To the Flag

Adam Crapser is an American but like John McCain or Ted Cruze, he wasn't born within our borders. But he's had a rough life, unlike those men who consider themselves legal and potential Presidents.  An abandoned child, he was adopted from Korea by American parents who apparently were abusive and neglectful and failed to fill out the citizenship papers.

I pledge allegiance to the flag. . .

The reason I can't force myself to regurgitate that fulsome and illegal oath of allegiance I'm prompted to do at every turn these days isn't just the "God" bit but the Liberty and Justice for All. Today may be April Fools day, but we're a nation of fools all year. 

The damn government wants to send him back after 36 years of living here, marrying and trying to support a family -- to deport him  to a country he doesn't know or belong to or speak the language thereof because he's "illegal."  Because he's "illegal" he's found it very hard to find employment in the land of Freedom and Justice and when they send him back to an alien country, his wife and children will find out the hard way, what a sham American Liberty is.

Small minded, bigoted, petty, afraid -- perhaps. All too willing to hide behind walls and punish people who say a word in some language other than English or Starbucks. The free and brave have no compunctions about tossing anyone on the trash heap because of some paperwork he was too young to fill out.

And it's likely to stay this way because of the mean-spirited bastards who call themselves a political party, call themselves "Christian" and demand protection for morality and decency and humanity because of their "faith" and "family values."  By mean-spirited bastards I mean, for the most part, the Republican Party, but their opposition has to share some blame for the bickering, parochial, short-sighted behavior. We're against this or that, but only after you agree it's only our subset, our group who is the victim of this or that, that our particular problem is the one and only and most important, or that our most dire and pressing issue is this or that or the other thing to the exclusion of all else and we won't support candidates who don't agree, who aren't obsessed with our obsessions.

When someone comes here involuntarily as an infant, is educated here, speaks English as a first or only language and is part of our culture, what does it cost us to treat him better than a dog - to allow him to work, pay taxes, start a business, educate his kids and contribute to our society?  What do we gain by sending an American to Mexico or Korea to perish there?  Nothing at all is the answer and God might as well damn any country that acts this way, for we've damned ourselves.

All roads lead to damnation

At least they do if you're Barack Obama.  Threaten to impeach if he intervenes in Syria or Libya and threaten to impeach if he hasn't.  I keep saying it but now perhaps I don't need to illustrate it. Representative Jack Kingston, R-Ga shouts it from the rooftops the day before yesterday, or at least from the Capitol steps.  Anticipating the presidents speech, and a great one it was, Kingston told reporters it doesn't matter how it goes,

”It’s an election year. A lot of Democrats don’t know how it would play in their party, and Republicans don’t want to change anything. We like the path we’re on now. We can denounce it if it goes bad, and praise it if it goes well and ask what took him so long.” [italics mine]

There you have it, the Republican strategy in a nutshell or the Republican turd in the punchbowl if you prefer.  Sure some people see these saboteurs and insurrectionists as patriots simply because they hate civilization so much but sorry, I'm not drinking that punch.

Please sir, can I have some more?

Pecunia non olet said Vaspasian, or so they say. Money doesn't stink, or so you'd think looking at the way Florida governor Rick Scott laps it up like a cat with spilt milk. Showing up Monday at a  Boca Raton, Florida home of GEO Group CEO George Zoley for his $10,000 a plate fundraiser ( another $3K if you want to come to the reception) would suggest that Scott can't  smell dirty money, as Zoley's company is in the business of running private prisons -- some say the worst in the country -- that squeeze the life and health out of prisoners as well as exposing the guards to unnecessary danger.

Of course it may be that Scott smells it all too well and, like a culture, is attracted to the smell of graft and corruption and human suffering. You'll recall his involvement with the largest Medicare fraud ever exposed. You may not recall that Zoley gave Mr. Scott $20,000 to add to the $800,000 of taxpayer money to pimp up the governor's mansion. Yes, it was a drop in the bucket compared to the great flood of lobbyist money soaked up by the Governor, but Scott is not one to forget his obligations to contributors.


No money doesn't care who owns it and it doesn't stink even though the people and deeds connected to it may reek. The dollars saved by understaffing prisons and serving substandard, sometimes maggot infested food to prisoners adult and juvenile affirm his credentials with his party and particularly because so many of the inmates rotting and starving and being beaten in GEO prisons are immigrants. Last year a group of protesters  chained themselves to the doors of the GEO Group corporate headquarters in Palm Beach in protest over  GEO's "pivotal role in promoting discriminatory laws that target people of color,

immigrants, youth, transgender individuals, and the poor."   There have been hunger strikes.  There have been investigations looking into accusations that inmates were being served rotten food and suffering from food poisoning at the Broward  County, Florida facility. There were also allegations of sexual assault among detainees and reports of several suicide attempts says the Broward/Palm Beach NewTimes blog.  Did I mention that Scott is a Republican?

But we can't accuse old snake eyes of total blindness to appearances.  After all Zoley was a second choice after it became known that the original host, real estate mogul James Batmasian, was convicted of tax evasion in 2008. Batmasian, who spent eight months in federal prison and completed a two-year supervised release program, also had his legal license suspended in Florida. That stinks, even if his money doesn't.   It stinks almost as much as his rather dishonest and scurrilous accusations made against his likely opponent, Charley Crist, but to his supporters it doesn't matter any more than facts do. Rick Scott saved us money by abusing prisoners and a penny saved is a penny you can spend on yourself.  And besides, prisoners can't vote.

Fox lies, America dies

"You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" 

asked Joseph Welch of "tailgunner Joe" McCarthy, for decades the prototype for the vicious, unscrupulous and dishonest Republican Jihadist.  The unstated but nearly universally understood answer was "hell no."

McCarthy has been somewhat de-demonized after years of propaganda and  revision, but compared to what we had in 1954, at the height of the Communist witch hunt, the wealthy Corporate Political monsters now stomping on America like something from a 50's Japanese monster movie makes those little demons as pathetic as the rubber suited Godzilla compared to the thousand foot tall  computer generated version.

But is it surprising that the one thing Foxzilla has to say about the ultra radical (too radical for the al Qaeda leaders)  ISIS, now rendering all those dead and wounded and all those spent billions nugatory, is that not only is this not Bush's fault, but Bush foresaw that this would happen if we had some weak, Muslim-smelling, black Communist incompetent like Barack Obama in the White House. 

This is how America ends, not with anything but Fox.  Of course as any non-Republican -- and by Republican I mean malicious, truth-hating saboteur -- Bush signed off on the pledge to remove troops by 2012 and of course the troops wouldn't have been there but for him and his malicious lies and greed for conquest in the first place. We might not have had the Great Recession either if  he didn't lust after the title of "warpresident" he invented for himself but just like that recession that followed his war and deregulation policies, Iraq's inevitable collapse, long predicted by Bush's opponents now becomes Obama's fault and a Republican prediction.

At this point there's little left but gallows humor and bleak despair because we're all idiots, all deranged and all preoccupied with our own petty grievances:  missing airplanes, private racist comments by old men. Preoccupied by irrational fear and hog-tied by our own propaganda we just don't care enough to recall the things of only a few years ago and while we natter about like nitwits, we take step after step toward fascism and jingoism and a government of dollars, not men.

Impeach Obama, Court Martial Bergdahl

Damn the troops, Damn everything.  We're the Republicans

Didn't you see it coming?  The release -- let's call it a rescue -- of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from the clutches of the Taliban after 5 years should have been a feel-good story for all of us as well as his friends and family in these days of supporting the heroic troops, but a country pleased with anything,  even for an afternoon,  just can't be allowed by the party that has long made it it's business to tell us just how awful things are  and just how it's Obama's fault.  As you know, some Guantanamo "detainees" yet to be tried for anything, were taken custody of by agents of Qatar in exchange for Bergdahl's release.  Even an old cynic like me went looking for a flag to fly.

Before the rest of us had finished saying "welcome home,"  Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sternly warned America that this would have dire but unidentified consequences for all of us and of course "the troops."  Let the Inquisition, the disgusting denunciations and fear mongering begin. What did you expect? 

That Obama, said Oklahoma Jim, “clearly violated laws” that require him to notify Congress 30  days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay.  He betrayed us all, as is his wont, by failing to explain to Congress how the threat of releasing the satanic horde had been substantially mitigated before uncorking the Guantanamo bottle and thus denied the Grand Old Bastards the opportunity to filibuster, stall, vilify and ultimately prevent the recovery of Bergdahl, who, up until now, had been an illustration of Obama's uncaring negligence.

So stop your anti-American celebrating, Jodi and Bob Bergdahl and the town of Hailey, Idaho.  This is an impeachable offense, and your favorite son be damned.  And don't you dare bring up the sale of arms to our enemy Iran to bargain for the release of hostages because that's entirely different. Reagan was a Republican and it's OK when we do it.  Besides Obama has deprived the depraved party of their ability to denounce him for neglecting Americans in captivity and that's unforgivable.

And of course, say some of  the True American Patriots: sometimes our sainted troops aren't worth supporting.

"Bergdahl is a stank-ass hippie who accidentally joined the Army and decided to smell some Afghan flowers one night"

So he wasn't worth the time and effort even searching for him and it was, as when that Communist Clinton tried to punish al Qaeda with his "Monica Missiles,"  all a cover up for the Benghazi scandal, or the VA scandal or whatever scandal we are selling this week.

 "And, oh, yeah, Bergdahl will be treated as a hero instead of the little coward deserter that he is. If he makes it to a court martial, he’ll get slapped on the wrist, get an honorable discharge and go on his merry way to co-write a book." 

He's a traitor and deserter for sure say the patriots in and out of the military, proving, if proof is needed that there is no God who punishes those who need so badly to be punished.  Of course the punishment of living in a country that doesn't punish the Republicans is punishment for the rest of us.