In other Pope Francis news

Ebola and ISIS have kind of consumed the news of late but there's also the gay synod, I mean the synod that addresses gays and the Church. The draft of the draft is widely seen as being pro-gay, the only thing missing are the sex ads and Pope Francis always seems to be flirting with changing church teachings but then denies having led you on. He's a bit of a theological coquette but he still gives you that tingle. So the pre-draft/working paper talks about the gifts gays bring to the Church and society. Nobody's denying this (interior decorating, the arts, Chaz Dean's WEN Shampoo) but the more traditional wing of the Church wants to crack down harder on the sodomites and those couples in general who are living in sin. Now Francis always noted for saying Trendy Things has also said you can believe in evolution and God at the same time, there's no contradiction. I've no problem but do the evolutionists think that? Does Stephen Hawking agree with Francis? doubt it. OK so the church cafeteria is open and I'm gonna go grab me a bottle of abbey ale:)

Are you ready for Ebola?

It must have something to do with gay marriage. I'm not a medical authority but I do support a travel ban until it's contained. CDC Director Frieden is way over his head since the most serious thing he had to do as NYC Health Commissioner under Bloomberg was to try to ban big sugary drinks. The Drudge Report lately could be more accurately titled the Ebola Report and on the flipside the other school of thought that's been developing is that the media is talking about this way too much, a journalistic preoccupation or obsession or overkill. Then again I can understand it too since we have a decent chance at a real medieval plague here especially since nobody's on the same page. I myself get instinctively cranky whenever a subject is ground into a fine dust. As Saty once said everyone knows about the tits and I feel the same way about Ebola at least for now or I was but the CDC doesn't inspire me with confidence so I'm beginning to worry. FDNY now can't say "Ebola" over the dispatch for fear some nerd might be listening in on some scanner. OK so BB, Saty and maybe Dave can respond:)

The international coalition of the unwilling

My position which has evolved is that there needs to be an international coalition of boots on the ground in both Iraq and northern Syria to combat the psychopathic evil of ISIS. Also this constant conservative sniping at how Obama is handling this international crisis/tragedy is not part of the solution and usually at such times with such a real foreign threat out there their usual counsel is to get behind the president. Even Canada has gotten involved but whenever a new coalition partner makes an announcement it's usually along the lines of we're willing to do airstrikes in Iraq but not Syria. Well ISIS has adapted to airstrikes since they pretty much knew they were coming and Obama should never have ruled out boots on the ground so categorically when his own generals are saying otherwise. Lastly the FBI says they know the identity of "John the Beatle" or that masked hostage-beheader seen in those infamous ISIS videos but are withholding this information and not making it public for strategic reasons it is to be presumed. I don't know why since not making the name a matter of the international record has not stopped the latest hostage Brit Alan Henning from meeting the same fate. So those are my thoughts and I would say the matter is urgent.

Axis of Isil

I thought President Obama's speech last night detailing his global strategy for dealing with IS was rather brief and subdued. I thought it would be longer and more impassioned but I'm not against it and generally agree with the tenor. Obama has quite obviously chosen to use the label "ISIL" or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant instead of the more popular "ISIS" and there are reasons for this. Using ISIS constantly the way most in the media now do makes it sound like we're in a war with the ancient Egyptian goddess and also using this term all the time has that "Get Smart"/comic book feel to it (remember Don Adams and his nemesis KAOS?). Another reason Obama prefers the term ISIL is it definitely refers to the threat IS poses to the nation of Israel since Israel falls under the definition of the Levant along with other countries like Jordan. I haven't really read the reviews yet in particular those of the always nitpicking right-wingers but the war and it is a war will eventually include airstrikes in northern Syria and it is the pundit's view that just like Bush left the Iraq war with Obama Obama will leave the Syrian mess to the next president. Syria has already bombed certain IS targets in the north and I couldn't help thinking if they could have they would have used chlorine gas again. The Sotloff family spokesperson has alleged the so-called moderate forces fighting Assad, the Free Syrian Army, sold Steven Sotloff for a price to IS but the State Dept. denies this. OK thoughts:)

Mad dot in the universe

The God Problem - You finally meet God someday and go to him "how come you didn't do anything about ISIS?" God: "Who?" then you see Him quickly searching wikipedia. God truly has swarms of galaxies solar systems and other planets to worry about but then there's the guardian angels. As a Catholic we're taught they exist but I see no evidence. Where were James Foley and Steven Sotloff's guardian angels? (angel walks in on the imminent beheading: "what's going on here?" bullets passing harmlessly through his Michael Landon-type body to the utter amazement of the crazed jihadists). Are our guardian angels too busy on their smartphones? Foley even prayed the rosary during his captivity in Libya, did it help? A priest or theologian might say it helped his soul but did it help his situation? Personally speaking my faith crisis really started after Newtown which imo is the most shocking news event to happen in my lifetime after 9-11. We still don't know why the bug-eyed psycho did it and it didn't change Wayne LaPierre one iota so there goes your great Saul-like conversion on the road to the gun show. My Mom just had a dear friend die of cancer, why doesn't al-Baghdadi get cancer or at least a damn bug egg-sac in his brain to say nothing of Kim Jong-un? Why doesn't the executioner/beheader the day before suddenly get a heart attack instead of your brother-in-law or dearly beloved aunt? Ray Rice was done in by TMZ not God but maybe God works through TMZ? Look it's fairly obvious to me God the Creator or an architect of the Universe or a central planner exists but does He care? Big Speech tonight, no not God although He should be giving one too:)

The rise of the appy savage

Their mentality and overall religious outlook is straight out of the 1400's yet they know how to upload videos to YouTube, cave-dwelling techno-savages who even make trendy and newsy references to events in Ferguson, MO. Next thing you know they'll be blogging. I thought YouTube like all mainstream websites of this nature have a TOS, you know you can't just submit a video say of how much you hate N-words or harass your ex-girlfriend so why is it technically ok for ISIS to upload a video showing the beheading of freelance US reporter James Foley? Various Islamic terror elements also take to Twitter, Twitter feeds, Twitter accounts - they've finally joined the Twitterverse those religious troglodytes! Now libs spend a good part of every waking day concerned about the threat posed by the Religious Right (oooooohhh!) but when was the last time Pat Robertson beheaded an American professor who passionately teaches evolution and then put it on YouTube? ISIS has said the beheading was in retaliation for US airstrikes, they just lost control of the Mosul Dam and the peshmerga are on the move so this is their way of making a Statement. Obama needs to keep pounding away however and I don't see how after such an atrocity you can rule out boots on the ground which should give McCain's heart a flutter or two. So stop worrying about Pat Robertson and Gary Bauer and start worrying about ISIS coming to a mall near you:)

Conservatives, Vietnam Syndrome and Obama

In a way Bush's foreign policy has become Obama's foreign policy, try as he may Obama cannot fully extricate himself from the situation. We're probably gonna see some big-time action in Baghdad starting with air strikes and as much as Obama distanced himself from Bush and the Bush Doctrine during the campaigning inevitably he's become Bush 2. Now I read a fair amount of conservative commentary, have a few issues of National Review and The Weekly Standard on my tablet and in my view there are many, maybe even most conservatives who when push comes to shove feel we should have stuck it out in Vietnam so the same thinking of course applies to the Middle East. Obama has the perfectly reasonable position that we can't stay there forever but for your average conservative and that's a neo-type no matter how many body bags let's get the job done. Radical Islam, a couple people here don't get it but easily it poses a far greater threat than the Christian Right. I mean c'mon purity balls vs. massacres at shopping malls. In coastal Africa the al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist group al-Shabab has been going door to door in villages during the night while people have been tuned into the World Cup and asking the men basic questions about Islam and if they fail to answer correctly they get shot, a kind of terrorist version of Jeopardy (Moustafa: "what was the name of Mohammed's wife?"). Imagine the Jehovahs doing this going door to door with their Watchtowers and if you brush 'em off they open fire. Of course over at the Hannity Forums you can't really talk like this because you're questioning a faith system. Look I'm no fan of Obama but on Iraq the bulk of the blame goes to Bush.

Mitt Romney had a better grasp of foreign policy

Just sayin'. Most countries these days are responsible for at least one or two positive contributions to the civilization-at-large. Of course everything is Made in China today but Japan has given us superior cars and cameras for example and even South Korea has Samsung headquartered there. Has Russia ever given us a digital camera, a computer chip, a smartphone or a new tablet? Russia is known for two things only - vodka and its military buildup. I remember learning in high school that a large % of the Russian economy, maybe it's even the majority is devoted to its keeping up its military might. Putin is an anachronistic leader and seems to have a very bad case of those cold war blues. Putin doesn't like Pussy Riot, he doesn't like the gays and he's not into going forward. Of course Obama's red lines mean nothing, it'd be like Gilbert Gottfried being a bar bouncer. A former director in the KGB vs. a former Chicago community organizer and I'm thinking my Dad is right Hillary would have been a better president at least on the world stage. So what's gonna happen now if Crimea becomes officially annexed to Russia again? is Obama gonna issue one of them executive orders he likes so much say banning the import of their famous drink? It's like as soon as the Sochi Olympics were over Putin couldn't wait to get back to the action. So has anyone apologized to Mitt Romney yet?

Obama's continuing war on Privacy

The NSA, the Atlas Shrugged of spying - bulk is better. There's intelligent spying and then there's the indiscriminate, haphazard, random and promiscuous spying as practiced by the NSA...now it's tapping into Yahoo and Google links overseas. Just what in hell were we supposed to learn from Angela Merkel and the Pope anyway? Welcome to President Obama's dystopia.

Bush put boots on the ground in two wars...

...and conservatives by and large eagerly supported him. Obama wants a limited strike on Syria and he's a weak and confusing leader. Is there a Tea Party Spark Notes to explain all this?

Obama, Egypt and what's a coup?

I'm confused about Egypt, they protested en masse against Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood and got rid of him, now that they got rid of him with the help of the Egyptian military others are now protesting en masse in support of Morsi. Of course before that everyone protested against Mubarak but seems they can't settle on a permanent leader over there. As everyone knows the Obama Administration esp. Sec'y of State John Kerry won't label it a coup as that would automatically cut off about $1.3B in foreign aid we give Egypt every year. As an aside where in hell does that money come from since we're in perpetual debt and deficit mode these days? Anyway the death toll continues to rise in the Arab Spring turned Red Summer with 275 dead a few days ago although the Brotherhood wrongly claims around 2,000. Mohammad Morsi was destroying basic freedoms like freedom of the press and dealt harshly with political protestors and yet a good slice of the right-wing commentariat seemed to want him to stay even though it was obvious he was turning this North African nation and pivot in the Middle East into an Islamist state. Well if you go back to the days of right-wing Chilean leader Augusto Pinochet many on the Right sometimes have a habit of turning the other way, he was a right-wing kind of dictator so I really don't take right-wing commentary on foreign policy all that seriously to begin with. Remember back in the day when Egypt was a fun topic and gave rise to a song by The Bangles and a skit by Steve Martin?

Reflections on the 2016 GOP field

Chris Christie the apparent frontrunner - I'm not a fan as most conservatives are but there's a concern about his famous personality. It may work well in Jersey but I don't think he has the presidential temperament for the world stage. What is he gonna do tell foreign leaders off? Then there's the latest idea being bounced around of LI Rep. Peter King running. To me he has a touch of the opinionated loudmouth and imo he's not libertarian enough. He'll explain to you why we need the NSA looking through your tv screen into your living room let's say and if somebody leaks this much-needed gov't program they're a traitor and should have their balls deep-fried. Rand Paul the well-known KY libertarian - a longshot but the fave of one person around here. Isolationist foreign policy, would not try to stop most, make that all of the world's current genocides. Then there's the youngish and photogenic Sen. from FL Marco Rubio, would tap into the much-coveted Goya voting bloc but buena suerte in the primaries young man going up against all those GOP hardliners on immigration. Dunno, I'm not all that jazzed up about it all.

A random thought on my walk today

I don't know why the White Rhino in Mozambique has to become extinct just so a Chinese businessman can have an erection.

A kind of off-the-cuff remark about Egypt & America (but don't quote me)

Big difference between how Egyptians handle things these days and over here in America.  Ordinary Egyptians have now within the span of a mere two years overthrown two official Egyptian leaders, longtime dictator but pro-American Hosni Mubarak of course and now Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood who was nevertheless perfectly duly elected by the Egyptian people once upon a time.  Now the modern Egyptian trend seems to be "hey buddy you suck, gotta go."  Here in America on the other hand a duly elected president can suck all he wants and unless he commits an impeachable offense he stays in office.  It's the American way, he can practically run the country into the ground over the course of even two long terms and basically we bitch and moan about it, get angst over it, write columns and negative blogposts galore, work ourselves up into a fine dander whereas the Egyptians don't have time for this.  OK so that's the don't quote me part, Janet Napolitano may be reading this right now and homing in.

OK so since I don't advocate the Egyptian way of handling leaders who suck and who otherwise disrespect the people there HAS TO be another way whereby, how shall we say we can speed up the process and get the country on the right course again.  Recently WI Governor Scott Walker was subject to a recall vote and I've been thinking if we tweak a little here and maybe work in another Amendment over there and this would apply to Republican or Democratic presidents btw but let's say we built into the system that you're really making a mess of things and to be fair this has to be proven over a lengthy time, for example certain negative economic and even social indicators have to reach a certain low first and stay there but under this new way of thinking, our new system Obama would be subject to a recall vote right about now or certainly midway through his second term.  Ditto retroactively would have been done to Bush Jr. I think it fair to say.  Liberals positively couldn't stand Bush for eight long years, we can't stand Obama so this would cut across party lines and benefit folks of all political stripes and an important side benefit is it would be cathartic.

There has to be a better way:)

Pope Francis I

Argentinian Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio is the first pope from the Americas.  One news station treated him as a political candidate and flashed on the screen "opposes abortion, euthanasia and same-sex marriage."  Well every pope in modern times has opposed those things, it's part of official church teaching if you haven't heard but then again the msm is so used to covering politics maybe it's hard to switch gears.  This was a great day for the Spanish news stations like Univision.  When I first heard the news that we have a Pope Francis I went on my mobile web and found out he has only one lung because of a lung infection he had as a teen, he has prefered humble living quarters and public transportation and has a special concern for the poor.  I have a good feeling about him.  At 76 he defied conventional conclave wisdom that held the 115 cardinals were gonna go with somebody younger and so as one commentator put it maybe they prefer shorter-term papacies now, God knows that would be a good idea for politics.  It's said he supports many social programs for the poor so we'll see how the National Review crowd reacts as they've been critical of popes in the past who have seemed to veer to the Left in their eyes.  Oh yes he chose Francis which is my middle name, Francis of Assisi one of my favorite saints:)

The GOP & the Susan Rice Affair, a funny way to go after Obama's demographics

Ninety-seven GOP House members have sent a letter to the White House basically saying UN Ambassador Susan Rice shouldn't even be considered for the Sec'y of State slot now that Hillary is leaving.  This is only a symbolic vote of course as the real action takes place in the Senate but it does carry some weight.  Now conservatives in general are opposed to Obama who happens to be black.  They're not opposed to him because he's black but because he is an unreconstructed liberal but the perception still floats out there.  Now they seem just as opposed to Susan Rice's nomination and she happens to be an African-American.  This is......awkward.  Senators John McCain from AZ and Lindsey Graham of SC are leading the charge against her in the Senate.  Saw Graham recently on Meet the Press and I didn't like the way he came across.  Ya got the Southern twang going and he's against another high-ranking black, I'm just sayin' (mental image of Graham humping Ned Beatty, McCain on the banjo).  You know when you're the passenger in a car with someone, you're not even driving but you feel your whole body tense up and become stiff throughout the whole ride?  I'm finding myself cringing here and as a practical matter it might be smart to drop the whole Susan Rice thing.  Yeah I know she repeated those Benghazi talking points on all the Sunday morning talk shows but she was obviously speaking on behalf of the President and I kinda agree here to be honest that they need to take it up with him instead if there's a problem and there is.  They don't like Eric Holder either and he's of color and I think they have a strong case with Fast and Furious and some other business but the Stupid Party really needs to start thinking of the racial scorecard here.  Go all out on Susan Rice and see how it comes back to haunt you come 2016 - happy demograpics.  Benghazi is already beclouding Obama's second term here, the sequel ain't going well but I'm just wonderin' what the strategy wonks in the GOP are thinking. 

The 3rd & Final Debate, foreign and domestic repairs

It took but half an hour or twenty minutes or so before businessman Romney veered off into more comfortable domestic terrain, done on purpose and killed a small block of time and Obama happily took the bait (geez Dad can we rap about birth control again?  I see an opening!).  Not exactly two Kissingers squaring off against each other and sure enough Obama obliquely got his pills in (I'm beginning to think he takes bc pills himself) when he said Romney has social policies more from the '50s, a Mormon cross between Robert Young and Leave It To Beaver but onto to Syria and some other more pressing matters.  Bashar al-Assad to date has killed about 30,000 of his own citizens, brings to mind Stalin's old quip that one death is a tragedy 30,000 is a statistic to paraphrase.  Obama kept talking sanctions up the kazoo whereas Romney agreed but said while there would be no military involvement under his administration we really need to arm the rebels the right ones anyway.  I pretty much watched the whole thing with a quick sidetrip for a whizz and a refill and in my notes there's everything.  Obama took out Osama bin Laden which in a foreign policy debate is perfectly fair to point out and also somehow took out Khadafy.  The evening started out with Mideast terror/Benghazi of course and perhaps the best line of the evening was when Romney said we can't kill ourselves out of this terror situation but really need to engage the Muslim world to reject extremism (hey Sat the real War Against Women can best be capsulized in the pic of little Malala recuperating in her British hospital room, just thought I'd get that in).  So how'd that reset go with Putin Mr. Obama?  Romney sees Putin more as a geopolitical foe, I see him as nostalgic for the Cold War and not wanting to move on but Obama somehow sees him in less menacing terms, dunno.  Iraq, status of forces agreements, the Red Line with Iran, future talks between the U.S. and Iran not being true, tensions with Israel which even many Dems are concerned about, Obama's global apology tour.  Geez this blogpost is beginning to resemble an updated version of We Didn't Start the Fire.  Rom's feeling is that the world's worst leaders saw weakness in Obama and this made events in the world worse and yeah China was ripe for discussion (we'll save that for the comments section).  Leaving Afghanistan in '014 (we hope) and Romney was quite straight about Pakistan being an ally after all they have about 100 nuclear warheads and if Pakistan somehow became a failed state we wouldn't want them getting into the wrong hands.  DRONES, education, a strong economy and the overwhelming need for a strong military which in my view Obama seemed particularly weak on, kind of stammered.  I finally figured out the media's formula for determining the winner in these things, if Obama didn't do horribly then he won.  Of the three debates this was the most pivotal imo.  Of course when I go to my e-mail later and find out who's trending today on Yahoo I may revise that.  Oh yeah Bob Schieffer a class act:) 

Will Obama release the Blind Sheik?

This is really a question to all the Daves and BBs out there, the Satys and Shaws, those 47%ers who are never gonna vote for Romney but is there at least a tipping point where you'll no longer be in Obama's corner? where he crossed the Rubicon, went too far, where a defense is no longer tenable or even logical?  Does the President write our material for us and does he even masturbate from time to time the various anti-Obama conspiracy theorists out there ("let's see if I release the Blind Sheik I'll solidify my rep as a closet Muslim who won the Oval Office").  Have to say this though, that guy the other night on Univision the Spanish station saying to Obama "with all due respect you didn't keep your promise" that there Latin guy should be hosting the NBC Nightly News and not Brian Williams:)

Liberals and the religion of peace

US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff were killed in an attack on the Benghazi Consulate in Libya by Islamist gunmen and a safe house was also attacked.  There was another attack on our embassy in Cairo and the Muslim mobs were outraged by some amateurish movie they feel insulted the Prophet Mohammed.  They're blaming America for the film which makes Mohammed into a philandering fool and religious phony not apparently understanding or caring to understand that our free speech system comes with the disclaimer these are the views of others but that's over the heads of these Fred Flintstone religionists.  We now have Islamists in power in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia the fruits of the so-called Arab Spring.  So what happened when Christians had their beliefs and Savior insulted when artist Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ" came out and when another artiste Chris Ofili disparaged the Blessed Virgin Mary by putting elephant dung on her?  Well...NOTHING but who do liberals see as the bigger threat to freedom though? not the Islamists of course, the Christians.  Romney is blaming Obama's mixed signals in the Middle East for the latest tragic events and that's valid and is this the way they repay Obama's past outreach to the Muslim world?  Seems too Obama's little post-convention bounce is gone, the sugar-high, the little orgasm and now it's back to business.  Our domestic economy to put the most positive spin on it is making a glacial recovery and the world is getting more dangerous by the day, can Obama ride the tide? 

Thoughts on the RNC Convention so far

I'm a heavy channel-surfer not one of those political nerds like Hannity who can name all the various Congresspeople on Jeopardy so what you're gonna get is my take on various snippets more to my liking like KY Senator Rand Paul's speech which was a good one even if he did milk Obama's "you didn't build that" remarks a little too much.  Condi Rice I thought was excellent, superb even especially in her comments on our entitlement and grievance culture and I saw John McCain on the floor telling the PBS interviewer that yeah there needs to be more of a discussion on Obama's foreign policy here.  I'm mainly sampling PBS' Newshour coverage beginning around 7 with Mark Shields and David Brooks and their generic political commentary and various guests like Newt and Rick Santorum and pollster Andy Kohut who said in his research some of the negative words folks used to describe Paul Ryan were "extremist" and "scary."  Funny but I tend to agree with soapster here, Ryan ain't no real constitutionalist radical he merely wants to give the federal budget a haircut, wants to streamline Medicare and Medicaid not get rid of them entirely.  He's not exactly gonna slay Leviathan but I like him more than soapster does what can I say?  Let's see what else?  Santorum talked movingly about his disabled daughter Bella probably offensive only to a pro-choicer and yeah the RNC paid homage to none other than Ron Paul but once they started showing that film about Bush Sr. and Bush Jr. I reflexively changed the remote to Sanford and Son.  I don't know how you can watch this stuff gavel-to-gavel, I guess you have to if you wanna churn out some nerdy blog.  They keep saying Romney has to open up to the country more as a person, discuss his Mormonism a little and Ann has already laid the groundwork with her charm offensive but that's the wisdom anyway.  The upcoming DNC Convention in September? that's gonna take a cast-iron stomach to sit through but if I'm to be taken seriously as a blogger than I have to sample at least.  My guess is that Obama is not gonna be talking alot about Bashar al-Assad even though his militias are killing women and children on an almost daily basis now.  That's not what they mean by a War on Women and it's gonna be kinda weird to see Dolan give the blessing at that thing:)