Psst! I am as anti-American as you are pro-American. Who’da guessed? There is very little about this country I like. A few loonies have screamed at me, “Go back to where you came from if you don’t like it here!” Thanks for the advice. Just where is it I came from? I think (not sure) it was Lutheran Hospital at the edge of Brownsville, Brooklyn, near the East NY section. I doubt it is even there any more. So much for the good suggestion. And, anyway, hospitals are just one more thing I hate about this country. Of course, my pet peeves are with police, politicians, and “doctors” [those weird creatures who, with over-the-top stupidity like to say, "Hello, my name is Doctor..." It is no use telling them that they are wrong, that a check of their birth certificates would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that "Doctor" is not any physician's first name. They have the same sense of humor that Freddy Krueger, the monster, hero of many movies, has.] Really, now, don’t just say the politically correct thing – be honest. If you had to choose between killing the despicable Freddy and fifty world-renowned surgeons, wouldn’t the choice be easy? Wouldn’t you do the same as I would? And don’t be coy and ask, “What choice is that?”

BUT MY PROBLEM TODAY IS WITH POISON GAS. The U.S. intelligence community [sic] believes “with some degree of varying confidence” that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s forces have used chemical weapons, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday.

Chuck’s boss, Barack, says that if Syria is using poison gas in its war against Syrian rebels then it has crossed a red line and he won’t put up with that. He said, using an incomprehensible metaphor, that the use of chemical weapons “would change my calculus. That would change my equation.” What the hell does that mean? Would Barack drop the Pythagorean Theorem in favor of E=mc square? Are you such a fan that you think he knows what he is talking about?

A big problem is that Syrian officials say their country has not used poison gas and never will, that the Americans are a bunch of liars. Look, for me it is simple. When country X says one thing and the U.S. says something diametrically opposed, I usually go with country X. What else can I do? History is on my side.

- The Gulf of Tonkin, Aug. 4, 1964: The U.S. went to war against North Vietnam on the basis of a false report that the warships USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy came under attack by the North Vietnamese navy.

- The Al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, Aug. 20, 1998: the U.S. destroyed this Sudanese factory with cruise missiles in retaliation for a pair of bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa two weeks earlier. The Clinton Administration said it had evidence of chemical-weapons production at the facility, and that it had ties to Osama bin Laden. Both claims were lies.

- Operation Desert Fox, Dec. 16-19, 1998: The U.S. and Britain launched a four-day bombing campaign against assorted targets across Iraq suspected of housing Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. But there were no such weapons and up to 2,000 Iraqis died in the attacks.

- Operation Iraq Freedom, 2003-2011: More lies. More than 100,000 Iraqis, most of them civilians, are believed to have been killed in the war, along with nearly 4,500 U.S. troops.

Beyond that, any military action to take out Syria’s chemical arsenal risks spewing plumes of the deadly agents and killing innocents in the way. Hitting chemical-weapons storage areas, sends those chemical weapons somewhere.” What do Chuck and Barack say to that?

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In the course of doing your homework, determine how many unjustified military interventions the U.S.A. has engaged in. Would fifty be a bad guess? I doubt it. Give me the legal life. Sing “Give me the simple life” but make a few necessary changes, for example, the ones I suggest below.

Der Bingle will guide you with the tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTzudIVvUaM

I don’t believe in lyin’ and killin’
Why mess around with strife
I never was cut out to step and strut out
Give me the legal life

Some find it pleasant killing a peasant
Those things roll off my knife
Just serve me tomatoes and mashed potatoes
Give me the legal life

A cottage small is all I’m after
Not one that’s loaded with bombs
A house that rings with joy and laughter
and filled with the music of Brahms

Some like the mined road, I like the safe road
Free from the care and strife
Sounds corny and seedy, but yes indeedy
Give me the legal life

Before a packed audience, Donald Kagan gave his Retirement Address.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323789704578446614144636002.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

If there were fewer than 10 million Christians in this world, Christianity would not be taken very seriously. If only about 5000 people were willing to swear that the ritual of sucking on wafers and drinking a bit of red wine was not a symbolic act but the literal ingestion of the flesh and blood of Jesus, then the religion would be called a cult and be laughed at. One may choose to think that the much higher number we have to deal with does not give Christianity its strength but the fact that there is a reason for such a higher number that accounts for Christianity’s success. Perhaps. There are very few persons (I’m guessing a couple of hundred) who believe in woodland faeries. And my guess is that there is a pretty good reason for this and that if the number of believers exploded (say to tens of thousands) the rest of us would suspect mass insanity has descended upon those poor folks. So, we don’t just believe, we have good reasons (I hope) for not believing.

Still, the fact is that sheer numbers make us confident in smug belief or disbelief. Christians are on the offense. Blood, flesh and all that sort of thing are not things to apologize for or feel embarrassed about. I am sorry to say that the same is true about voting. Voting is something like belief in a cult; it is mostly without a rational foundation. I happen to believe that the best reason to vote is to help influence an outcome. People are unsure about that. They drag in apologetics: voting is not just a right but a patriotic duty; voting is the essence of participatory democracy; the more people that vote the better; voting is a way to express your feelings about this or that, regardless of the outcome. With a little more effort than I am willing to give it, I think another ten reasons could be adduced.

You have to dredge up these phony reasons for voting because pretty plainly your vote does not matter. [Another explanation I could have added to the above list is: What would happen if nobody voted? Of course that is stupid on its face and is better emended to: What would happen if very few people voted?]

I won’t consider each of these bad reasons sequentially but can’t they all have their power undermined with a simple objection or two? If we could get every bum off the street by bribing him to vote and, with another bribe, get him to vote the way we wanted, would any sensible person think that is good? If the most terrible candidate in the history of American politics would win an election if millions turned out but the absolute best in history could win only if 100,000 voted, would not the latter be better? Which democratic Northerner would rather have Jesse Helms as president to Barack Obama? What kind of axe about political theory would he be grinding to insist on that? But someone might insist that if 100 million people vote for Jesse and 50,000 vote for Barack doesn’t that tell us something we previously overlooked? Can’t it be that the explanation for “strength in numbers” in this particular case is backed by the fact that Jesse is the much better choice? The answer to that must be, I’m sorry to say, a pigheaded NO. I am also sorry to have to say that if you live in a state that is a virtual certainty to vote Republican your Democratic vote is a meaningless bit of spitting in the wind. Perhaps if we did away with the electoral college things would be different but I am not sure. It is very hard to see how a single vote in a set of five million persons matters at all. You have to fall back on the worthless “But if everybody thought that way…” which is easily defeated by “They won’t.”

What should YOU do? I mean you, not the general “you” because only about 200 persons read this blog and I’m lucky if I influence 20 of you. I mean, “You, Hymie Schwarzenfliegel,” not your two cousins. Here’s the answer: Do whatever the hell you want for whatever reason you want. In 20,000 years, the record of your vote will be lost and not even one mad historian will say Hymie’s vote was the seminal moment in mankind’s history. Not even the ex-woodland faerie zealots.

H.R. 588: Vietnam Veterans Donor Acknowledgment Act of 2013
Introduced: Feb 06, 2013 (113th Congress, 2013–2015)
Sponsor: Rep. Don Young [R-AK0]
Status: Reported by Committee

OVERVIEW SUMMARIESRELATED
STATUS
The committees assigned to this bill sent it to the House or Senate as a whole for consideration on March 20, 2013.

PROGRESS
Introduced Feb 06, 2013
Referred to Committee Feb 06, 2013
Reported by Committee Mar 20, 2013
Passed House …
Passed Senate …
Signed by the President …
PROGNOSIS

22% CHANCE OF BEING ENACTED.

Only 28% of House bills that made it past committee in 2011–2013 were enacted.

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H.R. 588 would authorize the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund to acknowledge donor contributions to the visitor center at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial through a display in the visitor center. Based on information provided by the National Park Service, CBO estimates that the legislation would have no significant impact on the federal budget. Enacting H.R. 588 would not affect direct spending or revenues; therefore, pay-as-you-go procedures do not apply.

H.R. 588 contains no intergovernmental or private-sector mandates as defined in the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act and would not affect the budgets of state, local, or tribal governments.

[SG: You can expect this bill to go the way of 72% of bills that make it pass Committee. And what percent never make it out of Committee? God only knows....maybe.]

I was reading an article about the great early basketball star, Lou Bender, and I noticed that after his playing days were over, Lou became an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of NY where his legal activities included prosecuting members of the German American Bund. ["Bund" mean "Federation," I think.] So, after finishing the piece on Lou, I moved on to a Wikipedia article on the Bund. Here are some excerpts. Useful information was also obtained from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/230640/German-American-Bund

The German-American Bund, also called Friends Of The New Germany, was an American pro-Nazi, quasi-military organization that was most active in the years immediately preceding the United States’ entry into World War II. The Bund’s members were mostly American citizens of German ancestry. The organization received covert guidance and financial support from the German government. Military drill and related activities were provided for adults and youths at Bund-maintained camps: Camp Siegfried, Yaphank, N.Y.; Camp Nordland, Andover, N.J.; Deutschhorst Country Club, Sellersville, Pa.; and elsewhere.

Anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi elements in the United States generally supported the Bund. The Bund included self-designated storm troopers, who affected the uniforms of the German Nazi SA. Mass rallies were held at such sites as Madison Square Garden in New York City. In 1939 the Bund’s total membership was about 20,000.

In December 1935 Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess ordered all German citizens to leave the Friends of New Germany (FOTNG), while also recalling all the group’s leaders to Germany. In March 1936, the German American Bund (AV) was established as a follow-up organisation for the FOTNG in Buffalo, New York. It elected a German-born American citizen Fritz Julius Kuhn, a veteran of the Bavarian infantry during World War I and an Alter Kämpfer of the Nazi Party, as the leader (Bundesführer) of the group. At this time, the Bund established a number of training camps, including Camp Nordland in Sussex County, New Jersey, Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, New York, Camp Hindenburg in Grafton, Wisconsin, Deutschhorst Country Club, in Sellersville, PA, Camp Bergwald, in Bloomingdale, NJ, and Camp Highland, in NY. The Bund held rallies with Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute, and attacked the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish groups, Communism, “Moscow-directed” trade unions and the American boycotts of German goods. The organization claimed to show its loyalty to America by displaying the flag of the United States at Bund meetings, and declared that George Washington was “the first Fascist” who did not believe democracy would work.

Arguably, the zenith of the Bund’s history occurred on President’s Day, February 20, 1939 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Some 20,000 people attended and heard Kuhn criticize President Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as “Frank D. Rosenfeld”, calling his New Deal the “Jew Deal”,[SG: This may be the origin of this vile epithet], and stating his belief in a menacing Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. Most shocking to American sensibilities was the outbreak of violence between protesters and Bund storm troopers. In the last week of December 1942, led by journalist Dorothy Thompson, fifty leading German-Americans including Babe Ruth signed a “Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry” condemning Nazism, which appeared in ten major American daily newspapers. In 1939, a New York tax investigation determined Kuhn had embezzled money from the Bund. In an attempt to cripple the Bund, the New York district attorney prosecuted Kuhn.. [This is when, where and how our man, Lou Bender entered the story.] After the United States’ entry into World War II, the Bund disintegrated.

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Lou’s life was cut short in 1999 when he died of cancer at age 99 but he was survived by his wife of 75 years and by his eleven grandchidren and four great-grandchildren. I wish I knew what became of his basketballs and basketball jersey and shorts. I’d buy any of them for 200 bucks.

That wizard of deep thought, Caspar Weinberger, preached that when assassination is forbidden in the law of armed conflict, what is meant is “murder by treacherous means,” and that therefore there is nothing wrong with assassination per se, so long as it does not involve “treachery.” Now, it is time to hear from Caspar, The Friendly Ghost. Who doubts he can do better?

Caspar, the friendly ghost, thinks this: While there may be an additional moral constraint against the use of treachery, it is clear that the central moral concern about assassination is not the presence of a betrayal of trust, but rather the morality of premeditated, extrajudicial killing of specific individuals, typically those in leadership positions.

For some people (I don’t know where to stand on this one),the assassination target must a person in a military command position, not a political post. Others think it should be other way around. In some cases, political leaders are the military leaders and that nicely conflates the issue so we don’t have to choose.

For some people, assassination is a Just Punishment in virtue of violation of Just War Theory. For others, Just War Theory does not sanction retribution. Assassination is only justifiable consequentially. That sounds pretty good to me but I hate to find myself on Donal Rumsfeld’s side on any issue. Don said “the US would be acting in self-defense” in carrying out missions to assassinate bin Laden and other terrorists. Don has a broad notion of “self-defense.” Ordinarily it refers to imminent threats of danger. If you had sneaked up on Charles Manson while he was sleeping, you might have shot him or you might have had the chance to put cuffs on him. You would have to have a Rumsfeldian sense of “self-defense”or “imminence” to argue you shot Charley in self-defense.

Ari Fleischer, former White House Secretary, and like Rumsfeld, part-time genius, told us the cost of one bullet to save the lives of tens of thousands is worth it. I don’t know where Ari buys his bullets. One thing I am sure Ari doesn’t do is worry about the distinction between extreme duress and self-defense.

Many people want to exonerate Obama’s assassination order on bin Laden because they don’t bother to distinguish the need to perform a necessary evil and the curious satisfaction one gets from celebrating the death of an evil person.

Fans of the Bible should remember “not [to] gloat when your enemy falls” (Pr 24:17). Mr. Obama, [you remember him, don't you - the Nobel Peace Prize recipient in 2009?], a man who boasts of his love for Christianity, made it a central part of his 2012 re-election campaign, to remind us repeatedly that under his watch, we “took out bin Laden.” That expression “took out” chilled me to the bone and could not be much more vulgar, sounding as it does like a Rambo call to action.

Article 23b of the Hague Regulations, adopted by the U.S. and other nations in 1907, prohibits “assassination, proscription, or outlawry of an enemy, or putting a price upon an enemy’s head, as well as offering a reward for an enemy ‘dead or alive’.” In 1976, President Gerald Ford signed an executive order banning assassination. Mr. Obama, famous for his service as a law professor at University of Chicago, was out to lunch when his own law professor taught Ford’s reaffirmation of the Hague regulation to his students.

With his jaundiced eye on a dead sparrow, Mr. Obama is not able to see that Osama bin Laden was just one man – a terrible man, to be sure, but we have seen worse whom we have not been tempted to assassinate. Consider the non-vegetarian, Jeffrey Dahmer or the maniacal Ted Bundy or that practitioner of senseless killings, Charles Manson. What separates these men from bin Laden is that they had less opportunity to wreak evil. Bin Laden may have had a distorted sense of right and wrong but he did have a sense of right and wrong. Is a thirst for killing, a la Manson, to be chalked up merely as a distorted sense of right and wrong? Does Mr. Obama envision a deescalation of war because bin Laden is dead? If so, he couldn’t be more wrong.

I was disgusted by the bloodlust and cheering responses that Barack Obama kindled with his joyous proclamations: “the Madman is dead; long live the smiling President.” I hope some of you were, too.

The majority of Americans believe that however awful federal agencies may be, we must not exaggerate. While corruption may be widespread, it must surely be true that, on the whole, government agencies like the CIA, FBI, DEA, CBF, and ATF do more good than harm. This we may take as an article of faith because these agencies were created for the explicit purpose of doing good. That being the case, it would be incredible for each of them to fail, and fail alarmingly.

I have done a poor job over the many years I have been interested in corruption to persuade people how naive they are. First, it is unlikely that any of these agencies were created with noble intent. I admit that proving this is a bigger job than I have heart to take on. However, it is not a great task to argue that, as they are constituted, these agencies exist for ignoble purposes. Dozens of books and hundreds of articles are out there for perusal by those of you who have the strength (and indignation) to find out for yourselves.

One small but well documented and highly readable essay that should prove very disheartening to you (if you believe America is the greatest country on Earth) is Michael Levine’s account of his life as an officer for decades in the DEA, directly and closely involved in many of the biggest drug busts in history. The amazingly depressing story of the DEA is American corruption writ small and it would be a blunder to suppose that it is only an exception to the largely good work other agencies do.

Please read http://www.expertwitnessradio.org/site/mainstream-media-the-drug-war-shills/

For the moment, the President of the United States is crying in his root beer because Chuck Hagel did not get the 60 votes he “needs” to be confirmed as Secretary of Defense. The President is not too upset because there will be another round of votes and Chuck will prevail. But suppose he doesn’t prevail. Suppose he gets only 2 or 3 votes, why does that matter? The President is wailing over the fact that nothing in the Constitution says the Senate can bypass majority rule and demand 60 votes to confirm a desired appointee. He is right to be miserable but he fails to see he, too, can bypass the Constitution. He has the raw power to install anybody he wants as Secretary. It’s all a matter of whether the generals and admirals are in the habit of obedience to him. And, so far as they are concerned, it’s all a matter of whether the sailors and soldiers have allegiance to them.

Can it be that easy? Of course it can be and is, but what the President fears more than anything else is anarchy. His predecessors dully thought the way he does. They thought to themselves, “What would happen if every President took it upon himself to do something just because it was right even though it was blatantly illegal?” CHAOS! Or so they suppose. They kvell over orderly process. In virtue of this commitment to orderly process that presidents have, we suffer. For me, the Hagel story is just an example of what automata presidents are. Who would pay a Secretary that was not confirmed? Answer: the same people who would pay him if was confirmed. Or, if need be, the President can send troops to the homes of everybody who voted against Hagel, remove their wallets and take the money. Take the credit cards, too. Get it right. Is this ridiculous and childish? I don’t think so, and it is only the commitment the reader has to orderly process that makes him think my suggestion is absurd. As for Hagel himself, I don’t give a damn if he falls under the wheels of a trolley car and gets killed. I am interested only in good, solid chaos.

When Joseph Stalin was informed that the Pope disapproved of some of his policies, he smilingly commented, “Really? How many divisions does he command?”

It seems that Stalin did not understand that even he did not command any divisions because nobody does. At any moment during his so-called rule, one of his close underlings could have shot him to death. Moreover, like all rulers, Stalin was in the habit of sleeping. That habit made him vulnerable to attack. No matter how many guards stood by, it did not decrease his vulnerability but merely pointed up his habit of dependence on the cooperation of those beneath him. All political power depends on the habit of obedience. In most cases, so strong is that habit that it is not recognized by those who are obedient that their behavior is only a matter of habit.

People fear anarchy. They suppose that if any of their number takes it on himself to kill the man above him, anyone can do the same. Goodbye to security and orderliness, the most cherished of our political values. To secure this orderliness, Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.” We tend to overlook this idea of voluntary acceptance when we accept the Declaration. It was not always thus. Once upon a time, people believed in the divine right of kings and made that the basis of lawfulness. I believe it was John Locke who introduced the phrase “consent of the governed” to help us understand that all power is pseudo power. The Founding Fathers of the USA made lack of consent the cornerstone of our right to rebel against oppressors. In truth, there was nothing to rebel against since they were only announcing they were breaking with a bad habit of unjustified obedience.

All obedience is unjustifiable, whatever is demanded of us. It is wrong to obey laws forbidding rape and murder. This is not to say we should run around raping and murdering as we please. We should not rape and murder because those actions are WRONG. Their wrongfulness is not supplemented, amplified, nor even clarified by explicit claims about their wrongfulness. Laws are only reminders of our consent and if they are thrust upon us too often and too capriciously they become onerous. In fact, it may be argued, as the philosopher Robert Paul Wolff did, that doing anything out of obedience is a breakdown of autonomy. In other words, obedience to anything is ALWAYS wrong. We may, and usually should, conform our conduct to the law but that is entirely different from saying we should obey law.

Only one law governs, according to Locke – the Law of Reason. Where laws depart from reason, it is not reasonable of us to conform our conduct to their requirements. If laws, qua laws, exercise any hold on us, it is because we are too feeble to object, too feeble to rise up and say, “we won’t take this any longer.” Again, we fear anarchy. We think, “What would happen if each of us took it upon himself to “violate” those laws we consider wrong?” Actually, only good things would happen if we did not abuse this idea and did not use it as an excuse to grab power. Did civil disobedience as practiced by Gandhi or Martin Luther King introduce decades of anarchy?

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What gives rise to these early morning thoughts is something I heard on Rachel Maddow’s show at about 3.30 A.M. and made me rush to this infernal machine (that exercises unjustifiable tyranny over me). It seems that a certain man, Henry Marsh, a long time state senator in Virginia’s legislature, was just squeezed out of his job by a bit of gerrymandering that happened while he was attending the inauguration of President Obama. In his absence, the Republicans voted for a redistricting plan to eliminate his seat. Twenty Republicans voted to push Marsh out, nineteen Democrats voted against the madness. Had Marsh not been in Washington, D.C. at the time, the coup would have failed.

Marsh, a 79-year-old civil rights veteran, said in a statement Tuesday. “I wanted to attend the historic second inauguration of President Obama in person. For Senate Republicans to use my absence to push through a partisan redistricting plan that hurts voters across the state is shameful.” But the fat lady has not yet sung. A plan is underway to call the Republican madness unconstitutional. Moreover, the measure has got to be signed by the Governor.

Etcetera. I don’t care about the further details. If Marsh loses, the matter is over, but only because of the habit of obedience. What Marsh could do but won’t, is take a good look at how many troopers and police are in the habit of obeying the Virginia senators – let us say the number is 200 – and then proceed to raise his own army of, say, 300 and order the Republicans to vacate their seats. Does this seem preposterous? It certainly wouldn’t have been in any country before the year 1689 when all “legitimate” power resided in numbers. Kings had numbers on their side…usually. Only in 1689, during the so-called “Glorious Revolution” was the theory of divine right of kings questioned and abandoned in England. The American and French Revolutions of the late eighteenth century further weakened the theory’s appeal, and by the early twentieth century, it had been virtually abandoned.

Or has it been abandoned, even virtually? I think not. It has been transformed into the feeble idea of THE TACIT CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED. Few people are so crazy as to think a rebellion in Virginia could succeed and fewer yet are wild enough to suppose that such a rebellion could have a legitimate, moral foundation. However, this craven pusillanimity is only self-perpetuating. As for legitimacy, that is a matter for argument. As for the possible success of this mutiny, nobody’s crystal ball is so unclouded that his prophecy is any better than that of any traditional soothsayer.

Obama has some good ideas and I would like to wish him much success in his second term pursuit of them. Unfortunately, I cannot because he has left out the most pressing matters of all.

1. There is the matter of federal prison reform. Not a word was said about that. Frankly, and you MUST agree, the torture, inhumane living standards, rape and occasional murder of hundreds of thousands of prisoners is a greater horror and much more serious indictment of America, than the bizarre assassination of 20 children in an elementary school in Connecticut. Given the disparate coverage these two travesties have received, you would never guess which was worse.

2. Hospital reforms. If you think that the President cannot do anything about the 100,000 accidental deaths, most due to incompetent surgery, (Oops, sorry about that), you are wrong and the victims are DEAD wrong. Perhaps, he doesn’t care, perhaps he is not well-informed. If the latter, Secretary Sibelius is the culprit. She should be fired tomorrow as Obama’s first official act in his 2nd term of office.

3. For some years I have not been a member of the animal rights movement. Still, I take animal welfare very seriously and I place myself somewhere between the utilitarian’s concern for animals and the concern of the animal rights people. The President is blissfully unaware of the difference. The President does not seem to know about the thousands of cases of abuse in animal research facilities that are our country’s greatest shame. The President does not seem to know about the frequent violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The President is certainly unaware of the fact that the U.S. is a signatory to CITES – the convention on international trade in endangered species. The President and his latest henchman, Colin Powell, have declared they are not foes of recreational hunting and trapping.

So long as the President is unconcerned about these major deficiencies in his agenda, I cannot climb aboard the bandwagon. Dennis Kucinich sees the problems but we blundered by not supporting him in 2008. There is no second chance.