Category Archives: Current Affairs

An aside about Cluster Bombs

Americana, Current Affairs, Uncategorized, War

I have never understood cluster bombs and why they are such a problem. Now, after a visit to the Hawthorn Ordnance Museum, I do understand.  That might not be the good news. Be warned, if you don’t understand, your ignorance might be bliss; once you do understand, you might not like our fellow Americans as much . While in the airplane, the bomb looks pretty much like a run of the mill people killing device. However, it is innocuously labeled Dispenser, Aircraft so as it will not to be confused with a regular bomb.

The dispenser is rigged to come apart after it is dropped.  Inside are hundreds of tennis ball size bomblets that are then spread across the countryside. They have little aerodynamic wing stubs that start the bomblets rotating once they leave the container.

This act of rotating arms the bomblet so, when it hits the ground, they will explode. Of course, they all go in slightly different directions to cover as wide an area as possible. Because most of the dispensers are dropped from low flying fighter aircraft, many of the bomblets don’t have a chance to arm themselves before they hit the ground. So, in Vietnam, in Laos, in Cambodia, there are just millions of these things still lying around on the ground, or in the grass, or in bushes, all unexploded. Waiting for a farmer to hit them with a plow or a child to pick them up and give them a good shake. Years later, many of them are still there. Waiting.

According to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in The Fog of War, after the firebombing of Tokyo, former Army Air Force General Curtis LeMay said to him, It is a good thing that we are going to win this war, otherwise we would be tried as war criminals. He was probably right. As far as I am concerned, the guys who dropped these all over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, should also be tried as war criminals.

That is one of the problems with war, once in a war, people will do anything to win. The United States is really no exception. We don’t wear suicide vests or club people to death, we don’t have to, we have cluster bombs and drones.

Obama

Americana, Current Affairs, Politics

The first time I became cynical about my government was over the 1960 U2/Francis Powers incident. As we all found out later, we – we being the United States Government – had been flying planes over the – then – Soviet Union in order to take pictures of their missile facilities and other, even more – atleast in theory – dangerous, military installations. You know, a spy plane. Because the U2 flew at very high altitudes – 70,000 feet – it was thought to fly too high to shoot down.

When the plane was shot down by the Ruskies, our Government said that it was a weather plane that had strayed off course. Perhaps the pilot had passed out, or something. Whatever.It wasn’t a spy plane!

Of course it was a spy plane and the only players who didn’t know that were us. American citizens. The Russians knew, they had the U2 carcass and the the U2 pilot.Our Government knew, they had ordered the missions.

When Obama first ran for president, for the first time in maybe 40 years, I really felt hope. I thought the country, and the world, may be in so much trouble that we would wake up. And Obama – I hoped and thought – was aware of how much trouble we were in and would be part of the change that we need to get through this. Early on, I thought he was more like a Rockefeller Republican than a Liberal like Lydon Johnson or George McGovern, but he hit all my hot buttons.

Making Government transparent, rolling back the unConstitutional imperial presidency, winding down our foolish and hyper expensive wars.

When Michele and I started working on his primary campaign about 20 months ago, it seemed to us, that Obama would be a shoe-in . It was obvious, to us, that he was the change our country needed and that everybody would immediately see that. Our friends gently told us that we were being naïve and they were afraid we would be gravely disappointed when he got blown out of the water by Hillary.

Well, it turned out that Obama won. It turned out that we weren’t gravely disappointed until after he was elected.

I like Obama more than Bush; he seems like a very personable and thoughtful guy, but he is not change. He is just more of the same. He has not made the Government more transparent, he has enlarged the presidency, and we are now fighting additional, low grade, wars in Yemen and Somalia. He has continued the Bush plan of ignoring Kyoto. He has saved the banks who made shitty loans rather than the homeowners who were given the shitty loans, , and he has gone after whistle blowers with a vengeance. He has done nothing about our energy crisis, our growing water crisis, and almost nothing about our grumbling infrastructure.

Maybe the problem is that Obama came to the presidency as a true outsider. He is, after all, a mixed race kid who looks black and he was raised poor by a single mom and his grandparents. One of my favorite Obama quotes and one that I think is  revelatory is something like If you are black and don’t want to get in trouble, dress well and don’t make any sudden movements. He hasn’t made any sudden movements and it has hurt us. Like Clinton, he grew up poor and, like Clinton, he is too anxious to be liked, too anxious to get along. Like Clinton, that has stopped him from making big, risky moves like Roosevelt or Bush the Younger
It is sad. Really sad.

Pickpockets, salesmen and the actors performing
Official scenarios,
Turned a deaf ear, for they had contracted
American dreams….
All that grave weight of America
Canceled! Like Greece and Rome.
The future in ruins!
The castles, the prisons, the cathedrals
Unbuilding, and roses
Blossoming from the stones that are not there .
From Walt Whitman at Bear Mountain by Louis Simpson

 

San Francisco Pride Parade:The start and finish

Americana, Around home, Current Affairs, Politics, Psychological Musings, Uncategorized,

Like a James Bond movie, or a fireworks display, the Pride Parade starts with a bang and ends with a bang. The middle was much more prosaic; not prosaic like the Sonoma Fourth of July parade which was white bread boring prosaic, prosaic like regular people prosaic. The Pride Parade starts with Dykes on Bikes. Dykes on Bikes are famous enough so that even I, who before now – had never been to a Gay Parade – have seen dozens of pictures of Dykes on Bikes.

Still, they were a surprise. Surprise number one was that many, if not most, of them on rice-burners, less on Harleys than I had expected. Number two, there were just less of them than I expected. Number three, they soon turned into something more akin to Maidens on Mopeds. Then, rapidly, nice guys in pink shorts, holding hands. I don’t say that derogatorily, it was the most charming thing about the Parade. Just nice people saying Please accept me as I am.

There were times when the spectators were more fun than the paraders.

As an aside, it seems to me that there are two kinds of people who are here, on display. People who put together a costume or outfit to go to the parade or be in the parade and people who get out their costume. The costume, or one of the costumes, that they already had. I lived with a woman, with a spectacular body, who had what she called a cat suit; it was a very tight, black, body suit . She would get out whenever she could. Halloween? Check, wear it with rabbit ears. Costume party? Check, wear it with a white collar and black tie. San Francisco Pride Parade? I’m sure the answer would have been, Check, just wear it. End aside.

But the paraders were plenty entertaining even if they were sometimes a little hard to understand.

 

And then came the finale: the horsey set and the leather crowd . Both gay and straight and, to my eye at high noon, not all that appealing. But they seemed to be enjoying themselves. It reminded me of the joke; What did the sadist say to the masochist?….. Nooo!

That was pretty much the end of the parade, but it is not where I want to end the post. What moved me most about the parade, what brought me close to tears a couple of times was not the wild and wicked; it was the quiet and nice. The normal. I think that explains what is happening right now with gay marriage and the mainstreaming of gays in general. As long as they were in the closet, in the popular imagination, they could be anything. And past the popular imagination, they could be and do the unimaginable. As they came out of the closet, they began to just be other people. With problems and worries just like anybody else.

So the couple above just becomes another older, sort of overweight couple and not a couple of wackos or, maybe, not yet. The people below just become neighbors, some of who want to get married.

 

 

 

 

The missing baby

Around home, Current Affairs, Uncategorized

We have a deer with a bad leg that lives near our house and spends a lot of time in our backyard. Last year she had two babies: one with a goiter on its neck that just disappeared, and I saw the other one by the side of the road, dead. A couple of days ago, both Michele and I saw a new born doe by the side of our house. Michele said that when she saw it, it was still wet and when I saw it, it was standing, near its mom, on very shaky legs.

Then the baby was gone.

Last night, just at dawn, Michele looked out and saw the baby with its mom. It makes us both feel better.

.

This is so sad

Current Affairs, Politics, Religion, Uncategorized

This is just so sad and so hard to watch. It just makes me sick. Israel had such promise. It was going to be a beacon of  everything good and now it is just turning into another intolerant, right wing state. These beautiful, happy, clean cut, children marching through the streets chanting May your village burn. Slaughter the Arabs. As The Accidental Theologian said Is this how the pogroms started?