140 confirmed active duty  suicides in ten months, more than all of last year.

Related, I think, approval for the war in Afghanistan is at an all time low.  My one thought on Afghanistan is a thought about the thought process and assumptions that you will find in your, for instance Charles Krauthammers and Dick Cheneys.  The lowering approval ratings are themselves an indictment on President Obama, who has forfeited his presidential responsibility in keeping the approval ratings for these military expeditions high and rallying the nation around them.  The American popular approval rating for Harmid Karzai is particularly striking — just 26 percent think he and his government is a “reliable partner”.  It is almost as if Americans didn’t really believe that last election had any legitimacy to it, and we see Obama compound the problem in his statements about Karzai.  This is something that Bush would not have allowed to happen, and a popular thought he would have squelched in gaining currency — “Our Partners in Peace” — and another sign that Obama is falling down on the job.

You’ll excuse me if my feelings are kind of mixed on the ten year old “Conflict of Conscience” kid from Arkansas.

A 10-year-old Arkansas boy name Will Phillips has decided that he cannot in good conscience pledge allegiance to the flag as long as the country for which it stands refuses legal equality to its GLBT citizens.

That stand has brought young Mr. Phillips anti-gay taunts in the lunch room, but admiration from around the country, reports a Nov. 5 Arkansas Times article. The West Fork School District fifth grader clashed with a substitute teacher for his refusal to stand for the pledge, prompting a call to Will’s mother, Laura Phillips. When the principal acknowledged that Will has the right to refuse to say the pledge, Ms. Phillips asked that her son receive an apology–a request that the principal declined to honor.

Obviously the school administrators are in the wrong, the substitute teacher, and “Kids can be so cruel”.

The thing I can’t help but get around with the kid is that he’s moving in one of two directions here.  His favoring of uncompromising politics will either serve him to forever change the World, or it will prove a fool-hardy venture that will grind him up into a pulp as he faces the limits of Pure and Lonely stances, if you insist on stopping this or that procedure until the country lives up to an ideal you will be waiting an awfully long time.

Fairness in this case is more than a mere abstraction, since the family has a number of openly gay friends and has participated in GLBT equality events such as Pride parades. Will, who told the newspaper that he would like to pursue a career in law when he’s older, could not square the tenets of the pledge with the political realities faced by his family’s GLBT friends, whose family and individual rights are under constant challenge. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all,” said Will.

It would almost be better if somehow this were not the case, if he came to this stance with no particular sign-posts from family and parents, his impressions come more directly from elsewhere.  But we don’t live in a vacuum.   Still, you have to prefer him over the danged CPAC speaker, and I’d prefer the child’s activism of this issue-oriented basis over the “Kids for Kerry” speaker at the 2004 DNC Convention.

Obama is meeting with Hu.

What?

No.  Hu.

…

From Kids In the Hall, season one, the video has been taken off youtube by the corporates as per their right regarding copyright.

[Kevin and Dave walk onto a stage, Kevin is smiling comically and dancing around a bit, Dave keeps a straight face and speaks very reserved.]

Kevin: Good evening ladies and gentlemen! I’m McGillicutty!

Dave: And I’m Greene.

Kevin: Well, Mr. Greene, it appears we have a conflict of financial interest to settle up to the extent I owe you 10 American dollars bills. But as luck would have it [pulls out a 20 dollar bill] I only have a 20! [thinks for a second] Say Mr. Greene! Would you happen to have change for a 20? That is to say, do you have two 10s for this 20 dollar bill?

Dave: Uh, yes, I do. [Dave reaches in pocket and pulls out two 10s.]

Kevin: Fine then! I’ll give you the 20 and you’ll give me the two 10s [they exchange money] and we’ll call it even! [Kevin smirks]

Dave: Uh, no, actually we’ve just exchanged equal amounts of money. You still owe me 10.

Kevin: [a little nervous] But, isn’t that a 20 dollar bill in your hand?

Dave: Yes.

Kevin: Well, it looks to me like you owe me 10 dollars!

[Dave turns to Kevin with a whiny look.]

Dave: Please give me my money.

[Kevin stuffs the money into his hand and Dave puts it in his pocket.]

Kevin: Just take it! [short pause] Mr. Greene! Guess who I ran into on my way to the theater this evening?

Dave: Who?

Kevin: Rhonda, the former professional hunchback!

Dave: Oh! Did she get her back straightened?

Kevin: No, she’s just outta work!

[drumroll]

Dave: [a bit depressed] Awww, so her back isn’t better then?

Kevin: [looks nervous again] Nope, just outta work!

[Kevin tries to cue a drumroll; drumroll. Short pause.]

Kevin: Say Mr. Greene, I hear you manage a baseball team.

Dave: No. I’m a vaudevillian.

Kevin: No, I think you manage a baseball team!

Dave: Yes of course, yes I do manage a baseball team.

Kevin: I understand some of the players have rather strange nicknames, rather silly pet names the players have nowadays.

Dave: Yes, it’s true. In fact, I have the team roster with me right here. For instance, Hu is on first base, Watt is on second, and Iduno is on third base.

Kevin: Who’s on first base?

Dave: Yes.

Kevin: Who?

Dave: Yes, Hu is the man on first base.

Kevin: Why are you asking me; I’m asking you! What’s the name of the guy on first base?

Dave: No no, Watt is on – oh, I see what your problem is! Look, you’re confused by their names, because they all sound like questions.

Kevin: I dunno (whispers) third base.

Dave: Well, I’ll explain it to you. See, on first base is Hu, Samuel Hu, and you’re probably not familiar with that name because his grandfather was Chinese. And on second base is Hector Watt, W-A-T-T Watt, and that’s not so unusual because James Watt invented the steam engine. And on third base is Phil Iduno, I-D-U-N-O, and if you do say that fast, it does sound like the phrase ‘Gee, I dunno,’ but it’s actually Iduno, Phil Iduno.

Kevin: That’s it. You’re hopeless, you’re pathetic, you’re the worst straight man I ever worked with. I quit. I should have never saved you from those seals.

Dave: What are you talking about? I auditioned for this job.

Kevin: Bastaaaard!

I liked the Obama warning about coming Senate investigations into the Fort Hood shootings.  Don’t make political hay out of it.  Don’t play political football with this thing.  That would be untorrid and evil.  The chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security is Joseph Lieberman, who is facing a modicum of pressure from various points with a threat to take the chair away from him over his positioning in the Health Care debate.  He has put Homeland Security to use by investigating Obama’s “Czars”.

But I imagine he’ll balance out the sudden appearance of Rudy Giuliani on the Fox News programs to discuss these matters, and Obama is playing politics by squelching the discussion on how if this were 1940, Hitler would succeed, Pat Robertson pointing out what must be done to Islam.  (The good news with where Pat Robertson appears to be going on that score, is the result gets bandied about with the label “Hate Crime” instead of “Terrorism“.)

There is, back in the world of the living, a question about whether this counts as Terrorism.  It fits my definition, surely.  But then again, the government and people who make their careers out of studying Terrorism don’t define Theodore Kaczynski as a Terrorist, and I do.  The reasoning is something in Kaczynski’s motives being better understood as personal delirium as opposed to the political madness he blasted away from his Montana shack.

It’s the same vein some of the acts of Domestic Terrorism and/or personal vendettas we’ve had in these states in recent years — a Census Worker killed in Kentucky (probably more useful designation than with…), Edward Wycoff, 40, of the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights, the murderer of an Arkansas politico, and … a few others sulking my archives.

Most of these acts of violence are better understood as individual distress leading to their horrid positions.  The ideology that lead them to kill infected them from personal breakdowns.  It’s difficult to know how to parse it out with the Fort Hood shooter as of now — and there appear to clearly be breakdowns in the bureacracy, but — for instance, it’s difficult not to read into the “encouragement” at the man looking into Islam as not being on par with the desire to get a person back to self improvement.  Obviously, the man’s suicidal mission was not what they had in mind.

But you can excuse Pat Robertson.  He’s just waiting around for something big to happen.

This photograph was the lead on Drudge Report yesterday and this morning.  It isn’t now: right now Drudge is hawking Hugo Chavez’s plans on seeding clouds to control the weather.  I don’t know if it’s taking Drudge longer to make shifts, or if he really felt that focusing on this story was something that needed to be done.:

No fooling.  Obama visited the Emperor and Empress of Japan (ceremonial though their positions may be) and, as per custom, bowed down to them.  Looking into Blogoland, I see that question: “How Low Will He Go?”.  The answer is pretty low: the Japanese Emperor is pretty short, after all.  If he were taller, he wouldn’t have had to go as low.

During Barack Obama’s first presidential visit to Japan, he managed to work in a private lunch with Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko. The lunch, which lasted about an hour, was reported to have just been the three of them plus one interpreter. While the topics of their lunchtime conversation remain a mystery, the Japanese media delightedly reported on the event, stating how Obama made a polite short English greeting before entering the palace.

And thus creates the hub ub.  The president is criss-crossing the world, bowing down to foreign leader and royalty after foreign leader and royalty.  I don’t quite get this.  To compare to the similar foreign custom deference in the past Administration (and these minor controversies will pop up in every Administration, creating pointless hub ubs).:

Naturally this continues, with a bit less dramatic a flourish, with Obama (the Bush one is more striking in its symbolism) — we cannot extricate ourselves from power politics with Saudi Arabia, much as I’m guessing would have the preference of 99 point 99 percent of Americans.

But last I checked, our relationship with the Japanese Government is pretty straight-forward and simple.  Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is rather complicated, and has the feel to it of a Faustian Bargain.  I understood the hub ub about Bush kissing the Saudi king.  I don’t understand the hub ub about Obama bowing down to the Japanese Emperor.  But some people just have a wholly bizarre vision of the world – the rule for thee but not for me.

Obama “bowing down” to everyone?  Just come back to me when I see him do this.:

… or was Obama giving Gordon Brown, not much of a movie fan, a large collection of dvds as a gift the equivalent?  Maybe it’s best I ignore these hub ubs… Unless we want to dig back into earlier breaches of protocol — though, I don’t really begrudge Bush I of that incident, those things happen.

There was this woman on the tram, who was holding a sign out toward the window — obviously a political message of some kind for passerbyers (mostly at stops, seeing as that’s about the only time anyone would be able to focus on the sign.)

A guy — I’d guess age 17 or thereabouts, asked her to turn it over so he could read it.  When he did, he became puzzled.  “I … don’t get it.  That’s like, 2 different messages.  What does Abortion have to do with Homosexuals?  I can understand one message or the other, but what?”

The woman said something I couldn’t hear, and turned the sign back toward the window.  I could half explain how someone mixes the two items, but I decided to wait and see what the sign said when I left the place a few stops later.

“Free Abortions for Immigrant Lesbians.”

I… don’t get it.  Is there something in the ordering of the two words — would “immigrant lesbians” mean something different than “lesbian immigrants”?  Is there something to be said for the “Exceptions of Rape and Incest” here — I think Lesbians have a disproportionate number of unwanted or unplanned pregnancies?

Am I on Candid Camera, or being “Punked”?

Item.

Danvers High parents recently got an automated call from the principal warning them that if students say or display the word “meep” at school, they could face suspension.

Meep doesn’t mean much, unless you are Beaker – the hapless, orange-haired assistant to Dr. Bunsen Honeydew on “The Muppet Show.”

While meep may be nonsense, what it represented was no laughing matter to the high school’s administration. High school Principal Thomas Murray said students were using it and other words to disrupt school in a particular part of the building on Cabot Road. The term later became part of a disruption some students were planning online.

“It’s really not about the word in particular,” Murray said. “The reason for the message (was) a group of students were instructed to refrain from that language and other language in a particular part of the building.”

Murray gave students “a reasonable request” not to use the word to disrupt school in a hallway, and to stop other behaviors, but they did not listen, Murray said.

“Students were not going along with the direction or refraining from a particular type of language,” he said.

Murray did not elaborate on how the students were acting out. But he did say the phone call home was an attempt to head off a disruption being planned on the social networking Web site Facebook.

There’s only one thing you can say about a situation like that one.

Meep.

Item #2:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin rubbed shoulders with rappers and was hailed with “respect” in a television show on Friday that could help boost his flagging ratings.

Putin, wearing a turtleneck sweater and jacket, went on stage to present awards to participants in “Battle for Respect”, a hip-hop music contest run by Muz TV, a Russian rival to MTV.

“It would have been cool to record a joint track with Vladimir Putin because he is a legendary man and our idol,” sang rapper Zhigan who won the contest. “Let’s make so much noise in his honour that the whole world can hear.”

A presenter told the audience of about 100 young rappers in a makeshift television studio in an abandoned Moscow factory building that he wanted “smiles to stay on your faces throughout the evening”.

Despite hip-hop’s violent image, Putin had a stern message for the rappers about healthy living.

“I do not think that ‘top-rock’ or ‘down-rock’ breakdance technique is compatible with alcohol or drugs,” Putin told cheering hip-hoppers who responded with chants of “Respect, Vladimir Vladimirovich”.

Meep.  Meep.  MEEP!

This… can not end well.

Jul 28th, 2009
A group called “Patients First,” a project of the lobbyist-funded Americans for Prosperity, has been going around the country and hosting tea parties in opposition to “government-run health care.” Last week, they held a symposium in Salisbury, MD, and warned about the dangers of “socialized” medicine. Yesterday, some individuals decided to protest outside Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil’s office, even though he hasn’t yet come out in favor of a public option. Protesters even hung up Kratovil in effigy.

(Okay.  That’s not organizational, though.  One guy or a couple of peoples… is it?)

October 27, 20o9.
Randall Terry, the outspoken pro-life activist and a founder of Operation Rescue, has launched the “Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid Burn in Hell Video Contest,” encouraging people to burn the House speaker and Senate majority leader in effigy on Halloween and submit a video of the burnings to his Web site to win prizes.

(Lunatic fringe.  It’s goddamned Randall Terry, for crying out loud.  Still nobody in the mainstream… yet.)

November 13, 2009.
In a move sure to spark controversy, the Danville TEA Party will close their “Fired Up for Freedom” rally by burning Rep. Tom Perriello and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in effigy in response to the passage of landmark healthcare legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The event is being held Saturday at 5:30 p.m. in Blairs, VA at the corner of U.S. 29 and E. Witt Rd. and is open to the public.
Danville TEA Party Chairman Nigel Coleman said, “We were outraged to find that Tom Perriello had voted in favor of this bill. I was with dozens of 5th District voters in his office two days before the vote and we pleaded with him to stand with us against the Pelosi plan.”
“At this point we feel we have no representation in Congress. It disturbs me to find out that Perriello literally received a pat on the back from Nancy Pelosi before going to the House floor to vote.” Coleman said, citing unconfirmed reports that Congressman Perriello received handshakes from Democratic House leaders before casting his vote last Saturday.

(Wait.  This is “Danville TEA Party Chairman Nigel Coleman”.  Lines of demarcation… crossed.  Ladies and Gentlemen… Coming soon to the next big legistlative fight… National effigy burning as cental part of the Tea Party Rallies!)

Some comments worth noting.:

The other day, I thought to check the blogosphere for “Rick Emerson”, to see what fans had to say about the new owners of KUFO canning Emerson, and with it Rick Emerson Show version number — depending on how you count these things — I’d say Seven.  I saw this link to an interview Rick Emerson did for WSU Vancouver college radio, and posted it.  My posting went as follows:
Rick Emerson on his most recent of his long line of firings.   skip to 10 to … sputters out. skip to 18:22.  skip to 24:50 for a cringe-worthy college radio moment.  and Rick glosses right over “Max”, doesn’t he?
Special note on the new KUFO morning hosts: they apparently are doing this “call in to other radio show hosts”, such that the morning hosts “wackily” call into KPOJ’s local morning host.  Wow.  This stunt speaks badly of KUFO as a station I would never want to turn on. (Not that music radio is anything you listen.)

I believe the new KUFO morning show is called something like “The Skippy and Chuckles Morning Zoo”? , or and I post this link with the disclaimer that I basically hate Seth MacFarlane and The Family Guy but find this bit hilariously apt, Weenie and the Butt.  Googling for blog mentions of KUFO, I see this little comment.:

Responding to negative Internet reaction to the firing of KUFO’s previous talent and the station’s new hires, Ditch says it’s “just a small group of people who’s constantly posting stuff.”
Afternoon host Ricker says that listeners will eventually learn to appreciate his style and his show, then “come back three fold with love.”

Interesting.  A sign that the news owners of KUFO and the new Skippy and Chuckles Morning Zoo program are getting knocked about on the Internets.  I assume the main target of this nasty little missive is Aaron Duran, Geek in the City, who I see has on his website a posting to a new version of the Adolf Hitler film.

Myself, I am left with the comment:
KUFO listener Says:
November 12th, 2009 at 11:01 am
You’re opinion of KUFO.. means absolutely nothing… you sir are a NOBODY

I wish I had a firmer leg to stand on in charging against the contraction of “you” and “are”.  I half suspect that Skippy and Chuckles may not just be calling other radio stations with stunt calls, but are also typing out anonymous comments from “KUFO Listener”?  No, I don’t believe that, but I will be sure to check into the ISP number just the same.

Months back when Rick Emerson announced he and the show had been hired on to KUFO, I couldn’t help but have a negative feeling.  The situation was spot-lighted by Rick Emerson’s bad answer to the question “Are you going to be playing music?”, the answer: “Of course we are!  Music has always been a big part of the show!” somewhat evasive of the fear that Emerson, Dylan, and Riley would be rolling into that status as morning deejays to a pre-programmed playlist heavy on 90s alt rock.  But the ensuing battle over how much music they’d be playing is now moot — be sure to fill your ipods with Skippy and Chuckles Morning Zoo podcasts — or is it Wiener and the Butt?  I hear they’re quite wacky and edgy.