in an area, how is adding a fourth to the mix going to make the situation better? We are going to be trying to bomb Assad and ISIS while not bombing the “Syrian opposition.” How well is that going to work?

We are bombing in Syria because “if you threaten America, you will find no safe haven,” which was the reason for bombing Cambodia during the war in Vietnam. That eventually led to the killing fields of Pol Pot and the deaths of millions.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Surfing Culture

What intrigues me is that no one seems particularly upset by the Chargers loss to the Cardinals on Monday night. The local sports writers are basically saying that the Chargers did what the Chargers do, which is lose games they should have won; nothing to see here, move along. The coaches and players are saying that they played well and just made some mistakes which cost them the game; nothing to see here, move along.

Nobody asks the question which is sort of the great white shark in the swimming pool; why did the Charger players make those mistakes?

I would suggest that it has to do with a lack of mental discipline, something which the Chargers have suffered from for many years. No coach or general manager has been able to overcome it, and I think it goes with being in a city whose culture is “let’s go surfing.”

I would like to know where the Charger players were on Saturday night. I can pretty much guarantee you that the majority of them were not studying their playbooks, but were in downtown Phoenix studying something a great deal more lively than x’s and o’s. The local sports writers, none of whom have ever played football, all claim that players can be in a drunken stupor on Friday night and have recovered fully to play at peak level on Sunday. They are wrong.

The mistakes which I see being made at game time are for the most part due to a lack of mental focus, and by far the majority of them are being made by players whose names appear in the society pages as having been part of “the scene” on Friday nights. There is a connection. The Chargers will consistently win games, and championships, when they have players who are less interested in being celebrities and more interested in being professional football players.

Funky Red Lines, Maybe Pink

I normally take a dim view of Obama making threats and issuing “red lines,” but the ones he drew at the NATO meeting in Wales don’t bother me much. He said that we would “not hesitate to protect" one of NATO’s members against loss of its independence. He did not specify what might cause that loss of independence, but he was looking toward Russia when he said it.

"We’ll be here for Estonia,” he said. “We’ll be here for Latvia. We’ll be here for Lithuania.” Pretty easy words, since he knows that there is precisely zero chance that Russia will invade any of those countries. It was a little awkward when hi got to the end of the alphabet and had said nothing about “being here” for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden's rhetoric addressing a different theater of operations about how, "after a proper period for grieving" we will "follow them to the gates of hell because that's where they will live" suggests to me that Joe may be showing his age a bit.

NFL Kickoff

The opening game Thursday night is Packers/Seahawks which is, to say the least, an interesting pairing. But then we have Monday night bringing us the Chargers at the Arizona Cardinals. Are there any two teams in the NFL which inspire less national interest than those two? That game is the second half of a Monday night double header, starting at 10:20pm EDT, so only about six people on the East Coast will be watching it regardless of which teams are playing, but...

The Raiders are in desperation mode already, and the season has not even started yet. They announced that they will not start Matt Schaub at quarterback, but will go with rookie Derek Carr. That's the second year in a row that the Raiders have traded to get a starting quarterback and not started him, but it's the first year thay benched that starter for a rookie.

The Chargers are, of course, the class of the NFL. They will probably not win sixteen games during the reqular season, but no one will beat them legitimately and they will win the division easily, will all of their post season games without even breathing hard, and win the Super Bowl with one hand tied behind Philip Rivers' back. Just ask the sports writers for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

What's The Point?

CVS Pharmacy is changing its name to "CVS Health" but, according to several reports, will not be changing the signs on its stores, which rather makes one wonder why it changed its name.

The name change is pursuant to the chain stopping the sales of tobacco products, which you would think would generate rave reviews for the management which made such a socially responsible decision. That seems not, however, to be the case, because every social comment I have read in response to the announcement has been that they are remiss in not stopping the sales of soft drinks and candy as well. Because, apparently, stopping cancer is useless unless you stop obesity at the same time. Somebody is going to have to explain the logic of that to me, because I don't get it.

Of course, my father died of lung cancer which undoubtedly originated with his heavy smoking, and I have never had a family member die from obesity, so perhaps I lack perspective. I don't think so, however; I think my perspective is just fine. I think that there is something wrong with a society that refuses to credit a firm for doing something good, but instead criticizes it for not doing more.

This Is Getting Ridiculous

The college football season kicks off tonight, with Texas A&M taking on South Carolina, so I look to see what channel the will be on. Neither team plays in the Pac-12, so I don't have to worry about the game being on that new silly-ass Pac-12 channel.

Seems I spoke too soon. The game in on the SEC channel, because now the Southeast Conference also has its own television network. So where is that silly thing on the 1800 channels on my stupid Cox list of channels? Or is it even there at all? Yes, it's three numbers away from the Pac-12 channel, at number 1316, and yes, it is high-def.

At least my beloved LSU Tigers will meet Wisconsin on a real network Saturday night. I will have to record it, though, because I will be in Fontana, watching the Indycar season finale live.

Mission Creep

According to The Guardian last Saturday, US officials have said that there is now a “new context” for confronting Isis…following the beheading of US journalist James Foley.”

Of course there is a “new context” for expanding violence. America will always have a “new context” for expanding the scope of our infliction of death and destruction.

The original air strikes in Iraq were, according to Obama, in pursuit of an “extremely limited objective to protect lives” in Erbil and tens of thousands on Mt. Sinjar who were in eminent danger of being massacred, and he assured us that there would be no “mission creep.” Turns out the numbers on Mt. Sinjar were more than a little bit exaggerated, as was the threat and immediacy of massacre.

Then there was a “new context” in the need to assist in the retaking of the Mosul dam. Then we needed to “do something” about the killing of James Foley because his beheading was so much more painful than is the peaceful and painless death which we inflict, often on women and children, by means of Hellfire missiles.

So now we need to entirely destroy the Islamic State forces before they develop a “safe haven” from which they can “launch major attacks upon America,” but we are told that the White House is dithering with a “mounting concern” over “how to target Sunni extremists without helping President Bashar Assad” because Obama is “is loath to be seen as aiding the Syrian government, even inadvertently.”

This is a real conundrum, isn’t it? Two forces are fighting each other. One of them is headed by a “evil dictator” who you have declared has “lost his legitimacy,” is a threat to your allies in the region and must step down. You have taken the position that this guy must go and you are not going to back down from it.

The other is a group which you have defined as an existential threat to yourself. You must destroy this force or risk your own destruction, but doing so risks helping the guy that you have said is evil and must go.

Perhaps the problem lies in the way that you have defined the two forces.

Hypersonic Spin

Writers who are unfailingly loyal to Danica Patrick are having to resort to desperate measures to write positive things about her. I cracked up at the phrasing of this one,

"Though Patrick would fall another few laps behind, she was able to drive her way back into the top 30 by the time the checkered flag flew."

That means, actually, that several cars running in front of her crashed.

NFL Fantasy Football

ESPN provides projections of the fantasy points expected for each player in the league, but I'm not sure how seriously we should be taking thses projections when forming our teams. Like most fortune telling schemes, there are inconsistencies.

They project only 84 points for Antonio Gates, for instance, because they say that the Chargers have essentially replaced him with the younger and now seasoned Ladarius Green. For Green, however, they project only 82 points because they say he will be playing in the shadow of the veteran Gates. That's sort of like saying that you can't have your cake because you've alread eaten it, and then in the next breath saying that you can't eat your cake because you don't have it yet.

On the other hand, the two of them add up to 166 points, which is about right for one really good tight end. So maybe each guy will play half of the time and they have it right. I'm no fortune teller either.

They also project 153 points for Johhny Manziel, which is only going to happen if he is awarded 25 points for each concussion and 80 points for a broken leg.

Things That Are Obvious

Hillary Clinton will run unopposed in the 2016 primary election because everyone is afraid to oppose her. The Clintons are famous for punishing anyone who runs against them and no one ever dares to do so.

That is, of course, why Hillary Clinton won the primary election in 2008.

Missing The Point

I watch Grey’s Anatomy and enjoy it, but I wouldn’t say it is my favorite program. I also like the character played by Jesse Williams although, again, not really my favorite. I think I will like him better next season after watching Jesse Williams speak with such elegantly restrained anger on the issues reflected in Ferguson, MO recently.

What’s interesting is that his line that “the media starts in the middle of the story” has caught people’s imagination and, in a masterpiece of irony, every film clip I can find of his discussion on CNN starts with him speaking that line, which is in the middle of what he has to say and misses the very important beginning. His whole point goes something like this:

“When a white kid shoots up a school,” he says, the media discusses the kid for days in terms of background. “We go back to the day of his birth,” Jesse says, “We have to understand him.” (emphasis his) But in a case like what happened at Ferguson Jesse says, in the line that has become famous, “the media starts in the middle of the story, which is a black kid shot in the street.”

He makes a very powerful point, diminished significantly when you leave out the first part of it. I have long asserted that we should not even know the name of the “white kid who shot up a school,” let alone spend days in this ghoulish analysis of his psyche, and Jesse’s point is profound. We know the shooter’s inner workings, but as to “the black kid shot in the street,” we don’t even know what his hobbies were.

And even when people hear Jesse Williams talk about the racist attitude in media they focus on one line, miss the meaning of it and, in discussing what he has to say about the media reporting half the story, they talk about half of what he has to say.

Racism is alive and well, thriving in America.