Category Archives: ISIS

12/22/2015
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Barack Obama, CBGB, Chicago Police Department, Donald Trump, FactCheck.org, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Hillary Clinton, ISIS, Lamon Reccord, Laquan McDonald Shooting, Misogyny, Police Brutality, Racism, Seymour Hersh, Syrian Civil War, Uncategorized

Hot Air

One Shot, One Year

For my money, this is the picture of the year, 2015:

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[Image: John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune, November 25, 2015]

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That’s a young fellow named Lamon Reccord, a participant in street protests against Chicago police brutality and the killings of black people in general around this holy land. The protests broke out this fall in the aftermath of the release of a video showing a CPD officer shooting Laquan McDonald 16 times on a South Side street some 13 months earlier.

This particular confrontation took place at the corner of State and Randolph streets in the Loop the day after the video footage was released. Reccord already had gained national notoriety when he was video’d staring down another Chicago cop the day before. He’s either a symbol of morally-justified resistance to police racism and the use of deadly force or he’s a troublemaking punk, depending on where you stand on police/black relations in Murrica these days.

Loyal Pencillistas know where I stand.

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Insurrection?

Correct me if I’m wrong, lawyers and military experts, but if Sy Hersh is right about this*, Gen. Martin Dempsey has committed a clear violation of military chain of command, putting the himself at risk of court-martial, incarceration, and even death. It seems like treason, pure and simple. It doesn’t matter if the president’s decision is right or wrong. That’s not how the military works. In fact, it borders on a coup.

And, really, haven’t you been expecting one or another Obama opponent to lead some kind of mutiny, even at this late date in his presidency?

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Dempsey (L) & Hersh

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Remember when the big panic going around held that Obama was secretly planning to get us involved in a big war or some such emergency so that he could declare martial law and remain in office even after his term(s) expired? Then again, that particular paranoiac delusion might well have gotten lost in the flood of all the other psychotic reactionary hallucinations to Obama’s election. There were so many of them, after all.

In any case, at least one reactionary was sure to commit some act of overthrow, given all the panic surrounding the first black prez.

[ * Just in case you’re too pressed for time to read the piece, Hersh asserts in the January 7, 2016 issue of the London Review of Books that Dempsey engaged in a secret plan to lure the Russians into the Syrian civil war and simultaneous battle against ISIS. Further, he ignored the White House’s strategy of attempting to remove Bashar al Assad from power. Dempsey, acc’d’g to Hersh, thought Obama was all wet in his Syria strategy so he freelanced his own plot.

Hersh, BTW, is a dogged, fearless investigative journalist who exposed the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War and the US Army’s abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. He also occasionally cooks up the occasional crockpot conspiracy theory. The question, then, is where does this latest revelation fall in Hersh’s spectrum? ]

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Cashing In

CBGB’s in New York City’s Bowery district was the chic-est place for punks to hang out in the late 1970s and into the early ’80s. The seediest bar imaginable, run by a guy named Hilly Kristal on a side street rife with the homeless, junkies, broken glass, and discarded syringes, the place introduced the world to the likes of the Ramones, the Talking Heads, Television, Blondie, the Dead Boys, Patti Smith, and countless other heroes of punk.

cbgb-1983-nyc-billboard-650

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Even inside the place, CBGB was littering with trash, vomit, dog shit, and strung-out mainliners. The very ugliness of CBGB became its selling point. Punk — and CBGB — symbolized a violent reaction to Middle American sensibilities, corporatism, advertising, music marketing, and the use of personal hygiene products.

CBGB served food, after a fashion, because its liquor license demanded it do so. Nobody went there to eat, believe me. The place has been closed for years now, its frontage now redone a la gentrification moderne.

Nevertheless, an entrepreneur named Harold Moore is opening up a CBGB restaurant in Newark Int’l Airport. Moore says he’ll serve $9 deviled eggs, an $11.50 iceberg lettuce salad, and a $14 hamburger to travelers hoping to recreate the Bowery/punk experience. The only thing is, Moore isn’t going to be serving Hilly’s legendary chili which, acc’d’g to lore, usually contained cigarette ash, spit, and other bodily fluids you can only imagine.

Need I remind readers that this holy land is one weird fking place?

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Duh!

FactCheck.org has named Donald Trump its political liar of the year. The truth-digging organization selects an annual top lying bastard and, really, who else could it be in 2015?

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Our National Shart

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Girl Cooties

Ugh! Hillary’s got lady parts. And stuff comes out of them! Gross.

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Please, Click This Link — It Gets Better!

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Okay, can we all admit now that Donald Trump is the worst excuse for a human being this holy land has produced in many, many a year?

Okay then.

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12/21/2015
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Barack Obama, Bob Zaltsberg, Herald Times, ISIS, NPR Morning Edition, Steve Inskeep, Ted Cruz, Winter Solstice

Hot Air

Let There Be Light

Hallelujah!

Winter solstice zips in tonight at 11:49pm in the Eastern Time Zone of the United States.

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Winter Solstice Sequence

[Image: Danilo Pivato]

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The days, after that moment, will become longer, brighter, and more amenable to my overall mental health.

Yay.

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Talking Headless

It is important not just to shoot, but to aim.

That’s the advice Barack Obama would give his successor regarding how to kick the crap out of ISIS. He was talking with NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep in the public radio network’s annual end-of-the-year chat with the boss of this holy land.

It’s vintage Obama — measured, considered, sober, calm.

As opposed to, say Sen Ted Cruz, the foreign-born pretender to the throne who not long ago told the same interviewer that Murrica oughtta “carpet bomb” ISIS.

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Carpet Bomber Cruz

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That’s something your idiot, uninformed brother-in-law would say in the midst of a holiday meal pontification. What’s scary, natch, is the fact that Cruz is a valid contender for the 2016 Republican nomination for president.

Cruz tried to justify his remark by saying this country has dropped more and bigger bombs many a time before so why in the world aren’t we doing so now?

Do we really have to answer that? Okay, let’s say we must. The reason we dropped more and bigger bombs in other wars was because we were trying to destroy an enemy’s war-making capabilities, its factories, its railroads, its air bases, its military installations and key infrastructure sites. None of which ISIS really possesses. What Cruz doesn’t grasp is, ISIS is a marauding band of lunatics invading semi-urbanized, semi-permanent outposts, terrorizing frightened tribal groups, and imposing its will mainly through the use of scimitars and other medieval tools of war. Obama said earlier in his interview, “Well, who is it you are going to bomb? Where is it that you are going to bomb?”

But what Obama doesn’t understand is Cruz’s blatherings resonate more with the American people than his own rational utterances. The vast majority of citizens herein want the bold, decisive, action-oriented palaver of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump more than the aforementioned measured, considered, sober, calm reasonings of Obama.

I don’t suggest that Obama start word-vomiting à la Cruz, Trump et al. I do insist he begin talking more to the limbic brain of the American electorate. Be more of a cheerleader, Barack. Tell us you’re gonna stand on your head to beat ISIS. Reassure us that we’re the biggest, strongest, baddest-assed nation on Earth. We want to hear it. It doesn’t matter if it’s all bullshit. We want the bullshit.

We have no interest in wonk-think. Obama can continue to be the policy wonk behind closed doors. He should be. He must be. But when he’s addressing Murrica, he’s got to be more Ronald Reagan than the University of Chicago senior lecturer he once was.

You’ll pardon me while I go drink my depression away now.

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Vox Pop

So, Bob Zaltsberg and the brain trust over at the Herald Times have decided to suspend public comment on stories during the holiday season.

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H-T Chief Zaltsberg

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Hmm.

I can’t figure out why readers’ sensibilities might be more fragile during this two-week period than any other. Zaltsberg writes that he and other gatekeepers have had to delete a few dozen comments in recent weeks because the commenters violated the paper’s civility policy.

Me, I’d leave even the most egregious, insulting, offensive stuff in — with the proviso that everybody who comments use their real names. I like the idea of knowing who the haters and flamboyant ignoramuses are in our town.

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Cosmic Comedy

The contestants from Uranus, the Andromeda Galaxy, and Kepler 452b protest.

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02/18/2015
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2015 Bloomington Emerging Leader, Alycin Bektesh, ISIS, Islam, John Steinbeck, Socialism, Women's History Month

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America

From John Steinbeck:

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

Steinbeck

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Bektesh Boffo

My old pal and colleague Alycin Bektesh has been named Bloomington’s 2015 Emerging Leader as part of the city’s Women’s History Month festivities in March.

Hard to believe the old girl is now 30 y.o., considering I recall her years ago sitting next to me for the first time one afternoon in the WFHB newsroom, fresh out of J-school, as well-scrubbed as any neophyte can be.

Hah — neophyte! She showed me. Alycin hit the ground running and didn’t stop until she left her latest post as News Director earlier this year. Believe me, the dame showed the entire news op. how a young, serious, dedicated reporter should act. She served as a role model not only to young women, sure, but to young men like WFIU voice Drew Daudelin and new WFHB News Director Joe Crawford, and — yeah, I’ll admit it — to an old bastard like me.

Bektesh

Alycin Bektesh

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Alycin will grab her award at city hall, Tuesday, March 3rd, at 5pm. The event is free and open to the public. Oh, I’ll be there, just to hear her say, “Hey, Glab,” one last time. Alycin tells me she has no definitive work plans at this time but with nearly a thousand NPR stations and better than 220 community radio stations pumping out news in the US, it’s almost a sure bet someone’s gonna grab her from us. I get the feeling she has the itch to do some creative and important reporting after spending the last few years cracking the whip at ‘FHB.

Of course, she’ll tell you ‘FHB cracked the whip on her — and she’d be right, too. It’s good to see her step away from that grind and breathe again.

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Excuses, Excuses

Scads o’folks are taking to the interwebs these days to lay a big guilt trip on this holy land for making it possible for ISIS to exist.

The idea being, our benighted leaders have so horribly mangled and mauled various precincts of the Middle East that, by golly, what else can you expect but for good, decent young Muslim men to chop people’s heads off?

And burn one or two hostages at the stake.

And videotape the festivities.

Make no mistake, it’s easy as pie to hate empire, any empire, and we — these United States of Murrica — are the empire du siècle.

Many of the same tut-tutters decry outraged criticism of ISIS as so much Islamophobia. These sensitive souls like to say the ISIS guys are not really Muslims at all, not like the peace-loving, vast majority of Muslims on this otherwise mad planet.

All told, a certain number of hand-wringers and pontificators hold that we’ve got ISIS all wrong and, even if we don’t, we — the USA — are jerks anyway so who are we to be outraged?

The truth is the ISIS gang is really more interested than anything else in time-machining the world to the Seventh Century. That would be when Islam’s founder, fella named Muhammad, decided to incorporate his god myth. The way the ISIS boys (and they are exclusively males, natch) look at it, every single thing that’s happened since the good old Six Hundreds has been an utter and brazen violation of god’s want.

Don’t ask me how they know this. I’m perplexed by all god-believers and their cock-suredness of what the putative creator of the Universe is thinking. Hey, Christianist peeps here think god becomes sick to his stomach at the very thought of two men passionately kissing. Then again, the ISIS boys think the same thing so, hell, who knows? Maybe they’re both right — although it seems far-fetched that the super supreme being who created all 118 elements as well as Katy Perry and Saturn’s moon, Enceladus, would be so skittish.

Creation

Creation

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Nevertheless, the ISIS-ers are dead set upon regressing this world some 1400 years. And should they fail in that quest, apparently, they would be more than happy to see this planet roasted. Yep, acc’d’g to Yale U. poli-sci lecturer Graeme Wood, writing in the most recent issue of The Atlantic, ISIS makes no bones about that either-or position. Either we go back to those rollicking pre-A/C, frozen pizza-less, women-are-chattel, no-one’s-ever-heard-of-the-Chicago-Cubs days or they’ll do what they can to make an apocalypse happen.

As in a biblical Apocalypse. Capital A.

And guess what — should they get their hands on some nukes and some matches, it wouldn’t be a jaw-dropping shock to see ISIS torch, say, Cairo, Tel Aviv, or even New York City.

See, the roster of ISIS is not comprised of hail-well-met fellows who’d be Quakers or volunteers for Habitat for Humanity were it not for the USA’s missteps and atrocities. They’re cut-throats. They’re end-times believers. They hate the world. They hate life itself.

And their vision of Islam is the most pure and unadulterated there is. As Graeme Wood writes:

The reality is that the Islamic State is Islamic. Very Islamic. Yes, it has attracted psychopaths and adventure seekers, drawn largely from the disaffected populations of the Middle East and Europe. But the religion preached by its most ardent followers derives from coherent and even learned interpretations of Islam.

I know many good people who practice the Islamic faith. But like Christians and Jews, they cherry-pick their scriptural guidelines and commandments. All faiths today are pale imitations of the holy — and monumentally violent — ideals of their denominations’ original charters.

And today, only the ISIS guys are following the rules as originally laid down by Muhammad and his PR men.

Fundamentalists, man. We’re going to be fighting them for a long time to come. As we should.

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02/05/2015
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2015 Mayoral Election, Darryl Neher, ISIS, John Hamilton, Monroe County Clerk

Hot Air

Running

So, the two frontrunners for the Democratic nomination for mayor of Bloomington are digging in for real now. City Council member Darryl Neher — who carries the blessing of outgoing Boss Mark Kruzan — has been having intense, sotto voce tête à têtes with citizens in public places here and there, including The Pencil’s very own back office, Soma Coffee. For his part, John Hamilton is holding house parties all over town.

Hamilton

A Hamilton House Party

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In fact, JH asked me the other evening if I might be interested in hosting a house part for him. His shoulders sagged when I informed him I live right outside the city limits.

Politicians in this megalopolis are learning that the Big Mike imprimatur is worth ten times more than an eight-figure TV ad budget. (Yeah, I know there are no commercial TV stations here in B-ton, but still….)

Neher

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Anyway, were I a voting Bloomingtonian, I might be very interested in hosting a Hamilton soiree. I’d pack the house and, unbeknownst to JH, I’d invite Neher too. When Hamilton’s rival would arrive I’d say, “Okay boys, go at it.”

What fun! A mayoral debate right in my living room. I’m sure Steve and Sally the Dogs would contribute to the resulting mayhem.

(BTW: How ’bout me using three foreign language idioms, commonly used in English, within the space of three grafs? I bragged to Cecily, my sports editor pal Chandler’s squeeze who happened to be sitting next to me, that I’d done it. She said, “So you want people to think you’re smart?” “No,” I said, “smart-assed.”)

The Dem primary is May 5th. Consider that, for all intents and purposes, the day Bloomington chooses its next mayor.

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And Another Thing….

I went to the Monroe County Clerk’s voting info website to find the exact date of the 2015 primary. The only info it carried had to do with the 2014 and 2013 elections.

Personal to whomever runs the site: That’s so last year (and the year before), savvy?

So, okay, I scrolled down to the Election Board’s calendar of events and checked the month of May. No date jumped out at me although there was a notation for a “Holiday Closing” on Tuesday, May 5th. What the hell holiday is May 5th? I clicked the date and found — mirabile dictu — it’s primary election day!

Monroe County Clerk

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Personal (again) to whomever runs the site: I was under the impression we wanted to make it a tad easier for people to vote, ‘kay?

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Tradition Lovers

Burnings at the stake? Beheadings?

Y’gotta say this for ISIS — they’re old school all the way.

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A True Star

Stand-up comedian, memoirist, civil rights activist, anti-war protester, and all around fascinating guy Dick Gregory got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame earlier this week.

Gregory

Dick Gregory

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He’s 82 years old now. When a Variety reporter asked him why it took so long to get his star, Gregory — as always — pulled no punches:

You know damn good and well why it took so long. I’ve been a bad boy.

Yes he has. Let Dick Gregory‘s life serve as a reminder that thousands of his brand of “bad boys” are just what a corrupt, inequitable, hate-laden society needs.

Oh hey, Dick Gregory’s greatest line? This:

… so I picked up that chicken and I kissed it.

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10/04/2014
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Charlotte Lucas, Forrest Lucas, ISIS, John McCain, Koch Brothers, Lucas Oil, Pam Manzanec, Revisionist History

Hot Air

Blustering Bosses

So, here are a couple of business people whose mouths emitted sounds even though their brains did not actually contribute to the process:

I’m sick and tired of minorities running our country! As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think that atheists (minority, muslims (minority)n [sic] or any other minority group has the right to tell the majority of the people in the United States what they can and can’t do here. Is everyone so scared that they can’t fight back for what is right or wrong with this country? — Charlotte Atkins Lucas

Lucas

The Lucases, Under Siege

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and

[Calling for a more “positive” view of US history in school textbooks] As an example, I note our slavery history. Yes, we practiced slavery. But we also ended it voluntarily, at great sacrifice, while the practice continues in many countries still today!

Shouldn’t our students be provided that viewpoint? This is part of the argument that America is exceptional. Does our APUSH (AP U.S. History) framework support or denigrate that position? — Pam Mazanec

Manzanec

Manzanec (Colorado Independent photo)

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Natch, both comments are spreading on the interwebs in a way the ebola virus can only dream of. Charlotte founded Lucas Oil Products, Inc. with her husband, Forrest. Lucas Oil is a huge “lubricants and additives” manufacturer and distributor, mighty enough that the outfit can be the name sponsor for Indianapolis’s magnificent shrine to the sports gods, Lucas Oil Stadium. Now, don’t get all het up about those lubricants and additives. The Lucas concern is not about enhancements for your sexual pleasure; it trades in automotive fluids in 27 countries around the world, reaping some $150 million in revenues as of 2012.

As for Pam, she’s a Larkspur, Colorado, small businesswoman who sits on that state’s board of education.

Further proof that one needn’t have a functioning cerebrum to succeed in business.

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Debunking Online Buncombe

Just in case you didn’t know, Arizona Senator John McCain did not meet with ISIS fighters a year ago. Nor did he meet with them ten years ago or a hundred years ago (when McCain was fresh out of high school).

Not ISIS

Yeah, That’s McCain; No That’s Not ISIS

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A photo of him grinning and palling around with with purported members of the beheading-happy fundamentalist religionists has been floating around the interwebs ever since McCain called for a military strike against that gang.

Repeat: McCain has never met with ISIS guys.

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Demonization

I happened to be telling someone the other day that the Koch Boys are huge philanthropists, having donated scads of dough to cultural and medical charities and non-profits.

Here’s a sampling of who got a piece of the thus-far $600 million that various Koch charitable foundations have distributed (source):

  • New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell: $15 million
  • M.D. Anderson Cancer Center: $25 million
  • The Hospital for Special Surgery: $26 million
  • Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center: $30 million
  • Prostate Cancer Foundation: $41 million
  • Deerfield Academy: $68 million
  • Lincoln Center’s NY State Theater: $100 million
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology: $139 million

The person with whom I was chatting was shocked — shocked, I tell you — that the Kochs had given money to any organization other than those whose raison d’être is to enslave the rest of humanity to the Sacred Free Market.

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The Kochs?

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See, that’s the prob. with demonization. Now, don’t get me wrong: The Kochs are bad guys. Their philosophy for a happy, healthy humanity begins and ends with an ever increasing bottom line for Koch Industries. Still, wallowing in all their billions of USDs, they find ways to throw a few bucks here and there to theaters, medical researchers, and schools.

You may speculate on why they’re pitching their scratch at what we like to think of as “liberal” concerns. The Kochs, strategic thinkers that they are, may be thinking that some Lincoln Center plays may one day portray them as saviors of our species. They may even hope to see a one-woman play about the life of Ayn Rand.

And they may well be hoping that scientists will come up with a serum that will allow them to live forever.

It’s just as likely that the Kochs might have — believe it or don’t — a shred of human decency behind their hollow grins and cold eyes.

Kochs

The Kochs

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Another likelihood is that they may be trying to buy their way to atonement for their sins against Homo Sapiens sapiens and Planet Earth.

See, there’s a ton of reasons why the Kochs might be funding good, honest charities but the irrefutable truth is, they do fund them.

And human beings are a lot more complicated than our popular images of them suggest.

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09/28/2014
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Barack Obama, Bloom Magazine, Bloomington Playwrights Project, Charlotte Zietlow, Conspiracy Theory, Fraud, ISIS, Malcolm Abrams, Michelle Obama, Ray Hanania, The U.S. Patriot

Hot Air

[MG Note: Pardon the weird paragraph leading today; WordPress is eff-ing up.]

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Scandal!

Just when you think the Far Right-wingnut mob can’t get any farther or nuttier (and how many times have I had to type a version of that lead over the last few years?) they up and shock the bejesus out of me.
And any other sane person, for that matter.
Are you sitting? Okay. That latest deranged rumor about Barack Obama is that he and Michelle are not the biological parents of Malia and Sasha.
Obama

The Mother Of All Frauds

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Yep. A gang of Obama-obsessed jingoists on a website called The US Patriot (“home to the best Conservative news on the net”) has uncovered this earth-shattering news that’s sure to make Watergate and Iran-Contra and the October Surprise look like childish indiscretions.
“[S]ome Americans,” the site intones, gravely, “feel that the two girls have very little resemblance to their parents.” Later, the post’s author reveals, “[N]o one has ever claimed to see a picture of the First Lady pregnant or with a newborn.”
Hmm. What could be up here? No doubt something horribly devious, considering this Prez is the worst America-hating non-citizen who’s ever lied, cheated, and defrauded his way to the leadership of the Free World — which won’t be free very much longer after he and his pals enslave us all.
Whoever wrote this scoop — there is no byline — says unimpeachable sources (“others claim…”) have unearthed evidence the two kids might have been born in Morocco and then adopted.
Thank god for people like those who staff The US Patriot! Why, without them, we’d all be speaking Morroccan now.
[h/t to Ray Hanania.]
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False Flag

Not to be outdone, the loons on the Left have their own brand spanking new mad, mad conspiracy delusion.
ISIS, acc’d’g to one or two as-yet-uncommitted mental patients on the Wingnut Left, flat out doesn’t exist.
Meme
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All of which makes me wonder why scads of folks are so bored by the vagaries and complexities of real life that they must create spectacular fictions to get themselves through the day.
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Fogey Fun

The Loved One and I had a lot of fun out with the Fergusons and Joneses last night at the Bloomington Playwrights Project production of Kalamazoo and then, post-show, at Ferg. world HQ.
Kalamazoo

“Kalamazoo” At The BPP

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Kalamazoo was a rare bit of entertainment dealing with the lives, loves, hopes, and dreams of, well, old people. As in, Ick, old people.
The play was written by Michelle Kholos Brooks and Kelly Younger. Brooks is the daughter-in-law of legendary funny man Mel Brooks and his influence shows in the play. The gags and one-liners — lots of them Borscht Belt mots buffed up to a contemporary sheen — come rapid fire as two old fossils, widowers both, hook up on an old-person dating site and fall, by fits and starts, in love.B-town luminaries in attendance for the opening night performance included Bloom mag publisher Malcolm Abrams and political doyenne Charlotte Zietlow.
And Tyler Ferguson’s late evening jambalaya feed was fab.
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09/23/2014
1 Comment
Anand Giridharadas, Anti-intellectualism, Anti-science, Bloomington City Council, Bloomington Parks & Recreation, Deer Culling, IFLS, ISIS, Jeff Hobbs, Lisa Winter, Mark Kruzan, Poverty, Racism, Susan Sandberg, Syria, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace

Hot Air

Oh, Those Deer Again

As mentioned earlier in these precincts, the upcoming deer cull (or, if you prefer, kill) has raised a lot of hackles around town. A private wildlife management company (or, if you prefer, hired assassins) will mow down a few of the cuddly but troublesome ruminants this fall. Some B-town residents are in favor of calling out the Air Corps and having them drop the A-bomb on the Griffy Lake area where the deer loiter. Others say, Hey, wait a sec, those little cloven-hoofed Bambis were here first so we should learn to live with them. All of them.

The argument has reached sniffy and huffy proportions at times. The city’s Parks & Recreation Dept. approved the cull plan earlier this year. The City Council followed up by waiving the city’s no-shootin’-o’-them-there-firearms ban. Mayor Mark Kruzan then vetoed the Council’s waiver. The majority of the Council sniffed, stuck to their guns (pun intended), and overrode his veto.

Bloomington Council

Bloomington’s City Council

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One of our fave Pencillistas is Bloomington City Councilperson Susan Sandberg. She voted yea on the cull and has been dodging missiles ever since. And, like pretty much all political discussion these days, the rhetoric turned ludicrous. Some anti-cullers have suggested that the kill plan is symptomatic of this holy land’s love affair with guns and one or two have even suggested that recent muggings on the B-Line Trail just may be a direct result of the Council’s (and Sandberg’s) mania to solve our problems with firearms and violence.

Well, our gal got pushed over the edge by that. Sandberg took to Facebook the other day and huffed:

I just have to get this off my chest based on a subtle but false remark made in the last Council meeting. To equate gun violence against human beings with my position on responsible deer population management in the Griffy Woods Preserve to protect the ecology of other species is simply not acceptable. For all who follow my posts here, there is no one, I repeat NO ONE who is more horrified by senseless gun violence in America than yours truly. To suggest that those of us who support managing the over abundance of deer in Griffy is in any way related to a reckless gun culture or a direct cause of violence in Bloomington is irresponsible and untrue. I will not let that propaganda stand without respectful rebuttal. I’ve heard that some folks are out there saying that the recent violence on the B-Line trail is directly related to the City Council supporting lethal and humane methods of deer management in Griffy. Those two issues have nothing to do with each other and to spread that false line of thinking is offensive and absurd. I’ll be much more outspoken about this in public meetings if these false comparisons continue.

I, of course, leapt to Sandberg’s defense. Hell, she may be a Congressbeing or even the Governor one day and wouldn’t it be swell to have a friend in either the state’s or nation’s capital?

Like The Dude, Sandberg drew a line in the sand and would not let this (verbal) aggression stand, man.

From "The Big Lebowski"

This Will Not Stand

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Later on in the comment thread, SuSand hinted that some communiques from the anti-cull gang have been threatening and one or two have even characterized her as a Hitler. Susan Sandberg, I’ll say here and now, is no Adolph Hitler — she’s not even a vegetarian.

I spoke with another high-ranking official in these parts yesterday afternoon. Whadja think of SS’s smackdown of her critics the other day? I asked.

This high-ranking official eyed me for a moment and then responded, “When you take the job, you’ve got to accept the criticism that comes with it.”

I think my high-ranking official source is right. Therefore I advise S-squared to ignore the dumb bastards in the hereinafter. I’ll take up the sword in her stead. I’m no elected official so I don’t have to put up with anybody’s stupidity.

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Bomb Newark

Here’s a Wow! quote from the front page of Sunday’s New York Times Book Review:

There are places in America where life is so cheap and fate so brutal that, if they belonged to another country, America might bomb that country to “liberate” them.

That’s as powerful a statement as I’ve read in a big-time media outlet in I don’t know how long. Honestly, I can’t imagine how the line got past the NYT editors.

It is incendiary, it is dramatic, it is shocking, it is bold and, above all, it is true.

It’s the opening sentence in a review of the book, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, the saddest of possible tales about living in the slums of Newark, New Jersey. The book traces the life of the title kid who somehow succeeds despite being raised among gangsters, poverty, miserable schools, and the constant threat of violence. He found his way to Yale University where he majored in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. But Rob also had a daddy-o who was a dope dealer and who warned him off reading books because they’d make him soft. Rob eventually inherited his daddy-o’s drug business. Then he was killed.

Book Cover

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A NYT columnist named Anand Giridharadas wrote the review. Jeff Hobbs wrote the book. I suppose if you want to drive yourself into a deep depression, you’ll read it. On the other hand, there’s a lot about America that’s awfully depressing and it does us no good to ignore it.

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Boom Times

Just for the record, I’m four-square in favor of the pounding the US and its temporary allies are giving those ISIS boys in Syria and parts nearby.

Tomahawk Missile

Stock Image Of A Tomahawk Missile Launch

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People here and there are harrumphing that the whole ISIS scare is a false flag thing, that the US can’t be trusted to deliver us the truth since Iraq. It’s true Little Georgy Bush’s funtimes war against Saddam Hussein was based on pure, unadulterated bullshit. And that indeed should give us pause every time the leaders of this holy land try to sell us a bill of goods.

It doesn’t mean, though, that every utterance from every succeeding president is fraudulent.

The world needs to be wiped clean of ISIS.

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Science (Non)Fiction

Lisa Winter writes in IFLS about the Top 10 Unsolved Mysteries of Science.

That is, the most perplexing questions we haven’t been able to answer about the world — hell, the Universe — around us. Those who scoff at science (can you believe I’m actually writing these words in the 21st Century?) say, See, Science doesn’t know everything!

Correct. Science doesn’t know everything. Actually, science knows nothing since it’s a descriptor of a process rather than a person or group of people who, like, know things.

Those anti-science-ites like to say things like that to infer that not only does science not know everything, it really knows nothing. Evolution? Bah. Global warming? Puh-leeze. Childhood vaccinations? Never. That’s a lazy over-reaction on a par with those (as mentioned in an entry above) who think that because of Iraq, all American presidents lie about everything.

Bumper Sticker

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Well, presidents do lie and science — or , more accurately, scientists — are scratching their heads about any number of things. As Osgood Fielding III says in Some Like It Hot, “Nobody’s perfect.”

Here then, acc’d’g to Lisa Winter, are the most troublesome Q’s scientists face these days:

  • Why is there more matter than anti-matter?
  • Where is all the lithium?
  • Why do we sleep?
  • How does gravity work?
  • Where are all the extra-terrestrials?

From "The Day the Earth Stood Still"

Where Are These Guys?

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  • What is dark matter?
  • How did life begin?
  • How do plate tectonics work?
  • How do animals know where to go when they migrate?
  • What is dark energy?

When I was a little kid, I’d watch cars zip by on North Avenue on Chicago’s Northwest Side and feel frustrated because I couldn’t figure out how they could move. Nothing was pushing those cars; nothing was pulling them. The fact that they were zipping by seemed, to my little mind, impossible. Somehow, though, I knew it wasn’t impossible, nor was it magic. There was a reason, an explanation, a confidence that I’d eventually know.

Scientists today are like little kids when it comes to the aforementioned ten bogglers. No, science doesn’t know everything; it’s got a million questions.

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08/12/2014
3 Comments
Arthur T. Demoulas, Bill Clinton, Deregulation, Get On Up, Iraq, ISIS, Islamic State, James Brown, Market Basket, Monroe Anderson, Rice Quality Farm Meats, Robert Reich, Ronald Reagan

Hot Air

Fixing The Unfixable

As far as I’m concerned, we don’t need any more proof that unfettered capitalism has become our holy land’s Frankenstein monster. It’s now become as perverted as Marx’s Communism was under megalomaniacs like Joseph Stalin or Mao Tse Tung.

We don’t have a single bete noir we can blame for all the ills of free market madness, although Saint Ronald Reagan can play the role in a pinch. No, the greedy, acquisitive, sociopathic reprobates who’ve turned free enterprise into crushing corporatism and fundamentalist profiteering are many. The Wall of Dishonor includes such past and present hooligans as:

Kozloswki Party

Kozlowski Hosts A Birthday Party For His Wife

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Boesky

Boesky

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Success, it has been said, has a thousand mothers. The pantheon of big-time biz winners today, though, boasts as many motherfuckers.

So, what do we do? Overturn capitalism? Hah! Good luck. And, really, do we want to do that? Robert Reich, who served as Bill Clinton’s Labor Sec’y, the other day threw out a more subtle solution. BTW: it’s odd that a Clinton cabinet member should become such a hero of the Left as Reich; the 42nd Prez was about as guilty as Reagan was for creating the economic clime that gave us the various bubbles, the Wealth Gap, and the Great Recession.

Anyway, Reich tells the story of Market Basket‘s ousted CEO Arthur T. Demoulas. Market Basket’s board gave Demoulas the boot because he wanted the share the wealth, which is worse than child molestation in the corporate board world. Reich writes:

What was so special about Arthur T., as he’s known? Mainly, his business model. He kept prices lower than his competitors, paid his employees more, and gave them and his managers more authority.

Late last year he offered customers an additional four percent discount, arguing they could use the money more than the shareholders.

In other words, Arthur T. viewed the company as a joint enterprise from which everyone should benefit, not just shareholders. Which is why the board fired him.

Reich goes on to suggest that there are many more businessfolk-with-a-heart, like Arthur T. “[I]nterestingly,” Reich writes, “we’re beginning to see the Arthur T. business model pop up all over the place.”

Hmm. We’ll see. It’s nice to think that a growing number of modern corporate big shots might be slightly less immoral than a band of grave robbers, but is it realistic? Reich’s idea is that good people will triumph. I dunno: what if it’s not the people but the very system itself that’s crooked. We can pat people on the back and tell them how wonderful they are when they pay their employees a few cents more than starvation wages but pats on the back don’t drive boardroom discussions. Aggressive, ambitious people need to be reined in by laws and regulations, otherwise every leader, in business as well as politics, would be that guy who can kick the crap out of everyone else.

Ghandi was a great guy but he would have been chewed up and spit out by his competitors within ten minutes of accepting a job as a company’s CEO. He wouldn’t fit into the competitive corporate world no matter how much of a Mahatma he was.

I’m all for the good guys in business, only I fear they’ll always be the outliers.

Anyway, check out Reich’s piece.

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Rice Is Nice

Nice piece on the Rice family farm in Spencer in today’s Herald Times (paywall). The Loved One and I have stocked up at its country retail outlet any number of times.

The very idea of driving down a gravelly road to get to a market in the middle of rolling farmland is part of what makes living in Bloomington such a source of happiness for me.

Rice Quality Farm Meats

Meat Market

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The gist of the H-T story is Rice’s move away from producing so much beef. The farm family, acc’d’g to the piece, has done a lot of trade in the past processing beef cattle for private customers but with the recent rise in beef prices, that business may soon tail off. So Rice is diversifying, moving more into turkey and other fowl.

In fact, the existence of Rice’s retail ops was an early step in the farm’s hedge against a plummet in processing revenues.

If you haven’t been out to Rice of late, do yourself — and the Rice family — a favor.

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Who’s Fooling Whom?

The very idea that the intelligence services and the military of this holy land were all caught off-guard by the ISIS advance in Iraq is preposterous. Either somebody’s lying big time or we have the stupidest spy agencies in the world.

ISIS

Hiding In Plain Sight

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Papa’s Got The Same Old Bag

Gary, Indiana’s own Monroe Anderson points out that, with the exception of the actors, there were no blacks involved in the production of that new James Brown biopic playing in theaters now.

Movie Poster

Black On The Outside

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Just thought you’d like to know.

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07/19/2014
Leave a comment
Al Jazeera America, Alliance Defending Freedom, Armchair Homesteader, Chickens, Clarence Thomas, Contraception, Flat Earth Society, Hobby Lobby, ISIS, Jana Wilson, Misogyny, New Yorker, Samuel Alito, Sara Hellwege, Sharia Law, Susan Orlean, Tampa Family Health Centers, The Islamic State, US Supreme Court, Wonkette

Hot Air

Chicken Checkin’

One of our town’s most talented copywriters spends her time outside the corporate cubicle raising chickens. Jana Wilson lives with her family on a nice 20-acre spread nearby. She writes about Gallus gallus domesticus husbandry in her blog, The Armchair Homesteader.

Tons o’folks these days are growing the birds, mainly to be able to eat fresh eggs and even for the fresh meat to liven up their cacciatore. (Hey, wait a minute: Do peeps eat alla cacciatore around here?) Anyway, the City of Bloomington, for instance, allows residents to raise chicken flocks, although said flocks can’t number more than five birds and none may be roosters. Apparently, that crowing rooster next door might cause some little friction in the n’hood. That and chicken coops often stink.

The chickens-in-the-city trend got a huge jump start about five years ago when author Susan Orlean wrote about it in the pages of The New Yorker. “[R]ight now,” she wrote, “across the country and beyond, there’s a surging passion for raising the birds.”

Chicken

“A Surging Passion”

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When my grandmother, Anna Lazzara, lived in Chi., she was quite put out because the city wouldn’t allow her to keep chickens in the backyard. But back in the 1930’s people could still turn fresh chickens into dinner that night by buying the birds live at the butcher shop. Anna would tell my mother, Sue, to go get a chicken on a given weekday, a chore Ma loathed. She’d have to squeeze the bird between her arm and her chest in order to prevent it from fleeing, the critter pecking and clawing at her all the way home. Then Anna would grab the chicken from my mother, wrap her two fists around its neck and yank. Within minutes, the chicken’d lie still and be ready for plucking, singeing, and washing.

Ma always said those weekly walks from the butcher shop produced in her a phobia of all birds.

Yesterday, Wilson wrote about the problem of newbie chicken-raisers who purchase a passel of chicks and soon discover that one of the purported hens is actually a guy. She writes:

You anticipate these adorable little chicks growing into egg-producing hens and the speed at which they grow is just amazing.  They’re growing more feathers every day, their little combs beginning to develop, their legs lengthening. It’s all very fun and exciting. Fun until the day when little Sue emits the strangest sound. It sounds like a strangled screech. Could it be… oh no, surely not. But yes, its a crow!

Oh dear, little Sue is really little Stan.

Remember, cities that allow residents to keep chickens usually frown on or outright ban the keeping of males. “And for good reason: they are quite noisy and don’t crow just at daybreak,” Wilson writes. “Trust me on this one… they can crow just about any time of the day or night.”

In any case, check out Jana’s blog. You’ll even learn what a Sicilian Buttercup is. (And, no, it’s not me.)

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Après Ce, Le Déluge

It turns out those who’ve been wringing their hands over the Supreme Court’s recent Hobby Lobby decision, predicting that all manner of Christianists would start suing to get out of certain laws and responsibilities because their “sincerely-held beliefs” preclude them from doing so, really aren’t just being Chicken Littles. Any number of “sincere believers” have made moves to get out of things like not firing employees because they’re gay and other expressions of deep spirituality.

It would be hard to top this one, though: Pro-life activist attorneys in Florida have filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a nurse who applied for a job with the Tampa Family Health Centers. The attorneys claim the medical center refused to consider her for employment because she is Christian.

How horrible, right? What’s this crazy land coming to?

Christians/Lion

Persecution?

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Natch, the case isn’t that simple. The nurse made a point to tell the clinic’s HR director that her Christian beliefs forbid her from prescribing certain contraceptives, which just happens to be one of the primary tasks of the place. I suppose it’d be be rather like a newly graduated cartographer applying for a job at the local globe factory and saying he would not be able to draw maps on the co.’s product because he’s a member of the Flat Earth Society. The wags at Wonkette explain the impasse thusly:

Let’s play a game. It is sort of a choose-your-own-adventure make-believe game. Costumes optional.

You are about to graduate from Thing-Doing School and apply for a job as a professional Thing-Doer, as one does after attending Thing-Doing School. You inform your potential employer that you are interested in the Thing-Doing job but will be unable to perform Thing-Doing duties because of your religious beliefs. Your potential employer tells you, “LOL, that’s hilarious, but we are actually looking for a real Thing-Doer who is willing to perform Thing-Doing duties, because that is the job. Thanks but no thanks.”

For this, nurse Sara Hellwege and her handlers, the Alliance Defending Freedom, will be taking up time and space on the federal district court’s docket to right what they see as a horrible wrong — although the sane among us see it as pretty much a cheap stunt.

Thanks Justice Alito and the rest of the straight, male, white, Catholic majority of SCOTUS. (And don’t write to correct me that Clarence Thomas is not white; he’s whiter than an albino wearing a lab coat in a snowstorm.)

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Stoned, Again

Speaking of regressive fundamentalist extremists, Al Jazeera tells the tale of The Islamic State‘s latest contribution to civilization. The erstwhile ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), fresh off its successful campaign to capture and control a significant swath of Iraq and bits of Syria, is now turning its attention to the behavior of women, AKA sluts.

The Izzy State is bringing back that fave from yesteryear, public stoning for women who dig sex. Acc’d’g to AJ’s report, members of the gang that scares even al Qaeda stoned a woman to death in the public square in the town of Tabaqa, in Syria, because she’d committed adultery.

R. Crumb

Flashback

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An important corollary to the story is the fact that the man with whom she sullied all of Islam was charged with no crime at all because, well…, because he’s a man, you dope.

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