Judgment at Abbottabad: So why am I not dancing in the streets?

One of the most important ideals to emerge out of the Second World War is the notion that individuals can be called to account by due process of law in the aftermath of conflict for crimes committed in the name of a nation or ideology. These criminals can be captured, held, tried and punished for even something as horrifying as genocide. Even decades after the famous war crimes trials, fugitives from justice such as Aldolf Eichmann were still being brought to account. Many were captured, tried and punished . . . by sentence of court.

Fifty million died to fascist aggression in twelve horrifying years of war and genocide, but the architects of that cataclysm were called to account in a manner consistent with the values we were fighting for. In the face of overwhelming evidence of their crimes, even genocidal Nazis and Japanese militarists were offered the benefit of due process at trial.

In these debased times, apparently we can no longer afford the luxury. Due process of law is a sad casualty of this War on Terror™

Last night, President Obama informed the world that Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the attacks of 2001.09.11, was killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and the US has his dead body. This electrifying news triggered spontaneous celebrations around the country and even some praise for the President from the various Republicans seeking their party's presidential nomination.

So while this monstrous mass murderer is now explaining his crimes against his religion to Allah in person and a nation rejoices . . . why am I not celebrating?

First of all -- it's not because I'm some kind of crypto-Islamofacist terrorist socialist communist who hates America, kicks puppies, eats kittens raw and thinks American Idol sucks. Far from it. Unlike many who are having a Beltane mass public triumphalist war-gasm over this, I've served this country in the US Navy. I think I understand a thing or two about war and the way the world works. The part of me that understands the latter is not in the mood for celebrating.

Reason the first for not wanting to celebrate: I hold with the idea of that all human beings have inherent value -- even Hitler and OBL. Yes, even a villain like Osama bin Laden. Even the dearth of this monster diminishes us.

Reason the second: Apparently OBL was killed in a daring raid by US Special Operations troops. Boots on the ground, not bombs from the sky. Intelligence and light infantry were Obama's choice of weapon, not data nets and remote-control drones. This operation could have gone very very badly for the troops and Obama, as both living Democratic former presidents can attest. Barack Obama risked his chances for a second term as President on the success of this raid. My point here: If the President chose to rely on light infantry / commandos for this task, there was the possibility of capturing OBL for trial.

If OBL were taken and not killed in action, the end result would eventually be the same: OBL would never "get off on a technicality" even before the most bleeding heart judge in the universe. Yes, any trial would be a theatrical event to rival Broadway, a media circus that would make OJ Simpson's trial look like a kiddie ride, and a trial would take time.

Due process has a price. But justice at the cost of our values and our souls is hardly worthy of a great nation like the United States of America.

However disappointed that we aren't going to try OBL for his crimes, I applaud the US military for its valor and courage in carrying out a dangerous mission. The guys in camouflage and the intelligence community scored a brilliant success on this operation. However, there is a bigger picture here . . . one that worries me over the long term.

Edit for clarity and a couple of stupid spelling errors.

The problem with Rush Limbaugh owning a NFL team...

...is that the only formation the team would be able to use is "Right Wing"

Daily Bloggery 2009-04-18: Emotional Rollercoaster Rides

The last 24 hrs have been a roller coaster ride, and the hits keep on coming.

Upswing: I'm off to Gwenny's this afternoon.

Downswing: Last night, while playing WoW . . . Gwenny and I log on, and are going through our usual "What do you want to do tonight, Brain? . . ." routine. Gwenny spots an opportunity to get Marty into a pickup group (PuG) for Naxxaramas. Naxx is the place I really need to be going to get gear upgrades. Gwenny is not coming, she's got her hands full with guild drama. OK, so I go, get to the entrance. I was given the impression that this would be a fresh run, with all of the bosses -- and maximum loot possibilities. It turns out that this group is on the very last boss -- a really tough dragon -- and just needs me to down him. I've never been in here before, so I have no idea of how to get to the dragon. I really need some step by step guidance here . . . I ask for it repeatedly, and I get blown off. Now my frustration level builds up rapidly. I finally get into raid chat and ask them for an escort to the boss. Repeatedly. Again. And again. This is not an unusual request, but these bozos still blow me off. I finally yell at one of my guildies to help me get through to these guys . . . and I finally get some clear instructions on how to get into the instance and thence to the boss.

They sketch out what I need to do -- no details, despite my repeated pleas for more information, just enough to get started. A couple of them start manking snide comments in the channel that annoy me, but I figure they are as frustrated as I am and want to get on with the fight. They start the fight, I have a very vague idea at best as to what to do . . . and I die, rapidly, to an effect I did not understand.

As I lay there, dead, out of the fight and totally frustrated, one of the raiders pops off with a sarcastic "Well, that shaman was certainly worth waiting for!"

This is where I completely lose it. It is no use explaining why to this group of assholes. You DO NOT grab someone who does not know a fight (and EVERY boss fight in a raid has two ways or more to kill you very fast, other than big time damage -- unless you know exactly what to do and when to counter the instant kill) and especially a very tough end boss -- and expect him to perform. I was under the impression when I was invited -- and so I think Gwenny was as well -- that this would be a group who was starting fresh with the easier areas of Naxx where I could learn the fights. Instead I'm with a group that expected me to be born knowing everything and laughed when I died due to ignorance. And, the ONLY reason they had to wait is because these arrogant pricks did not bother to summon me to the instance, nor did they give me clear directions as to how to get to a FSCKING boss I am not quite ready for once I was there!

I rez at the graveyard, immediately drop group and log off in sheer angry frustration. Fsck them and the epic mounts they rode in on! You do NOT refuse to remedy someone's ignorance, arguably lie to him, and then mock him for acting out of ignorance!

What is even more frustrating is that now I cannot go back to Naxx until next Tuesday, because raids work on a lockout timer. Once you enter a raid instance, you are "saved" to it. This keeps you from running a raid dungeon more than once a week. I was really looking forward to running that place with a BOYD raid and with Gwenny / Paharita right there this weekend. Now that's not an option.

I log back in 10 min later, when every other word out of my mouth is no longer some variant on "fuck" and tell my guildies what happened. Gwenny apologizes and we spend the rest of the evening opening up the Sons of Hodr quest lines in Storm Peaks. She explains that most of that group are ex-members of our guild and they figured I'd have a clue like most of our other members. Then, Jenni (Gwenny's daughter) whispers me to tell me that this was totally bogus, is so very sorry, and says that there will be a Naxx run next week with just the guild. We have a lot of new level 80s who are ready for Naxx now . . . .

Upswing: just when I get to work, some good news: Our complementary employee email / network services accounts are upgraded to Family Packs (5 email addys, more storage / bandwidth, etc)

Supplemental Bloggery 2009-04-11: Thrall Hates Baby Seals?

OK, boys and girls. THIS takes the cake!

Our good friends at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are sponsoring an event on a WoW server: It seems that Thrall, the warchief of the Horde, has refused to ban the slaughter of baby seals in WoW. So, PETA is calling on "good" Alliance players to head to Howling Fjord to kill "evil" Hordies killing the seals.

OK, I'm not in favor of killing baby seals in Azeroth or elsewhere. What I object to is the depiction of the Horde as "evil." If you dig into WoW lore, you soon realize that the Horde is many things: savage, violent, determined and occasionally bestial and certainly not attractive by human standards but it is NOT "evil." In fact, it is usually the Alliance that breaks treaties and does other despicable things (like selling out the High Elves in the Third War to the point they, you guessed it, come over to the Horde!).

Oh, and the Litch King, the current expansion's Baddie of Baddies? HE IS HUMAN! The very heart and soul of the Alliance.

Now what next? Is PETA going to demand that skinning as a profession be banned? That all quests involving hunting (Hemet Nessingwary, I am talking about YOU!) be done away with?

The less said, the better . . .

The Van-Breaking-Down-Seven-Phone-Agents-two-tow-trucks-Two-oops-THREE-Fuel-Pumps-Fail-outta-teh-box-six-hundred-bux-but-the-shop-has-free-wifi Blues

Good Points: free wifi, accessible from here. I can forgive a lot for free wifi.
Bad Points: TV in waiting room tuned to Fox News. That's what iTunes and WoW were made for.

Foxaganda Trails:
"Obama's Gonna Close Gitmo and release the terrists, we're all gonna die!!!"
Where the fsck does FNC get all those idiots?
Calling Ann Coulter a "cvnt" is an insult to vaginas.
Bill O'Reilly wears a tie to keep his foreskin from rolling up his neck. Fsck BillO and the phone sex falafel sandwich he rode in on.
Calling Sean Hannity a "retard" insults the mentally ill.
Meat Loaf on Hannity; time to delete Bat Out Of Hell from the HD

This siege of semi-forced TV reminded me of why I don't own a set. I turned up the music, risking hearing loss to keep the IQ points from leaking out my ears.

THREE fuel pumps out of the box . . . but now they know WHY: the shop's been ordering the WRONG ONES!!

During my vehicle-less stretch this week, I downloaded more ebooks for my reading pleasure. Or so I hoped. I'm a very big fan of Eric Flint's 1632 series. If you were to design in a lab a sf series to appeal strictly to me, the premise of "Have a cosmic accident drop a small West Virginia town into Thurungia at the height of the Thirty Years' War. Watch hilarity ensue." is a at the top of the list. The original 1632 is a classic on the same plane as H. Beam Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (premise: "Pennsylvania State Trooper stumbles upon a transport device of the Time Patrol, winds up in a parallel universe where North America was originally settled by Aryan migration across the Pacific Ocean ("Aryan Transpacific"), with early 1600s tech and a church that deems gunpowder(!) a religious sacrament . . ."). Another good comparison volume of course is S.M. Stirling's Dies the Fire (Premise: "Alien Space Bats An Unknown Force shut down all electronic and high explosive / high combustion technologies, reducing the world to pre-1100 tech; SCAdians and Pagans war over the ruins . . . Oh, and Nantucket is missing."

Anyway, 1632 spawned numerous sequalae: 1633 (co-written with David Weber), 1634: The Baltic War (also co-written with DW), numerous "Grantville Gazette" volumes of vignettes and short stoies, and at least three other "163x" volumes. The first two volumes in this list are both awesome. Weber and Flint collaborated earlier on an awesome book set in Weber's Honorverse, Crown of Slaves, so I knew the first two sequals would rock. They did.

This brings us to 1634: The Bravarian Crisis. The book is not exactly a contunuation of 1634:TBW, it focuses on our favorite medieval / early modern royal dynasty: those lovable Hapsburgs! The co-author knows her 17th-century Germany. I learned more about the Hapsburgs in reading this book than I ever knew before I picked it up. Yes, the plot was okay . . . but it was BORING as all hell. Okay, 1634: TBC was really about "soft power." Building things like modern schools, while avoiding enemies like the Inquisition, the Society of Jesus and the French. Not to mention what happens when the Holy Roman Emperor (talk about 'three lies for the price of one') loses the will to live. Too much touchy-feely, not enough "Let's show them the meaning of Rate of Fire!"

Perhaps that's coming in future books . . . but this one struggled to hold my interest. At least it was better than Orson Scott Card's magnum opiate, Empire. I may give 1635: The Cannon Law a chance. Or not. Two months till Storm from the Shadows . . . hopefully eight - ten till Torch of Freedom (aka Crown of Slaves II) and Mission of Honor next year.

Once I get the car back, methinks I will see Gran Torino. You simply cannot go wrong with Clint Eastwood, marauding gangbangers and a M1 Garand. Also Defiance.
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Listening to: R.E.M. - Imitation of Life (Live)
via FoxyTunes

Talk like a . . . WTF?

Talk Like a Republican Day!

The RNC / Palin Nomination

Just a few observations about this week's political convention:

1. I'm going to ignore the speeches. There is nothing that they have said or will say that I have not heard before, and staying out of thrown weapons range of a TV screen is a wise maneuver. Since I'm ignoring the speeches, I'll not comment on them. As Mom told me as a wee lad, if you cannot say anything nice about someone, you're probably going to grow up a blogger don't say anything at all.

2. As to the Palin nomination, which is something that has been blogged to within an inch of its life, I have this to say: the pick clearly was not vetted by John McCain, and even more clearly was a sop to the theocratic wing of the Republican Party. I agree with Barack Obama that the nominee's families should be off limits. Palin's politics and performance as Govenor of Alaska is not. Her resume is thinner than an anorexic starlet on a week-long purge, her management style makes Dick Cheney look like Barney the Purple Dinosaur by comparison, her record on reproductive choice is unsupportable and if, Goddess forbid it, the McCain-Palin ticket wins or steals the election, this 44 year old tyro will stand one 72-year old heartbeat away from the highest office in the land. Don't be fooled by her attractiveness, she's a hardcore Christian Dominionist in sheep's clothing.

3. One more thing about St. Paul and Minneapolis: I've been there, those towns are lovely places. Hard to imagins such a place overrun with riot cops and no-knock flying squads on pre-emptive raids. It's almost as though the cops are trying to provoke a riot. As for the violent ones among them . . . I'm willing to bet some of them are cops -- agent provocateurs sent in to discredit the nonviolent ones and to justify the $50 million price tag for "security."

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Listening to: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers - I Won't Back Down
via FoxyTunes

Boot to the Head: Work edition

"I'll sing to you a little song / About the things that piss us off . . ."

Good day at work so far, but annoying as hell.

1. Pig-ignorant / lazy as hell coworkers. Three cases of these today, all before lunch.
a. Simple, easy steps even a Master of the Obvious should be able to do . . . but NOOOOOOO, they palm the job off on the Next Tech.
b. IDIOTS who refuse to use their empowerment to help customers because it will add a few minutes to their call times. Customer calls back, I spend the time to Put It Right, to ensure the customer is satisfied, and my metrics take it in the neck.
c. People who can name every minor character on The Simpsons and every break in continuity in their favorite comic books since the 70s, but have not a fscking clue who Genghis Khan was or what he really did.

2. Call monitoring. One of the conditions of my job is that my calls are monitored "for quality assurance." I know that any call may be monitored and evaluated, but this does not happen very often -- maybe a couple of times a week. When this happens once a day, I'm not stressed. Over the last week, I've had FIVE, three in one day, all by the same evaluator . . . who happens to be a member of my team on a coaching rotation.

OK, repeat after me: What. The. FSCK?
I run into him on my way out the door yesterday. Guy says this is purely random. Yeahright.
I get my 1 on 1 with my manager this week. Maybe he can answer my question.

WoW bitz

1. I have resigned as GM of the guild I inherited and left the guild. I was running into resistance to some of the common sense things I wanted to make this guild great (selective recruiting, slow promotions, etc). What sent me over the edge was one of my officers. He'd recruit just anyone into the guild (and wonder why our guild's bank would be ripped off . . .) even though I said I wanted to interview every applicant. but the final blow was when he sent me an invite to a group to help out in a dungeon THEN asked me "r u bsy?"

That is an incredibly rude thing to do. As it happens, I'm NOT a player who spends his limited online game time hanging out in a city to shoot the breeze in /General or /Trade chat. When I log into WoW with a particular toon, I'm there to gain levels and gold. Visiting with friends is a very distant second priority. Just because I am not raiding Kara, playing a battleground or running another instance does not mean I am open to invites by default.

This happens to tap dance on most of my pet peeves about certain WoW players. As it happened, I was working on a longish quest that took a lot of fighting and travel to get to the site of the quest. I don't mind fighting my way in or out once (after all, that's part of questing) butI did not want to fight my way through the same bunch of monsters a second time after breaking off the quest to go to an instance (dungeon) that's so far below my level that it isn't funny. I do not "power level" guildies through tougher instances than they can handle nor do I expect anyone to power level me. The same clown yesterday asked me to help him with a quest that is doable solo well below his level. Part of learning to play WoW is learning to do quests alone when possible and appropriate. And, in my experience, it is possible to solo all the way to level 70.

There are a LOT of free resources out there to help the soloing player. You don't need the Bradybooks guides. A web browser and Thottbot, WoWHead etc. and a co-ordinates UI mod are enough.

Yes, I could have answered "I'm busy." Yes, I could have saved the time it took to type this rant.

2. On a happier WoW note is the Web series The Guild" -- it IS funny.

Watch it:

Mediots, NIGYYSOB and America's future

The best illustration of the reason I don't watch or even own a TV set anymore: The ABC Democratic debate the other night.

I saw the coverage of the debate, and the consensus of the port side of the blogosphere is clear: The debate was little more than an exercise is what my freshman English teacher and Transactional Analysis fan, Mr. Davajohn, used to call "the game of NIGYYSOB" (Now, I've Got You, You SOB!).

*sigh*

OK, this country has BIG problems at the moment: an endless war, recession, inflation, income inequality and stagnation, the environment, the betrayal of our professed values with the rest of the world, the assaults on the Constitution, etc, etc etc... and for fifty plus minutes the two Democrats were compelled to debate minutia like flag pins and bowling. Gotcha, NIGYYSOB!

Why, OH WHY, cannot the so-called mainstream media treat Americans like adults? I remember a time, early in my life, when the media did just that. I was born too late for the McCarthy hearings, and I was in my early teens when media revelations brought down two presidents (Johnson, over the Vietnam, war and Nixon over Watergate). The media treated the American people like adults, even if the pols did not.

"Thanks for riding STFU Cab!"

My REM dream tonight:

I found myself driving a cab with brakes that barely work with obnoxious passengers. She kept screaming at me about my driving. My cab handled like a pig on ice -- a good thing when the semi with the heavy machine gun opened fire on me and the shots bounced off the cab's heavy armor. Once the semi veered off, I pulled the cab over, reached under the dash and pulled out a 30 Years' War wheel-lock pistol as long as my forearm with a bore the size of a king-size jawbreaker and told the passenger and her six kids to STFU or get out of my cab. She screamed and I shot her with ketchup from that wheel lock. The kids licked the ketchup off her.

THAT shut her up. I got the family to their destination and they paid me with two sheep. I reloaded the pistol with ketchup and drove off.

Hillary Clinton: You just lost my support. PERIOD.

I simply cannot believe what HRC said the other day with respect to her candidacy and that of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

This is mind-boggling that HRC would rather praise her all-but-certain opponent while the primary process is still underway than remeber who'se fscking side she is on!

With "friends" like her, who needs enemies?

I'm also incensed that Ms. Clinton has been playing the "fear card" -- "Vote for me or the terrorists will garotte us all in our beds!" How sick and tired am I of the politics of fear? The last seven years have been a living experiment in the Tarkin Doctrine; every time I hear a politician laboring to scare me with some news that Those Dark People Are Gonna Kills Us All!!! I just set that voice to my ever-growing "/ignore list."

The President's job is not to protect me from every and all peril in the world. The job is to "Support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United Stares against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to same." I do not expect the President to ensure my personal safety or that of the "nation," if it means giving up the essence of Americanism to obtain that safety. I expect the President and Congress to see to it that the US Armed Forces are as ready as they can be for credible threats to the national security.

I am FAR more afraid of what a McBush follow-on to Shrub will do to the tattered remnants of the Constitution and Bill o' Rights than I am of screaming hordes of jihadi conjured on demand by the scaremongers to frighten me into surrendering even more of my freedom!

Gary Hart, onetime Senator and Presidential candidate, has a few words for Hillary (via Huffpo). Is her lust for power so great that she'll cripple her own party? What use is getting the nomination if she gets creamed by John W. McBush in the fall?

Update to PotCO review

Michelle pointed out to me that PotCO cannot suck more than Bush / Cheney because you can walk away from a video game but not them.

You may not be able to walk away from their evil, bit at least hi gas an expiration date of 1/21/09

More This 'n' That

1. American racial bigots adopt the term "Canadian" to refer to African-Americans. People from Canada not amused.

2. Speaking of race, sanity prevails in Florida Republican primary: Rudy "9/11" Ghouliani drops out, throws support to Florida primary victor Sen. McCain.

3. Sad day: my Dem candidate, John Edwards, also drops out.

Political This 'n' That

1. Even though I'm a political junkie, I'll be ignoring Shrubby's final State of the Onion speech tonight. My one word SotU: FUBAR. The best thing I can say to him and his henchmen are the words Oliver Cromwell spoke to the Long Parliament:

You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.

2. This is the level to which reporting on certain presidential campaigns has sunk. Sic transit gloria mundi.

3. On the Dem side, interesting shift in momentum toward Barack Obama from his rather big win in the South Carolina primary this weekend. The more I look at Barack Obama, the more I like him. Even more interesting is the sheer vote totals. More people voted there for Obama than for all the Rs combined.

Consider how significant this is to me as a political and history junkie: An African American candidate (not the first one, but the first to have such a high chance of winning a major-party nomination), a man of my generation (he's two years younger than I am . . . our first post-Viernam / late Boomer / ur-GenX candidate in a field full of Cold Warriors and Viernam era 60-something Boomers), won a resounding victory in a Democratic primary in a state notorious for neo-Confederate revanchism -- and the state where the American Civil War started with the shelling of Fort Sumter in 1861.

4. In other Obamania news: The Democratic side of the Kennedy clan has endorsed Obama. Senator Ted and neice Caroline Kennedy have issued ringing endorsements of Obama that invoke the memories of President John Jennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy.

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Listening to: The Elders - Turning Point
via FoxyTunes

An double IV drip of "Irony"

Another factoid in the current debate on domestic spying:

The US Attorney General has a portrait of Grorge Orwell in his ofice.

He says he admires Orwell's style and clarity as a writer. Yea, and I used to read Playboy for the articles, too.

/bangs head on desk to dull the pain . . .

359 days until those people (to use a favorite phrase of Gen. Robert E. Lee) are outta there and our long long national nightmare ends.

His other office portrait, of Supreme Court Justice, US Attorney General and Nuremburg prosecutor Robert Jackson, is likewise ironic. But not in the way he might think it is.

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Listening to: Green Day - American Idiot
via FoxyTunes

Mike Huckabee Scares Me

Just. Read. This.

There and Back Again . . .

There's a good reason for the gap in my posting: I was in the hosptial for swelling and infected wounds in my legs. While I had my MB with me, I had no way to connect it to the Internet --I guess we're still a few years from what EarthLink founder Sky Dayton called "packetspace."

Ten days of almost no Internet (I had the browser on my cellphone, and that's it), coffee or TeeVee did not quite leave me a gibbering idiot. I was a near-run thing, though.

The most noteworthy aspect of this stay was that they (Kaiser) transferred me to a Kaiser-run skilled nursing facility (KPPACC) in San Leandro, about 100 miles from my current digs in South Sacramento.

I was not amused.

Highlight of my hospital visit: I successfully suppressed the urge to throttle by roommate at KPPACC. Idjit would have the remote for the one TV set the room had and play the most mind-destroying teevee other than political campaign ads or Fox News Channel: soap opeas and sports. Not only that, he'd read the damned paper with the fscking teevee on!

Whotta asshat. I wanted to stuff that remote down his throat, I was so pissed. I chose instead to employ my iPod -- stuffed with tunage from Leslie Fish, The Elders, Seanan McGuire and Flogging Molly -- and headphones to block out the sound; fortunately I had Civilization 3 loaded on the MB, a perfect non-Internet game for whiling away large blocks of time.

I also had The Sims 2 on my phone, another very good game. I'd never had the chance to play the game much until this trip to the hospital, and I got my money's worth from it during the ambulance ride to San Leandro.

M&D also brought me some spare underwear and Guinness pajama bottoms before I was shipped off to KPPACC. I wore the PJs for most of my stay at KPPACC. The tangerines helped stave off the hungries from the notoriously small (and utterly flavor-free) portions of Hospital Food® and the sugarless Jelly Bellies and Gummi Bears were treats I savored.

I managed to read William Gibson's Idoru as well -- I wouldn't say it was better than Neuromancer but it was better than Count Zero or Virtual Light.

At Kaiser South I encountered some utterly awesome nurses and a wonderful doc.

My daughter, bless her, came to pick me up and bring me home. Our first stop on the way home: Starbucks.


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Listening to: Sun Green & The Imitators with Neil Young & Crazy Horse & The Greendale Chamber of Commerce - Be the Rain
via FoxyTunes

The Christian Hell Just Froze Over . . .

I am in complete agreement with a New York Times editorial for once.