Guns and the NRA-Right Wing Dingbat Fear Campaign

First, let`s make my position clear. I own guns. I see nothing intrinsically wrong with responsible private gun ownership, nor do I see anything wrong with firearms collecting which is the only venue in my mind that a person should be allowed to own such things as military-style weapons.
That being said, the NRA (which apparently stands for Nonsensical Rabid Abberation) is back to fear-mongering and it`s having a deadly affect. Recently, a mentally disturbed kid (and I can`t be bothered to look up this contemptible little twerpt`s name) who was expelled from Marine Corps training for uncontrollable violence, and who also turned out to be a neo-nazi and vile anti-semite, shot and killed three police officers and wounded a third with a legally owned assault rifle and two hand guns because he was afraid “B. Hussein,“ aka President Obama was going to take his guns away. Naturally, the Lords of Loud on AM talk show radio have run with it, tripping over their own trotters with conspiracy theories of how the evil Democrats are plotting to confiscate your weapons, floridate your water and convert you all to Satanism.

Let`s make one thing clear, regarding gun confiscation. The Obama administration has never said word one about any such thing. It`s all in the fevered imagination of Right Wing loons like Beck, Bachman, Limbaugh, et al.

So let`s look at the NRA`s favorite shibboleth - a highly selective reading of the Second Amendment. Here`s the whole thing:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.“

Now- let`s look at its historical context. In the day in which it was written, the US did not have a large standing army. Indeed, it barely had an army at all. The citizen`s militia was an important augmentation to the professional force. Nowadays, that “well organized militia“ is known as the National Guard. The courts have even defined it as such. So if you want to play with M-16A1`s, A-4`s and FN Minimis, good citizen, join up and do your nation some service.

RE: gun control (or more accurately, goon control) right after 9-11, the FBI was using the Brady Bill to check on whether any of the 186 terrorist suspects they`d recently hauled in had bought guns. Two had. The then-Attorney General, Ashcroft promptly intervened in told the FBI that background checks could not be used for such a search. According to him, these checks could only be used at the time of the firearm`s purchase. (Pause here for “Are you shitting me?!” But please remember, this was Ashcroft - a man who had himself periodically anointed with “holy oil.” He is said to have used Crisco…)

In other words, with the myriad number of civil liberties getting trashed by the USA PATRIOT Act, the Bushites were determined to keep the 2nd amendment sacrosanct even if it worked for our enemies. (This is one of many reasons why I almost gag every time I hear that shameless old hack, Cheney crow about how he and Dubya made America safer.)

In point of fact, in the summer of 2001, months before 9-11, Ashcroft was hard at work trying to dismantle the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. His belief was that the government shouldn’t keep information on private firearms ownership and that files created by background checks should only be kept in the system for 24 hours. His defense for the indefensible was encapsulated in his statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee in December of that year, “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of ‘lost liberty,’ my message is this. Your practices only aid terrorists.”

Well, golly. What a patriot. At the same Senate hearing, he waved about an Al Qaeda training manual found in a safe house in Afganistan that contained the following advice:

“(In) some states in the USA and South Africa, it is perfectly legal for members of the public to own certain types of firearms. If you live in such a country, obtain an assault rifle legally, preferably an AK-47 or variations, learn how to use it properly and go and practice in areas allowed for such training.”

Would it then not behoove law enforcement to be allowed to see if possible terrorists are actually purchasing the weapons they claim they want to kill us with legally in the US itself? Not according to assistant attorney general for legal policy, Viet Dinh, who claimed, as reported by an NY TImes story, “…that these checks were improper, reasoning that they would violate the privacy of these foreigners.”

In actual fact, back in 2002, the General Accounting Office released the Justice Department’s actual legal opinion, dated October 1, 2001 - a report Ashcroft suppressed - which stated that there was nothing wrong or illegal about using gun background files to see if a suspected terrorist had purchased a gun. Period.

The GAO also reported that 97 percent of illegally purchased guns that were initially approved and then recovered once the mistake was realized would not have been detected had the records been deleted in 24 hours rather than the currently mandated 90 days. So, super-patriot Ashcroft wanted to be able to tell what books you’d taken out of the library recently, but NOT if a terrorist suspect had bought guns…

Here are some facts and figures from a poll of NRA members in Michigan by the Lansing-based market research company, EPIC-MRA.

64% of NRA members favored mandatory reporting of private gun sales.
59% favored regulations requiring guns be stored unloaded.
68% supported creating uniform safety standards for domestic and imported firearms.
56% supported a law requiring a five-day waiting period before purchasing a gun.
55% were in favor of banning high-capacity magazines.

And just as icing on the cake, in July of 2001, while the Bush misadministration was plotting to invade Iraq, the CONFERENCE ON THE ILLICIT TRADE IN SMALL ARMS AND LIGHT WEAPONS IN ALL ASPECTS was held. It was an attempt to curb the illegal trade in small arms - the kind that fuel civil wars, terrorism and the international drug trade. In fact, the kind of weapons that were used to kill US troops in Somalia. Bush and his cabal made it clear that they would not support the “language” of the plan since it was apparently (to them, anyway) unacceptable to domestic opponents of gun control. It was not simply ironic, but actual sickening that the Commander In Chief would have the US army almost begging Iraqis to give up and turn in their weapons, and at the same time, derail an international effort that would have greatly facilitated in keeping them from having gotten them in the first place.

With massing killings on the rise and Right Wing microcephalics like Rep. Bachman urging armed insurrection and journalistic hacks like Sean Hannity asking the mouth-breathers that watch Fox News what kind of revolution they’d prefer, you have to ask the question:

Is the NRA a secret terrorist cell or just a bunch of delusional morons?

Perspective (n): According to the Chambers Etymological Dictionary, perspective is defined as “the ability to view things in just proportion…with the important and unimportant things in their proper places.” Thus, in the Right Wing mind, President Clinton receiving oral sex from a consenting adult and obfusticating about it to Congress is a far worse crime than “Scooter” Libby revealing the identity of a covert CIA agent in Iraq (Valerie Plame) ostensibly so the White House could extract revenge on her husband, ex-Iraqi ambassador and WMD denyer Joseph Wilson. Even though Clinton’s impeachment was not ratified by the Senate and Libby was actually convicted and sentenced for purjury and obstruction of justice, (although, surprisingly, not charged under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982) Right Wing ideology holds the former to be the most heinous. This is because the attempted impeachment of Clinton was vengeance denied whereas the outing of Ms. Plame was vengeance achieved. Thus, Bush’s commuting of Libby’s sentence was consistent with viewing things in “just proportion.” “Getting even” being a Right Wing virtue, it was clear to the White House that no real crime had been committed. Hence, perspective is the ability to view shoplifting a stick of gum and robbing a bank with a machine gun as being equal so long as the robbery is mitigated by donating some of the swag to the G.O.P.

The Recurring Saga of More Things You Probably Didn`t Want to Know About…

I’ve been contemplating mortality lately; not specifically my own, but that of the earth’s. After all, we’ve managed to get through the Cold War without blowing ourselves up and, sabre-rattling from North Korea or the ongoing re-arming of China notwithstanding, I began ruminating about things we can’t change. This was primarily promulgated by a viewing of Nicholas Cage’s latest offering, “Knowing,” in which the entire world is destroyed by a giant solar flare. So I decided to do a bit of research and find out how often and how close we’ve almost been collectively creamed, and now I need a drink.

Asteroids - there are millions of them and quite a number are - how shall we put this - freakin’ big. There’s a kind of Richter scale for asteroids and comets that was presented at convention of astrophysicists in Torino, Italy in 1999 - sort of a Homeland Security colour code which rates an object from 1 to 10, assessing it’s size, speed (and concomitant kinetic energy) and possibility of collision. The NASA Office of Space Science has adopted it and here, very simply, it is:

White - zero danger.
Green - normal - no danger of impact by any objects passing close by.
Yellow - merits attention.
Orange - an object large enough to cause mass destruction or even global cataclysm is observed with chances of striking the earth much greater than the century-long norm.
Red - we’re screwed. Collision assured, global destruction possible.

So how close have we come in the recent past? Well, in 1989, a thousand-meter asteroid was “discovered” only after having crossed Earth’s orbit at a spot we’d previously occupied just 6 hours ago. Then, in May 1996, another biggie, roughly the same size, got spotted four days after it crossed our Blue marble’s orbit, having missed impacting the planet by approximately four hours. Both these space stones were in the size range of the one that impacted the Tungusta area of Siberia in 1908. The Tungusta area was (”was” being the operable word) a largely unpopulated forested area. Now think of that kind of energy hitting New York City.
Then there are comets. Swift-Tuttle passed its closest to us back in November 7th of 1992, a mere (by astronomical standards) 177 million kilometers. Brian Marsden, director of the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics has been crunching numbers on this comet’s orbit within our solar system for many years and has determined that it has an orbital period of 130 years. His 1973 prediction of the comet’s return through Earth’s region of space was only off by 17 days - a mere bagatelle. His new predictions of the next perihelion is that it will occur on August 14th, 2126, so you should all mark your calender.
The comet will be moving at a speed relative to earth of roughly 60 kilometers a second which means it would have to occupy the exact same space as us for no more than a few minutes out of 130 years. An error of one hour in its timing would result in a miss of around 100,000 kilometers.

Does this mean we can all stop worrying? Well, according to professional pessimist and debunker Phil Plait, “Asteroid and other impacts are a stochastic process. They’re random. We could bet hit tonight by a big one or it might be a million years from now. Impact frequency is a statistical one only, so we can’t be overdue for a hit. That’s like a gambler saying I’ve lost six times in a row, so I’m overdue for a win.”

And, movies of heroic astronauts saving the earth notwithstanding, if a significant impact were threatening, how much warning might we have?

Hours to seconds.

What could we realistically do about it?

Absolutely nothing.

Sleep tight…..

It’s not my habit to comment on current events, but occasionally, you just feel compelled to, especially when the Looney Right Wing is involved.

Teabaggers: Your fifteen minutes are up. Get a life, folks. These sore losers appear to have three main gripes: No taxation without representation, the Obama debt is going to cripple our children and kill puppies and kittens, Obama is a facsist/socialist/commie, etc…

That last one we’ve dealt with in previous posts and is as cretinous as those espousing it. Recently, a CNN reporter was interviewing one of these morons and asked him what evidence he had that President Obama was “facsist.” His answer, verbatim, was “‘Cause he is!” Just the sort of intellectual discourse one might expect from a linthead.

As for the eebt, where were these good, patriotic folk when the Bush administration wiped out the Clinton surplus with a $1.3 trillion tax break for the rich and incorporate? Where were they when the Bushites added $6 trillion to the National Debt and gave the U.S. historical record national and trade deficits? And let’s not even begin to mention lying the nation into a bogus war which has volatolized roughly $3 trillion in and of itself. Where were these staunch citizens as the Bush regime, from 2000 to 2006 broke the historic record for pork earmarks? Has anyone mentioned that 98% of the Obama tax cuts go directly to people like them and only raise by 3% the tax levels of the upper 2% - like the bankers and speculators that got rich on investor money and tanked the economy? Were they living under a rock when the Bush’s delivered the first $700 billion in bailout money with damn near no oversight or accountability?

Did I mention gutting the Constitution?…

As for taxation without representation, I believe all these idiots have state representation in the Congress. If, perhaps, they don’t have the representation they want, it may be because enough people wised up to the fact that Republicans have been singing the same song since the lamentable Reagan administration and its failed miserably.

There’s only one thing these peopl can’t stand - the fact their ilk lost the election, not only to a Democrat but a black man.

Get over it, you pathetic fools.

And I see Dick Cheney is continuing his smear campaign against Obama. Since the subject of prosecution for war crimes and high crimes and misdomeanors against the American people is a very real possibility, dick must be going out of his tiny mind realizing that he no longer enjoys “executive immunity.”

Regarding the above, I was watching the former Bush administration press secretary, Ari Fleischer being interviewed on CNN. He warned that the Obama decision to release the memos on torture might come back on him at a later date. Opening up a can of worms, you know. Well, I suppose it could - if, like the Bush administration, the Obama administration might be tempted to participate in immoral and illegal activities.

And nobody ever publicly wished Bush to fail. He did that all by his little self…

Blackwater and the Ultimate Free-market Republican Wet Dream - the Privatization of War

Blackwater, in case anyone’s been living under a rock for the last few years, is the largest of three US private “military” companies, essentially a mercenary army with a database of over 20,000 ex-professional soldiers, special forces types, etc, to access for various contracts. Run by ex-Navy SEAL and right-wing fundamentalist Eric Prince, (who recently retired as its CEO) it owns a fleet of over 20 aircraft and is currently the second largest group of private contractors in Iraq. This concept came when the then Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney, was cutting the military budget from 1989 to 1993. To augment a shrinking military, the Pentagon`s Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGGCAP) was expanded. This was on the recommendation of a study commissioned by Cheney to a Halliburton subsidiary, Brown and Root, ostensibly to create a very lucrative job opportunity for itself. Later, Halliburton was selected by the Army COrps of Engineers to supply all the US military support work for the next five years. Shortly after, Cheney become the CEO of Halliburton, and the rest is history.
Ostensibly hired in 2003 to free up US forces from duties such as diplomat security and certain guard duities, they operate in a nebulous grey area, legally speaking, with no one apparently willing to commit to whether they operate under civilian or military law. Much of this discrepancy is thanks to the execrable Paul Bremer III, the Bush-Cheney Proconsul who ran the country as one would fry a small fish prior to the general elections.
One of Bremer’s last acts before creeping out of the country in a poison fog was to sign into law (again, prior to an elected Iraqi government) Order 17. Essentially, this decree immunized private contractors from prosecution for crimes committed in Iraq. While US service personnel, under the Universal Code of Military Justice, have been charged and tried for crimes, including murder, not a single Blackwater contractor has been so prosecuted, even though they have literally committed murder while on “duty.” Company reports ilude to 195 “escalating force” incidents where shots were fired. In one case, on September 16th of 2007, Blackwater mercenaries, while attempting to clear a path for their convoy, fired on a KIA sedan, killing the occupants, including a mother and son. They then tried to clear the way using non-lethal stun grenades, but nearby Iraqi soldiers, mistaking the grenades as real, opened fire on them and in the resulting firefight 17 Iraqi civilians were killed.
In another case, a drunken Blackwater merc shot and killed the guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abd-al-Mahdi. Within 36 hours, Blackwater was allowed to get the shooter out of the country to avoid prosecution for murder. Blackwater was admonished to make a payment of $250,000 to the victim’s next of kin by the US Charge d”Affairs, but, in what must rank as one of the most cretinous rationalizations in history, the US Diplomatic Security Service thought that this exorbitant amount might actually result in Iraqis trying to get themselves killed and the sum was reduced to a Princely $15,000.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich, while questioning the Pentagon’s director of defense procurement and acquisition, Shay Assad, put forth the question “Would the Department of Defense be prepared to see a prosecution proffered against any private contractor who is demonstrated to have unlawfully killed a civilian?” REplied Assad, “Sir, I cannot answer that question.”
Kucinich: “Wow! Think about what that means. These private contractors can get away with murder.”

Yes they can, and yes, they have.

To attempt to ameliorate this, Bush amazingly slipped a one-line amendment into the immense 2007 defense spending bill that would subject contractors to the US military court martial system. (after only over three years of Blackwater operations) The problem is that the military is hard pressed to monitor the conduct of its own troops, and there are over 100,000 private contractors in Iraq. The Government Accountability Office stated in December 2006 that “officials were unable to determine how many contractors were deployed in Iraq,…or the services those contractors were providing to US forces.”

So the Bush administration didn’t even know how many or what their private mercenaries were even doing - there’s a vote of confidence if I ever heard one.

Were this not bad enough, the GAO further stated that “problems with management and oversight of contractors have negatively impacted military operations and unit morale and hindered DOD’s ability to obtain reasonable assurance that contractors are effectively meeting their contract requirements in the most cost-effective manner.”

This flies in the face of Eric Prince`s own assertion that “We could do it certainly cheaper.”

OK let`s take a lot at the sheer economics of the situation. According to contract documents, Balckwater bills the US government $1222 a day for an individual `security specialist.`This comes out to about $439,920 a year. By way of comparison, a US army sergeant makes around $140 to $190 a day which, with subsistence pay and housing, comes out to between $51,100 and $69,350 a year. And it`s substantially lower for a private.

Mind you, this inordinate sum doesn`t apply to all of Blackwater`s employees. Especially the Wetback Division. Back in 2005, Balckwater was recruiting in Columbia, offering recruits $4000 a month. Prior to deployment in June of 2006, the new employees were told - four hours before wheels-up - that they were actually going to be paid. $2700 a month. Only after they were in the air did they learn that the contracts actually stipulated $1000 a month or $34 a day.

Blackwater is now operating in the Sudan under the corporate aegis of a subsidiary, Greystone.

This is just one of the many reasons why the phony war in Iraq has so far volatilized roughly $3 trillion. Blackwater has so far been paid over a billion dollars by the ex-Bush administration with an 800% increase in fees from 2001 to 2006 alone and 51% of this pelf awarded on the basis of non-competitive bids. They operate without accountability and have demonstrably gotten away with murder. Eric Prince has been called a “patriot`and a “great Christian“ and likes to wrap himself in the flag, but the reality in the field and the exploitation of some of his employees seem to paint a different picture. He has, for several years, been lobbying to get hired to replace UN troops on peacekeeping missions. Just what Kosovo needs - another gang of armed thugs. The mind boggles….

One might ask Congress if this is a wise use of taxpayer dollars or simply a gross misappropriation based on the opportunistic schemings of people like Cheney.

The Iraqi government wants Blackwater out. Now that the US has adult leadership again, we`ll see what devolves. But it does appear that the world will be plagued by the machinations and depredations of the Whores of War for some time still.

Opinion (n): That which everyone has a constitutional right to have, although Right Wingers’ opinions (at least in their own minds) count for more than yours. This is not because they contain better ideas, but simply because they are louder.
There is a bit of a caveat when it comes to opinions. It was, at one time, a popularly held opinion that blacks were inferior to whites. The fact that this opinion had virtually no scientific or social credibility but was based entirely on mindless and contemptible racism did not stop people from either holding or espousing it. Therefore, it is necessary to not only listen to opinions but to weigh them, the only valid opinions being informed ones. To paraphrase a statement previously made in this tome, facts without opinions are essentially trivia, whereas opinions without fact are generally classified as bullshit. Remember this the next time you hear a Republican express enthusiasm at the “booming” American economy or that “victory” that is possible in Iraq.

That pithy title was a catch-phrase after the US-Iran hostage crisis. You remember - that was when super-patriot Ronny Reagan conspired with an enemy of the United States to hold the hostages until after the election so he could be credited with their release and also to stick it to his opponent, Jimmy Carter. The tactic became known as the “October Surprise,” and is elegant proof that Republicans will actually endanger the lives of their fellow citizens for political gain.

Well, now that there’s a new sheriff in town, there’s a lot of stomping and bellowing about Iran again, especially since Obama has decided to at least start off his relationship with Tehran like a civilized human being. Mind you, Iran’s leader (Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not Mahmoud Abadinnerjacket) is having none of it. When the President suggested that Iran should take “its rightful place in the community of nations,” but that “that place cannot be reached through terror or arms,” Khamenei responded “Our nation cannot be talked to like this.”

In a way, Khamenei would make a good Republican since, when accused of something that’s actually true, responds not with futile denial, but sputtering indignation that their honor has been offended.

Which, of course, is bollocks, because it’s a proven fact that Iran supplies weapons to both Hamas and Hezbollah, both which are classed by the U.S. State Department as “terrorist organizations.” Of course, that has always been a bit of a teflon definition since the Reagan administration didn’t see any inconsistency in supplying arms to the Nicaraguan Contras which Ronny’s administration described as “freedom fighters” and the equivalent of “our founding fathers.” Funny, but I don’t recall any passage in US history that describes Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson sneaking out at night to murder nuns…

So - is Iran a “terrorist” state? Well, Hamas,, in 2006, won the only free election ever held by the Palestinians and is now the legitimate government in the Gaza Strip, and Hezbollah has members in the Lebanese parliament. But supporting people at odds with US foreign policy doesn’t constitute a “terrorist state.”

But, of course, there’s the matter of nuclear weapons. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signator, they are allowed to develop the full nuclear fuel cycle. The only caveat is that you must not enrich uranium - ie: spin U-238 into U-235, enriching it from 20% which is reactor-grade to 90% which is weapons-grade. And so far, there’s no proof that they’ve done so.

Of course, this wasn’t good enough for the Bush administration who was instrumental in getting Iran’s case moved out of the jurisdiction of the International Atomic Energy Agency to the UN Security Council where it can threaten, cajole and browbeat other council members into pressuring Iran regardless of what the Non-Proliferation Treaty says.

Is there proof that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons? Ask Dennis Blair, US director of National Intelligence. Early in March, he testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stating “Although we do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons, we assess Tehran, at a minimum, is keeping open the option to develop them.”

Remember the “mushroom cloud” Condi Rice was fear-mongering about when the Bushites were trying to sell the invasion of Iraq?

Let’s get one thing clear. Iran is not our friend, but there’s a big difference between belligerent talk and action. Khamenei is a right-wing theocrat trying to hold control on an increasingly non-secular nation. But even Kim Jong Il, who is a raving loon, is not so flat-out demented that he’d be willing to have his nation literally wiped from the face of the earth by a nuclear counter-strike if he let loose with a single fission-powered firecracker against a US asset or ally. The US wouldn’t even have to respond - Israel would use its own nukes unilaterally without US permission as a defensive action if any nuclear attack were provable to have been of Iranian origin.

Bottom line - Iran has every legal right to develop nuclear energy. Should we keep an eye on them? Hell, yes! Should we be mindful of the Right Wing’s fear mongering and calls for military action against Iran? Consider the credibility of those doing so and make up your own mind.

Foreign Policy (n): To most nations, this phrase describes the way which the government deals with other countries. Under Right Wing Republican governance, it describes policies that are foreign to any person with a sense of diplomacy, history or a molecule of common sense. Right Wing foreign policy may be best evinced by the statement of Michael Ledeen, a leading architect of neoconservative military strategy and ex-participant in the Iran-Contra fiasco: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall just to show the world we mean business.”
His opinion is vindicated by the last crappy little country the US tried to throw against the wall prior to the current war in Iraq. It was called Viet Nam; a stunning success story if ever we saw one.

Bribe (n/v): An incentive given to assist the recipient’s vision in seeing things your way. The trillion dollar-plus tax cut instituted by Bush in 2001 (in addition to wiping out the unprecedented Clinton budget surplus of 2.7% and putting the U.S. back into deficit spending) gave the top one per cent personal rebates in the high tens of thousands of dollars. The average American received a princely $200 to $400. This demonstrates an interesting character trait. it should not come as a surprise to anyone that the average person can be bought. It is, however, somewhat sobering to understand how low most people’s prices seem to be.