When you’re working in a group, it’s hard to know what you truly think. We’re such social animals that we instinctively mimic others’ opinions, often without realizing we’re doing it. And when we do disagree consciously, we pay a psychic price. The Emory University neuroscientist Gregory Berns found that people who dissent from group wisdom show heightened activation in the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with the sting of social rejection. Berns calls this the “pain of independence.”

Take the example of brainstorming sessions, which have been wildly popular in corporate America since the 1950s, when they were pioneered by a charismatic ad executive named Alex Osborn. Forty years of research shows that brainstorming in groups is a terrible way to produce creative ideas. The organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham puts it pretty bluntly: The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups. If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.”

This is not to say that we should abolish groupwork. But we should use it a lot more judiciously than we do today.

Author Susan Cain interview with Gareth Cook, Scientific American Jan 24, 2012

A while back, I did a post on politics over at the Defeatists (In full disclosure, I post my stuff several places at a time if it fits, and that’s my primary place. It’s also the easiest to throw in videos and such…so if you think there may have been tune-age that you missed, check it out.) One of my frustrations with blogging and one reason that I have cut back is the lack of feedback, by the way. Comments are welcome, good, bad or indifferent. Anyway, most of the comments over there seem to come from people who are trying to sell something like Gucci handbags but have been fascinated by some brilliant thing one of us said, either recently or a couple of years ago. We’re about due for the annual “How dare you say anything bad about boy bands, you misogynist bastards, especially you, Commandante!” which has some interesting semiotic undertext in it. However, this one was from a real human being who was interested in what I said and conflicted…I might be right, but what the hell…

Here’s the conversation. Any emphasis is mine…

Good post, good post…but what if the “middle” is, objectively moronic and absolutely wrong? The middle says:

“We need to invade Iraq and kill or displace a million people and turn the country over to the Shiite theocrats, but we will do so with properly audited spending and well-trained troops who will follow the letter of the rules”

The middle says: “Medical care funding in this country is broken so let’s require people to buy overpriced private insurance with their minimum wage jobs”.

Sometimes, to parpaphrase Jim Hightower, “the only thing in the middle of the road are yellow lines or dead armadillos”

And…do you really see any Democratic Party politicians with any position or any influence in the party (which means…Jesse Jackson does not really count) as being anywhere near as crazy as the current GOP? Really? Which ones? I can’t think of any…I’m a little younger than you but I remember Jimmy Carter and Dukakis and their ilk…and they are NOT Santorum or Gingrich, let alone Bachmann.

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 10:48 AM

The middle is also gung ho about the upcoming hot war with Iran…either run driectly by the United States or by our good buddies in Israel. (Another nuclear power. Hmmmm….why is Israel “allowed” to have nuclear weapons?”

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 10:59 AM

Not sure where the middle is…you see it further off to the right than I do. Oddly, we could take either Eisenhower or Nixon and their social policies as a starting point for the middle, and we’d look pretty leftist today. Imagine the New Deal or the Fair Deal or the Great Society in swing today…but, of course, what we got is what we got and determines what we’re gonna get near term and possibly long term. What that doesn’t do is allow us to just give up. I remain convinced that the lesser of two evils is the better choice. By having Bush beat Gore, how did Nader make things better? Devolve for 8 years and here we go again? (Nader is not to blame completely for Bush — lots of things conspired to make things this bad.) However, the difference between John Kerry and George Bush can be summed up with two names — Samuel Alito and John Roberts as well as one Supreme Court Decision — Citizens United. A Democrat wins in 2000 or in 2004, even an uninspiring Democrat like Kerry, and money doesn’t equal speech. However, it’s probably time for my periodic Yeats post…

Posted by: Crusader AXE | 31 January 2012 at 11:47 AM

I guess I am gloomier than you.

I wished I believed things could be “reformed”. I think Chalmers Johnston nailed it. Even as things devolve and crash and burn, the people that benefit from the system still have plentiful opportunities for looting and rent seeking. And, the system promotes sociopaths (no…I am not saying everyone in government is a sociopath…but still, there are a lot of ‘em).

People like Obama merely provide a cover, a gloss, for the ongoing predation. Arguably, Obama has made things worse in that the “anti-war left” (a feeble force given America’s history as a violent culture based on conquest)) was lulled to sleep and ineffectiveness.

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 02:04 PM

From a guy who calls himself “The High Arka”

You can refuse to play either of their terrible games. You can resist them. Most of all, you have the power to give up the deception that Barack Obama is a hero because he might murder “fewer” innocent people. The crucial difference between voting for Obama in the real world, and choosing to allow him to murder only 3 preschoolers in the example above, is that the example above describes a terrible choice being made one time only. The presidential farce is recurring. Imagine the preschool example, but this time imagine that it happens every day. Times ten or fifty or a hundred. Every day, you go by the preschool, and every day the madmen execute either 3 or 5 children–your choice. At what point do you stop choosing? At what point do you stop playing along and say, “Enough”? At some point, it must become apparent to you that the game is never going to end.

The children are going to keep dying–there will always be new madmen willing to take the hostages, make the speeches, and carry out the killings. Choose your decade. Choose your war. Choose your murders. Choose your “party.” How long can you justify this morbid farce? How long will you play the terrible game with the killer? Go back to Vietnam, if you like. Go back to Hiroshima and “choose” which rich, powerful national leader you want to press the button. Go back to the invasion of the Philippines. Go back to the Mexican American War. The fucking crusades, or the genocide of the neanderthals. Count the bodies. Is it ever going to end? Are you ever going to say, “Enough”?

Every day you walk by the school. Every day the madmen are there. When are you going to stop giving them what they want? When are you going to stop validating not only the deaths they cause, but their entire horrific game? It will never stop unless we stop it. If we keep supporting it, year after year, always justifying it as “a little less murder than we could otherwise commit,” it will never end. When you refuse to vote, or vote for someone else, you are a grain of sand. But at some point, change has to happen, and it will take individual people willing to refuse to support the killing. A few crazies, at first, who refuse to compromise by saying, “I guess it’s fine if Obama kills people, because he’ll kill fewer than Gingrich will.” (This is, essentially, what that haughty piece of shit George Clooney is saying as the televised 2012 contest approaches) A few crazies, and maybe someday, more. It’s as daunting a task as any, but it has to happen for the killing to stop: human individuals–without an automatic, reassuring group consensus–refusing to support killing any longer.

Posted by: Brian M | 31 January 2012 at 04:31 PM

I’m guessing Brian isn’t the High Arka, but HA is definitely invited to the conversation…

This bothered me, and I was blogging about it. However, I was composing on Typepad, which my Defeatist brothers continually caution me against because a couple of times a year the Google or the Typepad Hobbits decide to fuck me over and eat everything I had written. I learn for a while, and then revert to form…so, I have brief moments of sanity, interspersing the Einsteinian standard insanity of doing something again and again and being surprised when it goes wrong. Terribly wrong. So, I dropped it for a while.

However, it’s still bugging me. I’m a lifelong Democrat who thinks that Jefferson, Jackson, both Roosevelts and Truman were among the great presidents, but the greatest was Lincoln. Lincoln would have serious problems in today’s Republican party of course. In fact, he’d probably either be a Democrat or possibly something further left. It’s fun to imagine him with David Boies, arguing Citizen’s United against some Koch brothers mercenary. Of course, as Jesus wouldn’t be allowed to preach in modern Christianity, Lincoln could never be admitted to the bar. Paul Tillich, the Existentialist Christian theologian and philosopher wrote in the introductory remarks to his most approachable work, The Dynamics of Faith, a series of lectures given at Cambridge in the 50s that “Today, faith is more productive of disease than of health. It confuses, misleads, creates alternately skepticism and fanaticism, intellectual resistance and emotional surrender…”

One reason that I admire Lincoln is simple – he personifies human compassion. Lincoln wasn’t overtly religious publicly, but he was a man of deep spirituality and concern. Tillich contends that “Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned. The dymanics of faith are the dynamics of ultimate concern…” Lincoln’s ultimate concern was justice which he saw as fairness, compassion, compromise and the acceptance of the other side’s humanity. He was generally disappointed, but he strove to achieve that world by doing what he could to maintain the union based on that idea of justice – not because the Union was itself just, but because he saw the potential for justice as lying in the Union, depending on it, deriving it’s future from it. And, in order to preserve it as source of ultimate good, he was willing to risk everything, including his soul and sanity and sense of self to preserve it. Had the South been victorious, would he have been treated like a hero by the North? He’d have been hung…he was risking his life, and the irony of his assassination lies in the reality that Wilkes egotistical madness created.

Today’s political world is based largely on something that goes back to the beginning – between those who are ALWAYS RIGHT and those who suspect quietly that they could have made a mistake. I don’t think Lincoln ever signed an execution order easily or without struggle; we know that George W. Bush had no such concerns, and that Rick Perry was almost gleeful about it at times. And, we know that the people who go to Republican debates cheer executions. Where would Lincoln have been on that? I suspect he’d have vomited…

I’ve been doing some reading about Afghanistan and our continued adventures there. Now, I have colleagues who are 9/11 Truthers, which I am not. I have colleagues who think Osama bin Laden was killed years ago and then dumped in the Ocean for a propaganda victory; I have colleagues that believe that Israel and the Mossad did 9/11 and got us into the various mid-eastern debacles. Well, if I were Israel I would probably have reacted to the news of 9/11 attacks with some restrained glee especially if I was concerned about the US cutting a separate deal that would be to Israel’s disadvantage. Churchill confessed to a feeling of relief and happiness when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Do we really think Churchill planned Pearl Harbor? I know that the Israelis and their various lobbies in this country really want Iran to go away – and, they’d like us to do it. However, as Zbigniew Brzezinski argued on Hardball on Friday we’re facing a reality. There is nothing that makes sense about backing an attack on Iran for us; lots to make it a really bad idea; and, exactly what does Israel get out of the attack? NBC’s chief “go get shot at” correspondent Richard Engle was in the same segment, and he indicated that the political leadership in Israel might be really excited by the possibility of an attack on Iran, but the actual soldiers and covert operators think it would be stupid, that their focus needs to be on Egypt and Jordan. Brzezinski argued that Iran may be crazy, but that particular empire in various incarnations has been around for 0ver 3000 years, and do we really think they’re suicidal? He also points out to those who say “Israel can’t live under the threat of nuclear attack” the degree of fatuous reasoning. We did it for over 40 years as did the Soviets and Western Europe. If Iran gets a bomb and uses it, do they expect to survive? Everybody in the neighborhood who counts, including Israel, has a credible nuclear deterrent, as well as delivery systems. The Iranians are depending in so far as they are on anything, on North Korean technology…what the hell. Let them spend themselves into oblivion, which was Reagan’s strategy in the 80s. It works…unless you screw up and spend yourself into oblivion.

This is relevant to Afghanistan for a number of reasons. I know that the administration has agreed to stop combat operations sooner than later, but I’m really wondering why not now! It really helps to have some historical awareness, and the only tactic that has worked with Afghanistan is the punitive raid. Get in, fuck up the bad guys and anybody in the vicinity, threaten worse if they do it again, unass the AO. Invade and try to make it better, and you’ll just make it a helluva lot worse, and you’ll suffer for it. By April of 2002, the Taliban is gone from power although still there; al Queida was severely damaged there; Pakistan is/was/will be totally fucked up; and we’re there because…we’re going to turn it into a Jeffersonian Democracy? As soon as the Taliban was defeated and Osama bin Laden et al were in Tora Bora, we should have declared victory, given them a check, possibly re-established the monarchy and gotten out. The Afghan people don’t want western culture; they don’t want women to have any rights; they don’t want to not kill each other. It’s that simple – we’re trying to impose an improvement on people who see no reason to change and regard the “improvements” as evil. NATO and the US would be further ahead to fund emigration to some reasonable location – Barstow, California for example – for those who want to live under something other than Sharia law. That’ll assuage some consciences. But whether we leave now or in five years or in ten years, it will be the same…only worse.

The piece from Susan Cain is very relevant here. We got into Iraq due to a rush to judgment and the influence of Ike’s military industrial complex combined with green, hubris and myopia. It’s interesting in comparing our Iraq-Afghanistan experience to the Soviet experience. Unlike the Soviets, we did have a reason for attacking within Afghanistan – they were harboring a threat, and we had a just reason for wanting to eliminate that threat. The Soviets had been dithering around with the Afghans for years and chose to invade because of the Brezhnev doctrine that once a Red Block Country always a Red Block combined with the belief that they could control matters. They sold themselves a bill of goods. The Soviet experience looks a lot like US experience in Vietnam – lots of people with good intentions and an absolute inability to see the consequences of their actions. I’ve been reading former British Ambassador to Moscow Rodric Braithwaite’s Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-1989 with a degree of déjà vu combined with a strong sense of WHAT THE FUCK ARE WE DOING? Working from Russian sources and interviews, Braithwaite has a history of a cosmic comedy of errors that looks and smells a lot like Vietnam. Lousy policy, self-delusion, group-think run amuck, combined with inefficient tactics, lousy planning, and dumbfounding mismatches between outcomes, methods and resources. The good news for the Soviets was that Spetznaz was really well honed in Afghanistan. The bad news is that they failed to achieve any of their goals while turning the Red Block essentially into Cuba and North Korea. We achieved our initial goals, dithered and screwed around for the next 10 years and are still looking for a goal that we can achieve. Somebody in power needs to stop talking, listen to the record and the history and start focusing on ultimate concerns, desired outcomes – I define a desired outcome as something that can be achieved within the reasonable constraints of blood, time, treasure and lost opportunity. The most desirable outcome today is not to listen to the congressional storm or the media tumult but to listen to the inner voice of reason and make the sort of courageous decision that Lincoln made routinely. And, don’t wait for elections or consensus. Do what’s right, now…for Lincoln’s sake.

Braithwaite begins the third portion of his book, the Long Goodbye with a poem by one the Russian Afghan veterans, Igor Morozov. It reads, in part –

Down from the heights we once commanded/ with burning feet we descend to the ground/ bombarded with calumny, slander and lies/ we’re leaving, we’re leaving, we’re leaving.

Farewell you mountains you know best/ what prices paid while we were here/what foes unconquered still survive/what friends we had to leave behind…

I generally find Russian poems and song lyrics somewhat of a blend of overly didactic and overly romantic…peasant and soldier poetry. The Soviet Army and its soldiers deserved a better use; so did the British with Lord Elphinstone in 1820. The Soviets in many ways repeated the British experience. We repeat the Soviety experience…if history repeats itself with the first time as tragedy and the second as farce, what exactly is our experience going to be? Tragical farce? We deserve better, and if someone listens not to the crowd but to the inner voices or reason, creativity and common sense, we may get it. I remain pessimistically hopeful…

From the cage beneath the cellar, a random spattering of hyperlinks.

Inside New York's abandoned leper colony

• Bob McGinn of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has a great profile of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady here.

• Do Republicans orgasm more than Democrats?

• Freeman Dyson‘s brain.

• Ice hockey in Turkey; skiing in Iran.

• Liz Hazelton takes readers to “the island that New York forgot.”

• Peter Singer: “The U.S. Navy has trained dolphins to detect mines. Now, they might be used in the conflict with Iran over its nuclear policies.” (Related: CETACEAN NATION!)

• Portland author Scott Farris: “Democracy is a fragile thing. The winners only govern with the losers’ consent. It would only take one candidate to say ‘I reject the results’ to plunge things into chaos.”

• “Seeing a human wrapped in cellophane with blood smeared around, it makes people think.”

• Soothing image of holstein being brushed.

• The Antiplanner reviews Margin Call.

• The Mother of All Saxophones.

• The Washington Post: 10 Reasons the U.S. is No Longer the Land of the Free.

And from my Favorite Links of All-Time pile: “A cat is gorgeous and wild Leopard which disguises itself! Dress a cat only with shawl. Shawl achieves the duty of a foppish muffler. Back cloth is a tartan check handle and a hat and shawl look dear.”

Recently I was browsing in a used book store when I stumbled upon a soldier’s Japanese phrasebook from World War II. Between faded orange covers I found a treasure trove of fascinating words and phrases- certainly it’s the most useful text published by the U.S. War Department I’ve encountered since that pamphlet on sexual hygiene for GIs I found in a Texas ghost town a few years back. It does lack for detailed diagrams of human genitalia, however.

Like most phrasebooks it contains all the standard terminology related to greetings, asking for directions and finding lodgings, but the structure and at least half of the language is strictly determined by the context of war. Thus it begins not with “Hello” and “My name is…” but rather a set of “Emergency Expressions” the very first of which is:

Help! ta-SKET-ay!

Now that is definitely useful, so long as you are talking to friendly Koreans or “Formosans” and not a platoon of Japanese soldiers. Other handy emergency expressions include:

Where are American soldiers? Ah- may-ree-ka no hay-ee-TA-ee wa DOAK-o-nee ee-MA-ska?

Are they our enemies? KA-ray-ra wa tek-ee DESS-ka?

And:

Don’t shoot! OO-tsoo-na!

Only once this type of thing is out of the way does the War Department get down to teaching the basics of polite conversation such as:

Good morning o-ha- YO

And

Will you have a cigarette? Ta-ba-ko o DOAZ-o?

Frequently the phrasebook offers both polite and imperative forms for the same expression. According to the foreword you should be respectful when addressing prisoners in the officer class, but bark at their underlings- that’s the Japanese way, apparently. Thus, when interrogating gentlemen of breeding you say this:

Please tell the truth hoant-o no ko-TOE o eet-TAY KOO-DA-sa-EE

But when it comes to enlisted men, you say this:

Tell the truth! Hoant-o no ko-TOE o ee-YAY!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, no polite form is supplied for the following:

Obey or I’ll fire! Kee-ka NA-eet-o OO-tsoo-zo!

Of course, there are long lists of vocabulary dedicated to rank, terrain and military hardware. A lot of the combat stuff would not be very useful today however…unless you are attacked by a rogue member of the apocalyptic Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo:

I was gassed doak-oo-GA-soo nee ya-RA-ret-ah

I was surprised to find that Section 3 was filled with detailed terminology related to fine dining:

I want it- – koo-da-SA-ee
Cooked or boiled nee-TAY
Raw NA-ma-day
Rare na-MA ya-kee-nee SHTAY
Well done YO-koo YA-ee-tay
Baked or fried YA-ee-tay
Fried in deep fat ah-GET-ay
Roasted RO-sto shtay

War is hell but evidently that doesn’t stop you from squeezing in a good meal whenever you can.

Next come “health” words, which for seriously wounded soldiers would surely have meant the difference between life and death, e.g.:

I am hurt in the crotch/privates ma-TA ga ee-TA-ee
Stop the bleeding shook-KETS o-toe-MAY-yo
Quick! HA-ya-koo!

In conclusion, I’d say that the U.S. War Department did an excellent job of putting together this little phrasebook. The only thing that’s missing is a section dedicated to prostitution, which would have been very useful for some of the GIs, I’m sure. Oh yes, and also: “Where did all these severed heads come from?” an essential phrase for any English speaker en route to Nanking while it was under Japanese occupation in 1937. But then again, America wasn’t in the war yet. Heck, there wasn’t even a war on!

As evocative of a soldier’s reality as any memoir or novel, the War Department’s Japanese phrasebook made me thankful I was born in a different time, and did not have to face death in a hostile jungle. Which reminds me: my well-thumbed copy came to me with the previous owner’s name still penciled on the cover: Captain Pilch. Thus as I flick through its well-thumbed pages (the Captain clearly saw a lot of combat) I draw even closer to that moment in history and ask myself: Did the captain survive? Which phrases did he use the most? Could the Japanese understand him? There’s no way to know. But I am grateful to the Captain for his notations, such as REI for zero which the War Department omitted even though Eastern mathematicians were using it in their calculations long before the turn of the first millennium.

Who knows, perhaps this book even saved Captain Pilch’s life! And just on the off chance that he is still knocking around, aged 95 or so, I have a request to make. On the front cover the phrasebook is marked RESTRICTED. The first page elaborates that “… restricted material may be given to any person known to be in service of the United States and to persons of undoubted loyalty and discretion who are cooperating in government work…” But otherwise that’s it.

Now I’ll admit that since anybody could have constructed this phrasebook out of a big enough dictionary, I don’t quite understand why the War Department felt the need to keep its contents confidential. But I shall defer to their wisdom. So don’t tell anyone I told you all this stuff, OK? For Captain Pilch’s sake (and mine, I suppose).

Unless you happen to know for certain that the RESTRICTED classification has been lifted. In which case tell anyone you like.

Originally published at RIA- Novosti, the home of awesome

10. I resolve to finish that pro-Catholic pornographic musical I’ve been working on

9. I resolve to eat my weight in marzipan

8. I resolve to finally find Waldo

7. I resolve to keep my ambitions within reach

6. I resolve to solve world hunger

5. I resolve to e-mail back that Nigerian prince who keeps trying to contact me

4. I resolve to think of another password for my computer besides ‘password’

3. I resolve to drive by a gym at least three times a week

2. I resolve to keep all my resolutions to myself this year

1. I resolve to limit my number of resolutions to nine
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

10. Instead of ‘Naughty’ or ‘Nice’ you’re on his ‘Asshole’ list

9. He leaves a note saying, “You better watch out! You better not cry! You better not shout while I’m torturing you!”

8. He smears reindeer poop all over your drapes

7. Your biggest gift is Newt Gingrich’s To Save America

6. He pours eggnog into your Christmas stocking

5. You’re constantly being tripped by sinister-looking elves

4. As he drives out of sight, he exclaims, “Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night…except you, you bastard!”

3. All the candy canes he leaves you contain fish hooks

2. Instead of ‘jolly’ you’d have to describe his demeanor as ‘malevolent’

1. When you try to sit on his lap, he jumps out of the way
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

INTELLIGENCE ALERT
PINKARSKY COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

The Pinkarsky County Sheriff’s Department was recently made aware of a potentially dangerous threat to our children, in the form of music that mimics the feeling of euphoria that comes from taking drugs. Sheriff’s Department officials would like to warn parents about this troubling development, and encourages all parents to be vigilant and make sure and monitor any music that your children listen to, to ensure that they’re not “getting high” off it.

“Of course, we’re concerned about what the children of Pinkarsky County are listening to,” said Sheriff Waldo Heiny, at a press conference called specifically to announce this troubling development. “We want to make sure that the parents, who already have their hands full with their jobs, or unemployment worries, or whatever, understand that the Sheriff’s Department will do everything it can to help them to deal with this dangerous threat targeting our youth, by making random stops of children who exhibit odd behavior in public, and by making random searches of the CD and MP3 collections of the county’s children.”

The Sheriff added that the silence from some neighboring counties on this potentially devastating problem has been deafening.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DONAR COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

The Sheriff’s Department of Donar County recently learned that some parents had become alarmed by the idea that some kids might be trying to get high by listening to music. Donar County Sheriff Whitty Crain wishes to assure parents that there is little threat of children getting high from music. The real threat is from girls dipping their tampons in vodka, and then putting the tampons in their vaginas, where the vodka is absorbed through the soft, tender tissue of the girl’s vagina.

“Girls, teenage girls, have these really soft, tender vaginas,” said Sheriff Whitty Crain, of Donar County, during a press conference. “It makes it especially easy for them to get drunk by absorbing vodka through their vaginas, so parents need to be especially vigilant about this potential crisis situation.”

The Sheriff suggested that parents check their daughters’ vaginas for the odor of vodka, but he added, “We in the Donar County Sheriff’s Department won’t leave parents to deal with this potentially deadly situation on their own. We’ll have deputies stopping girls on the streets who exhibit unusual behavior and making random vagina checks, sniffing their vaginas for vodka.”

The Sheriff explained that unusual behavior could consist of anything from laughing in public, to crying in public, and anything in between.

“The important thing is that we keep our children safe by checking their vaginas,” Sheriff Whitty Crain added. “And of course we need to show that Donar County keeps things in perspective, and we don’t get all worked up about phoney stuff like some other neighboring counties I could name, but I won’t.”

INTELLIGENCE ALERT
PINKARSKY COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

The Pinkarsky County Sheriff’s Department has received a number of inquiries regarding the potential of teenage girls to become intoxicated by dipping their tampons in vodka, and then inserting the tampons into their vaginas, where the vodka is then absorbed by the tissue in the vagina. The Department would like to assure Pinkarsky County citizens that it is doing everything it can to check the vaginas of its teenage residents.

At a press conference, Sheriff Waldo Heiny stated emphatically that he was personally instituting a new vagina-sniffing protocol to ensure an orderly standard of teenage vagina sniffing. But he also stated the importance of pro-action in the fight to keep our county’s residents safe.

“To be honest, some counties have been caught flat-footed by some of these crises that we’ve been dealing with,” Sheriff Waldo Heiny explained. “Who saw the meth crisis coming? Who saw the Four Loko crisis? Who saw the candy with names that kind of sound like marijuana crisis? While some counties I could name but won’t are just sitting around scouring the internet looking for epidemics, we here in Pinkarsky county are actually trying to identify potential epidemics before they start, so we can nip them in the bud!”

Sheriff Waldo Heiny added that the night before he and his family had eaten asparagus for dinner. “Now, my wife doesn’t usually make us asparagus,” the Sheriff said. “But she did last night, because it was on sale at the Sav-A-Way. I think it was about two dollars a pound. Anyway, the asparagus was all right — she fixed it using a recipe she’d found on the internet. So we all ate it.

“Well, that night I went to the bathroom and peed, and I noticed that my pee smelled really funny. It had a more earthy and interesting odor than usual.” The Sheriff explained that because of all the teenage girl vaginas he’d been smelling lately, he had come to consider himself to be something of an expert on the odors of urine.

The Sheriff continued: “I didn’t really think too much of it until later that night, we were putting the kids to bed, and no one could find our son. It turns out, he was in the bathroom, with his head over the toilet bowl, sniffing the asparagus pee water. I hardly recognized him — it was like he couldn’t help himself.”

Sheriff Waldo Heiny warned residents that they should be aware of the potentially addictive qualities of asparagus pee odor. “My son even said that he wanted to pee in a bag so that he could keep the pee with him and sniff it whenever he wanted. Now, my son is sort of retarded, so if he could come up with an idea like huffing a bag of asparagus pee, imagine what ideas a smarter kid might come up with, to get his asparagus pee fix.”

The Sheriff added that he is working with local stores that sell asparagus, to help them to come up with voluntary protocols for the sale of asparagus, and warning signage that they can post on the potential dangers of asparagus pee sniffing. “This is a lot more than some neighboring counties are doing,” he concluded.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DONAR COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

The Donar County Sheriff’s Department would like to warn parents of a potentially devastating epidemic that is afflicting one neighboring county, and could potentially spread here.

At a press conference this morning, Sheriff Whitty Crain sounded the warning alarm. “This is an addiction that strikes regardless of race or ethnic background, or skin color. It doesn’t care if you’re some poor slob who only has enough money to shop at the Sav-A-Way, or if you’ve got a little more money and a lot better taste and you shop at the Super Pic-A-Lot. Our children are at risk, and the time to think is past, and the time to act is now!”

Sheriff Whitty Crain said that the trend of asparagus pee huffing, which he said that some children might start calling “Aspeeing,” for short, would be devastating to Donar County, if it is allowed to spread unchecked. “We all know how these epidemics go,” the Sheriff said. “At first it’s just an addiction, then pretty soon people are dying left and right.”

The Sheriff added that unlike some counties where they are taking a more “casual approach” to the crisis of Aspeeing, in Donar County they were going into full crisis mode, to stop this potential crisis before it starts. “I am happy to report that the town council all got together and voted on a resolution requiring all stores in Donar County to get identification from anyone buying asparagus. No one under the age of 21 will be able to make these purchases, and no one will be able to buy more than a pound and a half of asparagus at one time.” The city council agreed that a pound and a half of asparagus seemed reasonable to them. “I don’t understand why anyone would need to buy any more than that,” the Sheriff said. “Unless they’re trying to get their Aspeeing fix.”

The Sheriff’s Department is also announcing a special Aspeeing Task Force, the duties of which will include monitoring the internet for asparagus recipes. “A lot of these websites try to entice young people by making asparagus look appetizing. And it is, don’t get me wrong. But these kids eat too much of it so that their pee smells really earthy and interesting, then they pee in a bag and keep the bag with them all day, and all they can think about it sniffing their pee bag, and soon they’ve dropped out of school and they’re dying on the streets because we didn’t do anything to stop this before it started.”

Sheriff Whitty Crain added that he has instructed deputies to make random raids on homes where asparagus has been purchased, or those homes where someone has accessed Barefoot Contessa‘s website. “We’re working with Simons Cable to get IP information, or whatever,” he added.

“The best way we can protect our children is by raiding peoples’ homes, handcuffing them, shooting their dogs if they get in our way, and ransacking their homes looking for asparagus,” the Sheriff concluded.

The Donar County Sheriff’s Department wonders if some neighboring counties care even a little bit about their residents, that they’re not willing to take these simple steps to combat what is a growing crisis.

INTELLIGENCE ALERT
PINKARSKY COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

The Pinkarsky County Sheriff’s Department is pleased to announce that it is taking further steps to ensure the safety of its residents in the wake of the Aspeeing epidemic that has swept across at least two counties, and now threatens the entire state.

Sheriff Waldo Heiny, of Pinkarsky County, held a press conference at which he displayed a table of asparagus that had been confiscated from the back of the Sav-A-Way on Kitchen Truck Road. “This is what we’re dealing with, people,” he said, as cameras flashed. “It looks innocuous, but to potentially millions of people, this asparagus has the potential to ruin countless lives, kill potentially millions of innocent people, and leave potentially millions of children as orphans.”

The Sheriff’s Department has engaged in 38 asparagus raids in the two days since the Aspeeing Epidemic was first recognized. There have been 54 arrests. “Technically, these people haven’t violated any laws, because the law is working too slow to keep up with this potentially devastating crisis,” the Sheriff said. “But we’re working with our state legislator, Doug ‘Big Bud’ Hightone, to get an emergency bill introduced to ban the sale of asparagus in the state.”

In the meantime, the Pinkarsky Sheriff’s Department has unveiled it’s latest weapon in the war against Aspeeing, a rocket propelled grenade launcher, which will be used to take down airplanes or trucks that attempt to bring asparagus into Pinkarsky County. “As of now, we are an asparagus-free county,” the Sheriff declared. “Because we care about our residents, and want to ensure their safety.” Sheriff Waldo Heiny added that that the rocket propelled grenade launcher was being used in conjunction with the county’s other high-tech weapons, including four armored vehicles, 450 AK-47s, and body armor. “This is a war,” the Sheriff said. “We are dealing with a relentless enemy that is targeting our children. We will spare no expense in protecting those children.”

“Top that,” Sheriff Waldo Heiny concluded, in a jab which was aimed squarely at the sheriff’s department of a neighboring county.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DONAR COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

In a series of well-coordinated, daring midnight raids, the Donar County Sheriff’s Department confiscated more than twelve pounds of asparagus, which many fear is being used in a potentially deadly practice known as “Aspeeing,” in which victims become addicted to the earthy and interesting smell of asparagus pee. Among those places raided were the Super Pic-A-Lot on Greasy Hollow, and the home of Charles and Marie Mileton, of 1298 Follow Rooster Lane, near stop 238.

“It was a successful mission,” Sheriff Whitty Crain said. “We definitely sent a message, that Donar County will not tolerate the targeting of its most vulnerable residents in this insidious manner.”

Following the raid on their home, Charles and Marie Mileton were taken to County General hospital, where they were treated for multiple gunshot wounds before passing away. Sheriff Whitty Crain noted that while the deaths of the Miletons were tragic, they were an unavoidable consequence of dealing with the Aspeeing Epidemic.

“Aspeeing doesn’t care who it targets,” the Sheriff said. “Tonight’s battle was a victory, a small one, but the war will no doubt rage indefinitely. In fact, we’re already making plans for a long-term war.” The Sheriff added that during the raid the Miletons exhibited suspicious behavior when they accused deputies of violating their “fourth amendment rights.” These accusations made the deputies participating in the raid feel threatened, because asserting “fourth amendment rights” is typical criminal behavior.

Sheriff Whitty Crain went on to add that he was alarmed by what he saw as another potentially devastating crisis on the horizon. “It occurred to me while I was coordinating tonight’s missions: If people are now peeing into bags and huffing them, what’s to stop them from pooing into bags, and huffing that? That’s why this morning I am pleased to announce the formation of a brand new anti-Dooking task force, to help us coordinate our efforts in combating what has the potential to be a devastating new addiction for our children.”

The Sheriff had to cut the press conference short, as there were rumors that a small passenger plane carrying asparagus had entered Donar County airspace. “We will be taking that plane down with one of our Stinger missiles,” the Sheriff said, exiting the conference room. Later, after the passenger plane had been taken down, he winked at Channel 7′s camera and said, “Check, and mate,” in a comment apparently directed at a certain neighboring county’s sheriff’s department.

INTELLIGENCE ALERT
PINKARSKY COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT

The Pinkarsky County Sheriff’s Department, in response to the recently uncovered Dooking Epidemic, is pleased to announce that it will be conducting random bathroom raids to ensure that people are defecating into their toilets, like they’re supposed to, and not defecating into bags and then huffing it, which is potentially dangerous and addictive.

“If these raids find evidence of even one person even thinking about Dooking, it will all be worth it,” Sheriff Waldo Heiny said. He added that parents can help the Sheriff’s Department by talking to their kids about the dangers of Dooking.

“What we found with Aspeeing is that the epidemic came upon us so fast that most kids hadn’t even heard of it, and didn’t even know about the danger they were in,” the Sheriff explained. “Now, we’re asking parents to help us spread the word about Dooking, and the process by which a person first defecates, or poops, into a bag, then places the open end of the bag up to their face and firmly closes the end of the bag around their mouth and nose (creating as air-tight a seal as possible), and then inhales deeply the aroma of feces (poop).”

The Sheriff added that parents should be on the lookout for suspicious behavior from their children while discussing these dangers with them. For instance, if a child claims never to have heard of Dooking, the Sheriff’s Department should be immediately contacted so that a raid can be coordinated. “Claiming to have never heard of Dooking is a defensive move common among Dookers,” the Sheriff said. Other suspicious behavior among Dookers includes having no interest in the subject of Dooking, asking too many questions about Dooking, or not asking enough questions about Dooking.

“To be safe, we’re planning on raiding the homes of all Pinkarsky County residents,” Sheriff Waldo Heiny said. “We’re just gassing up our armored vehicles, and then we should be ready to go.” He then added that he didn’t care what other, neighboring counties did, all the cared about was protecting his own residents.

DEA INTELLIGENCE ALERT – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Drug Enforcement Agency is issuing a bulletin for all domestic police agencies. Over the past week, the Agency has become aware of two separate addiction epidemics, Aspeeing, and Dooking, which have devastated two small counties in America’s heartland. Thus far, more than 784 people have been killed, as law enforcement agencies in those communities have struggled to fight these addictions that are targeting our nation’s weakest people.

The DEA wishes to assure residents all over the world that it will spare no expense in fighting these scourges. It is pleased to announce that it is currently working with Senator Chuck Schumer to craft legislation that will empower federal law enforcement agencies to direct all necessary resources to fighting these two potentially devastating epidemics. “I see this as a real opportunity for us to get out in front of what has the potential to be a serious epidemic,” Senator Schumer said.

The DEA would further like to thank Sheriff Waldo Heiny of Pinkarsky County for bringing these epidemics to its attention.

FROM THE DONAR COUNTY EXAMINER
SHERIFF WHITTY CRAIN ARRESTED ON SUSPICION OF MURDER

Sheriff Whitty Crain has been arrested on suspicion of murdering Pinkarsky County Sheriff Waldo Heiny yesterday. Witnesses claim that Sheriff Crain was jealous that Sheriff Heiny had been mentioned in a press release from the Drug Enforcement Agency while he had not.

“This is a real tragedy,” said city councilwoman Irma Davois. “The Sheriff has been a tireless crusader for law and order, especially lately as he’s been out in front of two potentially devastating addiction epidemics — protecting our children from Dooking and Aspeeing. To see him facing these charges is a real blow.”

The body of Sheriff Waldo Heiny was found last night in own home. He’d apparently been shot with an AK-47, and his body squashed flat by an armored vehicle. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the words “I’M DOING MORE TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE IN MY COUNTY THAN YOU EVER DID IN YOURS, YOU STUPID JERK!” were found carved into his chest in tiny little letters, in handwriting similar to that of Sheriff Whitty Crain.

“He did have really distinctive handwriting,” said an unnamed source in the Donar County Sheriff’s Department.

Although charges are pending, Sheriff Whitty Crain has said he has no intention of resigning as sheriff. “There is still much that needs to be done to protect our residents. These charges are proof that I’ve been too effective. They’re all afraid of me, and how I’m protecting the people in my county! I can do it from jail!”

The Sheriff then began laughing maniacally and said that he was creating a task force to combat a new crisis he’d just heard about or thought might attack his county, this one in which people pee and poop on tampons, and then put them in their vaginas while listening to addictive music that comes from listening to pee and poop in a bag. He then added cryptically that, “No one wants to return to a time when just anyone could buy all the cold medicine they want without showing an ID, do they? Do they? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

The Sheriff’s lawyer, Manny Simon, noted that Sheriff Whitty Crain still has the community’s full support. “No one has done more to help this community through two recent crises, and everyone knows that.” He cited the fact that the Shriner’s of Columbus had not changed its plans to give Sheriff Whitty Crain its “Man of the Year” award next Saturday.

“He’s been a pillar of the community,” Simon said. “Unlike the sheriffs of some neighboring counties.”

I’m so sick of our nation’s focus on this ridiculous rich vs. poor scuffle.  We all know that there will always be a distinction between rich and poor, even in Communist Utopias, because the rich and the poor have always been opposing one another and have, over the millennia, reached a sort of natural equilibrium which prevents one from eliminating the other.  Thus, over the course of thousands of years, the poor’s standards of living have increased dramatically, with a similar increase realized by the elites.  Neither of those groups is likely to be the instrument of oppression in the United States of America.

For that dubious distinction we need to look to our Crusader Class.

So what is our “Crusader Class” and why are they so powerful?  Our Crusader Class is both abundant in number, and yet all of its power rests in the ultimate minority, that of a single person, combined with the ever increasing power of our unrestrained state.  These are not the government bureaucrats and politicians we so often target.

In terms of “dangerous to the liberties and freedoms of the American people”, politicians and bureaucrats are as nothing compared to the Crusader Class.

The Crusader Class is the foot soldier of the oppresive Nanny State machine.

The story which prompted this missive is the one about the Child Protective Services office in Ohio which took a kid from his mother because the state deemed him “too fat”.

 CLEVELAND (AP) — An Ohio third-grader who weighs more than 200 pounds has been taken from his family and placed into foster care after county social workers said his mother wasn’t doing enough to control his weight.

The Plain Dealer reports that the Cleveland 8-year-old is considered severely obese and at risk for such diseases as diabetes and hypertension.

The case is the first state officials can recall of a child being put in foster care strictly for a weight-related issue.

http://news.yahoo.com/ohio-puts-200-pound-third-grader-foster-care-191032515.html

So what happened?  The article states that some “social workers” have decided that this kid is too fat and needs to be removed from his mother, but we all know that’s not what really happened.  The media is covering for one of their pets in the Crusader Class.  Make no mistake, this all went down because one, single, individual case worker got mad at his mother and decided to take this kid.  The whole bureaucratic process required to remove the child had to be started by a single case worker.

There is no law giving this lone case worker the power to do this.  This is the first time anyone has ever tried such a thing.  This is a single person, a lonely Crusader, deciding that the state has the power to do this without a popular vote, an Act of Congress, a criminal investigation, nothing.  And that’s what makes the Crusader Class so freaking vicious:  They balloon the power and scope of the Federal Government on their own whim, for their own designs and ulterior motives without any restraints.

We like to lament our political bureaucrats and politicians, but these people are all spineless wimps, too scared of causing political waves which might produce negative repercussions for their careers to ever do any serious damage.  They never do, or say, anything.  That’s the whole point.  All of our laws are vaguely worded series of loopholes designed to give politicians as much wiggle room as possible in case the legislation becomes unpopular, or turns out to have dramatic unintended consequences.  Heck, our laws are written by lawyer-politicians who are trying to keep their lawyer buddies in business; they’re designed to say absolutely nothing at all so the details can be hammered out in court later.

These politicians and bureaucrats are the people who think the four words “General Welfare” and “Interstate Commerce” are more important than the 28 words in the 10th Amendment.  They exist purely to wordsmith nonsense, not to actually get their jackboots dirty holding people down.  That job falls to people like our lone case worker, the Crusader fighting for their own sense of morality and justice, and it’s entirely possible that they make their decisions based on nothing else.  These nannies and moral crusaders are the people who make up the new government regulations on the spot, who make the decisions which cost our country billions in deficit spending every year, and who keep our courts clogged, the low level government employee with an axe to grind is the most destructive force American liberty has ever encountered.

I broke 200 pounds in the 4th grade. Did it mean that my parents were neglecting me, or breaking the law? No, because I am a big man from a long line of big men and it was natural for me to be that large.

We’ve got a newspaper clipping from the early 1900s telling about how my great grandfather was arrested for getting drunk, punching a mule, and killing it.

My grandfather could carry an 8 cylinder engine block across the factory he worked in with nothing but his hands while other teams of men used a lift.

My dad is not a small man either.

Sure, I was pudgy in 4th grade, but once I entered puberty that all changed and by my 8th grade year, I was 6’1″, and the 215 lbs. didn’t look nearly as flabby when I was playing middle school football. Today, I’m 6’3″, 300 lbs. and after watching me hold 60 pounds at arms length for three or four minutes, the only person who would ever say I’m severely overweight is an overly educated idiot who was looking solely at a chart of recommendations…

The state social worker saying that this woman’s son being overweight, at his age, is justification for taking the kid away is absolute nonsense. How does this harpy know what this kid is going to look like as an adult?

Can this …  lady (sorry to all of you real ladies out there)… predict which ugly kid is going to remain ugly? Or which beautiful kid is going to remain the best looking kid in their class? Can she pick the class’s “Most likely to succeed” without a miss? Where did this case worker gain such otherworldly insight and fortune telling abilities?

People change as they grow, if they didn’t, you wouldn’t see shows like “Before They Were Stars” on TV.  For this Crusading Nanny to state that it constitutes a danger to this kid’s health for him to be chubby as a youngin’ and take him from his mother requires some form of high powered, Holy Inspired prognostication.

Apparently this lady has never heard of Charles Atlas.

But this is still old news.  Child Protectives Services have been pulling these stunts for a long time, all over the country.  They’ve taken 400 LDS kids away from their families at one time, on what was basically an anonymous tip.  Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility for them any more.  But the Crusader Class isn’t limited to just CPS.

I’m a forester.  I’ve worked as a logger, in sawmills, for both public and private institutions from the shores of Lake Superior to the swamps of East Central Arkansas.  I’ve run into these people in the DEQ, where they actively work to limit logging by ensnaring projects in lengthy permit processes, or through unfair inspections and selective enforcements.  I’ve seen the DNR shut down large tracts of land because the remote possibility existed than some endangered woodland critter might someday decide to cross it on a 1000 year migratory pattern, or some such nonsense.  I have watched low level government Crusaders shut down entire operations, send whole crews home for weeks, because they had a bug up their arse that morning and just decided to be impossible.

Or what about the Amish farmers being busted for selling their cow’s milk, or the picnic in Nevada where a government agent (one woman named Mary G. Oakes) forced people to pour bleach on the food they themselves had grown and wanted to eat, something men have been doing quite successfully for many thousands of years without a complete meltdown of the world’s economy or health, telling them that this food wasn’t even good enough for slopping their hogs?  These scenarios all had to start because one low level asshole felt insecure about his life and decided to make some other people suffer just to prove he wasn’t as weak as he feels himself to be.  It always takes a willing enforcer to start the indomitable movement of the bureaucracy, and the bureaucratic higher ups usually don’t get things moving themselves.

And there’s not much you can do about when you run into these people.  As of that moment, their individual decisions have the full force of the United States Government behind it, regardless of how things work out in court years down the road.  Our Crusader Class makes up the law on the spot, selectively, often with ulterior motives, rarely based on real science, and outside of the judges who might hear a resulting case, the rest of us have no say in the matter whatsoever.

These people cost our country BILLIONS of dollars every year.  Possibly trillions, but hey, our CBO is about as reliable as Pravda, so who could even know?  Suffice it to say, every time you hear about the wasteful spending from some obscure government agency with an alphabet soup name, it’s more than likely caused by some Crusader trying to right the world, to make it conform to their vision of how everything should be, and their willingness to blow as many taxpayer dollars as it takes to make their vision of the world become reality.

When we talk about limiting the size and scope of government, these are the people we need to target.  The politicians could hand out orders 24/7, but until a willing lackey follows them, they’re just so much blather and hot air.  Its the Crusaders who need to be repelled.

The sun shines. People forget. There is an eminence front for all people and therefore all candidates. For candidates it must be especially thick and durable as it is liable to come under meticulous attack, if not by the people then by the press and the other candidates. Herman Cain has learned this simple truth. Does his need to learn this lesson the hard way indict him? According to the gunslingers not on the Cain payroll, the gunslingers that are have ham-handed this one. What actually happened or was said is immaterial on this reckoning. It’s all about the optics: how it looks and Cain looks like a desperate fugitive. Not a good pick on the campaign trail. Those on the bench, always hungry for a campaign to attach, guffaw and point at Cain and his minions. They are not performing up to industry standards. Cain should really hire me, is what they would advise in all candor but that would be a bit crass. Never considered is that Cain might not be operating to some strategic form but simply responding honestly and forthrightly. If his answers are muddy and inconsistent, so are they on all subjects with THIS subject being the muddiest particularly because no one has even offered a version of events different to his. Really, this is true. The headlines are written in a dire style and the mouthpieces run their motors, fueling the talking heads but as of now, as of today, there are no documents, no names, no sources and no evidence of anything at all; not any illegality but any actions whatever. There is only one truth on the side of the crows; more than a decade ago two women got settlements, totaling $80k from the National Restaurant Association long after Cain had departed. That is it. The nature of the behavior or statements, even the actual dates (if they are even asserted) is secret. And that is no doing of the NRA. They have publicly released the complainants to speak without even their settlement money in jeopardy. As an old legal pro I can tell you, this doesn’t happen and would not happen if the NRA didn’t think they were in the clear. Mr Cain, as has now been discovered, was never a party to this agreement so his ignorance of its contents is far from surprising. These too are all truths unhelpful to the project of hammering down whomever is standing up. (Which tells you why Romney has received no hammer blows as yet.)

The Truth of their reportage is always the defense from the press room although Politico, the forge where this iron was cast, seems to be more in the mold of a partisan tip sheet than an unearther of truths. Still their cry is the same. We only print the Truth. This truth is that someone told them of a settlement and they have tried to contact the women involved, who have declined comment and instructed their attorneys to do likewise. But it is TRUE! We were told that! By whom? Well, right there the well of truths runs dry. When interviewed the pressies make splashing sounds to hide that fact but now their throats are parched. But if it is Truths these guys and dolls seek, there are plenty of other wells close at hand.

This is, as they say, a case of He said, She said (although the Shes are actually silent). But We are not all equal here, not a bit of it. The He is subject to all kinds of scrutiny. The Shes are subject to none. Not only that but any close attention aimed at the sources for the stories or the original principles in these events is treated explicitly as a witch hunt. But the greatest Truth on display from all this activity is that the rules of the game have been inverted silently in the night. The complaints from the gunslingers that Team Cain is not adhering to the well-worn strategies is based on one truth we all know; former President Bill Clinton raped and assaulted many women over his long career and walked away from it a free man and a leader on the world stage. That is a Truth. It has the added benefit that it is a Truth everyone knows. Everyone also knows exactly how such a disgraceful state of affairs came about, it was by the inversion of the template sketched above. In that He said, She said it was the accusers (and these were real people with names, on the record and often under oath) who got vivisected under a microscope and the He was doted on as if he were found weeping and bleeding in an alley. Indeed this is how Clinton postured himself. All mentions of the brutal acts by Clinton against defenseless women, who he cornered with the powers of his office, were smothered in “allegedlies” and the details kept mum as they were presumed to be the ravings of opportunistic grifters or disgruntled exes and in any case, distasteful. But we consumers of retail information were not there, were we? We were not at the scenes of these many crimes nor in the depositions or hearings where the statements were entered. With great exertions high and low there was one interview with a victim, Jane Doe #5, by the name of Juanita Broaderick. In great detail she described the attack with corroboration from contemporaries. She also describes the cover-up of her rape that included the maniacal collusion of one Hillary Clinton who holds high office today. All this was rubbished, denied in the execution of a “strategy” well-named Nuts ‘n Sluts by those who carried it out; foremost these were James Carville and Maggie Williams although an honorable mention must be made for Susan Esterich, who paraded her own assumed status as a rape victim and long time activist as she denounced Broaderick as a Nut, possibly a slut, disbelieving ostentatiously her weeping recount. The press airs these Truths evenhandedly, correct? It is for the observer to decide. Those willing to believe Clinton a deranged thug believe Broaderick. Those not so disposed simply look away. It is to be hoped that Cain did not expect such treatment but he did, perhaps, expect a tiny dash of consistency. Foolish man.

With this naked abuse the Clinton template wears a bit thin around the gaskets. Bill and Hillary view with horror the smoke and grinding sounds coming from their faithful old contraption. If the Cain Standards are ever applied to a Clinton Scrutiny there will scarcely be anything left of them. Kathleen Willey still bears Clinton’s paw prints from the day he attacked her in the Oval Office. Paula Jones is sitting on a nice fat settlement of $850k due to Clinton’s exposing his erection for her after calling her from her desk to a private room and stroking her thigh. These are the sort of specifics the Cain accusers do not provide. Likewise a history that endorses the allegations is missing in the Cain events but gaudily present with Clinton. Dolly Kyle-Browning and Elizabeth Ward-Gracen are two other subjects; derided and discarded by the pressies in the recent past who have made public statements that they were raped by Bill Clinton and at times that would have implicated Hillary in the cover-ups. These public Truths have had their wings clipped by the “strategy” Cain is supposedly a fool not to employ. In his detour and gyrations Cain is testing the mounts of the grumbling machine and threatens to unleash a torrent of Truths on the land as if from a collapsing dam.

The Clintons are the foremost beneficiaries so they will be inundated most deeply. Those Truths above are just the mildest froth on the waves. The reservoir is deep. But let’s not forget the others. John Edwards was taken down by a particularly voluminous leak although he was playing the game strictly by the rules. His problem was hard evidence, being not a stained dress but a screaming baby. In his inexpert handling of the levers he overtaxed the abilities of the machine so he is being fleeced like any Regular Joe. We can leave him to justice.

Another interesting figure is one Jesse Jackson. We know that the attacks on Cain are not racially motivated largely because of Jackson’s treatment. Like Edwards, Jackson also fathered a child outside his marriage. Yes, this has come to light but only after decades. If that is not freshie-fresh enough for you, Jackson has his own sexual harassment case pending today only this one is being pursued in open court. A fellow by the name of Tommy Burnett was Jackson’s travel assistant. He was called to Jackson’s hotel room one night where an engorged Reverend told him tales of youthful homosexual activities in football locker rooms and invited Barnett (openly gay) to do likewise. He declined and further asserts that this is just one incident in many, some of which have corroborating witnesses. Is this of no interest because Jackson is no politician? Except that he has run for President and if he holds no office now he is still a power broker at the national level. This also is a Truth that cannot forever be employed opportunistically.

If Jackson is too peripheral a player, well, who else might benefit from the Cain Scrutiny? As the press ever more wanly calls for Cain’s Janes to come forward no one is encouraging Larry Sinclair to do so. And who is this, then? Larry Sinclair is the fellow who had gay sex in a limo with a young candidate (for Senate) Obama, shared cocaine with him and then repeated the whole thing again. Mr. Sinclair has no judgement to defend but instead is defending his very life, right? That is what he says. Like Cain, let Obama fill in the details. Larry’s statement was made publicly to the press. As he became acquainted with Barack Obama Larry was contacted by a Donald Young, an openly gay man directing the choir at Trinity United Methodist. It is little secret that Trinity United, the home and workplace of Rev Jeremiah Wright was a mecca (ooops) in the Chicago black gay scene. Larry says Donald feared for his life because of his sexual relationship with the rising Presidential Candidate. As Cain could tell you, things like this can trip you up. But we know no such thing happened to President Obama because there he sits. We do know what became of Donald Young. He was shot to death in his home. This is a Truth and one with a mighty splash, or one would think; but no. Only Donald Young’s mother speaks for him and many a Truth spills from her mouth and heart. No one is interested. Such a truth is outside the realm. Donald Young was just robbed, it’s all a coincidence you see. Is that the Cain Standard? No, it is the threadbare Clinton Method which requires close press support. The thin, sturdy barrier of revulsion has held because those who claim their job is to rupture it are up there with duct tape and spackle. Can they release a torrent on Cain and still protect Obama? Probably. History implies they may. If only Donald Young were alone in his grave, but he is not. Two other fellows, Larry Bland and Nate Spencer, gay members of Trinity United, were likewise murdered; shot repeatedly with no witnesses and no obvious motive and all three within a month of each other (and Spencer’s cause of death was ruled HIV). These are Truths far more worthy of exposure and investigation than anything the maddest hater can concoct about Cain. And that is why you will see the Cain Scrutiny fizzle, smolder and flop.

Lately I’ve been chasing my father all over Hell – figuratively speaking. I don’t expect to catch him; he died seven years ago, taking with him some secrets I wish I could have asked him about, and others that I know I couldn’t have. He left behind some intriguing clues about himself, but remained something of a mystery to the end.

As a posthumous attempt at understanding, I’m writing an essay about his formative experience in World War II, when he was sent to the Pacific as a cryptanalyst for the US Army Signal Corps. He served aboard the USS Blue Ridge, a command and communication ship that took him to New Guinea and the Philippines. The Blue Ridge was the flagship for Rear Admiral Daniel E. Barbey, leading the VII Amphibious Force, during the invasion of Leyte Gulf, when American forces under Gen. Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines. My father liked Admiral Barbey, an expert on amphibious warfare who planned and executed some 56 landings in New Guinea and the Philippines. When I was very small, one of his nicknames for me was ‘Admiral.’

     A few months ago, while exploring how my father’s war experience shaped his later life – and how his generation came out of World War II to produce mine – I came across an interesting book titled “Lost in Shangri-La” (2011) by Mitchell Zukoff. It describes an odd occurrence in New Guinea in May 1945, seven months after my father left. An American DC-3 carrying some two dozen soldiers and WACs crashed while on a sightseeing flight over the interior of the island. They were looking at a vast network of native villages, a primitive culture that had only been discovered by outsiders a decade or so earlier, and which had not invented the wheel.

The three survivors of the crash were ultimately rescued, but getting them out required a massive month-long effort. They had taken off from a base at Lake Sentani, Gen. MacArthur’s headquarters, where my father had stayed for a while in 1944. I can’t help wondering whether he knew any of the survivors or rescuers.

My father was lucky: he didn’t have to carry a rifle through hell. But he saw action between New Guinea and Leyte, and may have witnessed the first successful kamikaze attack, which struck the bridge of the HMAS Australia during the battle of Leyte Gulf.

He and I differed, but didn’t argue, about the atomic bomb. He thought it had been necessary to avoid an invasion of Japan, and that such an invasion might well have cost him his life. Based on what he knew in 1945, his reasoning wasn’t unsound.

But while researching my essay I learned something interesting about that subject as well. Operation Olympic, the planned US invasion of the Japanese home islands, had been secretly abandoned in the summer of 1945. Japanese radio intercepts at the time (not made public until the 1970s) showed a massive build-up of enemy forces on Kyushu, and the projected invasion became unthinkably costly. So, unbeknownst to the rest of the world, President Truman and his war planners scrapped it. The actual alternative to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was further bombardment and blockade, not invasion.

It goes to show.

I grew up in a very different and more divided America than my father. That’s the luck of the draw. He remained an enigma to the last, but a loving one. He taught me to laugh, and we practiced a lot together.

Digging into the past has a way of turning things up that don’t fit the puzzle, or hitting rock; it’s worth the effort, but only if you know when to stop. I’ve stopped trying to figure out my father. There will be no more digging. The essay is nearly finished – a son’s small gesture. and a last long salute.

In honor of Halloween, below is an excerpt from the Zombie Kama Sutra, which is sort of like the regular Kama Sutra that we living people all know and love, except that it’s aimed at the Undead. This excerpt features some highly disturbing and erotic images of zombie sexual positions. Please stop reading if the thought of such matter disturbs you.

IN the beginning, the Lord of Beings created men and women, and prescribed therefore about one million rules by which those men and women must necessarily regulate their living existence. Yet, these rules have not applied to the undead. For too long have these wayward, shambling, unholy creatures attempted to engage the acts of courtship, embracing, unions, seduction, and etc.

Death should not be used as an excuse for chaos.

To that end are written these more than one thousand chapters, intended as a guide to those who have risen from the grave by whatever means, be it metaphysical, mystical, biological, or extraterrestrial. These important “rules to be dead by” shall provide to the Zombie the proper knowledge in regards to conducting oneself in all manner of intimate relations.

From Part 1st, Chapter 1st: On Getting Your Kicks When Your Bucket Has Been Kicked.

MAN is divided into three classes, according to the size of his thingambob. UNDEAD man is divided into two classes, depending on whether or not he has retained all his limbs and brains.

WOMAN is also divided into three classes, depending on the depth of her you-know-what. So too is UNDEAD woman divided into two classes, corresponding to the number of remaining limbs and brains also.

The temperament of the undead is based most especially on the proximity to brains. The brain is the most important sexual organ. The undead crave brains. The undead are attracted to the brains of one another.

Whatshisname says, “The undead male will feel a driven desire to slowly and inexorably move forward toward any source of food, but will willingly subsume the desire for food if there is anywhere in his field of vision a willing undead female coital partner. The undead woman is much more sensitive, and is likely to derive a pleasurable sense of contentment from the touch of the undead male, as evidenced by the low, monotonous moan that escapes from her decaying lips following the act of romantic congress. The undead female will expect from her undead romantic partner a reciprocating low, monotonous tone, sometimes known as ‘Pillow Moaning.’ The undead male, left to his own devices, would rather fall asleep.”

Of the various means of congress among the undead, there are many different types. These types are divided into several different categories: The Low, the Lower, the Gruesome, the Despicable, the Loathsome, the I’d-Rather-Not-Even-Think-About-It, and the Seriously, Not Even if You Paid Me a Million Bucks, Even Though I’m Undead.

Variously are below illustrated a few of the Low types:

IN the pleasure crypt, it is decorated with incense that disguises the odor of decay. The undead citizen should therein receive the undead woman, who shall give her decrepit, bruised, disgusting body, with its exposed brains and innards so that the undead citizen should freely find love’s sustenance. It is in this manner that shall the bodies of the undead be so used until such time as they fall apart against each other, the eroded limbs falling off and the body crumbling to a fine dust, to be ingested, along with dead rose petals and oils, by the next undead couple to engage in the act of congress in the pleasure crypt.

It is the circle of undeath!