TRAYVON, THE REAL SCENARIO

Scenario at 2:30 am:

I'm in a strange town, visiting. I don't know anybody in the town except my Dad, and I'm walking home to my Dad's house down a strange street in this strange town when some crazy guy comes after me and shows me a gun in his pants belt and seems to be inappropriately crazy-acting angry. I've got three choices...fight or flight or freeze. 

If I freeze the dude could easily shoot me. If I run he might shoot me in the back. I know the dude must be crazy to be confronting me when all I'm doing is walking home. Paranoid crazy people do that sometimes, attack others for no sensible reason. So, my only choice, faced with this armed madman, is attack so fast that he doesn't have time to pull his weapon and quickly do enough damage to the dude so that he won't be able to pull his gun and kill me. That's what any sensible male, acting on instinct, would do when confronted by what seems to be an armed maniac in a strange town.

The only error I make is I don't beat the guy senseless. I let up a minute because I'm a human being, and I don't like to kill people. That's my mistake...I don't knock the guy completely unconscious, so, because I'm a human being with a conscience, I'm dead, and a shyster lawyer makes sure that the paranoid racist, nut job gets off by making sure that nobody gets a chance to really understand the dynamics of the situation. The prosecutor began by reading the very clear racist remarks of that nut job when he reported "suspicious" [walking down the street?] behavior. Zimmerman made clearly racist comments at the time. What he committed was a clear hate attack that he instigated, and only in the deep South would he get away with it. We all know that, anybody my age of 75 with a bit of brain in his head knows it, anybody who saw McCain defeated by the race card in South Carolina during his first run at the presidency knows it...the South is full of prejudice. Hell...it's the whole reason the South went from Democrat to Republican after Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

Now...will I be able to sleep?

I SENT THIS TO SENATOR MCCAIN

Thank you for trying to reinstall the Glass-Steagall Act. I wish you great success. As a Dem, I was happy that we again led the way in getting a minority candidate elected President as we did with the first Catholic president. I wish a handful of truly responsible Congresspersons would get together and make some honest decisions about what the Federal government can do better and more cheaply than the private sector and, then, fund those things well and turn the rest over to private enterprise. 

Health care is one of those things that the federal government can do better, so why not get on board there, Senator? The private insurance health industry has admitted repeatedly that they can't do the job as inexpensively as the feds can. Aside from a few really important and public things that the feds can do, most business should be private enterprise, as long as the private sector is well regulated. The private sector proved that when they are let to run loose, they are greedy and irresponsible as anyone. 

Thanks for you years of service to our nation. Many long years ahead. Why don't you try to build up a strong independent party that could take Congress out of this endless cycle of hateful irresponsibility that excessive partisanship has created?

I’M SORRY TO SAY: REPUBLICAN (CONSERVATIVE-CHRISTIAN-FUNDAMENTALIST-MCCAIN) PARTY IS FASCIST IN NATURE TOP TO BOTTOM! WHY DOES MCCAIN CONTINUE TO BE A REPUBLICAN?

The evidence of vote tampering by Republicans continues to mount. The evidence pile is now about as tall as Mount Hood in the State of Oregon.

[SNIPPET]
Von Spakovsky, Schlozman's deputy, who has been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury because of his refusal to speak to investigators, was also alleged to have to misused his official position by setting aside the law to take actions to help Republican candidates.

When von Spakovsky was nominated to serve on the Federal Election commission, six career officials of the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section, who had worked under him, wrote the Senate asking that he not be confirmed.

The six alleged that "during the 2004 election cycle" von Spakovsky "broke with established Department policy by getting involved with contentious and partisan litigation on the eve of the election. Mr. von Spakovsky drafted legal briefs between the Republican and Democratic parties in three battleground states, Ohio, Michigan and Florida just before the election, all in favor of the Republican party's position." The six career officials further asserted: "These briefs ran counter to the well-established practice of the Civil Rights Division not to inject itself into litigation or election monitoring on the eve of an election where it would be viewed as expressing a political preference or could have an impact on a political dispute."

These briefs ran counter to the well-established practice of the Civil Rights Division not to inject itself into litigation or election monitoring on the eve of an election where it could be viewed as expressing a political preference or could have an impact on a political dispute.
[PASTEIT]

As reported by Murray Waas murraywaas@gmail.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC

CHECK THIS OUT

[cut]
I watch McCain throughout the sermon. When the story is over, he flashes his creepy Count Chocula smile — the same one he pulls out, teeth bared, after his That's not change we can believe in! stump line — but otherwise doesn't react. Everybody on our side of the chapel is glancing over at him.

In a way, this scene says everything you need to know about McCain's dilemma. The man is a relic from a previous era of conservatism, when privacy was sacrosanct and public expressions of religiosity were considered vulgar and in bad taste. McCain comes from a generation of American men for whom religion was a ticket you punched once a week, a low-effort symbol of conformity to go with your two-car garage, your sorority-girl wife and your weekly golf game with the fellas. The whole braying-to-the-moon, born-again Promise Keeper act perfected by the Bushes and Huckabees of the world is as alien to his sensibility as an Iron John man-poetry retreat. Sitting here in the North Phoenix Baptist pews, he has a look on his face like he'd just as well suck a cock as do an altar call. It's one of his most likable qualities.
[paste]

Matt Taibbi really gets into John McCain, but the subtext is a good trashing of Fundamental Xtians and their hold on political power which seems to be slipping. In a way, Taibbi’s essay, in a twist, could be said to backhandedly support poor old John’s attitudes about religion. According to Taibbi, McCain really doesn’t like them, but he’s got to court them, yet he isn’t able to court them. It turns his stomach. Read it for yourself at

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/21896154/without_a_prayer

USUALLY MY POSTS ARE ABOUT…

politics, science and literature, but I just happened to come across these photos on the Huffpo site. Even at the ripe old age of 70 and with a little help from Viagra, I can rise to this occasion. My great grandparents from before the days of the Great Depression would not understand it at all… or would they? Or at least my wonderful great grandfather on my grandmother’s side of dad's family might respond and understand. He was a drayman who drove a team of horses for a brewery in Dayton, Ohio. Have men ever been immune to a well-turned ankle? Look at the ankle on that chick! Hey! Where is that ankle.... Never mind!

"Proving she's still an American Beauty, actress Mena Suvari looked a figure of confidence as she showed off her slim physique in a revealing bikini."



NOW FOR SOMETHING
COMPLETELY DIFFERENT:

The following explosive and revealing letter by a serviceman in Iraq, I got via the Huffpo site also which directed me to a website run by a fellow named Spencer Ackerman.

from ’s Ackerman's blog:

"A friend of a friend just received the following email from a junior officer serving in Iraq. It makes for especially powerful reading in the wake of the Second Sadrist Intifada. Reprinted with permission.


"[Name redacted],

"I agree that the war was a great strategic mistake. The way I see it, Saddam Hussein was a secular leader and therefore a huge stumbling block to the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. Yes, he was an evil person and he was our enemy (since Gulf War I) but he was also an enemy of Bin Laden and the Shia extremists etc. If he did have WMDs, he would have used them for regional influence. He never would have given them up to terrorists or risked provoking the US by using them against us. Now, with Saddam gone we have a vaccum that can only be filled by Shia extremists who are more of a terrorist threat than Saddam.

"So I agree that coming here was a big mistake for those reasons and others. As far as things on the ground, the outlook isn't much better. In my opinion, what everyone fails to realize is that this is not a counterinsurgency. If we wanted to stay in Iraq, then it would be a counterinsurgency. But it is clear that our goal is to turn over power and pull out. So, in building our strategic endstate, it's pointless to set goals that relate to our presence in Iraq. If the "insurgency" is a function of our being there, then it is not an insurgency in terms of our endstate. For example, if one of our goals is to stop IED attacks on US forces, that is pointless. When we leave, there will be no more IED attacks on us forces. So our endstate needs to be different. We need to ask "if we left tomorrow, what would happen in Iraq?" and from there, we need to determine which of those anticipated results are unacceptable to us. Then we must aim our efforts on making sure those unacceptable results do not occur.

"When I look at the problem that way, it becomes almost impossible to find a purpose in what we do. Regardless of what we do, the Shia are going to take control. They have completely infiltrated all the security forces. The only kind of leader who could keep them in check was a tyrant like Saddam. And when the Shia take control, as soon as we leave, they are going to be as brutal as they like against the Sunni and there will be little we can do about it. That is what will happen whether we leave tomorrow or in ten years. As far as the foreign fighters, they will leave Iraq when we do. So what are we trying to accomplish here? Train the Iraqi forces? History shows that training forces in the Middle East can backfire. Any training we offer these people will find its way to our terrorist enemies.

"Things are heating up as well. The Shia are getting more aggressive. We lost a man the other day and another was seriously wounded a week or so later. We're facing a high risk with very little potential payoff. We are able to make a difference at the local level. Some of the people are very kind and appreciate our help. That is the only positive thing I can see coming out of this.

"Very Respectfully
"Junior Officer XXXX"

PS: I wonder why we have to hide the soldier's name? His disagreeing with the Bush fiasco should only get him replaced by a soldier who puppets the Bush/McCain plan like Patraeus replaced the general who disagreed with Bush. What the hell was his name? Is he still in the service?