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.

French Quarter Tourist Shooting

Thanks to Bobby Jindal and a rubber stamp legislature, gun laws in Louisiana are so loose they would make any 19th century resident of Dodge City cower in terror. It is perfectly legal to wander down Bourbon Street in New Orleans carrying a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a loaded gun in the other.

The result was on display this weekend when two men got into an argument in the famed French Quarter, both unholstered their guns and began firing. Nine innocent tourists where shot in the melee, two critically. The police only showed up after the carnage was over and they spent their time putting up yellow tape and walking back and forth examining pools of blood and listening to the moans of the injured.

Thanks to Jindal, it is legal to carry guns almost everywhere in the state, including businesses that serve both food and alcohol. It is legal to load your gun with explosive bullets, as long as you are carrying under five pounds. Louisiana has the highest rate of death by gun in the United States, 72 people are shot to death every month (per capita, that is five times higher than Massachusetts). Jindal describes this as a "Sportsman's Paradise."

I guess, if you describe "sportsmen" as "maniacs with lethal weapons," he's right.

Tea Party Protests Blacks Voting

Lots of Tea Partiers are outraged that Thad Cochran (R-Miss) appealed to African-Americans in winning his runoff election. The Tea Party had send "poll watchers" to try to intimidate blacks trying to vote. Echoing the Jim Crow era, Sarah Palin is now charging that blacks voted illegally.

Some Tea Partiers say blacks who voted for Cochran who don't intend to vote for him in the general election are criminals. There are vague suggestions that Mississippi law requires the state to compel blacks who voted in the runoff to vote for the Republican or risk prison.

There are no reports of blacks who voted being lynched. Yet. But the Tea Party candidate, Chris McDaniel, is a renown neo-Confederate with ties to the KKK.

It's a weird, and totally frightening, return to the Mississippi of 100 years ago.

Is Satan a God?

Last night I had a dream where I debated the polytheism of Christianity with one of those door-to-door religion salesmen where I made this point. It was so much fun I'm kinda hoping an annoying bible thumper knocks on my door this weekend. There are so many delicious points to make.

Christians Are Polytheists
Especially Catholics.

Chock Full of Saints

Starting at the bottom, there are over 10,000 canonized saints in the Catholic pantheon. They are prayed to, worshiped, and intercede in the lives of mortals. That is the definition of a god. Because they are deified mortals with a limited focus they are exact parallels of the petty Greek Gods. Aristaeus for the Greeks and St. Ambrose for Catholics are the patron gods of beekeepers.

Lots of Little Angels

Christians believe there are billions of angels watching over us, protecting us, and frequently doing a shitty job of it. They are in numbers and job description just wood nymphs and house elves.

Archangels Among Us

If Jehovah is the supreme god, like Zeus, then archangels are lesser gods created by the supreme god then they are like Ares and Athena. They are immortals and superior to humans but not, themselves human. They are spirits that can take both human and non-human form. There are seven named archangels in most Christian sects; Roman Catholics have fewer while Mormons add more.

Lucifer Makes Eight

The biggest problem with any truly monotheistic religion is that there is no antagonist. Heroes need anti-heroes, otherwise you have a damn boring religion. Lucifer wants to dethrone Jehovah and rule all of creation. We are not talking about the Pine Crest Little League All-Stars challenging the New York Yankees. He thought he had a legitimate shot at pulling off a coup. This is a contest of near equals, more like the Boston Red Sox against the Yankees. What is nearly equal to a supreme being god? Why another god, of course.

Council of Gods

Facing a hard case who believes the Bible is infallible holy scripture. Refer him to Psalm 82:1. Right there in the Bible, Yahweh is sitting at the head of a Divine Council addressing his fellow "elohim." Elohim is a Hebrew word meaning "gods." Plural.

Conclusion
Satan is a god, like Loki or Kali. He is the equal, or nearly equal, to the creator god, Yahweh (aka Jehovah). Yahweh hold court with the other gods of the firmament known to us collectively as the archangels.  Beneath these dukes of heaven, if you will, are a massive population of lesser spirits and demons that any good pagan religion would also call gods.

By the by, Islam is also polytheist believing in jinns (demons made from smokeless fire), angels (slaves to Allah), and the devil (called Iblis). Although their creator god does not have a Divine Council and his opponents are mostly humans who defy him. But being all-powerful means that Allah is rather capricious, inflicting evil on innocents just to test them. Basically, he treats humans like they were his lab rats.

Open Carry Observations

If the pride of the NRA confined themselves to shooting each other in the face or the penis I would support a very liberal interpretation of the Second Amendment. They can own all the guns they want. It's your basic Darwinian principle in action, culling the herd of those who should never, ever breed.

For those people, toy gun ownership should be illegal and they should be required to only own real guns.

My problem is the NRA idiots who think they should be able to carry guns in public without being part of a "well regulated militia." These fetishists who think carrying guns in public makes them more masculine when the truth is that, gun or not,

a schmuck is still a schmuck. Then there are the Rambo wannabes who think if they carry guns everywhere they go, eventually they will have a chance to become a hero when the reality is should a crisis come the odds are they will freeze, fuck up, and piss themselves before being shot like a dog.

To accommodate these people we have to allow psychopaths to acquire and carry guns.

Therefore, I contend that clause "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" is the dominate part of the Second Amendment and that the remaining words were meant to be subordinate to that clause.

Iraq Civil War: Three Questions

There are three questions that beg answering about the Iraq civil war.

How Could the CIA/Pentagon NOT Foresee This Possibility?

Our spy agencies communicating with each other.

It's not like the ethnic factions in Iraq were unknown. Pretty much the entire decade of the Iraq occupation was consumed with dealing with the blood letting of those factions trying to kill each other. It's not like the goal of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, which has been around since 2004, to form an Islamic state of the Sunni tribes that live in eastern Syria and Western Iraq was a secret. It's all right there in the name.

My best guess is that the intelligence agencies were totally insulated in their bubble and only told each other what they wanted to hear. Anyone with a dissenting opinion would be labeled "not a team player" and reassigned to the Thule, Greenland listening post.

Why has the Iraq Army dissolved Like Wet Paper Mache?

Let's face it, in Iraq being in the army isn't considered an adventure, it's just a job. And certainly not a job worth dying over. When the US was training the Iraq army it had a couple of goals. First, it didn't want the Iraq Army thinking it could stand up to the US army of occupation. It was mostly trained to be subservient bitches. Second, it wanted an integrated force not dependent of tribal loyalties. But, Iraq is a collection of tribes, not a nation so the Iraq Army is devoid of any loyalty. Finally, the Iraq Army is, like the government, corrupt. The rank-and-file know their generals got their appointments through bribery and spend all their time sucking at the golden teat of the American taxpayer.

There is nothing new here. It is exactly the same state of affairs that caused the Vietnamese army to fold like a cheap Chinese lantern in 1975. The army can think of a lot better things to do, like going home,
than fighting and dying for the absentee gangsters who command them.

How Will the "Who Lost Iraq" Debate Play Out?
It is an American habit to find scapegoats whenever anything goes wrong. In 1948, factions of the corrupt Chinese government were fighting among themselves over how to divide their loot while Mao Tse-tung's Red Army focused on actually taking over the country. When the American backed crooks, led by Chiang Kai-shek, escaped to Taiwan Republicans, led by Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon, started a State Department witch hunt asking the question, "Who Lost China?" After Vietnam fell, the debate over "Who Lost Vietnam?" started. That time blame fell on the American generals when the perpetually corrupt South Vietnamese government had created a state that no one in their right minds was willing to fight and die for.

If Republicans were having fun with the Benghazi inquiries they will go absolutely orgasmic with charges of jihadist traitors in the State Department betraying Iraq. There weren't any, of course, but facts never stopped a good lynching.

Iraq Civil War

Who would have predicted a civil war in Iraq after the fall of the brutal Hussein dictatorship? Try just about anyone with an ounce of common sense.

Iraq was never a nation-state, it was an artificial construction by colonial British after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. In the north there are ethnic Kurds (about 18% of the population). In the south and east are Arab Shi'ites (about 42%). In the west and middle are Arab Sunnis (about 38%).

Each have their own militias; the Kurds have the Peshmerga, the Sunnis have the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and the Shi'ites have the regular Iraqi army. An awkward peace was possible as long as the United States maintained a colonial occupation of the country but that would have required having a significant army stationed in Iraq for-fucking-ever. Once the US left, the teapot was bound to erupt eventually.

There are few alternatives. The US could reinvade and return the country to status quo 2007. Or, one of the two Arab factions could impose a vicious dictatorship like the Sunni Ba'ath dictatorship of Saddam and thus rule with an iron fist over the others. Or, and this is the best option, partition the country between its three main factions. The problem with the partition option is oil rich Mosul that all sides want to control.

Most likely in the short term, the central government in Baghdad will contract with the Kurdish Peshmerga to open a second front on the ISIS to relieve the military pressure on the capital while they petition both the United States and Iran to intervene. It's unlikely the US will want to engage in Iraq War III so I expect that Iran will send in a fighting force to install some sort of partition.

American Presidential Dynasties

With the possibility of a Hillary Clinton-Jeb Bush presidential campaign in 2016, people are talking about political dynasties in our supposedly democratic nation. The truth is that, by and large, American dynasties have been pretty much failures. My criteria two family members elected president. So, no Kennedys.

The Bush Family

In addition to the two President Bushes, this family has Prescott Bush who was so distraught at the election of Franklin Roosevelt that he tried to organize a "cocktail putsch" in 1933 and impose a fascist military dictatorship. Nothing much came of it, no one was arrested, but Prescott saw his bank seized by the government in 1942 for its financial dealings with the Nazis.

George Bush Senior got to the top the old fashioned way, he inherited it from the sainted Ronald Reagan. In four short years he took the Reagan Revolution and a successful Iraq War and turned it into the worst result for a president seeking reelection since William Taft, getting just 37.5% of the vote.

George Bush Junior probably stole the presidency in 2000 when the Supreme Court ordered a stop to the vote count and gave him the office. When he left office he was thoroughly hated by both left and right. He has been reduced to painting childish art.

The Adams Family

Sorry, wrong picture.

John Adams was a founding father and helped pen the Declaration of Independence. Elected to succeed the sainted George Washington, John grew to hate the open debate of democracy and signed the Sedition Act that outlawed criticizing the government and used it to throw some members of Congress into jail. He ended up losing his reelection to Thomas Jefferson.

Son John Quincy Adams was the sixth president but he stole it from Andrew Jackson in the House of Representatives even though Jackson won both the popular vote and a plurality but not majority of the electoral votes. Like his father, Quincy was a one-term president.

The Roosevelt Family

The only successful family in US dynastic history. Teddy was popular while in office but was not Republican enough for the party when he tried to replace William Taft as the Republican nominee in 1912. Still, Teddy ran as a third party candidate and nearly pulled off a victory.

Franklin was Teddy's fifth cousin, but family is family. He was so popular he won election four times. Effectively, FDR was his own dynasty. Between them, Roosevelts controlled the White House for almost 20 years.

The Harrison Family

The most pathetic dynasty on the list. William Henry won the election of 1840. Famous for killing Native Americans in the Indian Wars of 1811 and not much of anything else, he still won. At the age of 68, he delivered a two hour inaugural address in a driving rainstorm and caught his death of cold. Literally. His cold turned to pneumonia and he died exactly one month later.

Benjamin Harrison was William Henry's grandson. He beat incumbent Grover Cleveland (trivia: the city of Cleveland was named after a distant relative of Grover's) in 1888. Benjamin's signature accomplishment was greatly increasing the tariffs on imported goods, which was the 19th century equivalent of a massive tax hike. After one term, he was unpopular even within his own party and was defeated by the man he had beat earlier, Grover Cleveland. This dynasty manged to rule for just four years and one month.

More Money Than Sense - NBA Edition

Like many of the US aristocracy, Steve Ballmer is an rich idiot who have no concept of the value of money. He's buying the LA Clippers for a totally insane $2 billion.

Before Donald Sterling put his foot in his mouth all the way up to the hip, the Clippers were valued at a quarter of that amount, $575 million by Forbes. With operating income of only $15 million, Ballmer's price comes to a rate of return of a microscopic 0.8%. According to Ballmer, the Clippers are worth almost twice their rivals, the LA Lakers, and worth as much as the LA Dodgers.

(Sanity Check: The Dodgers sold 3.7 million tickets in 2013, the Clippers sold just 790,000 tickets.)


What makes sense is that Ballmer is rewarding Sterling for his courageous stand in favor of gross racism. The only other explanation is that while Ballmer has more money than Croesus, he has the rational decision making skills of a kumquat. He is a walking, talking, spending argument for a marginal tax rate of 90%.

Veteran's Administration Perspective

I'm not going to say that the screw up that is the Veteran's Administration isn't horrible and doesn't need major fixes. I will say it's not new. The VA has been for most of its history failing to serve ex-servicemembers.

World War II
Immediately after World War II, President Harry Truman appointed Gen. Omar Bradley to clean up the VA. Bradley was second only to Dwight Eisenhower in the pantheon of American WWII generals. Bradley, in turn, brought in Eisenhower's theater surgeon, Major General Paul Hawley, who described the VA medical care system as "medieval."

Korean War
Many soldiers suffered frostbite during the bitter winter battles. The VA didn't recognize the long term effects of battle related frostbite until 1997, 45 years after the was ended.

Vietnam War
The generals in this war thought it would be easier to fight if they turned the country into a parking lot so they spread the herbicide all over the place. Symptoms of Agent Orange poisoning followed the veterans home but the Pentagon didn't want to admit they had engaged in chemical warfare in Vietnam. Therefore, the VA spent decades denying help to Vietnam War vets. Again, it wasn't until the Clinton Administration that the VA changed.

Personal
In the 1980's a close friend was being treated for cancer at a VA hospital. They were doing a royally shitty job of it and she was dying. Then her husband took her out of the VA system and paid thousand of dollars for private treatment and she went into remission.

I don't know what conclusions we can draw from this. But it is true that Pentagon generals and congressmen prefer spending money on fancy new weapons and rather think that investing in wounded warriors isn't very showy.

Five Biggest Fails of the Last Decade

We're not talking your normal cock-ups but fails so monumental it would have been infinitely better to not have tried at all.

1.) The Rapture

Harold Camping was the latest, in 2011, of a long line of religious hucksters to predict the end of the world. He had had used his own propitiatory form of numerology (that wasn't the least bit satanic) to predict the exact date and time of the rapture when Bible believing Christians would be whisked up out of the clothes and carried naked to heaven to be out of harm's way for the end of the world. Camping's church publicized his prediction across his 150 station radio network and bought numerous billboards

advertising the event. Of course, May 21 came and went without so much as a plague of frogs so Camping adjusted his prediction six months to October 21 and tried again. And failed again.

True believers sold off their property and quit their jobs to prepare for Judgement Day. One mother tried to kill herself and two children so they wouldn't have to live through Armageddon. Many committed suicide either because they couldn't face the future or in grief because thought they had been left behind. Camping's Family Radio Network began believing its own con and started spending money like there was no tomorrow (literally). After the failed predictions, donations disappeared faster than a raptured soul. Camping didn't just kill innocent dupes, he killed his own golden egged goose.

2. Operation American Spring

For months, Col. Harry Riley (ret.) has been planning the biggest march on Washington in American history. He predicted 10 to 30 million people, righteous patriots, would gather last weekend (May 16, 2014) to force the ouster of the elected leadership of the United States with a tribunal led by Rand Paul and Ted Cruz taking charge until the Constitution could be restored. Col. Riley wanted at least a million people to stay in the capitol for several weeks until the government fell and freedom was restored

Turn out was a tad light. Only a few hundred, not a few million, showed up. The protesters were outnumbered by tourists.  Excuses abound (although the best have been proposed by liberals). Supporters blame:

• the weather, claiming millions were trapped in campgrounds in Virginia by rain,
• that nearly 2 million people were actually there but media censorship blocked coverage. Here are several pictures taken of the actual event,
• millions would have come but they couldn't get time off work for the revolution,
• the traitor Glenn Beck sabotaged the event by bad mouthing it,
• real patriots stayed away because they were told to not bring their guns.

3. Rudy Giuliani's Presidential Campaign

Rudy Giuliani had been humiliated by Hillary Clinton when he ran for the Senate in 2000. But he was rehabilitated by terrorists on 9-11 and by 2007 he was the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination the next year. In March 2007, Gallup polls gave Rudy a 24 point lead over second place John McCain. He had a shitload of money, by the third quarter of 2007 Rudy had more money on hand than Mitt Romney and John McCain combined.

But Rudy didn't want to invest his money in retail politics in places like Iowa or New Hampshire. He preferred big media buys in big states like Florida and California. And his campaign tactics were downright bizarre. For example, he would "spontaneously" interrupt events to take phone calls from his "loving" wife (he was having a not very secret affair with Judith Nathan at the time). He avoided the early primaries and racked up a string of embarrassing single digit results.

Add in corruption scandals (Bernie Kerik), sex scandals (Judith Nathan affair), business scandals (his law firm worked for a pro-al Qaeda Arab royal family), liberal scandals (he was pro abortion), and weirdness scandals (appearing at public events in drag), and Rudy's campaign withered like an orchid in the Mohave Desert.

4. Anti-Gay Marriage Movement

The Family Research Council was founded in 1983. Their raison d'etre is to make life miserable for gay people everywhere. When they started, gay marriage was illegal in all fifty states. Even the concept of marriage-like civil union existed nowhere. Like King Canute, the FRC has stood on the shore and commanded the tide of social change to not come in. And like King Canute, they have failed.

At the beginning of the year, same sex marriage was legal in 17 states. Just this year, judges in seven additional states have ruled bans unconstitutional. Polls indicated that nearly 60% of Americans approve of gay marriage while only one in three stand opposed. The anti-gay marriage movement has failed faster than the pro-slavery supporters and those opposing women's suffrage.

5. Kill Obamacare Movement

Remember six months ago? The Republican Party was united under the leadership of a wackadoodle named Ted Cruz. They proudly shut down the government and proposed collapsing the entire economy to prevent Americans from having access to reasonably priced health insurance. They were going to repeal Obamacare or destroy the nation trying.

That was then. Recent polls show 60% of the public want to keep or improve the Affordable Care Act. While Republicans will still talk the game to their radicals, but only if they are forced to. Mostly Republican politicians have grown strangely quiet on the issue and will admit, in the seclusion of K Street cocktail parties that Obamacare is here to stay.