August 2015 archive

Fox News is half-right about Jon Stewart: How the brilliant satirist of the Bush years has been undone by his BFF in the White House

by Andrew O’Hehir, Salon

Thursday, Aug 6, 2015 07:00 PM EST

Stewart gradually evolved into the principal media mouthpiece or channel – the two things are not quite the same – for what might be called common-sense liberalism, the self-appointed pathway of Enlightenment reason. He has called himself a moderate and admitted voting for George H.W. Bush in 1988, and while you shouldn’t hold a person’s youthful indiscretions against him, I think that fact is important to the Stewart brand. He is disappointed, disillusioned and sometimes outraged by the evil and idiocy found on the Republican right and the thoroughgoing corruption of the political system. But he is not unreasonable, not an ideologue, not a “leftist.” He believes in comity and compromise, and yearns for the kinder, gentler days when a 25-year-old Jewish standup comedian in New York could vote for Ronald Reagan’s vice president without consciously self-identifying with a party of bigotry, warmongering and paranoia.

Was that a low blow? I’m honestly not sure. I come to bury Jon Stewart, not to praise him – except, wait, maybe it’s the other way around. First of all, let’s note that Stewart isn’t dead, so I’m under no obligation to say nice stuff about him just because he is leaving a television program after 16 years. Furthermore, there’s a reason most people get that Shakespeare quotation backwards: The speaker of that famous monologue, Marc Antony, repeatedly challenges his audience to perceive that what he says is not what he means: “Brutus is an honorable man,” and all that. He is using irony, in its old-fashioned Socratic sense (not the debased modern sense of easy mockery, or just a bad attitude), which is a mode that Jon Stewart has never mastered and largely avoids.

Stephen Colbert’s long-running satirical portrayal of a jingoistic Fox-style commentator, first on Stewart’s show and then on his own, had a random, hit-and-miss quality and often descended to cheap gags. (On balance, Stewart probably provides more laffs per minute.) But in his best moments, Colbert has employed the ironic mode to reality-altering effect, and never more so than in his infamous performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2006, when he mocked the empty, photo-op presidency of George W. Bush to the president’s face and derided the Washington press corps for its stenographic compliance: “Over the last five years you people were so good, over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn’t want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out.”

Stewart would make the same joke on his show, pretty much, but he would immediately walk it back to the mode of earnestness and be super clear about what he meant: CNN et al. had behaved like a bag of dicks and that was really a shame. Colbert, on the other hand, vividly demonstrated Socrates’ principle that the destabilizing and disorienting effect of irony depends upon the “aneiron,” the person who doesn’t get the joke. In this case, everyone at that dinner understood that Colbert meant the opposite of what he said, which is why none of them were laughing. What they had not understood, because it seemed inconceivable, was that a TV comic’s joke persona contained a radical critique of the nature of politics and the news media, and that Colbert was not going to observe the cozy, chummy conventions of a Beltway event whose sole purpose is to make the subservient Washington press corps feel like special snowflakes.

Stewart is not comfortable in that mode, and has never pursued that kind of confrontation. His on-air rhetoric slid perceptibly leftward over the course of the Bush administration, as he vigorously went after the bankers, the Iraq war apologists and the torture defenders. But even after his show hit a demographic sweet spot somewhere around the Democratic center-left – the position of the 2008 Obama voter – he struggled to avoid the impression of pure partisanship. As recently as 2010, although it feels like a lifetime ago, Stewart was calling for an end to partisan vitriol with his Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall. Even he must have thought the immediate aftermath was pretty funny: A few days later, Tea Party Republicans swept to victory from coast to coast in the midterm election that pretty much paralyzed Obama’s presidency. So that was the end of that.

Salon columnist Bill Curry has suggested that Stewart belongs to the Pragmatist tradition of Oliver Wendell Holmes, and seeks to draw a distinction between Stewart’s faith in reason and usefulness and Obama’s penchant for back-room political compromise. It’s a fascinating argument, but that might be an overly fine way to parse a TV comedian – often a very funny one, with a delightful ability to mock others and mock himself in the same moment – who has insisted on walking the narrow plank of reasonableness in times of rampant unreason, and now finds himself alone at the end of the plank above an ocean of hungry sharks.

I understand why it bothers Stewart that Fox News is depicting him, during his last days on the air, as a shameless Obama sock-puppet. He feels that it’s not quite fair and he feels more than a little vulnerable on that front. Both perceptions are justified. (Stewart himself said on the air that he has been much harder on Obama than Fox ever was on Bush, which is what you might call an invidious comparison.) But Stewart’s role as Obama’s stealth strategic defender, who has criticized the administration on several key issues while consistently seeking to channel progressive anger and disappointment toward the crazy and intransigent opposition, wouldn’t bother me at all if I felt convinced that it reflected underlying convictions. (I am not counting the nonideological relativism that drives the 21st-century Democratic Party as a conviction.)

As with Stewart’s pal in the White House, that question has only grown murkier over the years. All the contradictions of political satire in the Obama years would exhaust anyone, but Stewart’s performance of sincerity, the factor that gave his comedy its force and also limited its scope, has pretty much come unraveled. You can see that in his recent interview with Tom Cruise, which barely differed from a boot-licking celebrity appearance with Oprah or Ellen, and in which (as filmmaker Alex Gibney has observed), Stewart never mentioned Cruise’s central role in the noxious Church of Scientology. You see it in Stewart’s increasingly tedious feud with Bill O’Reilly, where they play the roles of media commentators with profound ideological differences and pretend to dislike each other, coming dangerously close to the kind of masturbatory media-insider banter Colbert mocked so mercilessly a decade ago.

Jon Stewart has had a great run as the host of a comedy show, the kind of longevity that has become nearly impossible in American pop culture. In political terms, his mission has either been fulfilled – if he was really sent here by Putin to bewilder us and destroy democracy – or was never possible in the first place. As I said earlier, we want to be permanently in on the joke and we want to believe in something. But what if the things we want to believe in are just a joke?

You may think this is the future, you may think that it’s the end.

I won’t give up the struggle.

Some times, sometimes you take a stand.

Every day is exactly the same.  Every day is exactly the same.  There is no love here and there is no pain.  Every day is exactly the same.

Future Directions

Jon Stewart is not dying.  The Daily Show is not dying.  The Sausage Grinder of Snark is not dying and neither am I (well, in the normal course of things.  I’m 120+ years old!).

I’ve been a huge supporter of Larry Wilmore ever since he took over from Stephen.  His Nightly Show has gotten better and better since it’s found its format (Daily Show + panel instead of interview, duh).  That will not change.

I’m totally willing to get behind Trevor and expect to feature his efforts at the helm as well.  I’ve watched a number of his comedy sets and he really is as bright and funny as Jon thinks he is.  He’s more international than anyone since Oliver so he gets the class thing and he’s also an expert on racism (South Africa?).

However.

While Jon is retiring to raise bees in Sussex, Stephen is taking up the sword again on Late Night.  I will certainly give him a fair shot too.

So while it’s easy enough to track the guests (which I intend to do) I have a serious viewing overlap at 11:35 and frankly the repeats of Larry are easier to access (1:30 am ET) or tape (30 minutes) than Late Night (1 hour and who knows?).

Well, it’s something to think about instead of silently weeping.

From the kiddie table:

From Heather at Crooks and Liars:

From Karoli at Crooks and Laira

From multiple contributors at Huffington Post:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s spirit is apparently as immortal as his earthly vessel.

At Thursday evening’s GOP candidate forum in Cleveland, Cheney’s foreign policy vision was very much alive as various presidential hopefuls vowed to re-invade Iraq, send troops to Syria, spy on mosques here in America and get tough with Iran by scrapping President Barack Obama’s diplomatic approach.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) explicitly promised — twice — to invade Iraq again. “If you’re running for president of the United States and you don’t understand that we need more American ground forces in Iraq and that America has to be part of a regional ground force that will go into Syria and destroy ISIL in Syria, then you’re not ready to be commander in chief,” Graham said, referring the Islamic State militant group, which is also known as ISIL or ISIS. “And you’re not serious about destroying ISIL.”

Even former New York Gov. George Pataki, generally viewed as one of the most moderate candidates among the GOP pack, appeared to commit to sending more U.S. troops to the Middle East, saying that it was “necessary” to put American lives at risk to “destroy ISIS.”Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s spirit is apparently as immortal as his earthly vessel.

Get the picture? This is a preview of tonight’s main event. See you at 9 PM EDT

The 10 leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination take the stage at 9 PM EDT for a two hour debate at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. It will air exclusively on the Fox News Channel. I doubt this event will have any effect on who the eventual nominee will be. Despite the cast of characters and their recent antics, it may well be incredibly boring but we’ll do our best to entertain. I just regret that we will no longer have Jon Stewart’s wit to help get through this cycle.

As hard as it may be for those of us in the reality based world to take any of these individuals seriously, we should, as author Larry Beinhart notes, we should “beware the clowns” because the more clownish and unrealistic they are about the issues, the more likely they are to sit in the Oval Office. Just look at the last 30 years.

In 1980 the very witty Gore Vidal said, “[Ronald] Reagan has no chance of being elected president. It is true that the United States is turning into Paraguay but not at that speed.”

Reagan was elected twice.

By 1988, it was time for a change. The stock market crashed in 1987, “Black Monday,” the largest one day decline, still, in Wall Street history. The savings and loan crisis, the biggest set of bank failures since the Great Depression, was underway. Reagan’s tax cuts were supposed to generate more government revenue, even with the lower rates. Instead, the deficit tripled.

Also, there was Iran-Contra.

Imagine if Barack Obama had been secretly selling missiles to Iran. The evidence against Reagan mounted until he had to go on television and say, “A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”

That’s astonishing. The president admitted not merely that he preferred to live in his imaginary world but also that he was capable of doing so.

The money from selling arms to Iran was used for another illegal purpose: funding right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua.

Pat Moynihan, the highly esteemed Democratic senator from New York, took a look at the contenders for the GOP nomination and said, “If we can’t beat these guys, we need to find another country.”

Yet the Republican, George H.W. Bush, won. [..]

After eight years of peace and prosperity, Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, should have coasted to victory. Ronald Reagan’s son Ron Reagan summed up Gore’s opponent, George W. Bush, this way: “He’s probably the least qualified person ever to be nominated by a major party … What is his accomplishment? That he’s no longer an obnoxious drunk?”

Yet Bush won and then won re-election.

Whenever to GOP candidate was sane, sober and respectable like Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney the Republican base loses interest and the presidency goes to the Democrats. The proof of Mr. Beinharts’ theory is George H. W. Bush:

George H.W. Bush is the proof of the pudding, because he ran as two different characters. In order to win the nomination in1988, he had to prove that he wasn’t a “wimp.” He did so by walking out of a TV interview. This may seem a strange way for a guy who won the Distinguished Flying Cross and flew 58 combat missions in World War II to prove his manhood to the electorate, but it is credited with having done the trick. To win the election, he attacked the Democrat as being soft on crime, specifically black criminals, and it carried him to victory.

As president, George H.W. Bush proved remarkably sane and sensible. He made sure his Gulf War was legal. He managed to have Arab states align against another Arab state to get the Israelis to keep their mouths shut, to stop when Iraq was kicked out of Kuwait and, to top it all off, got other countries to pay for it. The economic policies he inherited from Reagan continued to increase the deficit and had driven the country into a recession, so Bush raised taxes. At which point the economy reversed direction.

That lost the support of his base and, as a consequence, cost him re-election.

Why does this happen? It makes no sense. Mr. Beinhart’s conclusion:

We get a hint from Reagan’s Iran-Contra confession. True Republicans – not RINOs but the base, the enthusiasts, the foot soldiers – can be truly enthused only by reality deniers. When they get even a whiff that their guy recognizes facts and might act on them (such as that tax cuts don’t work, that torture doesn’t work, that compromise is necessary, that government has useful functions, that contraception prevents abortion, that climate change is scientific fact), they lose their enthusiasm. Then their candidate loses.

The next question is: who in that car is respectable and sane? Bet your popcorn futures the show continues for the next fifteen months.

For your amusement, below the fold we have Esquire‘s Charles Pierce’s questions for the candidates and Matt Taibbi’s drinking game. Please drink responsibly.

So we’re liveblogging the prelims and our invited also-rans are-

• Rick Perry (1.8 percent)
• Rick Santorum (1.4 percent)
• Bobby Jindal (1.4 percent)
• Carly Fiorina (1.3 percent)
• Lindsey Graham (0.7 percent)
• George Pataki (0.6 percent)
• Jim Gilmore (0.2 percent).

Thank you for playing our game.  Here’s a Home Version and some lovely parting gifts.

Sir Not Appearing In This Film

Now will you please stand, take off your hat, and bow your head as we quickly run through the list of who?s that you didn’t even know were running-

• Skip Andrews Army child and business owner
• George Bailey Pastor
• Michael Bickelmeyer Creative Dreamer
• Kerry Bowers Veteran and spokesperson for AFFT
• Eric Cavanagh American Progressive
• Dale Christensen International entrepreneur and business professor
• Brooks Cullison Attorney and Certified Public Accountant
• John Dummett, Jr. Constitutional Republican and strong conservative
• Mark Everson Businessman and former IRS Commissioner
• Jack Fellure Engineer and perennial candidate
• Jim Hayden Business-owner and Veterans Advocate
• Chris Hill Combat pilot and airline captain
• Bartholomew James Lower Businessman
• Andy Martin Author
• James C. Mitchell, Jr. Water Treatment Operator (Retired)
• K. Ross Newland Veteran and Pastor
• Esteban Oliverez Entrepreneur
• Michael Petyo Businessman and veteran
• Brian Russell Entrepreneur, innovator, limited government advocate
• Jefferson Sherman Common-Sense Leader
• Shawna Sterling Woman of Faith

Now stop it.  Stop that giggling.  These are serious people seriously running for president.  Honest.

Besides, what makes you think any of these 21 have a lesser chance than the 7 margin of error candidates appearing on stage?

5 pm on Faux Noise

The cocksure Tea Party governor of Maine, Paul Lepage, decided he would play games with what he thought were his veto powers under Maine’s constitution by using a pocket veto of 65 bills.

On Thursday, LePage delivered vetoes of 65 of those bills (the rest he returned unsigned) and urged the Legislature to consider his vetoes. Both House Speaker Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, and Senate President Michael Thibodeau, R-Winterport, said they would not let the vetoes hit the floors of their respective chambers.

LePage argued that because lawmakers left Augusta on June 30, he had been prevented from returning the vetoes before the 10 days had expired. The Maine Constitution states that if a Legislature adjourns, the governor may hold bills until three days after they return.

The House and Senate passed a temporary adjournment order on June 30 to give LePage time to act on the bills. Top lawmakers and Attorney General Janet Mills, a Democrat elected by the Legislature, said that temporary recess was not adjournment, and thus did not give LePage more time to act.

Gov. LePage’s problem was that he was using his interpretation of the constitution, not what it really said. So off to the Maine Supreme Court he went. Briefs from both sides were submitted and oral arguments were heard last Friday

Today that court disagreed with the governor and those 65 bills are now law:

Gov. Paul LePage erred in his end-of-session veto gambit, and in so doing lost the ability to veto 65 bills that he opposed.

In an advisory opinion released by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday (pdf), the justices said that the bills in question became law without the governor’s signature, and that the Legislature should not be required to consider his attempted vetoes. [..]

In making its decision, the court relied in part on decades of precedent in which Maine governors had returned vetoes to the Legislature while it was in recess.

“History demonstrates that Maine governors, for nearly forty years, have routinely returned bills with their vetoes during temporary absences of the Legislature that came at the end of the session – after an “adjournment” but before the Legislature adjourned sine die,” the court wrote.

“These examples demonstrate that temporary adjournments of the Legislature near the end of a legislative session-whether until a date certain or until the call of the leadership, and whether beyond a ten-day period-have not prevented governors from returning bills with their objections to their Houses of origin within the constitutionally-required ten-day timeframe.”

LePage on Thursday thanked the court for its ruling.

Indeed, too clever byhalf.

An Annual Reminder.

Echo… echo… echo… Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon… Manny Mota… Mota… Mota…

You may remember my brother the activist.  I keep trying to get him to post, but he’s shy and busy.  He sent me this yesterday and I thought I’d share it with you.

I need to add that he’s a great admirer of James Carville’s political savvy (though not his policies) and one story he likes to tell is how during the height of Monica-gate Carville was on one of the Talking Head shows and made a point about how important it is to stay on message.  Carville then proceeded to demonstrate his gift by working the phrase “Cigarette Lawyer Ken Starr” 27 times into the next 30 seconds.- ek

The date – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 – August 6, 2001 needs to be as well known to Joe and Jane American as September 11, 2001.

Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001 PDB

Declassified and Approved for Release, 10 April 2004

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct foreign terrorist attacks on the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and “bring the fighting to America.”

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

After U.S. missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [deleted] service.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [deleted] service at the same that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the U.S. to mount a terrorist strike.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

Presidential Daily Briefing: August 6, 2001 – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.

The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the U.S. that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the U.S. planning attacks with explosives.

So Vice President Dick, tell me again how the REPUBLICANS WILL KEEP US SAFE?

So Senator McSame, tell me again how invading and occupying IRAQ has helped the U.S. hunt down BIN LADEN?

I’m printing my own bumper stickers filled with images from 9-11 and this text-

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center”- Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor

“All right. You’ve covered your ass now.”- George W. Bush

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Ari Berman: Why the Voting Rights Act Is Once Again Under Threat

IN his opinion for the majority in the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County decision, which struck down a major section of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that “history did not end in 1965.” But the sad truth is that voter-suppression efforts did not end, either. [..]

The act, signed 50 years ago today, was the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. It swept aside longstanding practices that disenfranchised voters, and prevented new ones from emerging: Between 1965 and 2013 the Justice Department and federal courts blocked more than 3,000 discriminatory voting changes. But it is precisely that capacity, known as preclearance, that the Roberts court invalidated.

The backlash to the law was as immediate as its progress. Southern states quickly challenged its constitutionality, and several changed their election laws to stop newly registered black voters and candidates from winning elected office.

David Cay Johnston:  How to Repeal the Tax Loophole That Allows Companies to Hide Their Profits in Offshore Accounts

If we want to address the inequality crisis, we must prevent corporations from sitting on hoards of untaxed cash.

More than a third of a century after Ronald Reagan led America down a costly and unnecessary path into extreme income and wealth inequality, the opportunity to restore broad prosperity is rising before us. This is a moment not for despair, but resolve-and hard work.

Income inequality has become so outrageous that even Republicans vying for their party’s presidential nomination are talking about it, though not their party’s role in creating it or any workable solutions. On television the talking heads wring their hands, saying, “If only we could afford the costs of digging ourselves out of the economic hell most Americans have been shoved into.”

Actually, America has an immense pool of money that can be put to work closing the nation’s extreme inequality gap. Doing so will also improve our health, longevity, level of education, and knowledge.

“There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it’s all dark.”

Jon done, Republican Debate, Hiroshima, ‘You’ve covered your ass’.  Not really that much more to say today.

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• Dark side of the moon captured by Nasa satellite a million miles from Earth, by Oliver Milman, The Guardian
• Why the long face? Researchers compile directory of horse facial expressions, by Tim Radford, The Guardian
• Are you smarter than a Japanese schoolchild?, by Alex Bellos, The Guardian
• Can we reverse the ageing process by putting young blood into older people?, by Ian Sample, The Guardian
• Mathematical déjà vu, and Coffee, by Jon Butterworth, The Guardian
• Nasa says Congress cuts mean $490m is needed to buy rides on Russian rockets, by Reuters
• Generation game: earliest evidence of reproduction in complex species found, Tim Radford, The Guardian
• ‘Magnetic’ Discovery May Reveal Why Earth Supports Life and Mars Doesn’t, by Charles Q. Choi, Live Science
• Lexus’ New Hoverboard Is Cool, But Will It Fly?, by Elizabeth Palermo, Live Science
• Lion ‘Factory Farms,’ and the Dark Side of Wildlife Tourism, by Nicole Paquett, Live Science

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on images to enlarge

August 6 is the 218th day of the year (219th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 147 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day there have been many significant events. Certainly, one of the most memorable is that this is the anniversary of dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. It is also the anniversary of President Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act.

Recent significant history that has been over looked by my usual sources is this: The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing better known as the August 6th PDB. It was handed to President George W. Bush, who was on one of his many vacations to his home in Crawford, TX, by Harriet Miers, who was the President’s WH Council, and promptly ignored. Whether Bush ignored the warning that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack the US because he was told to let it happen or, the darker theory, that the government made it happen will never be known, at least not in the lifetime of those reading this. Whatever Bush’s motive was, it set off a series of events in this country that has affected us all and divided us like no other incident since the Civil War. The US has now been in Afghanistan for almost 9 years 10 years 12 years 14 years and Iraq for over seven eight 10, the last U.S. combat troops withdrawing from Iraq on 18 December, 2011. Despite campaign promises to restore the rule of law and the Constitution, the Obama administration has continued the most heinous of the Bush policies that are violations of not just US law but International Law, ratified treaties and agreements. A sad anniversary, indeed.

I wrote this five years ago, although Pres. Obama has withdrawn combats troops from Iraq, “support” troops still remain. The US is in the process drawing down military presence in Afghanistan. That may sound encouraging but the President has since increased drones attacks in Pakistan and targeted American citizens for assassination and, now, is turning the US into a police surveillance state, shredding the Constitutional rights of its citizens. So much for ending the “war on terror” and restoring the rule of  law.

(While) I am far on the road to conviction, … (when) eight men, be they grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they have seen the plates too; and not only seen those plates but “hefted” them, I am convinced. I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire Whitmer family had testified.

–Mark Twain

Revealed: the stone that ‘translated’ the Book of Mormon

Associated Press

Tuesday 4 August 2015 21.00 EDT

Mormons believe that 185 years ago, Smith found gold plates engraved with writing in ancient Egyptian in upstate New York. They say that God helped him translate the text using the stone and other tools, which became known as the Book of Mormon.

I want to be completely clear.  This is not a picture of that stone.  It is a rock from a beach in Maine given to me by my cousin that I have around for good luck (it’s pretty useless as a paper weight, it’s too round and keeps rolling off the desk).

It is however is the first one I’ve tried using the Macro mode of my Cool Pix 9700 so I’m interested in seeing how it comes out.