Rolling Stone’s Stupidity

Catherine Ann Fanning was born on June 18, 1883, in the little town of Leighlinbridge in Cty. Carlow, Ireland.  She left at 16 and came to New York City.  She went immediately to work ten hours a day in the laundry of a large convalescent home in the East Bronx.  It’s still there.  If you use the Whitestone bridge to get to Long Island you’ll see it, the large red stone building, on your left as you approach the toll booths.  It borders St. Raymond’s Cemetery.

I don’t know how many years she worked there. I do know that she worked in similar places until she was in her seventies, nearly, and began to lose her mind.

She was my father’s mother.  She never went home.

Years later I was there, in the little town she left,  with a cousin.  We went to a low hill in a cemetery overlooking the river Barrow and the lovely plain beyond.  He told me a few stories of my grandmother’s family and the conditions in which they lived.  While he spoke, I remembered her own stories, of one meal a day, and that cold potatoes or oatmeal, on land her father farmed for someone far away.  “It’s our own land once again,” my cousin said. Listening quietly I knew why my grandmother never went home.

Nothing was there.

Ella McGowan was born in New York City very near the same date as Catherine Fanning in a place that used to be called The Five Points.  Her father had grown up there, and she spent her young years there.  She married a fellow named Downs and bore him four children in the first years of the 20th Century, the Edwardian Age to some; a time of elegance and excess.  Mr. Downs?  He fell in love with long distance and left her and the kids in The Five Points, a place a slum dog millionaire would avoid.

She was my mother’s mother.  She never went home, either.  What use?  It was demolished to make way for court houses and skyscrapers.

In their own way they were each as soft as kittens and as fierce as tigers.  They both spent much of their day in prayer when I saw them on visits, or on longer stays at our very crowded apartment in Kingsbridge.  I loved them both.

Ellen Frances MacAuliffe was my wife’s mother.  Born in Ireland she left at 16, too, and came here.  She had her own stories, about beatings and shootings in the street from the Black and Tans.  But she never said a word about them, nor about her husband, who came home from two years in combat in Europe a wasted man, who abandoned her and her two children.  She was a quiet, happy woman.  Neither did my wife breathe a word, aside from the occasional, “When life gives you lemons…” kind of observation.

I loved them both.

There is a publication called Rolling Stone that appears regularly on the newsstands and is read by enough people to warrant the expectation of those who publish it that they can do it again, can feed themselves on its income.  I wish they weren’t so full of hope.  I had never read it until a day or so ago when I was interested enough to do it because my granddaughter , a journalism student, gave it what is called now a “shout out” for a story in it.

You have probably heard of the story.  Desiring, I suppose, to place the story before the eyes of as many as possible, and to make the story’s point even more graphically, the cover of the issue was filled with the face of a doe eyed, soft faced young man.  Framed with wavy black hair, the face could have been the subject of some Renaissance master, either in stone or oil; another David.  The rest of the issue was mere filler to the young fellow’s story, the story of a cold blooded killer and the people who loved him, the story of a kid who had a difficult time not being “the best he could be”…and the people who knew him, helped him, befriended him and whom he betrayed.  Some of these people, fellow students, were the ones who helped him by hiding the elements of his crime; accessories after the fact to bloody terrorism.

That was almost more disturbing to read about than the portrait the author painted of this fellow.  In five or so pages, she detailed a life of woe and disappointment, frustration and discord, all endured while the young fellow and his family were well cared for by the state.  He went to school, became a well liked athlete, earned the respect and fellowship of his peers, was a darling to his teachers.  In the end, he was unsatisfied, though.  So he became a terrorist.

Yesterday, while spending a quiet afternoon with some people I know who have had their own share of  “bad times” I learned something.  In the hospitals across Boston on the day that this nice young man and his brother set off their home made WMDs men and women with their own tough stories were picking nails and bits of metal from the shredded skin and burnt limbs of hundreds of victims of his bad mood.

There are other pictures to appear on Rolling Stone covers, and other stories to be written I suppose.   And, well there’s really no sense in getting personal about this, but I can’t help wondering what in the world was so interesting about this kid killer’s life that required the time needed and the space devoted to telling it?  You want to write about people whose lives were tough?  Why not write about Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman or George Washington Carver?  Why not tell the story of Elie Wiesel or Alexander Solzhenitsyn?  Why not speak of Saints Josephine Bakitha, Kateri Tekakwitha  or of Pierre Toussaint.

Instead we got five pages of “the rest of the story”, a depressing tale of disgruntled and ungrateful people blaming others for their failures and angrily biting the hands that fed them.  Are we supposed to sympathize with them all, the killers and the fools, the complainers and the complacent?

Someone said that journalism’s purpose is to bring the truth to light. But what is the point in telling anyone the “truth” about losers, abettors and their mentors and friends?  The only truth that matters here is that this young man is a killer and some of his friends are ignorant enough to think that helping a killer cover his horrible crime is a good thing to do.  That was mentioned but was not covered by Rolling Stone.  Why it wasn’t may be a story worth telling.  It’s certain it won’t be told by Rolling Stone.

This story may have been an exercise in public relations, and badly done at that.  It was certainly not truth, or journalism – however one conceives that thing.

We Choose to Save

“In the face of those who would visit death upon innocents, we will choose to save and to comfort and to heal.” Barack H. Obama, President of the United States of America, at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston, MA, April 17, 2013

On September 5, 1935 the Laws for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, the Nuremburg Laws, became the law of the land in Germany.  The effect of the passage of these laws was to make Jews, Gypsies, and a number of other racial or ethnic groups added later administratively to the original two, un-persons who really had no rights.  They paved the way for the death camps that followed only a few years later.

In her book “Eichmann In Israel”, which carries the subtitle “A Report on the Banality of Evil”, Hannah Arendt devotes some small part of her time explaining how the Nazis got the Jewish people to cooperate in their extermination.  One reads the sections so devoted with a sense of incredulity only “looking back” can give.  There actually were some Jews who believed they were better off living as a people apart in the middle of the rest of the Reich.  Jews had been treated as second class citizens since January 1933 when Hitler beacme Chancellor of Germany.  From April to October, laws barring Jews from holding positions in the civil service, in legal and medical professions, and in teaching and university positions were pushed through. Boycotts of Jewish-owned shops and businesses and book burnings of writings by Jews and by others not approved by the Reich took place.

While Nazi antisemitic legislation and propaganda against “Non-Aryans” was a thinly disguised attack against anyone who had Jewish parents or grandparents, still there was a certain haphazard and uneveness to it all . Arendt writes about the growing awareness that more organization, tighter control was needed.  Things needed to be tightened up.  All of the many laws and regulations about race, racial purity, inferior types and racial protection, and the various agencies regulating such things needed to be consolidated.  Soon enough, it happened.

Arendt writes that after the Nuremberg Laws were issued in 1935, and Jews had been stripped of political but not civil rights, the situation was felt to have been stabilized.

Now, at least they knew what the situation was, Arendt explains.  There had long been Jewish organizations, civic clubs and fraternal groups, and a thing called a Reichsvertretung, an umbrella group of all the Jewish organizations in Germany, which had not been ordered int0 existence by the Nazis.  They set about accommodating the Jews to the “facts on the ground.”   Even as a second class citizens, one could be quite comfortable in Germany.  That was the feeling.  When the Nazis began to force Jews to emigrate, these organizations and their members willingly cooperated in the program and the policy.  They “generally believed that a modus vivendi would be possible; they even offered to cooperate in the ‘solution of the Jewish question’.”

Arendt goes on to say with no little irony, I think, that when Eichmann became the center of that “solution” Jewish leaders of all kinds, “assimilationists” and Zionists alike, talked “in terms of a great ‘Jewish revival’ and a great constructive movement in German Jewry.”  There were, she says, “still quarrels among themselves in ideological terms about the desirability of Jewish emigration.”  She concludes this sentence ominously by adding a short phrase: “as though this depended on their own decisions.” (Arendt, “Eichmann in Jerusalem”, Viking Press, 1967, p. 40)

We know that very soon these same Jewish leaders were fully cooperating with their Nazi masters in the murder of millions; assembling them by the trains and preparing them for death.

On Januray 22, 1973, the US Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade and announced their decision to the nation.  Its effect was to declare the unborn child in its mother’s womb to be not a person, with no rights, and thus give pregnant women the right to abort theese non-persons if they so chose —  at any time and for any reason.  Since that time more than 50 million people have been killed.

I went looking for Arendt’s book and comments when I became aware of the news blackout regarding Kermit Gosnell, the “doctor” on trial in Philadelphia now, charged with the murder of at least one of his patients and of at least seven infants born alive.  In fact there were more, many more, casualties of both kinds.  These were simply the ones which could be easily proven in court.

From what I have been able to read about Gosnell and his practice, such as it was, filth is too good a word to describe the conditions in which he operated, cruelty too soft a word to describe the kind of treatment he provided, and victims too kind a word for the poor people who came within his grasp.

Yet he was respected.  He enjoyed a certain popularity.  He was looked up to in the community he “served”.  Himself an African-American, the vast majority of his victim-patients were African-American. The way he operated reminds me of Rudolph Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, who also had the law behind him.

Of course you know that his medical “practice” was in the area of “Women’s Health”, a code word for abortion.  And, except for one or two stories lately in perhaps a half dozen major newspapers and TV news outlets not a word has been said about what Gosnell is charged with doing, how he did it or why.  Those few words that have been said, have been said in self-defense by the major news machines, and, not too very subtly, to blame the atrocities Gosnell committed on his pregnant victims and the living, defenseless “products of conception” that fell victim to his malevolence, to blame it all on those who want to end legalized abortion.  In a sense, they seek to blame the victim for the crime.  Had really good care been available they argue and bloviate, then women would not have had to submit to Gosnell’s cruetlies.

Well, “really good care” was available from Planned Parenthood within an hour’s drive of Gosnell’s Mengelian death clinic.  That clinic, too, was recently closed and prosecutors are preparing charges for operations that sound chillingly gosnellian.

There is nothing new about that.  Planned Parenthood clinics are regularly shut down because of their slipshod practices, their filth, their unlicensed personnel, their lack of care.  But who, in Hell, would expect to be treated well or with compassion?  One goes there to kill.  Kindness and killing don’t mix well.  Care and killing are opposed.  Sooner or later kindness and care leave, are pushed aside for the pleasures of killing, the need to kill.  Care costs, takes time.  Killing is easy.

Besides, why waste care on those unworthy of it, the under classes.

This last is, really, the reason that Planned Parenthood exists, despite all their rhetoric about women’s health.  The people who founded Planned Parenthood are, likethe Nazis, perfecters of the breed.  “Bring us your poor, your weak, your defective, your congenital idiots and deformed, and we will kill them for you.  Often we will kill you in the bargain.  Then we will be perfect and free.”

You will understand my confusion, I think, when I learned a few days ago that the wife of the US AG, owns a building which houses an abortion clinic.   “What!!??” I exclaimed to the empty room when I came across the article on the internet.  From the ether came the answer, “Don’t you see, Peter, how necessary this is?”  Well, no, I was a little doubtful why the US Ag, who is black, and his wife, who is black, should be hosts to an abortion facility which caters primarily to black women.  Do you doubt the last statement?  Then please look at the picture in the ad for the Old National GYN and come to your own conslusions.  I was interested to find out from spending a little time there at the site that no one is named.  You wouldn’t know anyone even worked there, except something called board certified physicians.

Here is a link to an excellent article article about Mr. and Mrs. Holder’s Little Wayside Abortuary.  As the article says, it explains a lot.

The place looks nice on Google, so I can’t tell if it’s been decorated with gosnellian attention to decor; if baby bits and precious bodily fluids and cat crap are artfully placed and displayed.  But I was interested to know that Eric and the Mrs. are in on a place whose last operator has been indicted in by the feds in Atlanta for going south with 300 large in medicaid funds he fraudulently billed.  That is felony weight anywhere.  And, Eric has the case.  I’m sure he’ll do a good job, aren’t you?

I cannot remember if Eichmann In Jerusalem mentions at all the millions of dollars, the jewels and art work, the fillings and hair, that the SS and all the other nazi murderers harvested from the Jews they killed all those years ago.  “What does it matter, now?” a recent Secretary of State might angrily squawk.  Indeed.  But, I do know that Gosnell has gotten rich killing babies and the occasional poor woman.

Please don’t get the wrong idea, here about Eric and Kermit the Impaler.  I don’t want anyone to think they are the same kind of fools as were the leaders of the Jewish communities in Germany who cooperated with their Nazi killers.  Those tortured souls really had their backs against the wall, though that is no excuse for their actions.

No, there is no government or any of its agencies, no maniacal ruler here in these Untied States intent on eradicating a whole race, and whole classes of people.

What we have is Barack H. Obama, for at least the next three some odd years,  Oh, and Kathleen Sebellius, the token white woman.  With friends like these, black folks don’t need enemies.

In order for me to make some sense of that statement I’ll return to Arendt and her wearisome story of evil in a crisp uniform.  But before I do that, allow me to get rid of this little factoid I stumbled across.  For every 1,000 black children born in this country, 1400 are aborted.

Anyway, Arendt tells the story of one of these Jewish officials, a fellow named Kastner in Hungary or one of those eastern European countries whose cooperation was needed by Eichmann.  She mentioned that Eichmann liked most to deal with Zionists, they were idealists, and Kastner was a Zionist.  According to Arendt, Eichmann himself was an “idealist”, which for him meant a person who would do anything in service of his “ideal”, no matter what was required.  This Jewish fellow was a man like that.

Eichmann wanted a nice orderly removal of Jews to Auschwitz.  This fellow cut a deal with him.  In exchange for a trainload of a couple of thousand of the right type of Jews in one direction out of the country…safe passage…the guy guaranteed a docile herd of a few hundred thousand Jews waiting patiently for the one way trip to Auschwitz.  The people given a ride out of hell were all Zionists; Eichmann’s right kind of Jew, the ones who didn’t want to be there.  For them, though Arendt doesn’t say it, what’s the loss of a few hundred thousand lower class no accounts.

It is a fact that Obama, a black man, is fervently “pro-choice”.  In other words he believes in abortion.  He has said as much regarding his own children, and he has spoken against laws which would restrict abortion; especially late term abortions, the kind of abortions tailor made for gosnellian horrors .

It is a fact that though they account for 13% of the population, black women make up nearly 40% of those who have abortions.  It is a fact that Planned Parenthood abortion facilities are predominently located in or near black and lower class neighborhoods.

One might reasonably conclude from his words and actions that our president is an Eichmannian idealist regarding abortion as an agent for change in the black community particularly and throughout the country.  Abortion at any time and for any reason advances his agenda because it erodes family structures and makes for a population ever more dependent on government, and supportive of its policies and positions.  Certainly, he has not used his considerable influence among the leaders of the abortion industry and within the black community to diminish either abortion’s popularity or its availability.  His Obamacare, is obviously designed to further increase the ease with which black women abort.  And, everyone else, too.

Among a lot of other distasteful “changes” being put into place, that’s race hatred by another name! But it stinks just as much.

Holder??  He’s a Renfield to Obama’s Dracula.

“In the face of those who would visit death upon innocents, we will choose to save and to comfort and to heal.”

When the lights are on, and the cameras rolling.

Do Ya Think?

Yesterday I read a short article in a British paper: The Telegraph.  The article was a report on a study conducted on the life, and the prospects for life, of Christianity in the Middle East.  Those few of you still familiar with the word, Christianity, comfortable in its presence, inclined to use it favorably and with some affection and loving attachment will know what I have reference to.  For the growing majority of people whose understanding of and connection with the word and its meaning is arguably much less than their knowledge of the leading actors in The Walking Dead or the line on next week’s NFL games let me try to place it for you; to contextualize it.

Tomorrow is Christmas Day.  You will immediately see there is a similarity between the words Christianity and Christmas.  I will not belabor the thing, but simply point out that the first syllable is, itself, a word: Christ.  And the word signifies a man.  Tomorrow is, despite the amazing amount of evidence to the contrary, the celebration of the birthday of that man, the annual observance of that event by the dwindling few who happen to believe in the man and the stories told about him; what he said and did.  Simply put that is the astounding fact that Christ is at one and the same time God incarnate and the savior of the World and a man “born in time, born of a virgin.”  No, I mean it, really.  (Actually His name is Jesus, and Christ is, more or less, a title.)  I happily count myself among the remnant who think this way about Jesus Christ; that He is truly God and truly Man.  And, that is just the beginning of the amazing facts about Him.  But, let us not get ourselves involved in that.

For those who know it is not necessary to do so; for the rest, they will be made aware sooner of later, here or there.

The prognosis is not good.  That is, the prognosis for Christianity, that system of beliefs and practice, that way of living that grew from the testimony of some few people who knew and lived with this man Jesus about what he did and said so many years ago in Palestine, in the Middle East.  It is dying, they say in The Telegraph; dying in the place where it was born and where it has lived longest.  The prognosis for the “rest” I have reference to above; that they will be made aware of certain “amazing facts” at some time is certain: they will.

The study reported on in The Telegraph did provide a cause for the imminent demise of Christianity in its homeland, may it rest in peace.  Militant Islam (MI) is infecting Christianity in the Middle East, and the disease, so says the article, is likely to cause its quick death.  “Sic transit gloria coeli et terra” to corrupt a phrase.

How is this being accomplished, and how, better yet, is it so being done right under the eagle eyes of our many media snoops?  Does no one have any idea except some old rag in Blighty? And, finally, why have not those in powerful places and positions, guardians of freedoms, protectors of widows and orphans, weak and underprivileged the world over raised even an eyebrow at this rather depressing (to say the least) bit of news?  Well, I have my ideas about who might have gathered a rumor here and there, and why they haven’t whispered a word, but then, I am a suspicious type.  I’ll leave it to more rational folks to explain why the imminent death of Christianity in the land of its birth means simply nothing here in the West which owes simply everything to it.

What interests me, just as much, is this little fact; call it a sidebar.  It, too, will never appear anywhere soon.  Maybe it is simply too boring?  That fact is this: 150,000 Christians a year are killed for being Christians.  What, some editor might reasonably ponder is newsworthy about that, or a burnt village in Africa when compared to Our Dear Leader bodysurfing in Hawaii?  Many, many more are imprisoned without trial, little girls raped, women raped, churches blown up or burned to the ground, homes burned, villages burned, neighborhoods attacked by armed fanatics and , well, sad to say, more schoolchildren, murdered in Muslim countries simply because they are Christian than are murdered by our own madmen.  Again, one wonders about the silence, the the lack of interest.

Tertullian was an early Christian Father, a theologian whose work helped form what was becoming Christianity.  He was from Carthage, part of the Middle Eastern world where Christianity is now dying of that disease called MI, also known to be fatal to Ambassadors and people in tall buildings in places like New York City.  Among other things he is famous for having said is this, “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.”  Now that might scare a good atheist or modern day secularist in a corner office somewhere.

And now, before I leave you to turn on your Santa Claus lights, your reindeer with their red noses, your Frosty the Snowmen in their hats, to fill your living rooms with wrapping paper and your bellies with rich foods and rare vintages, and to taste deeply all of the other signs of our winter holiday, may I ask you to wonder this.  Will there be more to mourn over the death of the last winged cardinal at your feeder or the death of the last Christian once from some place west of the Indus and east of Eden?  I do not think so, because you will not know.  Few are those in any position to let you know who hazard saying a word about it.  Fewer still are those who think anything should be done.  Many, I suspect rather hope that nothing will be done.  Ever.

We are being flooded with the blood and the bodies of the dying victims of militant Islam as the story in The Telegraph has it.  The dead are the seed.  The raped and beaten and dispossessed are the soil, the field and the planting where will grow anew the the fruit of their sacrifice.  It has suddenly occurred to me that “they” are afraid of what this way comes when , some day, the once and future Christianity appears.  I can think of no other reason for such a black curtain over this news, a holocaust across a third of the world.  As Special Agent Gibbs often says, “Do ya think?”

Merry Christmas!

The Sheepul Vote (A Short Pastoral Fable)

The dictionary has something to say, here.  The definition of complaisance in one of the sources I checked is this: com·plai·sance (k m-pl s ns, -z ns) n. The inclination to comply willingly with the wishes of others; amiability. complaisance [kəmˈpleɪzəns] n

Sheep and cattle are complaisant.  As long as the grass is green and no wolves wander near, they are content to stand, even in the rain, outdoors and munch, moving only when the grass might grow too short, or the piles of ordure they produce a little too high.  From time to time the tender ones are carted off to “somewhere”.  No one of them left behind really notices or cares very much what that means for them.

The grass is green.

The shepherd’s whistle pierces the still air and the dogs are let in upon them, to run them here or there.  But, the sheep know.  The promise always is greener grass beyond the next gate.  This has been the way.  Always forward.

The shepherd never lies.  So the sheep willingly obey.  And, from time to time the tender ones are carted off to “somewhere”.  No one looks up.  The grass is green.

Soon, they will go forward once more, their slow ramble from green bit to green bit temporarily interrupted by the shepherd’s whistle, the little dogs busy  at their backs and the frenzied nip at the slackers.

But the grass is always greener there, wherever there may be.  The sheep neither know nor care.  That the shepherd knows, and that is enough.  Did the sheep once know?  It is too much to think about.

The grass is always greener after the sheep have gone forward..

And, the way is downhill.  Going forward is always easier when the direction is down.

Too late, alas.  The cliff.  Too late.

One , the last, turns before the plunge into darkness, and sees.  There was no grass at all.  The dogs smile.  The shepherd lied.

But the sheep have been complaisant.  They have been willing.  They believed, if it can be said that sheep are able to believe.  Some few may have even thought they were making a good choice.  And why not?  Every time they moved it was forward.  It was green.  It was down.

It was down.

Every change they made was a change to a better place.

Until the cliff.

“We believed unto death,” cry the sheep falling.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Now, I will beat you on the head until it hurts.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Every word or attitude is forbidden which by flattery, adulation, or complaisance encourages and confirms another in malicious acts and perverse conduct. Adulation is a grave fault if it makes one an accomplice in another’s vices or grave sins. Neither the desire to be of service nor friendship justifies duplicitous speech. Adulation is a venial sin when it only seeks to be agreeable, to avoid evil, to meet a need, or to obtain legitimate advantages.

But, what is it when it leads to debt, weakness and death?

To whom do children in our schools now sing?  Whose face appears on our flag? To whom do the sheep-like look for their “things”?  Who promises them greener pastures?

How close is the cliff?  Can you see its edge?

Dogs’ nipping.

Final Word On the Benghazi FUBAR

I have just been handed the final intelligence report from my agent on the ground, Ali Ibn Bibbin Ben Stein, an Israeli Arab PhD from Penn State who works for an American oil company and doubles as a triple agent of Mossad, the CIA and Walmart.  I include it below in full:

Hi,

I suppose you’re wondering what I’ve been doing since 9/11 over here.  Well, I did have a few busy days.  When all of that stuff hit the fan that night I was just finishing up a nice meal with Achmed Lagattuta (There are a lot of half breeds in Libya.  After all it was conquered by Mussolini back in the day) where I finalized a deal to open the first Walmart in Benghazi.  They won’t allow any overweight or toothless people in underwear to shop, but we can get along with that.  It’s some violation of Sharia, I think.

I know that you’re really interested in finding out what really happened that night.  Here is the straight scoop.  At about 9:00PM, just as we were finishing our second orange crush, Akky’s iPhone rang.  His ring tone is a nice tune by the Libyan cutie, Moobar Goofootammy called “I love My Chickens”.  I only heard his side of the conversation, but Akky was by turns disturbed and excited by what he heard on the other end of the line.  The call took only about a minute and when he hung up Akky looked me straight in the eye and said,

“That was my good friend Vance.  Well we all call him Vance cause he liked the guy who played Vance for a couple of seasons on The Dukes of Hazzard.  He’s the only guy in Benghazi with a bushy black beard and his hair dyed blond.  The Mullah Abdullah don’t like it, but Vance can get a pick-up mounted 50 caliber machine gun and a crew of 20 or 30 bomb wearing potential martyrs into places you wouldn’t think of taking your best goat.  Mullahs, even this one, make allowances.”

I smelled something big happening and wanted to know more.  If I’d paid more attention I would have recognized the smell as a mixture of cordite and burning cars.  But there’d been a lot of that recently in town.

Akky continued, “Vance said that he’s loading up the pick-up with a few thousand rounds and picking up some of his buddies down at the gym behind the mosque where they keep all their weapons and ammo.  They got them a bunch of RPGs the US dropped off after we zotzed Ghaddafi, so we could “restore order”.  Then they’re gonna go out to the edge of town and do a little night firing.”

The fellas like to go our there and blow old cars apart, I’ve since learned.  It’s kind of like some guys I know back here go out in the woods, or down to the gun club and shoot at plunk at paint cans and beer bottles.

“You want another orange crush,” I offered, and Akky nodded.  I signaled for the waiter, a medical student at Edinburgh University studying to be a Neurologist, to bring us another two crushes.  Then Akky continued, “He laughed when I said, “Oh.”  “Nah,” he said to me, “they’re gonna go over and take out the US Consulate.   Just kidding.”

We both laughed at the thought of that.  I mean most of these guys had gone to school in the States and some even had girl friends they hoped to bring over here some day, or marry and move there.  I’d seen the iPhotos they all had taken of them with the Seals and Special Forces guys on the ground here a few weeks ago, smiling and holding up bottles of Coke, or Molotov Cocktails.

“Listen, ” Akky said, as we finished our oranges, “Lance invited me to tag along and take some vids and photos of the fun tonight.  You want to come?”  “No, ” I replied, “I think I’m gonna go back to my tent and watch some “Little House” re-runs.”

A couple of minutes later, Lance pulled up in his pickup in front of the place.  There were about fifteen guys in the back and another four or five in the cab with him.  I knew he was coming from about three blocks away because of all the noise the AK-47s were making.  As he parked, one of the guys in the back swung the 50 in our direction and took down a young palm tree.  I said to Akky, “Wow!  These guys are really juiced tonight.”  “Yeah,” he answered,” they got a few soles of really good Afghani hash in this afternoon.”

The guy who had the camel rental deal out front was hopping mad because the tree fell on one of his camels.  Lance got out of the pick-up and walked over.  He made a deal not to kill the guy and gave him a half a sole of hash for the dead camel, a young one.  “That’ll make some good soup,” he said as they tied it to the back of the pick-up.

Akky stood up, got his camera, and ran out to join Lance and the other kids at the pick-up.  “Sure you don’t want to come?” he yelled as he got in the back.  I waved him on and they took off, firing the 50, letting go a few RPGs at the houses still standing, the camel bouncing along behind the truck, swinging from left to right behind it as they swerved to avoid the wrecked cars in the street.

A few minutes later, I walked over the the guy at the camel stump and rented a ride home.

I had just gone to sleep after finishing Season 2 of “Little House” when my phone rang.  It was Akky.  “Hey, Akky,” I said “Make any more holes in the desert?”  “Desert?” He yelled in an excited voice.  “We just blew the American Consulate to hell and back and offed the Ambassador and a few guards.  They never knew what hit ’em.  Man it was Rambo In The Sand tonight!”

“You what!” I exclaimed, wide awake.  “Are you guys nuts?”

“Don’t worry,” he said, his voice calmer now.  “No one was hurt.  And besides, I just got the feed from CNN.  Some doofus in the States , the guy who made that dumb Mohammed thing we were all laughing at the other night, is taking all of the heat for the thing.  Moohmhar just got a call from his girl, Shirley, in Ohio.  She said the guy will probably go to jail.”

“No kidding,” I said.  “Yeah,” Akky went on, ” and one of the guys, when he called his brother down in Yemen, the one who’s a pirate, this guy said his brother’s thinking of gettin’ a few of his buddies to go trash a few embassies down there.”

“Well,” I said, “thanks for the call, but I gotta get some sleep.”  “Oh, O.K.,” he answered, “sorry to wake you up.  But I really called to ask a question.  You don’t think this will have any effect on the Walmart deal, or interfere with some of these guys going back to school do you?”  I thought about that for a few seconds and then answered, “Nah, why should it.  They got the guy who caused it all, didn’t they?  Anybody asks any of you about it, just tell them you were there to help.”

“Yeah, that’s what we figured to do.”  he hung up, and I went back to sleep.  A couple of days later we all got together for some camel soup and a few laughs.

See you in Panama City at Spring Break,

Al

What Are You UPTA? Who Cares!

So it’s official.  The White Hose says that thing in Libya was not a bunch of guys who were partying.  It was a terrorist attack.  I read it in a story from CNN.  CNN and MSNBC electronically and the New York Times in print are to the current Administration what Pravda was to the Kremlin, wholly owned subsidiaries.  You read something there about anything those guys do and you can take it to the bank.  Anyway, the CNN story is about that the attack on the Untied States in Libya was a terrorist attack.  But, it was an unplanned terrorist attack.  This is something new, an ominous and foreboding change in tactics, unplanned attacks.  But, it is also a good thing. As long as the terrorists are launching unplanned attacks, there is no use in trying to find out what they are doing.  The terrorists don’t even know.

So when an UPTA happens, we can legitimately say , “Gosh!  We had no idea.”  And, if someone, say a drunk in a bar on Third Avenue, happened to mutter something about the crazy Muslims, we can as well point to the drunk as the cause for all of those embassies being burned to the ground, and avoid having to suffer any criticism for being clueless idiots ourselves.

In addition, there is no need wasting time, money and manpower building up a muscle bound security staff.  In fact, if the UPTF (the Unplanned Terrorist Front) decides not to plan another raid somewhere where there isn’t anybody awake or watching, we can legitimately say their barbaric murderous insanity will not provoke us since no one was home, err, figuratively speaking.  And, since nothing really was lost, our apology for being the victims , here, will not make us look like any bigger fools than we really are.

That probably means that our apologies will not have to be withdrawn, which is a good thing.  When a country goes back on an apology everyone will start to think they are getting ready for a fight.  But if we don’t know who punched us, or why, what’s the good of fighting back.  Better just to say you’re sorry somebody got upset at something and promise it won’t happen again.

Oh, you don’t believe it was a UPTA?  (That’s Washington for Unplanned Terrorist Attack.) Well the folks who should know said it was and that’s enough for me.  Here’s what this guy Carney said:

“It is a fact that there are in post-revolution, post-war Libya armed groups, there are bad actors, hostile to the government, hostile to the West, hostile to the United States and as has been the case in other countries in the region, it is certainly conceivable that these groups take advantage of and exploit situations that develop when they develop to protest against or attack either westerners, Americans, western sites or American sites.”

Not only are they Unplanned Terrorists, but they are also Bad Actors.  That is why the video of some of the unplanned terrorists dragging this dead guy, our recently living former Ambassador to Libya around and screaming “Allahu Akbar.” fools no one when they say they are taking him to the hospital.  What they are doing, really, is dragging him around so they can show everyone how their not-plan worked like a charm.

I have been given a transcript of a cell phone conversation between two members of the UTF (Unplanned Terrorist Front) in Libya.  The boys are ginning up a scheme to kill someone.  Here is my rough translation leaving out all of the profanity and references to sexual prowess, which figures hugely in conversations between terrorists, when they are not talking about murder and eating:

Terrorist 1:  Hello, Uday?”

Terrorist 2:  This is me.  Is this you Jamil?

T1:  It is but I cannot tell you it is.  Someone may be listening.

T2:  That is good.  This isn’t me, either.  For the purposes of this conversation I am The Blood of Hero Martyrs for Ultimate Death to All U.S. People.

T1:   Great name.  Did you think that up by yourself or did someone suggest it?

T2:   I got it from the last issue of Super Jihadist, the one where he kills everything in Europe but the sheep.

T1:  I like that one.  I have every issue of SJ.

T2:  Do not say that, SJ.  Those are the initials of the infidel Jesuits who slaughter Muslim babies and serve them to Catholics at their Christmas.  I can’t wait to kill Jesuits.  That is why I have decided I will go to America to study medicine at Georgetown and kill Jesuits.

T1:  Well, forgive me.  Anyway I called to ask if you are busy tonight.

T2:  Yes, I am.  I am taking my younger brother Abdrule out to rape Christian girls.  It is his first time.

T1:  Ordinarily Blood, I may call you Blood?

T2:  Yes,of course.

Ti:  As I said, ordinarily I would love to join you in helping the faith grow among the infidels, but haven’t you realized that there are no more Christian girls in town?  They have all been raped and become good wives to our Brothers, or they have died by our cleansing swords and knives and guns and RPGs.

T2:  I knew that.  I was going to take him over to Hamid’s sheep herd to practice his technique.  Next week we’re borrowing my uncle’s armored troop carrier for a trip over to Egypt to go raping.

T1:  That can wait.  I have something which is much more important for the spread of the Umma.

T2:  W hat can be more important than bringing into our faith converts who can give us many sons for jihad?

T1:  Well, you have a point. But tonight you must suppress your zeal to convert young girls and join us for an evening of jihad of another kind.  Do you still have your Kalashnikov and enough ammunition for an evening’s, umm, evangelization among the infidels?

T2:  Of course.  I have it along with five large knives for mutilating corpses, one hundred feet of cord for hangings and crucifixions, three rpg’s and some pickling spices , and a blow torch for burning holy names on the bodies of infidels.

T1:  Pickling spices?  No, I won’t ask.  Boy you guys from Abbadabbabad are weird.

T2:  Whatever.  Ok.  Anyway, what and where and how much?

Ti:   I’ll be by with some of the other fellows, The Mostly Cruel Brothers of the Heroic Martyrs of April 5th Brigade, and a few guys from The Vicious and Bloodthirsty Vengeance of the Powers of Heaven on all Infidels Social Club at about 7:00pm.  We’ll all be in Akphoom’s pickup, you know the one he was married in, the one with the 50 caliber machine gun that blew away half of his third wife during the reception.
T2: Yeah, what a laugh.  Her head exploded like a watermelon.  Cool thing was he still kept the goats.  Anyway, what’s going down, or blowing up…which is always more interesting?

T1.  No one’s too sure right now.  But it’s gonna be a lot of fun.  There isn’t much left, really, so we might do two or three places; a couple of churches, and that hospital, and the Ecuadoran Embassy.

T2.  Ecuador?  Why Ecuador?

T1.  It’s the only one still standing.

T2.  Well, let me get something to eat.  My brother will be disappointed, you know.  He’s already 12 and he hasn’t raped a Christian girl yet.  Dammit, I kinda wish we hadn’t burnt down that school and machine gunned all of them when they came running out.

T1:  Who knew? You know I was eight when I started raping.  It was a target rich environment then.  Anyway, bring the kid along.  He can work the blow torch.  We’ll be there in about an hour.

T2.  OK, don’t be late.  I gotta take an exam tomorrow and I haven’t cracked a book yet.

The One Percenters

(or)  The Recent Bold Deeds of The Most Busy and Industrious Band of True Believers and Followers of the Religion Of Peace

Not too long ago someone sought to prove a point, that being that most followers of Islam are nice folks who just want to get along, that not every Muslim was an Islamist … a PC word used now in lieu of the word Terrorist, which is fast becoming a word not to be used in polite society…..  After all one cannot call a billion people terrorists.  I mean some of them are crazy, some of them dribbling idiots, some kings, some murderous dictators, some rabid preachers and even more rabid politicians, some oil billionaires, and someone needs to stay home and cook.

They mentioned the results of a years long poll, worldwide in scope, by the Gallup folks and sponsored by a bunch of pro-Muslim organizations here in the Untied States…if fast fading memory serves.  The poll concluded that only 1% of Muslims were interested in converting the world by any means, fair or foul, into a seamless garment of burka clad women and bearded men with four wives apiece and 70 virgins waiting them in paradise.

This conclusion was reached, one may speculate, from analysis of data gathered from the usual statistically accurate survey of 1,00o some odd folks…perhaps in every country where there are one thousand Muslims, but who knows.

Only 1%?

It is  only too easy to adopt the term One Percenters from the Occupy Everything crowd of anarchists and use it to denote this extremely busy band of murderers, bombers, arsonists, rapists, enslavers, “occupiers”, whiners, thugs and criminals who do not worship any god I can recognize…and the governments and vast numbers of angry maniacs who support them anywhere one or two of them are gathered, it seems, in their prophet’s name, peace be upon him.

You doubt??

Read on then, here.

This thing comes out every month.  One would think, from the way our Main Stream media is addicted to feeding its slobbering audience with stories of gore and guts, that they would jump at the chance to cover things like these assorted acts of horror, mayhem, intimidation and crime all committed by a mere, but extremely busy, one percent of the worshipers of something or other.  But, no.  The fact is they hate Christianity more.  And they hate anyone who is a believing Christian.  Did you ever wonder why?

The battle is not between Islam and the rest of the world.

The battle is the same one it has always been; the one between Good and Evil.

Who Will See Your Tears?

We just finished reading a book, an epistolary novel, and a very good one at that, too.  At the end “R”, the character to whom all the letters are addressed over a forty year period, appears briefly only to leap from a quarry wall and dashe his brains out on the rocks below.  A Polish priest rushes over to him as he lies bloody and not quite yet dead, and blesses him.

Since this all happens in a concentration camp somewhere in Germany, the guards, cheated of their prey, and enraged at the priest club that poor man to death, while “R” sees and sheds a tear.  The tear, “seen by Another” in the words of the author saves him.  It is a happy ending.  Of course the book is by a Catholic author, so what else would one expect.  Catholicism…Christianity…is all about happy endings.

“R” had spent his life in a prodigality of sin, coming to realize in the darkness of the concentration camp that there was no reason to continue living.  Choosing death in this life was his final gesture of waste and uselessness.  Of course, what better place to do so than in a concentration camp, a place whose sole purpose is to use up and discard as useless the lives we have been given, the State not only allowing it, but positively encouraging it, assisting it and participating in it?

But once State organized and controlled death appears, no one is safe from it.  That is the lesson which should have been learned.  Alas,  look at Holland.

But, you need not go that far away.  Look at Oregon.  There Death has come to live, taken up residence, cast his dark shadow over the state.  And no one cares that Death is growing fat on Oregonians who like “R” have grown tired with life; even in what I am reliably informed is a beautiful place to live.  No concentration camp, Oregon.  There the state has many able surrogates and quieter more subtle ways to assist Death’s dark purpose.  He has learned to smile, to walk softly, to creep ever more secretly.  But, it will not be long before State and Death dance openly in Oregon.  For now, quiet, Death works.

I was interested to read this from the report:  ” The most commonly expressed concerns of those dying from physician-assisted suicide were unchanged from previous reports: less able to engage in activities making life enjoyable, losing autonomy, and loss of dignity.”

The term used often to describe those whose conditions, whatever they were, made them “less able, autonomous and dignified’ was “Lebens Unwertes Leben”;  lives unworthy of life.  The decision is theirs, now, in Oregon.  And the lovers of death do nothing, it seems to try to persuade them otherwise.  That will change, too..  If you look at the numbers, it has already begun to do so.  There are no brutish guards with rifle butts to club those who would help, yet.  That may be simply because there are none who will come to the side of the despairing dying ones and bless them on their way.

Death can be so lonely.

Who will see your tears?

Nah, That Can’t Never Happen Here —. You Think?

Abstract

Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus’ health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled.

This is an abstract from something called The Journal of Medical Ethics.  I have long ago reached the conclusion  that the proper and legal definition of an ethicist of any stripe is : “A person who, for a nice fat fee, will tell you that whatever you wish to do, no matter how bizarre, repugnant, illegal, immoral or fattening, you may do. ”

“That?  Sure, you can do it.  That’ll be $250.00.  Pay my girl Nausea on the way out.  No checks without two forms of picture ID, please.  Next!”

There’s an article here.  You can read a bit more about the story…if you have the stomach for it.  But, all you really need to know is contained in the abstract from JME.  These guys love acronyms, and I want to please them.  At my age, I figure I’ll be next to be okayed for the trip to the Release center.  Oh, wait, I already have that “right”.

It would take a more sober, reasoned and smart person than me to look at that abstract and take it apart bit by bit; exposing it for the outrageously smug, insipid and stupid thing that it is.  I simply want to blow it up, and punch out the authors, the editors and anyone vaguely connected with the thing.  I can probably get a bunch of ethicists to tell me that it’s the epitome of ethics to do so.

But, I won’t do that.  For one thing I haven’t got the plane fare to Australia.  I’m wondering, now though, if its ethical to ask for donations.  Hmmm.

_________________________________________________________________________________

While I was sitting here trying to get the best of my gag reflex a couple of things occurred to my mind.  I imagined a couple of scenes from the near future:

The first is a quiet little corner in Portland, OR, the place first in love with death here in the Untied States.  It’s about 6:00pm on a lovely day in May.  The sound of a garage door closing is heard and then the door opens into a bright, neat, modern kitchen.  A young woman stands  at the central work station obviously preparing something for the evening meal.  She smiles as a tall slim fellow walks through the door and gives her a hug and a kiss.

YW:  Sorry, Brutus, my hands are so yucky.  I’ve been working all afternoon on this.  I thought we’d have something special.  I hope you’ll like it.

YM:  That’s just fine Gladiola.  I’ll fix us a drink.  Where’s Benjie?

YW:  Oh, he’s probably asleep on the rug inside.  He had a busy day outside today running around chasing butterflies.

YM:  I love that little fella.  So, what’s for supper?

YW:  Well you know we had to decide today…

YM:  Oh, yes.  So did you?  I would have been happy to stay home, but BIFFING Steel has this big job they were interested in having us handle and Smothersworth wanted me to look it over.  I was out there all day.  Sorry I’m a little late.  Anyway, it looks like we’ll take it, and you know what that means.”

YW:  Oh, now we can go to Fiji for my sister’s wedding t0 Allred.  It’s her 7th and it means so much, and I can wear that lovely thing I have been so wanting to ever since..”

YM:  Honey, isn’t that sauce…?

YW:  (Looking over at the stove.)  Oh, no, everything’s fine.  I’ll just need you to get the lumps out later.  Anyway, I really didn’t need you today.  I spoke with Polonia across the street.  She said I could do it myself, everyone does these days.  So I did.  It was so easy and kind of fun.

YM:  Oh, here’s the dog!  Hey Benjie, you lucky guy.  I wish I had your life chasing butterflies all day long.  C’mere you little dickens.

YW:  Anyway, afterward, I cleaned it and prepared it for tonight’s supper.  I used Polonia’s mother’s recipe since you liked it so much when we had it over there for the 4th of July last year.

YM: Great!  I’ll make us a drink, now and get outta this straight jacket.  Hey, what are you gonna call your version of the dish?

YW:  Well we were going to name it Bobbie before we decided it would really be funner in Fiji, so I’m calling it Bobbicued Kid.

YM:  (Laughing and petting the dog)  That’s great.  I love your sense of humor.  I hope we have plenty of leftovers.

_________________________________________________________________________________

And, here is the second scene:

“Good morning, East Bluegill Public Works Department.”

“Hello.  Is this where I arrange for a trash pickup.”

“Yes, Ma’am.  What is it?”

“I have a dead kid in my refrigerator.  I did it this morning, and I want it out.  I’ve got some shopping to do this afternoon and need the room.  I checked and I can’t bury it out side where we put Sniggles last year.”

“No, your right.  Besides raccoons might dig it up and leave a mess.”

“I don’t want that for sure.  When can you come?”

“Just wrap it good in some plastic and leave it by the curb before 6:30 tomorrow morning.  Or, if you want, you can bring it to the dump before 5 this afternoon.  Anyway.  Whatever’s easier for you.”

“I think I just leave it at the curb.  Thank you.”

“No problem.”

_________________________________________________________________________________

You may want to write to the JME, I don’t know.  I though of doing so and asking if they had any good recipes.

A Disturbing Piece of News for the Untied States

I have read, recently, that in many areas these Untied States of Amurriker are falling behind places like China and  the EU.  By the way is that a real place or simply a sound kids make when you give them a soft boiled egg for breakfast instead of Chocorottotoothflakes?

I am happy to know that His Hopefulness, as part of his plan to restore hope and make us number one again is embarked on a campaign to make the mountain of money we owe everyone else in the world insurmountable. (Including that little Albanian guy who sells apples and pencils just outside Bloomingdales in New York City, and has a fist full of Series E Savings Bonds from 1952 papering his bathroom in Greenpoint.)  I mean not only is it inconceivable, it’s growing so quickly that physicists at the Lost Alamo think it may soon reach critical mass begin a chain reaction and become the first Black Hole of Debt in the history of the universe, sucking all the money everywhere into itself.  Poor little Albanian.  he can console himself though by knowing he may contribute to the discovery of the much hypothesized but so far elusive Geithneron, the particle that generates the end of all wealth anywhere, and the Bankruptcy of Creation.

Well that puts us back in front, on top, in command, ahead of the competition where we rightfully belong at least so far as money and stuff are concerned.  I look forward to gasoline for $20.00 a gallon, and a pack of smokes for a C note..

I was vastly encouraged also with our Great leader’s move against the forces of religion here.  The Communists have long held a commanding lead in this critical area.  They know one thing and they know it well.  Religion gets in the way of human progress.  (So did the National Socialists of happy memory and murderous efficiency.)

So I applaud him, and everyone who is working so hard with him to change the way we think about life and what really matters; getting everything we can get as soon as we can, and not listening to anyone tell us we can’t have it or gotta pay for it.  Which is just silly.  Anyway, I can’t understand most of what they say all those dependent clauses and stuff.  Besides how can you form a conscience?  What the hell IS a conscience, anyway?  Anyone ever seen one?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Reminds me of a line from a song from some 1950’s musical: “How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?”  That’s silly, too.  You can’t.  Moonbeams don’t even exist.

Neither do consciences, probably.

But, there is a cloud on the horizon.  This link will take you to an article in a little known journal about the Catholics, Public Enemy #1 if you are a good citizen, and what they’re doing around the world.  I like to check it out so I know what tricks they’re up to.  Believe me, they have their hands in a lot of stuff.  Anyway, every once in a while I come across a piece of good news like this article.  Good, I mean, for the folks in Congo, wherever that is, but bad for us.

I mean, we haven’t even shut down a newspaper over here, let alone a TV station.  And, I’ll give odds that no one anywhere over here has even begun to plan a massacre.  For crying out loud!  This is the Untied States!  We gotta get going!