Hypocrisy accomplished.

It has been a year since O and his band of Navy Seals took down the tall Arab guy with the long beard. Of course, as is to be expected, Flipper and company do not like to be reminded about it. "Even Jimmy Carter would have given that order". Oh stop it! Flipper is so classless. Just days after the guy (Carter) gives him a compliment, he makes fun of the former President for making a courageous call (albeit a failed one) to save American citizens who were being held hostage in a foreign country.

Republicans are claiming that O is politicizing the killing of OBL and are outraged that an American president would politicize the war on terror. ---That sound you hear is me throwing up. I would like to take you back to the year 2003, and I want you to picture a certain president standing on an aircraft carrier and declaring that our mission in Iraq has been "accomplished".

How about a certain Mayor of a city that was attacked on September 11, 2001? He is a man who actually ran for president and based his entire campaign on his actions during that tragic time in the nation's history? And yet, republicans cry a river over O taking credit for killing OBL. Unbelievable!

But that's republicans for ya. I loved the oped in the Washington Post that I read about them:

"Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges." [More] 

Yes, even something as simple as acknowledging the killing of the most wanted terrorist in the world becomes a problem.

This is not "dysfunctional", this is delusional.









        

Together again?

"What's natural and right is to go with the energy of how it all has to work together. What's natural and right is interconnectedness, not individualism. What is natural and right is respect for the system, not killing the system. What's natural and right is love."
~Susan Powter~
We are two days away from the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, and A-merry-cans, once again, are getting introspective. It's a nice time to reflect on who we are and why we are here. Those of us who lived through it are glad to be alive, and others are wondering how it has affected our collective psyche.

That experience didn't change us that much, in fact, it might have made us worse. We live in greater fear of others, and our prejudice and ignorance towards others seems to manifest itself in even more impenitent ways.

But this type of behavior is encouraged by the right, because the right embraces and celebrates the individual and not the collective. The individual only cares about himself, and not the community to which he belongs. Which is actually kind of sad. Having natural and inalienable rights is great. But without the legal constraints and laws set up by society as a whole, anarchy will rule the day. The irony is, of course, that these very people on the right who claim to embrace individualism, are the ones who will trample all over our basic human rights without even thinking about it.

I read a wonderful article in my local paper, and I want to share it with you:

"Lately there's been much reading of old but relevant documents, like the Constitution. For my part, I've been reading old but relevant books.
One is The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His 18th-century writings helped inspire the French Revolution and probably the American Revolution. In this small book he uses a familiar term later picked up in our Declaration of Independence: "unalienable rights."

Until recently, I thought unalienable rights were ones that could not be taken away. But from Rousseau I learned they actually are rights that cannot be given away.

That's quite a difference. Rousseau believed people have a tendency to relinquish their freedom, but that under God they lack the moral authority to do so.
In many ways, Rousseau was instructing us on how to avoid the sad situation we now face.

The Social Contract says all government is an agreement among people, and that these agreements require that some rights be given up - but not unalienable ones.

Rousseau notes that prior to government, humans were totally free under natural law. A person could murder another without legal or moral consequence, just as a fox can kill a rabbit. Realizing civilization could not advance this way, our species formed social contracts as a way to control the bad and increase the good.

In these contracts, we surrender individual freedom for the betterment of the whole. We agree not to commit murder, for example, and to be governed by a law punishing us if we do. As Rousseau put it, the "individual will" is replaced by the "general will," which benefits all.

The Social Contract tells us how to create the ideal state while acknowledging that even a perfect state erodes. "The body politics, no less than the body of a man, begins to die as soon as it is born, and bears within itself the causes of its own destruction," he wrote.

Washington, these days, drives home this point.
Rousseau says the biggest threat comes when the government created by and for the "general will" starts to govern on behalf of the "particular will." In America, the particular will is better known as special interests.

Rousseau contends that when special interests - like Wall Street or the National Rifle Association - become too strong, "contradictions and disputes arise; and even the best opinion is not allowed to prevail unchallenged."
In the end, the general will is silenced and citizens act only on behalf of personal motives. Inequitable laws are passed and it becomes time to remake the social contract and the state.

While it could be argued that what's good for General Motors is good for America, few could argue that our government is well run. It lacks direction, is absent of a unified mission, has caused a shameful decline in our world prestige and has eviscerated our once-mighty economy.

Rousseau would call ours a failed state. Sadly, his large-scale solutions are wise but not practical.

An easier fix can be found in the simple truth of another great theorist and philosopher. Erasmus, the Dutch Renaissance humanist, once told a young monarch: "Whenever kings invite wisdom to their councils and cast out those evil counselors - ambition, anger, greed, and flattery - The Commonwealth flourishes in every way."

This one sentence is a great start to making things right for America. We have elections here, so let the casting out begin. To not do so is like giving away an unalienable right - which at least one great man said we have absolutely no right to do. [Source]

I am glad we are reflecting about September 11th again. Maybe we should change the next election day to September 11, 2012.

       

TWENTY BILLION DOLLARS AND WE STILL HAD TO DO IT OURSELVES.

*

Somewhere in Pakistan there is a government official saying, "That would be IBAN z BA108254. When can I expect all the money to be in my bank?"

So the tall skinny man with the kidney issues is dead. Ironically, he died on the same day that a certain German leader was killed. -Shout out to the DevGru crew for doing their thing.- It took almost ten years, but A-merry-ca finally got their man.

The celebrations across the country has been dizzying. A-merry-cans really needed this. A chance to celebrate a victory. Make no mistake, getting OBL was a victory for A-merry-ca. A chance to say that you cant just orchestrate the death of over 3,000 of our people and die of natural causes.

Some of you have sent me nasty e-mails about my side-bar: "Field, how dare you make fun of Islam and the man's death like that?" Save it. OBL was a murderous coward who did not represent true Islam. (He tried to use his wife as a shield for crying out loud! And, BTW, he was chilling in a million- dollar mansion, not a cave.) Personally, I am glad I won't have to listen to his garbled 911 speech ever again. That s*&^ was getting old.

All you Obamaholics should be proud of your boy. I know the wingnuts will try to kill your joy, but f&^% em. He gets credit for making a gutsy cal. If that SEAL team had botched the job the winguts would be measuring the curtains in the White House as I type this. This will by no means guarantee him a win in 2012, (-ECONOMY- ECONOMY- ECONOMY-)but it can't hurt. And Mr. Bad Hair better keep him out of his Casinos, that man would be a serious player at the poker table. Just think, he knew all of this was going on while he was making fun of Mr. Bad Hair and FOX NEWS at the WH Correspondents' Dinner.

Folks, look at it this way; If OBL had masterminded another September 11 style attack on us here in A-merry-ca while O was in office, what do you think they would say? Who do you think they would blame? If you guessed the beige man in the people's house move to the head of the class. So shouldn't he get the credit when something good happens on his watch? Don't answer that wingnuts, it made too much sense for you to comprehend it.

But I am not going to rip the wingnuts tonight. I want to join the rest of the country in a spirit of unity. If Mr. Bad Hair of all people can post an oped calling for unity, why can't we all just get along? Just for now. At least until our memories of OBL start to fade.

*Pic courtesy of TIME Magazine.