8 April 2012 buy another stupid plastic ribbon sticker made in China.

Cassi Creek:

          So much for operational security.  In Afghanistan, we have just signed over any hope of operational security to the Afghans.  They have demanded that night raids designed to capture &/or kill Taliban and other insurgents be placed under the control of Afghan authorities and Afghan law. 

          In order to run a night raid in a suspect village, the U.S. must secure the approval of local Afghan army officers and local civilian officials.  A civil warrant must be obtained in order to carry out a capture/kill mission.  Afghan troops must carry out/lead the mission.  Only Afghan troops may enter the houses where suspects are believed to be. 

          It is easy to predict what will happen now.  The suspects will be warned of the plan to detain them.  U.S. troops will meet with many more ambushes.  Essentially, this agreement abandons any hope of operational security for U.S. and NATO troops.  The porosity of the Afghan army and government is comparable only to that of the former South Vietnamese army and government. 

          There is no longer any justification for maintaining any U.S. armed forces in the AFPaK Theater of operations.  Every bit of security has been compromised.  Either bring those troops home now or admit that we no longer value their lives or their service.  When we can’t trust our allies, we should not sacrifice our troops or expend our hardware.  There is no military force, no government we can trust in Afghanistan or Pakistan.  Write or call your legislators now.  Bring the troops home!

          Below, I have excerpted material from another Washington Post column by George Masters of South Carolina.  Mr. Masters has written concerning another matter that I find highly disturbing.  He lets his thoughts and memories be brought to the surface, taking him back to his time as a Marine in Vietnam.  The trigger mechanism is a display of the magnetized plastic “ribbons” sold at Wal-Mart and other retailers to purportedly “Support Our Troops.” 

          Mr. Masters lays out in exacting detail what it is like to be part of an infantry patrol.  He doesn’t’ have to carry those thoughts to the point of contact, as anyone who’s been on such a patrol knows the preparation, the moment when all hope for an unopposed excursion falls apart as the tree-line or the paddy dike, or some feature of the landscape bursts into small arms and explosion, and the fear that the best of training still can’t erase. 

          Masters knows that it doesn’t matter how many “ribbons” someone plasters on his or her car.  The retailers have no intention of “supporting the troops” at any level beyond the impulse racks at their cash registers.

          He delves into the lack of support for returning men and women.  He makes the point that the only way to “support the troops” is to stop becoming involved in foreign wars that lack an endpoint, a measure of success, and that load the burden for fighting the war on a very small percentage of our populace rather than on the corporations that stand to benefit in one manner or another from our involvement. 

          I have often said that there is no one who is more opposed to war than the men and women taking fire in the field.  Not all the “yellow ribbons” in the world will provide one iota of comfort or logistical support to a single trooper.  But a bumper sticker that reads, “Bring them home now!” reminds them that someone cares enough to express an opinion that may be outside the idiocy expressed on Fox News or by teavangelists who equate Afghanistan with another round of Crusades. 

Please read both the columns linked below.  Then call your legislators and the White House and ask them to abandon the folly that is Afghanistan and bring our troops home now.

http://us.cnn.com/2012/04/08/world/asia/afghanistan-night-raids/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

U.S., Afghanistan reach 'night raids' deal

By Nick Paton Walsh, CNN

updated 7:41 AM EDT, Sun April 8, 2012

“Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The United States and Afghanistan say they have reached a landmark deal to be signed Sunday that affords Afghan authorities an effective veto over controversial special operations raids.

            “A bid to end visceral Afghan anger over raids on private residences, the deal prevents NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops from conducting such operations without the explicit permission of Afghan officials, said a senior NATO official.

            “An Afghan review group would have to authorize an operation before it goes ahead, the official said.

Special operations forces would operate under Afghan law, said a statement from the presidential palace.       

            “The agreement was to go into effect at a signing Sunday afternoon, said Afghan presidential spokesman Aimal Faizi. ISAF commander, Gen. John Allen, and Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak were scheduled to take part in the signing.

            “The key deal comes after months of angry recriminations against special operations raids, particularly at night, that deeply offend Afghans as they involve foreigners entering their homes. U.S. officials say the raids are vital to NATO's operation against insurgents.

            “The complex system would fully "Afghanize" the operations, putting Afghan commandos in the lead and giving American special forces a "training and support role," a senior Afghan official said.

The senior Afghan official said the deal would involve a joint committee of U.S. and Afghan officials reviewing U.S. intelligence on a target before a raid.

            “If that target were approved, a warrant would then be issued by Afghan authorities for the raid to occur, the official said.

It remained unclear how or when the warrant would be issued.

            “One western official confirmed the committee mechanism but would not comment on any warrant procedure.

Afghan officials have insisted the raids be conducted in compliance with Afghan law, meaning any warrant or legal authority for a raid would have to occur before the operation.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/support-our-troops-then-bring-them-home/2012/04/06/gIQACyNb0S_story.html

Support our troops? Then bring them home.

By George Masters, Published: April 6

George Masters is a freelance writers and teacher in Charleston, S.C.

            “ The car in front of us wears two Support Our Troops ribbons. One is yellow; the other red, white and blue. Both are made in China. On the rear bumper is a faded black MIA sticker. That driver probably means well, but by now I’ve seen too many ribbons. While the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq kill and maim, I think of how they are also shaping the future of returning veterans. Many of these men and women will come home and go missing, and you won’t even know it. Returning from a war is more than getting off an airplane and putting on civvies. Combat changes a person. It changed me…”

            “ want to support our troops? Give the man some space when he gets home. Give the woman a job. Don’t say how you would have been there if you could have and reel off excuses why you weren’t. He may be quieter than you’re used to and kind of keep to himself. She might be missing an arm; he could be in a wheelchair, knowing he’ll never again chase his kids down a beach. Both may drink a bit. She may smoke pot, dress wild and date around. She might play music loud. He could go to the movies for hours, come home, and cry for no reason you can see. Don’t lecture them. Don’t tell them to forget about the war — they can’t. Don’t try to tell her how she’s escaping reality. She’s had all the reality she can stomach. He may carry what you call an attitude. She might have a low tolerance for shenanigans and a quirky sense of humor. If you touch her when she doesn’t want to be touched, she could very well turn around and bust you in your chops.

            “If you’ve never hunted humans, if you’ve never been hunted, if you haven’t been shot at on a regular basis, just try to appreciate what this person has been through. Then get down on your knees and thank your lucky stars it wasn’t you…”

7 April 2012 A sea change in Tennessee

Sea change

 

Noun

1.   A striking change, as in appearance, often for the better.
2.   any major transformation or alteration.
3.    a transformation brought about by the sea.

Definitions 1 & 2 are applicable in this submission.

          The last time I voted for a candidate in a national election was in 1972 when I allowed myself to hope that McGovern might actually have sufficient support to defeat the incumbent Nixon.  At that point in time I believed Nixon to be the least worthy person to ever hold the office of POTUS.  There have been several Republicans in that office since Nixon’s resignation, and each of them have, in some manner, made Nixon look more realistic, more humane, and more concerned with the well-being of the American populace.  As for honesty, none of them are worthy of emulation.

          This year I suddenly find myself in the position of wanting to vote for a candidate standing for election to the Senate from Tennessee.  At a time when the state of Tennessee seems to be leading the red states in a charge to reverse the flow of time, in efforts to wipe out all social, cultural, educational, and legal progress since the 1850s, a progressive candidate worthy of election, willing to drag the state and the nation into the 21^st century with the rest of the world’s industrialized nations, has appeared upon the stage. 

          The incumbent Senator, an entrenched example of ineffectual GOP subservience to the moneyed class, is opposed to conservation of natural resources (unless the GOP backers profit handsomely as those resources are sold off to corporations).  He is willing to vote the teavangelist/GOP party lines on climate change, clean air and water, education, health care, and to allow theocrats to take over the nation. 

          Recently I was introduced to a progressive woman who appears to be the direct antithesis of all things GOP/teavangelist.  She has the intellect to understand technical problems, the capability to explain those problems in day-to-day language for the average voter, the belief in science as a core solution to many of our national problems, and support for women in the teavangelists’ effort to overturn the 20^th century.  She is currently involved with local concerns as well as national concerns.  She is an example of what a United States Senator should be.  She is someone I can happily and confidently vote for.

          Park Overall stands head and shoulders above the usual candidate.  When she speaks, she says what she believes.  If she doesn’t have an immediate answer to a question, she admits it, looks for answer before bullshitting like our current crop of legislators.  Gloria and I were privileged to see some of her deliberation process as she decided to run for Senator.  She asked the right questions and answered them honestly, as she made a difficult choice.

          She’s already done something I never expected to have happen again.  She’s offered a candidacy to me and people like me who expected never to see our republic function honestly and openly again.  For the first time since 1972, I will be able to vote for someone, not against everyone. 

          Park Overall, thank you for undertaking a difficult and brutal campaign process.  When the votes are counted in November, I hope the numbers fall in your favor.  However, win or not, you will have restored some of the honor to the electoral process that the GOP/teavangelists have been destroying since the end of the Civil War.  Tennessee needs more people like Park Overall in public and private life.  The 21^st century is taking place in the rest of the nation.  We need to make Tennessee into the modern state it can be.  Electing Park Overall to the Senate is the first step we all can make together.

6 April 2012 Light a Candle, curse the glare!

          Last April saw the largest outbreak of tornadoes within a single day in U.S. History.  Following an extremely warm winter, it looks as if this April could follow in the  tracks of last year’s April. 

          Tuesday evening we had a squall line track through the region, taking down cable and internet for 5 hours and electricity for about 20 minutes.  Wednesday night we had another squall line blow through but services remained intact.  Loki has come to associate the alarm on the NWS weather radio with bad weather.  She now starts pacing and looking for a small den as soon as she hears it alert. 

          Yesterday we took Gloria’s Hyundai in for servicing – normal maintenance.  When we picked it up we could see the squall line building and moving in.  By the time we covered the 15 miles of back roads from garage to home it had begun to rain. 

          A squall line had formed and was being bowed out by the line winds driving the storms.          At 1650, we had a series of blackouts, recoveries, brownouts, and the power was gone.  We were in the dark until 0910.

          Dinner switched from the planned steak and ears of corn to whatever could be pulled together in the dark without leaving the refrigerator open too long.  

          The power outage was caused by apparent line-wind damage Southeast of Limestone.  This is all too similar to the same type of event that happened on 9 April last year.  The weather pattern can change away from tornadic storms now. 

          Pesach begins tonight at sundown. 

Chag Sameach!, Shabbat Shalom!

4 April 2012 Too little too late to be certain

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/the-morning-plum-obamacare-may-perish-what-would-gop-do-about-tens-of-millions-of-uninsured/2012/04/04/gIQAc8E3uS_blog.html?hpid=z2

            “Posted at 09:06 AM ET, 04/04/2012

The Morning Plum: Obamacare may perish. What would GOP do about tens of millions of uninsured?

By Greg Sargent

As I’ve been noting here, the Supreme Court deliberations really should be focusing the conversation a bit more on this question: If Republicans get their way, and Obamacare is struck down, what would they do about the nation’s tens of millions of uninsured?

Today’s New York Times has a good piece in which leading Republicans are asked this question. The answer still appears to be: To Be Determined.

          The thought that our Supreme Court might find the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional is truly frightening.  This nation has an immense problem delivering health care to those who can’t afford to pay the spiraling salaries and geometrically increasing bonuses of the health insurance corporations' executives.  This nation has as much as 1/6 of its population with no access to health care other than by further clogging the already over-burdened ERs of not-for-profit hospitals. 

          The GOP has been railing against Medicare and Medicaid since they became laws.  The GOP turns collectively red-faced and screams in chorus, “socialism, communism,” whenever single-payer, universal health care for all citizens is suggested as an answer to our uninsured citizen’s problem.  This has not changed in decades.  Only the face and voices of the anti-cheer-leaders in Congress change as the obstructionists rotate through the latest attempt to abolish care for the uninsured.

          The standard joke, that the GOP/teavangelist’ health care plan is to ignore everyone but the wealthy; results in the algorithm for health care planning – “Get sick, die quick!”  Of course, this sounds like a poorly written policy response by the Democrats and others who believe health care should be readily available to all citizens.  It sounds like a bad joke, but it isn’t. The GOP has argued against Medicare and universal insurance since 1964 at least.  They’ve protested what Congress passed and promised alternatives to improve and broaden health care coverage.

          It is now 2012.  They may get their wish.  A thoroughly hostile to universal care SCOTUS sits ready to hand them the keys to the medicine locker.  What do they have to replace the ACA?  How are they going to improve and stabilize Medicare? 

          They are not going to do a damned thing except to force seniors into a voucher replacement for Medicare that will not be affordable and that will not provide care of an adequate nature.  The poor, the aging, the unemployed, and the former middle class and working class will be studiously ignored by insurance companies that will be appointed by Congress to determine who gets care and who dies. 

          The GOP has refused to realistically fund health care and create universal insurance since the Goldwater days.  The teavangelists are too busy shouting that they don’t want to pay for anyone else’s health care to realize that the Medicare and non-profit-hospitals they make use of is a socialist form of government program. 

          It just may be that the teavangelists will get their wish about health care. I can guarantee that they won’t like it when they finally realize that the GOP has used them and thrown them aside as it has done with every other bit of the citizenry. 

          I find myself hoping that the teavangelists have time to understand how poorly they have served their fellow men and women by buying into the GOP greed.

3 April 2012 Confidence inspiring?

          The Veterans Administration has produced an individualize handbook for very good thing and I looked forward to receiving mine.  The benefits booklets I currently have provide the information I want if I wade through them long enough.  This handbook should eliminate those periodic searches. 

          Mine arrived yesterday.   I sat down with it and eagerly looked through it.  Surprise on page 25.  The booklet, essentially a merge and print project, lists my health care facility – my source for primary care and other services- is listed as Bay Pines VAMC in Bay Pines FL.  All the contact phone numbers are Florida 727 area code numbers.   The handbook is essentially a collection of errors. 

          I immediately began to wonder if my current appointments scheduled for April and May were at risk of being cancelled and if my primary care had somehow been shifted back to Florida.  While my first few years in the VA system were provided by Bay Pines and a satellite clinic of Bay Pines, when we moved in October 2006 I had my primary care shifted to Mountain Home VAMC.  While I was pleased with the care I received at Bay Pines, I have no desire to travel to Florida for all my routine appointments, labs, and other care when I live 28 miles from Mountain Home. 

          A half-hour phone call has supposedly moved my enrollment from Bay Pines to Mountain Home.  Another phone call to my primary care team indicated that my appointments for April and May are still valid and active.

          Some searching, on-line, this morning suggests that I am not at all unique in discovering this problem.  

http://www.va.gov/healthbenefits/assets/documents/publications/faq_veterans.pdf 

Shows me the following: 

          “Wrong facility information - what is given is somehow the veteran’s favored facility, not necessarily where care is provided.  “

          I find this somewhat disconcerting in that I chose both Bay Pines and Mountain Home due to their proximity to my home.  While the people at Bay Pines provided what I felt to be high quality care, so do the people at Mountain Home.  My preferred facility is Mountain Home and I sincerely hope nothing further untoward occurs to cause me to reconsider. 

          As of today, I still have confidence in the VA system.  Film at 2300!

2 April 2012 Scientists discover source of fossils

          This Toles cartoon appeared in this morning’s Washington Post.

I write this commentary at the beginning of April 2012, at the end of one of the warmest winters I can recall.

          It is technically spring, early spring if one goes by the astronomical markers that govern the solar year that determines the life cycles of plants and animals on this 3^rd planet outward from our sun.  The plants seem greatly confused.  We reside at the altitude of 1804 feet, 550 meters. Our latitude is North 36.12.  This location has normally recorded snowfall and hard freezes as late as 17 April.  We would expect the floral indications of spring’s arrival about 2 weeks later than residents at similar latitude but 0 meters of altitude.  During our first spring residing here, we did, indeed, have a hard freeze and snow on17 April that severely damaged crops in the fields.  This year, many trees have already bloomed and are leafing out.  Local strawberry crops may actually be ready a month ahead of normal.  The potential for a cold snap destroying berry harvests is all too real.  But the short-term forecasts don’t include over-the-Canadian-border assaults by the northern jet stream.  Instead, the earlier than normal warm-up predisposes toward severe thunderstorms with wind and hail damage. 

                   The polar icecaps are melting at rates previously unheard of until now.   The long-sought Northwest Passage actually existed last summer and will most likely exist again this coming summer.  This is not to claim that many or most merchant ships could or should attempt to force that passage.  Those vessels trying it should have an unlimited fuel supply, immense reserves of food with respect to the crew’s size, at least one icebreaker on call, long range logistic, medical, and other resources not commonly carried by cargo ships.  But the passage has been forced and a changed route will likely be forced again this summer.    In truth, both the U.S. ballistic missile submarine fleet and that of the former USSR ran numerous patrols under the Arctic ice cap once the navigational difficulties were worked out.  The same icepack conditions that made under-ice submarine patrols feasible with respect to vessel and crew safety and recovery in the event of fire, collision, or other accidental damage; make the trip feasible for surface vessels too.  Thinned icepack with numerous polynyas would allow a submarine to force through thin ice or perhaps blow a hole using a torpedo in order to allow emergency surfacing in the icepack. The same conditions make forcing the route with icebreakers feasible if not yet cost effective.

          Still, with decades of polar icecap photos, hundreds of temperature graphs from above, upon, and below the icepack, the GOP propagandists continue to deny any change in the icecap.  With the increased rates of ice shelf calving in the Antarctic, the GOP house organs still find some reason to deny change despite the increased presence of ice sheets the size of Florida.

          The GOP/teavangelist alliance plays to the inability of its base to understand basic science.  Candidates like Rick Santorum claim that mythology intended to explain physical occurrences such as lightning, thunder, volcanism, and floods is somehow more to be believed than the actual science-based causation that can be demonstrated, quantified, and repeated on demand.  Other religious fanatics such as Sarah Palin routinely encourage the teavangelist voter base to ignore reality and to focus on placating an imaginary deity hiding unseen in the stratosphere in order to assure rain, a harvest, and escape from an endless dance with minor imaginary enemies in an as-yet-undetected chamber in the core of the planet. 

          I no longer have any hope of convincing any GOP/teavangelist that climate changes are real, or that climate change has a human component.  I find it frightening that the same people who have no belief in science are being asked by the GOP/teavangelist party bosses to push their religious fanaticism into the school systems, into health care, into private matters concerning reproduction, and into the politically-driven revision of history textbooks so that minorities and non-Christians are being removed from history by such groups as the Texas school board. 

          Science is based upon repeatable demonstrability, upon quantifiable observations and results.  Measuring the rise in sea level over a century is science.  Counting the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is idiocy.  Praying for rain in a long-standing drought is not a workable state policy to prevent crop loss.  Developing drought-resistant species of plants used for food is a scientific approach to conservation, to modern agriculture, and to evolution.

          Prayer in school does not prevent crime, and never has, despite the huge number of chain letters currently being forwarded around the internet.  There will never be a shortage of historical fossils to examine as long as the United States is unable to realize that religion is irretrievably linked to magical thinking, and that neither religion nor magical thinking will ever provide answers to the questions that scientists answer every day.

          Ask any woman who has ever suffered from a UTI, been successfully treated, and then developed another that required a different medication to treat if evolution is real.  She may not understand the mechanism for bacterial resistance; but she has just demonstrated proof that evolution takes place in biological organisms. All the prayer and religious intercession imaginable will not change the course of the infection although man-made antibiotics will. 

          If we can identify and quantify the effects of human interaction with microbes, if we can demonstrate the effects of Freon on the ozone layer, we can also demonstrate and quantify the impact that 7 billion of us have on the greenhouse effect and on the icecaps.  Now we just need to breed a population of voters able to discern and discard the lies spread by the GOP/teavangelists.

1 April 2012 What constitutes a lynch mob?

          Typical graphic depiction of a southern lynch mob shows the mob component as white in complexion, and the intended victim as black.  Move the scenario westward and the mob still remains white while the victim may be a member of any minority in the community; or the victim may be a local outcast or a drifter or vagrant, unfortunate enough to meet the criteria that excite the mob while lessening all chances of an effective legal defense.

          Mob violence is easy to provoke and difficult to defuse.  It feeds upon anger, bigotry, lies, and an undercurrent of social and cultural separatism and perceived and/or actual injustice. 

          The victim need not be guilty in order to become the target of a lynch mob.  Local sentiment and an active rumor mill can make cast an innocent as a target, guilty by means of public sentiment before any semblance of a legal investigation and trial ever takes place.  The local law enforcement agencies have sometimes been implicated in lynchings by means of averted eyes or an opportune absence from a duty post.  With the development of stronger and better trained and paid police agencies such dereliction of duty has become a thing of a distant past. 

          The Martin/Zimmerman incident in Florida has many components of a lynch mob in action.  The major discrepancy from the previous image of a lynch mob centers on the reversed complexions of the victim and the mob.  Zimmerman is not black but is the target for literally millions of people who are ready to rush to judgment and who would, if possible, surrender him to the mob for trial and punishment.  The television coverage of the partial facts of the case, the incessant social network-driven rumor mills, and the actions of community leaders has kept the situation at a low boil.  Add in the appearance of national demagogues at local demonstrations, stirring in their bits of ages-old grievances based upon injustices dating back centuries, and the social situation becomes highly explosive. 

          This incident, not fully or well investigated yet, has generated a $10,000 bounty offered by “The New Black Panthers,” countless hours of broadcast hate mongering directed toward Zimmerman and many more directed toward the local black community and toward a 17-year-old male whose role in his own death has yet to be fully or accurately determined. 

          The use of “twitter” as a tool to incite violence or other action has been demonstrated openly in the publication of an address thought to be Zimmerman’s. but actually belonging to an elderly couple who have been subsequently terrorized by members of an ill-informed and angry mob for no reason beyond their last name. 

          There is no doubt that if Zimmerman had been handed to the mob at one of the many demonstrations taking place, his fate would have been an ugly, brutal death without trial, proof of guilt, or legal disposition by a court of law; a lynching from any vantage. 

          What is less well defined is, what would be the label placed upon the actions of film-maker Spike Lee if his error in publicizing an incorrect address had resulted in the death of either or both of the older couple who lived at that address.  Had the sheer terror of the mob’s actions toward them caused a cardiac arrhythmia resulting in death wouldn’t that also constitute death at the hands of a lynch mob?

          We’ve the ability to broadcast a lot of information and misinformation because of the internet and social networks.  We’ve an obligation to make sure we have our facts straight.  In 19^th and early 20^th century lynchings, the final instrument of death was often a gallows or a rope and a tree.  In the 21^st century, it appears that the lynching is carried out first by a not-so-smart-phone in the hands of not-so-smart members of the e-mob.