Men with Guns Shoot Man in Buns

I’m writing this on the morning of Sept. 11, 2006. Rudolph Giuliani is back on TV, this time to speak at a Ground Zero memorial ceremony. There’s no humor anywhere, life sucks, terrorists suck, and I have roughly 666 words in which to say something amusing.

OK, well. Speaking of tragedy, there’s a tragedy happening in slow motion in connection with court proceedings in El Paso that might have something to do with 9-11, but may still have funny bits in spite of that. I am speaking of the conviction and pending sentencing of two border patrol agents for shooting a drug smuggler in the butt and not reporting it, and the uproar over said conviction, etc. If nothing else I can say “butt” frequently.

Border agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean shot marijuana runner Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila in the butt as he fled from them, in February 2005. Since then Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila has filed a suit alleging violation of his civil rights and is asking $5 million. At the same time, even though Aldrete-Davila was found to have been hauling 800 pounds of marijuana when he was shot in the butt, he was granted full immunity to testify against the border agents, who were indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of assault with intent to commit murder, assault with serious bodily injury, and assault with a deadly weapon.

Ramos and Compean both said they thought Aldrete-Davila was armed that day. But the jury didn’t buy it. The jurors were probably more swayed by the fact that the two agents refused to write up the incident and destroyed evidence of the shooting, than by any testimony by the border-flaunting, marijuana-toting, $5 million-wanting, Rosa Parks-wanna-be, woundee.

I mean, if I were a juror in the case, when I learned that Ramos and Compean not only failed to report the shooting, but went so far as to retrieve and hide their shell-casings in order to cover the incident up, I would immediately have wanted them to spend life in prison, because I don’t think armed officers of the law should have a free pass to shoot people on holiday whenever they feel like it. You gotta do the paperwork, and THEN we look the other way.

In any case, a jury has spoken and Ramos and Compean were convicted months ago. The next step is sentencing, which is due to take place in El Paso in October. The slow-motion tragedy of which I spoke earlier is, however, happening right now in Washington, D.C.

Not only are the usual Republicans, such as James Sensenbrenner and John Hostettler, trying to meddle in the federal court’s business in this case, but also so is good old Democrat Dianne Feinstein. They are all asking Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to order the case be reopened and re-prosecuted because they already don’t like the way it turned out, even before allowing the sentences to be read.

You can go to justicefortheborderpatrol.com and sign their petition if you think it’s a good idea. I won’t. It looks to me like they want Bush to assign a new prosecutor in the case now, and then again in the future, and then again, until a prosecutor can be found that doesn’t bring charges, because Sensenbrenner, Feinstein, and the others have decided that if guys with badges can’t shoot Mexicans in the butt without anyone knowing, then the terrorists have won.

What really has the conservatives’ panties in a bunch is that the woundee and undoubted felon Aldrete-Davila got full immunity to testify against two white-hatted good guys, and they RIGHTFULLY see this as a travesty of justice.

It IS a travesty of justice when the bad guys get immunity to testify against good guys. But if you’re going to end that practice just for federal agents, we’re going to be stuck with two separate justice systems, one for liars with badges, and one for all the rest of us. That would be the tragedy.

Ahmadinejad's Two Seconds of Clarity

Here we are on the verge of another foreign policy “oops, our bad, but that’s all right” moment. The Iraq War: “Oops, no WMDs, our bad. But that’s all right, Saddam had to go anyway, right?” The CIA's attack on a village in Pakistan: “Oops, our bad. Al-Zawahri wasn’t there. But that’s all right; the people killed included several non-Pakistanis so they must have been terrorists, right? Besides we already established in Iraq we could attack and kill anyone in any country anywhere, including thousands of innocents, whenever we thought we might eliminate one enemy, so, what the hell?”

Really, what the hell? All sorts of folks are condemning Harry Belafonte for calling Bush the world’s greatest terrorist. But all Belafonte was doing was giving credit where credit is due. Bush surely authorized the CIA attack. If any attack of that nature were conducted by a foreign power in this country, it would be called a terrorist attack, at the least. But Bush has convinced the majority of Americans that he is not a terrorist. It’s precisely that which makes him so great!

The newest “oops” moment in the making concerns Iran. Thanks to a CNN translator’s error, most Americans today probably believe that last Saturday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that his nation has the right to build nuclear weapons, when actually what he said was that no civilized nation needs nuclear weapons.

Let’s put that in perspective. First of all, it means it must be really hard to find good translators of Farsi. That one wasn’t even close. On the other hand, since CNN was banned from Iran because of this screwup, what Farsi-English translators there are, good or not, will become more available. Snap one up now, prices will never be lower!

But what I think really needs to be appreciated is that the biggest nutcase in the Middle East, and in fact the biggest nutcase with major political influence anywhere east of Darfur and west of North Korea, said something saner than George Bush has ever said or is likely to ever say, and he won’t be believed.

And why won’t Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad be believed, you ask? Well, even though he has always been totally straight-up with his stupid “death to America” rhetoric and his extreme nutcase ideas that Israel should be moved to Auschwitz and/or downtown Berlin under permanent Polish or German management, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won’t be believed because he is a president of a country, and George Bush knows that presidents of countries can’t be believed. Why heck, that just goes without saying! Presidents are all liars!

Meanwhile, just as in 2003 the UN wanted nothing to do with an invasion of Iraq without proof of WMDs, so now, the UN will never authorize sanctions without proof of a nuclear weapons program, so...

So we are all set up for: “Oops we bombed nuclear energy-making facilities, instead of bombing bomb-making plants. Our bad. But it’s all right, because we’ve decided for them they don’t need nuclear energy anyway, and besides, they’re Islamic extremists who attack people in other countries without justification. Besides, nobody else would do it but us, so we had to act for the good of Iranians and all Mankind. Sorry ‘bout the mess and the thousands of innocent lives lost, but we did what was right.”

Questions for Further Discussion:

1. Senator McCain says the only thing worse than attacking Iran would be an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. Which would be worse: a) the United States having nuclear weapons, or b) the United States being attacked?

2. Iran is hosting a “Holocaust Conference” to study the evidence that the Holocaust never happened. Are they asking for an Israeli missile strike, or what? If the answer is “what,” try being more specific, for a minute or so. Then, give up, have a cold one, or take a couple of aspirin, or whatever you’re used to doing to re-enter reality.

An Embarrassment of Riches

Let’s say “embarras de richesses” too many times!

I’m going to talk about freedom of speech. But, who am I to make a fuss about freedom of speech, when I am so full of it? Look, I’m speaking right now, with printed words! Can you say “embarras de richesses?” I can’t! I don’t know how!

Nevertheless I know what it means. I exemplify it! For example this appears to be my 201st column. That means I have let my speech out to run freely 200 times just in this rag alone. Embarras de duck-licking! That doesn’t begin to count speaking incidents at bars, nightclubs, carnivals, and poultry farms.

No way though do I epitomize this sort of thing. For that look at the generic Washington State politician running for office.

In case you missed it, it’s again legal in this state for political candidates to lie about their opponents. For five or six years before last week it was against the law for candidates to lie about each other (they could lie about themselves all they wanted.) But now that law has been struck down because it violated the candidates’ freedom of speech to have their speech constrained by the truth.

When it comes to politicians, “it’s not that the truth shall set you free, but that the truth shall handcuff you to the bed and shall make you watch it model leather pants for hours, which is just plain naughty,” said the court, in effect.

So this state’s highest “embarras de richesses” award, in the Too Much Free Speech Category, goes to our hard-working politicians. Congratulations, guys and gals!

Now lets talk about people who can look forward to less freedom of speech in the near future. Gosh, let’s see, who might we be talking about? We can’t be talking about the politicians; we just said they can babble about anything. Could it be the rich? No, rich people can just buy full-page ads in the Seattle Weekly when they want to say something unpopular that needs to be protected by the First Amendment.

It would be poor people! Of course! Poor people living in buildings run by Seattle Housing Authority!

As reported in our last issue by Cydney Gillis, SHA was planning to prohibit residents of 28 buildings from putting signs (including flags!) in their windows. This was justified on the grounds that A) it would make the buildings prettier, and B) other apartment owners (commercial ones) prohibit the same.

YES, SHA, AND IF OTHER APARTMENT OWNERS JUMPED OFF A BRIDGE, WOULD YOU ALSO JUMP OFF A BRIDGE? Now, with that outburst out of the way, I am ready to delve deeper into this issue and calmly analyze one by one the validity of the two reasons offered for this rule.

In connection with reason A, Virginia Felton, SHA spokesperson, was quoted saying that “we’d like our public housing buildings not to look like college dorms.” Well, tough. The First Amendment is not preceded by a One-Halvesies Amendment that states, “SHA’s sense of esthetics shall not be violated.”

Reason B is trickier. Yes, commercial apartment owners insist that renters sign an agreement to accept such rules before allowing occupancy. And I notice that SHA plans to appear to act just as a commercial apartment owner would, by letting residents choose to either sign an agreement to comply or be evicted.

But that’s just a sham. Commercial apartment owners get away with such threats because the courts accept the myth, in their case, that the renters are free to negotiate or go elsewhere.

No such myth is functioning on SHA’s behalf. SHA knows, and the courts know, that their residents have no place else to go. The threat of an eviction that would result in homelessness to preserve a trite middle-class boneheaded esthetic standard is unjustifiable. So SHA needs to chill, go back to art college, and broaden its taste in the decorative arts.

Of Pennies and Prejudice

Today I want to talk about panhandling, panhandling related incidents, and panhandler focused factoids.

It really annoys me that I can't actually present reliably true panhandler focused factoids, on account of there being none. So far, the only way genius social scientists have been able to figure out who panhandles and who doesn't is to go around to places where they think potential panhandlers are to be found, like shelters and meal programs, and beg them to tell the truth about whether they panhandle or not. This approach results in statistics that are a little like the ones you get when you ask the neighbor teenagers how often they've done each other.

To make matters worse: I am not a statistics wonk, so I forget even where I've seen statistics based on the truth-begging approach. So, for example, I am certain that at one time a few years ago I saw a report about such surveys being done in Seattle, Denver and Washington, D.C., independently, among other places. I am almost certain what the results were. And I am absolutely without any shred of doubt certain I don't remember where I saw that report, so I'm just wasting space telling you about it.

Still I can't resist telling you that, in spite of the inadequacies of the research methods, there is one pair of conclusions that genius social scientists always come up with when they study the question. Those conclusions are that (2) most panhandlers aren't homeless (so looking for them in shelters might be a mistake, see above), and (1) most homeless people aren't panhandlers.

The reason they come to the first conclusion is that the reported frequency of panhandling among admittedly homeless people is incredibly low even assuming, as social scientists do, that roughly a quarter of all human beings will lie to social scientists whenever they get the chance. The reason they come to the second conclusion is the same way I have, namely by getting to know various panhandlers and following them home at the end of the day.

The kind of results we're talking about varies considerably from city to city, but, except for Washington, D.C., in every place you go the percentage of homeless people who report even intermittent panhandling is down below 15%. In some areas the figure is much lower. I just saw a recent report out of Charlottesville, Virginia, about a hundred miles from D.C., where they could only get 4 homeless adults in a hundred admit to having panhandled at all in 6 months. Or maybe it was 3 in a hundred. They weren't too clear about their denominator. I don't blame them --denominators are hard.

The result I remember for Seattle was closer to 6%. I'd really appreciate someone tracking that down for me.

Meanwhile, a survey done by the Gallup people found that over 30% of all Americans thought the average homeless person was a panhandler. So a sizable minority of Americans figures that you can't solve homelessness without first dissuading homeless people from relying on panhandling, something hardly any of them do. It's like thinking that in order to solve the continuing problem of poverty in rural West Virginia, we have to get the West Virginians to not speak Etruscan when applying for jobs.

Here's one of those panhandling related incidents I was talking about. One day I was homeless and had 3 pennies. Two days later I still had the same 3 pennies. It occurred to me then that if I asked somebody for a quarter and they gave me one, I would experience an 833% increase in liquid assets, and after buying a roll at Safeway I would still have 3 pennies. Instead, I starved. Ha, ha, pride is funny.

Let that be a lesson to you all. If you are ever homeless, and you only have 3 pennies, and you don't ask anybody for a quarter, well, join the club.

Outrage Fatigue

Oh no! I was about to write this column on my latest righteous outrage du jour, when suddenly to my horror I didn't have one. Should my meds be adjusted again? Have I become laid-back now, according to the principle that everyone becomes the person their friends tell them they are, no matter how wrong their friends' perceptions were originally?

I've never been laid-back. I've always been a seething pool of anger and fury. OK I kept a lid on me, pool that I was, in order to prevent unacceptable actions like land reclamation and inappropriate commercial development of human pools. Boy, this metaphor sucks.

So anyway, like I say, I'm a pool of anger, fury, etc. And I thought I had some outrage to dish up this week. I went so far as to mark my territory (another sucky metaphor!) by warning Anitra "Op Ed Mama" Freeman off the topics of my outrage. "Don't talk about the news about the Pentagon Channel," I said, "because I'll want to rant about that." "Don't talk about the Senate Nuclear Option," I said, "because that really has my panties in a bunch."

But now deadline approaches, and here I am. Though poised to rant, I am rantless. I am like the roarless lion, the croakless frog, the yell-less sixth-grader. I am also lacking even one decent metaphor.

Well, here's the deal, anyway. You know how the government lies to you all the time? They've been lying to our troops since the Napoleonic Wars, but now the Pentagon is institutionalizing it's process of lying by going forward with plans to bring the "Pentagon Channel" to the widest civilian audience possible on cable and satellite dish outlets. They will be providing national and international political news and analysis as well as the expected in-house military news.

An example of Pentagon editorializing-by-headline, from their 24-hour streaming website (www.pentagonchannel.mil): "Taking its cues from President George Bush, the international community is now standing up to Syria demanding the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon." Yes, the international community is just helpless without cues from George. What will they ever do when they lose his manly leadership?

So, terrific, we have the beginnings of our very own US equivalent of Pravda. Why aren't I up in arms about it? Am I losing my touch? Is this that male menopause they're always talking about?

When I first heard about the Senate Nuclear Option I went nuclear. I paced back and forth in my hovel punching the air with my fists. How dare Bill Frist even suggest such a thing, I thought. The thing he suggested was that Cheney, as President of the Senate, outlaw Senate filibusters by fiat, at least for the debate of judicial nominees.

Part of my outrage was at the way some are distorting history of the filibuster. The Senate had UNLIMITED debate before the rule on filibusters was initially established in 1917. The "filibuster rule", currently requiring a 3/5-ths vote to close debate, was actually an improvement on a tradition, since 1806, of no closure without unanimity. Would Frist like to return to those good old days?

But, hey, I don't love the filibuster. I remember how it was used to delay civil rights legislation for years. So the real outrage is about the timing. Under Clinton the Republicans didn't need the filibuster; they blocked Clinton's nominees by refusing to allow the nominees names to go to the floor.

Now it's all the power the Democrats have left. So this is the time the Republicans decide they want to do away with a 199-year tradition, so that a Republican administration can install judges into the federal courts that anyone even slightly to the left of Mussolini or Bill O'Reilly would regard as extremists.

How pathetic is that? How can anyone stay angry at such pathetic behavior? I can only feel revulsion.

Bitter Sleeping Pill

Well, here we are. It's the Dawn of a New Day, America Has Spoken, the fat lady has sung, and birds everywhere have flown south for four years.

The good news: expect a resurgence of Fifties-ish-style paranoia to feed a renaissance of the paranoia-genre of horror-scifi movies. With modern cgi technology and the experience of this year's election under our collective-consciousness belt, we can look forward to some terrific movies. Titles like the Attack of the Evangelical Masters, or Night of the Living Neocons, or Invasion of the Constitution Snatchers spring to mind, but I'm sure talented writers could sublimate them way up better than I could. Sublimation was never my forte. Vomit is my forte.

So tell me, do I sound bitter? Good, because I'd hate to sound like I was living a lie or in denial or anything like that. No, unlike 51% of whatever percent of America bothered to vote, I live in the world of Reality, not the world of Bush-Think. So if I'm bitter I'm going to know it, and I'm not going to care if I show it.

I don't mind the country's election choice nearly so much as the transparent mind meltingly bombastic canard of Cheney et al to the effect that George W. Bush now has a significant mandate. He does not. That the numbers of voters that put Bush over the top was a record does not erase the fact that the numbers that voted for Kerry was a record also. For an incumbent running for a second term, 3% is a slim margin. That was no landslide and I would put far more faith in the Bush Administration if it didn't consist of such cowards in the face of the truth that they couldn't even admit it and proceed from there.

If the administration can't rule without propagating fantasy after fantasy, then all of America will get into the act.

Do I sound bitter? Let's see, in news from Texas we've already returned to the days of after-school specials. The decision by voters all across America to affirm the lie that denying marriage to gays is justified has already begun to be followed by orders to require textbooks rewritten to reflect the majority opinion. As if elections determined matters of fact.

The precedent could lead to interesting new forms of oppression. For instance we can expect Texas to hold a state-wide initiative soon to decide Yes On Creationism, bypassing that whole free scientific discussion crap. Then when it passes, they'll announce that the majority has called it true so it's true. Schoolbooks will be rewritten, fools will gloat over the fall of the wise, and it won't be overturned because Bush will have, by then, installed additional fools in the Supreme Court.

In October 2001 I expressed the fear that the terrorists may win, because they might have succeeded in bombing us back to the Fifties. Well, it's happened. "What, Me Bitter?"

Hey, what's the worst that could happen? Sure, a man who's already prosecuted the first totally unprovoked war in American history based on fabrications has his finger on the red button. Sure, an arrogant blasphemer who thinks he's God's all-time favorite president has the power to destroy our environment for the sake of his corporate buddies, and he has the character and temperament to tell us it's for our own good and the Greater Glory of God. Sure, a "servant of the people" that thinks Habeas Corpus, the right to a swift and speedy trial, and the right to be free of unwarranted searches are all obsolete concepts has now got almost complete control of government. But you have to get over it, right?

So in the interest of getting over it, I propose a further slide into irrationality and denial and fantasy. Lets all say black is white and white is black and have us a four-year carnival of lunacy.

The terrorists are on the run. Osama is scared of the terrible visage of George W. Bush, Man of God and Macho Ace National Guard Pilot. If the terrorists do by chance succeed in striking America again, it will have been Bill Clinton's fault. Gays will never endanger our marriages again. Speaking out against a government of liars is an attack on America.

Sweet dreams, one and all.

Syria's Friends Are Layabouts?

Periodically I encounter young people. And one of the things young people like to ask me is, "Why did you hippies screw up America back in the sixties?" "Ha, ha," I respond, "I wasn't a hippy, you ignorant child," but later I feel bad because I sense that I could have provided some insight to someone who was sincerely seeking answers. Then still later I watch the Simpsons and fall asleep.

Put another way, the question that arises is, what were all those long-hairs rebelling against back then? Well, now it can be known. Consider the following quote from Donald Rumsfeld.

"The (Syrian) government's making a lot of bad mistakes, a lot of bad judgment calls, in my view, and they're associating with the wrong people."

That, my friends, is a sixties dad. "That kid (alternately: my son, or that minority person, or that rock singer, or that protestor) is making a lot of bad mistakes, blah, blah, in my view, AND they're associating with the wrong people." Pure sixties dad.

Now multiply that by how ever many millions of sixties dads there were and count in the fact that most sixties moms were backing up this kind of clenched-teeth belligerence from the sidelines, and you can see what all the fuss was about. The long-hairs were rebelling against a zillion petty Donald Rumsfelds in various pants and skirts. (Women always wore skirts in those days. Or else.)

The one non-sixties-dad like thing about Donald Rumsfeld is that he writes poetry. However, when Donald Rumsfeld writes poetry, it is very recognizably the sort of poetry a sixties dad would write if he broke the stereotype and wrote poetry. So the stereotype doesn't really break.

In view of some recent events in the Middle East, some of Rumsfeld's poetry from the past starts to look like warnings of things to come. For example the 2001 "Situation" ends with the lines, " There will be some things that people will see. / There will be some things that people won’t see. / And life goes on."

Take the celebration in Baghdad when the statue near the Palestine Hotel was brought down by the tank. People saw the cheering Iraqis. But they did not see the limits of the crowd. Wide-angle photos that showed that the crowd consisted of fewer than two hundred people were available on the internet but not discussed in the major US media -- things unseen. Also unseen was evidence that the Iraqi participants in the celebration were primarily Iraqi freedom fighters brought into Baghdad by our military.

Credit has to go to our Army and Marines for doing such a fine job of propaganda. This is what we pay them the big bucks to do. It is of course desirable to convince your enemy that you have won the support of the people as soon as possible, so that they will give up the fight. It is unfortunate that in the process you also end up lying to everyone else in the world, including the people you are supposedly saving from future terrorism. But hey, life goes on, right?

Well, for some of us anyway. Not for Rachel Corrie and Tom Handoll.

You probably know Rachel Corrie was murdered by Israeli army bulldozer a while back, when she could have simply been handcuffed and arrested. You may not know that Tom Handoll, a British activist, was murdered a few days ago by means of a shot to the head, fired at him while he was trying to herd Palestinian children away from Israeli soldiers. When he could have simply been handcuffed and arrested. (They could have charged him with "giving a damn for Palestinian children," apparently a capital offense in Israel now. At least he would have had a trial.)

Shades of the sixties. I remember it now so well.

To Israel: Please find another way.

To the reader: Please support House Concurrent Resolution 111, AKA the Rachel Corrie Resolution, which calls for an investigation into her death.

By the way, I know this column hasn't been very humorous. But as Anitra puts it, "They're giving you hell to work with."