Right-wing heads explode,... again

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It's the last half of this video clip I really wanted to post. Yeah, Republicans are all about respect, aren't they? Why hasn't Fox 'News' been laughed off the airwaves by now?

Jon Stewart got it exactly right: "When Bush took us to war, any criticism was shouted down as treasonous. But when a president you don't like has the country poised on the same precipice, no transgression, no matter how immaterial and ridiculous, is too small to cite as evidence that this president isn't as American as you are."

This is about politics and - dare I say it? - race. Of course President Obama isn't as white American as they are. I mean, just look at him!

Eric Holder has the same problem Barack Obama does. His skin is the wrong color for these people, especially since he's a Democrat.

Think I'm exaggerating? Here's Fox 'News' claiming that Holder runs the Justice Department like the Black Panthers:

Fox News host Andrea Tantaros said Thursday during a discussion about Attorney General Eric Holder's reported resignation that he ran the Department of Justice "much like the Black Panthers would." ...

"He didn't enforce the laws on Obamacare," Tantaros said. "He was droning terrorists without a trial while he was giving them trials in downtown Manhattan. He ran the DOJ much like the Black Panthers would. That is a fact."

Yeah, that was certainly tailor-made for their elderly white viewers, huh?

And the Cato Institute compared Eric Holder to segregationist George Wallace!

In the column, senior fellow Ilya Shapiro said that Holder had the "most divisive tenure of any attorney general I can recall, tearing the country apart on racial and partisan lines," according to a cached version of the piece.

After arguing that Holder was the worst attorney general ever, Shapiro jumped into the George Wallace comparison.

"Like a modern-day George Wallace, Holder has called for racial preference now, racial preferences tomorrow, racial preferences forever," he wrote.

As ThinkProgress noted, this was likely a reference to Wallace's inaugural address as governor of Alabama in which he used the phrase "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

Shapiro said that Holder only worked to protect minority groups.

"According to our outgoing attorney general, and the 14th Amendment, Civil Rights Act, and Voting Rights Act only protect some citizens (members of the right kinds of racial minority groups) – and should be used to extract political and financial concessions for them," he wrote.

Oh, we poor white men, so beaten down by the powerful black establishment. These days, you can't even shoot an unarmed black teenager without getting lynched. ("Lynching" does mean "being criticized," right?)

Yeah, it's Holder who's been tearing the country apart ever since the election of our first black president. Of course, these right-wing loons would never dream of 'playing the race card,' would they? Why, the whole idea just gives them the vapors.

And these are the crazies Americans plan to let take control of the U.S. Senate (either through voting for them or through inaction)? Even crazier, polls show they're favored when it comes to foreign policy issues! The same people who got us into all of these messes in the first place? The people who haven't been right about anything in decades?

Sometimes, I really have to despair for my country.

Militarizing... public schools?

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Yeah, it's not just police forces we're militarizing, but school districts, too! But of course every school district needs a grenade launcher. Just think of how useful that would be!

Again, this is the military-industrial complex that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about. Defense contractors don't have to stick with pushing weapons to our, and other country's, militaries. Sure, we spend more money on our military than the rest of the world combined, but it's never enough.

So now, they've got our military distributing gear to police departments and public schools, too - thus wasting even more money requiring even bigger purchases and even bigger bonuses for defense industry lobbyists and contractors.

Well, thanks to Republicans on our Supreme Court, we've already sold our country to the highest bidder. So what else did you expect?

PS. And yeah, speaking of the Supreme Court, it's not just Citizens United, either. We're starting to see problems from their incredibly inane Hobby Lobby decision now, too:

A federal judge in Utah has ruled that a member of a fundamentalist offshoot of the Mormon faith may refuse to answer questions in a child labor investigation as a result of the Hobby Lobby ruling on birth control. ...

Erwin Chemerinsky, the Dean of UC-Irvine School of Law, said Sam's decision reveals the pitfalls of Hobby Lobby, calling it "stunning" and contrary to precedent for a judge to use RFRA to let a person get out of testifying.

"I think it is quite predictable that the court's decision in Hobby Lobby would open the door to such claims of an exemption from laws for religious reasons," he said. "I fear it is just the start of cases of people claiming religious exemptions from general laws."

Adam Winkler, a law professor at UCLA, said the ruling shows how "Hobby Lobby threatens to make religious believers a law unto themselves."

Ferguson, Missouri, and police militarization

John Oliver just keeps getting better and better, doesn't he? One thing he doesn't mention, though, is why military gear is being distributed to police departments across America (including Ferguson's).

This almost certainly has a lot to do with the political power of military contractors and their lobbyists, don't you think?

Sure, America has far and away the biggest military in the world. And sure, we give away even more equipment, worldwide. (Thus, the terrorists in ISIS are using American armored personnel carriers and weapons, which they captured from Iraqi soldiers who just turned and ran away.)

But when it comes to making money, the military-industrial complex never thinks that enough is enough. So what better way to make more money from our tax dollars than to militarize our police forces nationwide?

The military gives away equipment, so they need to buy more of it from contractors. It's win/win for the contractors and their lobbyists. (Only America loses.)

Of course, it's different when you don't look on a whole group of people as the enemy. Here's the police at a demonstration in St. Louis:

(from Pharyngula)

But the protestors looked like this:

(Pharyngula)

See a little difference from the scene in Ferguson?

(The New Yorker)

The police don't have an easy job. I certainly wouldn't want to do it. And yes, it's a dangerous job, too. There are violent criminals out there. But if you're this afraid of our own people, you shouldn't be a policeman in America.

And keep in mind that you can always join the military, if you want to play with military gear. (Of course, the military won't let you behave like this towards peaceful protestors.)

When Johnny comes marching home...

(Tim Eagan)

Do Republicans really hate Barack Obama that much? Or is it just another example of cynical politics by the all-time masters of cynicism?

Certainly, they immediately switched from yelling about getting Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl back from the Taliban to yelling about... getting him back from the Taliban. Of course, Fox 'News' is leading the way:

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Stephen Colbert did a number on this, too:

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I don't know how Bowe Bergdahl got captured, and I don't know what he thought five years ago (or what he thinks now). I also don't know what we're supposed to do with the Gitmo detainees who haven't been convicted of anything in a court of law, especially now that we're planning to leave Afghanistan.

I don't have a knee-jerk reaction to any of this, though I think the last good option we had was not to invade Afghanistan in the first place. But it's too late for that now.

Meanwhile, when Bergdahl comes home, he'll face our own homegrown terrorists who - surprise, surprise - aren't Muslim at all:

JAG in Space

(cover image from Amazon.com)

John G. Hemry also writes under the pen name Jack Campbell, and I've been enjoying his Lost Fleet series - and the sequels - so much that I wanted to try the books published under his real name. His very first series, starting with Stark's War (2000), didn't sound appealing, so I went with JAG in Space.

Yeah, the series title is terrible, and it's not even particularly accurate. But I'll get to that in a minute. This is military science fiction with significant differences from what you might expect. Indeed, it's quite unusual, and if I wonder about the setting - which I do - I can't complain about the results.

I've enjoyed both of the books I've read so far. In A Just Determination (2003), we're introduced to Paul Sinclair just before he boards the USS Michaelson. He's a grass-green ensign on his very first deployment after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy

In the second, Burden of Proof (2004), Sinclair has just been promoted to lieutenant jg, but he still functions as the ship's collateral duty legal officer, thanks to a one-month course he was assigned just to fill in a gap in his schedule.

Sinclair is a line officer in the U.S. space navy. He's not a lawyer and has no desire to be a lawyer. But in each book, he gets involved in a court martial proceeding against a fellow officer from his own ship. Thus the "JAG in Space," I guess.

(cover image from Amazon.com)

For science fiction - certainly for military science fiction - this is set in a very odd time. Sinclair is an officer in the U.S. Navy, and their ships patrol some undefined part of the solar system which is claimed by the United States of America.

There doesn't seem to be anything there, not anything worth the claiming. They're just patrolling in order to maintain their claim to that particular part of space. Why they'd even want it? Who knows?

This doesn't seem to be too far in the future, and it's never explained why America spends that much money for no apparent reason. There's no hint of FTL flight, nor even of colonizing other planets within our own solar system. (Then again, we learn almost nothing of civilian society and see nothing but the inside of a space ship and a tiny bit of a naval space station.)

All in all, the setting doesn't seem to make much sense. America isn't even at war - this is a peacetime navy - although there's apparently the potential for a violent confrontation with the South Asian Alliance. But it's certainly unique, at least in my experience. After all, there's plenty of military science fiction set aboard starships in the far distant future.

Most of those seem to follow the pattern of Horatio Hornblower, C. S. Forester's great series set during the Napoleonic Wars. In that pattern - copied by countless authors since, both those writing military fiction set on Earth and science fiction authors, too - you follow the officers and crew of a military ship, getting to know them, until finishing with a climactic battle against overwhelming odds.

These two books do the first part of that - indeed, Hemry makes military life aboard a space ship seem very realistic - but they end, not with a battle, but with a trial. It's still a desperate situation for the accused, I guess, but the real drama is more about the courage of Paul Sinclair in risking his career to see justice done.

It's unusual, but it works. And it probably works mostly because Hemry's characters are superb. We like Sinclair right from the start, and most of the other characters are appealing, too. But all of the characters seem realistic, and they're all individuals.

This is character-based fiction which presents an interesting and very plausible view of both military law and life on board a military ship in space. It's a combination I've never seen before (a blurb on the back cover of A Just Determination calls it "The Caine Mutiny in space"), but it's as entertaining as it is unusual.

There are two more books in the series, and I've already got them on order. So far, the series has stuck to a very distinct path, and I just don't know if it stays that way in the next two books or not. I'd like to learn more about their society in general, but I have real doubts that he could make it seem plausible.

So maybe he'd be wise to stick with "The Caine Mutiny in space" for every book? I really don't know. Again, the characters are great, so at this point, I'm pretty confident that I'll enjoy the rest of the series, anyway.

___
Note: All of my book reviews can be found here.

Jobsolete

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There's nothing new about this - there really isn't, although it might be worse than ever these days - but it's a wonder America ever accomplishes anything, isn't it?

Here's another one:

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And don't get me started on the power of wealthy organizations - insurance companies, car dealerships, real estate agents, gun manufacturers - in politics these days, especially when it comes to pushing laws at the state level.

Forget capitalism, forget free markets, forget even patriotism - these guys are looking out for their own bottom line, nothing more.

The right to offend

(via Terminal Lance)

A friend sent me that. He thought it might be too inflammatory for his own website, but that it would fit right in here. He's right, of course. :)

Ordinarily, I would have glanced at it, chuckled, and forgotten it immediately. It's clever, sure. Apparently, it's just a slight revision to a common Christian image, but it's clever and it's mildly amusing. That's all.

But apparently, some people are getting all bent out of shape over it. From Terminal Lance:

So I posted this image on the Facebook page...

Naturally it caused quite the disturbance in the force for faux Christians who might have assumed that all Marines are warriors of God. This image isn’t anti-Christian. People are telling me I’m “Christian-bashing,” by posting this image, and they’re fucking wrong. If you think I’m bashing anyone by posting this popular image (which I’ve seen numerous times prior to my posting), you’re an idiot.

Do you have the right not to be offended? Then my rights are being violated all the time - usually by Christians.

And think about it. This is the military. Right now our only enemies are religious nuts trying to force their own views on everyone else, religious nuts who make a point of being offended at everything. Those are our enemies. So why should we imitate them?

Now, apparently, the U.S. military has become a hotbed of Christian fundamentalism. From what I've heard, it's not easy for soldiers with other beliefs (not just atheists) when their commanding officer is a religious nut. All too often, these 'Christian soldiers' - literally - want to see the so-called war on terrorism as a religious war between Muslims and Christians.

Ironically, that's exactly how our enemies want to present this conflict, too. Funny how both sides - both varieties of religious lunacy, I mean - are in perfect agreement about that, isn't it?

But it's not true, and I'm sure the majority of Christians agree with me about that (the majority of soldiers, as well). Here in America, our troops are defending freedom of speech and freedom of religion, among other things. Our soldiers are defending your right to believe anything you want.

But you don't have the right not to be offended. That's what Muslim extremists argue (not all Muslims, I'm sure), so it's ironic to have American Christians - especially in our military - agreeing with them, isn't it?

Here, for example, are some of Ed Brayton's replies to just that argument from commenters in the Muslim Times:

The answer is simple. No human being has the right to offend another person.

Really? Because I find what you just said incredibly offensive. There are few things that offend me more than someone who blathers this kind of totalitarian bullshit. By your own reasoning, you have just committed a crime. [my emphasis]

One person’s freedom ends where another’s begins. Therefore offensive ‘anything’, should NOT be allowed under the guise of freedom of expression.

In fact, it is more hate mongering than so-called freedom of expression and therefore should be made illegal and a crime for it costs many lives.

There is no other freedom being impinged. You do not have any right to go through life with no one ever saying anything that offends you. And the only thing that costs lives are barbaric authoritarians who think they have a right to kill someone who offends them.

Hell yes, we have the right to offend you. And you have the right to offend me, as you do every day with your authoritarian demands.

As I said, I think that most Christians agree with me about this. It's only the religious nuts - Christian and Muslim alike - who don't. Now, I don't mean to imply that complaining about "Christian-bashing" is the same as killing people who post cartoons you dislike, not at all. But the sentiment is the same.

Get over it! In a diverse society, people are going to disagree with each other. So what? In a diverse society, some people are going to say something you don't like. And, inevitably, some people are going to use humor to get their point across. So what?

You don't have to agree with that point. You don't have to find it funny. But you don't have the right not to get your feelings hurt.

I'm not talking about criticism. If you don't like a point of view, say so. Draw your own cartoons. Make fun of the other side, if you wish. You don't have to stay silent. Obviously, staying silent isn't anything I do, and I welcome opposing opinions here. What I'm talking about is implying that someone else should stay silent, because you're offended.

That's the path to totalitarianism. When blasphemy becomes a crime, pretty much everything the majority doesn't like will become 'blasphemy.' This isn't so much a struggle between Muslims and Christians as it's a struggle between authoritarian religious extremists and modern democratic societies. Think before you side with the former, even by implication.

Phantasmagoric biotheology

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As always, Rachel Maddow hits the nail on the head. This time, she shows us that even relatively sane Republicans aren't all that great.

Here in Nebraska, I used to respect Chuck Hagel, but I never voted for him, just for reasons like this. He wasn't completely crazy, and in a Republican these days, that's saying a lot. But he's still a Republican.

There's a reason why he hasn't left a party that's become batshit crazy. It's kind of funny, because he's too sane for his fellow Republicans. That's why he didn't run for re-election to the U.S. Senate in 2008. He'd have seen a primary fight if he had.

But he still has views - or had views, certainly - that aren't suited to a civilized country in the 21st Century. Admittedly, when it comes to gay rights, attitudes have been changing rapidly, and he may no longer hold those views. Or he might just be more cautious about expressing them.

And his views on abortion probably haven't changed a bit. Well, I don't know that, but it's the sort of issue where opinions tend to be stark, and resist even compromise, let alone change.

This is important. We have women in the military now, and we have gay people serving openly. It's the 21st Century and we need a 21st Century Secretary of Defense.

General Petraeus and 'spiritual fitness'

(About.com)

OK, I wasn't going to say anything about the Petraeus sex scandal. I have zero interest in his sex life, and I'm disgusted with all the attention it's being given.*

This is just the typical 'celebrity news' which seems to be our national obsession. (And it really wouldn't matter which celebrity, since they're all interchangeable.)

But then I read this:

I hate hypocrites. And the first word that came to mind when I heard about David Petraeus's extramarital affair was "hypocrite."

One of the big issues we've been dealing with for several years at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) is the military's push to make our troops "spiritually fit." There's the mandatory Army-wide "Spiritual Fitness" test, spiritual fitness concerts, spiritual fitness centers, and lots of other spiritual fitness events and programs to keep our military "spiritual." But while the military insists that "spiritual fitness" does not mean religion, it does. All of this spiritual fitness stuff, which the military spares no expense on, is just a cover to push religion, and particularly evangelical Christianity. The spiritual fitness concerts always have evangelical Christian performers and most of the Army's Strong Bonds events are really just evangelical Christian retreats.

And what's one of the big goals of all this "spiritual fitness" stuff? Strong marriages, of course! And who was a big proponent of this "spiritual fitness" stuff? Yeah, you got it - General David Petraeus. ...

Yeah, General Petraeus, we see how well that "spiritual fitness" stuff is working for you.

There's more there about Petraeus's "eagerness to promote religion." Honestly, you can't believe how tired I am of these religious hypocrites who tell me I can't be moral without a god.

Whether it's Catholic priests raping children (and the church covering it up), or devout Muslims flying passenger planes into buildings, or 'family values' Christians visiting prostitutes, maintaining a 'wide stance' in public bathrooms, or screwing their biographer, they keep defending their "holier than thou" fantasies.

Hell, David Vitter is still in the U.S. Senate, still the darling of the right-wing, and still "defending marriage" from the gay menace. Sure, a hypocrite in the Republican Party is hardly unusual enough to be news, but is there no limit to their hypocrisy?

Now, I'm sure that some atheists cheat on their wives. We're just as imperfect as everyone else. But that's the whole point. All this 'spiritual fitness' crap is crap. Religion does not make you any more moral than anyone else, and might make you less moral. (Try comparing nations with various levels of faith-based thinking.)

I don't need religion to be moral. I don't need religion to be ethical. Indeed, I think I do far better than the average true believer in both respects. So believe whatever you want, but don't tell me how much better that makes you.

And dammit, keep your religion out of my government! You have the right to believe whatever you want, but you don't have the right to push your religion into our military, especially since soldiers have fewer rights than the rest of us and can't tell their commanding officers to go to hell.

(John Cole)

* PS. Note that I'm not even talking about the batshit crazy right-wing conspiracy theories, which seem to be inevitable no matter what happens. I mean, like the news of his infidelity was suppressed until after the election (but why would this have had any effect on the election?) or that it's a way to keep Petraeus from testifying to Congress (which it also wouldn't affect at all).

PPS. Oh, and I guess I see that America isn't the only nation with this problem. It seems that Great Britain is seeing a similar scandal right now:

James Bond, a longtime agent with the British Secret Service, has announced his resignation after being implicated in a vast number of sexual affairs. He issued the following statement earlier today:

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for coming. I am here to announce that I am stepping down from my position with British Intelligence and handing in my License To Kill, effective immediately. The fact is, I willingly engaged in conduct unbefitting an individual in my profession, as I have engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with approximately 790 different individuals during my tenure with this organization, in a variety of locations around the world including numerous boats, moving vehicles, and areas just outside volcanic villain lairs, often times massively endangering myself, my sexual partner, and my mission in the process. ...

To the public, I know what you're thinking: Why would I consider it acceptable professional conduct to have intercourse with a mistress literally named "Pussy Galore?" To this, I have no sufficient answer, but I guess it's kind of like, you know that quote about "The bigger the lie, the easier it is to get people to believe you"? I guess I figured that if I nailed someone so cartoonishly sexual, and my wife found out about it, it would seem like it never actually happened. Does that make any sense? I mean, I know it's no excuse, but seriously, Pussy Galore?? The frickin' Austin Powers parody was "Alotta Vagina," and that's WAY LESS EXAGGERATED than the original.

Now that's a celebrity! :)

The repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'

I like Cenk Uygur's final comment here: "So, once again - shockingly - conservatives a hundred percent wrong. Nicely done."

Stars Earn Stripes

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What kind of country have we become? Have we completely lost the ability to distinguish fantasy from reality? Every time I think we've reached the bottom, I'm surprised by a new low.

I remember thinking about this when the Rambo movies were popular. Sure, we might have lost the real Vietnam War, but in the fantasy world of the movies, Rambo could kick butt. Yeah, that was real macho, wasn't it? We could all be tough vicariously, in our imaginations.

Likewise, chickenhawks in the Bush administration, who'd been very, very careful to avoid serving in the Vietnam War themselves, viewed war as a spectator sport. Well, they were all faith-based. They didn't seem to have any mechanism for distinguishing fantasy from reality. War was fun and politically popular.

Yes, without a draft - we're all "loyal Bushies" in that respect, in the care we take to avoid danger ourselves - America loved it. When Afghanistan got boring - how dare they have no good targets for our high-tech missiles? - it was time to boost ratings with a new war in Iraq.

Sure, we didn't have any real excuse for invading Iraq, not even the poor excuse we had for invading Afghanistan. (The 9/11 terrorists were actually Saudi Arabian. And Barack Obama showed us how we could have gone after Osama bin Laden in the first place, even if we hadn't been smart enough to consider terrorism to be a crime, rather than 'war.')

But Iraq had lots of oil, so the war would "pay for itself," right? And they had lots of targets for our high-tech weapons. Military contractors were giddy at the prospect of shooting off our whole stock of enormously expensive missiles.

Ordinary Americans loved it, too. It was like the Fourth of July. We got to see the explosions in real-time without getting off the couch - and certainly without being in any danger ourselves. Reality TV! What fun!

And it was all free, since we just put it on the nation's credit card. I mean, you can hardly pass up a free war, can you?

But now, I guess, we're bored again. And until the Republicans regain power, we probably won't have a new war to watch. (I can't wait until we can all watch the explosions in Tehran! What about you?)

I mean, that stuff's not real, is it? It's just television, right? And the Obama administration just doesn't know how to entertain us. Afghanistan? That was boring a decade ago! Come on! We need a fresh war to keep ratings high.

Or maybe just 'reality' TV. Yeah, that's the stuff. For Americans, this is 'real,' I guess. Or, at least, real enough, since these days we seem to have a harder and harder time telling the difference.

Is anyone else as embarrassed at this as I am?

Mitt Romney vs Muhammad Ali

"Doesn't it feel good to get both sides of the story?" :)

The Pentagon's liberal green agenda

Marine general (from Republican Party training documents)

In my last post, I showed one way the right-wing is fighting back against reality. Here's another.

From Indecision Forever:

Constantly looking for new ways to destroy all that is well and good with America, hippies have recently taken to disguising themselves as top ranking military brass. Out are Birkenstocks and hemp skirts, in are polished shoes and chestfuls of distinguished service medals.

But have no fear, Republican members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees, and a few Democratic allies, are wise to these tricks. The conservative magazine Human Events explains…

The Senate markup of the 2013 National Defense Appropriations Act late last month dealt a grave blow to the liberal green agenda that has taken hold of the Defense Department.

Like the version of the bill that passed the Republican-controlled House, the Senate version censures military plans to invest heavily in costly biofuels to power ships and aircraft…The Democratic-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee voted 13-12 in late May to include two amendments sponsored by Inhofe and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that would prohibit the military from purchasing alternative fuel in the next fiscal year if it cost more than traditional fuel sources.

It's the military-green energy industrial complex Dwight Eisenhower didn't warn us about!

I guess it's worth offering up the generals' and admirals' side of the story, since they're the "experts" on security policy, so here goes: The military isn't interested in renewable energy because they speak for the trees, they're invested in green technology because it helps them to blow shit up while reducing the risk of their own soldiers getting blown up.

The Army's investment in energy efficient tents and trailers? It has something to do with the reality that oil tankers have a nasty habit of coming under enemy fire as they traverse the scenic byways of Central Asia on their way to forward operating bases in Afghanistan. For those bad at math, fewer tanker trips = less American casualties.

The Marines' interest in solar panels? Has to do with the fact that Marines operate in small units, away from resupply points, and carrying pounds of batteries reduces the amount rations, weapons and ammunition that can brought to bear on the bad guys.

With this is mind, do we think that the Navy is invested in biofuels because a) diesel makes baby Al Gore cry, or b) because the ability to make algal biofuel while underway reduces the need for port visits where U.S. warships are especially vulnerable, a la the U.S.S. Cole?

Wow, we've finally found a way to get the right-wing worried about the military spending money! You just have to tie it to protecting the environment (even when that's not the purpose).

Now if we can just tie all military spending to environmental protection, maybe we can close up the Defense Department and go home.

How much rape is "too much"?

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Crazy, isn't it? Hey, if they want to serve their country, women have to expect to be raped by their fellow soldiers, right? Did they expect to be on the same team or something?

And then they complain about it? Wow, that's hard to understand, isn't it?

And this is a woman making such bizarre statements. (Admittedly, it's a woman on Fox News.) She even laughs a bit about that report on violent sexual assaults in the military. Yeah, funny, isn't it? Who wouldn't get a chuckle out of that?

What did these women expect? Well, I imagine that any woman who volunteered to place herself in danger in order to serve her country would expect to be treated with respect by her own side!  These women probably expected to be in danger from the enemy, but not so much from their fellow soldiers.

Is that really how the military works, that you have more to fear from your own side than from the people you're fighting? Somehow, I thought there was supposed to be a certain amount of trust among people who were all risking their lives in a common undertaking.

And since when do we shrug off rape, even when perpetrated by our own soldiers - maybe even especially when perpetrated by our own soldiers? Is that just one of the perks of being in the military then, that you get to rape whomever you wish? Somehow, I got the idea that we didn't want American soldiers raping even the enemy.

But, of course, those nasty feminists have to make such a big deal about this, don't they? Hey, man up and take your rape like a, like a... woman?

Really, I'm still struggling to get my head around the fact that it's a woman saying such insane things. Oh, not that right-wing women aren't just as crazy as right-wing men. But I guess I thought they might have a different perspective on rape, at least.

There was more to that Fox News segment than Jon Stewart shows. Here's Steve Benen:

When Fox News anchor Eric Shawn said that "many would say that they need to be protected," Trotta was unmoved. "That's funny," she said, "I thought the mission of the Army, and the Navy, and four services was to defend and protect us, not the people who were fighting the war."

"Us," in this context, apparently doesn't include Americans who wear the uniform.

The host pressed further, noting, "Well, you certainly want the people fighting the war to be protected from anything that could be illegal." Trotta was still unsympathetic, responding, "Nice try, Eric."

It's hard to even comprehend such a twisted perspective. To hear this Fox News contributor tell it, American women in the armed forces should expect sexual assaults; American men in the armed forces are likely to become sexual predators; and the American military shouldn't bother to take any of this seriously.

That anyone would find such attitudes acceptable is just stunning.

Amen to that. The right-wing continues to surprise me at just how crazy they can be. Every time I think they've reached the bottom, they demonstrate that I was wrong.

Navy SEALs rescue hostages in Somalia

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This is gutsy! A lot of things could go wrong in an operation like this. Politically, the safe bet would probably be to do nothing at all.

I've got to say it's impressive that Barack Obama hasn't been taking the easy option, the safe option, neither here nor in getting Osama bin Laden.

How Rick Santorum ripped off American veterans

From Mother Jones:

Like any good presidential candidate, Rick Santorum heaps praise on America's soldiers and veterans. He's pledged to "make veterans a high priority" if elected president, adding, "This is not a Republican issue, this is not a Democratic issue, it is an American issue." But as a US senator, Santorum engineered a controversial land deal that robbed the military's top veterans' home of tens of millions of dollars and worsened the deteriorating conditions at the facility. ...

Under one scenario, by leasing the parcel of land and letting it be developed, the Home could pocket $105 million in income over 35 years for its trust fund, David Lacy, then-chairman of the Home's board of directors, told Congress in 1999. Lacy stressed that the Home wanted to keep the property, and not offload it to a buyer. "Once land is sold," he said, "it is lost forever as an asset."

Enter Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.). At the behest of the Roman Catholic Church, and unbeknownst to the Home, Santorum slipped an amendment into the 1999 National Defense Authorization Act handcuffing how the home could cash in on those 49 acres. The amendment forced the Home to sell—and not lease—the land to its next-door neighbor, the Catholic University of America. Ultimately, the Catholic Church bought 46 acres of the tract for $22 million. The Home lost the land for good, and by its own estimates, pocketed $27 million less than the land's value and $83 million less than what it could've made under the lease plan.

Of course, Santorum is a Catholic himself. In fact, he wants to write Catholic dogma into U.S. law. Taking land from U.S. veterans and giving it to the Catholic church is what God would want him to do, right? So why would a little thing like the U.S. Constitution stop him?

And  how is this retirement home doing now?

Financial records, court documents, and government reports from the 2000s show how the Home cut back on the services it provided veterans as it grappled with funding problems. The slashing of services got so bad that in 2003 veterans living at the Home filed a class-action suit against the Home and its director, Timothy Cox, alleging shoddy health care and less access to that care. As a result of cutbacks and declining quality in care, the suit claimed, the suicide rate at the Home spiked from 59 in 2000 to 131 in 2003.

In 2007, an investigation by the Government Accountability Office came to similarly troubling conclusions. The watchdog's head, David Walker, reported that one Home resident had been admitted to the hospital with maggots in a wound. Other vets were admitted with bad pressure sores, suggesting they'd been left unattended for dangerously long stretches of time by the Home's health care employees. ...

Yet today, despite some improvement in the Home's financial health, its campus is pocked with boarded-up, decrepit buildings. All but one of the Home's gatehouses is shuttered, as are some of the Home's more elegant buildings, including the historic Grant building (named after the Civil War general) and the red-brick hospital that now sits empty, bearing a sign warning off trespassers.

Welcome to Rick Santorum's America. This is how the whole country will end up, if he and the other Republicans get their way.

Militarizing local police departments

Rural states tend to vote Republican these days, and they also have more political power per capita than urban states (thanks to the two senators per state rule). For both reasons, Congress tends to shovel a lot of pork at rural states.

But as Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian point out, this isn't just a problem of waste. The whole idea of militarizing our police departments should bother every American.

The end of the Iraq War

(John Cole)

Unfortunately, David Emanuel Hickman wasn't greeted with flowers when he came home.

Or maybe he was:

Hickman, 23, was killed in Baghdad by a roadside bomb that ripped through his armored truck Nov. 14 — eight years, seven months and 25 days after the U.S. invasion of Iraq began.

He was the 4,474th member of the U.S. military to die in the war, according to the Pentagon.

And he may have been the last.

With the final U.S. combat troops crossing out of Iraq into Kuwait, those who held Hickman dear are struggling to come to terms with the particular poignancy of his fate. As the unpopular war that claimed his life quietly rumbles to a close, you can hear within his inner circle echoes of John F. Kerry’s famous 1971 congressional testimony on Vietnam:

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

It was quite a mistake, too. Not just 4,474 young Americans dead, but nearly 32,000 injured, often horribly - maimed, burned, and disfigured, with brain injuries, amputations, castrations, and other terrible, terrible injuries. (Modern medicine is so good these days that soldiers with truly horrific injuries can still survive the experience.)

Not to mention hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead - men, women, and children. And trillions of dollars wasted (direct and indirect costs, including caring for our injured soldiers). And now, every nation in the world has seen the danger of an out-of-control America and how, if Saddam Hussein really had developed nuclear weapons, we would have left him alone, as we do North Korea.

That's certainly a lesson Iran has taken to heart!

(David E. Hickman, 23 - photo by Zack Zornes)

No senior Iraqi government officials even showed up at our exit ceremony. But Iran was cheering wildly. After all, we took out Iran's worst enemy and ended the rule of Sunni Muslims in Iraq, giving control to the majority Shiites - like Iran's leaders. The funny thing is that Saddam Hussein, as a secular Muslim leader, was also the enemy of al-Qaeda.

Yeah, crazy isn't it? We took out the enemy of both of our enemies in the region. And why? Iraq was no threat to us. Iraq had never attacked us and, obviously, would never have dared to do so.

Even clear back in 1990, before Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, he checked with the American ambassador first, to make sure we'd be OK with that. Imagine his dismay when those assurances turned out to be worthless! That was the first President Bush.

At any rate, we'd still maintained a no-fly zone over Iraq since that war. And the United Nations was continuing to inspect for "weapons of mass destruction." Even if Saddam Hussein still had such things (he didn't), why not let the UN do its job? After all, we were already bogged down in one unnecessary war, one that we might have been able to win, if we hadn't taken our eye off the ball.

The whole thing was just completely insane! But the Bush administration was faith-based. They believed what they wanted to believe, just like Republican leaders now. They sneered at the "elites" who actually knew something about the Middle East. And Iraq's oil wealth was very seductive, especially since our president and vice-president were both former oil executives. Remember how the war was supposed to "pay for itself"?

Did we invade Iraq to steal their oil? I doubt it. I think it was more a matter of right-wing ideologues, chickenhawks almost to a man, believing what they really wanted to believe. They loved war - as long as there was no danger of them or theirs having to fight and die in it - but Afghanistan was just too boring. It was so primitive there were no good targets for our high-tech weapons.

They wanted to find an excuse to invade Iraq. They believed we'd be greeted as liberators, because that's what they wanted to believe. They believed the war would somehow "pay for itself," because that's what they wanted to believe. (Well, they believed that cutting taxes on the rich would pay for itself, too, for the exact same reason. When you're faith-based, you tend to believe whatever you want.)

(Pat Oliphant)

And now, Republicans are clamoring for war with Iran. Well, that's the other thing about faith-based thinking - you don't learn from your mistakes. Evidence isn't important, only faith. And when you know you're right, when you're absolutely certain that you've got God and the right on your side, then you'll keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

After all, your dogma just can't be wrong, right?

Rape in the U.S. military

From The Guardian (UK):

Rape within the US military has become so widespread that it is estimated that a female soldier in Iraq is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. So great is the issue that a group of veterans are suing the Pentagon to force reform. The lawsuit, which includes three men and 25 women (the suit initially involved 17 plaintiffs but grew to 28) who claim to have been subjected to sexual assaults while serving in the armed forces, blames former defence secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates for a culture of punishment against the women and men who report sex crimes and failure to prosecute the offenders. ...

Whether or not the case goes to trial, it is still set to blow the lid on what has come to be regarded as the American military's dirty little secret. Last year 3,158 sexual crimes were reported within the US military. Of those cases, only 529 reached a court room, and only 104 convictions were made, according to a 2010 report from SAPRO (sexual assault prevention and response office, a division of the department of defence). But these figures are only a fraction of the reality. Sexual assaults are notoriously under-reported. The same report estimated that there were a further 19,000 unreported cases of sexual assault last year. The department of veterans affairs, meanwhile, released an independent study estimating that one in three women had experience of military sexual trauma while on active service. That is double the rate for civilians, which is one in six, according to the US department of justice. ...

It is so well known that sex offenders go unpunished and victims penalised for reporting incidents, that most say nothing. Michelle Jones describes how she was still lying on the floor of her room in the barracks, her ripped shorts by her ankles, when her rapist stood over her and said, "I'll tell everyone you're a dyke and you'll get booted out if you report this." ...

Under the (now-repealed) US Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, openly gay people were barred from the military. Jones wasn't even sure she was gay at the time. But it wasn't worth the risk of reporting. "If I had spoken out, I would have been the one investigated," she says. "And it wouldn't have done any good anyway. I could tell you about 15 other women I know who had tried to report a rape and got nowhere."

Rape in any circumstance is brutal, but in the military the worst effects are compounded. Victims are ignored, their wounds left untended, and the psychological damage festers silently, poisoning lives. Survivors are expected to carry on, facing their attacker on a daily basis. "Unlike in the civilian world, a military rape survivor cannot quit his or her job and move on," explains Anu Bhagwati, executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, an organisation spearheading a campaign to reform this aspect of military life. "It's like rape in the family. Many victims often receive additional threats from their attackers." ...

Rape by a fellow serviceman also represents the most unfathomable betrayal to a soldier, according to Bhagwati. "You have to understand that from day one when you sign up, you are told that the people you work with are your family, that you will risk your life to save theirs. You live that uniform. It's who you are. And then, to be raped by one of your fellow servicemen? It's institutional misogyny."

The article, in which several rape victims recount their own experiences (and there are plenty more at My Duty to Speak), is both disgusting and infuriating. Why is rape so prevalent in the U.S. military?

"We looked at the systems for reporting rape within the military of Israel, Australia, Britain and some Scandinavian countries, and found that, unlike the US, other countries take a rape investigation outside the purview of the military," explains Greg Jacob, policy director at the Service Women's Action Network. "In Britain, for example, the investigation is handed over to the civilian police.

"Rape is a universal problem – it happens everywhere. But in other military systems it is regarded as a criminal offence, while in the US military, in many cases, it's considered simply a breach of good conduct. Regularly, a sex offender in the US system goes unpunished, so it proliferates. In the US, the whole reporting procedure is handled – from the investigation to the trial, to the incarceration – in-house. That means the command has an overwhelming influence over what happens. If a commander decides a rape will not get prosecuted, it will not be. And in many respects, reporting a rape is to the commander's disadvantage, because any prosecution will result in extra administration and him losing a serviceman from his unit."

I like the phrase "institutional misogyny." Women were not welcomed in the military in the first place, certainly not by everyone. It's a male-centered, aggressively macho culture. And it's top-down. Superiors exert power over their subordinates. It's not a democracy. It's a place where you don't rock the boat.

The highest officers are older, from a time when women - and certainly gays - were not wanted in the military. Women just cause problems, right? And any woman who reports a rape is going to be considered a problem, possibly more than the rapist himself.

It's not everyone. It's only a small minority, I'm sure. But in a top-down, authoritarian institution like this, the solution must come from the top. Those in charge must consider the problem important, or nothing will change. Maybe this has just festered in the dark, but that needs to stop now.

Too bad this is in a British newspaper, rather than an American one, but we all need to do what we can to make sure this doesn't get swept under the rug. We need to shine a light on it. Make sure that ignoring the issue will cause worse problems for the brass than dealing with it.

Because I'm sure the military leadership will ignore it if they can. Let's not let them.

No abortions for raped military women

I like how angry Cenk Uygur gets about this, because that's exactly how I feel. As a man, I'll never be in this situation. But when I start thinking about it, I just get furious.

Frankly, I feel angry about rape in the first place. I don't know any rape victims, but I'm still angry. As a man, I'm embarrassed that women even have to think about rape. That it exists at all makes me feel ashamed of my gender.

But then, to restrict abortions for rape victims is just beyond the pale. Thankfully, I'll never know how a rape victim feels, but I know exactly how Cenk feels in this video clip, because I feel the same way.