THREE REPUBLICANS WHO WON'T GET THE NOMINATION, BUT RICK SANTORUM?

Until at least the generation of Republicans typified by Donald Stering and Cliven Bundy dies out, there are three potential Republican candidates for president who will not make it: Ben Carson, Bobby Jingle, and Marco Rubio.  Marco Rudio was pretty popular until he lead a team that came up with a bill for comprehensive immigration reform that passed the Senate.  Though Rubio is a Cuban Republican and not Mexican, I doubt that most Republicans notice the difference.  There is no such thing as an illegal Cuban immigrant.  Any Cuban who can step onto our shoes is legal, although they are returned to Cuba if detained off shore.

I would like to believe that younger Republicans have a different view on immigration reform than their elders.   I am not sure of that, but maybe some decade before this century runs out, Republicans attitudes will change.

My most unfavorite Republican candidate - Rick Santorum* - has now come out with a book called the Blue Collar Conservative.  Remember he ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2012 and came in second and sounds like he plans to run again.  I have not read the book but have heard him on TV, and he comes across saying that the American laborer is paid too much.  If their reward package was reduced below the cost of automation (Government says you have to pay them this, you have to pay them that which is disincentivising.), there would be more jobs.**  Maybe, and more people starving in the streets  because they couldn't afford food.  In addition to being a member of the Religious Right that dominates the Republican Party in their War on Women, Santorum certainly obeys one of my favorite sayings: Politicians are skilled at the art of getting votes from those they intend to fleece.  Fortunately, some manufacturers are bringing their plants back to the U.S., supposedly because of the high cost of natural gas overseas.

Here is Santorum on Fox saying labor wants to "..balance the budget, cut taxes for higher income individuals, and cut benefits"*** Really!

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-end-liberalism-wins.html; http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/04/chief-of-bedroom-police-drops-candidacy.html
** http://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/santorum-republicans-need-blue-collar-voters-240769603685
*** http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/hannity/2014/04/29/rick-santorum-talks-new-book-blue-collar-conservatives

EARTHQUAKE (Poem)

The snap and crackle of micro-earthquakes
Rippled back and forth the long-quiescent seismic gap,
Foretelling bigger things to come - exactly when not being known.
Creep continued deep on either side the quiet zone,
But micro-earthquakes in the gap did not release
Massive strain building along the stuck surface.
Nervously, people awaited larger quakes;
Signaling something grand and frightening to come. One day shaking
Began over magnitude five on the Richter Scale: was doomsday nigh?

It was a dour day, dark, sprinkled with rain.
Earth shook, without warning, violently back, forth,
Heaving with force of a great earthquake,
Cracking a fault break-length more than 200-miles long.
Automobiles tossed like mere tennis balls.

There was no escape, shaking was so awful.
Running down a staircase was hopeless;
Even staggering through a doorway - impossible.
Windows exploded; glass shooting everywhere.

With dreadful, deafening roar,
Buildings made by sweat and infinite patience
Were torn, sheared, trashed -
Leaving people crushed by fallen debris,
Others trapped in rubble. Blood spattered everywhere.
A child's shoe lay alone in desolation on the road.
One could only cower in terror, praying.

What seemed like a millennium of horror
Lasted but a few minutes when all returned to calm,
Except for the occasional crash as blocks continued to fall
From hulks of once proud buildings.
But all was not as before, as dazed survivors saw.
And all did not remain calm as aftershocks, some hard, rumbled through the area,
Returning a quickly-learned reflex of fear to hearts of inhabitants, Reminding them of the catastrophic power of nature.

(This poem was stimulated by the Mexico City Earthquake of September 19, 1985. From Wikipedia: The quakes were located off the Mexican Pacific coast, more than 350 kilometres (220 mi) away, but due to strength of the quake and the fact that Mexico City sits on an old lakebed, Mexico City suffered major damage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Mexico_City_earthquake)

BENGHAZI (SIGH)

As we all know, on September 11, 2012, there was an attack (actually three attacks) on the American Consulate and CIA compound in Benghazi, Libya's second largest city.  Except for political purposes, there is no more tired news than Benghazi.  After all the four deaths in the Benghazi attacks were small compared to other attacks on our diplomatic missions,* only unusual in that an ambassador was killed; however, Charley Rose had the Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell, on his program on April 3, 2014, that I found to be interesting and worth a listen.**  It should be noted that there has been a 9/11 since Benghazi with no published activity.

Morell's thought is that the original attack was by a group of extremists, maybe including some al Qaeda members, who wanted to go into the Consulate and cause some mischief  like their Egyptian compatriots did earlier.***  There were two other attacks and each picked up steam compared to the previous one.  The second attack was actually against the CIA compound, and they picked up some heavier armaments along the way.  The third attack was the most vicious and had the heaviest armaments.  Two of the deaths were actually at the CIA compound.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2013/09/it-was-movie-trailer-after-all.html
**  (http://video.tvguide.com/Charlie+Rose/Michael+Morell/21826147/tvo-194941-season-22-episode-156 primary=Shows&show=Charlie%20Rose&display_mode=details&length=fullepisode)
*** In Egypt, 2000 Salafist activists protested against the film Innocence of Muslims at 5pm EET (11am EDT) at the US embassy in Cairo. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack)

PREY ANIMALS AND PREDATOR ANIMALS

I suppose you know that prey animals (e.g. blue birds) have their eyes on the sides of their heads whereas predator animals (e.g. eagles) have their eyes on the front of their heads.  No doubt this placement of eyes is because prey animals need the maximum amount of field coverage to alarm them when something is coming, but predator animals find having three dimensional vision helps them focus their attack.

Personally, I don't like the food chain as it creates the maximum amount of pain.  We presume that plants do not suffer pain although plants sprayed with herbicides shrivel up and look to me as if they are in pain.  If I designed the universe, however, I wouldn't have developed the food chain and would have invented another way to keep populations in check.

But we have the food chain and it is, unfortunately, alive and well, and human beings most definitely have their eyes in the front of their heads.  So human beings with their ability to rationalize became the biggest predator of all.  In fact it goes beyond that.  We kill some animals not for food but just for their furs, for example, or their tusks.  Since we are predator animals, it is not surprising with our ability to reason that we developed increasingly efficient methods of killing other animals: from stampeding animals over a cliff, to spears, to the bow and arrow of several kinds, to guns.  We have to face it, hunting is in our nature, even if you or I don't do it, and there are even large societies that do not eat meat (e.g. most Hindus.).  A Hindu told me many years ago, that they do not like the idea of eating even plants, but we have to eat something and vegetation is the path of least pain..

I like to think that domesticated animals for food are killed in a painless way, but I don't really know this to be true.  Certainly having them penned up in confined spaces is not humane.  The problem of hunting with guns is that we can kill animals into extinction (e.g. the passenger pigeon is a common example).  The elephant, for example, may be close to extinction although it is hunted only for its tusks.  But human beings are a part of nature and driving animals to extinction seems to be a part of the design of things.

Since hunting is in our nature, the point of all this is that I have come to the conclusion that human beings should be allowed to hunt to a reasonable extent and doing so with guns is unavoidable in our society.  After all we even like to shoot each other.  We even like to shoot ourselves, but I don't like those who want to commit suicide to take others down with them, in many cases just because they are handy.*

Of course, hunting is not the only way human being drive animals into extinction.  We also do it by expanding our communities and take away the animal habitat.  Thus some animals, like deer for example,  seem to have adopted, and you can see them running around to urban communities.  When they adopt to urbanization, they become a nuisance to us and we want to get rid of them.  Many people who find deer to be beautiful still don't want them eating the foliage in their garden.

The prey animal population (e.g. elk) of Yellowstone National Park and Central Idaho was getting out of hand because of the loss of predator animals so they reintroduced wolves (http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/wolfrest.htm).  Frankly, I think I would rather be killed by a bullet than a wolf though I have never tried either.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/12/in-aftermath-of-firearm-newton-ct.html

WW-II IN MINNESOTA

In 1942, Nazi’s invaded Canada and were rapidly advancing westward with the Pantzer Divisions overwhelming all resistance.  They finally had advanced to latitude 44 degrees and 56 sec. of Minnesota and began a push southward.  They quickly took Duluth.  Shortly thereafter they got to the outskirts of St. Paul, where I lived, and a group of us boys armed ourselves with bread knives and would quickly attack  small groups of Germans, killing them with our bread knives.  One time the force of Nazi’s included tanks and was too much for us so we beat a hasty retreat around the front of my house.  When we got to the other side, the Germans had set up a machine gun on the space on side of the house - rat-a-tat-tat, on and on.  It was an awful  slaughter.  I woke up with a start, trembling, to hear a woodpecker pecking on our metal rain gutter.  Scariest dream I ever had.

IT'S ALL ABOUT, UM, TESTICLES

I broach this topic with some trepidation and am unsure that it is appropriate for a "family" blog such as this one.  I'm talking here about Iowa politics.  I grew up in a urban environment, but Iowa is a farming state.  Remember the little ditty " Iowa, IOWA, that's where the tall corn grows?"  Well perhaps not surprisingly, the politics of Iowa, a farming state, is a little"earthy" shall I say?  I submit the following political commentary because it is out there on TV for all to see or Google.

It turns out that there is this Republican woman (and Iowa is one of two states that has never elected a woman to congress) by the name of  Joni Ernst, a veteran who is slightly ahead of her main opponent, Mark Jacobs, in polls for the vacant Senate seat.  Well she put this ad on TV that has gone virile.*  "I'm Joni Ernst.  I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm .  So when I get to Washington I'll know how to cut pork."    In Iowa, you have to be against government pork. Of course when it comes to certain farming pork, for example the subsidy for corn ethanol, that is a different matter.  What they they mean is to cut YOUR pork.


SO, one of her opponents, independent Bob Quast running as a long-shot write-in candidate on the Democratic ticket, not to be outdone, plumps for term limits but also says in HIS ad that he will take his glock, that he brandishes, and blow the balls off a sexual predator who murdered his sister.**

Where do they go from here?

* http://zap2it.com/blogs/joni_ernsts_gop_senate_hog-castration_ad_gets_colbert_report_the_soup_and_more_late-night_attention-2014-03
** http://qctimes.com/news/local/government-and-politics/elections/bob-quast-s-write-in-campaign-ad/youtube_d36abc9c-1960-50e2-9e42-4746becc0a4c.html

TRAGEDY: VETERAN SUICIDES AFTER A WAR

Reported deaths in a war are a minimum number in the first place.  For one thing, once you are airborne out of the war zone, you are not counted as a death from the war even if you die on the plane or in the hospital where they take you.  Then there are the deaths from suicide occurring for decades after the war.  Although getting the proper statistics is impossible, it seems clear that more Vietnam veterans have died from suicide than the 58,000 killed in the war.*

Now consider the case of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars where the same military people have had even more than one tour in these wars and four tours are common.  So say you have had a tour and escaped any IED or suicide bomber attacks or a supposedly friendly-Afghan-trainee shooting.  No doubt you feel, "Whew!"  Then you are sent back again and maybe again and again.  The accumulative effect must be unbearable for many.  The maximum number of tours for someone in the Army seems to be four because of the length of the tours.  We should remember that there are no front lines in these wars and an IED or suicide bombing or supposedly friendly-Afghan-shooting can occur almost anywhere.  The number of suicides from these conflicts should eventually dwarf the official number killed in the conflicts.  The talk show Morning Joe accepts the number of  veteran suicides  to be 22 a day.  Another study indicates this figure of 22 suicides a day is most likely a minimum.**

So we should remember in going to war that the total human costs of the war will be at least twice those killed in the war itself.  In the case of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it may well be several times more.

Also worth mention are life changing injuries that are many more than in previous wars because of perfected medical treatments that save the lives of many severely injured combatants (e.g. loss of limbs, defiguration, etc.).  One psychologist has said that many who survive an IED or suicide bomb, have had their brains shook and are "walking zombies."

* http://www.alternet.org/story/68713/120_war_vets_commit_suicide_each_week; http://www.alternet.org/story/68713/120_war_vets_commit_suicide_each_wee http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_died_in_war_in_Vietnam#slide=6
** http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/21/us/22-veteran-suicides-a-day/