By now, the literate world is well aware of CNN’s news anchor, Soledad O’Brien’s public humiliation during her interview with Breitbart’s Pollak. If there was ever a doubt in the mind of anyone but the most dedicated Socialist sycophants of the Main Stream Media being less than an unofficial propaganda bureau for the president, this should have been the deciding factor.

CNN is now in full damage control mode, by trying to cast Derrick Bell, one of America’s foremost racists and former mentor to our president as a great crusader for civil rights in the spirit of Martin Luther King; unfortunately, the truth and facts are ugly and one of our president’s early friends and mentors is a vicious and vile racist who used his dubious academic credentials and a prolific effort of obfuscation to disguise stark racism as an analytical theory on race. In an effort to “Save Face” in the oriental tradition, a writer from CNN, with considerably more ability than O’Brien, has written a 1500 word essay to vindicate O’Brien and to help lessen the public’s impression of CNN and O’Brien being in the tank or should we say cess pool with Obama and willing to do or say anything to promote the Obama agenda. However, it is this essay and its revisionist stance on recent history, that provides the proof of CNN’s complicity with the Obama agenda.

Soledad committed her first error by not admitting that she was a fan of Bell or perhaps her first mistake was not admitting to CNN that although she had read Bell’s books, her comprehension was marginal.

There is nothing wrong with being a sycophantic fan of a writer, but the problem becomes apparent when the fan is passed off as an objective analyst; unfortunately, for Soledad, she was humiliated and became a laughingstock, along with her employer, the Obama Propaganda Bureau, CNN.

CNN has now decided to do battle with the forces that have no reservations against calling the racist Derrick Bell, a racist, by rewriting or blunting the message of the racist mentor of President Obama and trying once again to repackage the vile message of racism under a pretense of scholarly circumlocution.

The story of our president and the endemic racism of his associates is ongoing with many surprises.

In November of 1985, the Harvard Law Review published a seminal article of Critical Race Theory, written by Derrick Bell, and edited by a student, Elena Kagan. The same article was cited by Professor Charles Ogletree and by President Obama as support for her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010. The article defines the Constitution as a form of “original sin”. A similar view has been expressed by President Obama in referring to the flaws of the Constitution. Most of the article is fiction and meant as a parable. Unfortunately, the parables of a racist are now becoming institutionalized within our legal system.

From Joel Pollak, Editor in Chief Breitbart.com

“It carries over into his governance because his Justice Department won’t treat black civil rights violators the same way it treats white civil rights violators, there’s a racial pattern in which justice is enforced and it gives us a sense of how Barack Obama thinks about these issues.”

From the pen of Bell as edited by Kagan and used as grounds for her nomination to the Supreme Court:

At the nation’s beginning, the framers saw more clearly than is perhaps possible in our more enlightened and infinitely more complex time the essential need to accept what has become the American contradiction. The framers made a conscious, though unspoken, sacrifice of the rights of some in the belief that this forfeiture was necessary to secure the rights of others in a society embracing, as its fundamental principle, the equality of all. And thus the framers, while speaking through the Constitution in an unequivocal voice, at once promised freedom for whites and condemned blacks to slavery….

The Constitution has survived for two centuries and, despite earnest efforts by committed people, the contradiction remains, shielded and nurtured through the years by myth. This contradiction is the root reason for the inability of black people to gain legitimacy — that is, why they are unable to be taken seriously when they are serious and why they retain a subordinate status as a group that even impressive proofs of individual competence cannot overcome. Contradiction, shrouded by myth, remains a significant factor in blacks’ failure to obtain meaningful relief against historic racial injustice.

The myths that today and throughout history have nurtured the original constitutional contradiction and thus guided racial policy are manifold, operating like dreams below the level of language and conscious thought. Much of what is called the law of civil rights — an inexact euphemism for racial law — has a mythological or fairy-tale quality that is based, like the early fairy tales, less on visions of gaiety and light than on an ever-present threat of disaster. We are as likely to deny as to concede these myths, and we may well deny some and admit others. They are not single stories or strands. Rather, they operate in a rich texture that constantly changes, concealing content while elaborating their misleading meanings.

This is supposedly the nonfiction part that precedes the fictional writing that is expressed in parables. Although, Bell’s writing is non-sensical, the main precept is that the framers of the Constitution were White and since they were White, it was impossible for them not to write racism into the Constitution. Racism that gives preferential treatment to Whites and assures Blacks of failure.

Actually, is a call for a form of Marxism or Communism that is being played carefully by the left. Essentially the technique appeals to Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, and the poor who feel alienated. Critical Race Theory is the vehicle designed to catch the imagination of the disadvantaged, the poor, and society’s alienated and promise them Redistribution of Wealth: of course, the ultra wealthy Liberals and students see themselves as the caretakers of the masses and therefore able to function as Elites within this Utopian Society promised by the Marxists.

Within this theory of Bell, that is lauded by Obama, it is impossible for Whites to atone for their sins of the past. Their sins are a part of their DNA and represent a malignancy within our Constitution and until the system is destroyed and White Culture is eradicated, the cancer will always be there; hence, the premise of Marx is just tweaked a bit to produce this theory of Critical Race Hatred our president holds in such high regard.

When recognized, these myths often take the form of the missing link between the desire for some goal of racial justice and its realization. Black civil rights lawyers propound the myth that this case or that court may provide the long-sought solution to racial division. They fantasize and strategize about hazy future events that may bring us a long-envisioned racial equality. White people cling to the belief that racial justice may be realized without any loss of their privileged position. Even at this late date, some find new comfort in the old saw that “these things” — meaning an end to racial discrimination — “take time.” The psychological motivations behind the myths perpetrated by people of both races can be sufficiently complex to engender book-length explanations by psychiatrists. Racial stereotypes are also part of this suffocating web of myth that forms the rationale of inaction, but it is not necessary to catalogue here the myriad stereotypes about black people that have served since the days of slavery to ease the consciences of the thoughtful and buoy the egos of the ignorant.

The contemporary myths that confuse and inhibit current efforts to achieve racial justice have informed all of our racial history. Myth alone, not history, supports the statements of those who claim that the slavery contradiction was finally resolved by a bloody civil war. The Emancipation Proclamation was intended to serve the interests of the Union, not the blacks, a fact that Lincoln himself admitted. The Civil War amendments, while more vague in language and ambiguous in intent, actually furthered the goals of northern industry and politics far better and longer than they served to protect even the most basic rights of the freedmen. The meager promises of physical protection contained in the civil rights statutes adopted in the post-Civil War period were never effectively honored. Hardly a decade later, the political compromise settling the disputed Hayes-Tilden election once again left the freedmen to the reality of life with their former masters. Finally, the much-discussed “40 acres and a mule,” hardly extravagant reparations for an enslaved people who literally built the nation, never got beyond the discussion stage.

It is time to “Out” the Marxist influence within the Democrat Party, for these people are no longer hiding their core beliefs. If you refuse to accept the obvious, you are a part of the disease.

In an interview with NPR, in 2001, President Obama gave his views straight from Critical Race Theory:

If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.

Richard Delgado (A founder of CRT) and Jean Stefanic wrote a primer on Critical Race Theory and stressed these two basic principles:

1. “Racism is ordinary, not aberrational”;
2. “Our system of white-over-color ascendancy serves important purposes, both psychic and material.”

In their context, these two principles mean that the 14th Amendment with its equal treatment under the law, is unjust because it doesn’t deal with the concept of White Supremacy; therefore to compensate for the corrupt system the system must be made unequal. Hence Obama and Holder’s reasons for not prosecuting the Black Panthers in a case that was already won becomes apparent.

The CRT loyalists also maintain that Brown versus Board of Education was a ploy to keep the Soviet Union from using the White supremacy as a propaganda weapon against the United States. Again the loyalists show their support for the Marxist Party Line.

Although, the Critical Race Theory attacks classical Liberal theory, the Left is willing to overlook the contradictions and the inherent damage it causes to race relations, the laws of the land, and the Constitution, because it uses Marxism in an effective manner to play to the groups they want to represent.

Jeffrey Pyle writes of the dangers in the Boston College Law Review:

Critical race theorists attack the very foundations of the [classical] liberal legal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law. These liberal values, they allege, have no enduring basis in principles, but are mere social constructs calculated to legitimate white supremacy. The rule of law, according to critical race theorists, is a false promise of principled government, and they have lost patience with false promises.

The Obama Administration is Critical Race Theory, and it is not just the junction of law, race, and politics as Ms O’Brien has so inelegantly tried to explain. Reverse Racism is not a cure for racism; especially, racism that exists in the imagination of race pimps who have nothing without racism.

Thanks to the Obama Administration, racism has taken root deep within our federal government and our courts; it will take decades to scrub this ugly stain from our country if we begin today and if it is even possible with endemic racism so deeply entrenched within our Supreme Court.

Epilogue: Early in my tenure as an amateur blogger at FA, I received several emails from authors who unknowingly served as my unofficial mentors. They asked that I tone down my rhetoric and refrain from calling Obama a Marxist; at least until, the public was ready to accept the fact. Never again will I rein in my keyboard for the delicate sensitivities of our readers or other writers. The country is in deep manure and I refuse to drown in it gracefully. Fire me or railroad me out of here, but I will not go down the path of Marxism quietly and without a fight. I will pull no more punches, not for Obama’s brown hide or anyone else’s.

The man in the photo up above is laughing his ass off at us and he should be, for the Communists could never mount a serious threat against our country, except through White guilt over past racism. Obama has the ball and he is a damned good runner and liar, but he might just get sacked in a few months.

There is no excuse: child molestation is the murder of an innocent soul, for that soul will never be able to grow and mature into the adult that it was meant to be. We all know victims of childhood sexual molestation, whether they have told you or not, you know them. Some of them have a strong survival instinct and persevere through the shame and confusion to become productive adults: others are destroyed, they are the ones for whom the pain and humiliation were too much. They are often consumed by drugs and alcohol or they become prostitutes to complete their pain and be ground down into the gutters of life.

These broken birds were damaged and preyed upon so that some sick twisted bastard could have a few minutes of pleasure by compromising the life of a child. If there is a hierarchy of sick perverted bastards, this type of scum is among the lowest sickest human beings on the face of the earth.

Jerry Sandusky, the alleged serial rapist of boys, claims that he didn’t have sex with these boys; no, not at all, he just showered with them, touched their legs, and rough housed with them. There is something wrong with a man who defends his actions with such antics. He assumes it is perfectly natural for a middle aged man to shower with adolescent boys and to touch their legs in a non-sexual way. He said this in an interview to try and gain sympathy. The problem is, this constitutes sexual perversion to most of us and only a pervert would see it as normal behavior.

Sandusky claims that he likes children; perhaps, he is just a little too affectionate when he hugs them in the shower and touches their legs. Its all been a horrible mistake; he is just a soft pervert, not an utterly despicable sexual deviant.

It is time for all of us to realize these perverts are out there and they are always ready to attack. We must be ready to offer a helping and appropriate hand or to call the police. Be ready to offer assistance or a listening ear if necessary.

Once upon a time, I was able to provide assistance. It wasn’t dramatic and I should have done more. A young teenage girl rode up while I was working at a horse show and literally holding on to a horse. She said some men were following her and making inappropriate comments. I told her to stand next to me and they would not bother her. They suddenly lost interest and found other things to occupy their weak minds. I asked her where her parents were, it turned out her dad was the manager of the show. I told her we will go talk to him. We walked over the office and related the story to her father. The workers were promptly told to straighten up or ship out.

Perhaps, I should have called the cops immediately. I’m not sure. I was hopelessly outnumbered if the situate would haven turned ugly, but thankfully, my presence was enough to defuse the incident, sometimes just a little help can make a difference. Most perverts are cowards and facing an adult is more than they can handle.

I will promise to always be there to help a child. If everyone would make that commitment, our children would be much safer.

During the Renaissance and up until the late 19th Century, the Straivarius violin was the standard of the industry. A model by which all others were judged. The Stradivarius and fine sailing ships were built by employing Pythagorean mathematics, a keen knowledge of various woods, and a sense of artistic proportion. The result was an aesthetic marvel that would be admired by generations

Lars used the same Pythagorean mathematics, his love of exotic wood, and an artist’s sense of form and proportion to build his double ended ketch over thirty years ago. Wood makes a sail boat seem alive. The steel cable stays that brace the masts play their own music in different winds and the wooden vessel comes alive and sings beautiful songs on the high seas, but you needed to speak the language of sailing to understand the music of the songs of the sea.

He woke two minutes before his alarm clock was scheduled to make that horrendous sound at 4 AM. He started a fire to take the chill out of the hand hewn 8 X 12 inch cedar log cabin, with the tight dove tail corners he had built himself years ago and measured out coffee for two cups and warmed up two skillets with butter. In one of the skillets, he threw in three pork ribs with peppers and onions and covered the skillet with a glass top: in the other skillet he’d cook his eggs with a half can of kidney beans in about ten minutes.

Lars laughed at the rest of sedentary America, he ate all the wrong things, but was stronger than most men half his age.

Suddenly, the previous night’s conversation came back to haunt him. His children, grandchildren, in-laws, and a few out-laws wanted him to become a respectable senior. They were worried that he would disappear on one of his moose or grizzly hunting trips up the coast or would perish in a storm. Of course it is harder to settle up a complicated estate among many beneficiaries, if you just disappear one day. That was surely a major consideration.

He thought back to the old days when he prospected, logged, and fished trying to make a living. He faced death many times before he made enough money to be wealthy; now, they were worried he might get killed after surviving for 65 years. Where were they when he fought gale force winds or ran pay dirt through the sluices at sixty below with nothing to eat but moose steaks and roasted barley for coffee, they weren’t worried too much about his survival in those days when starvation was only a few weeks away.

How the attitudes change when you become wealthy and no one knows for sure what is written in your will.

He thought back to his first trip to Hawaii at 15 years of age. He and his buddy “borrowed” his buddy’s dad’s sailboat and set sail for Hawaii from Vancouver. The first week was a beautiful sail, they took turns at the helm and when he wasn’t sleeping he read Louis Lamour novels. After a dozen novels, he began to wish his friend’s dad had a more eclectic reading taste. Lamour was a good story teller, but after that trip, he never needed to read another one. He chuckled to himself as he cracked the eggs and sprinkled a pinch of coarse kosher sea salt and ground pepper over the eggs.

On the eighth day, the winds picked up and they were making 15 knots by noon. Within a few hours the winds were measured at over 30 knots on the anemometer and the waves were running over twelve feet. Neither of them had been in this kind of weather, but they seemed to be handling the weather well and they both felt like real sailors. They weren’t scared, their blood was up and they were excited. Their fiberglass sloop was being driven toward the South Pacific at a tremendous rate of speed, running with the wind. The huge waves seemed to rise beneath the stern and raise the sloop impossibly high in the air, to slip down the other side at a quartering angle while accelerating at a tremendous rate of speed to the bottom of the trough with a tremendous crash, only to begin the process once again as the boat was raised up out of the trough and into the screaming wind.

They gained confidence with each hour; unfortunately, the winds were gaining momentum. When he took the helm at sundown they were running bare poles, he tried to hoist a small storm jib to help steady the craft, but it was blown away before he could run it up. The mast was quivering under intense wind pressures and was propelling them at an unbelievable rate of speed without sails. By midnight the waves were as high as homes and the winds were causing the cable stays to scream and whine in high pitched tones. The waves were irregular and they lost all control, when half the rudder broke away. The 38 foot sloop became little more than a fishing bobber bouncing around with in the ferocious waves and stinging spray. The water was completely white and the tops of the waves were blowing off crashing down on them when they were at the bottom of the troughs. They had no visibility and gave up on trying to control the ship, expecting to head for the bottom at any minute.

That next morning at sunrise the winds slowed from near hurricane speeds to a strong gale force and they felt so good to still be still alive. The boat was still afloat, but beat to Hell. The new fiberglass boat had survived the storm, but it would never look like it did. Lars jury rigged part of the broken wooden dingy as a jury rigged rudder and they regained a semblance of control. There was plenty of time for the reality of having ruined the boat to settle in over the next few days as they approached Hawaii.

They anchored the wreck in Hawaii and were chastised by the local officials for what could have happened, they were in a hundred year storm and they weren’t supposed to be alive.

It was a hard chore to phone home and tell everyone they were still alive, but the new boat was ruined. His friend’s dad was so unimpressed, he told him to stay in Hawaii; he never went back home to Canada, he crewed on different boats and eventually became a licensed skipper. He worked the tourist trade in Maui and Alaska for the rest of his life.

Those were the days, no one thought he was incapable of taking care of himself back then; now, his kids wanted him to be a manny (male nanny) to his grandkids and become a perpetual dependent, but first he had to give up his life as a vibrant free man who still has red blood with testosterone pumping through his veins.

Lars heated up a few hot dogs for his dog Clara and they had breakfast together. His dog was a generous mixture of hunting dogs and stock dogs. Her face was turning gray and she was a little stiff in the hips with many scars on her muzzle from fighting dogs and wild animals; she might be a little stiff, but she wanted to go everywhere with him.

He finished a breakfast that would have cost $25 in one of the local eateries and looked at his dog, who was resting her head in his lap and staring into his face with her big brown eyes. He had made up his mind. The only decision that was left was what to do with his best friend.

“It’s a long trip girl, there are no guarantees, it might be the last go around. I can leave you here and you can guard the grandchildren for the rest of your life, they love you as much as I do.”

She looked at him with her sad eyes and he believed he knew her answer. “Let’s get the cabin closed up for winter. We’ll set sail before daylight.”

He built the sloop during the winter of 81-82. He hired a few master ship’s carpenters to help now and then; otherwise, he worked all by himself and had the boat finished and ready to launch by june. He knew every piece of wood, every screw, and dowel that held the boat together. Thirty-five feet of wood hand formed by him.

Wooden boats take more maintenance, but they give a certain satisfaction to those who are comfortable with the past. He loved his boat. It was a part of him and he never considered buying a modern fiberglass or steel boat, even though he could easily afford one of the best.

They rowed the dingy out to the mooring and climbed aboard. On a day cruise, he would leave the dingy at the mooring buoy, but today he laced it to the the deck above the cabin. His relatives would know he was off on an adventure when they saw the dingy was gone.

He laughed at the thought of all the phony drama he would cause by dropping off the face of the earth.

Lars talked to his dog as if she understood every word, “What about Bora Bora girl, they have the most beautiful island girls. I feel the romance in my soul once again. What do you think about spending a winter or two in the tropics. We’ll buy some supplies and ships’ gear in Seattle and set sail for the South Pacific. It feels good to be free once again, heh ol’ girl.” She beat out a steady cadence against the bulkhead with her tail and was happy to be free with the love of her life.

Freedom is to be cherished, some of us want to finish the stretch run in a hospital or an old folk’s home and others want to meet life’s and nature’s challenges head on, until our last days. In either instance it should be our choice, it is the freedom to choose, that is so precious.

I had a Labrador and my best buddy Knarley Manners had a Chesapeake. The dogs were given to us by people in town, people who found that big dogs make a big mess in small backyards. That was fine by us, we usually had stock dogs and dogs for lion and bear, these bird dogs were exotics to us and really special. There was only one problem; we weren’t bird hunters. Oh sure, we shot prairie chickens (grouse and ptarmigan) for dinner out in the bush, but that was always with a pistol or a 22 and not all that sporting. Head shots at thirty feet or less was the rule, but the skills for shooting ducks and geese had eluded us. Why hunt ducks and geese when you can hunt moose and elk?

Now that we had dogs, we needed to learn how to hunt waterfowl. We made plans, oh how we made plans for weeks and months we made plans; the sort of plans that 13 year old boys make when they are hiding an expedition from their dads.

There was nothing wrong with us going hunting or trapping, but wasting time and ammunition with ducks and geese didn’t make a lot of sense to hard nosed ranchers who operated very close to the bottom line during WWII until 1948. In Canada, there was a prohibition on selling beef to anyone but England for the ruinous price of six cents a pound. In the states beef on the hoof was selling for twenty-four cents a pound and American ranchers were getting rich. My dad was in the Pacific with the US Navy and my grandfather couldn’t get ranch help because everyone was off fighting a war in either the Pacific or Europe. Our seed stock was sold at the artificial low prices to keep the ranch at just below poverty levels. Once the ban was lifted in 1948 and after the men came back from the war, there was a slight hope for recovery.

When I was old enough to trap, the fur prices were high and my fur money helped the ranch become solvent. I was actually regarded as an important part of ranch revenue. There was still no money for the extra things. I bought a Mouser 8×57 surplus rifle because it was a cheap good rifle, I still have it, my only weapon after all these years, I suppose it will be passed on when I cross over. I hate to think that my rifle might have killed allied troops, but that is an enigma that I will always have in the back of my mind.

Consequently, under those conditions, you can see why our fathers didn’t encourage extravagances for us boys. I usually rode or drove a team into town to get supplies several times a year. I was allowed to go to the movie house if there was a western playing, it was usually a double feature. I paid my quarter and watched the same movies over and over, until my dad came looking for me. You could say, I was there to get my money’s worth.

If Knarley or I managed to find a hunting magazine with duck or goose hunting we studied the pictures for hours and made lively conversation on the techniques and skill involved in hunting water fowl. Both of us became hunting guides and professional trappers later on and would live a lifetime of adventure in a few short years. Knarley stayed behind and was a trapper and outfitter for the rest of his life: I became a horseman and traveled the world. I knew his world, but he has no idea of the life I have lived. All things considered, I should have stayed at home and guided and trapped the rest of my life.

But it was ducks and geese that had us fascinated at this time in our young lives. We had almost everything we needed, full choke single shot shotguns, bird dogs, but we needed decoys. You had to be very lucky to get the geese to fly over if you had a boat in a lake. We had no decoys and there was no way we could afford the cost of several decoys, but I had a plan. Knarley’s dad had a pen of white turkeys. We could use turkeys for decoys. I figured we could tie one leg on each turkey to the leg of the next turkey and we would have our decoys. It was a foolproof plan, the decoys in magazines were artificial, our turkeys would be live and swimming, they’d be sure to attract some geese and we would rise up and shoot them.

We had made our own plywood boat out of weathered plywood, it leaked slow enough that it was fairly safe if you kept bailing. I drove Tom and Geraldine over to Knarley’s in the evening on the pretense of us sitting at a moose lick overnight, the plywood boat in the back of the buckboard looked a little incongruent, but my dad didn’t say anything. We loaded up the turkeys in burlap feed sacks; Knarley’s dad would never know they were going hunting. We would return them the next day, it was a perfect plan.

A couple of weeks earlier, we got into a bit of trouble over another foolproof plan of mine, it was simply a mistake in judgement and we both got into hot water over the deal. We were out on a camping hunting trip and Knarley shot an old baloney bull. That’s an old bull moose with a big rack, they aren’t really good for roasts or steaks; it best to just make them into sausage and hamburger, I never really heard of someone making baloney. We only had three horses and it would take all three to pack out the bull. That meant we would need to walk the twenty miles home. I didn’t want to stop hunting, so I suggested we field dress the moose and leave the hide on. We could borrow some harness from a nearby logging camp, there was no one there and they wouldn’t start logging until after freeze up. They wouldn’t know we were borrowing the harness and we could return it before freeze up.

Elsie was terrified of Moose, but I figured if we hid the moose under leaves and grass and hooked the harness up to the hind legs of the moose, Elsie wouldn’t stop until she arrived in the ranch yard. They would realize what had happened and hang the moose until we got back home. It was a perfect plan.

Elsie was nervous, she could smell the moose and she was very skittish as we hitched the single tree up to the moose carcass. We clucked to her to move forward. She took one step and saw the dead moose rise up out of those leaves and took off like a race horse out of the starting gate. Knarley and I looked at each other as the cold feeling that we had just made another major mistake settled over us. Elsie ran until she was out of sight. Actually she ran all the way to the barn yard. There wasn’t much left of the moose carcass and Elsie was a nervous wreck for months.

We were in big trouble after that great idea of mine. Our fathers were beginning to doubt the wisdom of letting us go into the mountains armed with weapons and ideas.

We tied the team and wagon a hundred yards or so from the lake and carried the plywood boat with our sacks of live goose decoys. I was the best rower, so Knarley tied the turkeys together and we went out aways to set up our decoys. It was fairly noisy as Knarley threw the birds into the lake, but the birds settled down once they were comfortable in the darkness and floating on the water. We rowed silently through the dark to our blind in some cattails. The turkeys were quiet until morning. We looked for them, but they were nowhere in sight. No geese flew within shooting range so we rowed out in the middle of the lake to gather up our decoys. We looked and looked and suddenly we saw a strange sight just below the surface. All six decoys were underwater; actually they were all drowned. We didn’t know it, but turkeys are one of the few animals that can’t swim. The situation was looking grim and we were going to need to do a lot of explaining later on that day.

President Obama is now in a similar situation; he is looking down into the water at his failed economic policies. They are drowned and hopeless. Unfortunately, he won’t own up to his mistakes. Knarley and I had to do some fast talking and promising to keep from getting a two by four on the backside like we did from my dad after the moose incident. After the turkey incident, our fathers were wondering if they had raised up a couple of nincompoops and it was hopeless. I think the public has reached that same point with Obama.

There is a major difference in how we handled the disaster and how Obama is handling his situation. We admitted our mistake and promised to make up the loss of six turkeys to Knarley’s dad. Obama is blaming earthquakes, tsunamis, the Euro, and bad luck. If we would have used such lame reasoning we would have not been trusted again for years.

He has promised a new plan to get the country working once again, but the new plan is only a repeat of the old failed plan with mega-taxes thrown in to pay for it all. In the mean time, the country is sitting in a leaky boat staring at the drowned turkeys below just below the surface.

There is an old proverb in the country that is used to describe a man who wastes time and can’t get any thing done. It is said, “He runs around like a man in a silo looking for a corner to piss in.” Our president often reminds me of such a man; although it can be argued he flaunts our traditional system by making the EPA regulations into his own form of tyranny.

President Obama has just sent an email to his supporters, a group growing smaller and consequently requiring less cyber ink with the passage of time.

Obama claims to have a plan to get America back to work and he is asking for a joint session of congress to explain the plan.

He explains that it is ultimately up to congress to implement his plan and do what they were elected to do; apparently, in his opinion they were elected to be his rubber stamp.

Friend –

Today I asked for a joint session of Congress where I will lay out a clear plan to get Americans back to work.

Next week, I will deliver the details of the plan and call on lawmakers to pass it. Whether they will do the job they were elected to do is ultimately up to them.

But both you and I can pressure them to do the right thing. We can send the message that the American people are playing by the rules and meeting their responsibilities—and it’s time for our leaders in Congress to meet theirs. And we must hold them accountable if they don’t.

So I’m asking you to stand with me in calling on Congress to step up and take action on jobs:

http://my.barackobama.com/Time-To-Act

No matter how things go in the weeks and months ahead, this will be an important challenge for our organization.

It’s been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on. I know that you’re frustrated by that. I am, too. That’s why I’m putting forward a set of bipartisan proposals to help grow the economy and create jobs—that means strengthening our small businesses, giving needed breaks to middle-class families, while taking responsible steps to bring down our deficit. I’m asking lawmakers to look past short-term politics and take action on that plan. But we’ve got to do this together.

I will deliver this message to Congress next week, but I’m asking you to stand alongside me today:

http://my.barackobama.com/Time-To-Act

More to come,

Barack

I am sure the witless hordes are waiting breathlessly for marching orders from Dear Reader and I am sure they are impressed with the personal message that was written by one of his erudite saps he keeps around for the trivial and mundane tasks, like writing a note that people can read and understand.

He is on the ropes. He wasted two years with a health care plan that is a debacle and will hopefully be rewritten or thrown down the outhouse hole, and while he tied his useless and fiscally ruinous dream around the neck of the American public, he ignored the job crisis. Now he takes a public relations nightmare of an elitist vacation in a $50,000 a week resort, expecting America to pick up the tab and with total arrogance he and his wife fly out on separate jets spaced three hours apart, but in all fairness, he was concentrating on a plan to put America to work and his golf game. After giving our Affirmative Action President the benefit of the doubt for two years, it is time to unload on this dilettante who lives the life of luxury while unemployment edges closer to double digits.

He is blaming congress for his own inability to do something constructive, after he had control of both houses for two years.

He can run in circles for the next 14 months, but there are no magic corners in that silo of stupidity and arrogance.

What the frak are they doing to my superheroes?!

I was checking in over at the Washington Post and just discovered that the superhero closest to my childhood heart, Peter Parker, is dead:

Oh my God! They killed Spidey! It’s true. More than 10 years ago, writer Brian Michael Bendis brought Ultimate Spider-Man into the world, and today he’s taken him out. According to Bendis, this isn’t temporary, either. Is there a future for a Spider-Man without Peter Parker?

I have no idea what Ultimate Spider-Man and Bendis were about; the last I had paid attention to Spiderman was when Peter Parker and Mary Jane got married in 1987(and while doing some research for this post, I discover their marriage also had ended a few years ago! Egad!)

But in the WaPo article I read, it wasn’t the death of my favorite superhero that made my skin crawl. What really bugs me is that they have a new replacement Spiderman and are making much hoopla over his biracial ethnicity:

It’s not simply about publicity and stirring things up to get people talking (although Marvel surely welcomes those, too). It’s about a black kid in D.C., a Dominican kid in the Bronx or a young Mexicano from California being able to read a comic and come away from it saying, “I can be Spider-Man.” Generations of minority comic-book fans before this day, couldn’t say such a thing.

I call bullcrap:

~~~

Take a look at the photo at the top. Is there anything strikingly odd about the photo? What do you see? I see a “ridiculous” little Asian boy pretending to be a cowboy, and proud of wearing the get-up. I say “ridiculous”, because, of course, there weren’t really any Asian cowboys out in the Wild West. If anything, I should be playing the part of an Injun. But back then, at the time, I didn’t feel ridiculous. I thought I looked like Robert Conrad.

I didn’t see the movie version of Wild Wild West (starring Will Smith). But it certainly didn’t have to do with not being able to envision a black man in the role; or myself having a hero who is black (Tony Dorsett was my football hero I wanted to emulate). But I do associate Robert Conrad with being James West in the same way that William Shatner is the definitive Captain James T. Kirk.

Of course, if you’re going to ignore established character ethnicities and canon, does that mean when a reimagining of Star Trek sees fit to have Kanye West play Captain Kirk, that Matt Damon is up to play Sulu and Angelina Jolie gets to be Uhura? That Chekhov is cast as a Pakistani rather than a Russian? Or maybe they just kill off the entire crew and start afresh, yet still call the series “Star Trek” and reshuffle the diverse crew because they were never…um….diverse enough?

Wolverine isn’t Asian. He isn’t even American. Yet he’s another superhero I loved while growing up. It wasn’t his non-Asiatic ethnicity that made it difficult for me to see when I looked in the mirror: It was the hairstyle, my unconvincing scowl, and lack of chest hair. Minor physical details, though. It didn’t stop me from pretending. I could, however, identify with his short stature (he’s supposed to be 5′ 4″ – sorry bub, if you happen to be 6 ft tall and want to pretend you’re Wolverine).

When Jim Rhodes replaced Tony Stark as Iron Man before becoming War Machine, that wasn’t the same as what they’ve done to Spiderman, here.

What’s in “poor taste” is killing off an American pop icon and yet trying to keep the franchise alive by turning this into a teachable moment/selling point on the value and importance of ethnic diversity and multiculturalism. Blech!

After the death of Peter Parker, rumors started that a focus on ethnic diversity would play a part in the new casting of Spider-Man. It turns out rumors were right on the money. Miles Morales is half-black, half-Hispanic, and at least a few percent spider. It’s a bold move from writer Brian Michael Bendis, since cape-and-tights heroics still continue to be a mostly all-white affair.

Says Marvel editor in chief Axel Alonso, “What you have is a Spider-Man for the 21st century who’s reflective of our culture and diversity. We think that readers will fall in love with Miles Morales the same way they fell in love with Peter Parker.”

It really drives me nuts that in the 21st century, what this is really reflective of isn’t that we’ve moved beyond race, but that we are still fixated on making it into an issue. That we are still paying attention to the content of skin-color and identifying ourselves by ethnic pride/ties/loyalty/heritage.

Is it a bad thing to acknowledge where you came from and honoring ancestral heritage? To take pride in it? No. But when people whine about Generations of minority comic-book fans before this day, couldn’t say “I can be Spiderman”, I just can’t help but feel horribly bothered by such sentiments. Instead of just creating a whole new Marvel character, they essentially want to do to Peter Parker what they did to Nick Fury in the movies (which wasn’t so irksome as this whole line of thinking):

Axel Alonso, Marvel’s new editor-in-chief, says that Spider-Man’s newfound diversity was something that was considered the moment Marvel knew that their ultimate universe Peter Parker was headed to the grave.

“We knew that the death of the Ultimate Spider-Man/Peter Parker was coming,” Alonso told Comic Riffs by phone Wednesday. “The question quickly became: Who will be the person to fill those tights? We knew very quickly what had to be done. Having a character as iconic as Spider-Man, when he peels off that mask, having a new demographic be able to relate to him, we’re very excited about that.

The reason why I related to Peter Parker when I was very young was because I felt awkward and nerdy as a kid…just like him. I identified with him and his desire to do good in the world.

Alonso said a Marvel title accurately reflecting the society we live in is nothing new and that it’s been going on since Stan Lee was in charge, agreeing that X-Men in the ’60s was just as much about the civil-rights movement as it was the hatred of mutants.

Yup….and yet these new clowns at Marvel, like most Democrats and liberals, are still mired in fighting the good fights of the 60s and have not moved beyond it to the next level (like most Republicans and conservatives have): Transcending melanin count for content of character.

And here’s some moral condescension (yes, I realize I’m guilty of exercising this as well in my criticism) from David Betancourt (who identifies with the new Spidey based upon shared biracial makeup):

“For the small portion of the fan base who hates anything changing from their childhood, who say Peter Parker can crawl on a ceiling but Miles Morales can’t, they need this change the most.”

You want racism to disappear? As Morgan Freeman said on 60 Minutes, “Stop talking about it.” And what he meant by that (as I understood it) wasn’t to ignore the issue of racism and pretend that it doesn’t exist, but to quit obsessing over it, keeping it alive by making it into such a big issue.

Spiderman’s dead. Writers other than the original creators killed him off. Let him rest in peace. Call this other guy, Miles Morales, the Arachnid Kid or something else.

There’s only one Spiderman, and that was Peter Parker…

…and his white ethnicity didn’t matter.

LATImes:

– it took a lot of special effects to make the toned actor look like the skinny military hopeful he’s supposed to be at the beginning of the story.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Evans told Reuters. “They took shape out of my jaw line, they shrunk my skeleton and they made my shoulders less broad.”

Those rippling muscles on his Captain America alter-ego, however, are anything but CGI — the actor put on 15 pounds of muscle to play the part.

Everyone’s raving about Chris Evans in the film and how, thanks to CGI, they are able to make the actor look like a 90 lb soaking-wet weakling when the actor has in fact packed on 15 lbs of real muscle; but what they aren’t telling you is that after his character receives the super-soldier serum, that body doesn’t belong to Chris Evans either.

FA has obtained the exclusive rights to a behind-the-scenes photo of the real actor/stunt double, who just happens to be a real-life super-soldier about to deploy to Afghanistan:

Behind that Captain America half-mask, the rugged patriotic scowl, and brandishing that star-spangled shield,is FA’s very own CJ. Believe it or not, neither CGI nor photoshopping was involved in this picture of America’s finest super-soldier! The Taliban and al-Qaeda have no idea what’s coming their way!

Based upon the above photo, an artist made the following rendition of CJ (most have confused it for Chris Evans as the artist’s live model):

WaPo:

Even his name exudes an America that time forgot: Steve Rogers, who as channeled by Chris Evans embodies the kind of wisdom, bravery and fairness that a country mired in debt and political rancor could use right around now. “I don’t like bullies,” Rogers says simply before joining the U.S. Army in 1942. Some time later, after he’s been pumped up by a muscle-building serum even Roger Clemens would envy, someone asks Rogers, “What makes you so special?” “Nothin’,” he replies. “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn.” Sure, but one who was knocking Hitler on the jaw when he was first introduced to comic book readers in 1941 (goading a recalcitrant administration into doing the right thing).

This seems to be the year of the super hero movies:

The movie looks enjoyable. Anyone who is seeing it care to offer up a review?

I was never a fan of Captain America as a comic book reader growing up; but as an adult, I’ve become sensitive to how symbolic the character is (he turned my stomach when he fell into the clutches of anti-Bush writers); or at the least, the potential this character has in embodying American idealism and exceptionalism.

I’m not expecting this to be a flag-waving, “rah rah America #&%@ yeah, we’re #1!” kind of movie; just good old-fashioned entertainment, good vs. bad, that is respectful of America and absent of Hollywood liberal worldview messages.

Michael Medved writes:

Hollywood increasingly depends on overseas markets, so executives at Paramount Studios worried about anti-American sentiment hurting their new film, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER. They therefore offered foreign distributors the chance to sell the film simply as THE FIRST AVENGER, but only three nations made that choice: Russia, Ukraine and South Korea.

The rest of the world embraced the CAPTAIN AMERICA title, suggesting that hatred of the US may be less a factor than we think.

I’m still baffled that they didn’t capitalize upon a 4th of July weekend opening here in the States.

Previously (Related post):
Truth, Justice, and the UN Way

When I was a young man, I heard the old adage that women used, “clothes make the man”; consequently, I tried to always dress well and look my best. The years have made dressing less important to me, but at one time, I looked pretty dang good.

I’ve always dressed in the Western Style, even though I received a lot of snickers in the Northeastern U.S. and in Europe, but I wasn’t going to slap my heritage in the face to look like someone else. The rudest thing I ever heard was from a couple of toughs in London who made a comment about wearing a chamber pot on the head. It took me several hours to figure out, through their thick accents, that they were talking about my Western hat.

It was just as well, I am slow to anger and rarely rise to the bait of insults; however, it is a remark I remember some twenty or so years later. The boys did show a bit of wit; although, they probably wondered at my reluctance to respond, it’s was just that I couldn’t understand their accents.

Another rude group was the waitresses in New Jersey. They seem to delight in mean remarks meant to criticize other people’s accents and dress. I thought it was strange behavior for people who depended on other people’s generosity for their livelihood. They liked to make an issue of my slow country accent and often asked the person I was with what I was saying or if I was alone they would ask for me to point to the meals on the menu.

I looked at them as recalcitrant horses and played along; relying on the premise that you need to take what a horse has to pass out, at least until you can out finesse or outsmart it. So I played along and endured the insults and ate in peace with measured dignity.

Now one of the most bizarre contradictions to this dressing rule was a trainer I met at Sportsman’s Park in Chicago during the late 70′s. They were actually running the spring meet at Hawthorn, the track next door, but he was stabled at Sportsman’s Park.

I received word to report to a job in a certain barn and walked into the barn at eight AM. I introduced myself to the foreman and he pointed out the trainer. This was a short heavyset man, working down the shed row like a groom. The whole situation seemed wrong. Small men are common on the track because they are often former jockeys and gallup boys that age and get heavier later in life. They usually just slip into another occupation and spend the rest of their lives at the track. I was six foot two and two hundred and ten pounds of muscle and bone back in those days and considered to be a big man. It’s true I towered over most of the race trackers, but off the track in Chicago, I was just an average sized guy wearing western clothes.

This trainer came out of the stall with a big grin, a western hat and white tennis shoes. As he walked toward me, I was wishing I was somewhere else. In those days, I had too much pride and I thought it was insulting to the Western way of life to wear an expensive Western hat with a pair of tennis shoes. These days, I wear a Western hat with tennis shoes until I finish work and then I put on my Western boots, even if it is just to drive home. But at that point in my life, I was a little more idealistic. Actually, most of the trainers I worked for were from big city race tracks and they accepted me for my skills and integrity. The guys didn’t wear the Western style unless they had some claim to authenticity, it was an unwritten rule of etiquette.

He was a friendly little guy and impressed upon me that I had come with good recommendations and the assurances that I could keep my mouth closed. Actually, I cultivated the fact that I could be trusted to take secrets to the grave and that I would never talk about another man’s horse. It is a good reputation to have; especially, in Chicago, where some of the owners and trainers might be involved with the underworld. Yes it’s true, I often worked for mob types, but they trusted me, not everyone was trustworthy when those C notes were waved under their nose. I was asked many times for inside information and learned that I could never trust the person asking me the questions. They also learned they might as well ask an oak tree or a granite boulder for information, for asking me was an exercise in futility.

I let the trainer do the talking as we walked down the shed row looking at some nice New York horseflesh, standing in the stalls. He had four horses that he was mainly concerned with, we ducked into a stall to look at the first one.

I looked at the horse and told him that it was a good looking horse and he replied that he was indeed a good looking horse, but more importantly, he was going to make us all rich. I thought it was a joke and smiled at the remark.

He wanted the teeth done that morning in case there were any impacted deciduous teeth and otherwise, he was to be lightly floated. That part was easy enough. He then critiqued the hooves and the legs and told me how he wanted the hooves trimmed and what kind of shoes he wanted nailed on. I was impressed, the man knew legs, feet, and shoeing: in fact, he knew them so well, I wondered if I might be in over my head,

He wanted to show me some more horses, but I said I wanted to get to work on this one while the information was still fresh. I walked out to the truck for my equipment and when I returned, I started following the directions very closely. The trainer would get down on his knees to study each hoof after I trimmed it and each shoe after I nailed it on; I felt like I was back at the university taking a practical exam. There were four horses that were a team effort between the two of us. I worked on about eight more, but the first four were the most important.

When I was done, he paid me in cash, but he held onto the money when he laid it in my hand and said, “When these four horses run, bet this money on the first one, then bet the winnings on the second one, then place it all on the third one, and then parley it on the fourth one.

I walked away thinking the man was a good horseman, but was certifiable. The odds against a streak of winners like that were astronomical, if you actually bet all four horses and they won, paying a decent price, you would score at least a hundred thousand. I was just glad to have my cash.

A week or two later, I received a message to report back to the barn. The trainer told me that everything was going well with the horses, but he needed a rider that could sit there and not be afraid to let the horse run his own race and not be playing games with the horses and the gambling.

I told him about a young boy from Montana that had nerve and wasn’t all that friendly with the other pinheads. He asked me to tell him to be there in the morning.

A few days later, the first horse ran and paid $64.00 for a $2.00 bet. I couldn’t believe it. The second horse ran and paid $45.00. I was in a state of shock. The third horse ran and paid $36.00. The betting public was starting to pay attention and they weren’t going to let him play these games all alone.

All this had transpired and I had yet to bet a dime on my inside information. I decided to bet the farm on the last one, I heard he was entered, but when I looked at the form, he was entered in a grade 1 stakes race for three year olds at the end of the meet. This was too much, no one cuts up races and plays the gamble at that level; besides, the horse was way over matched, the best three year olds in Chicago were in the race plus several ship ins were there from other states. The race had so many class horses you wouldn’t be able to find my friend’s horse with a search warrant.

He won by many lengths, while improving his position; actually, he set a new track record and received a call that afternoon to run in the Preakness.

The one chance I had in my career to become rich and I passed on it all; maybe, it was that Western hat and those white tennis shoes, who knows, but my preconceived ideas cost me a fortune.

The prestigious news channel CNN is planning to bring in psychics to find out what is happening with the economy and global finance. It seems the Fed Chairman is lost and bewildered when it comes to performing his job. Of course, when you are dishonest in your efforts to analyze the past, you are starting with a deficit. Tim Geithner is convinced the failed Obama policies of the past are the keys to the future and President Obama sees the future in Green Technology and the Green Jobs the technology that has virtually killed Spain’s economy and most of Europe.

Now these guys can fumble around like cub bears making love to a football and CNN can call in their psychics, but me personally, I’d rather have that little guy in tennis shoes wearing a Western hat.

Apparently, Weiner’s sanctimonious piety and his use of the universal defense of Liberals as a victim is all a ruse. Another woman has come forward with emails and intimate photos from a “consensual online romance”. Is the Wiener done or is he willing to be grilled even more. His buns are being burned as you read these lines. There is only so much heat a Weiner can take.

A new woman has come forward with what she claims are photographs, chats, and emails with Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY). These appear to undermine severely Rep. Weiner’s explanations that he was the victim of a “prank” or a “hack.”

The detailed new information suggests that the Brooklyn- and Queens-based representative and the young woman in question were involved in an online, consensual relationship involving the mutual exchange of intimate photographs.

BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com were approached regarding this information more than a week prior to the separate, independent event of Friday, May 27, 2011, when a link to the now-infamous “gray underwear” photograph appeared publicly on Rep. Weiner’s Twitter feed.

We will be updating BigGovernment.com and BigJournalism.com throughout the day with photographs, timelines, and other clarifying details. However, we will not be releasing all of the material because some of it is of an extreme, graphic nature.

It’s a sad statement on American politics when we have our Weiner over the line of public decency and telling lies about it to disguise the Weiner’s indiscretions. We may safely assume that sanctimonious rabble rousing and the banging of pots and pans on the congressional floor does not necessarily indicate a clean Weiner: to the contrary, these media whores who are the most exuberant Weiner wavers and are often involved in the most indelicate Weiner usage.

None the less, he is our Weiner from Queens and he deserves to be judged in the court of public opinion; for no laws have been broken other than the informal laws of human decency and undue Weiner exposure. Sadly, we can say this a sorry about an out of control Weiner.

ARLINGTON, VA - DECEMBER 15: (L-R) US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, US President George W. Bush and US Vice President Dick Cheney attend the Armed Forces Farewell Tribute to Rumsfeld at the Pentagon December 15, 2006 in Arlington, Virginia. Praise was heaped on the outgoing secretary by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld used his farewell speech to call for an increase in military spending. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“The history of the United States military is clear: Torture doesn’t work”- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

“We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.”- Vice President Dick Cheney

“This country doesn’t torture, we’re not going to torture.”-President Bush

Agents searching Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s compound discovered what one official later called a “mother lode” of valuable intelligence. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was obviously planning more attacks. It didn’t sound like he was willing to give us any information about them. “I’ll talk to you,” he said, “after I get to New York and see my lawyer.”

George Tenet asked if he had permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I thought about my meeting with Danny Pearl’s widow, who was pregnant with his son when he was murdered. I thought about the 2,973 people stolen from their families by al Qaeda on 9/11. And I thought about my duty to protect the country from another act of terror.

“Damn right,” I said.

- Decision Points, pg 170, by George W. Bush

When asked about future plots, KSM’s reply was, “Soon you will know.” Like Abu Zubaydah before him, KSM was trained to resist standard interrogation techniques. After being waterboarded by his CIA interrogators, Zubaydah thanked them and told them, “You must do this for all the brothers.”

Around my last year of college, I picked up some work as a loss prevention specialist for a major retail clothing company. Aside from acting as an in-house detective on occasion, I also worked different stores in the district, training the sales staff in areas of loss prevention.

The person I answered to was the regional loss prevention manager who hired me. She was amazing! I had the privilege of sitting in on a couple of her interviews as she interrogated employees suspected of internal theft. After the interviews, she’d walk me through and point out the employee’s body language throughout key moments in the interview; the questions she asked, why she asked them at the moment she chose to ask them; she educated me on where the employee’s missteps were and when it became obvious to her that the employee was fabricating, hiding something, etc. By the end of the interrogation, the terminated employee would walk out of the room in a daze. Throughout the process, my boss basically got the thief to confess through a kind of relationship-building. It was so intense, that even after it was over, the employee left still feeling like my boss was somehow an understanding friend.

She confided in me that there was a time in her youth that she was approached by the Secret Service and the CIA to work for them. She was THAT good, apparently. I remember asking her why she didn’t take the job offer with the Secret Service and she simply told me she didn’t want to have to take a bullet.

What she taught me from the small amount of exposure I had been given, was just how much of an art it was to interrogate people. Watching her at work, then having her interpret for me later on what I failed to see, was like watching/listening and appreciating/analyzing good poetry.

There seems to be a misunderstanding about the nature of the CIA program under the Bush Administration that involved enhanced interrogation. So much so, that even experts in the field of interrogation have been misled into false assumptions about what the CIA interrogation program was all about. One such expert is Matthew Alexander (a pseudonym) whose book, Kill or Capture: How a Special Operations Task Force Took Down a Notorious al Qaeda Terrorist, I recently purchased.

Fortunately, early in 2010, an important book came out to try and set the record straight by defending those CIA interrogators who, up until then, could not openly speak out to defend themselves from all the slander, distortions, and assumptions about their work. The public should not have had knowledge of the details, let alone our enemies. But thanks to the leaks, media hysteria, hype, and distortions, partisan politics over patriotism, and finally the release of the OLC memos by the Obama administration, Marc Thiessen was able to shoot back with his book. As he puts it in his Author’s Note and has stated in interviews, “You should not be reading this book. I should not have been able to write it.”

The public discourse over the CIA program has in itself killed it. Its effectiveness was in the “not-knowing”; in the uncertainty. Waterboarding had already been discontinued (I think in 2003) long before President Obama’s first executive order, redundantly “banning” what was already banned. Revelations about its existence and details already effectively killed its value to CIA interrogators. Now, like those in our military who undergo waterboarding in SERE training, al Qaeda operatives can now add it to their list in interrogation resistance training. According to Thiessen, KSM, who is said to have received upward of 183 splashes during his waterboarding sessions, figured out just how long his interrogators could waterboard him for and would count down the seconds on one hand. Matthew Alexander and critics argue that this is proof of how ineffective waterboarding is. I’d say it bolsters the argument that the CIA method of waterboarding hardly constitutes the kind of waterboarding that does cross the line from the simulated feeling of drowning to one of actual drowning and torture.

The effectiveness of the CIA techniques was in the pretense of torture; of making the terrorist believe that things were worse than they actually were. As Marc Thiessen describes it:

The effect of the techniques is psychological, not physical. They trick the terrorists into thinking what they are enduring is worse than it really is.

It’s like the show Magic’s Biggest Secrets Revealed — once you know how the magician saws the woman in half, you’re not fooled. The same goes for enhanced interrogation.

In a strange twist of irony, the media falsehoods about torture at the hands of our CIA, as damaging as it’s been to our reputation in the world, may also have helped to perpetuate the “magic trick”-purpose of EITs:

The story of one senior al-Qaeda terrorist, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, illustrates the point. When Abd al-Hadi was brought to a CIA black site, agency officials told him, “We’re the CIA.” He replied, “I’ve heard of you guys. I’ll tell you anything you need to know.” And he did. Detainees like Abd al-Hadi cooperated without enhanced techniques because they feared enhanced techniques.

In wake of the “waterboarding” of Osama bin Laden’s carcass at the beginning of this month, new partisan questions have arisen regarding which administration should be credited the most with “having brought him to justice” (and his 72 urchins).

This has reignited the debate between defenders of the Bush-era CIA practice of enhanced interrogation and those attackers who choose to label it “torture” and “ineffective”, plain and simple.

Like Ali Soufan, Matthew Alexander is an expert in his field who has served his country honorably; both have played important roles in the fight against the al Qaeda network and affiliates. Both men have also been lionized by liberals (holding credibility for their expertise in the field of interrogation) on account of their scathing criticism of the CIA enhanced interrogation program; and in calling the Bush administration out with the torture charge. I, the non-expert, however, believe they themselves have been misled, just like these WWII vets and that the proof is in Thiessen’s research. I believe Thiessen’s work trumps their own assumptions regarding the CIA program as it functioned under President Bush.

In Alexander’s book, he stresses the importance of relationship-building as it relates to interrogating suspects and captures. By emphasizing this, critics of enhanced interrogations are setting up a strawman. What they don’t seem to get or acknowledge is that the CIA absolutely believes in and acknowledges the virtues of the relationship-building approach as well.

Pg. 91 from Ronald Kessler’s The Terrorist Watch:

The CIA interrogated captured terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and at secret locations throughout the world such as Bagram Air Force Base, an American installation in Afghanistan. While the CIA used coercive methods like depriving suspects of sleep and forcing them to kneel for hours, the CIA believed that actual torture involving infliction of pain produced bad information. Simply offering terrorists tea and sympathy was often enough to get al Qaeda members to talk. Often, the Stockholm Syndrome took over. Most al Qaeda members cooperated after a day or two. If not, they might be turned over to intelligence services in Egypt, Morocco, or Jordan where rough techniques could be used.

“You start by getting him talking to you,” David Manners, the former station chief in Jordan, says. “You start with items you already know about. That shows him you know a lot. His defenses diminish. Then you ask about items you don’t know about. Beating a guy up doesn’t work. He will tell you anything to stop the pain. We never used such tactics.”

Marc Thiessen would agree, based upon his research and interviews with those CIA interrogators who themselves were directly involved in the CIA program.

In the opening prologue to Kill or Capture, Alexander talks about how legendary WWII-era interrogators stuck to American values and principles, never resorting to torture. Well, guess what? The very best American interrogators- including Alexander, Soufan, and those directly involved in the CIA enhanced interrogation program- also uphold American values and principles; and also do not believe in the effectiveness of torture.

Incidentally, according to Eisenhower and the German POWs by Stephen Ambrose and Gunter Bishhof, as many as 56,000 German POWs- about 1% of the total numbers captured by war’s end- may have died while in U.S. custody. Contrast this with the .125% in today’s GWoT: Human Rights First reported in a 2006 study that since August of 2002, 100 detainees held by the CIA and the U.S. military had died while in captivity (According to military records, 34 of these are suspected or confirmed homicides). According to Department of Defense figures, by 2006, over 80,000 have been held under U.S. custody in the War on Terror.

So where lies the historical precedence that the Bush Administration behaved worse or that those under its leadership behaved worse than Americans of previous generations and of previous administrations? It doesn’t exist, other than in the fevered imaginings of media hype, sensationalizing and distorting the record.

Only about 100 terrorists were ever held in the CIA program that saw fit to subject only 30 of those 100 to enhanced interrogations (and of these only 3 were waterboarded; how many detainees both military and CIA were ever waterboarded at Guantanamo? Answer: Zero). The techniques used arguably do not rise to the level of definition for torture and were cleared by the legal counsel of the Justice Department and CIA lawyers. The European Court for Human Rights, which has a more restrictive definition of “inhuman and degrading treatment” than Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, also determined in Ireland vs. United Kingdom that the 5 techniques (wall-standing, hooding, noise, sleep deprivation, food and drink deprivation) used by British interrogators did not amount to the level of definition for torture.

When critics say, “people will tell you whatever you want them to say to make the torture stop”, what they are saying is that they completely do not have a grasp of the CIA program or the purpose for coercive techniques. Enhanced interrogations were not used to elicit confessions but to gain cooperation, after which normal relationship-building interrogation is established (de-briefing). Those 30 detainees who became candidates for enhanced interrogations were tough. A number of them most likely received extensive training in interrogation resistance for them to have entered the program.

As Thiessen wrote recently in WaPo:

Interrogators would never have asked about the names of couriers during waterboarding. As I explain in my book, “Courting Disaster,” enhanced techniques were not used to gain intelligence; they were used to elicit cooperation. According to former CIA director Mike Hayden, as enhanced techniques were applied, CIA interrogators would ask detainees questions to which the interrogators already know the answers — allowing them to judge whether the detainees had reached a level of compliance. “They are designed to create a state of cooperation, not to get specific truthful answers to a specific question,” Hayden said.

Once interrogators determined a terrorist had become cooperative, the techniques stopped and traditional, non-coercive methods of questioning were used. Moreover, the use of enhanced techniques wasn’t needed for two-thirds of the detainees in CIA custody . Just the experience of being brought into CIA custody — the “capture shock,” arrival at a sterile location, the isolation, the fact that they did not know where they were and that no one else knew they were there — was enough to persuade most of them to cooperate.

Alexander makes the argument in his article that there are negative consequences to torturing your captured enemies aside from the unreliability of confessed information:

Those consequences include the fact that torture handed al Qaeda its No. 1 recruiting tool, a fact confirmed by the U.S. Department of Defense’s interrogators in Iraq who questioned foreign fighters about why they had come there to fight. (I have first-hand knowledge of this information because I oversaw many of these interrogations and was briefed on the aggregate results.) In addition, future detainees will be unwilling to cooperate from the onset of an interrogation because they view all Americans as torturers. I heard this repeatedly in Iraq, where some detainees accused us of being the same as the guards at Abu Ghraib.

I have no doubt that many foreign fighters and Muslims embraced the jihad just as many Americans began enlisting after 9/11. A desire to protect your tribe is a natural, noble, universal instinct; a desire to defend your own. Abu Ghraib almost single-handedly cost us Iraq and gave al Qaeda new life. But more so than the actual abuses that happened there, more than any actual instances of abuses that happened at Guantanamo, Bagram, or anywhere under CIA and U.S. military supervision, was the media hyperventilation and overexaggeration of any actual let alone alleged abuses that occurred. Media distortions and misguided human rights watch groups, absent of real facts, did just as much to recruit jihadis as anything that actually happened in earnest. Jihadi propaganda could not have crafted a more self-serving narrative than the one world opinion shaped for them.

As Thiessen writes, “It is this myth, not the CIA’s actions, that has harmed America’s reputation across the globe” (Courting Disaster, pg 172)

Americans do not condone torture. Neither President Bush, VP Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, nor Marc Thiessen endorse torture. They are not “torture apologists”, nor am I. (“Torture deniers”, maybe…might be a label I’d be willing to wear )

Yes, abuses happened. But these were the exceptions, outside the norm; never part of military or CIA policy. Those abusers were prosecuted and punished.

Honest debate can be made regarding where the line in the sand should have been drawn. But it is dishonest and wrong to compare “the belly slap”, “walling” and SERE-inspired waterboarding to actual water torture by Japanese soldiers or waterboarding during the Inquisition. It is so much hyperbolic nonsense and slander. And it fuels enemy propaganda for recruitment and support.

As Thiessen writes on pg 193 of Courting Disaster,

It speaks well of our country that many Americans are uncomfortable with enhanced interrogation. We should be uncomfortable with these techniques, just as we should be uncomfortable with the decision to go to war. Americans always go to war reluctantly, recongizing that war is a tragedy, even when it is necessary and just. The same is true for coercive interrogations. It is tragic that coercive interrogations were needed, and it speaks well of our country that we placed so many liimits on them. But the CIA’s actions were not only necessary and effective- they were also moral and just.

Former President Bush:

Our intelligence officers carried out their orders with skill and courage, and they deserve our gratitude for protecting our nation. Legal officials in my administration did their best to resolve complex issues in a time of extraordinary danger to our country. Their successors are entitled to disagree with their conclusions. But criminalizing differences of legal opinion would set a terrible precedent for our democracy.

From the beginning, I knew the public reaction to my decisions would be colored by whether there was another attack. If none happened, whatever I did would probably look like an overreaction. If we were attacked again, people would demand to know why I hadn’t done more.

That is the nature of the presidency. Perceptions are shaped by the clarity of hindsight. In the moment of decision, you don’t have that advantage. On 9/11 I vowed that I would do what it took to protect America, within the Constitution and laws of our nation. History can debate the decisions I made, the policies I chose, and the tools I left behind. But there can be no debate about one fact: After the nightmare of September 11, America went seven and a half years without another successful terrorist attack on our soil. If I had to summarize my most meaningful accomplishment as president in one sentence, that would be it.
-Decision Points, pg 180-181

Photo by Jim Young, Reuters

Over half of what the CIA learned about al Qaeda can be traced back directly to the CIA enhanced interrogation program. Terror plots were derailed. al Qaeda operatives killed or captured. And it now appears the killing of Osama bin Laden can be traced back to information gleaned from the CIA program.

American lives have been saved thanks to the CIA interrogators, who did not compromise American principles and values in the handling of our enemies- those who wish us grave harm. Many have been treated with compassion and decency; some received tough treatment, for sure. And deservedly so where American lives are at stake.

What on earth do we have to apologize to the world for? Instead, we should be thanked, just as Abu Zubaydah thanked his CIA interrogators. The world is made safer by what we do; it is not made safer by the spin that distorts what we do.

Thank the CIA, the military, and our elected officials who have to make tough decisions everyday to keep America and the rest of the world safe.