Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Libya

The events of the last 24 hours show us how dangerous the world is; the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three Embassy staffers were killed during a "demonstration" or "riot" over a video posted to YouTube by a small group of fanatics in the U.S. that apparently denigrated the Prophet Mohammed. That one of the nutcases reported as helping to prepare the video is the crazy preacher out of Gainesville, FL who finally got around to burning a copy of the Koran and instigating massive riots in Afghanistan and other places where Americans are based, resulting in a number of American deaths, doesn't particularly surprise me.

Why? Because innate stupidity rarely goes away, no matter what the cause.

The dummies who started this with the video, one an Israeli living in the States and at least the aforementioned preacher/fanatic, had to have known it would cause a backlash. I suspect they were counting on it, because these kind of people live for it. They revel in the knowledge that something, anything they did, caused violence. Folks like this used to be called agents provocateurs and they've been around longer than we'd like to think, stirring up problems for some agenda only they can truly understand.

Does this excuse the monsters who caused the deaths of our Embassy staff in Libya? Of course not and if the cobbled-together government there cannot bring the offenders to justice, we'll have to pull some resources off the on-going efforts against terrorism in other places to track them down and make sure everyone out there knows such acts do not go unpunished.

The trouble though, is that we're in the middle of an election campaign and Mitt Romney has just shoved his handmade shoe and foot into his mouth by attacking the Obama Administration, claiming that they issued "mixed messages" to the rioters and "apologizing" for the YouTube video before talking about the death of our Ambassador. The problem is that the apology came from a staffer in the Embassy in Cairo BEFORE the Libyan incident and was not authorized by the Administration, but those kind of small details don't seem to matter to Mr. Romney and his handlers, who have famously said that they aren't going to let their campaign be "dictated by fact-checkers".

What Romney SHOULD have done was issue a short statement condemning the attackers and supporting the President as our LEADER in making sure justice is done and our other embassies across the world remain safe and secure. But no, while that would have been the honorable thing to do, the right-wingers MUST have their say, MUST attack the President because they themselves have no honor and no sense of unity. They've proven it time and again over the last four years by blocking the President at every turn, even over issues that they originally supported but abandoned once the President agreed to them.

Had Obama been a Republican President, rather than a Democrat, I'm pretty sure the Right would have been falling over itself to demand Democrats support whatever actions he decided to take in defense of American interests, just like they did when George W. Bush was President after 9/11. Many of us who did NOT vote for Bush and who questioned the results of the election of 2000 still proudly stood shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Americans and the Administration in seeking justice, particularly when we attacked the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that had welcomed Bin Laden and his cronies. We lost faith in Bush's policies when he shifted over to a made-up and unncessary war in Iraq, taking necessary troops and equipment from Afghanistan and allowing the Taliban to regroup and justified torture as a means of obtaining information.

I'm hoping calmer heads will prevail in the GOP, but after the path they've been taking over the last decade or so, I'm not going to hold my breath for any glimpse of sanity and reason.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Back Again, Again

How time flies when you're having fun.

Another five months have flown by since the last post and, depending on how things go, it may be another five months (or more) before I remember to update this blog again.

Why do I keep forgetting? Because no one reads it? Maybe; when no one bothers to give you feedback, you start thinking about the absurdity of writing something that others don't see. However, that's NEVER stopped me before, so why should it now?

Not a lot has changed over the last few months, except that our oldest nephew had a terrible horse-riding accident in North Dakota a few weeks back and suffered a spinal cord injury. How permanent or how encompassing it yet to be determined; he's currently in a rehab facility in Atlanta that specializes in such injuries and he has made some progress, but he's not out of the woods yet. Thank God he had insurance, because the alternative would have made a terrible example of why we need the Affordable Care Act (perjoriously known as "Obamacare").

Mrs. Blue and I returned from a trip out to the Oklahoma City area to visit littlest Blue and her honey. We managed to pick the week the backdoor to Hell was left open by someone, since the daytime temperatures averaged 104 or so, even in the shade. We did manage to enjoy ourselves, eating good food and seeing the sights (well, as much as you can see when everything is fairly flat). We did see the Oklahoma City Memorial, which was well designed and touching, even in the heat.

The political scene, post-Conventions, has returned to the usual carping about minor issues, though I've got to say that it is gotten practically surreal on the GOP side. Apparently, because of a floor fight at the Democratic Convention over the use of "God" in the platform, Romney started saying that Obama and the Dems were going to take "In God We Trust" off the currency, prompting an immediate response from the Dems of "What in the hell are you talking about?". Geez, Teddy Roosevelt started talking about that during his Presidency and my great-great grandfather issued the Christian Church equivalent of a fatwa against him (well, maybe not quite THAT extreme, but you get the idea).

Never underestimate the power of well-funded stupidity.