In Your Court

Since we're forbidden even to mention the words "gun control," lest we desecrate the sacrosanct lines that constitute our most holy 2nd Amendment, I put the onus firmly on gun lovers to find a solution to shooting sprees and dead schoolchildren.  Fresh ideas are welcome.

Your haste is appreciated,

nwb

FEAR

I WILL NOT BE SCARED.  MY CHILDREN WILL NOT BE SCARED. 

This world is filled with unbelievable tragedy and we saw a numbing example of that this morning.  Our thoughts go out to all of those involved with the shooting in Connecticut today.  All of the strength and courage in the world can not prepare anyone for something as traumatic at this shooting. My thoughts also lie with those who in some fashion have experienced similar harrowing tragedies in the past.  I know that for so many an event like this will bring horrible memories flooding back to the surface, exposing wounds not yet healed. If I could take on some of your pain to ease the burden you carry every day I would do so without hesitation. 

I didn't really know where this post was going when I started.  I just knew I needed to write.  I could discuss gun control and the fact that this sick bastard found access to military grade ammunition for his automatic rifle.  But I won't.  I could discuss the moral dilemma we face every day in our country of having a 20 year-old willing to walk into a school, and gun down innocent human beings. Children. But I won't.

Instead I am just going to speak generally on how I feel finally having a few minutes at the end of the day to process this.

My feelings and my thoughts lay squarely with all of those who must face the horrific reality of these unthinkable crimes.  At Quicken Loans Arena there was an eerie feel all day following the news, including a spattering of brief conversations between co-workers about what happened in Connecticut, and you could see many drowning in their own thoughts, reflecting on their lives and their loved ones. Everyone confused, dumbfounded, shocked, and an almost universal sense of uncertainly on how to process the nature of what happened.  I'm sure many of you in discussing the shooting today at some point heard the question, "What would drive a person to the point of shooting a child, how is it possible?"  I know I certainly did several times.

The pain in my heart comes from thinking about those families affected in Connecticut. Tonight we will all be able to go home and tell our children, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers that we love them.  Those families, and that community however, will not.  They will be faced with coming to grips with the irreversible reality that a loved one is gone.  That the unthinkable has happened right in their own back yard. There are no words, there are no memorial services, there are no cures that will lesson the magnitude of their pain.  Only time will ease the severity of those permanent scars that this tragedy has left; which I know each and every person in that community will now carry with them for the rest of their lives.  I send you all of the strength, love and positive energy in my body. 

My final thought is what I began this post with:  I WILL NOT be scared.  My children WILL NOT be scared.  To all of you sick-minded, disillusioned murderous monsters out there: You will not intimidate me.  You will not alter the way that I live my life.  EVER.  I will go on living without fear, and my children will be raised to live every day to the fullest.  To experience everything that this wonderful life has to offer.  If at some point I come face to face with one of you, and you threaten my family, my friends, or my community; the only the fear that will be felt is yours. 

Love will ALWAYS conquer hate.  Love comes with strength, honor, courage, compassion, and bravery.  Hate is the characteristic of the simple minded, a pathway to cowardice.  Love will ALWAYS conquer hate.

jab

DR. PAT

Someone very important in my life is going to be having a very signficant and serious surgery next Monday.  Triple bypass or apparently now it may end up be quadruple bypass heart surgery.  I am going to be sending every ounce of positive evergy I have to him and to his family over the next few days. I ask that you all do that same.

FAMILY.  That is the key word.  Because the Flanagans are a part of my family.  Maybe I am not connected by blood, but that has absolutely nothing to do with the relationship that we have with one another.

Ryan - AKA Ry-Guy, Flanny, Ballz, etc. etc. (I could write a four page post on just his nicknames) - My brother and comrade through good times and bad.  This guy is simply one the best people on Earth.  I will always be there to support him in everything that he does, even if that means living 3,000 miles away.  He has such a big heart which he gets from both his parents, he is a loyal and devoted friend, and there is literally never a time when we're together that we aren't having fun.  I love this guy and I am very thankful to have him in my life.

Denise Flanagan, AKA Aunt Dee, Mama, Mama Dee, and I'm finding out from her friends at The Bay she has about as many nicknames as Ryan.  Aunt Dee is one of the most unique and caring mothers I have ever met.  So much so that she has looked after about 25 of us since we were 12 years old.  "Looking after" of course sometimes translated to yelling, grounding us, scolding us, and most recently dancing with us at weddings.  Regardless the circumstance she was and is always there to make sure her boys are ok.  She lives with an unwavering spirit and energy that I can still have throughout the rest of my life.  Aunt Dee is unafraid to be herself every step of the way, and makes no apologies about who she is and what she is about.  This is one of my favorite things about her. 

Now on to Dr. Pat.  There is absolutely no coincidence that there is so much good in Ryan, because all you need to do is have one conversation with his father and you see where so much of it came from.  Dr. Pat has always been such a stoic, strong and compassionate figure in my life.  He is an amazingly talented Doctor who worked his ass off for many years to support his family.  However, he always found time to be involved in everything that was going in our lives, especially our sporting events.  No matter how old we were Dr. Pat would be there, camera in hand, taking pictures of us at our proudest moments.  I still have this framed collage that he made of me playing traveling baseball when I was 12 or 13 years old.  Those pictures mean so much to me as those were some of my favorite moments, and I spent them with so many people who are so important to me. 

Dr. Pat - You are an amazing person and have been a tremendous influence in my life. We are all there for you with strength and love.   I look forward to you being there to take pictures of me when I'm sworn in as the official Mayor of Cleveland.


JAB

The Case Against Obama (Yes, You Read That Right)

Last week I used some space to make a not-so-subtle plea to our Resident Aquarist to vote Obama.  Understand that he's no Republican, but he is, to put it mildly, disillusioned with the President.  So I, and several of our friends, attempted to work him over from the "lesser of two evils angle."  See, our aquarist lives in Ohio, where Romney and Obama have more or less established permanent residences.  He was unmoved.  His reasons why* bear repeating.  I maintain that a "not Romney" vote is a good one, but I find myself agreeing with much of what is written below, and look forward to the day that we toss out this worm-ridden 2 party system of ours.

nwb

I've thought long and hard about it and I will not be voting for Obama.  At what point is "the lesser evil" so repugnant that it can't be supported?  For me it breaks down to several actions Obama took in both international and domestic policy.

1. The Drone Strikes.  So far, the US has launched close to 400 drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan that have killed an estimated 3500 people, give or take a few hundred.  Drone strikes are notoriously inaccurate, and some stats I've seen talk about a 1 successful kill to 49 innocents killed ratio.  That's not a good thing especially considering we are not at war with Yemen, we are not at war with Somalia, and we are not at war with Pakistan.  I haven't even brought up his strikes in Libya, which were not only done without Congressional approval, but done in the face of Congressional disapproval.  I believe these conflicts were an unconstitutional overreach by the President and if so, this makes him a historic-level mass murderer. 

2. Disposition Matrix.  Let's call a spade a spade.  This is Obama's personal kill list that contains women, children, and U.S. citizens that he is attempting to codify to make it a permanent fixture in our foreign policy arena. Normally when military action seemingly goes awry you can make an argument that the President didn't have direct involvement.  That is not true in this case.  Obama personally approves every target on the list.  I have serious problems with summary executions being carried out without due process.  Can you imagine if this was Dick Cheney and not Obama with a personal kill list? (does it matter whose list it is?)

3. Lack of Transparency Part I.  What is the President's argument that all of the above is legal?  Nothing.  He has made no argument at all.  In fact, he refuses to turn over the legal memos justifying any of it despite the demands of Congress.  This whole episode has a Nixonian, "if the president does it, then it's legal" stench to it.  At least Bush marched out that legal hack John Yoo to make a case for waterboarding.  Secrecy is a worrisome trend with this administration.

4. Lack of Transparency Part II. This Administration has declared war on whistleblowers like none other before it.  Obama dusted off the Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute double the number of whistleblowers than ALL prior presidents combined.  It's ironic because during his inauguration speech he talked about having the most open and transparent Administration ever.  He has gone on to use this tactic to threaten and intimidate journalists who's job it is to look into government affairs.  

Perhaps more concerning than those he prosecutes for whistle-blowing are the ones he doesn't prosecute.  Last I checked, Bradley Manning, of WikiLeaks fame, is still being tortured in some CIA black site and will be until he meets his demise without formal charges ever being filed.  The President can do that I hear because of the 2011 NDAA which authorizes indefinite detainment of citizens without judicial review.  When Obama signed it, he did so vehemently disagreeing with that provision in the NDAA, but from that moment has fought vigorously to hold onto that power.

I read an article in the Guardian about the worst civil liberty presidents in US history, and they did an interesting balancing test comparing the horrible actions taken, (for example Abraham Lincoln suspending habeas corpus rights for deserters and seditious elements in the population) with the justification used for those offenses.  In the Lincoln example, the entire nation was engulfed in an internal all-out war where half the country was fully devoted to the total destruction of the other half. The existence of the nation was in doubt and people were dying by the tens of thousands practically daily.  

Obama's justification is the war on terror.  You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than being killed by a terrorist.  The infringements on civil liberties are a delusional overreaction to the threat of terror.  Needless to say, Obama didn't score well in that article's view.  The fact that Obama argues it is lawful to be able to unilaterally snatch up a U.S. citizen and detain them forever with no trial or even charges is downright chilling.  Obama is no doubt a talented lawyer and it is dismaying to see him use that talent to be as big a creep as possible.

5. Lack of Transparency Part III. I'll make this one short.  The government is trying to pass a law where it is lawful for them to lie about the existence of records requested by the public under the Freedom of Information Act when in reality those records exist.  

Long story short, I just can't overlook this stuff.  I must sound like a pro-life person that just can't get over the whole abortion thing despite agreeing with a candidate on 50 other things. Seriously though, look at this shit.  He is killing thousands of innocent people in a war-crime-like fashion while suppressing dissent in the most horrific ways possible.  Lesser evil is pretty damned evil.  Fuck Obama.  He is the reason that a "not Mitt Romney" vote for the Democrats isn't viable.  Such a low hurdle too.

-ra

Why Did I Do It?

Young Obamunist

Because he:

kept a recession from becoming a depression,

got the economy growing again,

invested in green energy,

saved the automobile industry,

knows women can take care of their own bodies,

thinks any two people in love should be able to get married,

ended the nightmare in Iraq,

is ending the nightmare in Afghanistan,

passed Obamacare, and

is our first president who can hit a jump shot,

I voted for Barack Obama today.

Was glad to do it.

nwb

Why Not Jill Stein?

Maybe someday, Jill Stein

Some readers may remember back four years when I was an enthusiastic supporter of democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel.  I liked how the former Senator from Alaska didn't cloud his beliefs in obfuscatory language.  He wanted to end the war in Iraq immediately.  He supported marriage equality.  He knew the war on drugs is bullshit.  He railed against the military industrial complex.  I liked what I heard, and I wrote about him several times.  I vowed to vote for him, no matter what.

On election day, I voted for Barack Obama.

A few days ago I had a quick exchange with our official aquarist, someone whose opinion I greatly value, about casting a 'lesser of two evils' vote.  As frustrated as I am with the Republican Lite version of today's Democratic Party, my friend appears to be officially fed up.  We only traded a few messages, but it got me thinking about the way I use my vote.  If my views are more in line with the Green Party candidate, why do I vote Democrat?  People lament the two-party system all the time, but the fact is, we do have a plurality of parties: Green, Libertarian, Constitution, Prohibition (wtf?).  These are mostly marginalized and only seem to be relevant when they're siphoning votes from one of the major candidates (like when Ralph Nader drank Al Gore's milkshake).  But for those of us not entirely in line either of the two largely corrupted behemoth political parties, there is a way to more adequately express ourselves, and perhaps sleep a little better at night.  Very few of us have the guts to do it.  So, if I'm not enamored of Obama and his drone strikes and his incessant rhapsodizing of 'clean' coal and his plan to more or less maintain the status quo on military spending, my question is this: is a vote against someone a good vote?

I think so.

I think a vote against the GOP is a damned good vote.  It's not particularly controversial to say that things are better for the majority of people when a Democrat is occupying the White House.  That's a broad statement, but I think it's pretty plain that, for at least the last 32 years, that GOP largesse has been reserved for the extremely well-to-do, whose campaign donations and political movements have been repaid in the form of lucre (tax cuts), power (Citizen's United) and fawning adoration (all hail the job creators).  Are the Democrats any better?  Only marginally in some areas, but in others there is a great yawning gulf separating the parties.  Gay rights, health care and climate change are a few that come to mind. And then there's women's rights.  You can see ideological differences every time Todd Akin, or Richard Mourdock, or Paul Ryan, or Mitt Romney or any of these candidates from the neolithic age of American politics opens his mouth about the opposite sex.  There is a very real possibility that two new Supreme Court Justices will be selected in the next presidential term.  The thought of Romney wielding those picks makes me tremble for Roe v Wade.

And for me, that's the bottom line: I respect my wife, mother, sister and hypothetical daughter too much to ever consider voting R.  I dig just about everything on Jill Stein's platform, but Obama is staunchly pro choice, he's committed to protecting Planned Parenthood and he knows unequivocally that rape is rape.  Call me yellow if you want to, but I care enough about keeping these GOP assholes out of office that I'll keep filling in the D for as long as I have to and dream of the day that Jill Stein is a viable contender.

Obama/Biden 2012

nwb

Paul Ryan:

Attended Miami University in Ohio.  Strike one for this Ohio Bobcat.

Was a Miami frat boy.  You know what?  Strike fucking three.

So, we've established that the Representative from Wisconsin is an incurable prick, and indeed he does come off as the cocky 18-year-old who after one semester of college and a Poly-Sci 101 class suddenly knows everything about the workings of the world.  A lot of us go through that phase.  The difference is, after reading some Ayn Rand and taking a few Econ classes, Ryan appears to be locked in this juvenile hubris for the long haul.

That wouldn't be such a big deal, except that he's a legislator who's ridden a meteor to the top of his party's leadership; Ryan has ambition and the attention of his party.  What's more, we keep hearing his name and the word 'intellectual' mentioned in the same breath.  Now that Newt's time is up, it  seems Ryan has emerged as heir apparent to the GOP's resident deep thinker.  This is troubling.  Where Newt always seemed most devoted to his own hedonism, Ryan is fit, full of energy and hellbent on making his mark on the country.  What's disturbing is that his fervor seems less intellectual than ironclad, like something out of the Westboro Baptist Church (and yes, Ryan does hate fags, for the record).  His prevailing belief?  Not that big government is bad, of course, oh no; he's voted for every giant spending bill to come his way.  In that way, he looks like just about every other Republican from the last 30 years.  Social beliefs?  Standard GOP playbook: anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-immigrant. 

No, what makes Ryan special, aside from his blue-eyed glow of phony geniality and veneer of erudition, is the abject cruelty at the core of his economic superstardom; it's brazen, nasty and dangerous, it encapsulates no kind of conservative ideology that I've ever heard of, and it can be parsed out thusly:

1) Your worth as a human is in direct proportion to your wealth.

Ronald Reagan, patron saint of the modern conservative, godfather of reckless tax slashing and exploding deficits--Reagan sacrificed fiscal balance in the name of swelling the coffers of the already rich.  He also sneered unabashedly at the poor, painting needy families as parasites and singling out poor black women as welfare queens.

George W Bush carried Reagan's torch for 8 years, compromising the future of our social programs by cutting taxes and ignoring the consequences.

Reagan and Bush Jr: that's Paul Ryan's pedigree.

There are euphemisms for enriching the rich.  'Supply-side economics.'  'Trickle-down economics.'  'Reaganomics.'  Whatever you call it, it doesn't work as advertised.  Ryan and the GOP know this better than anyone, because they don't want the wealth to trickle down.  They keep going back to the well because, to them, the only thing better than a rich American is a richer American.  Now they're trying to sell it again, this time on the strength of Ryan's intellectualism, as if this preppy economic savant has really thought it through, worked out the kinks and come up with a plan that's just too nuanced to explain to drooling rubes like us.  If Ryan had it his way, as outlined in his first budget proposal, there would be zero taxes on capital gains and dividends--that's the kind of income that people like Mitt Romney prefer, because it's already taxed at a lower rate.  That lunatic idea has since been ditched in subsequent Ryan budgets, but it does underscore the kind of men we're dealing with.  Men of wealth and entitlement.  You're rich.  You deserve more.  Treat yo self.

Of course, Ryan is not blind to our giant growing debt;  He seems to sort of genuinely want to do something about it.  You can forget about increasing revenues or cutting the military, but some program or other is going to have to cough up the trillions, which brings us to our second point:

2) If you are not rich, you don't deserve to live.

How else can you explain his attitude toward Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Pell grants?  These are the programs that stand to lose if Romney and Ryan win in November.  How about the Affordable Care Act?  The GOP calls Obama the 'Food Stamp President,' but let's get something straight: more people on food stamps means that people were still eating through the second worst financial meltdown in our nation's history.  These safety nets quite literally keep people alive, but the GOP sneers again.  Yeah, Ryan is that guy, the one making an example of the mom in the grocery store who uses food stamps while having the audacity to own a smart phone.

So what are the poor and needy to do?  Ryan says he wants to teach them to fend for themselves.  What he doesn't seem to understand is that so many people who need food assistance already have jobs.  You can talk about self reliance all you want; people with low incomes can't just give themselves a raise, can they?  They can't scare up college tuition, can they?  The reality is that unemployment is still high, organized labor is weak and wages for middle and working classes have stagnated since the time of Reagan.  Social programs are popular.  They work.  Ryan himself was able to attend college because of the Social Security benefits provided by his late father.  That was fine for him.  He made the most of it.  For everyone else, it's a Ponzi scheme.

Any rational person knows that we'll all have to chip in to bring down the debt.  Ryan and his mythical job creators don't see it that way.  Sacrifices will have to be made, but not by them.  As for the rest of us, if we die, we die.

We were formally introduced to the new face of the GOP at the Republican National Convention.  Paul Ryan made his national debut by delivering a speech that was riddled with lies.  His encore comes tonight at the vice presidential debate. 

Here's hoping Joe Biden calls him on his bullshit.

nwb

Mr Chicken 2010-2012

Tonight we bid a fond farewell to our favorite fish, Mr. Chicken, whose ashen corpse was discovered on the bottom of our 29-gallon freshwater tank earlier this evening.

From the beginning, Mr. Chicken was a cantankerous fish, bridging no rival for food or turf, but his special brand of gritty determinism would grow on us before long.  I don't know if he led a particularly happy life, or if he had any hopes or dreams beyond the panes of his transparent cage.  I'm not even sure what kind of fish he was, but I do know this: Mr. Chicken was a survivor.  I could recount a dozen tales of his toughness, but one that stands out is a tank cleaning in the winter of '11.  On that January day, our bottom feeder slipped into the kitchen sink, through the mouth of the drain and into the teeth of the garbage disposal--mercifully disengaged.  For a hectic five minutes, Mr. Chicken flopped while my desperate but inept fingers attempted to rescue him from a slow and torturous death.  Only when he came to rest, on the verge of asphyxiation, was I able pluck him from oblivion and spirit him, gills swollen, to the more hospitable confines of recycled, oxygenated water.  He was shaken but alive, and an unspoken bond was forged between us.  We were no longer master and pet.  We were brothers.  From that moment on, we knew: I had his back, and he had mine.  Alas that I could not save him once more.

Aside from danger, Mr. Chicken enjoyed nestling into the holes in his favorite driftwood and devouring the funny-smelling flakes that occasionally rained down on his habitat.

Mr. Chicken was preceded in death by his spouse, Mrs. Chicken (née McDougald).  He leaves behind no known progeny.

A brief memorial was held toilet-side with friends and family gathered.

nwb