Chinese Cyberspies

 John Cascone sent out the information that follows, and he did it just as I was becoming indignant about the Chinese hacking into American agencies and businesses. About 15 miles north of the Beltway, the NSA (National Security Agency) operates out of a 6 million square foot block of buildings. Its task is to hack into electronic data generated by terrorists, other enemies and some of our friends. When the President reads his daily intelligence briefing, about 75 % of the information comes from America's cyberspies.  Now the Chinese do the same thing. Who do they think they are?

War of the Sects

As everyone knows, Sen. John McCain this week slipped into Syria and posed for pictures with some difficult to identify young Sunni rebels. Like all of us McCain is unhappy with the brutality of Syria's civil war--Sunnis vs. Shias--but unlike some of us, the bellicose senator demands that we send heavy arms to the Sunni side. That is his solution. Sen. Rand Paul has pointed out that if we ship in heavy weapons, we might be handing over surface-to-air missiles to Al Qaeda. For some reason Sen. Paul does not want to arm Al Qaeda.  Paul does not trust them not to attack passenger planes filled with civilians and so forth. Here is my problem. I'm on the same side as Rand Paul.

Drone War Clarifies Issues

Kiel Brennan-Marquez  has written a progressive's defense of drone warfare. I hope you can google the whole essay. The essay's key point is as follows. War is hell, but in traditional warfare all sorts of myths fog up Gen. Sherman's truth, including myths about your own war heroes, the sacred dead and so forth. But if you use only drones, your side has no heroes, just killers.  Few will admire a pilot sitting safely in an air-conditioned room in Florida while butchering people in Yemen. The ugliness of war suddenly becomes starkly clear. Drone war, Brennan-Marquez argues, will encourage people to rethink their stance toward wars and consider restraint. (There is at least a hint of this process evident in the speech made by the President yesterday.)

The Vanishing Swing Voters

There's a political insight going around that makes sense to me: "There are almost no swing voters left in this nation." That explains why the Republican leadership isn't talking to swing voters. It talks only to the base part of its base. 

The two parties are so starkly different in the positions they take that the Golden Gate Bridge couldn't link them together.  Elected representatives who occupied the middle 20 years ago have been primaried back into civilian life. Today election victory depends on (1) gerrymandering and (2) voter turnout. That is why, while under attack by the teabaggers on four fake scandals, President Obama's popularity poll has ticked up a point. 

Those who voted for Obama see the teabaggers as dangerously nuts--teafolk have little credibility except within their own faithful. The more wildly they attack, the smaller their party will shrink.

the company I keep

 Shonnie Brown sent out a notice on the death of Susan Armstrong yesterday:

"Susan Armstrong, a long-time friend of the Healdsburg Peace Project, died last Wednesday, May 15, in her home in Healdsburg. Susan was an active member of HPP for many years. She died of metastatic breast cancer––quickly and peacefully, surrounded by her two loving adult children, Harvest and Atticus, and her two dear friends, Betsi Lewitter and Shonnie Brown."

 

Susan's sardonic wit delighted me many times at Peace Project activities. This news is sad, but it makes me proud of The Company I Keep. 

A Job in India

This month HARPER'S published some excerpts from India's official National Classification of Occupations.  You might think there is no job in the world that Rand Paul can do, but in India they are still looking for buffoons and firewood gatherers. Paul Ryan might find success as a glass bubble cooler.  Eliot Spitzer could work as a wood impregnator or a hand fluffer. If, like George W. Bush, you lack a developed talent, you can seek work as a peon.

The Mammy State

On Sunday the Republicans went on the talk shows denouncing "the nanny state." I asked my ancient Republican buddy, Milgrim Icywalker, the Presidential candidate, why he disliked the nanny state, and he agreed to be quoted. "Did you like your nanny?" he  asked. "Of course not--that's why everyone despises women and the nanny state." When Icywalker says "everyone," he means the ones who matter,  ancient white males who went to Old Miss.

"I never had a nanny," I admitted, "only a mother, and she worked as a receptionist."

"All you need to know, Goss, is that nannies told us what to do.  They made us wash behind our ears before going to bed at the wrong time. They were hired to oppress young men. Women are fine people, of course, and someone has be school teachers,  but they're weak, timid and smelly by nature and bossy. A state run by women?--talk about the world turned upside down!"

"Nanny sounds a lot like mammy, doesn't it?"

"To be honest you might as well call it the mammy state," he told me. "I plan to run that by the voters in 2014."

Hillbillies vs. Rednecks

I watched a program on American idioms and learned more about the Scotch-Irish (which the grammatically tender program insisted on calling "Scots-Irish," which was not their name in the States or in Canada). Anyway, one of my grandfathers was Scotch-Irish, although he mostly referred to himself as Irish, as was apparently the custom. He put on an orange shirt on St. Patrick's day. You name any country singer (Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton) and he or she will turn out to be of Scotch-Irish descent. I learned new stuff. For example, "y'all" is a contraction of the English plural "ye" and "all" and it dates back to the old country. Two other terms surprised me by dating back to Scotland and Ireland. "Hillbillies" is a term for the hill people of Scotland who backed King William; "redneck" began as a name for Scottish Presbyterians, who wore red scarves around their necks to show allegiance to their cause. My mother's family was mostly Catholic Irish, so I remain divided.

The Myth of Privacy

When I first went on the Internet in the mid-1970s, I assumed that anything I sent out would be public. I decided to avoid messages that looked sexist, racist or homophobic, and I hesitated to publish photographs of my private parts, something political leaders are still doing 40 years later. Today our Internet providers share what they know about us with merchants who want to sell us things, and most of us have signed agreements authorizing this. Many "free" Internet providers require it. 

From the start, many government agencies have been peering at some of our email. Now they plan to store and sift through even more of our junk. Who do they think they are, L. L. Bean? I would join with the talking heads on TV in opposing this invasion of my privacy except for one thing: everything on the Internet is public. Seeking privacy on the Internet is like seeking dryness while body surfing at Waikiki.

Painless Gun Laws

I was watching a TV talking head tonight, a nice looking woman and one who is rational for a Republican. She did okay on several issues, but when the discussion turned to guns, she grew loud in her complaint that Democrats were attempting to take away her second amendment rights and compile a gun registry and make her prove she wasn't a criminal before she could buy a 30 round clip and so forth. And I finally had a thought. Here it is.  

About 50 years ago I decided to buy a handgun, so I drove to the store in my Ford pickup, paid out some cash, and then I waited while the store ran a background check. That took about a week. I guess--in retrospect--it was a cooling off period. Then I picked up the pistol, which I still own. Here's the thing. It did not occur to me that I should protest having my background checked or being put on a gun registry. Why would I care? I'm not planning to refight the Civil War with my handgun. I wish I could talk to the talking head and reassure her. My car is registered with the state. My dogs were always licensed. I've been a registered gun owner for 50 years. It's painless.

Obama Derangement Syndrome

 I live in a county and town that is solidly Democratic. Here the elections are usually contested by Progressive Democrats (on one side) vs. Corporate Democrats (who run with Republican backing). As I returned from the drugstore this pleasant afternoon, I passed a couple standing behind a table holding signs asking people to impeach President Obama. Several posters of the President wearing a Hitler mustache decorated their table. I assume they had petitions to sign.  

I've been known to waste my time in related ways. Weekly I stand in a vigil with a local peace group (in a much better location). We began the vigil months before Bush attacked Iraq, knowing at the time that nothing ordinary people did was going to prevent war. These days at our vigil, people walking or driving by throw us peace signs and honk their horns. 

The voters around here want out of Afghanistan. We are grateful the President said no to the advice from his entire security staff, including Hillary Clinton, that we should plunge deeper into the civil war in Syria. I'm unsure what to say about the impeachment folk. Their petition won't work in our district or influence our Congress member, a veteran of Vietnam. They have a right to petition the government. Maybe it's a good thing that people so divorced from reality occupy themselves doing something useless.

Why I Voted For Obama

I have voted for President Obama at every opportunity, although my view is that he's made major mistakes. My reason for choosing him can be found in Dexter Filkins' article in the May 13 The New Yorker. In the article Leon Panetta talks about a covert proposal to arm one side in the Syrian civil war.  This course of action was urged on Obama by Panetta, Hillary Clinton, Gen. Petraeus and David Clapper (director of National Intelligence).  Obama replied, No thanks. He saw that action as a slippery slope down which we would tumble into yet another war--and why this particular war? At any time there are ten such wars we can sponsor if we decide to get involved.

Obama's action astonished Sen. John McCain. "There may be another time in history when a President's entire national-security team  recommended a course of action and he overruled them, but if there is I'm not aware of it," McCain said.  Yes, there is most of a universe out there that McCain never heard about.

Chekhov

Chekhov wrote that if you fear loneliness, you should not marry. I've found no context except that the sentence comes from his notebook, a collection of unrelated observations. Chekhov might mean that marriage is not a cure for loneliness, or--this is more likely--he might mean that marriage will make you lonely at times. Loneliness is built into marriage.

Republican Talking Points

Republican Talking Points: "The globe is divided between good Americans and bad people. The worst person is the President. He is not American. He wants to subjugate the good Americans. He plans to take away their liberties. We must hold hearings to prove this is true. Hearings will confirm that he hopes to do bad things to good people. He has already done something terribly wrong, and we will find out what it was."

Benghazi Talking Points

As you know, the Republicans have been running a campaign of quackery centered on the first talking points used by the administration in the confused hours immediately after the terrorist murders in Benghazi. The Republicans keep asking questions that have already been answered. This is, of course, a waste of time, but we might want to consider the people who wrote the talking points, particularly the man who signed off on them, the editor-in-chief. He's a well-known retired general named David Howell Petraeus.

War Looms

In Washington the war drums have begun to vibrate more loudly this week. Sen. John McCain continues to love war, of course, as do the neo-racist haters of all things Islamic. But a new element has been edging onto TV panels, the centrist practical men. Some very reasonable liberals on MSNBC have discovered that Syria is a vital part of America's self-interest. After all, Syria is near land that itself borders on oil fields. They do not see any reason for the President to hesitate. Here is the argument. The whole region could disintegrate, and in the end the oil-rich nations might end up selling their oil to countries that do not have oil, selling oil on the world market, just as they do today. We can't let this happen. We need to get in there and start killing someone, anyone. Otherwise the high opinion the world has of us will fade, and no one will love America again.

An Age Divider

You know you are getting old if you can remember that once you ate some canned tamales.

Google "Shot by Toddlers"

 In the week of April 10, a 2-year-old shot her mother with a Glock. A 4-year-old killed a woman with a hand gun. A different 4-year-old shot and killed a 6-year-old. A 3-year -old died of an accidental self-inflicted wound.

You can google "Shot by Toddlers."

Solar Power to the People

According to the Press Democrat, the first city to require solar power in new housing developments is a deeply Republican burg in the Southern California desert, Lancaster. This, of course, is exactly what we need to mitigate climate change. Our local Sevastopol, deeply fearful of smart meters, is considering becoming the second city to do the right thing. You see?  Paranoia can have good outcomes.

Moronic Letters

I usually skip the editorial page of our local newspaper, the Press Corporate Democrat, because the letters to the editor are moronic. A respectable newspaper would not print rubbish. For example, this morning's paper had a letter that ended as follows:

"The White House (our house) should not be closed to us. it is just the president (sic) trying to put pressure on the public so he can put us further in debt. In my household, I don't spend money I don't have, and I don't want my government to spend money it doesn't have. Particularly when it wastes so very much on duplicate programs and provides welfare and shelter to non-citizens  who blow up innocent children."

Signed (a very stupid woman)

 The assumptions by this very stupid woman are that the President  wants to increase the national debt, and his reason is . . . she doesn't say. I suppose Obama wants to increase our debt because he is pure evil. The stupid woman is so ignorant about economics that she assumes that you manage a household the same way you manage a federal government. Now it is true that she likely owes the bank $400,000 on her mortgage, and it is true that the federal government has a large military payroll and an economy to get back up to speed, but never mind. In her dim mind the two are comparable. Finally she seems to believe that our mass murderers (most of them male citizens) are on welfare when they flip out and kill people.  That is a fact, and she found it deep in the recesses of her own gigantic hindquarters. 

Remind me not to read the editorial page tomorrow.