Monday, January 31, 2011

Does a second Mea Culpa nullify the first?…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 6:30 PM Permalink

…a question that has troubled me greatly lately. I may have my answer.

I've been corresponding with my best friend and brother-in-arms and he told me we had missed a blogiversary here, something I did not know and had not even considered in the midst of my recent, very well-known (to our readers), utter and complete blowout in my mind, the worst in at least five years and one well-documented dementia falling four-square within the very definition (dementia - dementia |diˈmen sh ə| noun Medicine | a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning); it ain't no picnic and there's nothing but ever greater and rising higher pain when it finally clobbers me every few years.

It dawned on me, as I slowly began to recover, just how bad this episode was, and the people who mean the most to me, those I respect most highly, managed, with very sparse but meaningful messages helped me ground myself again and, with my brother from a another mother, Sailor, telling me we had missed a blogiverary it was the last little reminder of my humanity, or lack thereof, that brought to my attention that this break and the kind words of DanD and the wonderful people with whom I write convinced me that I should again start doing that which brings me happiness and that warm, fuzzy feeling, and that would be, of course, writing for you all, the most cathartic activity I know.

So, having demonstrated beyond doubt that I sometimes go full-goose Bozo and explode, out-of-control, it's time to show that the years of therapy, psychiatrists, the tons of medications I consume, and the love of my family and friends to give me hope that someday I will no longer experience these breakdowns - it's highly unlikely, but clearly possible - so hang with me if you dare and join me on this maniacal roller coaster as it rockets me through the twists and turns of my damaged mind at a dizzyingly frantic, white-knuckled-hold-on-for-your-life, furious pace with no one at the brakes.

So HAPPY BLOGIVERSARY (Sailor or the Vidiot will need to say what number it is) and thank you.

Ciao for now, bella ámi.

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Egyptian Wrath

posted by The Vidiot @ 2:40 PM Permalink

It's practically biblical and I have to hand it to them, those folks know how to protest.

I'm still in the throws of trying to find a job and settle in here in the Midwest, meanwhile, we're going to get pummeled by yet ANOTHER snow storm here. Ugh.

So, I'm still a little off the radar as far as news goes. Hell, I only knew about the impending storm because I overheard someone talking about it at the grocery store. That's what you get when you don't watch TV I suppose.

But I am watching the events in Egypt whenever I can sit down for a few moments.

For excellent coverage, go over to the English broadcast of Al Jazeera. (I too agree that the Arabic network's coverage is cable's "Sputnik Moment.")

Robert Fisk is there covering it for the Independent.

For good analysis, check out Juan Cole's blog. This article in particular explained very well some of the underpinnings of the protests.
Excerpt: The Nasserist state, for all its flaws, gained legitimacy because it was seen as a state for the mass of Egyptians, whether abroad or domestically. The present regime is widely seen in Egypt as a state for the others– for the US, Israel, France and the UK– and as a state for the few– the Neoliberal nouveau riche. Islam plays no role in this analysis because it is not an independent variable. Muslim movements have served to protest the withdrawal of the state from its responsibilities, and to provide services. But they are a symptom, not the cause. All this is why Mubarak’s appointment of military men as vice president and prime minister cannot in and of itself tamp down the crisis. They, as men of the System, do not have more legitimacy than does the president– and perhaps less.
And for heaven's sake, don't even bother with the American media. When Mohamed ElBaradei was giving his speech, CNN was talking about Michelle Bachman and I think FOX was going on about Charlie Sheen's cocaine addiction.

And if you just want to watch a perfect "RAH RAH" moment, watch hundreds of ARMED Egyptian riot police run for their lives from protesters:



Ain't it sweet?

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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

To my brother from a different mother…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:32 PM Permalink

…I send my condolences for your loss. I had feared something disastrous had happened to that member of your family whose identity will remain anonymous as I would never break your trust by revealing it.

Instead I opened up the computer I had been ever so willing to abandon last week to find that you had been struggling with love found, love lost, love found again, then lost again as it seemed you were on a cosmic roller coaster spinning ever faster, ever closer to losing control as you hurled past memories, scenes of old, and yet still thrilled that the next turn of this maniacally cosmic 'coaster might still yet return your true love to you.

Alas, that did not happen, and your true love perished, my heart cries out with yours for a reason, any reason that it should be thus. It's not fair that you, my friend, should be denied the opportunity to see her just one last time so that you could express your obvious love for her with the hope and desire that she feel the same about you.

It is too sad that the finality of her death will forever deprive you of the opportunity to reconcile with her, to hear her voice caress your ears as, surely, your voice would have been equally caressing to hers.

Take heart my good friend and brother and cherish the moments when, in her presence, time and space were suspended, all laws of nature and science broken, and know that she, too, shared with you memories and the absence of anything else in life but you. during those close, intimate moments in time.

I will absolutely respect your request that no one call you, but I'm here for you bro, and so shall I remain. Call anytime, day or night, it makes no difference

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Monday, January 24, 2011

But I always thought that I'd see you again

posted by The Sailor @ 6:28 PM Permalink

So there's this girl I met in 7th grade and we went to the movies and stuff, and dated and fought, and stuff. And I saw her again a few years later and we dated and fought and stuff. And we lived together, and dated, and fought and stuff.

In between times she and I moved a thousand miles apart, she got married, I got tours, she got un-married and I got her. And we dated and lived together and stuff, and fought.

Over the years I proposed to her twice. Years apart. She was right to turn me down, I ain't, or at least wasn't, husband material. Smart girl, smart woman. I probably broke her heart more than she broke mine, but I never forgot about her. Years later, when I lived 3 thousand miles away I heard she got married again and moved a thousand miles away.

In the last few years I've been trying to contact her, mainly just to apologize for being a jerk, but kinda maybe hoping somehow in the back of mind that maybe she was un-married again. Hell, I even joined FaceBook just in case she ... but it's hard to find your friend on FB if you don't even know her last name.

But then I got a call from a mutual FB friend that she had died 3 years ago in an accident. I called that person a liar. Then I got angry at that person. The Kubler-Ross steps aren't quite as defined as they look in print. But if this a joke, it's a pretty fucking elaborate one to put a headstone in the ground.

Of course I'm handling it in the mature way that I've now grown up in. Fist sized holes in the wall, and "I ain't drunk, I'm just drinkin'" For my friends who are tempted to call me? Please don't, I don't feel like talking. I'm OK, just going thru the shit we all do.

For Debbie, I'm sorry, you deserved better than me for years, I hope you found him. "But I always thought that I'd see you again"

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Thursday, January 20, 2011

Ron Paul

posted by The Vidiot @ 12:05 PM Permalink

Here's a great speech he just did. He basically called Congress a bunch of crooked and spineless idiots to their face. Awesome.

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Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Greetings from St. Louis!

posted by The Vidiot @ 9:30 AM Permalink

We finally made it and what an odyssey it was.

We were supposed to leave Brooklyn the day after the blizzard hit. Unfortunately, neither Bloomberg nor the Department of Sanitation complied with our repeated demands to plow our street.

On the night of the blizzard, at about 3am, the dog had to pee, but the snow had drifted up both doorways and being as we were in the garden apartment, we couldn't get out. Teen Vidiot was up (He's convinced he's an insomniac so he acts the part. He's very "method.") so I made him shovel a path in the back patio so the dog could go. The dog, frightened by the walls of snow, scooted out, peed, and promptly scooted back in with a sort of "WTF?" look on her face. Once I saw how heavy the snow was and how much of it there was, I knew we weren't leaving that day. I called the movers and the U-Haul to postpone to maybe later that day.

Later that same morning, Monday, we tried to get out the front door and couldn't do it. We had to go upstairs and climb out and down the snowy stairs. Once out, we saw the devastation; the streets were all not plowed, even the major thoroughfares, sans one. On that one street, some guy in a pickup truck with a plow lived on that street and so he plowed it himself. We saw stuck sanitation trucks, some just sitting there, others being pulled out by other sanitation trucks. Lots of cars just parked/stuck in the middle many of the streets. (Teen Vidiot made a killing helping folks dig out their cars.) The most surreal part of it all was the silence; not only were there no cars and buses, but there were no airplanes either. I called the movers and the U-Haul to postpone to Tuesday.

The next day, Tuesday, we thought, OK, maybe they'll clear it today. But no. They'd gotten to the major streets, but the side streets were still not snowplowed. We awoke to find an abandoned taxi stuck in the middle of the street, right next to our car. Some idiot driver dropped off his fare and then tried to drive down the street, realized it wasn't plowed, tried to back out and got stuck. It was there all day. We spoke with someone at the funeral home on the corner and she said that it was Bloomberg's fault the streets were a mess since he didn't call the snow emergency on Sunday when he should've because he didn't want to pay for the weekend overtime. That was the first I'd heard that one. (Later, someone else said the sanitation workers had staged a slow-down to make Bloomberg look bad because of all the budget cuts to their department. I'm more likely to believe the first story than the second, only because the second provides too perfect a cover for Bloomberg.)

That afternoon, Dr. Vidiot and Teen Vidiot, along with a few other neighborhood guys, helped push one of the cars on our street out, clearing the way for our car. Dr. Vidiot contemplated digging out our car, but talked himself out of it because there was just so much snow and even if we could maneuver the car around the abandoned taxi to go get the U-Haul, loading it would be impossible. I called the movers and the U-Haul to postpone.

The NEXT day, Wednesday, the side streets were STILL not plowed, not that they could plow our street with the abandoned taxi in the middle of it anyway. However, the funeral director had hired a backhoe to clear his end of the street since he said, "Folks die, blizzard or no, and we need the street for the mourners." He also had the backhoe clear as much of the snow it could behind our car, but by then, some idiot yuppie SUV owner had parked behind our car so now we had to wriggle the car out between that SUV and the abandoned Taxi, no easy feat with the snow and ice. By late afternoon, the taxi company showed up to get their vehicle. They tried to dig it out, but apparently, the driver had burned out the transmission trying to back out. The car had no reverse so even though they had dug it all out, the car couldn't be backed out of it's spot. They had to wait for a tow truck.

At this point, I'm a complete and utter wreck. I'd been living with boxes for a couple of weeks, I was exhausted from the packing, I still had packing of last minute stuff that I couldn't do because I had no idea when 'last minute' was going to be, everything was in complete disorder, I had to stop cooking because all the pots and pans were packed so we had to eat out every night which became difficult since, during the blizzard, a lot of the restaurants were unable to open, it just seemed to drag on forever with no end in sight. If you'd have seen me, you'd have seen that my eyes were little spinning saucers of insanity.

Dr. Vidiot said, "That's it! I can't take it anymore!" and he ordered Teen Vidiot to grab the shovel, he handed me a shovel, and he marched out the door with his shovel and we got to digging out the car. It took several hours. One neighbor egged us on because her car was in front of ours and she wanted out too, but she didn't have a husband or a teenager to do the digging. Finally, at about 5pm on Wednesday night, we got the car out. People were cheering and applauding. The funeral guy said we were welcome to park our U-haul overnight in front of his place as long as we were out by morning, I called the movers and we stuffed that damn truck to the gills in record time. The next day, after we got the mattresses and plants loaded up, we were back at the U-haul to load the car onto the trailer and we were off.

The drive was fairly uneventful. We only got stuck at the first gas station when we underestimated the distance the trailer was from the pump. The dog was cool all the way up until the last few hours of Day One. Then, she started to pant and shiver uncontrollably. She knew something big was happening but couldn't put her paw on it. Dr. Vidiot had to be reigned in a bit. He was doing the guy thing, "We're making great time!" and, "Just one more exit, then we'll stop." We ended up in Washington, PA for the night. We brought in our luggage and the plants. We ordered a pizza because we were starving and Dr. Vidiot and I promptly made a bee-line for the hotel bar to suck down some relaxant. We waited and waited for that pizza and it never showed up. It was late and we were exhausted, so we went to tell Teen Vidiot that the pizza wasn't coming. When we got to the room however, we caught him in mid-bite, with what apparantly was his fifth piece of pizza in his mouth. He was all, "What? I thought it was for me." I contemplated killing him.

The next morning, we piled back into the truck, though not after one of the plant boxes broke and dumped dirt all over the hotel floor. The dog was still twitching and panting. I was worried she was going to stroke out. When we stopped for gas, I got her some benedryl. Thank god for such a simple solution. She went from Ozzie Osbourne to Siddhartha in about 15 minutes. For the rest of the ride, she just sat on my lap, looked around, eyes half open, lips curled up in a barely discernible, buddahesque grin.

We pulled into St. Louis on New Year's eve night, tired, exhausted and a bit stressed out, but we made it. We celebrated the new year in our new city.

We've been here two weeks now, the first five days spent in hotel room, the rest, in our new apartment in a suburb of St. Louis. We're not really suburb types, but the schools in St. Louis are so horrendous that we had to move out here. Teen Vidiot's grades aren't good enough for a magnate school and Dr. Vidiot's salary isn't big enough to pay for private school. So, while we wanted to move to the Soulard neighborhood, we're out here in Clayton.

It's not half bad as suburbs go. I can walk to a great grocery store, the high school is just across the street, as is the community center which has pools, gyms, classes and anything else you can think of for almost no membership fee for residents. The dog doesn't have a back yard, but she gets lots of walks where she gets to chase lots of birds and squirrels in the park. I can walk around my apartment without bumping into any furniture. For the first time in 25 years, my thighs don't have bruises! The kitchen, while not ideal, is 500% better than the last nightmare, so I'm happy with that. Dr. Vidiot's folks bought us a new washer (kiss kiss!) and we found a used dryer for a $100 and for the first time in 25 years, I can do laundry like a normal person! We have central air and heat and the parking is free and easy. Dr. Vidiot no longer has to wake up early to go to a job that he hates. He's now an assistant professor at a big state school. He only teaches 2/3 classes a semester and has the rest of the time to do research. In his entire adult life, he's never had time to do his research. He's always had to work several jobs, go to school and squeeze in his research between jobs. He's been sleep deprived since he was 17, so, you know, he's happy. Teen Vidiot is 15. Whether or not he's happy is a mystery.

People here are dead pleasant. I mean, wow. Maybe a bit too outgoing late at night though. Dr. Vidiot's head of perfectly curly hair seems to attract a lot of attention, usually sometime after midnight. Right around then, all the inhibitions are thoroughly lubricated and hands just start reaching out to touch it. The nightlife is pretty good; live music everywhere you go, decent restaurants, quaint neighborhoods. It's a cross between New Orleans and Chicago. The worst thing about living here is to get everything you need, you need to go to strip malls and mini-malls. There's no way around going to big-box stores (though I still will not allow myself to go to a Walmart) but it's easy to get around and their idea of a traffic jam is laughable.

All in all, it's a great palate cleanser after years of NYC life. We may be back in NYC eventually, if that tenure track line is ever opened up again (the one he got, but then the school cut the funding for right before they offered him the position.) but until then, I'm going to chill out just fine here.

Political blogging will resume shortly, just as soon as reacquaint myself with current events. I've been in the moving bubble for a while and I'm not even sure who the speaker of the House is anymore.

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Sunday, January 16, 2011

Mea culpa, mea culpa…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:39 PM Permalink

…I have apparently driven away large numbers of our former readers and to them I extend my heartfelt apologies and best wishes.

My good friend, Sailor, my brother from a another mother, once told me that when I was writing the readership increased dramatically, sometime double previous levels, which I did not believe until I actually compared the figures Sailor regularly emails me. The most recent report showed a hugh loss of readership and buried deep within the twisted world of my brain the only objective reasons I can discern for this lies within the posts below, my posts.

I cannot bear the thought that I have, by being myself, which is no picnic, driven away even a single reader that the fine people of this site labored long to attract.

I am filled with sorrow at the mere thought that I have wrought damage where none should have been wrought and so I am compelled to gracefully resign; I wish you all the very best in life.

Thank you all, Sailor, Vidiot, Dr. Vidiot, Teen vidiot, and Vidiot Mom, everyone who ever read my ramblings, and to DanD, with whom I have engaged in much banter I found to really be a lot of fun.

Ciao, bella ámi. (Good-bye, beautiful people)

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Physician Heal Thyself…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 3:02 AM Permalink

…as Bill's medical and mental health physician I follow the postings he makes here at VidiotSpeak as a vital diagnostic tool to ascertain whether he is on an even keel, so to speak, or whether he is a more likely to have left a sail hanging overboard, slowly filling and sinking the ship of state of mind from the adhesive property of water molecules slowly 'climbing' the sail through the miracle of osmosis, only to continue its trip downward, after death threats from the Gravity Union, through the sail into the boat itself. After an undetermined length of time requiring a separate determination of the determinative nature of this undetermined length of the determined time for this process the boat sank.

My name is Horatio Hornblower Luxuryyacht, Rhodes Scholar, graduated top of class from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Cornell, Penn State, and Ohio. I attended, though I did not graduate, several all women universities. I received my several Phd s in Ohio when there were tin soldiers and Nixon coming to my graduation ceremony that was interrupted when a car backfired and the National Guards killed several hundred thousand college students, including Raul and Fidel Castro of children's TV fame (F-I-D-E-L C-A-S-T-R-O, FIDEL CASTRO, Fidel Castro, long may you live in memory, born on a mountain top in Tennessee, killed him a bar when he was only three, he and Paul Bunyan sure chopped down a lot of trees, until an injury to their ACLs blew out both their knees).

I will give you an update on his condition and his prognosis, yes, yes, YEAH, YOU IN THE FUCKIN' CORNER! Whatta you want? Wow, that is a very good question, but, no, we don't think years of wild partying, debauchery, orgiastic sex parties, heavy drug use, and rapid withdrawal of drugs used for decades to calm him had any affect at all. Although Bill did quit smoking, having sex, using drugs, and drinkin' alcohol for the helluvit, and now tells me it was absolutely the scariest twenty minutes of his life. Next? Oh, thanks for that question, but no, Bill has no knowledge whatever that he is I and I is he and we are all together. We can all poo-poo any other opinions on Bill's mental health except to say that he can't locate it at this time We are certain it will turn up as soon as he removes all the excess business cards from his wallet so he can get his wife's number and ask her where it is. This may prove to be time consuming since Bill, like Ronnie Raygun, will soon announce his complicity is trading Smores for hostages in the Smores-Contra administration of the goofy old pricks at the GOP Headquarters.

Next? Bill likes to blow off steam by singing in the rain when its plain Spain will not give us rain or good drugs again and again and that causes him much pain. What's that, Bill? Oh, awright, does anyone have any drugs with them? Bill never does them unless he is alone or with someone. O, Yeah, it's true - and he never lies unless he is alone or with somebody either. Hey I ought to know, being one of the three of us

Last question - that rockin' hot, hardbodied, obvious wild child there on her knees…uh…yes, Bill is available tonight but if his hard-on remains for more than four hours you must promptly call the hospital to get three nurses or more there to help beat his manly member into submission. Last time we went through twelve nurses before the Kraken was called to drive it away because Bill don't play that; it's so embarrassing to watch professional nurses reduced to babbling, quivering, satiated, sweat covered, and totally wild sex fiends. Sex Lives ruined forever. How tragic.

The reason I called this press conference is to confirm that Bill, me, and I had been without the drugs that protects us from panic attacks, anxiety paralysis, and all sorts of crap because the VA pharmacy told us in… October? that we we had no refills. Through the miracle of compound time we were able to land our ship long enough to get the meds but still escape all those nurses. Boy! Time must fly when you're that high.

But to fill in the gaps and say that which could not be said before I had to relearn the language, having forgotten both Swahili and pig-den Latin, which I/we had heard was a dead language but no one can tell us where its fucking buried and we have seen no definitive, or non-definitive newspaper reports on the matter. Anyway, after further reflection and before the mirror broke we just wanted to step back through the looking glass, which is smaller, more elongated, and has a tighter crawl space than the typical mirror to reassess our reassessment. To connect our ravings of late and attempt to show how my twisted mind still possesses some modicom of intelligence and insight

Sick people, those truly sick, can only partially control criminal urges. This is because even a sick man recognizes sick cops that TASER without necessity and use the TASER to torture. Torture has been brought back, clandestinely at first, notoriously, well known now is that our leaders order surreptitious assassinations, kidnappings, and torturing citizens who cannot be proven to have committed any crime 'cept self-defense or being Muslim. gwb also ordered extreme torture, lied about it, was found out, and these heinous acts continue under Obama. Drones are launched with Hellfire missiles that inject true hell into wedding parties, village gatherings, children's birthday parties, and even people just walking down the street. The United States became the laughingstock and major disappointment to countries unaware that we had no intentions of honoring their laws, our laws, several treaties, and the world learned that America is no longer an honest broker of peace and instead now commits warcrimes so horrific hundreds of thousands of people died and millions more were displace from there ancestral homes by America and its armed forces.

Domestic police, as I described in my earlier ramblings, follow the example of their leaders and thus torture, too, demand immediate response and if they respond 1/4 second late you can depend on being beaten and shocked senseless by every cop on the scene. The perp here is clearly insane as all personal accounts of people who knew him state; he will not be convicted because he is clearly insane and easily slipped through the system because though people were afraid and thought him looney, no one to the time to report him to authorities who may have been able to intercede.

No help from the schools, none from his parents, so the opportunity presented was guaranteed at least partial results; the police could not possibly respond swiftly enough to stop this entirely and the perp knows it. He will enjoy the trial as one witness after another is forced to tell they thought him crazy. IT's true and will resonate with a jury.

Unknown to police or mental health authorities his actions are further provoked by teabagger-gop-ers and their excessively puerile mentality."There (was) a killer on the road…His brain (was) squirming like a toad…Take a long holiday…Let the children play…If you give this man a ride sweet families will die…Riders on the Storm(The Doors).

So every component of this tragedy was obvious to SOMEONE along the way…but none acted. The stage set, the execution of its elements were all too easy to carry out, and ALL society is to blame. I/we/Bill wanted to complete our analysis.

His parents didn't help him; the schools didn't help him or ID him to the police; army recruiters who rejected him but, again, did nothing. The politicians are too busy with their dual monologues to have a proper dialog, the media megaphone, to me, have never helped anyone so no safety net there. A logical progression leading to murder and mayhem. A straight line to my eye; causes and effects.

Forgive me, please, for not making that clearer, though in the small fraction my functioning brain I saw repeated a scenario we have seen time and again and will see again in the future. If more people trained themselves to make intuitive calls as to whom exactly is dangerous, we would all sleep easier.

NOTE: I know I make a lot of drug references. What can I say? I'm a genuine sixties hippy and grew up in that era where drug use was common, but more common still was the humor generated by people like Cheech & Chong, George Carlin, Richard Pryor, SNL (original cast), and on and on. I found that type of humor funny then and, if properly executed, funny still. I personally take far too many serious and deleterious prescription drugs to use street drugs that would blow up my heart, chop off my legs and throw them into the fire, enable me to leave the planet, or something; I forget which. But those are the only drugs I do, period.

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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:50 PM Permalink

…is the adage of old that has guided countless aspects of my life.

When I served as a law enforcement supervisor making an arrest there was no way possible for a suspect to provoke me to violence short of actually committing violent acts and never by words alone.

That was my moral grounding long before enlisting, I learned it as a child, it was part of my training after enlisting, it was a point of unspoken personal pride that I could not be provoked to violence by mere words, no matter the circumstances.

I would be too ashamed to belong to many, many L.E. organizations or police departments in today's world where all to often the first response to any real or imagined insult or even the slightest hesitancy to respond to an officer is the use of TASERs, often and repeatedly, upon the person doing so.

I saw news coverage of three or more officers approaching a baseball fan, from behind in a stadium almost half empty, who had gone down several rows to speak to others. The guy kept talking and I could see no sign that he had even heard the approaching officers when, shockingly (absolutely no pun intended), the officers began TASERing him over and over until they ultimately took the man into custody.

Neither the cops, nor anyone else, were in any apparent danger nor under threat of violence, the guy was simply talking to other fans and I reckon someone might have taken offense at something the laughing, garrulous fan said, but there appeared to be absolutely no cause to violate that man in such a barbaric manner.

Many of you may have seen the incident of a college student protesting the presence of Karl Rove with words alone. As he turned and saw the approaching officers and with despair in his voice quietly pleaded, "Oh, no. Please don't TASER me," which of course, is precisely what the three or four officers promptly did. The man quite obviously recognized the threat posed by the officers themselves whose conduct was itself, to my mind, a criminal assault and battery on the student.

Here in California a man was recently shot in the head and killed while laying on the ground, surrounded by several officers, the arresting officer, who clearly had the man under control with lots of backup and the subject clearly in control, discharged his service revolver and killed a man merely suspected of an offense.

When convicted of murder the officer, in his defense, alleged that he thought he had his TASER in hand, not his service weapon. Bullshit. Any officer unable to tell, blindfolded, whether he was holding a semi-automatic handgun or a TASER is either stupid beyond belief or lying. The jury got it right.

Why this reliance on torture, which is absolutely and without question what is happening when someone is TASED five, ten, fifteen times by several officers aiding and abetting the crime against uncharged persons?

Is there no longer any pride, training, and professionalism being taught in police academies? Is willingness to attack and torture non-responsive suspects now a prerequisite for becoming a law enforcement agent? Are they recruiting and retaining officers that are so cowardly or so ill-trained or so lacking in judgment that an officers FIRST action is to assault, batter, and torture rather than to protect, serve, and seek non-violent resolutions for any slight, real or imagined? Even if an incident leads to or calls for apprehension of a citizen do they so lack the skill and sense of pride and duty that those upon whom we rely to prevent violence are themselves now the instigators and executioners of unneeded and/or uncalled for violence?

I grieve for all the victims of this mentally deranged man and for all our citizens and our once great nation.

In my two previous rants, which is of course what they were, I myself used much profanity and vitriol in expressing my opinion. I do not regret using such language or expressing my opinion as I did. Nor will I apologize for those rants. They are my words, my opinion, the way I chose to use the words. If anyone was offended I recommend that you just not read my writings.

I have many times stated here that I am aware that I suffer from mental illness after suffering years, more than a decade + six years, of intractable, unrelenting 24/7/365 neurological pain from the full radical neck dissection (a medical term of art and beyond common understanding or interpretation of the plain words) required to remove two different Agent Orange caused cancers that well nigh killed me.

I suffered endlessly afterword from the nerve damage, but it wasn't until I realized that every night I fell asleep with tears of despair in my eyes and awakened each and every morning with tears in my eyes at the realization that I had to face yet another day of pain smothering all reason, all desire to live, the will to carry on that I knew I must seek help.

I am not now, nor have I ever been suicidal. I value life, love, family, and duty to ever take a life without cause and I was compelled to keep on going aided by the love of my Warrior Woman and beloved son, without either of whom I would surely have perished.

But I did recognize that I was, and still am, mentally ill and sought help from my doctors at the local VA clinic. I have another continuation of care appointment today as a matter of fact so I will be closing this post soon.

I have covered a lot of ground here on a meandering path that to me seems to be fairly straight. Many of our readers here will intuitively discern this. Others won't, but that's o.k., too. I am no longer in full control of my faculties, blocks of memory rotate in and out of view, some that have never returned, others remain or come and go that are crystal clear. I remain lost in time and space and can rarely tell anyone, even myself, what time, date, month, year, or decade in which I am living at any given point. I simply don't know. My vocabulary, ability to spell, handwriting, and sense of logic and expression have all been reduced to a small fraction from that I previously enjoyed, but I know it and live with it. To me this last horrific round of lunatics and gun happened…a week? Ten days? A month ago? I couldn't remember or figure out why this seemed so long ago; imagine my surprise when I found that this incident happened only two days ago. It isn't possible.

I have always had a memory bordering on the photographic since age four I got my first library card. I would check out 10 to 15 books, read fifty pages of one, fifty of another an so on until my mind was trained to be able to switch to any book and instantly recall everything, plot, characters, relationships, names, dates and times of events, etc.; it took less than a few months (In my third grade year testing showed my reading and comprehension levels exceeded those of a college graduate entering post graduate studies. That's also gone and affects me in very not-so-subtle ways as I lament the loss, the joy of reading, the challenges to memory that would prospectively ensure I became a firt class, very expensive to hire bounty hunter that worked on a "no locate, no pay basis" and that worked maybe four to six months a year (during winter) and then took the rest of the year off to spend on the beach with the love of my life. Now I am unable to work at all and, in fact, was told by the VA that I am now permanently medically retired and forbidden to work. Another loss. More stuff I can never do again. It hurts me but I retain jut enough commonsense to know they are right.

I had to stop riding very powerful, very fast motorcycles; my neck, shoulder, winged scapula, and constant pain deprived me of a lifelong love for riding to fly at 150 mph where safe. Now I must consume so much medicine that I no longer drive a car for fear of accidentally losing control and injuring someone or anyone. My Warrior Woman or my son drive me wherever I need or want to go. Yet another depressing loss of something I enjoyed doing and for which I had considerable skills, abilities. Gone now. But I made the choice to do this VOLUNTARILY, to ensure my conditions and maladies didn't lead to irresponsible behaviors and violations of law.

Everyone, please, if you see the signs of mental illness or incapacity within yourself, family, friends, or anyone else, try, then try again and don't stop trying to encourage them to seek professional help.

It really does help.

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Monday, January 10, 2011

Psycho Killer, Qu'est-ce que c'est?

posted by The Sailor @ 6:38 PM Permalink

Excerpted via Coalition to Stop Gun Violence:
July 27, 2008—Jim Adkisson shoots and kills two people at a progressive church in Knoxville, Tennessee, wounding two. Adkisson calls it “a symbolic killing” because he really “wanted to kill…every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book,” but was unable to gain access to them.

December 9, 2008—FBI teams investigating the murder of white supremacist James Cumming, 29, a resident of Belfast, Maine, find supplies for a crude radiological dispersal dervice and other explosives in his home. Cumming's wife, who shot him to death after being abused by him repeatedly, explains, "His intentions were to construct a dirty bomb and take it to Washington to kill President Obama. He was planning to hide it in the undercarriage of our moter home."

April 4, 2009—Neo-Nazi Richard Poplawski shoots and kills three police officers responding to a 911 call to his home in Pittsburgh. His friend Edward Perkovic tells reporters that Poplawski feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on its way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon.” Perkovic also commented that Poplawski carried out the shooting because “if anyone tried to take his firearms, he was gonna’ stand by what his forefathers told him to do.”

April 25, 2009—Joshua Cartwright, 28, a member of the Florida National Guard, shoots and kills two Okaloosa County sheriff's deputies attempting to arrest him on a domestic abuse charge. Cartwright is killed in an enusing gun battle with police. Cartwright's wife reports that he was "severely disturbed" that Barack Obama had been elected president. Okaloosa County Sheriff Edward Spooner states that Cartrwight was "interested in militia groups and weapons training."

May 31, 2009—Scott P. Roeder shoots and kills Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. The FBI lists Roeder as a member of the Montana Freemen, a radical anti-government group. In April 1996, he had been pulled over in Topeka, Kansas, for driving with a homemade license plate. Police found a military-style rifle, ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder, and two 9-volt batteries in his car.

February 18, 2010—Joseph Stack of Austin, Texas, flies a single-engine plane into an office building containing nearly 200 IRS employees, killing one and wounding 13. In a suicide note, Stack lays out his grievances with the federal tax agency, stating, "The law 'requires' a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that's not 'duress' than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is ... Violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer."

March 4, 2010—John Patrick Bedell, a California resident, travels to Arlington, Virginia, and opens fire on police officers at the entrance to the Pentagon. Bedell is armed with two semiautomatic firearms and "many [ammunition] magazines." Bedell injures two officers before he is killed by return fire. Reports reveals Bedell to be a Truther who believed that the U.S. government had been taken over by a criminal organization in a 1963 coup.

May 20, 2010—Jerry Kane, Jr., 45, and his son Joseph Kane, 16, fatally shoot two Arkansas police officers with AK-47 assault rifles during a routine traffic stop on Interstate 40 in West Memphis. The Kanes are killed during an exchange of gunfire with police in a Walmart parking lot 90 minutes later. Jerry Kane, an Ohio resident and anti-government activist, had a long history with police and had recently spent three days in jail for driving with an expired license plate and no seat belt. Kane considered himself a "sovereign citizen" and ran a business that centered on debt-avoidance scams.

July 18, 2010—California Highway Patrol officers arrest Byron Williams, 45, after a shootout on I-580 in which more than 60 rounds are fired. Officers had pulled Williams over in his pick-up for speeding and weaving in and out of traffic when he opened fire on them with a handgun and a long gun. Williams, a convicted felon, is shot several times, but survives because he is wearing body armor. Williams, a convicted felon, reveals that he was on his way to San Francisco to "start a revolution" by killing employees of the ACLU and Tides Foundation.

July 30, 2010—Camp Hill prison guard Raymond Peake, 64, is charged with robbery and the murder of Todd Getgen. Peake allegedly shot Getgen to death at a local shooting range and stole Getgen's custom, silenced AR-15 rifle. Investigators follow Peake to a storage unit when they find three firearms: Getgen's AR-15 rifle, a scoped Remington rifle that had been reported stolen from the range in May, and a second AR-15 rifle. Thomas Tuso is also arrested and charged with conspiracy, receiving stolen property and other crimes. Peake tells police that he and Tuso had been stealing guns "for the purpose of overthrowing the federal government."

August 17, 2010—Patrick Gray Sharp, 29, opens fire on the Department of Public Safety in McKinney, Texas, and unsuccessfully attempts to ignite gasoline and ammonium nitrate in a trailer hitched to his truck. Sharp is armed with an assault rifle, a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, and a 12-gauge shotgun. He is killed after an exchange of gunfire with police arriving on the scene. Miraculously, no one else is hurt. Sharp's roommate, Eric McClellan describes him as "a great guy" and states, "We're Texans. We have a right to bear arms."

January 8, 2011—Jared Lee Loughner, 22, shoots U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 others at a "Congress in Your Corner" event at a Safeway supermarket in Tuscon, Arizona. He kills six, including federal judge John Roll, and wounds 14, including Giffords, who is shot in the head. Loughner has an extensive history of mental illness and substance abuse, yet is able to purchase two handguns and a high-capacity ammunition magazine legally at Sportsman's Warehouse on November 30, 2010. In a YouTube video posted in December 2010, Loughner states, "You don’t have to accept the federalist laws ... Nonetheless, read the United States of America’s Constitution to apprehend all of the current treasonous laws."
These are just the incidents where someone died. I guess they could all be just lone wackos, but their speech and writing have an awful lot in common with that broadcast by Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Ruch Limbaugh and Michael Savage to name a few.

It's also very similar to that by Republican candidates and office holders.
March 21-22, 2009—Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) states that she wants residents of her state to be “armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people—we the people—are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.”

July 15, 2009—Katherine Crabill, a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in the state’s 99th District makes headlines by calling on Americans to resist the course President Obama has set for the country. Appearing at a “Tea Party” rally, Crabill quotes a 1775 speech by Patrick Henry and then states, “We have a chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box. But that's the beauty of our Second Amendment right.

September 28, 2009—Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), the Chairman of the Second Amendment Task Force in the U.S. House of Representatives, calls House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “domestic enemy of the Constitution” at a health care reform town hall meeting.

May 30, 2010—Sharron Angle, a candidate for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator in Nevada, tells the Reno Gazette-Journal that a recent increase in gun sales nationwide "tells me that the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways.

October 21, 2010—Pastor Stephen Broden, the Republican candidate for U.S. Representative in Texas' 30th Congressional District, tells WFAA-TV in Dallas that the violent overthrow of the government is an "option" that remains "on the table."

November 9, 2010—U.S. Representative-Elect Allen West of Florida's 22nd Congressional District hires conservative radio talk show host Joyce Kaufman as his Chief of Staff. On July 3, Kaufman told a crowd of Tea Party supporters, “I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendments rights was they gave me a Second Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will."

November 29, 2010—U.S. Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, circulates a PowerPoint presentation to his colleagues in which he compares the Obama administration to the Nazi regime in Germany and likens himself to Gen. George Patton, bragging, "Put anything in my scope and I will shoot it."

June 12,2010-Jesse Kelly, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords opponent wrote "Get on Target for Victory in November Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly"
I'll ignore Sarah Palin, as everyone should, but this is not an isolated incidence, it is a trend.

Do I think such speech should be illegal? No.

But if a high school student had put cross hairs on their opponents and continually wrote about revolution and 2nd Amendment solutions, they'd be arrested. If an American Muslim had done it they'd be in GITMO, if they weren't targeted for death first. If the New Black Panther Party had showed up at political rallies carrying assault rifles, they'd be in prison and have congressional committees saying they should be in GITMO.

So let's please be consistent when we apply the Constitution and the PATRIOT Acts?

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"Our thoughts go out to those impacted…" The White House (according to MSNBC)…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 1:58 PM Permalink

…IMHO (oh, all right, I've never been humble about expressing my opinion nor do I consider my opinion to be humble), there could not be a more mealy-mouthed, evasive, non-expression of grief absent any mention or acceptance of responsibility by federal or state, so-called, authorities. Maybe somethin' more like this:
To Gabrielle Giffords, her family, friends, those innocents engaging in civil discourse, their families, friends, and those expecting to dump off responsibility for this travesty of justice and blame a clearly mentally ill man that has long been the subject of many queries and investigations by your local schools and so clearly unfit to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Armed Forces that he was rejected, despite the thousands of waivers given to convicted dope dealers, violent offenders, gang members (most of whom were required to kill someone to join the gang) convicted criminals of almost every stripe, and others that, historically, would also have been summarily rejected as unfit to kill in the name of the United States of America.

Each and every partition of government that viewed, dealt with, spoke to, and observed this obviously demented man FAILED YOU, not for any good nor acceptable nor even necessary reason except that every branch of this formerly great country and government and most every arrogant elected or appointed asshole has become so engaged in consolidating their maniacal base of power to engage in international warcrimes, clandestine murders ordered with all the conscience, pride, and dementia of Hannibal Lecter that NO ONE in or of the bigoted, radically, racially, and socially effete snobs of the 'better than thou' rightwing government of Arizona nor anyone in the federal government could get off their hairy asses to protect the very person of a DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE or the innocents of Arizona, being so consumed with puffing up their emaciated minds and bodies trying to outlaw people different than themselves that they CHOSE TO DO NOTHING; accessories before the fact these diseased despots willfully, deliberately, and shamelessly permitted this to happen as surely as if your governor and state legislature, all harbingers of hate, had purchased the high-powered guns, high capacity clips, and devastatingly destructive ammunition and then with malice aforethought taken aim and started shooting.

Had this sick, sick man vocalized targeting a teabagger-gop-er representative the site of this tragedy would undoubtedly have been blanketed with trigger happy guardians of the status quo just itching to open fire and show the world how well rethuglicans protect, harbor, enable, and provide security for their fellow rethuglicans and just how easy it is to conspire, create, and then watch their political enemies die from GOP malfeasance in office and their willing, criminal negligence, BUT YOU'LL HEAR NO APOLOGIES NOR ACCEPTANCE OF RESPONSIBILITY FROM ANY BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT OR PERSON THEREIN.

You will instead hear every rehashed, mealy-mouthed excuse and the pointing of fingers at a demented man identified previously and repeatedly by those responsible for your safety who chose to take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut rather than fulfilling the duties for which they were elected or appointed or hired to do. The games of denial have begun, the law enforcement authorities, military recruiters and others will obfuscate as much as they wish until the attorney who has apparently lost every death penalty case she's handled, i.e., Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, and others, loses this case and society as a whole cheers as a mentally ill man is put to death as a salve for the collective conscience or confine under circumstances in which he is totally unable to protect himself from political zealots already in a prison or mental institution that will kill him to curry favor for a possible pardon.

So, my fellow Americans, the dead, the wounded, those traumatized for life, possibly, as your president it is incumbent upon me to tell you now and with certainty that America is now and for the foreseeable future, perhaps forever, UNGOVERNABLE. NO ONE IN FEDERAL OR STATE GOVERNMENT GIVES A SHIT ABOUT ANYTHING EXCEPT BEING REELECTED IN ORDER TO CONTINUE THEIR PERSONAL CRUSADES TO ACCUMULATE THE POWER NOW AND FOREVER TO SEIZE YOUR FORTUNES, PERSONS, THOUGHTS, DREAMS, AND ASPIRATIONS AND THEY WILL KILL YOU, WHETHER THROUGH ACTION OR INACTION, TO REMAIN IN POWER, SO Y'KNOW WHAT? FUCK ALL OF YOU. DO NOT ask for nor expect the apologies of this openly rogue group of power mad politicians more willing to pick your pockets, shame, embarrass, or kill you than any government in American history AND YOU ARE POWERLESS TO STOP THEM OR US from doing as we fucking well please.

Any questions? MSM puppets…newsreaders…Bueller…Bueller…the republican with the high powered assault rifle…anyone…anyone?

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Sunday, January 09, 2011

Representative Gabrielle Giffords shot in head, 9-year old girl among others killed- And now,…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 11:35 AM Permalink

…you fucking evil, mean-spirited, wicked, arrogant, instigators-of-violence-by-praying-to-whatever-putrid-and-foul-deity you lying pack of hyenas making-up the republican, teabagger, GOP, conservative, religious rightwing tools of social disintegration, tyrannical assholes of wartime regimes bringing home the brutality, viciousness, and utter insanity of political assassinations as you have practiced time and again; the hundreds of thousands murdered in war crimes in the Middle East, and the millions displaced in one of the greatest man-made debacles of all time and the repeated calls by by teabagger-gop-ers to "ensure Obama fails," the calls to carry arms to Obama rallies, the baseless charges equating Obama and the Democratic Party with socialists, Nazis, fictional characters such as The Joker of Batman lore and fame (can any of you differentiate between fiction/fictional characters and REAL, LIVE, PEOPLE EVERY BIT AS ENTITLED TO EXIST, SPEAK, DREAM, HAVE FAMILIES, AND WORK TO HELP AMERICA AS ANY OF YOU JERK-OFFS?)

And to any/all who would purport that by these very words I, too, am debasing the FORMER American tradition of open, civil, political debate as much as the GOP you are entitled to hold any inaccurate or wrong opinion that you wish:
I am not now, nor will I ever be a holder of elected office.
I am entitled to my opinion, right or wrong, appealing or repugnant.
I do not call for, wish to see in operation, nor condone political assassinations or attempts in America or outside America, whether it is "ok'd" by our president or not, clandestinely or publicly.
I have no power to write or repeal statutes allowing or prohibiting the carrying of guns by citizens in public places where emotions in this charged political environment may, and can, result in senseless shootings and murders.
I do not have the bully pulpit of a president or the pit of slime occupied by teabagger-gop-ers in Congress to play the MSM for the fools they are.
Not once, re-read and check, have I ever called for the death of any person, but,
I sure as hell advocate for the immediate dissolution of any political party shown to be advocating political assassination in any way, shape, or form, and no matter how benign or ridiculous appeals for "killing, shooting, assassinating, threatening, attempting even by innuendo to bring about an assassination," (doesn't that sound obscenely stupid on the face of it? To tolerate ANY repeated calls for violence?)
Yes, yes, of course I know how we will hear of mentally ill kids, out-of-control-crazies looking for infamy, coulda happened anywhere (THAT much is true) and I know I'll only feel more and more sick at heart upon hearing the mealy-mouthed excuses for mindless butchers driven to vent their incomprehensible madness upon the innocent.

And the sham calls for action from the teabagger-gop-ers will ring as false as their preening and posing and lamenting the loss of a political enemy ('though, of course, no one in that party will be forthright enough to point out to the public that,"…the democrats just lost a vote in congress!" and, "…thank our lucky stars we can cancel that stupid vote on the even more insipid and violence provoking bill the title and subject of which is overturning the 'job-killing health care bill'; killing, destroying, ensuring failure of a sitting U.S. President, openly advocating his death, and stoking crowds to a killing frenzy by using the language of provoking war against a foreign force instead of seeking peace by reasoned, sensible, and productive debate to benefit America.

Not fair to only blame teabagger-gop-ers? Name the last democrat you or anyone else can name and provide the citation where any democrat ever called for the assassination of a republican in the last 170yrs or so. Say since Lincoln was assassinated. Name any prominent democrat religious leader ever calling for a presidential assassination.

I'm pissed. I do so hope many of you are as well.

My heart goes out to the families of Representative Gifford, the several dead and wounded, and especially the mother and family of the nine year-old child senselessly gunned down - in a state moving forward with legislation to ACTUALLY PERMIT students and teachers to CARRY GUNS TO SCHOOL, courtesy of the teabagger-gop-er gutless cowards that will never admit their duplicity is a large part of the root cause of this incident. Merely voting to enable and, to my mind certainly, exponentially increase the numbers of such attacks by placing guns into the hands of their lunatic fringe base should alone be sufficient to revoke the charter of the political party advocating such insanity.

Prepare yourself for much regurgitation as you witness the crocodile tears of teabagger-gop-ers that will affirmatively state and argue this incident happened because there weren't ENOUGH GUNS for a citizen to have shot the perp and "stopped" the slaughter of innocents their words and deeds inspired.

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Friday, January 07, 2011

Come on baby, eat the rich

posted by The Sailor @ 7:11 PM Permalink

(Most links are provided in footnotes.)
There are death panels, no, not the "death panels" lie Palin & other republicans used, (the 2009 Lie of the Year), but actual death panels. The death panel? It's Jan Brewer. (Donner, party of one? [/snark])

Gov. Jan Brewer has sentenced 100 people in Arizona to die. What was their crime? They were sick and needed a transplant. 2 have already died. The money was already allocated, AZ already was ready to receive 2x as much Fed money as they would have to provide, and reneged. Brewer and her Republican legislature said the state couldn't afford 1.4 million dollars. They were willing to spend that much to save 5 squirrels (I'm not kidding.)

But she still wants the Medicare money from the Federal coffers, (that would be our tax money) even tho she and AZ repubs reneged.

And she's not alone, 33 other republican governors also want our tax dollars to also renege on their duty to their fellow citizens. Somehow these bastards that ran on fiscal responsibility and states rights (like Gov Christie of NJ who was vacationing in Disneyworld during the snowpocalypse) suddenly think the Feds should bail them out.

And right now, the US House of Republicans Representatives, says that their can only be cuts in social services, and not defense, to balance the Fed budget.

Do you need any more proof that these people are trying, and succeeding, to kill us?

The majority of Americans say increase the taxes on the rich to help balance the budget. The majority of Americans don't want health care repealed, they just think it didn't go far enough.

But republicans are ignoring the will of the people.

I have a modest proposal; If you're out of work? If your family is hungry? EAT THE RICH.

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Sorry for my absence as the VA assisted the military devise new dental tortures…

posted by Bill Arnett @ 2:31 PM Permalink

…ostensibly applied to provide relief this diabolically cruel method of inflicting unbearable pain grows evermore efficient in the hands of the masked men with shiny, metallic tools with curls, swirls, sharp points, wide, flat steel levers to rip the mouth asunder while keeping their subject anesthetized and unaware of the crushing pain until the "patient" comes out from under.

True story: The only person whom I ever told I was going to kill and quite literally meant it was a dentist.

I was on duty with a terrible tooth ache when my supervisor came by my post, noticed the swelling on the right side of my jaw, immediately relieved me from duty and, since it was almost 8am I was taken directly to the base dentist on an emergency basis.

This young Captain came in, looked, told me it was an impacted lower wisdom tooth. Then he jammed a hugh needle into my gum and squirted some awful "irrigation" fluid (despite my twisting, turning, and muffled cries of pain) then placed a chisel on the tooth raised a big ass mallet and told me,"You're going to feel some pressure here," and then whacked the chisel very hard and broke the tooth into about fifty splinters; it felt like he had torn my jaw right out of my face. He then spent about a half-hour pulling the splinters, put a couple of stitches in there and then hustled me out the door without a word about painkillers.

I bore the most incredible pain of my life for about an hour-and-a-half, got a ride back to the clinic, marched in to the Captain's office, sat down, pushed his paperwork to the side and leaned over his desk trying to get nose-to-nose with him. He got pissed, demanding to know what I wanted, threatening courts-martial, and THAT'S when I put myself in the most severe jeopardy of my career: I grabbed him by his lapels, pulled him up out of his chair, got nose-to-nose and very quietly told him that,"You ARE going to give me something for my pain you bastard or I will leave here, walk down to the armory (only a short distance), draw my weapons, and I will then return and KILL YOU, UNDERSTAND?

I didn't allow the Captain to move while his clerk called the Colonel in command of the dental unit. He came storming into the room yelling something about NOBODY threatening one of his dentists, saw the Captain, still in my grasp, and then the Colonel calmed himself as I began to explain. He came over, coaxed me into letting the Captain go, and then gently shoved me into a dental chair. He took a cursory look, turned to the Captain, obviously pissed, and asked him,"Did you do this work? And didn't put him under while you missed an inch of severed gum that should have been stitched, and THEN SENT HIM OUT WITH NOTHING FOR HIS PAIN?" The Captain that had started to regain his confidence, expecting the Colonel to back him at all cost kinda deflated real quick as he answered in the affirmative.

The Colonel sent the Captain to await him at his office, worked on me VERY gently for almost an hour, and then gave me all sorts of pain relievers, the best of which for me was codeine - except that codeine puts me way O.D. (Out Dere), so he gave me four days off, called my first sergeant and told him to assign "handlers" to watch out for me and to safeguard me, 'cause for those four days I could make the wrong turn in my own barracks and find myself hopelessly lost.

They followed me to the shower, to the chow hall, to the mail room, from my bunk to a nice sunny spot where the houseboys shining shoes and stuff could help watch me.

NO ONE anywhere along the chain of command, from dental commanders, to my first sergeant, commander, NCOIC, NO ONE ever breathed a single word about courts-martials or even non-judicial Article 15 charges being filed against me for this incident.

The Captain that so obviously butchered me turned out to be a reserve Captain, was written up in a career ending letter by the Colonel, and was shipped home no longer a reserve captain.

The above story is entirely true, no names have been changed to protect the innocent as no names were used and none were innocent.

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Tuesday, January 04, 2011

So Tell Me, Who Are You?

posted by The Sailor @ 9:40 PM Permalink

Ohh, a poow wittle NYT columnist got his feewings hurt, again, about us anonymous bloggers. Never mind the fact that the NYT joyfully quotes 'anonymous' sources all the time that lie and lie and lie to them, just so they can have 'access' to people that lie to them? Hmmf!
Anonymity and the Dark Side of the Internet
Read the whole thing if you want, but all you need to know is that Stanley Fish, wrote a book called "There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing, Too."

Yet somehow he gets the free speech to declare there shouldn't be free speech. Hmmf again, because no one just gives me the right to have a giant megaphone like the NYT, because it's only wittle fwoks who can't afford a GIANT MEGAPHONE.
****************
In related news:
The Queen of Liars, Judith Miller, who helped drive a nation into war with her stenography and lies gets all upset that someone who revealed the truth is getting more press than her:
Reporter behind WMD claims calls Assange ‘bad journalist’

A former [Judith Miller] New York Times reporter assailed for her incorrect reports about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction is criticizing Julian Assange for being a "bad journalist."
[...]
Miller once defended her reporting with the argument that it is not a journalist's job to verify -- only to report inform readers of what they had been told.
I think that's the definition of a stenographer.

And just for facts sake, Wikileaks has vetted the leaks; when the US MIL and State dept refused to help, they went to the NYT, The Guardian and other papers. It was not a dump of 250,000 US State Dept cables, it's been a very careful release of only 2500 cables ... so far.

Judy, Judy, Judy, has more excuses, but that's a tale for a different day.

[insert The Who footage here]

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