Brutally Honest

Are we again on the verge of war?

Posted here and at The Borg Conspiracy by guest blogger Locutisprime.

Saudis give nod to Israeli raid on Iran

Biden: U.S. Won't Stand in Way of Israel on Iran Nukes

Two headlines jumped out at me this morning. The first concerning the Saudis supposed tacit approval to the Israelis potential to launch a preemptive strike on Iran. That story leaked out early this morning, then several hours later, a new revelation by our own vice president. (And since when is Joe Biden the lead man for releasing Obama administration foreign policy. )

Especially concerning the more than touchy reality surrounding public discussions of the Iranian nuclear program and Israel and potential attacks. It seems to me that we may be in the midst of watching a substantive sea change on the part of both America and certain middle eastern entities, as it concerns what to do about the Iranian nuclear problem.

And what better place to run up the test balloons of public opinion, than in the Sunday headline sections of various national media. I remember all too well the Sunday when the news story broke of a supposed cult called the Branch Davidians in Texas. A full expose on David Koresh and his Branch Davidians ran that Sunday in a number of major American papers.

Allegations of child abuse and all manner of other allegations were bantered as fact in those articles. And the following day is when the siege at Waco began. I can still look back on those stories and see sound reason to believe that those stories were purposeful media plants. These stories were purposely floated on a Sunday, to soften up the psyche of the American people (IMO) for what the government knew was about to happen the next day. I have that same feeling after seeing these two articles concerning a potential Israeli attack on Iran, suddenly appearing within hours of each other in the MSM today.

Is something about to happen in Iran? Involving an Israeli attack and the subtle but well wished blessing of America and a number of her allies? I suppose we will have to wait and see. Just don't be surprised later on this week if we suddenly find ourselves at war with Iran. Remember, Achmed the the crazy president of Iran and the Mullahs of Iran have long promised to attack America and Americans if anyone attempts to attack Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Something is wrong in Wasilla

Posted here and at The Borg Conspiracy, by guest blogger Locutiprime.

Ever since the breaking news announcement this afternoon concerning Governor Sarah Palin, I have been at an increasing loss for words and bewildered of thought, as to exactly what has happened and what was or is behind it all.

To suddenly call a news conference and then to get up there in front of the national media and ramble for twenty minutes, before finally dropping two bombshells? Well something is going on IMO and that something stands to be a big bombshell. And a lot bigger bombshell than the mere announcements that occurred in Wasilla this afternoon.

I could understand her decision to opt not to run for a second term as governor of Alaska, in order to prepare for a national presidential race. But I cannot fathom why she would abandon her current term 2 1/2 years in and without any explanation other than what I considered to be a weak, rambling and lack luster dissertation that left more questions than it answered.

It was as if I was watching a different version of the inexplicable Mark Sanford press conference of ten days ago. Only this time? No discernible scandal or rhyme or reason to the mid afternoon drama. Something tells me that we have not heard the last of this shocking announcement of Governor Palin's resignation.

And something tells me that when the other shoe finally drops? It is going to be a bombshell. Something that will literally shake the republican party to its foundations.

You just don't get elected to the governorship of a state, then get picked to be the running mate of a presidential party candidate, then suddenly six months after the race, simply call a news conference and bow out of office. Not unless there is a major reason or outside influence at work in that decision.

There is no question or doubt in my mind, that Sarah Palin has purposely fallen on her own sword and there is presently no amount of convincing me that it was done for the benefit of family or because of the totality of stress that the vice presidential run created and has continued to create. Or that it was decided based upon the recent controversy involving Letterman.

Sarah Palin was sitting on the cusp of being the 2012 nominee for the presidency of the United States as the republicans choice and suddenly? Someone yanked Cinderella's shoes and her ball dress and turned her chariot back into a pumpkin and mice.

Something is definitely amiss and it is only a matter of time before the truth prevails. And when it does, people's heads are really going to spin IMO.

The Franken-stein monster goes to Washington

Posted here and at The Borg Conspiracy by guest blogger Locutisprime.

Franken Wins Senate Battle Minn. Court Ruling Gives Democrats A 60-Seat Majority

Yesterday the Minnesota Supreme Court settled the race for US Senate between Al Franken and Norm Coleman. After which Coleman conceded and issued a statement saying that he would not seek further legal action to attempt and preserve his senate seat. There are three things that are interesting to me about this story.

First that there are that many stupid people in Minnesota. Prior to some recent elections? I use to believe that those living in Massachusetts were the stupidest Americans. How else to explain Teddy Kennedy's forty plus year run in the senate and his sidekick John Kerry? But I digress. I believe that those in Minnesota lost the plot back when they elected Jesse (the body) Ventura to the governor's office and they haven't found it since.

Therefore, the first bit of amazement in this entire affair that baffles me? Is that that many people in Minnesota would vote this idiot into office in the first place. But then again? Minnesota is establishing a track record for idiocy at the ballot box. The second thing that I find amazing is that it took eight months to resolve this election, but most importantly, the real amazing part of this entire drama is that the courts of Minnesota combined to disallow the votes of enough Minnesotans to reach this apparently desired and contrived result.

Welcome to the modern day version of the Frankenstein monster. Al Franken has as much business being a US senator as I have flying the space shuttle, but a senator he is. And the villagers who should have been riding him out of town on a rail with a torch parade, have now elected him to the US senate and their courts have given him their collective blessing. Stranger than fiction possibly, but the end result is that now, the political power has been completely given over to a ruling elite of democrats in America and at the worst possible moment in time IMO.

Marines on the offensive

WaPo:

Thousands of U.S. Marines descended upon the volatile Helmand River valley in helicopters and armored convoys early Thursday, mounting an operation that represents the first large-scale test of the U.S. military's new counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

The operation will involve about 4,000 troops from the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which was dispatched to Afghanistan this year by President Obama to combat a growing Taliban insurgency in Helmand and other southern provinces. The Marines, along with an Army brigade that is scheduled to arrive later this summer, plan to push into pockets of the country where NATO forces have not had a presence. In many of those areas, the Taliban has evicted local police and government officials and taken power.

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population. The brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.

"We're doing this very differently," Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. "We're going to be with the people. We're not going to drive to work. We're going to walk to work."

Similar approaches have been tried in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world's supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income.

The operation launched early Thursday represents a shift in strategy after years of thwarted U.S.-led efforts to destroy Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and extend the authority of the Afghan government into the nation's southern and eastern regions. More than seven years after the fall of the Taliban government, the radical Islamist militia remains a potent force across broad swaths of the country. The Obama administration has made turning the war around a top priority, and the Helmand operation, if it succeeds, is seen as a potentially critical first step.

I have my doubts as to the strategy but hope, and pray, that I'm wrong. 

Godspeed to our men and women on the front lines.

Neverland never dies

Posted here and at the Borg Conspiracy by guest blogger Locutisprime.

 

'I'm better off dead. I'm done'

It's been a little over 72 hours now, since the king of pop passed from our midst. I have purposely refrained from commenting on his death, in lieu of contenting myself to simply watch the lecherous aftermath of what surely is proving to be a media feeding frenzy and media circus. Quite predictable I might add and leaving little for someone like myself to add of either worth or relevance.

I was like many of the Jackson era, I passed the last forty odd years on the sidelines watching the rise of the child into the mega star and then the decent into the decadence of a childhood deprived and prolonged by mind boggling wealth and a media circus that both prolonged and propelled it into its final oblivion. I was never a great fan of the man or his music, although I must admit that his Thriller video has always stood out to me as the zenith of his career and the best offering of talent that he ever produced IMO.

I like many others, simply watched the circus that was Michael's life and never considered the conflicts and pain that he endured until probably the last five or six years of his life. The man child was a hapless soul IMO. A pitiful mass of humanity that had long ago been trapped into the life of a performing circus animal and never allowed to experience even the most simple joys in life. How else to explain the infatuation with Peter Pan and Neverland and the boy who never grew up.

How else to explain the known comfort of the company of children. How else to explain the wide eyed wonder of extravagance, all the while never considering the consequences, or the fact that at some point the money runs out. Michael Jackson was the classic caricature of arrested development IMO. The child trapped in the grown up body that could never be a man and yet could never remain as a child.

There were never any options for this trick pony from Gary Indiana. He was born into a family of performing acts and he wound up being the prize pony of an abusive father that never allowed him to simply enjoy being a child. I could probably say a lot about my observations of Michael Jackson over the last thirty odd years, but there would be little point. Most everyone knows and has seen for themselves the spiral of the once mega star into the oblivion that resulted in his death this week. In the article linked above, the author clears up more than a few loose ends and answers more than a few painful questions IMO.

The article and comments obviously excerpted from his book and from a seeming wealth of direct experience dealing with and observing Michael over years. The author is the first person to bring it all into perspective since Michael's death IMO and his book was already written before Michael's death. My first thoughts after hearing of Michael's death this week were.....'let the circus begin.' But in reality, the circus has always been there, it never ended. It goes on and all that has changed is that the real freak show is about to begin. And that will become the legacy.

Everyone from the creditors to all the other scavengers are only out to make a buck. Sadly so, even his family will be right in the midst of carving up the legacy. They will all be tearing at the carcass of memory that was once the king of pop music and they will each want their pound of flesh and royalties for their efforts. Thankfully, Michael is gone and removed from this final act of debauchery. He won't have to endure the penetrating lights and the sneering laughter anymore, or the family betrayal that has already begun IMO.

He has endured one of the most sumptuous and painful lives that any human being could possibly imagine, but all that has ended now. And whether he is at peace now is something that remains between him and his creator. I for one find no pleasure in watching the circus. I am content to remember the performer that was Michael at his best. Before the corruption of life and people had taken their toll and destroyed the last living resident of Neverland.

I can close my eyes and almost hear Michael's voice saying......."Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you'll never, never have to worry about grown up things again."

RIP Michael.

 

Compare and contrast

First, from Wheat & Weeds:

Interesting interview with Daniel Pipes about Abombnjihad v. Moussavi. I note this:

I am taken aback by the nearly complete absence of Islam in the discussion. One hears about democracy, freedom, and justice, all of which do play a role, but the key issue is the Iranian population’s repudiation of the Islamist ideology that has dominated its lives for the past 30 years. Should the regime in Tehran be shaken by current challenges, this will likely have profound implications for the global career of radical Islam.

That's what has struck me, too. I'm also thinking about the Bush Doctrine a lot these days. How much of what we're seeing in Iran is a direct result of having Free Iraq right next door?

Now... to... well... someone else:

Who thinks these events would have taken place if George Bush were still in office? Anyone?

 *crickets*

Who thinks Iran's leaders are really happy about this recent turn of events and don't wish every day that Bush was still around to make them look smart and tough?

Who thinks Ayatollah Khamenei is really stoked about having to give a speech to quell the protests?

Who thinks it's a refreshing change of pace to have people around the world protesting something that happened in Iran, instead of Iraq or Gitmo?

Who thinks it was just a coincidence Obama spoke in Cairo mere days before the votes in Lebanon & Iran?

Don't kid yourselves, boys & girls, the world is watching America again. Good for the world.

Interesting juxtaposition is it not?  One perspective grounded in historical fact... the other in butt-kissing, koolaid drinking, reefer smoking stupidity.

Amazing.  Then again... not so much...  The Obamassiah serves up a potent batch of koolaid and there seems to be an abundance of psychophants willing to lap up every drop.

Huge developments in Iran?

Steve Schippert of ThreatsWatch believes so:

A report from Saudi Arabia's al-Arabiya, Iranian clerics seek supreme leader alternative, indicates that Rafsanjani is seeking to eliminate the Supreme Leader. Not just the man, but the position and role presiding over Iranian politics and the Iranian society.

Religious leaders are considering an alternative to the supreme leader structure after at least 13 people were killed in the latest unrest to shake Tehran and family members of Ayatollah Rafsanjani were arrested amid calls by former President Mohammad Khatami for the release of all protesters.

Iran's religious clerks in Qom and members of the Assembly of Experts, headed by former President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, are mulling the formation of an alternative collective leadership to replace that of the supreme leader, sources in Qom told Al Arabiya on condition of anonymity.

Skipping down a bit, here's what they seem to have in mind, obviously a bit sketchy at this point.

Members of the assembly are reportedly considering forming a collective ruling body and scrapping the model of Ayatollah Khomeini as a way out of the civil crisis that has engulfed Tehran in a series of protests,

The discussions have taken place in a series of secret meetings convened in the holy city of Qom and included Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq.

An option being considered is the resignation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Iran's president following condemnation by the United States and other European nations for violence and human rights violations against unarmed protestors.

This is a huge development. One of the biggest questions I and others have had since the Iranian protests/revolt/revolution began was whether Mousavi would be any different in tangible effect (Hizballah & Hamas support, etc.) than Ahmadinejad and whether Rafsanjani was seeking to sack 'Supreme' Leader Khamenei simply to acquire the powerful position for himself. That question perhaps may have been answered today.

Read the rest.

Father's day memories

Oh yea... been there, done this:

Do you shop at Trader Joe's?

If not, perhaps you should this weekend:

Flush with their success in France, Palestinians, and their friends, are planning on “de-shelving” Israeli products here at home, and they’ve selected Trader Joe’s as their target.

As far as I can tell, Palestinians (and their friends) are generally hostile to Trader Joe’s for its temerity in stocking Israeli products.  The pressure is on June 20th, however, because June 20th is World Refugee Day.  (Considering that it is the UN that has ensured that Palestinians have been refugees for decades, you’d think they’d simply boycott the UN, but that kind of logic seems to elude these groups.)

So far, Trader Joe’s (bless its corporate heart), is standing firm.

This letter was received by the Central Pacific office of the Anti-Defamation League from Jon Basalone,Senior VP, Marketing, Trader Joe’s:

“We have received a few letters like this via our customer relations email as well. Our response is that we sell products, and do not use our products as political tools or to make any statements about any political causes. We have no intention of removing any products based on pressure from any group, no matter what they support or don’t support. As always, we believe our customers are smart, and they are capable of making decisions about what they purchase. Let me know if you have any more questions or need more information.”

That’s the kind of attitude we like to see our American corporations show, and in this regard Trader Joe’s is proving itself to be a courageous organization deserving our praise.

And courage may really be needed.  As the episode in France demonstrates, de-shelving can be an actual physical process in which political thugs vandalize a store.  It is entirely possible, of course, to de-shelve a product by putting pressure on management not to stock that product or by stopping your own purchases of that product (and encouraging others to do the same).  As to these last two tactics, as long as the pressure isn’t illegal, they are a legitimate use of marketplace power.

People who support the state of Israel, however, can also use marketplace power.  It’s very simple:  Go to Trader Joe’s and buy products made in Israel.

Couldn't agree with Bookie more... I hope to head that way this weekend.

You?

Letterman apologizes

Posted here and at The Borg Conspiracy by guest blogger Locutisprime.

 

Letterman re-addresses Palin: 'I had no idea [Willow] was there'

I am going to paste his entire commentary and apology, as I believe that it is relevant to what has happened in review of context.

“All right, here – I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week – it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don’t know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There’s no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can’t be defended. The next day, people are outraged.

They’re angry at me because they said, ‘How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?’ And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani … and I really should have made the joke about Rudy …” (audience applauds) “But I didn’t, and now people are getting angry and they’re saying, ‘Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who’s completely innocent, minding her own business,’ and, turns out, she was at the ball game.

I had no idea she was there. So she’s now at the ball game, and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I’m wondering, ‘Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?’ I’ve never made jokes like this as long as we’ve been on the air, 30 long years, and you can’t really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself. “And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer ‘Newshour’ – this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke. And I’m certainly – ” (audience applause) “– thank you. Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke.

I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.” (audience applauds) “Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” (audience applause)

The bottom line....I believe that David Letterman would have never apologized if he and CBS hadn't felt the heat on this for the past week. They have lost audience share and advertisers over this blunder. And the sad reality is? He is probably being honest in his most recent remarks as opposed to that BS apology he was floating the day after his remarks.

I suppose that on the night in question, that he just felt that he was being his usual comic smart ass and had no idea that Sarah Palin's 14 year old daughter Willow was at that ball game with her.

Personally, I believe that this apology would have had far more benefit and effect had it been tendered immediately. But it wasn't. Instead, Letterman felt that he would pursue a contrived path and continue to make jokes about the incident and play stupid. Obviously that didn't work.

What a difference a week makes. Never fear though, this won't have any lasting impression on Letterman's success. He will continue to have his regular audience of loyal leftist loons who will continue to swoon over his top ten lists and stupid pet tricks. But you can bet that from here on out, that he will vet anything that he plans to say about Sarah Palin and her family.