Bumps in the Road

I don't know where to start on the murder of Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi and the subsequent cover-up. It's like watching the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. You just watch. You don't really say anything, just watch. The relative silence has probably convinced Baracula and the rest of his minions that all of us are seeing it that same way he is: oh well, things happen, just another bump in the road, sorry about that but, hey, Stevie knew the risks going in.

No.

Here's some things need addressing:

a. It's pretty clear that Ops Centers back in DC knew, early on, that a major attack was being mounted in Benghazi. Not only did they hear from the guys inside the compound, but they, apparently had a drone circling the area for the entire six to eight hours watching the whole thing. I don't know which Ops Center—DIA's, CIA's, FBI's, whichever—contacted the White House first, but, at some point, someone told Baracula. His reaction?

He went to bed.

No ordering of troops, no calling out of aircraft, not even a destroyer racing to the coast. I immediately flash back to that fatal moment during the Normandy invasion when von Rundstet was frantically calling Berlin to get the Panzers released to him. Sorry, Runny, Hitler can't be disturbed— he's sleeping. I know these two situations are not analogous, but the attitude is: whether Obama went off for some shuteye because that campaign stop in Vegas tomorrow morning is more important, or the bunch of lickspittles he's surrounded himself with think Him So Holy that His Sleep is Precious, I don't know, but, the point is, Baracula thought his eight hours rest warranted more attention than the murder of an ambassador.

After all, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.

b. It is, also, very clear that US security teams were screaming for more help weeks before, at least screaming that the in-place security team remain in-place. Charlene Lamb said no. Now, I haven't actually read this anywhere, but the implications floating around are that Lamb believed the Libyan government (try saying that with a straight face) was sufficiently viable to provide the necessary protections; a gesture of faith, so to speak, in the Arab spring. But, IMHO, that's not why she refused:

She has nothing but utter contempt for security people. Even more for ex-military security people.

See, in Charlene Lamb's world, violence results from the mere existence of military and police forces. Because everyone in the military is a Neanderthal stroking his rifle in masturbatory glee, wars start. Evil and cruelty and murder and children crying is the result, so all you thugs out there just shut up and stop asking for more troops and money. You all got us into the Libya mess in the first place, in some non-specific and confusing manner, so we're going to show you how love and trust and holding hands and dancing around the Maypole will bring laughter and love and tears of joy. No security for you. The peace-loving free peoples of Libya will hug you and keep you warm.

This is what happens when the high school student council runs a country.

So, Barack, Mr. Bump in the Road, Mr. I Gotta Get Elected and a dead damn ambassador is just sooooo inconvenient, you should resign. Re. Sign. Or be impeached, you child, you baby, you incompetent, you fool, you traitor. That's right. Traitor. You, too, Hillary.

And, as for you, Charlene Lamb? Prison. In Libya.

 

Letter

Dear President Romney,

I'm going to go ahead and start calling you that because it's a foregone conclusion. Even if you lose the election, you're far more of a President than that sophomoric Marxist holding the office now.

That, of course, does not mean I have become an admirer. I haven't. You are still enamored of government-led solutions. Get rid of Obamacare, yes, definitely, but DON'T replace it with some OTHER god-rotted top-down everyone-will-be-happy stupid government program that will suck money out of our wallets and end up a non-functioning bureaucracy driving the cost of a hospital visit through the roof. Why you and the rest of the plutocrats haven't figured out that medical costs began skyrocketing the moment Medicare was enacted back in 1965 and that piling on more programs will only make things worse... Hello, McFly!

I know, I know, you have an election to win, and forty-something years of government largesse and Annanberg-challenge public education have reduced a good portion of the population into blithering idiots and, unfortunately, you  need the blithering idiot vote. I wouldn't mind that so much if I had an inkling that your programism was nothing more than placating the sheep and you will emerge Reagan Reborn, slaying the federal dragon. But you actually have to eschew government programs to slay them, and you don't eschew. You believe in them.

Yes, I heard you say Big Bird was gonna go, and I applaud. But that's a no-brainer. There's also the EPA, the Departments of Education, Agriculture, Commerce and many other tax-sucking wastes of time that need to be shut down. I know, I know, Reagan was unable to close those departments, either, so give it up, Schlub. But there is a difference between failing to do something and not wanting to do something.

And that is why you won't be the next Reagan.

Oh sure, you definitely look the part, and definitely have the right attitude. The Muslim Brotherhood and Iran and Putin will be a tad more circumspect during your four years, and the economy will explode and there will be a general sense of well-being. You will be Reaganesque.

But not Reagan.

 

Your friend,

 

Schlub

Poll-lite conversation

Stop it with the polls already. I'm talking to you, AP, Fox, MSNBC, ABC, M-O-U-S-E. We just don't believe them. And you're starting to sound pathetic.

Don't you understand that all of us, every single one of us, have already made up our minds? There isn't going to be any real movement, up or down or sideways, for Romney or Obama or Virgil Goode or whoever, at all, of any kind, between now and the election. The election is set. Romney is going to clean Obama's clock.

Pish posh, you snort, our polls say...your polls are wrong. Dead. Wrong. You're simply not talking to the right people. The ones you are talking to are lying. And you are lying to yourselves. And to us.

Need proof? Okay. How many of you predicted Chik-Fil-A Tuesday?

We're done here.

Letter

Dear President Hopeychange,

Ah, so much going on, I don't even know where to start. But here's a good place: you saying on Letterman that you represent the entire country.

 

Dude, you don't. You don't represent me, or any other American, at all.  

There is, as you well know, a big difference between a US citizen and an American. I mean, you're a US citizen, odd birth certificate notwithstanding, but you're definitely not an American. An American believes the individual is more important than the mass, everyone is responsible for his own behavior, all rights are inherent, and the government is, at best, a necessary evil with very restricted powers.

Tell me what, if any of that, do you actually believe?

Seems to me you pretty much hold a completely opposite view on all those points. You are willing to impoverish Joe the Plumber just to give the people behind him a "fair shot." You blame Wall Street and banks for your own party's destruction of the housing market. You want to regulate free speech. And if there's one thing you are definitely into, it's expanding the power and reach of the US government so that it can tell us what to eat, what to think, what to read, and what to say.

From where does such hubris arise?

Well, that's easy to figure out— your Dad and Mom and Frank Davis Marshall filling your young skull with all the tripe of Marxism and collectivism, your drug-addled high school days making everything about you, and your extreme self-righteous college and post-college activism. What truly puzzles me, though, is, in the face of all the evidence, you still believe that crap.

I mean, you have more than enough historical proof that the entire collectivist/centralized approach to societal governance simply doesn't work. It impoverishes, enervates, coarsens, everyone. Heck, the  last three years alone show that all of your policy concepts simply don't work; yet, you remain committed to them.

So, you are either an oblivious moronic pseudo-intellectual masquerading as an open-minded sophisticate, like most Democrats, or...

A hate-filled, arrogant, contemptuous demagouge intent on destroying the Constitution.

Which is it?

Your friend,

Schlub

All's Sort of Well

Schlub had taken a bit of a theatrical hiatus this past year, but went back to it last weekend. I attended Shakespeare Theater's Free For All performance of All's Well That Ends Well.

Not being overly familiar with the play, I didn't have big expectations. There's no memorable soliloquies in it like "St. Crispin's Day" or "All the World's a Stage," at least, not one your average Schlub knows. So, I wasn't prepared to be wowed.

And I wasn't. "Workmanlike" would be a good one-word description. Everyone hit their lines and did their steps and there was even some singing and it was all pretty good. I was laughing throughout the entire thing because there's some funny stuff in there, especially Parolle's attempt to convince Helena that virginity is wrong. But, overall...eh.

Marsha Mason played the Countess of Rossillion. Yes, that Marsha Mason, and, ever since The Goodbye Girl, Schlub is somewhat of a fan. But she played the role like Marsha Mason playing a role: once you've seen her in something, you've seen her in everything. Cameron Folmar played Parolles in a distressingly flamboyant manner that was one mincing step too many. And poor Tony Roach. He was absolutely outstanding in The Liar, but, in Bertram, he's got a character so friggin' nasty there's no saving the guy.

There were some outstanding performances, of course. Miriam Silverman, who I just love, and who was equally outstanding as Lucrece in The Liar, did a great job with Helena. Adam Green, another Liar alumnus (and Miriam Silverman's husband), was hilarious as Lavatch, but had a tendency to overdo it a bit. The best performance, though, was Paxton Whitehead as Lafew. Oh man, he killed it, especially when he and Parolles were going at each other.

So, overall...eh. But a good eh.

  

 

RIP, Neil Armstrong

I saw you that night. Well, at least your leg, shadowy and ill-defined, tentative, feeling your way, and I knew you had actually placed your foot on the moon a couple of times before you actually stepped down and said that phrase. I, and practically everyone else in the world, heard this: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." And, even at fourteen years old, I knew there was something wrong with that- was it a small step, or a giant leap?

Of course, we now all know the signal was cut out and you actually said..."for a man." Which was poetry, pure poetry. And, if I had heard it correctly, I probably would have swooned. And I'm not given to swooning.

Because the world changed, Neil, right then. It felt like the culmination of history. Even my fourteen year old soul knew it, and I leaped up and ran outside and grabbed my stupid little 60x Sears telescope and swore, SWORE, I saw you and Buzz and the flag right there, on the Sea. We, mankind (a word now despised, Neil), had loosed bonds. Magics had taken over, and it was 1492 and 1621 and 1776 and 1865, all over again. There was no limit. There was no end.

Since then...well.

But it doesn't take anything away from that night. Your night. And yes, yes, thousands got you there but, Neil, you're the one. You're the one who delivered it.

So, on your way to wherever, stop by. Give the flag a shake. Send a little note back to us that, even in the grips of mediocrity, there's still loosed bonds. Still magics.

For all mankind.

Curiosity, with no dead cats

Look at this: we dropped a VW camper bus on the surface of Mars in an extraordinary choreograph of orbit and angle and thrust and parachute.

Still got it.

But Schlub, Schlub, what a waste of time and money! And aren't you the guy who thinks the government should stay out of everything?

Well, the government should stay out of people's lives and ways, of course, but we come together and form a government to take care of certain functions. Like defense. Like commerce.

Like exploration.

How else do we marshal resources and send the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria where no man has gone before? Well, white men, anyway. Where else do you think you're going to find those exotic minerals, previously unknown resources, miracle cures and astounding technology, unless you head out there?

And, besides, contractors put the Curiosity together, not the government; they just asked somebody to do it.  

See what you can do when you dream?

Mazeltov, NASA.