Terrible Day

So, going into Shabbas, there's the North Japanese Tsunami, but after Shabbas I find out that (1) the 'quake/tsunami damaged a nuclear reactor and they need to act quick to prevent a meltdown. Like one Godzilla wasn't enough!

Then, a small header on the Times front page, I read about (2) an absolute horror in Israel where terrorist slaughter a family - including a months old baby. I'm mute with rage over this. It's been a while since we've had this kind of attack and that's enough time for me to again be stupefied at the world's silence and/or complicity over the crimes of the (so-called) Palestinians and the cheapness of Jewish blood.

Then I read, in the same Times, in a minute's reading, about the terrible bus accident in the Bronx confirming most of my fears about these cheap Chinatown buses.

I need some good news quick.

Reaction to Tuesday's Midterms

Some quick reactions from Tuesday's Midterm Elections. Note, when I say "we" that refers to "Democrats" and/or "(Normal) Jews" and/or "(Normal) Americans". This is because, as I said Monday, the current Republican party is bizarrely more evil in intention than the ideas backing the Bush Years:

1. This could have been much much worse. As the dust settles, the Democrats lost only 1 House. Many of the lost seats in the Senate should have been quite safe (PA, Ill-a-freakin'-Noise) and that's a depressing sign. But considering that Teabaggers were defeated in many places, that California stayed Blue, and that Harry Reid's Faustian deal is still under warranty, means that it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
   


2. The irony about Reid is that if anyone is responsible for the current failure of the Democrats, it's Reid. As I said in the intro, it's a given that the current GOP is freakishly evil (see below), but the only places where their evil could reign was SCOTUS (which is a lost cause until Scalia and Thomas get incapacitated by their own hatred of humanity), and the Senate. Despite the Dems having a historically high 60 seats, Reid allowed the Senate Republicans to destroy most attempts to repair the economy and help America. It's that bad. And because of the deadlock in congress, more people are out of work than should be, the health care plan is flaccid, and Obama's appointees are stalled in committee. All this evil was hated by the American people who returned their ire on... House Democrats. Who were by and large heroes these past 2 years. If there was any justice, Reid should have lost, the Dems should have kept the Senate - and House.
   


3. Which leads to the most infuriating result of Tuesday. While it's bad enough that the disturbing and malevolent John Boehner will be the new speaker, and that the Teabaggers have renewed vigor, what I'm especially angry about is that the GOP tactic of legislative anarchy worked for their benefit. The GOP is better at "playing the ref" than the Dems, mainly because the GOP is ideologically anti-government! Even when the Dems were trying to stop Bush's evil, in general their party is in favor of legislation. GOPers can take it or leave it. They may have claimed that they were trying to stop laws that hurt the American people, but only morons or fanatics actually believe that was true. Seriously. The proof is that the GOP supported everything they claim Obama stands for when Bush was the president. Every (non-alcoholic/moron) in Congress knew that we needed economic stimulus, health care, and bank reform - the GOP just didn't want those vitally important things to happen under a Democratic president. Which makes them a special type of evil.
   
   Note, this proof is the same one behind the Teabaggers: (1) if you don't like deficit spending, then why did you support Bush's epic/disgusting ballooning of the deficit? Because you want tax cuts and crazy wars? OK, yeah, you do. But it's because they're bigoted fiends; (2) if you hate health care reform, why did you support the Medicare Prescription Drug Boondoggle? I could go on but the pattern is obvious.


The Republicans spent 2 years blocking vitally important legislation - that they supported and knew would help get people jobs, medicine, life - in order to help their electoral chances... and it worked. And the American people fell for it. And I just threw up in my mouth.

And because it worked, the GOP will do it again and it will work again. It's bad enough to know that evil has gone unnoticed, it's worse to know that it will keep happening.


4. It's possible that Obama should be blamed for not strongly broadcasting the GOP evil before Nov 2. It is my biggest cavil with the president: that I want him to fight more. Yeah, it's nice to be 'non-partisan' but evil is evil and must be stopped. However, in retrospect, I have to blame the House/Senate democrats - and thus the DNC - for the responsibility of carrying out that message. It was their gooses about to be cooked and their legislature to be explained, and thus I blame their loss on themselves.
   
   
5. The big silver lining about the election is that - based on the GOP Evil Analysis above - that the hidden enemy of Republican Obstructionism now has a face. Ya see, as I've experienced in my own life, it's part of the American psyche to dismiss the excuses behind loss and failure. Bush lied, stole 2000, so what - he crossed the finish line and now we can move on to the next horse race. So too in Congress - so what if the GOP committed legislative fraud and grand evil over 2 years - it's not visible therefore its not provable. Yet now Bone-nert/Bay-nert/Boonert is the orange face of Congress. And we have a clear, easily spotted - even at night - enemy of Democracy.
   
   
6. Other good news - Massachusetts stayed Blue. The Scott "Nudie Model" Brown debacle of 2009 did not repeat.
   
   
7. On the unknown/bad news front: one piece of info I was looking for in the news organs is probably the most crucial factor of the Midterms - the makeup of State legislatures in those states that will gain/lose Congressional seats because of the new census. As Obama said on the Daily Show, the two biggest anti-Constitutional enemies to the Republic are (1) the filibuster, especially in the hands of the anarcho-nihilistic burglars of the GOP, and (2) gerrymandering of House districts. The GOP has succeeded in the former and may now succeed in the latter.
   
   
8. The last reaction for now has to do with newspapers. I sought out a (free) New York Times on Tuesday morning because I felt that I needed to have a good analysis and breakdown of the effects of the Midterms. Yet, I didn't get one. Not only was the newspaper frozen in time while reporting on a constantly shifting fact landscape, what information they did contain was fluffy and pedestrian. I wanted numbers! I wanted facts about losses and wins and causes and effects. Instead the paper was filled with reaction pieces about mood and feelings. It was useless. The internet wins again - not only because its up-to-the-second in news, but because the possible info is BETTER.

Philipine Karaoke Killings

OK, this is from my wife. I've sent a link to the Dave Barry Blog (who amazingly has not referenced the story, possibly because he's face-deep in a beer filled kiddie pool in the Miami hosted superbowl. Anyway, this could be one of the craziest articles I've read: Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord. Some choice quotes:

"The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.”" ... "In the past two years alone, a Malaysian man was fatally stabbed for hogging the microphone at a bar and a Thai man killed eight of his neighbors in a rage after they sang John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” "

"Stand-alone karaoke machines can be found in the unlikeliest settings, including outdoors in rural areas where men can sometimes be seen singing early in the morning."

"But in karaoke bars where one song costs 5 pesos, or a tenth of a dollar, strangers often rub shoulders, sometimes uneasily. A subset of karaoke bars with G.R.O.’s — short for guest relations officers, a euphemism for female prostitutes — often employ gay men, who are seen as neutral, to defuse the undercurrent of tension among the male patrons. Since the gay men are not considered rivals for the women’s attention — or rivals in singing, which karaoke machines score and rank — they can use humor to forestall macho face-offs among the patrons."

Pic from here of some weirdness from Japan.

Robo-Land, Massachusetts Senate 2010

So Massachusetts is now in one of those teabagger fueled election death-struggles. Which means that for the past week or so we've been getting robocalls every few minutes or so. Robocalls, like mudslinging, turns voters off, not on and the candidates should know that. Karl Rove did - that's why he'd only pay for robocalls for his opponents (I think).

Anyway, the election tomorrow (Tuesday) is between a lackluster Democrat and a pretty-boy GOP walking-teabag cypher. The fact that we're in this place is scary to me, as a Democrat and a supporter of the president, but it's also a testimony to machine politics. We shouldn't be here, but here's why I think we are:

1. Martha Coakley is a poor candidate. Sadly, she's a combination of Hillary Clinton & John Kerry - an unimaginative, and mean, woman whose ambition overshadows her talent. I voted against her in the primary for this reason and were she in any fashion decent, this election wouldn't be so close. A sign of her paucity as a candidate is her desire to go negative early and often. Even when she was leading by double-digits in the primary, she attacked her opponents - one reason why I voted against her. And that undeserved hauteur - a hallmark of Kerry - is undoing her now.

2. Massachusetts screwed up the voting schedule - I said this before - there's a reason to have elections all at the same time. We should have had the primary on the November day and the special election soon after. Rather MA is forcing people to go to vote 3 times in close succession. It's expensive and time consuming. And unlike my fellow pundit-curmudgeons, I sympathize with good faith reasons for being unable to vote (with our 3 kids we're forced to find a babysitter or work out a way to switch places and go to the polls - not easy, and we both have time flexible jobs!) And voting in January in Massachusetts?! In-freakin-sane! The inevitable low-voter-turnout of the bad scheduling favors the crazy, under-employed, and committed - and in an off-year that means that opposition party.

3. Obstructionism Works - The GOP are better obstructionsists that Democats for a number of reasons: (a) conservatives, almost by definition, are against change which means they WANT to stop things, (b) the GOP is against government (pretty much) and so stopping legislative movement is part of their ideology, (c) the party, since Newt's time, has had remarkable voting unity - which helps obstructions.

In any case, the GOP obstructionism has given the view to the electorate that Congress isn't capable of doing anything and that helps the GOP depict themselves as the loyal opposition. Of course the truth is that they are continuing the despicable practices of their 2000-2008 reign... but most voters seem unable to capture that right now - aided by Coakley's hacky negativity.

Tomorrow may determine the end of the Obama era - just like Clinton's Democrats let him down from 1993-1994, so the stupid Democrats of 2009-2010 may end Obama before he can really begin.

Briefly stated, we need to get rid of the filibuster - it's become unconstitutional. Beforehand, the Senators, knowing they had a terrible weapon, only used it for the most severe cases. But the current GOP, like the gun-toting hillbillies who make up their core electorate, are using their weapons for everything. Sadly, it's time to take the gun away. I'll say more anon about that, though.

Thoughts on the Ft. Hood Massacre

As you've heard, a nutjob shot up 50 people in 3 minutes in Ft. Hood, Texas. A few thoughts:

1. The moment I read he was a Psychiatrist, not just a guy with a Muslim name, I thought that this is another Baruch Goldstein. The pattern is familiar. Two motives of BG (yimach shemo) were (a) as a doctor he was driven nuts by the trauma of his patients, and/or (b) he was nationalist scum going for a big score via 'collective punishment.
   
2. I'm not a pure mental health professional (despite being on the front-lines, as it were, of the nutjob world as a pulpit rabbi), but I am training to be a behavioral scientist; and I've been fascinated, for years, on how most people don't know the warning signs of these mass murderers. I claim, and we'll see what we find about yesterday's (and now today's) mass murdering mamzers (MMM), but I'm certain there were warning signs. Remember Virgina Tech.
   
3. Connected to the 'warning signs,' I've also hoped that one day we'd catch one of the MMMs alive, and it looks like we've done that for both shootings. This is good - because, especially with the Hood shooter, who's was not only a psychiatrist, but he's also a client! Who better to give insight as to why these crazy men (and it's almost always men) snap and decide to kill random strangers.
   
4. Related to that, maybe by talking with Hassan Hassan Hassan, we can find out the best way to convince these budding MMM to just straight out commit suicide, first, before the rampage. Because, as I claim, these guys are usually giving off many warning signs. Yet since there is, as a guest teacher confirmed for me in pastoral psychology, a "license to be crazy" in America, we can't do anything for the MMM before he takes out his family/coworkers/random innocents. So my idea is to create a stress kit for mental health professionals who can convince the pre-MMM that suicide is the best option. In the long run, we'll save many lives. I'm only slightly joking.

From Overkill to Meltdown

At least I hope so; I hope Hillary's oozing bile is melting her candidacy apart from the inside. Her attacks on Obama have gone from "too-much" to "totally nuts."

I. Bad Mud

The first - and I'm not making this up - is accusing Obama of having his own secret life-long plot to become president. How does Hillary know this? Well, as her campaign pointed out in a long, resourced, press release, they have proof that Obama has been planning to president ever since kindergarten.

Again, I can understand you think that I'm making that up. It sounds like a joke. After two days of the press hammering Clinton, her lead campaign troglodyte, Mark Penn, tried to claim it was a joke. It ain't. Compare the first 'proof' of the press release to the last:

12/2/2007

Twice in One Day: Senator Obama Tries Rewriting History, Again Claims He Hasn't Been Planning White House Run

At an event in Boston this evening, Senator Obama claimed for the second time today that he is "not running to fulfill some long held plans" to be elected President, contradicting statements his friends, family, staff and teachers have all made about him.

[snip]

Immediately after joining the Senate, Senator Obama started planning run for President. "'The first order of business for Senator Obama's team was charting a course for his first two years in the Senate. The game plan was to send Senator Obama into the 2007-2008 election cycle in the strongest form possible'...The final act of the plan was turning up the talk about a potential Presidential bid, which was greatly aided by his positive press and suggestions by pundits that he run for President." [U.S. News and World Report, 6/19/07 ]

In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.' "Iis Darmawan, 63, Senator Obama's kindergarten teacher, remembers him as an exceptionally tall and curly haired child who quickly picked up the local language and had sharp math skills. He wrote an essay titled, 'I Want To Become President,' the teacher said." [AP, 1/25/07 ]

The first paragraph is opposition research; it's a bad attack, and one I'd expect from any bush-league outfit, but it fits the profile. The last paragraph follows the same format but it's completely bats**t crazy.

II. Really Bad Mud.

The second piece of Hillary meltdown overkill came out this afternoon. A bit of context first. The Washington Post has been under fire by the majority of the non-Fox news world for a story that ran last Friday on the front page that discussed the rumors of Obama being Muslim. The story topic ain't the problem... it's that the long news piece didn't actually say the magic words, that the rumors are completely false. It's a big issue, and others have been savaging the Post (including the heilige Tom Toles), so you can find out about that elsewhere.

Anyway, the false rumors about Obama have been spread by anonymous emails, much like the general mud and slime of electioneering (cf. push-polling, robo-calling, firing US Attorneys)

So, with that context, we can understand the crazy news today that an Iowa county chair for Hillary has been caught sending some of these "Obama is a Muslim" emails.

The Hillary campaign has dismissed the woman. The official statement is:

"There is no place in our campaign, or any campaign, for this kind of politics. A volunteer county coordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain e-mail. This was wholly unauthorized and we were totally unaware of it. Let me be clear: No one should be engaging in this. We are asking this volunteer county coordinator to step down and are making it clear to every person involved in our campaign that this will not be tolerated."

Note that they describe her disgusting behavior as a 'mistake,' and don't bother explaining that the rumor is false.

For those who believe that this was a mistake by the Hillary campaign, I have a great bridge to sell you.

And we've got 4 more weeks. Obama is leading in Iowa now and is climbing in New Hampshire. And Hillary may already be having her "Dean Scream" moment except that the scream is lasting for weeks.

P.S. The cartoon above ran today on the front page of the Des Moines Register

Technical Bad Craziness

A reader, President Ed, has recommended a wacky fix to my Blogger problem - to create a second blog, rename the older blog "archive" and then name the second blog "the styx" again. If it doesn't work, I've lost everything. But frustration is the mother of desperation! And desperation is heightened necessity and you can just take it from there.

Here We Go With Stage Two

If I ever run for public office, I believe my platform will begin with a public condemnation of PETA. The "animal rights" organization is filled with pernicious wrong-headed views (that would allow me to bash the Left). The newest stage of their lunacy: Fish Rights.

Check it out.