"Robicheaux" by James Lee Burke, 2018

Dave Robicheaux is back. This is almost as good as Tin Roof Blowdown. Burke returns with his great characters, and descriptions of the underbelly of southern Louisiana that keep you up at night. Another great one from the old master.

"For many years our state legislature has been known as a mental asylum run by ExxonMobil. Since Huey Long, demagoguery has been a given; misogamy and racism and homophobia have become religious virtues, and self-congratulatory ignorance has become a source of pride...

How do you handle it when your anger brims over the edge of the pot? You use the shortened version of the Serenity Prayer, which is "Fuck it"...have faith in your own convictions and never let the naysayers and those who are masters at inculcating self-doubt hold sway in your life. "Fuck it" is not profanity. "Fuck it" is a sonnet."

"The Son" by Philipp Meyer

A damn good novel about four generations of a Texas family. Meyer details Comanche customs as well or better than "Empire of the Summer Moon"; his portrayal of the Mexican-American 'war" in South Texas in the early 1900's, and the Texas oil barons is as good as any history I have read while placing the context in a page turning novel. Highly recommended. Note: Skip the AMC series. It is another story altogether. It's not worth the time.

Even if God existed, to say he loved the human race was preposterous. It was just as likely the opposite; it was just as likely he was systematically deceiving us. To think that an all-powerful being would make a world for anyone but himself, that he might spend all his time looking out for the interests of lesser creatures, it went against all common sense. The strong took from the weak, only the weak believed otherwise, and if God was out there, he was just as the Greeks and Romans had suspected: a trickster, an older brother who spent all his time inventing ways to punish you. Meyer (2013). p. 505

The cotton men had burned their own buildings to bring us into the war and before the sun came up the next day, their newspapers were blaming escaped slaves and Yankees, whose next step would be to burn all of Texas, right after they got done raping all the white women. Meyer (2013). p. 439

My old flip phone and bare internet look better every day ...Maybe the internet needs to go...

That would be a far worst experience for those viewing my feed...

The day after I set it up, it caught me walking through the living room naked, resulting in the very first nude video of me (that I know about), which was promptly sent to the cloud and saved to the Home Cam app on my phone. This appears to be a common problem for the smart home set.

When you are an asshole and the President, maybe you should be more selective with your friends and associates....

Josh Marshall's (Talking Points Memo) political commentary is consistently prescient and accurate. This article focuses on the Porter situation.

All of it starts to feed on itself. The President is defined by his predation. He attracts these people to him or they are the only options available and he in turn protects them. He’s staffed by the inexperienced, the incompetent and the reprobate. They are unable to hide his nature even when it would be in his interest to allow them to do so. The rush of crises and incapacity yields desperation and lying, in part because of the nature of the situation but even more because these behaviors are validated from the top. Did John Kelly start out as a liar? We don’t know. He seems to be one and a not terribly good one now. Porter’s exposure is like a brief but sustained flash of light amidst the moral darkness and squalor of Trump White House, briefly illuminating all the dreck and rot of the rough beast of Trumpism.

JUAN PABLO VILLALOBOS VOLUNTEERS THE NATION OF MEXICO TO BUILD TRUMP’S WALL: IT'S GOING TO BE REALLY TERRIFIC

Let's build the wall...read it all...Exceptional piece...

Let’s build the wall. And okay, we’ll pay for it, us Mexicans. But we’ll build it ourselves, and we’ll put an aid station every twenty kilometers, a proper shelter with doctors, food, water, beds where people can rest and gather their strength, and English classes. And most importantly, we’ll have lots of doors all up and down the wall, thousands of them. Doors that can only be opened from one side: ours...

The only policy they understand is Revelations...

Richard Land of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, appeared on the “Point of View” radio program, where he told host Kerby Anderson that he has been shocked by how much influence he and other Religious Right activists have had over the make-up of Trump’s administration.

“Some of my conservative friends and I, we have been pinching ourselves, are we hallucinating or is this actually happening?” Land said. “I know a good number of people on the transition team and I can tell you right now, about half of them, Kerby, think I’m liberal. I mean, these are very conservative people.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/even-richard-land-is-shocked-by-how-much-influence-the-religious-right-is-having-in-shaping-trumps-administration/

This Tain't Zoning Regulations, Cheetoini...

Ethics Schmethics...Get ready for the great fleecing...

Shaub pleaded with Trump to change his mind. “It’s important to understand that the President is now entering the world of public service,” he said. “He’s going to be asking his own appointees to make sacrifices. He’s going to be asking our men and women in uniform to risk their lives in conflicts around the world. So, no, I don’t think divestiture is too high a price to pay to be the President of the United States of America.”

Trump’s impulse is to cavalierly disregard ethical and democratic norms that he views as inconvenient.  

It's the same old developer's hustle

Drain the swamp without addressing the hydrology, build low-rent, sub-code houses and sell them before they sink and fall apart.

Aspiring to the Lowest Calling...

Sheldon Goldman, a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the leading academic expert on federal judicial appointments, calls the Senate's record over the past two years "the worst in American history in terms of obstruction and delay."

Yes, Children, there were dinosaurs in the Mesozoic and humans in the Anthropocene...

Have we entered the Anthropocene Era?

There is growing evidence that human activity has changed the Earth’s system to such an extent that we are now in a new geological age. 

This is according to members of the Anthropocene Working Group who will present their findings to the 35th International Geological Congress...

Pence? Is Jeb more progressive?

Hillary could have carried the wave of enthusiasm and reform created by Bernie's campaign by naming Warren, Sanders, Grijalva, McGovern, Grayson, or better yet, Maxine Waters. But here we are with Pence?

I need the bumper sticker that says, "Hillary, well...OK...I guess".

Why is there no recall? This is called theft...

From the Tucson Weekly...

Hank Stephenson at the Arizona Capitol Times has another blockbuster exposé on House Speaker David Gowan: The Sierra Vista Republican had to refund more than $12,000 in bogus expenses that he billed the state. Stephenson's report

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2016/02/25/az-cap-times-house-speaker-gowan-had-to-refund-12000-in-bogus-mileage-reimbursements-and-phony-per-diem-claims

Intervention has failed. It is time to stand up to the neocons

Ron Paul nails this one....

They have a point. But the most important point we must learn from the destruction of Libya – and of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on – is that US interventionism has been a complete failure. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in the last 15 years, societies have been broken apart, economies have been destroyed, and property has been flattened. There are no success stories. The neocon plan to remake the Middle East has only succeeded in destroying the Middle East. As a consequence, we are far less safe than before the “war on terror” was launched. ISIS and other terrorist groups have expanded their territory and have even been able to attack in Europe and the US. Our currency has been debased to pay for the trillions of dollars spent in this no-win war. The connected elites have gotten rich while the middle class has gotten poorer.

Intervention has failed. It is time to stand up to the neocons and their liberal interventionist collaborators and say “no more!”

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2016/february/21/intervention-fail-back-to-libya/

Quote of the Moment

"It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value."  -Arthur C. Clarke

Hitchens on Religion

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Ukulele weeps by Jake Shimabukuro

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MLK and Vietnam

Operation Dark Heart

These quotes from Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan-and the Path to Victory by Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer:

“To this day, I don’t know who finally pulled the plug on Able Danger-or why-but I do know that a lot of people were more concerned about their careers and getting that next promotion than they were about protecting their country. The army and SOCOM were ahead of their time in doing something about global terror. It was not a “failure of imagination” that resulted in the 9/11 attacks. It was pure bureaucratic bumbling and intellectual corruption.”
-Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan-and the Path to Victory, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, St. Martin’s Press, 2010, pg. 176-7.

“General Vines knew the score, understood the intel and, in Patton-like style, wanted to take the war to the enemy-to show him no quarter. The Taliban was still there and was a threat to the long-term stability and economic programs that were just then taking root in Afghanistan. General Vines knew that he had to break the back of the counteroffensive before the Taliban could come back and take the country again.

”Privately, we assumed, he’d had to push back against Rumsfeld’s aggressive effort to turn activities in Afghanistan into a reconstruction-focused, postcombat, “permissive” environment, and to declare that the large-scale combat was over. After all, the focus of the main effort was Iraq. We wouldn’t want any bad news to tarnish the brilliant victory achieved in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan.”-Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan-and the Path to Victory, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, St. Martin’s Press, 2010, pg. 176-7.

“Leadership-the White House, Rumsfeld, top brass at the Pentagon-just didn’t get it. They were focused on Iraq. They weren’t listening. You could see that: Rumsfeld was showing up in Kabul every few months and declaring the combat was over. I had to believe that people were passing the right information up the chain. Whether he got it, I don’t know. His deputies sure didn’t get it. The Taliban didn’t recognize international borders. The Paks were in bed with the Taliban. The intelligence was irrefutable. Believing otherwise was a failure of leadership at the highest level.”
-Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan-and the Path to Victory, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, St. Martin’s Press, 2010, pg. 182.

“Then Rumsfeld showed up in Kabul and appeared to be seriously delusional. He and Karzai claimed that the Taliban were no danger to the country.

‘I’ve not seen any indication that the Taliban pose any military threat to the security of Afghanistan,’ Rumsfeld told reporters.”-Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan-and the Path to Victory, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, St. Martin’s Press, 2010, pg. 257.

“I’m not saying torture should never be used. I’d torture someone, if say, I believed that they had information that would prevent a nuclear weapon from going off or would likely prevent a massive loss of life. Albeit those kinds of situations are exceedingly rare. In fact, they usually only occur in the movies, not in real life. In the vast majority of cases, I don’t believe torture works-nor should it be used.”-Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on teh Frontlines of Afghanistan-and the Path to Victory, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, St. Martin’s Press, 2010, pg. 259.

“I eventually testified twice, both times in February 2006, to the House Armed Services Committee and the House Government Reform Committee in open and closed sessions. I concluded in my testimony that the Able Danger project might have prevented 9/11-and in closed (top secret) session, I outlined exactly my judgement in great detail based on the larger work, which is still unknown to the public.
    “After multiple denials, DOD was eventually forced to confirm that Able Danger did exist, and to confirm that it was an offensive operation designed to identify and attack Al Qaeda in a preemptive manner, two years before the 9/11 attacks. General Hugh Shelton publicly confirmed the existence of the operation and that he had come up with the idea and tasked it to General Pete Shoomaker, then commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM).”
-Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan-and the Path to Victory, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, St. Martin’s Press, 2010, pg. 274.

Why only 40% of the population believe in evolution...

The sky is falling. The sky is falling