Gunfighter: A Modern Warrior's Life

The Problem with "Equality"

In democratic societies an awful lot of time gets spent talking about equality.  For some reason we seem to think that the concept of equality is important.  It's that whole "leveler" mentality... and you know what?  I hate it.

You read that right.  Good ol' Gunfighter isn't so much for the equality thing.  Oh, sure, I believe that people should expect (and receive) equal treatment under the law, but that is where my thoughts on equality pretty much fizzle out.

You see, I believe that the notion of strict equality is damaging to our country.  The notion that everyone's opinion is as good as another person's is absolute crap, and is responsible for so much turmoil in the United States today.  If you don't believe me, I give you this fine group of people as an example:

The "birthers"

What a bunch of effing morons!  Morons, I say.  Why is anyone paying any attention to them?  Why is anyone giving them air time?  Why is anyone paying attention to them in courts of law?  I'll tell you why! It's because we cling to the absurd notion that "my opinion is just as good as yours!", and that my friends, is an entire railroad car full of steaming bullshit.

Look, people have opinions based on their previous knowledge of a subject, event, or person, or their education in related areas.  People also have visceral reactions to certain stimuli.. the reliable "gut feeling", that people frequently talk about.  Opinions, in order to have any sort of validity have to be based on something real, otherwise it's just a notion.

Here is an example.  It is my belief that George W. Bush was a failure as a President for a number of reasons, allow me to cite some of them:  Our country is involved in two wars that we didn't have to fight;  Our economy is in a shambles because Mr. Bush's administration wouldn't hear of regulating the banking industry; and because his administration violated the Constitution on a number of occasions for vague reasons pertaining to "National Security"

Now, you may not agree with those positions, and that's ok, but my opinion in this sense is valid because it is based on tangible things that may be seen different ways by different people.

Here is an example of a non-valid opinion: "George Bush was a GREAT President and will be remembered as such by history.  I have nothing to base this on.  It's just how I feel."

The whole "birther" movement, and other whackjob movements tend to gain steam amongst the benighted and those who feel themselves to be on the fringes.  Much like the old, stupid meme about the American government shipped guns by the carload in L.A. so the Crips and Bloods would go around killing each other, and other black people.  Valid?  No.  Stupid?  Yes.  Given credence by a bunch of f***ing dummies?, oh, hell yeah.

It is time, my friends, to stop pretending that the opinions of the stupid, are as good as those who... well, aren't stupid.  You know you agree with me.

As I said before, I believe that people should be treated the same under the law, without regard to their gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, or what their first language was.  Neither do I think that the law should disfavor the stupid (any more than it already does, anyway), but holy moley, do we have to pretend that stupid, invalid opinions aren't exactly that?

A Memorial Day Reminder

Today is Memorial Day in the United States.  Today is a day that we commemorate, above all others, the sacrificed lives of our dead Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines.

For a great many people, today is a day off from work, and a day spent with the activities associated with the beginning of summer... and that's fine, just don't forget that hundreds of thousands of American fighting men (and women) have died in the service of their country, fighting on behalf of their government.  Their government, which is by, of, and for the people (that means US).

As we honor our war dead, let us remember that we, by electing smart, well-informed, and sane leaders, are directly responsible for sending these brave souls into battle.

Let us remember that, before we make decisions that may cost the lives of these brave men and women.  Let us remember that their lives aren't to be thrown away, or spent in a cavalier manner.  Let us remember that their dedication to our country shouldn't be misused for unscrupulous political reasons.

We owe those things to the memory of those we have lost, and especially to those we have yet to lose.

The Bush Administration: A Review

A great day for America.   Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th President of the United States. 

 

If you don't mind, I'll quote President Gerald Ford and say that "our long national nightmare is over".

 

I will try to refrain from over-sentimentalizing, but I am certain that it won't shock you to know that I am excited.  Excited for our future.  Excited about the possibilities that this day means.  Excited for my daughters, excited for my Grandmother, and excited for my parents.  I'm Excited for my ancestors... all of my ancestors, black and white.  I am excited for America.

 

I have no illusions that with the inauguration of President Obama, everything that is wrong in this country will be put right by next week.  I have no illusions that with the ascension of Barack Obama that everything wrong in this country will change... even in the long term.  I remain excited, nonetheless, because in electing Obama, this country has showed, enthusiastically, that it has reached a tipping point.  We, the people, have had enough bad leadership from our government.

We have, by electing this man to be our leader, taken a positive step in restoring sane, responsible government.  This isn't a matter of Right v. Left, nor of Democrats v. Republicans, as much as it is about making wrong things right.

 

Over the past eight years, a particular faction of anti-democratic reactionaries have run roughshod over the government of the United States.  The government of, by, and for the people has been mightily abused and as a result, the American people have been mightily abused.

These reactionaries spent the past eight years making our national treasury the playground of largesse for any corporation or conglomerate seeking to make money... taxpayer's money, in the name of "privatization".  These evil men and women engaged in the political sleight of hand of deceit and deception, and fooled the people, at least for a while, into believing that the "party of fiscal responsibility" could fight two wars, improve schools and infrastructure, create something close to a balanced budget, and cut taxes all at the same time, and maintain solvency.

While these governmental pirates had their snouts deep in the trough of Midas and were busy bribingdistracting the ever-shrinking middle class with "stimulus" checks, they were busy molesting our Constitution in ever more vile ways.   These people treated our laws with no less brutality than that of a dark-alley rapist, with secret prisons, torture, warrantless searches, indefinite detention without trials or even charges.  This sort of thing is wrong in any circumstances, but it is thrice-damned when you consider that these things were also done to American citizens.

The Bush administration, at the direction of their leader, and with the collusion of their party affiliates, instigated and initiated a war of aggression against a sovereign nation that wasn't a threat to this country, our way of life, or our economy.  This war destroyed a nation, made it less safe and opened that country to internecine religious strife, which, until our intervention, it had never seen on this scale in modern times.  Without the slightest compunction, our country, being led by the criminal clique of George W. Bush, and his lick-spittle sycophants, began a bloodletting unequaled in modern western military history.  A bloodletting that didn't have to happen, that was based on distortions, lies, and outright crimes.  A war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, thousands of American and allied military deaths, and untold thousands of wounded soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines.

Anyone who is reading this knows that Bush and his quasi-fascist gang of Constitutional thugs were unpopular, that fact became abundantly clear early in their time of national control, but they didn't care.  We don't like the law? Don't even bother to change it... let's get our pet lawyers to write something that says it doesn't pertain to the Executive Branch.  Don't like the fact that the Attorney General is being investigated for crimes in office?  Have him refuse to answer questions put forth by Senate committees.  Don't like the treaties that we are signatory to? Ignore them?

George W. Bush wasn't content to flout the laws of this nation, no indeed, his domestic policies regarding education, in the form of the "No Child Left Behind" act, took measures that could potentially cripple already struggling public school systems.  Mr. Bush's one-size-fits-all view of education started and ended with teaching students to pass standardized tests, which is fine on it's face, but fails to take into account that if all you are doing is teaching to a testing standard, you are failing to educate the whole child.  Further, the "No Child Left Behind" initiative was basically a cover for attacking public schools in general and public school teachers and their Unions in particular.  The idea here is that the more blame and scorn we can heap on public schools, the more money the government could take away from public education in order to fund private schools, which does nothing for the education of children in either public or private school. 

All of this was done in the name of "school choice" which is just another name for segregation.

The list of crimes and nefarious activities of the Bush administration is long.  Certainly too long to be properly enumerated here, but I have to tell you that, Mr Bush and his people were out of control from start to finish.  Their leadership was a a nightmarish exercise in failure. 

Failure.

Failure of leadership.  Failure of good citizenship.  Failure in every single aspect of governance.  Mostly, the Bush administration was a textbook example of the failure of character.

Welcome, Mr. Bush, to the ash-heap of history.

Dennis Kucinich Throws It Down!

Watch this. It's important. Do you understand, now, why I supported him from the beginning?

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr President,

I would think that one of the toughest things about being President of the United States, is being the leader of your party. It isn't like you don't have enough to do running the country... you also have to ride heard on a bunch of elected officials, Cabinet members, and other office-seekers who try to use you or your office to help them get elected.

In normal times this would be difficult, but considering what is going in in this country these days, it really must be awful!

It's been a rough couple of weeks for you, hasn't it?

I mean, first, your main political advisor, Karl Rove...



...is forced from office resigned under a cloud for his roles in the exposure of an active CIA operative, and for his involvement in the questionable firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for political reasons. Next, you had to fire your Attorney General...



...resigns because every time he opens his mouth, he lies to the United States Senate... and got caught doing it.


Then the most recent National Intelligence Estimate tells us that, despite your claims of success for the troop surge in Iraq, that country's government will become more precarious, not less, over the next six months.

Next on the hit-parade is a soprano-singing, staunch conservative GOP Senator...



...who gets caught trying to do the nasty with an undercover cop in an airport men's room, tries to use his position as a U.S. Senator to interfere in the investigation, pleads guilty to a lesser charge... then conceals whole arrest/guilty plea from the Senate ethics committee. The incident forcing him to announce his resignation (nice mug shot, Senator).

As if all of these things weren't bad enough, John Warner, a well-respected moderate GOP Senator (from my own Commonwealth of Virginia) has decided not to seek re-election, severely jeopardizing the chances of your party holding on to that Senate seat next year.

I'll bet you are sure glad that August is over.

Now for the good news: The General Accounting office will be putting out it's estimate of the situation in Iraq soon. Rumor has it that the picture that they paint will be none too rosie. Rumor has it that portions of the report have been leaked so that your purple kool-aid swilling minions have the chance to doctor it.

THEN you embark on a secret trip to Iraq, Seemingly to give General Petraeus a copy of hie report that YOUR PEOPLE wrote confer with General Petraeus on "the way forward in Iraq".



I'll bet months like this one make you look forward to getting out of the White House.

I'll tell you one thing, the folks here at Casa Gunfighter are really looking forward to that happy day a great deal.

Sincerely,

Your pal,

Gunfighter



I hope you enjoyed the trip!

The Department of Revisionist history (I)

So... eminent historian George W. Bush now believes that the United States should never have left Vietnam?

Am I the only person left open-mouthed at the brass of that historically ignorant, dumb sonofabitch?

Recently, the current occupant of the White House had this to say about the American withdrawal from Vietnam:

"then, as now, people argued that the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end..."

"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left,"

"Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields,"

So... is there really a legitimate debate on how the United States became embroiled in Vietnam?

Was there really a wide-spread belief that if U.S. forces left Vietnam, that there would be no more killing? Or was the prevailing belief that if our forces remained in Vietnam, more Americans would die for nothing, militarily propping up a corrupt government, with a corrupt, weak, dispirited, ineffectual military?

Am I alone in thinking that it is rather crappy of the President to make these remarks considering his questionable military service and his refusal to serve in Vietnam?

President dumb ass is the same guy that actually had the nerve to compare the successful occupation of Japan to the failing occupation of Iraq. This guy must be getting his advice from a psychic that he found on the back of a matchbook cover.

Idiot.

GF

Cooking The Intelligence?

As reported in the Sunday Washington Post, it appears that two separate assessments from the National Intelligence Council, in January, 2003, predicted that the invasion and occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region.

Apparently, the reports, which were delivered to White house officials, went on to discuss the fact that in post-Saddam Iraq, domestic groups would fight each other and former Iraqi military could merge with terrorist groups.

One of the assessments suggested that an invasion of Iraq would give a boost to political Islam.

The article says that when these assessments were given to senior officials of the Department of Defense, the DOD said that the assessments were "too negative" and ignored.

Even George Tenet, the disgraceful ex-Director of Central Intelligence (and Medal of Freedom recipient) said, in his recent book, that the NIC papers on Iraq said that "Iraqi political culture is so imbued with norms alien to the democratic experience... that it may resist the most vigorous and prolonged democratic treatments."

Great. This was said before the war.

Let me get this straight:

The NIC tells the national leadership (President Pinhead) that the Iraqis will resist democratic reforms; that the Iraqis will start fighting each other; that former Iraqi soldiers will join with terrorists and foreign fighters; that occupation by western nations will be widely unacceptable in Iraq; and that an invasion/occupation will cause a boost for political Islam, and exacerbate terrorism... and the leadership goes ahead with the invasion and occupation anyway?

As Shakespeare's Hamlet would have said: "That would be scanned"

Our government, no... the President, said that the invasion of Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction" democratizing Iraq, but had already been told, months prior, that the invasion would not likely produce said democracy, and indeed, would lead to sectarian violence, and increase political Islam and terrorism?

Does that sum it up?

The President, is the same guy that gave us his Top Gun moment on an aircraft carrier, and told us that our mission was accomplished, even though it wasn't. This is the same guy that was told, before the fact, that the war would have the precise results that we have been seeing since 2003... This is the same guy that, despite what he was told by the leaders of the National Intelligence Council, launched a war that has caused the deaths of over three thousand Americans, and untold numbers of Iraqi civilians. This is the same guy that created the failed-state of Iraq. This is the same guy that has caused a number of my colleagues and a few of my good friends to be separated from their families, sent to war, and in the case of two of them, to be wounded in combat.

He knew all along, what was likely to happen... and he did it anyway.

Nice.

Mr. Bush, I am a firm believer that someday, everyone will have to account for themselves before their maker.

You have a lot of explaining to do... and somehow, I don't think that your excuses are going to fly.

Paranoia and The FBI

Most Americans know how our national security apparatus went berserk after 9/11. We can see the results of this in all of our airports as well as on television every night when we watch the news of our current debacle in Iraq.

Those of you in the Washington, DC-area, got to see our city turned into a fortress.

Ghastly concrete barriers were erected all over the place... the U.S. Capitol building had it's beautiful tree lined entrance dug up and destroyed (which still breaks my heart) in order to build a monstrous underground boondoggle visitors center... many of our beloved monuments were encircled in concrete, protected by Police officers... armed with rifles!



The Headquarters building of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (the J. Edgar Hoover building) was no different. It was already fortress-like (and damned ugly) to begin with... it only got worse.

Nearly a year after 9/11, a journalist of my brief acquaintance was about to interview a senior FBI official, and while he was about to enter the building from the E street side, he noticed that the huge American flag that had been draped across the building, looked odd.

He began counting the stars in the blue field, and concluded that the flag only had 48 stars. That's right, the FBI had trotted out a flag that was made before Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union as states.

What a bunch of boneheads.

But, wait... it gets worse!

While he counted and re-counted the stars, trying to make sure he was right, some people in the Hoover building noticed his intent observation and notified the FBI's uniformed police (didn't know they had them, did you?), and as he was about to enter the building, he was "detained" for quite a while, and had his journalist credentials for the building revoked (albeit temporarily).

All for counting the stars on a flag.

Paranoia is a bad thing.

The Perfidy of Paul Wolfowitz(2.0)

Once again, gentle readers, a special guest blogger with words of wisdom about disgraced (and disgraceful) World Ban President Paul Wolfowitz. Please welcome my comrade, fellow blogger, and all-around mensch, DJ Black Adam.

I’d like to thank my future Secretary of defense /Security for the Republic of Liberia, Gunfighter, for allowing me the honor of filling in for him today as guest blogger. He picked a topic that I had been following, so I know about Mr. Wolfowitz, but, even with the wisdom of SHAZAM, I didn’t know what “perfidy” meant, so I looked it up on dictionary.com ;-)

perfidy \PUR-fuh-dee\, noun:

“The act of violating faith or allegiance; violation of a promise or vow; faithlessness; treachery”

Well, lets see how Paul got to the “violating a vow” and “treachery” ....

Paul Dundes Wolfowitz was United States Deputy Secretary of Defense during the administration of President George W. Bush and he was one of the principal "architects" of the Iraq War (which you’d think would disqualify him for being in charge of future things he could mess up). He was appointed president of the World Bank Group 01 June 05 and officially resigned on 17 May 07 though his resignation is effective 30 June 07. He resigned after an investigation by the World Bank Group's board of executive directors, which accepted his resignation, "ending a protracted and tumultuous battle over his stewardship, sparked by a promotion he arranged for his companion."

Mr. Wolfowitz’s appointment was very controversial, though by tradition the US appoints the World Bank president as the US is the largest donor, the current administration (in typical Bush/Cheney fashion) didn’t really give a rat’s tail on considering what other governments thought of their choice.

Surprisingly, even with the controversy, Mr. Wolfowitz accomplished a few good things in his short tenure, such as: the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, the Clean Energy Investment Framework, the Africa Action Plan, and the Avian Flu Initiative. In 2006, there was record lending to Africa (unfortunately he didn’t lend me anything to hire mercenaries or rebuild the infrastructure when I take over Liberia, but I won’t hold that against him).

What I do have to hold against him, is what we like to call in Cook County - Chicago Illinois, good ole fashioned “look out for your peoples” politics, as they say elsewhere “patronage” hiring. Now of course, they get away with it a lot here in Illinois (not as much thanks to Patrick Fitzgerald). But ole Paul was already skating on thin ice. What he did specifically was arrange for his “girlfriend’s” separation package from the World Bank and arrange for her a position in the State Department under Dick Cheney’s daughter, with a salary increase of roughly $70,000.00.

Supposedly, the reason he did this was to deal with a conflict of interest pointed out by the Ethic’s committee for the World Bank, as it had come to light that Mr. Wolfowitz had a relationship with Shaha. This relationship caused a problem with Mr. Wolfowitz as World Bank employees are subject to an ethics rule that does not allow personal relationships between bank employees and their supervisors, including indirect supervision through a chain of command. He felt that if he recused himself from all personnel actions or decisions that involved her Shaha, that should be sufficient, unfortunately the ethics committee disagreed with Paul.

Soooooo, Paul decided to dictate the terms of how this lady would leave the world bank and compensation she should receive (in essence, he determined what his girlfriend would get in her good bye package). Bad move # 1, followed by Bad move #2 getting her the hook up with the US State Department.

Don’t get me wrong, the lady is an Oxford graduate, clearly very capable of the positions she has been given, it is the circumstances that cause the questions. Ultimately, Paul did like he learned fro Bush, ignore the rules and do what you want to do to hook up your people, however, unlike G.W., Paul’s card has been pulled and he will just end up getting some 7 figure job in the private sector (Poor Paul).

Do you think he should have gotten the boot, or should the WBG done like the Cook County Board of directors does, look the other way?


Many thanks, DJBA!

Friends, some of you already read DJBA's blog... but those of you the haven't, ought to go give him a few minutes of your time. If you do, I'll bet you go back.

GF


www.myspace.com/djblackadam

Absent WithOut Leave (AWOL)

This picture of the extended Bush clan was taken in 2005.



Please note the ages of the people in this picture.

To date, NONE of the age-eligible people pictured here, have ever served or have volunteered for military service.

I guess it is only your kids or mine that have to do the heavy lifting.

I can't heap enough venom on these people.