Milestone?

Today is some kind of milestone:

The approximate circumference of this planet in miles? 24,000

The number of days that I have been living on it? 24,000

So this means that if I could have walked just one mile a day in the same direction for my whole life, I would have ended up right back where I started.

I don't know why I even know this, or why I think it's so cool to proclaim it like this.

Maybe I need to work on this in therapy.

And BTW, there are 24 hours in a day and 24 bottles of beer in a full case.

Coincidence? I don't think so...

Homeless Guy With a Million-Dollar Voice

You really can't judge a book by it's cover. Just take a listen to this guy:

If he doesn't get a boatload of radio-voice job offers, then there really is something wrong with this country.

Study Shows I'm a Liberal Because of My Brain

Here's some interesting news. A recent study has found that there are some very basic structural and information processing differences between the brains of liberals and conservatives:

In recent years, researchers have been trying to determine whether our political opinions—pro-life or pro-choice? Republican or Democrat?—are guided by fundamental differences between the minds of conservatives and liberals. A number of studies suggest that conservatives think in more structured and stable ways, while liberals reason more flexibly, changing their beliefs as they take new experiences into account.
. . .
The authors conclude that the liberals’ brains were more sensitive to how accurate their ongoing responses were, and were more likely to adapt to changing demands. Conservatives’ brains, on the other hand, might be better equipped for tasks that require a more fixed response style. It remains unclear whether this difference in brain activity is the cause or a consequence of liberal vs. conservative thinking. That is, scientists don’t know whether these brain differences are innate or develop through years of thinking in a certain way. So far, researchers have found no relationship between political orientation and a variety of heritable traits, suggesting that liberalism and conservatism may not be genetically determined.

I was raised in a politically liberal and religiously secular family, and we came by it naturally: On my father's side there were Agrarian Socialists from the sharecropper dirt farms of Oklahoma, and on my mother's side there were Wobblies from the logging camps of the Great Northwest. Neither of my parents would ever be caught dead voting Republican, but aside from voting in every election, they weren't politically active and downplayed by reticence as much as they could the radical past of their families -- but who could blame them, really, since we are talking about the early 1950s, the heyday of the House Unamerican Activities Committee, McCarthyism and witch hunts.

The topic of the unlikely existence of a mythically ethereal being sometimes known as "god" never came up.

So when it came time for me to rebel, I started positing myself as a self-described Republican, pretty much just to piss them off.

In my own defense, however, this was the age of the "Liberal Republican" -- people such as Tom McCall, Mark Hatfield, Charles Percy and Nelson Rockefeller, none of whom would be welcome in today's Rethug party -- so I didn't have to swerve so far to the right as to support the 1964 pre-enlightened version of Barry Goldwater.

About that time I also found myself a member of a religious cult. It's a long and disgusting story, and a part of my life I'd just as soon forget about. None of my closest friends -- except for those lifelong buddies who know about it and accept me anyway -- even know about it, and I'd like to keep it that way. I won't name the cult (you would recognize it immediately) and I managed to work my way out of it in about a year, but I still look back on it with embarrassment.

The only time I am willing to talk about it is when I happen to run into another former member of the cult, and even then I'm a little circumspect about discussing it. But they, like me, experienced the attempted humiliation, the discomfort, the shunning, the alienation of being "churched" (which actually ought to be called "un-churched" or "dis-churched"; it happens when you leave the cult and you are consequently anathema to your former "friends" still in the cult because you are now in thrall to Satan and have embraced your new status as a Son of Perdition).

So where I am going with all of this? Even though I was a professed Republican and a member of a religious cult, all the while it just didn't feel right. It just wasn't who I was -- and not who I am now.

I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode in which George Constanza gets back together with his ex-girlfriend who became, briefly, a lesbian. When Jerry asked him about it, George said, "it didn't take."

And that was it for me. It just didn't take. And that's because my brain was hard-wired to be a liberal.

This study shows that this is true.

Filibuster Reform Petition

Like most other reality-based carbon-based life forms in this country, I want to see some reform of the US Senate filibuster rules.

The Rethugs have filibustered a record number of times (203 since 2007) but you'd never know how obstructionist they really have been because all they've had to do is threaten to do it. No more of the Jimmy Stewart-like thespian tour de force we saw in Mister Smith Goes to Washington.

Well, that needs to change. When someone is filibustering, the American people need know that. They need to be able to switch on C-SPAN and watch them making a fool of themselves. Can you imagine what weak-assed bumbling arguments they could try to articulate concerning, for example, their opposition to the bill to help First Responders?

To that end, please consider signing the petition over at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Yeah, after you sign you'll be pleaded with to send in some campaign cash, but hey, after the Citizens United decision, you already know that until we finally get publicly-financed campaigns, politics isn't gonna be cheap.

I Miss Alan Grayson Already

Here, in case you didn't see it the first thousand times it went viral, is his speech on the floor of Congress in which he explains the Rethug Health Care Plan:

I really hope that we haven't seen the last of Alan Grayson. And I have a sneaking suspicion that we haven't. We need a lot more straight-shooting take-no-prisoners bona fide liberals in the public arena, and I don't think Grayson is one to hide his light under a bushel.

Snarlin' Arlen's Valedictory Address

I have never been a fan of Arlen Spector, what with his life-long Republicanism until he had that cynical "deathbed conversion" to the Dems when it was obvious that he couldn't win the 2010 Republican primary.

In case we forget, he was also, as counsel for the Warren Commission, the primary author of and chief cheerleader for the infamous -- and impossible -- Single Bullet Theory that held, against all of the evidence, that one single bullet, allegedly fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from a defective weapon, traveled right through JFK apparently without resistance, and then went on to a second career, driving through the chest and several body parts of Texas governor John Connolly, causing numerous wounds, and finally ending up lodged in his thigh. And that it somehow miraculously remained in an almost-pristine and visibly undamaged condition, even though the bullet fragments in Connolly's thigh were proof -- buried under Big John's skin -- that this was impossible.

Nevertheless, here is his complete farewell address (in two parts) -- which he stresses is not a farewell address -- in which among other things he slams both his erstwhile Rethug colleagues and the rightwing mouthbreathing Rethug knuckledraggers on the Supreme Court.

So Arlen, exactly where was all this honesty and doubt and criticism over the last half-century -- and especially the last decade -- when you had every opportunity to voice these concerns?

Nevertheless, here's Snarlin' Arlen at his best:

President Palin? Don't Scoff -- It's Possible

As much fun as it is to contemplate the political curb-stomping that Barack Obama would likely administer to Half-Governor Sarah Palin if she became the Rethug nominee, it could turn out to be one of those "be careful what you ask for because you just might get it" things.

I'm as eager as anyone else with half a brain to see Palin get her ass kicked in a general election, but we anticipate that particular matchup at our peril.

If she actually managed to claw and snarl and lie her way to the top of the heap to become Obama's opponent in the 2012 general election, she just might pull it off and take all the marbles.

Anything can happen: All it would take would be another Iranian-hostage-type situation like the one that destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency and ushered Saint Ronald into the Offal Office. Or the Rethugs, with the enabling tactics of their sycophantic lackeys and servile toadies in the CPM/SCLM*, could manufacture out of whole cloth some "scandal" -- Obama is a child molester, Obama is a rapist, Obama is a ________ (fill in the blank with your own heinous crime) -- that would sway enough of the Moron-American voting bloc to vote against Obama and for her.

Keep in mind that a December poll pitting her against Obama was, in the grand scheme of things, pretty shocking: A full 40% supported her, vs. only 48% for Obama. That seems like a landslide, but if I have my math right, a shift of only 5% from Obama to Palin would hand her the presidency on a meat platter.

And if that happens, I really do have to get out. I'm way too visible on the left side of the spectrum, what with my membership on the National Advisory Council of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, my long-time membership in the ACLU and my left-wing political and anti-war activism. And of course, this blog.

If I am not already on a new Rethug "enemies list", it's not for lack of trying.

----

[* CPM/SCLM = Capitalist Pig Media/So Called Liberal Media]

Book of the Month: The Grapes of Wrath

Most of the members of my father's extended family were Oklahoma sharecroppers for several generations, until the deadly combination of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl devastation of the 1930s drove them off the land and to the west, where they would face a new brand of poverty, humiliation and starvation in California, Oregon and Washington.

My new book of the month is The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, which tells in harrowing detail the plight of "Okie" Dust Bowl refugees in their flight to what they hopefully but erroneously thought would be greener pastures, oranges free for the picking off of trees, high wages and lots of work.

Reading it, for me, is like reading a biography of my own family. But the book is far more than that, and it's a necessary reminder of the kind of society that the Teabaggers and the everything-for-the-rich Republicans want to take us back to. It's not a pretty sight, but I think periodically the rest of us need to be reminded of those "good old days" that they want to see come around again.

No one can read this book without getting pissed off at a country that would allow this kind of thing to happen.

BONUS: While you are reading The Grapes of Wrath, I recommend popping this great Woody Guthrie CD into your player and listening to it. It's Dust Bowl Ballads, a terrific compilation of songs that also describe the hell that was the 1930s flight of the Dust Bowl Refugees.

Both John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie made the trip west along with the migrant worker "Okies" they wrote about, which is why both of these works have that distinctive ring of truth about them that you just can't make up. I am a writer--trust me on this.

Since my father had been untimely ripped from his childhood, the draw of Oklahoma was strong in him, as it often is in those who suffer from a sudden dislocation in their youth. So in 1950 he moved back to NE Oklahoma, dragging me and my mother along with him. We spent five years on a dairy farm near Bristow, until the draconian agricultural policies of Ezra Taft Benson, Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of agriculture (who was later elevated to the lofty perch of "Prophet, Seer and Revelator" of the Moron Mormon Church), drove us into poverty once more and we were forced to again abandon the land and move west. While it wasn't close to the great migration of the 30s, it was personally disruptive to me, as it had once been to my father.

With I think the same motivations that once drove my father back to the state of his birth and childhood, I managed to make several trips back over the years. But I never even considered moving back there. Oklahoma had changed, and so had I. In a state that in the first two decades of the 20th Century had elected a huge number of Agrarian Socialists to office, Oklahoma managed to drive itself as far to the right as it could, ridiculously culminating in this year's ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to prohibit the establishment of Sharia Law(!) in the state. As if that was a problem. But what can you expect from a voting public -- part of the Moron-American Voting Bloc --that is willing to elect a professional dickhead and crypto-Fascist like Tom Coburn to the US Senate?

Anyway, The Grapes of Wrath and Dust Bowl Ballads: Get them, read one and listen to the other. You will not be sorry.

My Anthem for the Next Two Years

Here's Leonard Cohen's stirring Democracy:

(You can read the lyrics here.)

This song ought to be required listening for every politician, instead of that stupid-ass lame-brain teabagger stunt to read the US Constitution aloud before every session of Congress.

BTW, why do we have to rely on Canadian singer-songwriters for progressive/radical commentary songs (Bruce Cockburn is another one) to get our blood running? I'm just wondering...

Holiday Stress

I get it every year, but for some reason it's worse this year than it ever has been.

Maybe it's the bullshit that's happening in Washington DC, maybe something else, but I'm just going to shut down until after the holidays.

I'd like to just disappear into the desert until the New Year, but we don't have a warm desert anywhere nearby, and it's too far to drive to get to the Mojave and The Slabs.

Last year we escaped to Hawaii for a couple of weeks, but we spent all of our traveling money on our trip to France, and now we are stuck in the wet winter of western Washington.

Everybody, have a great holiday and I'll see you after the New Year.

--The F Man

Anybody Get the "I'm Tired" Email Yet?

As I've said before, I'm on some pretty oddball mailing lists, and one of the things that came to me last week was what is apparently a viral email essay written by a guy named Robert Hall (and no, it's not the actor from CSI, even though it purports to be) who is allegedly a Marine Corps veteran and five-term Massachusetts state senator.

It starts out with the title "I'm 63 and I'm Tired", and then it gets into the nitty-gritty:

I'm 63. Except for one semester in college when jobs were scarce and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but job-hunting every day, I've worked hard since I was 18. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.
I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I'm willing to help. But if they bought Mc Mansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the left-wing Congress-critters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them with their own money.

And it goes on and on with anti-Islamic and racist screeds and a bunch of phony-assed I-pulled-myself-up-by-my-own-bootstraps kind of crap.

You may, if you wish, see the whole thing over at Snopes, whose take on it is that it is true (that Robert Hall said it) but that it was sometimes wrongly attributed to the actor guy Robert Hall who plays the coroner on CSI.

The list that this was sent to is mostly Vietnam veterans of the Rethug-Asshole stripe, but there are a couple of liberals besides me on it and one of them responded to this crap with his own lambaste of the Glenn Beck/Bill Orally/Faux News gobbling morons who believe this shit.

Which, of course, then prompted a flurry of "If you don't like it here why don't you get out you fucking commie!" responses, with North Korea pretty much heading the list of potential new homelands for us commie-nazi-socialist-atheist-pinko liberals.

Naturally I couldn't just sit by and do nothing (but you knew that already). Here is my response to the list:

I have a simple question: Why does this joker claims that the economy is so bad he can't retire, if he's worked every day of his life and owns outright a condo worth 250k?
A lot of people, me among them, have retired and are doing fine on what I suspect is a lot less retirement income than this Robert Hall has available to him.
I suspect that this whole piece of raving is a little long on exaggeration and a little short on actual facts.
But what you can expect from a former politician (he was a Massachusetts state senator) whose political party is not given but which I would bet good money is Republican?
In Glennbeckistan, though (as Winston Churchill so famously said under different circumstances), facts are such precious and fragile things that they must constantly be protected with a bodyguard of lies...
And those of you who are parroting the "if you don't like it here, get out" line: It appears that you are the ones who don't like it here, since you are doing all the complaining. Why don't YOU get out? May I suggest the Ayn-Rand-Libertarian paradise of Somalia as a potential new home base for you, where there are no taxes and no government intervention in your life because there is ... no government.
Just what you want...

I know, it's too easy. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. But so what? It's still fun.

A Lost Generation

A lost generation. That's what it seems like to me, with Obama giving up without a fight and giving the rich motherfuckers their two-year tax cut extension, and the spineless Democrats are going to go right along with it. I really can't see Obama attempting to run for reelection now and trying to gin up that whole "hopey-changey" thing again in two years. I know a lot of people who will not vote for him again because he's Republican-Lite.

I'm particularly pissed off since I worked so hard to get him elected. That whole Hopey Changey Thing isn't working out for me, or anyone I know. When I voted for Obama, I wanted another FDR and instead I it looks like got another Clinton (who, to be fair, was the best Republican president of the 20th Century)

All the Dems have done is kick the problem down the road two years, so the tax cuts will expire in an election year. Can you imagine the Democrats trying to do anything with it when they are in an election cycle? No, I didn't think so, and in the meantime the deficit that could have been partially plugged by that tax income will just get bigger and bigger.

It's a missed opportunity, and a HUGE one. Now it'll be a cold day in hell when those two-percenters have to pay anything resembling their fair share of taxes in this country, and in the meantime we'll have a country coming apart at the seams and the only tailors who can sew it back together are Chinese...

And the Rethugs will finally have their way, a government so small that they can drown it in a bathtub.

I'm seriously thinking about getting out. The only problem with that is that there is no reasonable way to actually get off the planet...

Ironically this news came on the very day that I was being sworn in as the Democratic Party Precinct Committee Officer in my local party.

Oh, the humanity...

The Mormons and the Constitution

It's an article of faith -- or a "prophecy" from one or another of the old "prophet, seer and regulator revelator" guys at the top of the Mormon hierarchy -- that one day the US Constitution will "hang by a thread" and it will be up to a Mormon to save it.

Could it be we've already found our boy? Newly-elected Teabagger senator from Utah, Mike Lee, a scion of "Mormon royalty"-- he is a direct descendant of John D. Lee, infamous for being Brigham Young's scapegoat for the savage Mountain Meadows Massacre of white settlers who had the gall to cross Mormon land -- says that the Constitution is "divinely inspired" and he personally knows ('cause god told him, presumably) how to interpret it.

Here's Buzzflash's Mark Karlin:

What is the difference between religious fundamentalists and so-called "strict constructionists"? Actually, they are two sides of the same coin.
First, they both believe that the Constitution and the Bible are divinely granted documents. Secondly, they believe that there is a literal interpretation to both, and that they are the ones who know what that is. Thirdly, anyone who disagrees with them is either a heretic or un-American, or both.
The New York Times makes note of one newly elected Tea Party Republican senator:
Mike Lee, a 39-year-old Republican from Utah, has the most impeccable establishment legal credentials: the son of Rex Lee, a solicitor general under President Reagan, he attended law school at Brigham Young and later clerked for Samuel Alito on the U.S. Court of Appeals and then the Supreme Court. But on the campaign trail, especially during his heated primary battle with the three-term Republican incumbent Bob Bennett, Lee offered glimpses of a truly radical vision of the U.S. Constitution, one that sees the document as divinely inspired and views much of what the federal government currently does as unconstitutional.
This radical viewpoint is what characterizes the "Repeal Amendment" movement, which I wrote about yesterday. It is the fanatical, cultist viewpoint of those who believe that only they have the divine knowledge to understand "God's word" in the Bible and in the Constitution.
For these extremists, the Constitution is not a document of men and women that threw off the shackles of a Europe still governed by the claim of divinely sanctioned royalty, but rather, like the Ten Commandments (an apt analogy), a manifestation of the will of God - and an exclusive Christian God at that.
"As your U.S. senator," Lee promised during the campaign, according to the Times, "I will not vote for a single bill that I can't justify based on the text and the original understanding of the Constitution, no matter what the court says you can do."

Of course Lee is just the one, having labored in the august halls of the SCOTUS as a clerk for Scalito, to know exactly (and rather smugly I might add) just what the Constitution allows.

BTW, be sure to read that inner link to How Radical Is the Republican Leadership in Congress? Very.:

How radical is the Republican leadership in Congress? Let's just say that some of them make anarchists look like "centrists."
Eric Cantor, who was elected incoming house majority leader by the GOP caucus, is backing a plan, according to Talking Points Memo (TPM), "to blow up the Constitutional system and replace it with one that would give state governments veto power over federal laws."
A few years back, such an anti-constitutional notion would have been considered the province of unbalanced individuals and extreme, right-wing cultists. Now, the notion of states overriding the Constitution and federal law has apparently become mainstream for the Republican Party.
Of course, it would take an amendment to the Constitution, called the "Repeal Amendment," to eviscerate the founding document of our nation and our legal system. Cantor, for his part, thinks that this is a good idea, saying: "The Repeal Amendment would provide a check on the ever-expanding federal government, protect against Congressional overreach, and get the government working for the people again, not the other way around. In order to return America to opportunity, responsibility, and success, we must reverse course and the Repeal Amendment is a step in that direction."
According to TPM, one of the main goals of the Repeal Amendment is to overturn the 17th Amendment, which allows for the popular election of senators. This is an objective both the Tea Party and Antonin Scalia share, as BuzzFlash pointed out in a recent commentary. This fits in well with the perplexing notion that the "rabble of democracy" is a danger to the Republic!

So back to little Mikey Lee. He probably believes -- truly believes -- in the kind of crap he's spewing, and since he's already part of Mormon royalty, how hard can it be for him to already think he's The One who will save the Constitution?

The Return of "Hanoi Jane"

Six years ago, when I was involved in the Veterans for Kerry movement, this email started being sent around along with a photoshopped picture of Jane Fonda with John Kerry. It was a repeat of one that first started making the viral circles in 1999, when Jane appeared on ABC's list of "Women of the Century".

Back then the whole Hanoi Jane thing hadn't been very well researched and people were willing to believe anything they heard about her, even to the point of buying into this nonsense. And I guess things haven't changed very much. People are still stupidly angry about this, and six years ago when I did "respond all" reply about the lies in the email, I got death threats -- yes, death threats!

Now the same email is making the viral rounds, but this time Barack Obama's name is thrown into the mix because… well, I don't know why and neither, apparently, does anyone else, except for the belief that he is a traitor equal with or even surpassing Hanoi Jane.

So here's the text of the email – I've had to clean up the punctuation and the spacing to make it more understandable (not that it helped, but I'm not responsible for the content, just the presentation)

Subj: Never Forgive a Traitor
*Never Forgive A Traitor* For those of you too young to remember *_Hanoi Jane_ *is a bad person and did some terrible things during the Vietnam war. Things that can not be forgiven!!!!
* and now OBAMA wants to honor her......!!!!
In Memory of LT. C.Thomsen Wieland who spent 100 days at the Hanoi Hilton*
IF YOU NEVER FORWARDED* *ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE FORWARD THIS SO THAT EVERYONE WILL KNOW!!!!!!
_ She really is a traitor_.
A TRAITOR IS ABOUT TO BE HONORED KEEP THIS MOVING ACROSS AMERICA
This is for all the kids born in the 70's and after who do not remember, and didn't have to bear the burden that our fathers, mothers and older brothers and sisters had to bear..
Jane Fonda is being honored as one of the '100 Women of the Century.' BY BARBRA WALTERS
Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during Vietnam*
The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot. The pilot's name is Jerry Driscoll, a River Rat.
In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF Survival School was a POW in Ho Lo Prison the ' Hanoi Hilton.'
Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJ's, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American 'Peace Activist' the 'lenient and humane treatment' he'd received.
He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp Commandant 's feet, which sent that officer berserk.
In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision (which permanently ended his flying career) from the Commandant's frenzied application of a wooden baton.
From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E's). He spent 6 years in the 'Hanoi Hilton',,, the first three of which his family only knew he was 'missing in action'. His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and clothed routine in preparation for a 'peace delegation' visit.
They, however, had time and devised a plan to get word to the world that they were alive and still survived.
Each man secreted a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security Number on it , in the palm of his hand.
When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: 'Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?' and 'Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?' Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper.
She took them all without missing a beat.. At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper..
Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carrigan was almost number four but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day.
I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam , and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in 1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years.
I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one year in a cage in Cambodia ; and one year in a 'black box' in Hanoi My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Ban me Thuot , South Vietnam , whom I buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border. At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs. (My normal weight is 170 lbs)
We were Jane Fonda's 'war criminals....'
When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi , I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her..
I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real treatment we POWs received... and how different it was from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as 'humane and lenient.'
Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees, with my arms outstretched with a large steel weights placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane.
I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda soon after I was released. I asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She never did answer me.
These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who should be honored as part of '100 Years of Great Women.' Lest we forget....' 100 Years of Great Women' should never include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots.
There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Hanoi Jane's participation in blatant treason, is one of them. Please take the time to forward to as many people as you possibly can.. It will eventually end up on her computer and she needs to know that we will never forget.
RONALD D. SAMPSON, CMSgt, USAF 716 Maintenance Squadron, Chief of Maintenance DSN: 875-6431 COMM: 883-6343*
PLEASE HELP BY SENDING THIS TO EVERYONE IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK. IF ENOUGH PEOPLE SEE THIS MAYBE HER* *STATUS WILL CHANGE*

Okay, aside from the fact that this first surfaced in 1999 (that was when the Women of the Century list was published), what else does the writer have wrong?

Pretty much everything, it seems.

Snopes has a very long article, Hanoi'd with Jane which debunks nearly every point in this email:

Were Jane Fonda's actions treason, or were they the exercise of a private citizen's right to freedom of speech? At the time, the legal aspects of this question were moot: President Nixon was engaged in trying to wind down American involvement in Vietnam and had to face another election in a few months, so politically he had far more to lose than to gain by making a martyr out of a prominent anti-war activist. (No requirement in either the Constitution or federal law states that the U.S. must be engaged in a declared war, or any war at all, before charges of treason can be brought against an individual.)
On the one hand, Jane Fonda provided no tangible military assistance to the North Vietnamese: she divulged no military secrets, she gave them no money or material, and she did not interfere with the operations of the American forces. Her actions, offensive as they were to many, were primarily of propaganda value only. On the other hand, Iva Ikuko Toguri (also known as "Tokyo Rose") was convicted of treason for making propaganda broadcasts on behalf of the Japanese during World War II (although she claimed her betrayal was forced and was eventually pardoned many years later by President Gerald Ford), and Fonda's efforts could fall under the definition of "giving aid and comfort to the enemy." It is also undeniable that some American soldiers came to harm as a direct result of Fonda's actions, an outcome she should reasonably have anticipated.
The most serious accusations in the piece quoted above, that Fonda turned over slips of paper furtively given her by American POWs to the North Vietnamese and that several POWs were beaten to death as a result, are untrue. Those named in the inflammatory e-mail have repeatedly and categorically denied the events they supposedly were part of.
"It's a figment of somebody's imagination," says Ret. Col. Larry Carrigan, one of the servicemen mentioned in the 'slips of paper' incident. Carrigan was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and did spend time in a POW camp. He has no idea why the story was attributed to him, saying, "I never met Jane Fonda." In 2005, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that Carrigan "is so tired of having to repeat that he wasn't beaten after Fonda's visit and that there were no beating deaths at that time that he won't talk to the media anymore."
The tale about a defiant serviceman who spit at Jane Fonda and is severely beaten as a result is often attributed to Air Force pilot Jerry Driscoll. He has also repeatedly stated on the record that it did not originate with him.
Driscoll said he never met Fonda, as the e-mail claims — and therefore, never spit on her and didn't suffer permanent double vision from a subsequent beating. "Totally false. It did not happen," Driscoll said.
"I don't know who came up with [my] name. The trouble that individual has caused me!" he said, referring to the time he has spent repeatedly denying the persistent myth.
Mike McGrath, President of NAM-POWs, has also stepped forward to disclaim the story: Please excuse the generic response, but I have been swamped with so many e-mails on the subject of the Jane Fonda article (Carrigan, Driscoll, strips of paper, torture and deaths of POWs, etc.) that I have to resort to this pre-scripted rebuttal. The truth is that most of this never happened. This is a hoax story placed on the internet by unknown Fonda haters. No one knows who initiated the story. Please assist by not propagating the story. Fonda did enough bad things to assure her a correct place in the garbage dumps of history. We don't want to be party to false stories, which could be used as an excuse that her real actions didn't really happen either. I have spoken with all the parties named: Carrigan, Driscoll, et al. They all state that this particular internet story is a hoax and they wish to disassociate their names from the false story.
Despite the claims of hundreds of Vietnam veterans who maintain they were "there" and can affirm these tales as true, Jane Fonda actually met with only a handful of American POWs in North Vietnam, and even they have spoken out on the record to disclaim the story: "The whole [e-mail] story about Jane Fonda is just malarkey," said Edison Miller, 73, of California, a former Marine Corps pilot held more than five years. Miller was among seven POWs who met with Fonda in Hanoi. He said he didn't recall her asking any questions other than about their names, if that. He said that he passed her no piece of paper, and that to his knowledge, no other POW in the group did, despite the e-mail's claims.
In fact, Fonda carried home letters from many American POWs to their families upon her return from North Vietnam.

Okay, another question: Who the fuck is Ronald D. Sampson? A casual reading of this email might lead you to believe that HE was the POW who was tortured ("I spent 27 months…" "I was on a rocky floor…"

Actually he was not there. His name does not appear on ANY lists of POWs (see for example, POW Network) and it's tempting to think he's one of those Stolen Valor dickwad wannabe's, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and choose to decide that the email just got garbled in the viral spread.

Here's more from Snopes:

The source of the story about a prisoner forced to kneel on rocky ground while holding a piece of steel rebar in his outstretched arms still affirms that account as true, though. Michael Benge was a senior agro-forestry officer with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) who was working in South Vietnam when he was captured by the Viet Cong in 1968 and held prisoner for five years:
He was at a Hanoi prison in 1972 when a political officer he hadn't seen before asked whether he would like to meet Fonda. "I said yes," he wrote in a 1999 letter that protested the Fonda honors, "for I would like to tell her about the real treatment we POWs received and how different it was from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese."
Benge said he doesn't know who pilfered his story from his letter and attached it to the Carrigan and Driscoll fictions.
In the 1972 incident, "I think I had maybe a little smarter-than-the-average bear [political officer] who knew I was being cynical," Benge said recently. Benge said he spent the next three days kneeling on a rocky floor with a steel bar on his outstretched hands. Whenever his arms dipped, he was struck with a bamboo cane, he said.
North Vietnamese guards might be the only people able to verify Benge's torture account independently. But, McGrath said, Benge's account is "consistent with [North] Vietnamese policy and conduct about people who didn't cooperate."

If you are the recipient of one of these Hanoi Jane emails, I would hope that at the very least you will trash it and not pass it on. Passing these things on without checking into their veracity actually dishonors people like Jerry Driscoll and Larry Carrigan. It is calling them liars, and that, incidentally, is the best pushback you can have to the person who sent you the email in the first place.

That is how I handled it, and the person who sent it lost no time in sending out the correction to everyone he sent it to.

I don't know how many of those have resulted in death threats, but I'm willing to bet that he got some.

Taking a Few Days Off

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, with all that that implies... Those of you who are from "families" know what I mean. I'll be taking on my IBIL* with a full load of verbal double-ought buckshot, and since I can't really eat anything, I'll be on my absolute best behavior...

I have a temporary cap on my back molar with an injunction from my dentist not to eat anything that could fuck it up. Which means that I'll be drinking my Thanksgiving dinner. Which means I may say something I could end up regretting later, when the IBIL burbles something in praise of the Rethugs or the Teabaggers or Michelle Bachmann or Mama Grisly or the US Chamber of Commerce...

Which means that even if She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed manages to bail me out of jail in time for the pumpkin pie, I'll still need a few days to recover.

See you next week.

----

[*IBIL = Idiot Brother-In-Law]

When Even Motor Trend is Against You...

...you know you've crossed some kind of line.

Except if you are Rush Limpdick, the pimple-assed draft dodger, who recently went on a rant about the new Chevrolet Volt being named MT's Car of the Year.

From what I can tell, Rusty doesn't like it because he doesn't like it. He's never driven one, he's never even seen one. But it's electric and doesn't use a lot of gasoline, so it must be bad.

Motor Trend, surprisingly, unwilling to buy into the whole "That's just Rush being Rush" justification that the rest of the media uses an excuse not to call him on his bullshit, shot back -- and shot back big -- in a column by Todd Lassa, called Rush to Judgment:

You said, “Folks, of all the cars, no offense, General Motors, please, but of all the cars in the world, the Chevrolet Volt is the Car of the Year? Motor Trend magazine, that’s the end of them. How in the world do they have any credibility? Not one has been sold. The Volt is the Car of the Year.”
So, Mr. Limbaugh; you didn’t enjoy your drive of our 2011 Car of the Year, the Chevrolet Volt? Assuming you’ve been anywhere near the biggest automotive technological breakthrough since … I don’t know, maybe the self-starter, could you even find your way to the front seat? Or are you happy attacking a car that you’ve never even seen in person?
Last time you ranted about the Volt, you got confused about the “range,” and said on the air that the car could be driven no more than 40 miles at a time, period. At least you stayed away from that issue this time, but you continue to attack it as the car only a tree hugging, Obama-supporting Government Motors customer would want. As radio loudmouths like you would note, none of those potential customers were to be found after November 2.
Back to us for a moment, our credibility, Mr. Limbaugh, comes from actually driving and testing the car, and understanding its advanced technology. It comes from driving and testing virtually every new car sold, and from doing this once a year with all the all-new or significantly improved models all at the same time. We test, make judgments and write about things we understand.
Chevrolet has not sold one Volt because it’s not on sale yet. It will not sell 10,000 this first model year (although GE plans to buy truckloads for its fleet), because it takes time to ramp up production. See, Rush, because we’re the World’s Automotive Authority, we get access to many cars before they go on sale.
Rush to Judgment imageBut, harrumph. In its attempt to force cars that don’t use much gas on us — how un-American/un-ExxonMobil/un-Halliburton is that? — the Obama administration is offering a $7,500 tax credit on the Chevy Volt, grabbing tax breaks and credits right out of the deserving, job-creating pockets of America’s richest individuals. How dare he?
This is another of your distortions, Rush, repeated by the otherwise more level-headed George Will in The Washington Post last Sunday. The $7,500 Obama tax credit is an expansion of President Bush’s hybrid credits from the last decade. The Obama tax credit extends to the new Nissan Leaf, too, but if you or Will slammed that car, I’ve not heard or read it. I’d be surprised if you did, though, as Nissan is building the Leaf in a non-union factory in a right-to-work state represented by two Republican senators. A factory located there because Tennessee offered Nissan big tax credits. Maybe you’re worried that if the $7,500 tax credit works, too many people will buy the Volt, and that could reduce the need for oil drilling tax credits?

Nyuk, nyuk nyuk...Take that, asshole.

There's more to this, so be sure to check out the whole story, and especially the last line. There is also a ton of comments on it, and there are surprisingly few dittoheads in there, but a lot of people who are going to subscribe to MT because of this.

Let the Rehab Begin!

I'm talking about the rehabilitation of George W. "War Criminal" Bush. Not a real rehab, mind you, just his reputation.

He's just published his obviously ghost-written book, he's making the rounds of friendly journalists and he's trying to pass himself off as being the reluctant one when it came to the Iraq war.

Jesus, does he know no shame? Bad question, of course not.

But why is this happening? Why is it happening now?

I have two answers to that:

(1) It's been two years since the fucker was in office, long enough for the ADHD Moron-American Voting Bloc to forget about all the bad stuff he did, long enough for the Obama-haters over at Faux News (along with their card-carrying fellow travelers in the CPM* -- Matt Lauer anyone?) to gin up enough antipathy towards the current president that even Bush looks good by comparison. Plus who can remember, ten years after, that Bush was the cheerleader-in-chief for the Iraq war, that he said before he even ran for president that he was going to "get" Saddam Hussein?

(2) There's just two years until the next election, and the Bush name has to be "cleared" to pave the way for Little Jebbie to run for president.

Jesus wept. I hope that Caribou Barbie, aka Mama Grisly, stomps him in the primaries. I really do. You betcha! Jebbie would be out of the picture and she'd be easy to beat in the general election.

After all, I think we've already had enough members of the Bush Crime Family in the presidency. I doubt whether we could survive another one.

Okay, back to the question of rehab: I think Dubya really needs some. Anyone remember the stop-smoking program that administered an electric shock every time you tried to light up? I think Dubya would be well served by something similar. Say, something with 1,000 volts, and just enough amps to make smoke almost come out of his eyes... Just for a little while, say an hour or so, followed by a cooling off period under a dripping wet cloth placed strategically over his nose and mouth.

After all, "the lawyer" told him that it wasn't torture.

I'd like to know if he'd agree when it was being done to him...

------

[CPM = Capitalist Pig Media]

JFK Assassination Anniversary

Those of us of a certain age can tell you in great detail exactly where we were, what we were doing, and who we were with when we heard the news of death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963. But not all of us. Interestingly enough, former president George H. W. Bush, for example, couldn't recall where he was and what he was doing, nor could E. Howard Hunt, later of Watergate fame...

Okay, before I go all tinfoil hat on you, I will tell you up front that I never believed in the official answers to the JFK Assassination.

I don't need to go into the whole thing, since by now everyone knows the story, and those who buy into the Warren Report are incapable of listening to evidence to the contrary, and those of us who believe that there was some kind of conspiracy going on have our usual suspects and we are not willing to entertain motions to dismiss.

A terrific blog on the assassination is Oswald's Mother, and it's one that should be required reading for even a casual student of the events of Dallas 1963.

Think you know something about Lee Harvey Oswald? Think you know everything? You'll change your mind after you read the four-part Oswald Was One Weird Dude.

And what is probably the most complete and best book on the real history behind the JFK Assassination is Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann's Ultimate Sacrifice:John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK, which is probably about as close as we are going to come to a "Unified Field Theory" of the Kennedy Assassination.

It's a pretty long book, but it is heavily footnoted and documented. And it is a "must read" for students and critics of the Warren Report and the subsequent government coverups of both the JFK and the Robert Kennedy Assassinations.

"...and the ground shook..."

Yea verily.

It came as a total surprise to me that Pope Benedict (heretofore known only for his eggs) actually is going to come out in favor of the use of -- shock! -- condoms.

But there's a caveat (there always is) to this: "Only in certain circumstances", he says.

Presumably that will include pedophile priests who are buttfucking altar boys, so the little angels won't have a demonstrable proof that Father Fuckmeindeass actually did anything...wrong...to little Johnny.

Given the advances in DNA evidentiary chemistry, it seems that once again the Catholic Church is one step behind (cue sneering chuckle) the rest of us...

Apparently Joe Miller Reads this Blog...

Yesterday I said, "Joe Miller needs to demand a recount -- something went wrong with the poll-stuffing machinery in Alaska this month..."

Today I see that Senate Loser Miller has asked a judge not to certify the write-in election.

Aside from the fact that the fucker is a sore loser, it rankles me that he would actually follow my advice and act like the spoiled child/Sarah-Palin-leg-humper that he is and throw a temper tantrum because he actually LOST the fucking election.

What an asshole.