Allow me to forget the life I've made my own

I've held this nation in my hand and yet it's not my home

Allow me just one answer and one reason why

Why this refugee of the family of man must die, tell me why?

Kansas. Closet Chronicles.

 Reading the recent news of Eduardo Saverin’s cowardly defection renunciation of his US citizenship, to avoid paying some 67 million in taxes on the decidedly larger sum that he stands to make in the Facebook IPO,  got me to thinking about an exchange I had –on Facebook interestingly enough-last year while I was still claiming Shopping Mall USA as my place of residence. (But not the place of my heart).

On the way there, we first stopped in Stuttgart and walked down Konigstrasse-where they were having an animation festival at the Schlossplatz:

After a quick walk around the plaza it was off the to the festival:

For some reason the Germans seem to have a fascination with the American west, so much so they built a "Western Village" :

But of course, the main attraction was in the big beer hall-tickets required, but for some reason we got in:

And more beer and more girls:

And of course, its never too early to get your tickets for the fall fest:

So imagine my surprise when , this guy paid them a visit last week:

NEW YORK — In an effort to reach out to conservative media, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and wife Ann met for two hours Wednesday with several dozen conservative bloggers, reporters and columnists in an off-the-record gathering at a private Washington, D.C. club, according to attendees.

Romney, who struggled with some members of the conservative media during the Republican primary, is banking on their support in his campaign against President Barack Obama, regardless of whether they were previously in his corner or not.

The attendees came from numerous conservative sites and right-of-center publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator,Washington Examiner, Human Events, RedState, Right Wing News, Powerline, Townhall, Ace of Spades, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier and PJ Media. RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.

Details of the Romney meeting did not previously leak out because of the off-the-record ground rules…

As to why he was not invited, Andrew Breitbart could not be reached for comment.

But rest assurred, his snot nosed, idiotic, children where there.

The meeting, which included writers from RedState and Breitbart.com as well as a list of conservative publications reported by Huffington Post — National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator, Washington Examiner, Powerline*, Townhall,, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier, and PJ Media (though not, as an early report had suggested, the conspiracist site WorldNetDaily). RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended.

Notably, the meeting also included some grassroots bloggers with no real institutional ties to the Washington Republican Establishment, including the Twitter virtuoso Ace of Spades and John Hawkins of Right Wing News.

John Hinderaker and his blog Powerline, are especially vile-especially given the fact that in this election, as in the last, he is something of a special pleader:

[* Powerline Proprietor John Hinderaker is the newest Koch installation on the Cato Institute Board of Directors, his firm does work for Koch and the blog was prominent in the takedown of Dan Rather via blogswarm. This memory will be important below.]

 

I despise John Hinderaker-and everything he and the rest of that crowd represents. If you want a great example of why I am down on American politics-look no further than this: The GOP nominee having to grovel before this group of lunatics.

PS-If you want a pretty good accounting of what a loons Hinderaker and his supporters are-look no further than here.

I'm tired of seeing your vile trash everytime I open up Memeorandum.

Rest assurred I will get it fixed.

I also get to hear the guns-last night the big guns were firing. And you could hear it. A big BOOM-then machine gun fire. They shoot them all the way up to midnight. That surprised me a lot.

And today-when I was walking from lunch, I heard the familiar BRRRRRP! of a 30mm Gatling Gun. "There is no CWIS here". (If you have ever been on a Navy Ship-you know that distinctive sound). I looked up and saw an A-10 climbing doing a hard left turn-trying to avoid the cloud bank-and evidently shooting something on the range.

You learn something new every day.

Vive le France!

With about half the votes counted, preliminary results released by the Interior Ministry shortly after the last polling stations closed at 8 p.m. showed Mr. Hollande had secured about 51 percent of the vote, while Mr. Sarkozy, of the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, had about 49 percent. The results were slightly closer than expected.

“François Hollande is the president of the republic; he must be respected,” Mr. Sarkozy said in a gracious concession speech shortly after the polls closed. “I want to wish him good luck in the midst of these tests.”

Mr. Sarkozy thanked “the millions of French who voted for me,” but said he accepted “total responsibility” for Sunday’s results.

“My involvement in the life of my country will be different now,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “But time will never weaken the ties between us.”

Speaking earlier to members of his party, Mr. Sarkozy, who campaigned energetically to the end, told them to “remain united” and not give in to division. He said he would not lead the party into June’s legislative elections but said they were “winnable.”

“I become a citizen among you,” he added.

 

I am not as pessimistic as those representing the interests of the rich bastards the austerity freaks who are forcing the poison down the throat of all the major European Governments. Hollande is not a fool-he knows that France is committed to the survival of the Euro and strengthening the economy of Europe as a whole. What his election does send a message about is that-it doesn't have to be all about pain without gain. The usual suspects-the rogue's gallery of conservative idiots and pundits will argue otherwise-but it seems to me that the French showed some good sense today.

It probably did not help Sarkozy that his love life became public knowledge either. The French don't begrudge their President a mistress or two ( unlike our  tight ass, and overly prudish American electorate)-but they do ask that he exercise a little discretion.

Be interesting to see if the new Mrs Sarkozy sticks around now.

Good Job France!

First off-he points out expertly what a complete idiot Allen West is, and how once again-for a supposedly educated officer-he has very little accurate knowledge of his own nation's history. Of course I expect nothing but untruth from the poster child-but the Canadian Counterpart does an expert job of ripping his thesis that Congress is full of "card carrying Commies" to shreds.

Which brings me to Representative Allen West of Florida's 22nd congressional district. Being of a military background, Congressman West doesn't do things halfway. Where people like Palin and Hannity are proudly ignorant, West fetishizes stupidity in a way that normal adults would stop at nothing to hide, but modern politics rewards. Add to that the fact that he's an unrepentant fucking war criminal and you have a natural leader of the Tea Party. 



Well, over the last couple of weeks, young Allen has come to embrace his inner McCarthyite with endlessly entertaining results. 

 

On Tuesday, Rep. Allen West spoke at a town hall in Florida. During his appearance, he told the crowd he’s “heard” that up to 80 House Democrats are members of the Communist Party.

The Palm Beach Post reported on the event, adding that West “wouldn’t name names” to back up his assertion. Currently, there are 190 Democrats in the House.

That's notable in so far as even McCarthy himself never went that far. He said that communists subverted the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, not that they were welcomed into them. Nor did McCarthy ever go so far as to say outright that nearly half of the Democratic congressional caucus were actually members of the Communist Party of the United States. 



Of course, West's assertion was so blatantly and laughably ridiculous that it couldn't be ignored, except by Fox News and the Tea Party blogosphere, both of whom are as spectacularly dumb as West himself. The only people who took him seriously was the actual Communist Party of the United States, which is insulted that anyone would associate it with something as spineless as the Democrats. 

 

In a subsequent post-he goes on to document the debt that is owed by the Tea Party to those it despises, those same progressives West attacked,

Because they proudly have no idea what they're talking about, West, Glenn Beck and the overwhelming majority of Tea Party members equate early 20th century progressivism socialism and communism. This couldn't be more ironic in so far as the institutions that allowed for the rise of the Tea Party were created by those very progressives a century earlier. Without the progressives, the modern populists would have been crushed in the gears of the political machinery that governed the United States at the time.



As much as populists love talking about the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, they don't understand either very well. For example, the Second Amendment was written the way it was (beginning with the phrase "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State") because the Founders were unanimous in their belief that the new nation shouldn't have a standing military. This comes up several times in the Federalist Papers.



Being isolationist, they understood that a nation cannot have a standing army without deploying it on a regular basis. They created the United States as a retreat from the rest of the world, not as a military competitor in it. For that reason, the people would be armed and loosely organized in militias that could respond to any threat and disband when the crisis passed. 



Aside from being isolationist, the Founders weren't especially democratic. They were all classical scholars and had studied pure Athenian democracy, ultimately finding it unworkable. For those reasons, they created a number of significant checks on the will of the people, including but not limited to, a division of powers between the political branches, the establishment of an independent judiciary and a Senate that was appointed by the state legislatures. In the strictest classical definitions of the words, they were republicans, not democrats. 



Of course, there's no telling any of this to your average Tea Party member or Sean Hannity fan. Their famous love of tri-corner hats aside, they actually know very little about the political and constitutional history of the country they can't stop proclaiming their love of.

 

 

Its quality writing-well worth your time.

Murdoch “turned a blind eye and exhibited willful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications,” the House of Commons Culture Committee said in a report today that split lawmakers along party lines on critical findings. “This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organization and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corp.”

Roger Ailes should be next. He too is not a fit and proper person to run a news network. Of course, calling Fox News a “news” network is a bit of an overstatement.

Sadly, Mr Jacobson showed neither. And probably with good reason. His post had nothing to do with the reality on the ground in the Middle East-but everything to do with finding yet something else to blame Obama for.

Should Obama celebrate the raid on Bin Laden a year after the fact? Probably not-but then again its also quite a stretch to say that he is "losing" the Middle East.

The current situation in the region has a lot of fathers-most of them reside in Arab countries, not in the White House. If one follows the entire history-our current lack of influence can be traced all the way back to 1945-or at the least to 1956 when we refused to support the British and the French during the Suez War. The only President who has displayed any common sense about the region is George H.W. Bush-especially when he made the decision to declare victory and go home at the end of Desert Storm.

Certainly, however though-a great deal of the blame for our current position in Afghanistan and Iraq lies at the feet of George W. Bush. His decisions to go to war in Iraq in 2003, and in order to do so sideline Afghanistan and allow our window of opportunity in that country to close.

It is really a loss of one's senses though,  to believe that we could have done anything concrete to stop the path of action in Egypt, Bahrain or any other place that the Arab Spring has touched.  That's quite simply giving us too much credit-and not recognizing that the multi-polar world is rising and US influence is on the wane. You wanted democracy in the region? Well now you have it-and guess what? Arabs can vote stupidly just as their American counterparts can ( and did in 2010).

There are 4 major trouble spots in the Middle East. About Israel I have written a lot-and pointed out well the flaws of the American point of view towards that country.

Iran-which is doing what it perceives to be in its best interest to counter the United States, and btw-thanks to our invasion of Iraq, ended up stronger than it would have been without that event.

Egypt and Syria-about which little can be done, save for feeling sorry for the almost 11,000 Syrians that have died. That said -there is no concrete case to be made for intervention-anymore than there was in Libya. 

And finally the Arabian Peninsula and Iraq-which are going through their own troubles. Iraq is due to our misguided adventure there and their own stupid tribalism, the Arabian Peninsula because of the inability of Saudi Arabia to stop the forces of progress. ( They may be able to slow them down for one more generation-but no longer. When the King dies-it will be interesting to see what happens).

If you want to blame someone for the failure of America's wars-how about blaming the Iraqis and Afghans themselves? They both deserve the lion's share of the blame-for being the screwed up societies they are. Where the US failed-and I believe it was a disaster to go to war in Iraq-was not recognize that up front. Arabs can be counted on to screw up any good deal given them. Its in their DNA. ( Spend a few weeks negotiating with them and you will see what I mean).

I strongly believe that most of the United States problems currently can be laid at the feet of two decisions made by George Bush. The invasion of Iraq and the failure to recant the tax cuts to pay for it.

Which brings me back to the group of blogs that Legal Insurrection is a part of. His blog is part of the "group" that one can see any day on Memeorandum: Legal Insurrection, Gateway Pundit, the really abominable John Hinderaker with Power Line, Hot Air, Michelle Malkin, Weasel Zippers……..the list is long and not distinguished. Here at Far East Cynic HQ-we monitor them and mock them as needed. ( As do some much bigger blogs than mine).

On any given day-their theme is always the same. If Obama says the sky is blue-they will say its not. It is a tiresome rant-and as I stated earlier, becomes a dangerous one,  when you consider the size of their readership.  Together,  they continue to pour gas on the blazing fire that is American politics these days-and do their level best to prevent any accommodation and progress towards fixing these problems. Obama is not the best President we have ever had-but he's certainly a heck of lot better than the gray hair-and comments like Obama lost the Middle East do nothing to help the situation. It was wrong then-it is still wrong now.

The United States did not lose the Middle East. The world has changed-and we have yet to recognize that fact.

When it comes to the Middle East, less is definitely more. We need to scale back-turn our attention to our own needs, and watch the drama play out.

I do plan to post some though-and I intend to use those opportunities to write about relationships. For two reasons really: one, its on my mind right now-as I read a book called The Happiness Project and two, I want an excuse to right some explicitly erotic prose. If you are prudish-or that is not your cup of tea, well, you can consider yourself fairly warned.

William Jacobson is a worthless piece of shit. shrill.

In his latest post on his blog-which attracts such high quality readership as would read that other font of conservative wisdom, Andrew Breitbart, he has decided to blame the entire Middle East problem on Obama. In essence-he is re-running the "Who lost China?" argument-only this time he is saying we "lost" the middle east.

Like it was ever ours to lose. And to argue that Obama "lost" the Middle East without specifcally noting the role that multiple failed wars-all started by Obama's predecessor-played in destroying American influence in the region, is to completely ignore the root cause of any  such decline.  And also in setting the pre-conditions for the surge of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.

Your boy Bush caused all this trouble-and now Obama is simply carrying on his flawed policies, you idiot. But never let the facts get in the way of a strawman argument.

Maybe you should listen to Juan Cole-who knows more about the region than you ever will-who has pointed out again that ignorance of what is really going on in the region is rampant-as is evidenced by this post and others you have written over the years.

If we are losing the Middle East-it is primarily because of policies that you support. Like starting stupid wars for worthless people.

What's probably the worst is that people actually read what you write and believe it. When's the last time you were actually there-idiot?

Now there were some who have said that  I , as an American, have no right to criticize the fact that the country is failing on what it could be doing.  I have no patience with what one person wrote that I should just be content to  "celebrate America for what it is, rather than withhold their love in favor of what it might yet be".   I completely reject that line of thinking because it is nothing but fluff-and a cop out that gives license to those who would destroy the USA-even while they claim to want to save it. It is precisely because I care about America-that it disgusts me to see the country turning its back on solutions that are both practical and necessary, all because of our twisted, ignorant brand of politics that worships at the misguided altar of "american exceptionalism"-that false gospel that misguided Pollyanna's adopt to give themselves a reason not to adopt better ways of doing business-soley because they were invented overseas by one of "them".

Consider the transportation piece of my trip over here. I was able to get up-walk from my abode to a bus, connect to a train and in 1+30 minutes find myself stepping from said train into the terminal of Frankfurt airport. Getting through security was rather painless-and relatively quick and so I found myself sitting in the lounge for 2 hours eating free food and booze-another thing overseas carriers get right and ours don't-before boarding my flight to the US of A.

Now contrast that to the other side, when arriving at Dulles Airport. The immigration hall is cramped-as is the baggage claim. Getting through security to the transit flights is a long, slithering ordeal-not because it has to be, but because the powers that be refuse to place enough manpower on the lines or design a facility large enought to move the line along faster. Now I am told that Dulles is building a new terminal to address this as well as a metro line to downtown. Those are moves that make perfect sense-but I suspect are being screwed up in execution, not the least because of whining by folks who see it as a "dagger in the heart of the taxpayer". The better way to think of it is a way to improve the quality of getting to and from the airport-which in DC just sucks, no matter which airport you use.

Now one could say its unique just to DC. I've traveled enough to assure you its not. It applies to just about every major airport in the USA. There is a reason that 4 of the 10 worst airports in the world are in the USA. People respond that it is because of liberal ideas and environmental red tape. I think that's just an excuse-to give top cover to fat guys like Chris Christie who simply don't want to invest in the infrastructure to make their cities compete. Americans have the third worst congested roads in the world-falling only behind Hungary and Romania. ( And even Romania has a better train system than we do-which is saying a lot about how bad ours is).

The roads getting from destination airport in the particular state I am in were crowded-and thus my journey onward took far longer than it should have. Americans have the third worst congested roads in the world-falling only behind Hungary and Romania. ( And even Romania has a better train system than we do-which is saying a lot about how bad ours is). Arriving at the familal abode-I get subjected to the lunacy that is politics in America these days-getting to watch the Mittster reassure me that, if only rich people like him had even more money than they do now, there would be jobs and plenty for everyone. Never mind that facts of the previous decade point out exactly the opposite-sadly there are enough deluded morons people who are actually believing this stuff.

And we won't even discuss the fact that there is a major news network egging on these lies day after day.

What probably frustrates me most is knowing that -unlike Europe-America has the resources to fix most of its infrastructure problems. The money is out there, not matter what evil monsters like Paul Ryan tell you.  Contrary to the Wall Street Journal-America is not Europe. Our problems are not externally created-they are caused by bad choices made by ourselves. With an over 15 trillion dollar GDP-please don't stand there and tell me that the resources are not there. It belittles us both. And for all Europe's problems-the citizens of Stuttgart did themselves proud by voting for needed infrastructure improvements in the city. Picture that happening in an American city-not a chance.

Now I will grant you-that in a properly resourced government effort, there will have to be some tradoffs made. But we get no where because of our current political gridlock-and that has more to do with the GOP's stubborn insistence on defying Obama-even when its against their long term interest to do so. This is a group that has a vested interest in seeing America suffer-and they simply can't seem to imagine (or care about) the consequences of such policies, but they can't even imagine that people like Obama would actually feel moral outrage at their plans. They can't imagine a liberal objection as representing anything other than an attempt to score political points. 

And finally lets be sure to single out the real authors of the problem-the ignorant American voter. In 2010, thanks to a combination of people not showing up and too many people being swayed by Tea Party lies-the current herd was elected to office. Without a doubt they consititute the worst Congress that I have known in my life. They are even worse than the post Waterfgate Congress that did a host of stupid things ( like making the service academies co-ed). They are infected with a sickness-a callousness towards their own citizens and a love of a flawed ideology. Tax cuts were never the answer-and if there are to be spending cuts, there has to be increased revenue as well.

So I will be here for several days back in the land of my birth. But I will tell you the truth-I will be looking forward to the day I get back on the plane overseas. Too much craziness here-and no one of a mind to fix it.

The New York Post is printing pictures of some of the girls in question-wonder how much they paid for those-and rummaging through agent's facebook pages and finding new and innovative ways to smear men who by all accounts knew how to do their jobs.

All part of the "moral push" by hypocrites to shape people into their own pre-conceived notions of how one should think and act. I find it interesting that no one has asked the two most important questions:

1) Did the men know their jobs?

2) Did they show up for work each day on time?

If the answer to the above two questions is yes-THEN WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU CARE WHAT OR WHO THEY DO ON THEIR TIME OFF?

That's right Rep ISSA-I said it-why the fucking "moral outrage?"

Over at GI Korea it was brought up that this smells a lot like 2002 when people where shocked, shocked!-that their might be sex going on out in town:

You can read more at the link but this sounds much like when Fox News did their big expose’ on prostitution in Korea back in 2002. People were shocked about the prostitution going on in Korea even though it had been going on since the 1950′s and by the time Fox News did their report it had greatly scaled down compared to prior decades. Since that report it has scaled down even further. By the way does anyone know if USFK is still showing that Fox News report to new personnel as part of inprocessing?

I have never been to Columbia but I did have a real good conversation with a US military servicemember who did, so take for what it is worth, but he told me that Columbia is filled with women looking to hook up with Americans. He said it was kind of like going to Angeles City in the Philippines. Has any ROK Heads been to Columbia and can confirm this? So it appears that what these guys were doing is something that had been going on for a long time and everyone turned a blind eye to it until the media got hold of it like what happened with prostitution in Korea.

Be careful what you wish for-unless the organizations you want are to become just a bunch of no risk taking, non-drinking, religious zealots. We have already seen how well that has worked in the United States Air Force, haven't we? Hasn't seemed to lower the amount of sex going on-but it sure did increase the amount going on between service members.

I shake my head and weep when I think back to the way things were in the "the good old days"-if you had applied the "Secret Service Standard" to just about any Navy squadron  in the 80's during a port visit or detachment to (fill in the blank of your favorite sin city liberty port)-you would have wiped out a lot of very good people.

The type of people who excel in the military or other entities are senusal, excitement driven,  people. I have no doubt that carries over to sex lives as well-and if the kind of person you want is the staid, Casper Milquetoast type-well then that's not a world I want to be a part of. Besides it always begs the question of where is the line between ones private and professional life. Given the answer we hear  now repeatedly-the "man" wants to run it all. I think that's an unfair and unAmerican standard.  I believe that these Secret Service agents adn the military personnel involved are being given a raw deal. Whose life when put under a microscope can stand up to scrutiny?  This is the humorless, bland world you want?

I sure as hell don't.

Spike has a link up to a …….wait for it…… a blow by blow description of the woman who started the whole Secret Service mess. I am not sure any woman-bubble butt or not is worth $ 800 just for one's night sexual congress-but surely the guy knew the old rule about nailing down the price, before you leave the bar.

Anyway, Spike's closing comment is classic:

As far as I’m concerned, she was ahead on points until she equated a Blackberry with a fine rum or an iPhone.