Cartoon Saturday

Just when you thought things couldn't get any stupider ...

Americans' level of confidence in Congress has hit an all-time low ... even for Congress ... of ten percent (10%), dead last on a list of 16 institutions rated in a Gallup Poll; four people are dead in an apparent murder-suicide in St Louis*; a tornado touched down near Washington, DC, on Thursday, proving that there are other huge and powerful sources of wind besides Congress; Edward Snowdon, the treasonous, narcissistic bastard who shamelessly betrayed his country, remains in hiding in Hong Kong; and firefighters continue to battle wildfires raging out of control in Colorado.

I think we ought to just dump Edward Snowdon on the Colorado fires ... but that's just me.

We need cartoons. Stat!

Since the topic of the hour is the ability of your government (and your business community, and your social networking websites, and your doctor, and your ... well ... pretty much anyone) to use the latest technology to spy on you, why not take a few moments to laugh over this week's theme: the relentless march of high technology?

Isn't it great that you can buy the latest new gadget, and it's obsolescent before you leave the store and obsolete by the time you get it home ... ?

You may have read the story about the Navy finally getting high-tech enough that it can transmit messages that aren't in ALL CAPS. That's good. All caps can lead to all sorts of potential trouble ...

As can the ringtone you decide to use ...

You knew this one had to be coming ...

Some people just aren't cut out to handle high-tech. Or even medium tech ...

Today, this guy would be an investment banker ...

Distracted driving in the good old days? ...

From the world of high-tech, we turn to this week's groaner pun cartoon ...

Agnes goes to the dry cleaners ...

And finally, you probably suspected it, but ...

And that's it for this week's Cartoon Saturday. I am looking forward to a day without adult supervision, as Agnes is driving up to Pennsylvania with one of her sewing acquaintances to take a special class on one of her super-high-tech-it-could-sew-insulating-quilts-for-the-Mars-rover sewing machines**. It looks like it's going to be a nice day here in NoVa, which is not a bad thing, since all the rain we had in the last week has allowed my lawn to grow up to the second floor. I'm thinking of hiring Tarzan as a guide. There's also laundry to be done, the pictures from granddaughter Leya's kindergarten graduation (last night) to be sorted and posted, new batches of herb salt and granola to be made, and housecleaning to be done. I think someone arranged it this way so that I'd stay out of trouble. Sigh.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow, in honor of Fathers' Day.

Bilbo

* The gun had nothing to do with it. Really. According to one of my co-workers, it was manufactured for the sole purpose of shooting at paper targets.

** The instruction manual alone weighs more than she does.

One Word: Betrayal

Unless you've been vacationing in a cave in Outer Mongolia for the last week or so, you are certainly familiar with the case of Mr Edward Snowdon, the individual now hiding in the vicinity of Hong Kong who has made headlines by exposing some very secret programs of the US intelligence community. He believes he is a true-blue American who is standing up for rights he believes are being trampled by an evil government. Many people on the political left (understandably) and the political right (oddly enough) consider him a hero, albeit probably for different reasons.

I believe he's a holier-than-thou, hypocritical, treasonous ass clown who has caused immeasurable damage not just to the nation, but to people like himself. He should be arrested, tried and - if found guilty - imprisoned for the rest of his life.

Let's establish one thing up front: the program that Mr Snowdon, with all the vast, accumulated wisdom of his 29 years, exposed was perfectly legal under US law. It was approved by Congress, vetted by the courts, and operated under a network of legal and procedural oversight provisions designed to protect the rights of US persons. Reasonable people may (hell, will) disagree over whether the program is moral, as opposed to legal, and whether Congress has taken its oversight responsibilities seriously enough, but the simple fact remains that Mr Snowdon exposed for his own reasons a very expensive, very secret, very legal program intended to protect you and I ... and him ... from those who would do us harm.

Many critics thunder that we can't possibly know how evil this program is because it's secret. Strange as it may seem, there are often very good reasons for keeping secrets. The modern knee-jerk assumption that things are classified only to cover up government malfeasance is an insult to the many thousands of people who work very hard each day to protect you and I from the dangers of a very dark world. We often forget that there are lots of people out there who hate us for what we are and would happily murder us without worrying about laws, courts, rights, Congressional oversight, or any of the other things we take for granted.

There are real issues here, to be sure. Vast amounts of information are needlessly classified, or are classified at levels far in excess of their real importance. And much information that probably should be classified is not, for any number of reasons. There are serious issues that must be addressed ... but not in the court of public opinion.

As for the exposure of questionable or illegal activities, there are channels through which such allegations can be reported and investigated* ... but the front page of the daily paper is not one of them.

But returning to Mr Snowdon for a moment, one might reasonably ask this question: what does he think gives him a moral and legal authority greater than that of all three branches of our democratically elected government? And how can he claim any sort of moral authority when he himself has brazenly violated his own sworn oaths to protect the information to which he had been granted access?

I recommend you read this New York Times opinion article by David Brooks - The Solitary Leaker. It is a brilliantly written and damning indictment of the damage done by a headstrong young man who believes he knows better than everyone else what is right and wrong. From the article ...

"For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret NSA documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things.

"He betrayed honesty and integrity, the foundation of all cooperative activity. He made explicit and implicit oaths to respect the secrecy of the information with which he was entrusted. He betrayed his oaths."

The word betrayal is not used lightly here, for that is exactly what Mr Snowdon has done. He has betrayed honesty and integrity, his oaths, his friends, his employers, and the very cause of open government he professes to serve. And more than that, again in the words of Mr Brooks ...

"He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed. Snowden self-indulgently short-circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else."

We live in an unfortunate time when honesty and integrity and the value of oaths solemnly made are worth little to a narcissistic moron who believes that the rules don't apply to him.

If you think that Mr Snowdon has done anything other than despicably betray the nation, perhaps you need to think it over again and decide what sort of moral compass you yourself choose to follow.

Have a good day. More, and happier, thoughts coming on Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo

* And are, more often than you would be led to believe.

Great Moments in Editing for a Rainy Tuesday

Well, not exactly.

It's not raining at the moment, but yesterday evening it was raining so hard that the neighborhood animals were lining up by twos and looking for arks. Yes, we need the rain ... but all at once?

Anyhow, I wanted to write this morning about the self-important ass clown hiding in Hong Kong who is convinced he knows better than anyone else what ought to be secret and what not, but I was too angry, which does not make for good blogging. Therefore, in order to calm Bilbo down, we shall resort to our frequent entertainment dodge of Great Moments in Editing. You go ahead and read, I'll just sit here and breathe deeply.

There's just no end to the God-given rights of which we're being deprived nowadays ...

There are always great breakfast specials available if you know where to go ...

You just know there's a great story behind this ...

You take them in, care for them, feed them, and sometimes they turn on you in unexpected ways ...

Well, I'm glad we clarified this one ...

Now, I don't know for sure that there are a lot of extreme people of the left and right living in Rock Hill, but I have my suspicions ...

I'm no legal expert, but I would venture to guess that the lady does, in fact, have reasonable grounds for divorce ... 

Aha!! Now we know why our health care costs are so high and rising so quickly!

I don't think this is a bad plan ... I wonder if there's a version of it that would work on encouraging people with gigantic "carry-ons" to stop wasting time trying to fit them into the overhead bins during boarding ...

Finally, I suppose this is only a problem if you're looking for a temporary, rather than a permanent cure ...

And there you have it - another selection of great moments in editing. More fun than a barrel of Congressmen.

Have a good day. If you are entrusted with secrets, consider actually keeping them.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Big Brother is Watching, Listening, and Storing. And He Doesn't Always Work for the Big, Bad GovernmentTM

On June 6th, 1949, George Orwell's classic novel 1984 was published. Orwell established the date of the title by reversing the last two digits of the year he wrote the book - 1948. He died in 1950 without knowing that he set his story of a society based on universal government monitoring and surveillance and control about 29 years too early. The leader of the government was the almost mythical figure of "Big Brother," and citizens were always reminded that "Big Brother Is Watching" ...

This past week, with the revelation that the National Security Agency* is working with communications and internet service providers to vacuum up the billions of telephone calls, e-mails, tweets, and other electronic communications that fly across the country every day, there are outraged cries from Congress and the public about the arrival - 29 years late - of the total surveillance culture described by George Orwell.

As you might suspect, I have a few ideas about that.

We Americans have a long history of distrust of government, going all the way back to the time of the Revolution. The Bill of Rights - the first ten amendments to the Constitution - grant all of us a wide range of rights and freedoms not granted in many other countries**, including a right we believe we have, but that isn't actually guaranteed under the Constitution ... the right to privacy.

That's right.

You have no Constitutionally-guaranteed right to privacy. What most people think of when they think of a right to privacy are the rights guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

You are guaranteed protection against unreasonable searches, which is not quite the same thing as being guaranteed privacy. And although there are many legal safeguards, invisible to most of us, that are intended to prevent abuse of the government's ability to compromise our privacy and protect us from unreasonable searches, the fact remains that we live today in a surveillance society ... and not all of that surveillance is carried out by the government and executed under legal controls intended to prevent (or at least, minimize) abuse.

Every time you scan your "preferred customer" card at the local supermarket, every time you place an order online, every time you make a cell phone call to a business, every time you cross a busy street or sit in a public place, you are allowing yourself to be scanned, recorded, imaged***, bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated. The telephone number and other personal data you write down on the warranty registration for your new appliance is sold, resold, packaged, analyzed, and parsed by dozens of individuals and data mining companies who are not restricted by the Fourth Amendment. The jerky video of you jaywalking across the street because you were too lazy to walk down to the crosswalk is maintained in a database somewhere, where someday a face-recognition program may decide that you look like a person wanted for some other, more heinous crime. The other day a friend of mine posted this on his Facebook page:

"Yesterday I did a post congratulating someone for earning her Master of Divinity. Today an ad popped up offering me Master of Divinity programs. Coincidence? I think not."

No, it isn't a coincidence. Big Brother is, indeed, watching. And he doesn't always work for the Big, Bad Government^TM.

There are a great many questions - both legitimate and asinine - being asked about what the NSA is doing. These are accompanied by the predictable howls of outrage from the left and the right for someone's head on a plate****. Nevertheless, it was not an out-of-control intelligence community that started all this ... it was Congress, in its speedy passage and routine renewal of the Patriot Act and other well-intentioned (yet, in hindsight, perhaps Constitutionally questionable) legislation, that established the foundation for all the actions that are now being questioned and villified. You can read the whole story here (and you should).

The next time Americans are killed in a terrorist attack (and it will happen, this being that kind of world), representatives of the intelligence and national security communities will be sitting in front of the cameras being thundered at by irate members of Congress for not predicting the attack and doing something in advance to prevent it. For all their faults and often questionable provisions, the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act are some of those things we've chosen to do. Let us not throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

And if you can't have a right to privacy, why not just settle for the right to be left alone ...

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Because of its penchant for extreme secrecy, often jocularly known as "No Such Agency."

** Try exercising your freedom of worship in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, or your right to bear arms almost anywhere else in the world, and you'll see what I mean.

*** One day, on a whim, I decided to count the number of surveillance cameras that were taking my picture between the time I left my house and the time I arrived at my office in the Pentagon. I stopped counting at 25.

**** Prefereably the President's, from the GOP perspective ... which conveniently forgets that the Patriot Act was enacted under a Republican president, and still has plenty of members of Congress of both parties supporting the routine extension of some of its more controversial provisions.

Cartoon Saturday

Well, if you thought June just had to be better than May, I have some news for you ...

Congress is up in arms about yet another scandal - the National Security Agency's monitoring of telephone calls and online activity ... conveniently forgetting that it was Congress that authorized it in the first place; tropical storm Andrea*, the first named storm of the hurricane season, is moving up the east coast with high winds and drenching rains; four people are dead and five others injured in a mass shooting** in Santa Monica, California; an actress in Texas has been arrested on charges of sending letters laced with the poison ricin to President Obama ... but says her husband made her do it; and Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced that he and his wife of 30 years are planning to divorce.

It's a strange world. Good thing we have the cartoons to help get through it.

One thing I can say about my job is that it isn't boring. Others aren't so lucky ...

In these tough economic times, you do what you have to do to make your business stand out ...

E-mail me if you miss the reference in this clever pun ...

This is probably how it ought to work, except that the word "credit" is most definitely misused ...

This one is so blindingly obvious that I'm surprised I haven't seen a take on it before ...

This may have been the root problem at the Internal Revenue Service ... not to mention both houses of Congress ...

If my money talks, it's whispering. Very softly ...

Well, even lab rats need a break now and then, right? ...

When cutlasses are outlawed, only outlaws will have ... oh, never mind ...

And finally for this week, perhaps this sort of cosmetic surgery might have helped me back in high school when I was going through my Majorly Awkward Nerd phase ... 

And that's the way it is in cartoonland for this week. We're looking forward to a damp and muggy weekend ... but at least it's a weekend, which I desperately need this week. I can retire in 890 days, not that I'm counting or anything.

Have a good day and a wonderful weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* No relation to our Andrea, as far as I know.

** But it wasn't the guns that killed them, of course.

Brave Ugly New World

A few months ago, an old friend e-mailed me to let me know that he was no longer going to read my blog or comment on any of my Facebook posts because I was unfairly, wrongly, and overly critical of the Republican Party, while giving a free pass to the Democrats. I replied that he was partly true in that I'm much harder on Republicans than on Democrats because I am, at heart, a fiscal and social conservative, but that I'd been utterly disgusted by the social/economic/political mush that passes for rational public policy in the modern conservative era. Let us not forget that Senator Mitch McConnell said before the last election that the GOP's primary goal was to make sure that Mr Obama would be a one-term president. When that didn't work out, their primary goal became to make sure that the Obama administration would be completely unable to accomplish anything at all, by whatever means necessary. Perhaps it's just me, but I think that's a pretty poor excuse for public policy.

As I've written here often enough, if I'm harder on the GOP, it's because I think I should be able to expect more from thinking conservatives ... and there are darned few of those any more, let me tell you.

So it occurred to me to wonder what might happen if the Tea Party and "traditional" Republicans are ever able to quit stabbing each other in the back and actually employ enough social and economic smoke and mirrors to win the presidency (and, God forbid, both houses of Congress). Here are a few of the things we might expect ...

- The Internal Revenue Service would be shut down and all taxes eliminated. The few government agencies allowed to remain (other than the Department of Defense and anything perceived as good for big business) would be required to generate their own funding via bake sales, car washes, and similar activities.

- The Department of Health and Human Services would be closed and replaced with the Department of Get Off Your Lazy Ass and Quit Whining.

- The National Weather Service would be shut down. After all, everyone can just look out the window and see what the weather is like.

- The Department of Defense would revert to its original name, the Department of War.

- The National Academy of Sciences would be replaced by the National Academy of That's What the Bible Says, End of Discussion.

- Congress would reorganize itself to eliminate all committees and subcommittees and replace them with a single Senate/House Permanent Select Committee on Investigating All the Horrible Stuff the Democrats Do.

- The Constitution would be revised by moving the Second Amendment up to the main body of the text, making it Article I, and renumbering the subsequent articles. The pesky limitations on the imposition of religious tests for office holders would be removed from Article VI, and the part of the First Amendment that talks about Congress "mak(ing) no law respecting an establishment of religion" would be amended to specify that it excludes the Christian religion.

- Immigration reform would go high-tech, with large investments made to seal the border using the technology introduced by Stephen King in his novel, Under the Dome.

- All government facilities would be required to have a minimum eight-foot tall statue of Ronald Reagan prominently displayed. All government facilities not already named for Ronald Reagan would be appropriately renamed. The fact that Ronald Reagan would have been disowned by the present-day Republican Party would continue to be conveniently ignored.

- Social Security would be eliminated and the Social Security Trust Fund redistributed to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and job creators^TM. Elderly people would be encouraged to relocate to other countries.

- Medicare and Medicaid would be eliminated and replaced by the distribution (at cost) of home first-aid kits.

Welcome to the brave new GOP world*.

Have a good day. Think for yourself, not in political slogans and bumper stickers.

See you back here for Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo

* With apologies to Aldous Huxley.

Hump Day Odds and Ends

Normally I wouldn't post on Wednesday, but since I have to wait until 7:00 to drop my car off for servicing, I have some extra time ... and there's no shortage of things to rant about ...

From the Department of How Low Can You Go? comes this item I watched on TV this morning from my perch on the elliptical machine: Republicans Beg Kathleen Sebelius to Save 10-Year-Old Girl’s Life. Yes, Dear Readers, a 10-year old girl in Pennsylvania is dying of cystic fibrosis and in need of a transplant lung, and her family - understandably - is begging to have an exception made to the rules for allocation of transplant organs (which are based on age, not need). Naturally, this offers an opportunity for utterly shameless political ass-clownery as Republican legislators seek to make Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius (and, by extension, the Democratic administration in general) appear brutal and heartless in the face of a child's suffering. Yep, I'm still disgusted with the whole political circus. Showboating Representative Darrell Issa should be calling for some new hearings any day now*.

In the mood for a snack that will help you recapture the joys of youth? A candy company in Texas has introduced new breast-milk-flavored vegan lollipops. According to the founder of the company, "... what slowly dawned on me was that my friends were actually producing milk so delicious it could turn a screaming, furious child into a docile, contented one**. I knew I had to capture that flavor." The lollipops actually contain no breast milk. Yum.

Have you been watching the TV series Hannibal, which tells the story of serial killer Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (star of Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, and Hannibal Rising, by Thomas Harris) before he was found out and captured? One of the unsung stars of the show is the lady who prepares the gourmet dinners featuring ... um ... unidentified meats served up by Hannibal to his FBI friends. Want to know how she creates the yummy-looking meals that are supposed to really be filet of people? Check out her blog, Feeding Hannibal. Yum.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is being excoriated by fellow Republicans for scheduling a special election to fill the seat of Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg, who died this week, rather than just taking the opportunity to name a GOP empty suit to the seat. According to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, 

"All Christie has to do is appoint a Republican. That's the correct move for him to make ... Now, I put it down as debilitating stupidity." 

Well, hell ... we expect debilitating stupidity in modern American politics. What's your point, Mr Armey?

And there you have it: a few odds and ends to think about as we endure hump day en route to the weekend.

Have a good day. Avoid debilitating stupidity***. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Check out the Borowitz Report ... Issa Demands Hearings Into Why No One Listens to Him.

** I'm going to order a gross (no pun intended) of them for distribution to Congressional Republicans. What could it hurt?

*** I know it's tough nowadays, but do your best.

Announcing the Ass Clown of the Month for June, 2013!

Last month at this time we announced May's Ass Clown of the Month - a joint award to North Korea's "Great Successor" Kim Jong-un and America's own half-cocked big shot, NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre. This month, we have culled the teeming throng of superb candidates  to select yet another joint winner. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the June 2013 dishonorees:

Virginia GOP Candidate for Governor

Ken Cuccinelli

and,

Virginia GOP Candidate for Lieutenant Governor

E. W. Jackson

If you were looking for an extreme conservative ticket, you couldn't do much better than the Tea Party dream* team of Cuccinelli and Jackson. It was Mr Jackson, after all, who has called gays “perverted” and “sick,” and has denounced Planned Parenthood as being “far more lethal” to blacks “than the KKK.” And Mr Cuccinelli is so profoundly conservative on issues from immigration to abortion to gay rights to guns that, although he is a darling of the Tea Party, he enjoys an overall 44% negative or "not sure" rating among rank and file Virginia Republicans.

In a year when Virginia voters are faced with a choice between two unpopular and undesirable candidates**, the GOP seems to have gone out of its way to pander to its most radical base and offer a slate so far to the right of most Virginians as to drive thinking people away.

Ken Cuccinelli and E.W. Jackson - congratulations on your selection as Ass Clowns of the Month for June of 2013, and for giving true conservative principles a bad name. Now, get out there and lose the election.


Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* And by "dream" we mean "nightmare" for rational people.

** Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe isn't winning any popularity contests, either.

Why You Ought to Visit DC

Oddly enough, there ARE reasons why you should visit Disneyland-on-the-Potomac. There's our wonderful National Zoo (no, not Congress, the other one), the National Mall (now with less police protection and trash collection, thanks to the Sequester), our wonderful array of museums (many still free or low cost*), and lots more.

Including the magnificent Washington National Cathedral**.

Yesterday Agnes and I met up with our friends Kathy (who blogs at Kathy's Peace) and Dick for a very pleasant lunch at 2 Amys Pizzeria in northwest DC, followed by a visit to the National Cathedral - just a short walk away.

The last time I visited the cathedral was in December of 2001, when I took Agnes's niece Lea (who was then an exchange student with a family in Texas, and in town for the holidays) to visit. This time, the weather was much nicer and the Bishop's Garden behind the cathedral was in full bloom. For those of you who don't visit my Facebook page, here are a few pictures to spark your desire to visit one of the most beautiful places in DC ...

This is a view of the cathedral as we approached it from Wisconsin Avenue. Sadly, there's a lot of scaffolding on many parts of the cathedral as they work to repair the damage caused by the August 2011 earthquake, so the symmetrical beauty of the architecture is a little marred ... but it's still a magnificent structure ...

As with all cathedrals, it has many beautiful stained glass windows, including the "Space Widow" that actually has an embedded piece of rock from the moon, returned on one of the Apollo missions. I couldn't get good pictures of the Space Window, but here are a few others ...

I liked this picture because it captured one of the beautiful rose windows and an extra - there's a lot of otherwise-ugly safety netting spread above the interior areas of the cathedral to catch pieces of stone that were loosened during the earthquake. In this picture, you can see the colored light from stained glass windows on the right spilling out onto the netting, adding some beauty to an otherwise jarring element ...

Outside the cathedral is the famous Bishop's Garden, a small, intricately-designed, beautiful garden of trees, flowers, and herbs of all sorts, filled with little niches and benches for quiet contemplation. The combination of floral and herb scents makes even the air beautiful. Here's Agnes at the entrance to the Bishop's Garden ... 

Inside the garden are many interconnected paths that wind through the various areas. This is an overview of part of the garden area ...

 And a closer look at one of the winding pathways ...

This structure is known as the Shadow House Gazebo - a cool, beautiful place to rest and contemplate your surroundings ...

This shows one of the many small statues that dot the garden, with the cathedral in the background. It occurred to me to wonder if the statue was designed to represent the bishop one finds in a chess set ... unfortunately, there was no sign to give us an idea ...

Another view of the Shadow House Gazebo, approaching it along a path lined with herbs and flowers ...

Another beautiful sculpture tucked away in a small nook - the return of the prodigal son ...

Another random pathway under the beautiful blue sky ...

Last picture ... this is the sweeping lawn outside the Bishop's Garden ...

Should you find yourselves in DC and need something to revive your spirits after a day of listening to Congress accomplish nothing but turning your tax dollars into shrill noise, there aren't many better places to go than the National Cathedral.

Just bring sunscreen, depending on the day.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Well, there's the $15 fee to park at the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Air and Space Museum, but we won't mention that.

** There is no charge to visit the cathedral, although they request a $10 donation. On-street parking is available but hit-or-miss, and there's an underground parking garage at the cathedral. It's pretty expensive during the week - $16 maximum fee for more than 2 hours, but a flat rate of $9 on Saturday. Plus your car stays in the shade, yee-HAH.