Month: September 2014

Photo from olivia in the September FotoFlog

BBC BREAKING NEWS

○ Pentagon: US launches air strikes on Syrian state against IS militants
○ (Turkish News) and RT: U.S. air strikes over Syria in a coalition with Arab Gulf States

According to Jonathan Karl, chief White House correspondent for ABC News, five Arab nations are taking part in the first round of airstrikes in Syria: Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.

So Erdogan and Turkey have a new partner in the overthrow of Syria’s Bashar Assad, the terror group Liwa al-Tawhid. VP Joe Biden can be certain the vetting proces has been successful.

Syrian rebel group freed ISIL militants in swap for Turkish hostages

Syrian rebel group Liwa al-Tawhid released 50 members of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), including the family of a late leader, in a swap deal that ended with the release of 49 hostages abducted from Turkey’s consulate in Mosul, according to security sources.

The wife and children of Samir Abid Mohammad al-Halefawi [nom de guerre Haji Bakr], an ISIL leader killed in Aleppo in February, were among the released ISIL members in the simultaneous exchange for the Turkish mission, the source told Hürriyet.

Haji Bakr’s real name was Samir Abid Mohammad al-Halefawi, and that he served as an air defense officer in Saddam Hussein’s army before joining Al-Qaeda in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Haji Bakr supervised a series of attacks against hotels and embassies in Iraq in 2010, and headed the military council of Al-Qaeda in Iraq after the group’s then-leader, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, was killed in 2010, the official said.

Haji Bakr had almost no public profile before a few weeks ago as rumors of his death spread.

Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on militant groups at the Middle East Forum, said it was not surprising that Haji Bakr was little known, saying the Islamic State “is very low profile about who’s at the very top of their leadership.”

A total of 49 Turkish embassy staff were held hostage by ISIL for 101 days and were freed on Sept. 20.  

The source said Liwa al-Tawhid, a group that split from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and fights against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, agreed to free the ISIL members after rounds of talks. As part of the deal, the Turkish staff was released at a spot close to Turkey’s Akçakale border gate with Syria.

The Turkish staff reached Raqqa at 8 a.m. on Sept. 5, but they were still held until the ISIL members were handed over in the early hours of Sept. 20, according to the source.

The family of Haji Bakr and a number of other members were taken hostage by Liwa al-Tawhid during the clash in which Haji Bakr himself was killed.

○ Al Qaida is Not a Multinational Corporation by Steven D in May 2007

See my earlier diary – Turkey In Alliance with ISIS – Undermining Obama’s Policy In Iraq.

Promoted by Steven D.

Aw, you feel bad for the pro-murder and mayhem lobby. That mean Gabby Giffords may have hurt some feelings down at the shooting range, and Politico thinks it’s news.

Headline: Gabby Giffords gets mean

And here’s Alex Isentadt’s breathless, rather incredible lede: “Gabby Giffords, irreproachable figure of sympathy, has fashioned an improbable new role for herself this election year: ruthless attack dog.”

Yeah, it’s “improbable” that the nation’s most prominent surviving public figure of gun violence – now that Jim Brady has slipped this mortal coil – should actually go on offense against the gun lobby and the politicians that scrape and bow before its trigger happy lobbyists.

At issue: some modestly (in my view) tough political ads aimed at separating those gun toadies from the public offices they cling to. More handkerchief clutching from Isentadt:

Some of the toughest spots from Giffords’ newly formed pro-gun-control super PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, hammer Republican Martha McSally, a retired Air Force pilot who is running for the Arizona seat Giffords once held. One features a wrenching testimonial from a woman named Vicki who weeps and stumbles over her words as she recounts how her 19-year-old daughter was hunted down and murdered by an enraged ex-boyfriend.

Meanwhile, I’m with Laura Clawson over at dKos:

Apparently the emotion involved in testimony from a mother whose daughter was murdered is over the line–mean–even though there’s nothing false in the ad. People die because of America’s weak gun laws. McSally opposes tighter gun laws. The fact that the ad is effective doesn’t make it “offensive, selfish, or unaccommodating; nasty; malicious” or “small-minded or ignoble”

Go Gabby! What do you think?

[PS – get well soon, Booman]

Had to share this–it seems that in 1987 the mayor of Burlington, VT, a guy from New York City named Bernard Sanders,  you may have heard of him more recently, recorded a folk-rock album, with the assistance of a local record producer named Todd R. Lockwood. It’s a kind of hootenanny performance by a large number of Burlington musicians with Bernie, who neither sings nor plays, just being Bernie, declaiming words of great wisdom and beauty through the instrumental breaks.

Five songs ranging from “Oh, Freedom” to a socialist rarity from Pete Seeger’s repertoire, “The Banks Are Made of Marble”. Jon Pareles of the New York Times has posted a review at their First Draft site (from which I have appropriated any actual information presented here), and for those who just want to listen to this thing, and I swear you’ll be very glad you did, it’s at Lockwood’s own SoundCloud site.

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

How many times can Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, be wrong? Apparently the GOP is willing to give this clown another pass:

The state Supreme Court Thursday ordered him to strike Democrat Chad Taylor from the November ballot for U.S. Senate, ruling Taylor had complied with state law allowing a candidate to withdraw.

Just a few minutes later, Kobach — a Republican — said he’ll tell the Kansas Democratic party to pick a replacement by noon Sept. 26.

KansasCity.com

All of this in a bid to weasel incumbent Senator Pat Roberts in to another term.

The thing that amuses me the most, is just how many times Kris Kobach has had his extremist ALEC-incubated directives overturned. He is a well-known chupacabra in the migrant rights movement because of his involvement with the Hazelton, Pennsylvania outrage and SB1070 in Arizona. His efforts almost always end with egg all over the face of his allies.

The towns that passed nativist laws in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Texas and Nebraska, along with the state of Arizona, have spent millions of dollars to defend them in court, and almost every judicial decision so far has gone against them. One community, faced with skyrocketing legal costs, had to raise property taxes, and another was forced to cut personnel and special events and even outsource its library.

That was just the beginning. The four towns and one state examined in this report all saw a crisis in race relations as conflicts between Latino immigrants and mostly white natives escalated. Latinos reported being threatened, shot at, subjected to racial taunts and more. Police are having trouble getting cooperation from any in their Latino communities. Pro-immigrant activists have been threatened with notes that promise to “shed blood” to “take back” communities. The mayor of one town had his house vandalized after opposing a proposed law and was warned by federal agents to be careful; he ended up retiring after four terms in office. Angry protests and counter-protests, along with dangerously rising tensions, have rocked one town after another. In some communities, business districts have largely collapsed.

Southern Poverty Law Center

The modern GOP working toward a society that has drowned in Grover Norquist’s bathtub? Sounds about right.

November will show if Kansas has finally had enough of Kobach and his ideology’s losing strategy.

Saturday’s freeing of the 49 Turkish hostages held by ISIS may have been by a military rescue operation according to the Turkish government, or maybe by the serene clemency of his caliphic majesty Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi according to the caliphic Twitter account, says a remarkable piece by Metin Turcan in Al-Monitor that gives me what feels like a better sense of what’s going on politically inside ISIS-occupied Mosul:

Two major factors may have been at play. The first was the changing balance of power in Mosul: According to Turkish intelligence sources, US airstrikes seriously degraded IS communications between key centers in Mosul, Fallujah, Raqqa and Tikrit it controls. IS withdrew most of its Mosul forces to inland areas. US airstrikes were instrumental in changing the power structure of Mosul by strengthening the role of the Army of Naqshbandi and the Council of Mosul Tribes. Both favored the release of the hostages. The second major factor was the severe reaction from the Sunni world after IS released visuals of the beheadings it carried out of three Westerners. As such, IS’ release of the Turkish hostages signifies a change in IS strategy and signifies a move to win over Sunni public opinion.

The takeaways are:
(1) ISIS is only one of a number of forces coexisting in northwestern Iraq, alongside the Naqshbandis (a group tied to the old Saddam Baath party, Sufi by religious identification and thus theologically opposed to the Salafist Caliph) and the Sunni tribes (who are apparently very tight with Turkish intelligence), and no doubt lesser entities as well, so the situation inside the occupied cities is a lot less stable than you might think.

(2) The US airstrikes are doing something that is not especially shocking or awful but may be effective, Like the strategy I was sort of whistling-in-the-dark for a couple of weeks ago, in which the war aims would be modest, and aimed more at dividing than ruling: at recruiting members of Iraq’s and Syria’s minority groups into a coalition in which the US would (sooner rather than later) have no real role.

(3) The beheadings were not some kind of elaborate and counterintuitive plan to achieve a strategic goal; they were a stupid goblin mistake.

There’s something else, too, a dog that may not be barking. I believe we don’t have any casualty reports from the airstrikes over ISIS territory, which isn’t too surprising, in the sense that there aren’t reporters in there, and that the caliphic troops wouldn’t especially want their own casualties known, but you’d think they’d be anxious to denounce civilian casualties incurred by the Americans, and yet they don’t. Is it possible that US forces have begun learning to avoid murdering wedding parties and picnics, and there really aren’t any?

Cross-posted at The Rectification of Names.

Contributed by Doolittle

Forgive the parody click bait title but there actually IS a trick and it is probably one of the most effective things any individual can do to affect the outcome of the battle to change our economy from a fossil fuel based one to one based on renewable energy other than put solar panels on your home:

Write your pension fund administrator.

WHAT?! Yes, that’s right. Write to your pension fund administrator.

We could collectively mobilize TRILLIONS of dollars in assets this way!

(cont. below the fold w/ proposed sample letter to send to your pension fund manager)

The 300 largest pension funds in the world control about $14 Trillion in assets, according to the consultancy Towers Watson. This equates to almost half of the total amount held by pension funds globally, roughly $32 Trillion, which is a sizable portion of the total of all privately held assets. How pension funds invest this capital therefore has a large effect on the global financial markets. Most pension funds don’t hear much from their stakeholders. They tend to take conservative (small “c”) steps when addressing risks and looking for new investment opportunities. It tends to be one of those industries, for many reasons, where is it is better to fail conventionally than succeed unconventionally.

There is a large movement of university students working to divest from fossil fuels in their school’s endowments. These students’ futures are being mortgaged by the fossil fuel industry so why would they want to help them with investments from their endowment? At the same time, they want to use the endowment to help finance the industries that will not only provide the alternatives to fossil fuels but will be the main engine for jobs growth in the energy industry going forward.

The same logic applies even more explicitly for pension funds. We are all going to absorb massive costs from climate change impacts, $100+ per ton of CO2 Eq. emitted according to the most recent Nicolas Stern report for the UK government. Yet, through our pension funds, we are financing those industries that are making the problem worse. The long term risks to our pensions is immense as insurance companies pull back from insuring climate risk and the general economy therefore starts taking bigger hits.

In addition, an economy dependent upon fossil fuels will start to see ever increasing drag on economic growth as the average cost of oil production (even if that production increases due to fracking, tar sands, etc.) rises, taking all the profits from economic growth with it. Therefore, it is ESPECIALLY important to our long-term economic survival that we change what the investments our current economy makes. Unless we’re one of the few billionaires running around it seems like our small pools of capital, if we even have them, aren’t going to amount to a hill of beans in the larger scheme of things. However, as the numbers above show, we collectively control a huge amount through our pensions.

Unfortunately, the people who control this capital for us, for the most part, never hear from us! Now is the time to change that and I’ll tell a little bit more about why this is such an effective approach.

Recently, my job changed and I started working with pension fund administrators to try and implement various strategies based around more sustainable/ethical investment. These strategies aren’t just based on screening out investments in, say, tobacco or landmines or companies accused of child labor, but are often much more sophisticated model-based efforts to determine where long term thematic risks lie across the entire economy and arbitrage them out. Two key themes have become a core part of this effort:

One, the overall risk posed by climate change impacts and the reaction to it from governments and the markets, and

Two, the concept of “stranded assets” – that as regulation and disruptive technologies (like alternative energy) attack the market for carbon intensive fuels, these assets may become “stranded”, i.e. obsolete and unsellable or only saleable at a level far below the original investment price. This becomes especially important as all the new fossil fuel technologies require large amounts of constant capital investment to become viable and also require high energy prices in most cases to remain profitable. Pension funds, through equity and bond purchases, are providing large amounts of this capital. (Google “Carbon Tracker” for excellent background information on this…)

This where you come in. Pension funds, in most cases, don’t hear much from their stakeholders. The administrators are faced with a wide array of challenges stemming from the slow global economy to bring in enough capital from future retirees and grow it fast enough to pay out to those retiring today. The pension industry is heavily dependent on outside consultants to determine how the money is invested and what the long-term strategy will be. Many administrators will tell you that they wish they knew more about how their stakeholders wanted their money invested but with limited resources and often thousands or tens of thousands of members, they have a hard time getting coherent feedback.

Conversely, many people don’t know who is managing their pension, or how the whole thing works. There are only so many hours in the day and if you’re not an investment professional, or really dedicated to the subject, most people figure that making good investment decisions is what the administrators get paid for, so most people don’t communicate on these types of issues even when they are quite concerned and informed. This state of affairs is exemplified by the fact that nearly all pension funds’ biggest investments are through default funds as opposed to more actively chosen investments.

Therefore, even a single letter to the administrators from one of you can have a very big impact in how they view this issue and help to break the conservative mindset that tends to rule in pension funds. Administrators are legally required in many instances to provide information when requested, and are also responsive to the views of those who pay into the fund. You pay their salary after all.

We NEED to make sure they know that we care about the issue of climate change and understand it to be a huge risk to our collective futures. They need to hear from us that financing fossil fuels is not only a dangerous decision from an environmental point of view but also a bad investment. They need to understand that their members want to do something about climate change and will hold them accountable if they don’t. You’ll also have their back if they take the professional risk to move forward on addressing climate change using the funds’ monies.

I have been involved with several efforts at various pension funds to address climate risk and one of the things that we’ve discovered is that many funds can drastically reduce their exposure to the worst companies by eliminating investment in just 9-10 companies. Most investment portfolios at pension funds will be based on large market indexes that have hundreds, if not thousands, of stocks or bonds in them so this can be a very effective strategy because it won’t involve changing the overall fund or fund strategy very much.

Thus it’s an easy win – the administrators can claim legitimately to be responding to the concerns of members while also keeping their standard investment approach intact. Plus the markets will really take notice if even a few of the big guys start implementing these kinds of investment options for members.

If you’re still employed ask your human resources department for information on who to contact as they should have that information on file. If you’re independently employed and only have 401k or other retirement investments with places like Vanguard, it wouldn’t hurt to write them as well. If you are unemployed and have no retirement funds, I really hope that situation changes for you! The rest of us have the obligation to act on your behalf to collectively get these funds geared towards investing in a better future for all of us!

I’ve provided this sample letter that you are welcome to use.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dear Pension Fund Administrator,

I am writing as a pension fund member to find out what overall strategy the fund has for dealing with the financial risks posed by climate change. This issue will have broad and wide-ranging impacts on our economy and therefore poses a large potential risk to my pension. I want to make sure that the fund has developed a sound strategy to responding to these risks and for ensuring that my pension savings will be available for me when it comes time to retire.

To that end I would like to request the following information:

• Does the fund have an overall understanding of its exposure to climate change risks? How is this information gathered?
• For example, has the fund conducted a “carbon footprint” assessment of its investments, or an assessment of the potential for investment in so-called “Carbon Stranded Assets”?
• Who is the fund’s principle investment consultant and what strategies have they suggested for responding to the long term economic risks posed by climate change?
• What investment opportunities are available to me now that actively address the economic risks posed by climate change? What investment opportunities will be available in the future?
• How will the fund manage disinvestment from those companies with the largest carbon footprint on behalf of members?
• Overall, what recommendations can you make to the pension fund members to help us manage these risks over the long term until our retirement?

If the current level of understanding on this issue is insufficient at this time to answer these questions, please substitute your answers with details about what the fund plans to do to address this information deficit and your time-frame for providing full disclosure on these matters.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration in answering these questions.

Sincerely,

[YOUR NAME]
[YOUR ADDRESS]
[PENSION FUND ACCOUNT ID #]

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Koch brothers may have billions to spend against us be we actually have Trillions to respond with – we just need to take the steps to get it moving in the direction that we want and help finance a sustainable future.

The Cleveland Plains Dealer posted this article today claiming the Democrats are improving their chances of retaining control of the Senate. I don’t know diddly about any of this so I’ll let the article speak for itself:

In the past few days, a number of the major election forecasting models have lurched back toward the Democrats.

According to Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times Upshot model now judges the race for the Senate to be a tossup, with a 51 percent chance Republicans will win a majority, and a 49 percent chance for Democrats. […]

The Christian Science Monitor reported missteps haven’t caused Republican chances of winning the Senate to decline from 65+ percent plus to a toss-up, but a change in the models themselves: As the election nears, they begin to place more emphasis on poll results in individual races, as opposed to underlying political fundamentals.

The author of the piece, Ray Jablonski, identifies the Senate races in Colorado, Iowa and Kansas as being three key states for Democrats. I have no idea why he thinks that those three in particular are critical, though I certainly agree it would be important to win all three (yeah, I am Mr. Obvious), so my questions for you are as follows:

Which state races do you feel the Dems must win to keep control of the Senate?

Which Senate races not mentioned above do you feel the Democrats are at risk of losing, and why?

Finally, a personal story: my son, reasonably up to speed on politics because, well I talk to him all the time, surprised me yesterday, when he told me he didn’t think mid-terms were that big a deal. I had to go to great lengths to explain to him the significance of losing the Senate. He gave me the impression that most of his friends share a similar mindset, though he promised to let me drag him to the polls in November. I know this is anecdotal, but it bothered me that even someone who is committed to voting for Democrats and supports a progressive agenda, would express such sentiments about the upcoming election.

So:

How concerned are you about turnout in a non-presidential year election among young people and other groups which generally support Democratic candidates?

One of the interesting and hopefully illuminating aspects to come out of the Adrian Peterson saga has been to shine a light on the practice of corporal punishment.  One player (Calvin Johnson?) said that he would continue to discipline his child as he saw fit, and there was a story yesterday that Peterson simply doesn’t get the degree of trouble that he’s in.

The “I was whupped and I turned out fine” argument is a fascinating one, especially when applied to Peterson.  Because self-evidently, he did not turn out fine.  He turned into a man who left scars on his four year old child.  On the other hand, he’s a millionaire and not in prison – which for a black kid from Texas and from limited means is a sort of accomplishment.

There have been several good stories – Vox and The New Republic are good examples – that catalog the overwhelming evidence that corporal punishment is not good for a child.  Among other things: it damages the trust between parent and child that is critical in their emotional development, it teaches the child that violence is a way to solve problems, it instills fear of repercussion rather than teaches good behavior and it instills a fear of authority.  The long term effects are higher incidents of depression, substance use and the tradition of violence that gets passed down from one generation to the next.

There is also the fact that very rarely is corporal punishment applied dispassionately.  I have two sons.  I have wanted to swat them countless times.  They do incredibly aggravating/dangerous/disrespectful/hurtful things on a daily basis.  Did I mention they were boys?  Luckily for me (and the boys) my wife is wiser and calmer than I and laid down a “no spanking” rule in our house.  Because every impulse I’ve had to spank my kids has come from MY anger and MY frame of mind.  If you discipline from a place of anger (a place most parents are all too familiar with) you will teach anger.  If you discipline from a place of rationality, you will teach thoughtfulness.

But there is a cultural issue at play here, too.  Last week, I was teaching my students about political culture and how tricky it is to tease out causation and correlation when it comes to culture, so let those caveats apply.  I don’t know if there is a determinative effect here or whether this reflects the culture.  But look at the map of states that ban all forms of physical punishment in schools:

http://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/assets/4564211/Screen_Shot_2014-06-04_at_1.35.55_PM.png

Does that map look familiar?

It’s not perfect – you’d need to swap Colorado and Utah, and the northern plains states probably have some of that vestigial Germanic educational tradition – but that’s a striking map.

It would be interesting to tease out the use of corporal punishment by parents between “red” states and “blue” states, but from what we know of corporal punishment we know that it does create a more fearful attitude towards authority.

In the outrage over Trayvon Martin, white America was introduced to the reality of “The Talk” that African American parents give their kids, especially their sons.  We’ve learned that the world is fraught for black boys, replete with dangers and pitfalls.  But what sort of multiplying effect does the reliance on corporal punishment have?  In an effort to protect their sons from a world that looks down on them and values them less are parents making things worse by adding the psychological damage of corporal punishment on top of the societal weight of racism?

And what is the cultural effect on overall violence?  The ten most violent states in the country in the 2006 census are South Carolina, Tennessee, Nevada, Florida, Louisiana, Arizona, Delaware (!), Maryland, New Mexico and Michgan.  The highest ranked New England state in Massachusetts at 20.  Most European nations – that outlaw all forms of corporal punishment including by the parents – see much, much lower rates of violent crime.

To be clear, I’m not arguing that spankings turn people into violent criminals.  Nor am I trying to “blame the victim” when it comes to racism.

But I do wonder if the culture of “I was raised this way” that leads to the use of violence over education to discipline a child is one of the contributing factors in America’s bloody body count.

Promoted by Steven D

& Other Musings On The Autumnal Equinox

    The eve of the first day of autumn at the mountain retreat began with a stroll to the road and our mailbox under a sunlit canopy of leaves just beginning to turn to the sublime reds, oranges, yellows and browns of the season.  The mailbox disgorged a phone bill, the new issue of Vanity Fair (“Hell in the Ebola Hot Zone!”), several advertising circulars and some dragon smoke.  Alas, as I walked back to the house, my mind was not on the foliage, although I did pause long enough to notice that the maples are likely to be especially brilliant in the coming weeks.  Instead, I pondered what a mess the world seems to have become.

    Yes, there’s always some stickiness or other going on somewhere or another, hemorrhagic African viruses included, but in the words of Roger Cohen, a New York Times columnist, a Great Unraveling is underway, a mash-up of tragedies representative of the devolution of the world order, chief among them — until the next outrage comes big footing in — the beheading of two journalists and an aid worker murdered by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and America’s resultant return to war.

    I do not necessarily disagree with Cohen, but it is a law of nature that shite rolls downhill and a law of our times that at the bottom of the hill sits the White House and Barack Obama, who is either doing the best he can to lead a planet being especially unruly, or is a Hamlet-esque procrastinator, or if you are one of the too many people taking the especially uncharitable right-wingnut view, responsible for the whole bloody mess.  An Obamalypse is at hand, they claim.  A clever turn of phrase, which unfortunately has, if not the ring of truth, a wee tinkle of it.

    In my view, bad stuff is always happening, it’s just that a lot more bad stuff is happening on Obama’s shift, but it has been a terrific opportunity for the right-wingnut media to trot out Fall of the Roman Empire analogies even if such analogies are factually bereft, and most ridiculous of all, accusations from the equally reprehensible hard left that Obama is returning us to the outrages of the Bush-Cheney era.

    * * * * *

(cont. below the fold)

    Word is that the coming winter will be severe, which would make two in a row and two too many. The evidence for this foreboding isn’t exactly scientific.  After all, no one would compare the Old Farmer’s Almanac with the National Weather Service, although come to think about it, the Weather Service does seem to get it wrong an awful lot.  (Blame Obama.)

    My own view is that the winter to come will be pretty much normal, and I base that prognostication on perhaps the most reliable year in-year out predictors: The hummingbirds who migrate each spring to the mountain retreat and return to tropical climes in the fall.  They know what kind of weather is in the offing, and based on their departure date this year — that day when their tiny tummies are filled to bursting with flower nectar and sugar water from our feeders — the winter will be nothing to sweat.

    * * * * *

    The big story hereabouts is not the fate of the Western World or the possible severity of the winter, but the assassination of a Pennsylvania state trooper and wounding of another trooper by a 31-year-old gun nut survivalist coward whose idea of a good time is dressing like a Serbian soldier.

    The young man, armed with an AK-47 and other deadly weapons, remains inconveniently at large somewhere in the extensive woodlands hereabouts some nine days after picking off the troopers under the cover of darkness as they changed shifts at a state police barracks.  This has pretty much brought the region to a halt and is raising heck with the tourist business, forcing the closure of schools and incurring the harsh glare of the national media, which has belabored the obvious in declaring that the area where the coward lives “has seen better days.”  (Blame Obama.)

    The news media is up to it’s usual name game bull in calling the guy everything other than what he is — a terror-freaking-ist, because he is an American and doesn’t wear funny clothes and worship a false God.  That noted, I have a modest suggestion for how to end this drama appropriate to the violence that has come to characterize American society: Deputize people who own AK-47s and other assault weapons, of which there are said to be many in the hood, and send them into the woods to track down the coward.  

    * * * * *

    If you’ve read this far, you may still have a brain cell or two stuck on the opening paragraph of these musings and are wondering what the heck dragon smoke is.

    It is just what the name implies — smoke for a dragon; you know, the stuff it blows out of its nostrils to scare off chivalrous knights who are trying to rescue damsels in distress, and stuff like that.  In this case, the dragon is part of the fuzzy troupe accompanying a hard-working ventriloquist who is stopping over at the mountain retreat amidst a nine-month tour that will take him to schools and youth groups in a good many states.  He is bringing much needed laughter to kids and a rare moment for teachers and other grown ups to forget about the mess Obama has made of things.