Three Frighteningly Popular Reality TV Shows

In today's modern multichannel universe there is a television program for just about every bizarre taste.

Monsters Inside Me

You're a hypochondriac and you just can't decide what new symptoms to confound your doctor with next. This is the Animal Plant program for you. They have everything - flukes in your brain, worms in your eye, tiny mites crawling under your skin (scabies, above) - you could possibly believe is inhabiting you. All described in clinical yet gross, and engrossing, detail. The program started specializing on parasites but in recent years have branched out to viruses because they have actually run out of interesting parasites.

Deadly Women

The entire Investigation Discovery channel is dependent on the United States being the most murderous civilization in human history. If the National Rifle Association did not exist the ID channel would have had to create it to keep the kill rate up to network demands. Fortunately, for them, the list of American serial killers is so extensive even a 24-hour a day death channel is not  in danger of running out of subjects. Deadly Women concentrates on murderesses. Angry teens, black widows, old ladies with arsenic are all recreated by actresses in vignettes. Terrifyingly, the show is very popular with women viewers. The show features former FBI profiler Candice DeLong, a real life Clarice Starling. Each vignette ends with the female killer staring, unblinkingly, into the camera. Just like Hannibal Lecter.

Ancient Aliens

Remember the 1994 James Spader, Kurt Russell movie Stargate. It's premise was that the Pyramids were built for a space alien pretending to be the Egyptian god Ra. The movie was followed by successful TV spinoffs. Ancient Aliens contents that every jot and tittle of the Stargate multiverse was absolutely real. This History Channel series posits that everything that has ever happened on Earth is the result of alien intervention.

• Life appears on Earth? The planet was seeded by aliens.
• Dinosaur extinction? Aliens killed them off just a few thousand years ago to protect the humans that lived with them.
• Every god ever? Aliens.
• Noah's flood? Really happened, aliens.
• Moses at Mount Sinai? He was talking to an alien.
• Jesus virgin birth? Aliens inseminated Mary with an alien-human hybrid. (Actually, the series has never touched this because so many of the show's fans are fundamentalist Christians.)
• Da Vinci, Einstein, Tesla? They were only geniuses because aliens talked to them.
• Aliens helped Hitler build a flying saucer and America build its atomic bomb.

I could go on, they sure as hell do. Ancient Aliens is creationism for nerds.  Nothing happens due to physics or chemistry or biology. Everything is the result of space aliens playing with Earth. If you believe this you have to accept that these aliens, who once strode the Earth as gods have been reduced to drawing designs in corn fields, anally probing hicks, and butchering cows.

P.S. I admit I've watched all of these occasionally because I am severely disturbed.

Ted Cruz's Kinky Love Life

I’ll tell you I love my iPhone. ~ Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

I want to be tolerant of alternative lifestyles, I really do. But while Cruz was struggling to sound both sympathetic and hate-filled on the topic of Apple's CEO being gay, he revealed more about his personal sexual identity than I wanted to know.

I don't want to know where Cruz stores his iPhone when it's set on vibrate or whatever else he might use his iPhone for. I mean, what he does with his iPhone in private is his own business and in no way affects my opinion of his qualifications as a presidential candidate.

I'd still sooner vote for an intolerant baboon.

What Real Pandemic Panics Look Like

The Ebola panic in the United States is pathetic in large part because there are many more deadly infectious diseases in this country. Real pandemic panics are much different.

Yellow Fever Epidemic - 1878

Yellow Fever outbreaks occurred periodically throughout the 19th century in cities like New York, Boston, and New Orleans. The 1978 fever probably arrived in New Orleans with war refugees from Cuba. As it spread along the Mississippi Valley, Memphis tried to protect itself by banning travelers from the south entering the town. That didn't stop it. As deaths in Memphis started, the white population (some 25,000 people) of the city evacuated leaving behind less than 20,000 mostly poor or black people behind. The evacuees were frequently turned away by other towns by armed men and barricades. The death rate in Memphis reached 200 per day. The fever burned through the Mississippi Valley for three months killing 20,000 people. Over 5,000 died in Memphis alone.

There is an effective vaccine for Yellow Fever yet is is still endemic in tropical Africa and South America and kills 30,000 people annually world wide.

Spanish Flu Pandemic - 1918

In raw numbers, the deadliest pandemic in human history. In three years, the Spanish Flu killed as many people as died during the six years of  World War Two.

The current best guess is this strain of flu began on a pig farm in Kansas, spread to the Fort Riley army base in March, 1918 where 100 men reported sick the first day. It killed 48 men in Fort Riley is just two weeks. Soldiers carried the disease to East Coast ports and across the ocean into Europe. From there it spread across the globe. Wartime censorship compounded the disease. It was called "Spanish" flu because Spain was not involved in WWI and its appearance in Spain was the first time the pandemic was reported in the public press.

In the second half of 1918, this disease exploded across the world. The death rates were horrifying. One one day (Oct. 10, 1918) in one city (Philadelphia) 759 were killed by the virus. People would become sick and be abandoned to die by their own family. Entire families would get sick and starve in their homes as friends were afraid to help them. Police would enter the homes later to clear out the dead bodies. In Philly that year, priests would actually bring horse drawn carts through neighborhoods calling for people to "bring out your dead."

Over a half million died in the United States in September and October, 1918. Twenty percent of the population of Samoa died in two months. Seventeen million died in India. Entire Alaskan villages were wiped out by the disease. Globally, 25 million people died in just 25 weeks and an estimated 80 million people died during the two year run of the pandemic. To this day, saying the words "swine" and "flu" in the same sentence will send government officials into a panic.

Flu vaccines are developed annually. The flu still kills 30,000 people a year in the United States alone.

Polio - 1952

In 1952, a polio epidemic saw 57,000 cases leading to 3,145 deaths. Many others suffered paralysis, occasionally requiring encasement in iron lungs just to breath. The fear of polio was wide spread because it mostly infected children. Public swimming pools were closed and sporting events were cancelled. Parents were warned to not let their children play with strange children, get tired or cold. Every time a child came down with a sore throat or fever parents were terrified it was polio.

First Jonas Salk then Albert Sabin developed polio vaccines. I remember getting both because my parents wanted to be doubly sure I didn't get polio. Polio has been eradicated in most of the world, the last US case was in 1979. There were only 416 cases globally in 2013, mostly in Somalia and Pakistan.

The Ebola Panic of 2014

In these days of indigestion it is oftentimes a question
As to what to eat and what to leave alone.
Every microbe and bacillus has a different way to kill us
And in time they all will claim us for their own.
There are germs of every kind in every food that you can find
In the market or upon the bill of fare.
Drinking water's just as risky as the so-called "deadly" whiskey
And it's often a mistake to breathe the air. ~ Some Little Bug Is Going to Find You Someday (song lyrics from 1916)

Illuminati Plot

According to this theory, the Illuminati created Ebola so they can impose mass quarantines, "FEMA camps, and global depopulation. The proof is imbedded in the popular cartoons South Park and The Simpsons. A variant of this thesis is the False Flag theory that President Obama is deliberately creating an Ebola pandemic so he can institute martial law.

It's Fake
Another variant concludes there is no such thing a Ebola and that the Red Cross is poisoning people. The reason given range from a depopulation plot, a plot to steal Sierra Leone diamonds, or a takeover of Nigerian oil.

Bio-Weapon
The Ebola outbreak is the result of a US government weapons test that got away from them. If that sounds familiar, it is the plot of the 1995 movie Outbreak. Russia's Pravda and a Delaware State University professor promote this theory.

Redneck Cure
Apparently, beer and tobacco are the cure for Ebola. Which means Rush Limbaugh is perfectly safe and can stop panicking.

The Home of the 'Fraid

There may be nations more pathologically afraid of just about everything than the United States, I just can't think of one. And, as a group, no Americans are more terrified than conservatives.

ISIS Will Kill Us All

This president needs to rise to the occasion before we all get killed back here at home. ~ Sen. Lindsey Graham

HotAir breathlessly declares that almost every American is terrified of ISIS even though only 14% in the poll they reference see ISIS as the most important problem facing the country.

Breitbart is pissing its pants over the thought that "homegrown ISIS sympathizers" will turn their guns on Americans. Unstated is that their guns will have been legally acquired because the Second Amendment is holy script.

Over at National Interest, Stuart Gottlieb lists four reasons that ISIS is a "clear and present threat to the U.S. homeland." Among those reasons is their asymmetric advantage; he claims because ISIS is so small and weak they have an overwhelming advantage over large and powerful nations.

Young Conservatives is convinced that ISIS will murder the families of American service members. They fail to notice that this has not happened anywhere in the world.

The Truth Is I have a much greater chance of being gunning down on the street by a trigger happy cop or shot by a pissed off friend or relative. In the last few years, more people in the US have been killed during illegal cockfights that murdered by ISIS.

Ebola Apocalypse

Reports of illegal migrants carrying deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis are particularly concerning. ~ Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA)

As I write this there is a community of survivalists diligently preparing for an Ebola apocalypse. Their rules include:

• More guns. Be prepared to shoot anyone approaching your home.
• Never leave your shelter. Anyone stepping outside is lost to you. It goes without saying that they will have to be shot if they try to return.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas (1 Ebola case) has formed a task force to deal with the pandemic. Gov. Rick Scott of Florida (zero cases) has ordered stockpiling of supplies to deal with the outbreak. The City of New York has a website providing Ebola information. Their FAQ effectively says that if you think you have Ebola you should face reality, you don't.

The Truth Is, to date, 0.0000009% of the population of the United States has the disease, and they caught it in Africa.  It's a nasty and deadly disease. Contracting it requires contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person shedding the virus. That's why friends, relatives, and health care workers are vulnerable - they clean up all the infected blood, diarrhea, and vomit of victims.  I am much more likely to die from heart disease, the flu, even malaria (five deaths in 2011).

The Ghey

I honestly think [the homosexual agenda is] the biggest threat that our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam. ~ State Rep. Sally Kern (R-OK)

Gays are bullying Christians (even when Christians were trying to be bullies) and stealing children (echoing the anti-Semitic blood libel). They are plotting to destroy marriage and family by (gasp) marrying and having families. Gays caused 9/11 to happen. Eventually, God will destroy America and it will all be the fault of gays.

The Truth Is simply xenophobia, an irrational fear of strangers which Bible Belt conservatives have in spades.

Pretty Much Everything Else

People do weird things when they're hungry. You might run into cannibals at that point. ~ Doug, Doomsday Preppers

The National Geographic Channel's Doomsday Preppers show a sampling of the many Americans who are so terrified of everyday life they must be constantly prepared for any number of totally improbably disasters. The list of things they fear include:

• Yellowstone erupting (Likely to happen any time in the next 500,000 years.)
• Asteroid or comet impact (Tunguska in 1908 did localized damage in Siberia. The last major impact in the United States was 35 million years ago.)
• Earthquakes in New Madrid, MS (a 10% chance sometime in the next 50 years) but, oddly, not Los Angeles or San Francisco (25% chance in the next 30 years).
• World War III (Less likely now than in 1962.)

The Truth Is these Preppers are much more likely to be struck by lighting than inconvenienced by any of the disasters they fear. 

Nate Silver's Hissy Fit

Pythia was prettier and more famous.

A follow up to my previous post. I'm been quite amused by Nate Silver's obsession with Sam Wang from the Princeton Election Consortium over their competing predictions of the Senate election outcome. It's as if Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, got her panties in a twist because the Cumaean Sibyl had disagreed with her prediction of a wet fall on the Attic peninsula.

It doesn't matter. One will end up closer to the mark than the other but neither will be flawless. Both will claim their technique was perfect; it was their data that was imprecise. The one who gets closer to the actual election result will claim it proof of his infallibility. And it's all a bunch of pseudo-scientific hooey.

The Sibyl of Cumae is on the Sistine Chapel.

Political Polling - Season of the Witch

It's a desire as old as humanity, the wish to know the future. That's why palmistry and tarot card reading are still things even though the only thing palm readers can tell is whether I work with my hands and and tarot decks can only reveal how well I shuffle. Modern, scientific polling is more accurate than reading goat entrails but that is not saying much.

Pollsters will acknowledge that their polls are accurate, within a margin of error, except for those times they aren't. Pollsters like to claim to be masters of an arcane craft or, like Nat Silver, genius statisticians. What they are is educated guessers. Out of over 1,000 polls in the last week before the 2012 election, some pollsters were supernaturally accurate while others missed by a country mile. But, hitting your number in roulette does not make you prescient, just lucky.

When you look inside the magic box of pollsters you find a rather clumsy set of gears.

• Margin of Error -  Assuming all other factors are equal, this is the range that a poll encompasses. A standard 1,000 person survey has a MoE of ±3%, meaning that 19 times out of 20 the actual result will be within that range. So, a poll claiming a 52% win could really be showing a 49% loss. Most of the time the "momentum" polls reveal is nothing more than MoE noise. But, this all assumes all other factors are equal and they never are.
• Survey Structure - I once had a pollster explain to me how he could manipulate the results of a survey just by the order he asked the questions. Professional pollsters are aware of this but not even the best of them can catch all the subtle biases created by survey structure.
• Response Rate - Pollsters are annoying and in this era of cell phones and call screening they are an avoidable annoyance. To get 1,000 responses requires over 20,000 attempts. This lead to....
• Sampling Bias - Polls tend to under sample younger, poorer, and minority people. This means the results are not random. This leads to....
• Weighting - When I was in high school my science teacher had what he call "Stowell's Constant," which was the number you added or subtracted from the result you got to get the correct answer. Pollsters do the same thing. They adjust the raw results they get to mirror what they believe is the electorate. Rasmussen Reports notoriously believes there are more Republicans that actually exist and their results tend to skew Republican.
• Weighting Small Samples -  A problem with weighing is when you start parsing polls you get some really small sample sizes. A standard 1,000 person survey would expect 70 African-American males. If the poll only actually reached 30 black men then the MoE is approaching 18%, an error that is magnified by applying weighting adjustments. Pollsters hope the accumulations of these small sample errors will cancel each other out but there is no science to that, it is just hope.
• In Hindsight - Pollsters always come up with explanations for when they screw the pooch but whenever they get close to the mark it is because of their mastery of the art of polling.

I'm not saying that political polls are worthless. They are amusing and, if taken with an appropriate number of grains of salt, mildly illuminating. They can tell you if an election will be close, but so can common sense. Polls are most useful for people who lack any common sense which is why politicians cling to them so desperately.

Mercs R Us

Conservatives have a new (old) idea, hire mercenaries to do America's fighting in Iraq and Syria. Bill O'Reilly and Cal Thomas have both opined on what a really fun idea that is, just like in the movies.

Middle East Mercenaries
Professional warriors have been called the Second Oldest Profession. The most famous mercs in the Middle East were the Khwarezmiyya who were hired by Genghis Khan after he had destroyed the Persian Empire. They were also hired by the Kurdish Ayyubid Empire to drive the Crusaders out of Jerusalem in 1244. Wait. That's not at all what Cal and Bill want.

Post-Colonial Mercenaries
What Bill and Cal want are white, Christian mercenaries. Men like 'Mad Mike' Hoare. Hoare hired himself out to quell bush rebellions in the Congo during the 1960's. Later in life he and a troop of South African soldiers of fortune were hired (through a variety of shell organizations) by the CIA in 1981 to overthrow the government of the Seychelles. Their war never got any farther than the airport tarmac and they had to hijack a plane to escape.

Commercial Mercenaries
Of course, modern mercs are big business. G4S Solutions has the seventh largest army in the world with over 650,000 employees. Blackwater (they change their name every few years) along with her many sister forces within Constellis Holdings boast a fighting force in excess of 30,000 mercs who are not afraid to murder, rape, and maim.

I suspect O'Reilly and Thomas are examples of pundit payola. They were probably paid to promote the business of corporate mercenaries.

Stop and Frisk Explained in Pictures

The detention of Daniela Watts on suspicion of kissing her boyfriend in public and her arrest for refusing a police command to "show me your papers," has led to yet another edition of "The American Police State."

In Nazi occupied Europe a Gestapo command of "Papers, please" was a common street encounter. The Gestapo had a simple philosophy that everyone they encountered is a potential enemy.

These teens were walking to school when spotted by cops.

American police have a very similar philosophy. Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg defended that city's Stop and Frisk policy by declaring that police and the general public are in constant danger from people walking on the street, anyone of which could be a potential threat.

There are several similarities between the Gestapo and the US police street interviews.

• Both stops are random with nothing resembling cause (probable or improbable).
• Both require the victims to raise their hands in humiliating submission.
• Both demand ID papers.
• Both include the clear threat to ruin or even take your life if you do not meekly comply.
• Both pretend politeness, the Gestapo famously said "please," to mask the clear menace. 
• Both frequently execute their victims on the street for the slightest sign of resistance.
• Both target minorities. 

There are also differences.

• The Gestapo faced their victims while US police force their victim to face a wall or car and take a sexually submissive position that is frequently exploited.
• Gestapo officers were in better shape. Let's be honest, the NYPD cop on the left in the above picture would need a mobility scooter for a foot pursuit.
• US prisons don't have death camps but do have slave labor. 
• While both use prisoners in medical research, the US research is less horrific.

I'm not saying that US police are as bad as the Gestapo. They are not, at least not yet. As US police become more paramilitary and less citizens battling crime, the differences are narrowing. "Land of the Free" is becoming less a rousing national anthem and more a cruel joke.

St. Louis SWAT.

"Home of the Brave" is farce too.

A World Full of Duh

So much of the news this past week has bounced between transparent lies, through merely naive, to downright stupid.

NFL Sees No Evil. Really, Justice Is Blind and So Are We.
When the video of Ray Rice dragging his unconscious fiancee out of an elevator became public the NFL was all "naughty, naughty," boys will be boys, take a couple games off and be nicer. The NFL used its prodigious legal resources to get charges dropped and waited for it to be forgotten.

Pudge Heffelfinger may have beat his wife, too. Or not.

This week, when elevator security footage became public and showed Rice brutally cold cocking the girl, the NFL panicked. They made the ludicrous claim that  no one in the NFL has seen the tape. They saw it. They just didn't want to have seen them. They now have hired a career sycophant, Robert Mueller, to apply a thick coat of whitewash.

Bombing ISIS Will Only Get So Much

Berlin, 1945. All this bombing destruction yet Germany only surrendered after Russian ground forces captured Berlin.

I don't know how much of President Obama's speech last night was empty rhetoric and how much was naivety. I support the details of his plan (provide logistical and aerial support to local forces fighting ISIS) because ISIS is, on the scale of genocidal evil, between the Rwanda Hutu and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. The rhetorical goal, "degrade, and ultimately destroy," cannot be achieved with air power alone. At best, bombing can force ISIS to scatter their assets making it easier for opposing forces to chip away at  ISIS occupied land. That paragraph about industrial might is right out of the 1940's and sounds like this ISIS fight is, foremost, about growing US armaments companies.

Insult the Shit Out of Them, Why Don't Ya

Ted Cruz had a slam dunk speaking appearance at an "In Defense of Christians" banquet composed mostly of Arab Christians whose brethren are being butchered by ISIS. It was a perfect setting where he could support persecuted Christians who are being murdered by Muslim extremists. But no, that would have required someone with the IQ of a goat. Cruz is far dumber than that. Cruz started attacking all Arabs as terrorists and belittled the plight of Arab Christians by instructing them to stop being haters and start supporting Israel. Arabs in the room were strangely insulted by his hostility towards them and began booing. Cruz then doubled down and implied that if they didn't support Israel they deserved their fate with ISIS.

It was the kind of diplomatic sensitivity that will make Ted Cruz such a totally terrifying president.

Send Duck Dynasty to War

Here's a plan. It's a good plan that will kill two birds, so to speak, with one stone. Send the Duck Dynasty Klan to fight ISIS.

They have a plan (convert a few, kill everybody else). Republicans are always complaining that President Obama doesn't have a plan. They already have guns so it won't cost taxpayers anything to arm them.

But, don't just send those four wackadoddles, that wouldn't be fair. Recruit an entire army of the "convert them or kill them" crowd. Yes, including Anne Coulter. We could call it the Jesus Brigade. Who wouldn't want to see Sen. Lindsey Graham in combat fatigues backing up his words.

Sen. Graham used to claim to being a Desert Storm veteran until somebody pointed out that he spent the war hiding under a National Guard desk in South Carolina. Still, he did get a shitload of medals for heroic filing and stapling. 

There are problems. People like Ted Nugent, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney (why not send him, too?) are notorious cowards who love seeing other people do the fighting and dying as long as they can stay thousands of miles from the bloodshed. A call for volunteers to fight, without pay, for Jesus and America would go completely unanswered. Their confessed love of God and Country only goes as far as Sunday football services. President Obama should his executive powers as Commander-in-Chief to draft all the warmongers into the Jesus Brigade and send them to the front.

Of course, we know what will happen. The Duck Dynasty troop is only brave when killing unarmed water fowl. Faced with an actual ISIS soldier shooting back they will shit themselves, drop their guns, and quickly convert to Islam.

Whatever Happened to Officer Friendly?

An argument could be made that Officer Friendly was always a myth we told children, like the Easter Bunny. What with the third degree, Bull Connor, John Burge, the Rampart scandal, and the blue code of silence, history is replete with police committing and getting away with every conceivable crime up to and including cold blooded murder.

It is also true that many police officers are fine, brave, upstanding individuals honestly trying to make their communities better places to live and work. The true story of Frank Serpico is a perfect example of both sides of that coin.

Police Are an Isolated Community

When was the last time you passed a police officer on the street and he smiled at you and said hello? My guess is never. Police usually wear those extra dark sunglasses designed to make any kind of eye contact impossible. They maintain a stern, emotionless expression designed to be both intimidating and off putting. Police have an us versus them philosophy where the us is other cops and the them is every other living person. They are taught that everyone they meet, everyone, is a potential enemy. That soon evolves into the belief that everyone IS an enemy.

SWAT Spells Bad

There was a time when Special Weapon and Tactics squad made sense. And, in very limited cases, they still do. In the '60's there were a handful of cases where police were completely outgunned. The two incidents that convinced police of the need for SWAT were the Watts Riots and the Hub pawnshop shootout in San Diego, both in 1965. While these elite squads were initially designed for crowd control and heavily armed opponents, over time uses of SWAT began to blur. It was like, why have an expensive Maserati if your not driving it to the Starbucks. SWAT was designed as a squad that might be need once every few years. Today, SWAT is being used when it is not needed and is, literally, overkill. There are 4.5 SWAT raids every day. SWAT is even being called out for no-knock raids to serve misdemeanor warrants. I'd also like to compare the SWAT officer above to this ISIS terrorist.

Both carry military grade automatic weapons. Both wear thick, probably armored, clothing. Both wear stocking masks to obscure their faces even at the risk of blocking their vision. Really, how can the cop even see with that balaklava covering his eyes. That can't be safe for either the officer or citizens. The point of the masks, in both cases, is to instill terror.

US Police Are Death Magnets

The 2012 Empire State Building shooting saw Jeffrey Johnson shoot one person. Two NYPD cops wildly fired 16 bullets killing Johnson and injuring nine innocent citizens.

It is no surprise that no agency from the Justice Department to any local jurisdiction keeps stats on citizens shot by police officers. No one, no politician and no MSM outlet, want to know the numbers because the truth is absolutely staggering. Jim Fisher's True Crime blog did the research for the year 2011. By his count, in that year alone 1,146 citizens were shot by police and 607 killed. For comparison, in the span of 15 years (1995-2009) United Kingdom police have killed exactly 33 people. UK police kill as many people in 15 years as US police do in three weeks. Estimates are that since 9/11 American police officers have killed over 5,000 innocent citizens.

That doesn't count deaths in custody, which is a stat the Feds do keep. In 2011, 4,238 American prisoners died in custody. In the UK the number is 223, 33 died in police custody and 190 in prison custody.  For reference, the US has 5.5 times the population of the England and Wales.

A lot of this has to do with the American gun culture. There are over 300 million guns in the US; there are less than 4 million guns in England and Wales. Since 1995, 34 British police officers died in the line of duty, six were shot. In the US for the same period, approximately 1,500 police officers died in the line of duty with 628 shot to death.

In 2011, there were 640 murders in the Britain, only 44 killers used guns. In the same period in the US there were 12,664 murders; 8,583 used firearms.

Conclusions

• While the United States is a violent country its murder rate (4.7 per 100,000) is less than the global average (6.3) and half the murder rate in Russia (9.2). It is the highest murder rate of any industrialized nation, second place is Taiwan (3.0). The United Kingdom has a murder rate of only 1.0 per 100,000.
• American police die in the line of duty at a rate eight times more frequent than UK police. They are shot at a rate twenty times more frequently.
• However, American police kill citizens at a rate fifty times more frequently than in the UK.

That last number the most important. Every year American police officers kill more American citizens than the Mafia, than Mexican drug cartels, than terrorists. In the United States, especially in minority neighborhoods, police departments are an ever present, deadly threat.

What to Expect from the Ferguson Grand Jury

The pathetically vague incident report on the Michael Brown shooting indicates how the St. Louis County grand jury investigation will proceed. It will be slow, incomplete, and obviously rigged.

The Grand Jury investigation will take months. As police shootings go, this should be easy. It was broad daylight, witness could see clearly. The whole incident from first contact to fatal shots took less than three minutes. Prosecutors expect to take at least two months, to mid-October, to present evidence, then the grand jury "can meet as long as they want" to reach a conclusion. They probably won't announce a decision until a particularly cold and blizzardly day in mid-December chosen more for suppressing protests than justice.

The result will be "No True Bill." Officer Darren Wilson has not been charged with anything. This means the grand jury will not be deciding whether to indict but simply reviewing evidence. The St. Louis County grand jury requires a 12-vote unanimous decision to indict, unlike other jurisdictions where a majority of a 23-member jury indicts. St. Louis County DA, Robert McCulloch, is a renown "friend of police" who has never seen anything wrong when police shoot a black man. His actions are a nudge-nudge, wink-wink to the grand jury to not indict.

The law is not on the side of justice.  At its loosest interpretation, certainly the one Robert McCulloch will describe to the grand jury, Missouri law says that a police officer can always shoot to kill as long as the officer expresses the lamest justification for the killing. All Wilson need do is claim he "felt" threatened by an unarmed man surrendering 30 feet away and it becomes a righteous shooting.

In case of trial, it will be held in a conservative, lily-white community. Let's say the grand jury goes rogue and files an indictment. The first act of the defense will be to demand a change of venue. As in the Rodney King case, the new venue will be chosen specifically to be sympathetic to the white officer. My early guess is Benton County where there are fewer than 30 African-Americans in the whole county.

There will be no sign of justice in the Michael Brown shooting case. As proof, I offer the fact that St. Louis police gunned down an unarmed man in broad daylight a few days after the Michael Brown shooting. They had absolutely no justification and no fear of any sort of discipline.

Ferguson Debacle In One Quote

Gentlemen, get the thing straight once and for all– the policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder. ~ Richard J. Daley

There are a few questions regarding the death of Michael Brown.

• Was Officer Darren Wilson an ill-trained incompetent who panicked and shot, repeatedly, an unarmed man?
• Did Officer Wilson believe misdemeanor theft deserved summary execution? (There really is no third option here.)
• Why the fuck would police ever need camo fatigues? (There is no tactical need, it is just playing dress up, playing pretend soldier.)

Ferguson cop training an M4 carbine with sniper scope on civilians.

• What, exactly, is that police officer atop an armored personnel carrier pointing his 45 round per minute weapon at? 
• More importantly, what is he thinking? Where does he think he is?

Ferguson police released a police report accusing the victim of a petty crime in a transparent attempt justify the shooting. In that the report the case status is listed as "Exceptionally Cleared."

• What the fuck does that mean? ("Exceptionally Cleared" is police jargon. In this case it means, "we've got some defenseless, dead nigger we can blame it on so there is no need to actual prove anything.")

War or Genocide

I'm, generally, a pacifist. I've opposed US military adventures consistently since the Vietnam War of my youth.  I've seen very few wars during my life that I thought had to be fought. Two exceptions that come to mind are Israel in 1967 and 1973. In both wars, Israel had to fight and had to win or face annihilation.

The current war between the Kurds and ISIS in Iraq is another one. The closest parallel to ISIS in recent history is not the Taliban in Afghanistan but Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. ISIS has proven a willingness, even eagerness, to exterminate anybody who is not an ethnic Arab and not a Sunni Muslim and not an enthusiastic supporter of their brutality.

Left alone, ISIS will slaughter the Yazidi, every man, woman, and child. If they overrun the Kurds, the genocidal death toll will rival that of Adolph Hitler. ISIS will never be an existential threat to the United States but that is no excuse for idleness.

• I support bombing ISIS. Not just a few A-18s dropping a couple bombs to send a message but eliminating any ISIS concentration of troops or artillery.
• I support giving the Kurds whatever weapons they need to turn back this threat even at the risk of angering the Iraqi or Turkish governments.
• I even support committing American ground forces to assist the Peshmerga.

Call it the "Pottery Barn Rule" if you want but the US created ISIS when it invaded Iraq in 2003 and armed al-Qaeda (before it was even called that) in Afghanistan in the 1980's.

Hospital Bombed

After Israel bombed a Gaza hospital I did a little research into other instances of this and found that, in the 20th and 21st centuries, bombing hospitals is incredibly common. So common, in fact, it is impossible to calculate a total.

The why is really rather simple. Bomb a military barracks and you may kill a few men. Bomb a hospital and you will kill many times more as those wounded in future attacks have no place to be treated. Bombing hospitals is a great casualty multiplier. Attacking hospitals is second only to torture as the most commonly committed war crime.

World War I
The earliest instance of the aerial bombing of a hospital was on May 31, 1918 when the Germans bombed the rear echelon hospital complex at Etables in the Pas-de-Calais, France.   

World War II

All sides bombed hospitals although that was usually part of carpet bombing campaigns where everything from hospitals to dry cleaners were bombed indiscriminately. For example, the Hiroshima Shima Hospital was, not deliberately, ground zero for the first nuclear detonation in war. Germany bombed hospitals as part of the blitzkrieg attack on Poland in 1939. During the Anzio battle of the Italian campaign German bombers attacked and sunk the hospital ship St. David (pictured) on January 24, 1944.

Korean and Vietnam Wars
The US Air Force engaged in extensive strategic bombing of urban targets in both wars. Operation Rolling Thunder during the Vietnam War was famously intended to bomb North Vietnam "back to the Stone Age." During that war, America bombed the Bach Mai Hospital in Hanoi. It was later rebuilt with money largely donated from the United States.

Yugoslav Civil War
NATO got bomber happy in their efforts to protect civilians from ethnic cleansing. NATO bombed over 20 hospitals, as well as over 200 schools, in less than three months of extensive bombing. Some hospitals appear to have been accidentally hit but, given NATO's pride at the "precision bombing" and their targeting of "dual use" facilities, most of the hospitals were deliberately bombed.

Iraq Wars
During the second Gulf War, American forces bombed a maternity hospital in Baghdad in April, 2003. Many other hospitals and clinics had been bombed in the years between the Gulf Wars. In May, 2012, the Iraq government dropped barrel bombs on an hospital in Fallujah as part of the ongoing civil war in Iraq.This month, the Iraq government has bombed hospitals in several towns including Tikrit and Shirqat.

Israel-Palestine Wars

Israel has attacked hospitals in Gaza several times over the years.  In 2009, they bombed three hospitals including fire bombing the Al Quds Hospital (pictured) with white phosphorus. The use the same excuse that NATO gave in Yugoslavia, dual use facilities. Most recently, Israel bombed the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

Syria Civil War

The Kindi Hospital in Aleppo was destroyed by two suicide bombers in December, 2013.

This civil war could rightly be call the War of Hospitals. The Syrian government has attacked hospitals in rebel areas while the rebels have attacked hospitals in government controlled areas.

Insurgents
It doesn't take an air force to bomb a hospital. Many have been bombed by terrorists and insurgents. The Taliban has bombed hospitals in Afghanistan. Somali rebels bombed a hospital in Mogadishu. In 1991, the IRA planted a bomb in the military wing of the Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast, killing two and wounding 11 including a four month-old baby.

Final Solution to Gaza

I typed that deliberately provocative phrase into Google, not knowing what I would find. What I found was this shocking manifesto.

Warsaw Ghetto, April 1943

The author is Moshe Feiglin, member of the ruling Likud Party and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset. His proposal, published in Israel July 15, 2014, reads like a memo Martin Bormann might have sent to Heinrich Himmler.

Gaza, July 2014

Ethnic Cleansing
Feiglin would issue an ultimatum ordering Palestinians to leave Gaza. Anyone staying behind would be subject to attack by the full might of the Israel Defense Force. The Israeli government has implemented this step.

Warsaw, April 1943

He believes the passage from Gaza into Egypt would be easy.

Egypt (left) and Gaza border

The truth is that Egypt has closed its border with Gaza and has no intention of opening it to a flood of refugees. Civilians in Gaza are trapped.

Attack
Feiglin wants Israel to attack Gaza with the full might if the Israeli military with no concern for the lives of children or other non-combatants.

Warsaw, 1943

On July 24, Israel attacked a UN school, killing 15 and wounding over 200.

Gaza, 2014

Siege
Step three in Feiglin's master plan is a total siege of Gaza. There has been an ongoing blockade of all but food and medicine into Gaza for the past seven years. Feiglin wants to stop the food, too, and starve the occupants.

Warsaw, 1943 - Child died of starvation

In the past, Israel has used food as a weapon against Gaza. They have not yet tried full on starvation as a weapon.

Retaliation
Feiglin uses the word "defense" but he is really talking about retaliation. He wants any attack on Israel or Israeli soldiers to be repaid with a devastating retaliation with no concern for civilian casualties.

Execution of Polish hostages in retaliation for an attack on a Nazi police station.

When Germany invaded Poland, civilian deaths exceeded military deaths by a ratio of 10 to 1. Israel claims half the Gaza casualties are combatants while the UN sets the ratio at about 3 civilians for each combatant.

Conquer
Feiglin's next step is the invasion and conquest of Gaza. Again, civilian casualties be damned.

Elimination
This is Feiglin's own terrifying word. He tries to soften things a little but he describes the removal of the entire Palestinian population of Gaza either through death or deportation.

Deportation of Jews from the Lodz Ghetto, 1941.

 Absorption
Feiglin's final step in his final solution of the Gaza problem is the absorb the now depopulated Gaza into Israel. He calls this "Sovereignty."

Warsaw Ghetto wall.

Wall between Gaza and Israel.

I am not saying that Israel's treatment of Gaza is as bad as the Nazi's. It is not. But I have to add, not yet. If the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset gets his way the only difference would be the ovens and death camps.

The current leadership of Israel has learned the wrong lesson from World War II. They somehow learned that walling off an ethnic group they fear and hate to be followed by the forced deportation of that group is, somehow, a viable policy option.

Health Care Haves and Have Nots

Right now, I'm thrilled to live in California. We have a well functioning state health care exchange. As as result, I and millions of others fortunate enough to live in a state where their politicians care about their citizens, will retain our stable health care premiums.

Conversely, people in those states mostly run by Republicans that see their citizens as worthless pawns to sacrifice in bizarre political games face massive, and mostly unaffordable, increases in their premiums. Republicans, of course, are jubilant and plan to blame the premium increases that they have caused on Democrats.

The end result, which is entirely the goal of Republicans, is to divide the nation in half. The half with Democratic leadership will be healthier, more prosperous, and happier. The Republican half will be sicker, poorer, more miserable, and angrier. As Ted Cruz can tell you, poor and angry people are the most fertile ground for growing Tea Party fanatics.

Reality Check: The ruling by a three judge panel will be stayed and referred to the entire D.C. Circuit Court which will over turn the ruling by the two partisan Republican judges. Republicans, in turn, will appeal that judgement to the Supreme Court where the odds are, by the same 5-4 vote, they will reaffirm their judgement on the ACA. At the same time, Democrats will introduce simple legislation in the Senate to correct the problem, block Republican efforts to amend the hell out of it, and pass it onto the House which will bury it deeper than Argonaut Mine (in California, over a mile deep).

California - Drought or the New Normal?

California. Lush, beautiful, a land of orchards and fields. Is that all just history? Is California now just a big desert?

Folsom Lake was built a half century ago to hold a million acre-feet of water (One acre-foot is enough water for a family of four for an entire year). The levels are higher now than this photo, when the reservoir was at 17% of capacity, but still low.

Ironically, this sign at Folsom Lake was not intended to be low comedy.

Oroville Lake is the keystone of the California Water Project that ships water to agriculture, industrial, and residential users throughout the state. At 3.5 million acre-feet maximum capacity, it is the largest reservoir in the state. It currently sits at just a third of that capacity.

Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, is at its lowest level since the reservoir was first filled during the Great Depression. The water level is 100 feet below its average and just 75 feet above the lowest limit where water can be pumped out of that ever shrinking mud hole.

Speaking of the Colorado River, by the time it crosses the border between the United States and Mexico, that once mighty river has ceased to exist. That broad expanse of desert pictured above is all that is left of the Colorado River delta.

But all is not lost. If you are a millionaire you can find all the fresh water you could ever want extravagantly wasted on the high-end golf courses of Palm Springs. Pictured is the TPC at La Quinta.

The California Divide Initiative

The plan to cut up California into six different states is just another example of a billionaire, Tim Draper, who needs to have his taxes raised because he has way more money than good sense. This initiative did not come out of any popular desire for a break up, although it does reference a couple of long standing regional gripes. There was no actual thinking or planning. It's just an initiative born of an egoist and his money.

1. Silicon Valley
Besides being a silly name for a state, this is the only reason for the initiative. Draper's real goal is a separate country (probably called Draperstan) but, baby steps. The state of Silicon Valley would be, by far, the richest state in the nation with a per capita income twice that of New York State.

2. Jefferson
Logging interests in Northern California have long wanted to break away from the rest of the state and join with logging interests in southern Oregon to form a new state. The effort was never more than a joke when it began in 1941.

3. Southern California
Conservatives from Orange and San Diego counties have long hated sharing a state with Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Of course, when Ronald Reagan was governor it was LA and SF who wanted to cut Orange and San Diego out of the state.

4. Central California
Central Valley farmers resent the fact that so much water passes through their region on the way to SoCal without them getting their fair share (they believe their fair share is all of it).

5. West California
An irrational construct into which Draper dumps the rest of the LA metroplex that isn't Orange County.

6. Northern California
An even more irrational construct that make no geographic sense whatsoever.

If, by some perverse miracle, this initiative passes it will fuck up all the water allocations within the state. The Colorado River compact is for the entire state of California. Nevada and Arizona will demand renegotiation and a much bigger share of the river. The Los Angeles Aqueduct starts in the Owens Valley, which would be in a different state that will want to keep that water.

I can't wait to see the TV commercials on this initiative.

Dog Days of Politics

These are the dog days of summer, so called because the Dog Star, Sirus, is in the night sky. It is also the time of year that politicians get bored and do abysmally stupid things to get attention.

• There has been a rash of blatant racism, and the N-word, in public discourse. Perhaps the most amusing was a Chamber of Commerce press conference in Wisconsin where a speaker complained that "a n****r" was in charge in Washington.
• Republicans have begun their traditional second term "Impeach the Democratic president" activities flavored this time by plans to sue President Obama for, literally, everything he has ever done.
• A half century ago during Freedom Summer people fought, and died, to gain the right for blacks to vote in Mississippi. Today, Radical Republicans are aggressively pushing the political theory that blacks voted illegally last month.

Chris McDaniel objects.

• The three Supreme Court justices (Scalia, Thomas, and Alito) who belong to a radical Catholic sect that believe the government should impose religious law on everyone, frequently get their way in the summer session probably because the mainstream Catholic conservatives (Roberts and Kennedy) are more compliant in the heat. Therefore, the summer rulings tend to have a sharia law flavor.
• Summer is the traditional killing season in Iraq. This year is no different but, at least, this year Americans are not doing most of the killing. A fact Republicans find intolerable.
• Summer is also the traditional killing season in the Gaza Strip where the Israel Defense Force bombs that densely populated region, killing a few Hamas combatants along with a whole lot of innocent civilians.