Tragedy of Innocence: Amanda Knox

(D)ude: Man! Amanda Knox should never have written such a scathing account of the Italian criminal justice system upon being returned to Seattle, Washington after 4 years in jail over there. What was she thinking? Who advised her to write such a book in the first place?

(M)an: Dude! Amanda Knox is a high functioning young adult with a limited intellectual capacity. Yes, she managed successfully through academics, but her eyes are vacant and her affect is mistimed.

D: Man! Amanda Knox is limited intellectually but high functioning? Are you sure she’s not low functioning with a considerable intellect?

M: Dude! Where’s the medical community in the United States anyways? Can’t the United States and Italy and Pope Francis get together for the welfare of a young adult woman who has survived insurmountable odds stacked against her from birth just so she can exist without having her functional incapability figured out?

D: Man! Amanda Knox has suffered enough, don’t you think? She’s confident of her capabilities when tragically she has none. But, considering that, wouldn’t it be advisable for Italy and the United States to reach a diplomatic agreement where the publishers of Amanda Knox’s book must agree to pull it off the shelves nationwide as well as worldwide?

M: Dude! Remember the kids who always got laughed at for their simplemindedness in the cafeteria and the playground? And then, do you remember the loners with their books and other methods of escapism before and after school on the school bus? Do you really think they were actually reading anything? You know, I admit that when the going got tough, I used to pull out a paperback novel myself.

D: Man! No, I knew no one read the books they had in hand in public at school or on the school bus. In fact, I know because I was one of those students who would hide behind a paperback myself, especially in gym class. Do you know I read while undressing in the locker room as not to attract the venom of the upperclassmen and the bullies?

M: Dude! I also was able to pull that stunt off! And I thought I was special!

D: Man! Me too!

M: Dude! The Italian legal system is deservingly upset over the release of Amanda Knox’s book in which she basically rambles and stumbles herself on why she smiled and kissed her then-identified-accomplice boyfriend during the murder investigation.

D: Man! How’s she supposed to know what’s ill timing or inappropriate?

M: Dude! There’s a lot of room for subjectivity here. That’s why a clinical team of mental health specialists must be convened on behalf of the welfare of Amanda Knox.

D: Man! I can see the headlines and Amanda Knox perhaps losing the little capabilities she has mustered to attain in her frightful innocence.

M: Dude! The murder conviction was overturned back in 2011. That should still stand as the book she wrote should stand as evidence of Amanda Knox’s perplexing lack of self-preservation. She served 4 years in an Italian prison, remember?

D: Man! I wonder what kinds of books and newspapers Amanda Knox has hidden behind to mask her absence of  street smarts. I suspect she still colors in the puzzles found in Highlights For Children. I never liked and have grown to disdain Highlights For Children.

M: Dude! Huh?

D: Man! I’m telling you. I think Amanda Knox actually read Highlights For Children as well as coloring in the puzzles. That’s how bland her personal tastes are in literature and intellectual engagements.

M: Dude! You do have a point there! But why have you developed a disdain for Highlights For Children, may I ask?

D: Man! If I had read more of those, I am absolutely certain I would have aced the standardized tests in high school. At least the reading comprehension portions!

M: Dude! I feel the same sharp tang of resentment myself for the abacus I had in my crib as a toddler! I was fascinated by the colors but the numerical component just flew past me! One flew past the cuckoo’s crib?

D: Man! Don’t say that! I’ve seen all your baby pictures and I am still surprised every time at the depth and distances covered just by staring into you’re eyes.  

M: Dude! Amanda Knox’s family and advisors are paying debts through Amanda’s book.

D: Man! She’s been forced to write her account to pay outstanding loans and mortgages?

M: Dude! The financial ruin of Amanda Knox’s family should be evidence enough of just how unknowingly Amanda Knox found herself at her own place at the wrong time.

D: Man! Huh?

M: Dude! That’s just it!

D: Man! Do you mean that she was her boyfriend’s alibi and accomplice without even knowing he was essentially using her the entire time for whatever means were necessary to buy himself time?

M: Dude! Yeah!

D: Man! That’s a cold-blooded killer boyfriend!

M: Dude! Amanda Knox’s vacant eyes probably have sustained unconscionable harm due to their inability to communicate propriety most likely, and she could actually help Meredith Kercher’s family with the unconscionable pain.    

Desecrating United States University Campuses

(M)an: Dude! What are you reading?

(D)ude: Man! I’m just reading the New York Times review of Greg Whiteley’s documentary covering Mitt Romney’s run for the American presidency since Christmas 2006. Why do you think the right end of the political spectrum is so desperate to make a campaign comeback? Does it not understand that policymaking is part of the job as well?

M: Dude! It’s interesting, isn’t it, how no one cares to mention that Greg Whiteley is a practicing Mormon as is Mitt Romney? And this documentary comes just in time for no body to notice that Faux News correspondent George Will actually addressed the faculty, staff, and students of Brigham Young University on October 11, 2013. 

D: Man! But why is the Right getting the accolades and backing of the American Press? Doesn’t the American Press understand the crucial peace talks taking place at the moment and how President Putin basically told George Stephanopoulos last weekend that the United States political climate had to get its house in order before it could interfere with affairs on the world stage?

M: Dude! And don’t forget that President Putin dismissed Stephanopoulos’ description that Edward Snowden was the most significant American in Russia. Instead, President Putin respectfully insisted that President Barack Obama was the most important American and that Snowden could travel freely throughout Russia, even attend the Sochi Olympics if Snowden so desired.  

D: Man! Madeleine Albright, former United States Secretary of State, said it best when she differentiated between what a whistleblower was and how what Snowden did made him a traitor, not a whistleblower as the New York Times claimed and still continues to assert.

M: Dude! Keep in mind that the New York Times rejected to print Martin Luther King, Junior’s Letter from Birmingham Jail that he’d wrote on April 16, 1963.

D: Man! No! Really?

M: Dude! King’s lawyers retrieved the scraps of newspaper and took them to the Reverend Wyatt Walker who then reconstructed and edited the final version, which went on to see publication in the Sunday edition of the New York Post Magazine on May 19, 1963 and the Atlantic Monthly that July as The Negro Is Your Brother.

D: Man! The New York Times article about the Romney documentary says that the Whiteley film quote unquote glosses over some of the moments in the campaign, including Mitt Romney’s infamous 47% comment and then quotes the patriarch saying that President Obama’s strategies—“tax the rich people, promise more stuff to everybody, borrow until you go over a cliff”—are ineffectual. But doesn’t that basically bring Mitt Romney to the same point of infamy as when he claimed that 47% of Americans were “dependent upon government”?

M: Dude! Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon interviewed John Boehner Mitt Romney, respectively, this week. Did you watch?

D: Man! Jimmy Fallon actually invited Romney to a cookout on his wife’s family lake house where one of the Romney Estates is located. And Fallon appeared to side with Mitt Romney when the patriarch blew nonsense about the Affordable Care Act being a failure. But Obamacare is actually a success and saving countless lives by providing people who were previously unqualified for medical insurance coverage the basic healthcare that they desperately needed.

M: Dude! There are countless children who are receiving care for their preconditions now that the marketplace is finally running. I believe there’s an evidence-based analysis of the Affordable Care Act, like the bipartisan election commission list of recommendations released this past week. Do you think John Boehner and the Congressional Republicans are capable of understanding that if they had been able to delay Obamacare for a year, countless men, women, and children would have had their coverage suspended?

D: Man! Really? And the Republican Party calls itself pro-life! Huh! Did you hear Speaker John Boehner of Ohio slip Jeb Bush’s name as a presidential contender in the 2016 election on Jay Leno’s show?

M: Dude! Yeah. Did you hear Mitt Romney’s intentionally slipping in that his party’s already agreeing to a presidential contender in the 2016 election on Jimmy Fallon’s show?

D: Man! Jeb Bush and his son George Prescott Bush are going to ambush the peace talks that Secretary John Kerry and President Obama are encouraging in the Middle East. Jeb Bush and George Prescott Bush will descend upon the Middle East needlessly with our precious sons and daughters as soldiers. We’re going to return to the times of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, when our brave sons and daughters returned home in caskets draped with American flags for their sacrifices in unnecessarily driven warfare. And the Republican National Committee calls itself pro-life!

M: Dude! Remember that the George Herbert Walker Bush White House actually banned photographers from taking photographs of our brave sons and daughters returning home in caskets draped with the American flag for eighteen years, 1991 to 2009.   

D: Man! And George Walker Bush actually insisted on renewing the photography censorship in 2008. I think a one-term Mitt Romney and a two-term Jeb Bush would have essentially blown the Middle East to smithereens. The Republican Party as of 2010 has not been very engaged in the policymaking in Washington, D. C. They hide their ineffectuality behind such grand shams like constantly campaigning while defining their incapability as obstructionism.

M: Dude! Have you seen the trajectory of decay in the content and the character of the American Press leading up to President Obama’s State of the Union Address tomorrow? They cover Kentucky Senator Rand Paul as a viable candidate for the United States presidency even after Rand Paul, like Chris Christie after him, had a tantrum about the complexities and obligations of their offices and their proclivity for becoming blindsided by their own staffers apparently when the going gets tough. There is no personal accountability with this 2010 crop of Republican leaders.

D: Man! What’s going on? Jorge Ramos from Fusion TV interviewed Bill Gates and, afterwards, made the case against philanthropy and intervention abroad. Philanthropy and intervention abroad are the basis for worldwide education and betterment! Contraception is not vulgar as Mike Huckabee seems to imply it is as well as himself in his rants. And Mike Huckabee is scheduled to desecrate Harvard University this semester as a “visiting fellow”…

M: Dude! Mike Huckabee will be a “visiting pervert” this spring at Harvard University, dressed up in the most repulsive Freudian slips.

D: Man! Like George Will trying to defend the “sainthood” of Calvin Coolidge in front of an exasperated faculty, staff, and student body at Brigham Young University, Mike Huckabee will attest to the prowess of his fallacies. The way George Will’s audience at Brigham Young University seemed perplexed by his rabid tearing apart of the fabric of American progressivism and FDR, Mike Huckabee will be reassessing politics with a  similar overwrought libido that has consumed the GOP as of late.  

M: Dude! RNC Chairman Reince Preibus who decided to forgo “brewing” for “percolating” last Sunday [January 18, 2014] on Meet the Press.

D: Man! Reince Preibus percolating coffee in place of brewing beer?

M: Dude! Greg Whiteley’s June 23, 2007 documentary film Resolved includes Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, nominated by George W. Bush and assumed office on January 31, 2006, who went on to mouth “not true” when President Obama questioned the Court’s January 21, 2010 Citizens United decision during his January 27, 2010 State of the Union Address.

D: Man! As the crook is the first to fall to folly by grabbing his beard when authorities with impeccable foresight and timing demand to know who has placed an item of value inside the crooks of their facial hair, Justice Samuel Alito basically ended up, especially now that we have hindsight evidence about 2010 and how the Tea Party and Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, concurring what President Obama foresaw.

M: Dude! The Republican Party is trying hard to bring back bullish intimidation tactics, the worse being warfare, and who better to bring that destruction and death but the depraved and bellicose Bush Dynasty?

D: Man! The Bush Dynasty is depraved and bellicose!

Man! Dude! Session #256

(D)ude: Man! Robert M. Gates tries ridiculously hard to come across as a levelheaded intellectual, but his own words betray his waning intellect. The further you read into his memoirs, the more you realize how engulfed with inferiority he is and I think George W. Bush really made Robert M. Gates lose his sensibility and compromise his sense of duty to country and the ground operations of the United States Military abroad. Listen,

Page 35: We had simply had no idea how broken Iraq was before the war—economically, socially, culturally, politically, in its infrastructure, the education system, you name it. Decades of rule by Saddam, who didn’t give a damn about the Iraqi people; the eight-year-long war with Iran; the destruction we wreaked during the Gulf War; twelve years of harsh sanctions—all these meant we had virtually no foundation to build upon in trying to restart the economy, much less create a democratic Iraqi government responsive to the needs of its people. We were going to insist that our partner, the first democratically elected government in Iraq’s four-thousand-year history, resolve in a year or so the enormous and fundamental political problems facing the country? That was a fantasy.

(M)an: Dude! Robert M. Gates tries really hard to make President George W. Bush come across as a heroic Commander In Chief. However, his attempts to cover up the criminal disregard of Bush #43 are unsuccessful. Look here,

Page 39: Bush raised the idea of more troops going to Iraq. All of the chiefs unloaded on him, not only questioning the value of the additional forces but expressing concern about the impact on the military if asked to send thousands more troops. They worried about “breaking the force” through repeated deployments and about the impact on military families. They indicated that tour lengths in Iraq would need to be lengthened to sustain a larger force.

I was struck in the meeting by the service chiefs’ seeming detachment from the wars we were in and their focus on future contingencies and stress on the force.

Page 40: Bush heard them out respectfully but at the end simply said, “The surest way to break the force is to lose in Iraq.” I would have to deal with all the legitimate issues of the chiefs raised that day, but I agreed totally with the president.

On December 19, [2006], the day after I was sworn in, I talked with David Petraeus. I wanted to pick the brain of the Army’s most senior expert on counterinsurgency. I asked him what I should look for in Iraq, what questions I should ask. Fundamentally, he said, the question was whether our priority was security for the Iraqi people or transition to Iraqi security forces. We probably couldn’t do the latter until we had improved the former.

Page 44: The president clearly was headed toward a significant increase in U.S. troops. I knew for sure that whatever people had thought about the decision to got to war in Iraq, at this point we could not fail.

Page 47: I also reported to the president that I was working on a proposal to increase the size of the Marine Corps by 27,000 for a total of 202,000, and the Army by 65,000 for a total of 547,000. The increase would be spread over several years, with a first-year cost of $17 to $20 billion and a five-year cost of $90 to $100 billion. I also reported that I was looking at our policies with regard to mobilization of the National Guard and Reserves, particularly to ensure that their deployments were limited in duration—probably to a year—and to make sure they had the promised time at home between deployments. He immediately told me to proceed.   

D: Man! Robert M. Gates really does think he is laying the foundation for a rewrite of both Bush #41 and Bush #43’s presidencies as having merited a place in the upper echelon of presidential greats. Likewise, Former First Lady Barbara Bush also has gone on the record a second time promoting her son Jeb Bush as the best candidate for the presidency while paralleling the Bushes with the Kennedys and Clintons. That’s a lofty claim to be making, isn’t it? I think Barbara Bush really does believe herself to be a matriarch of the same caliber as the Kennedy women. And it’s becoming more apparent with time that President Clinton aligned his stars with that of the Bushes, perpetually 

placing the United States under terrorist threat. Listen to Gates,

Page 48: In the span of forty-five years, serving eight presidents, I can recall only three instances in which, in my opinion, a president risked reputation, public esteem, credibility, political ruin, and the judgment of history on a single decision he believed was the right thing for our country: Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, George H. W. Bush’s assent to the 1992 budget deal, and George W. Bush’s decision to surge in Iraq. In the first two cases, I think one can credibly suggest the decisions were good for the country but cost those two presidents reelection; in the latter case, the decision averted a potentially disastrous military defeat for the United States.

In making the decision to surge, Bush listened closely to his military commander in the field, his boss at Command Central, and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff. Then  he rejected their advice.

Page 49: I am in no position to judge whether not acting earlier was influenced by the forthcoming midterm elections. But I do know that once Bush made his decision, I never saw him look back or have second thoughts.

My role was to figure out how to buy time, how to slow down the Washington clock, and how to speed up the Baghdad clock.

Page 51: I changed my modus operandi, making the subject of the debate the pace of troop withdrawals so as to extend the surge as long as possible but also try to defuse the Iraq debate as a major issue in the presidential election.

We began to see signs that the surge was working as early as July.

Page 53: Remember, they [the Iraqis] had no experience with compromise in thousands of years of history. Indeed, the politics in Iraq from time immemorial had been a kill-or-be-killed activity. I would listen with growing outrage as hypocritical and obtuse American senators made all these demands of Iraqi legislators and yet themselves could not even pass budgets or appropriations bills, not to mention deal with tough challenges like the budget deficit, Social Security, and entitlement reform.

M: Dude! Robert M. Gates is, I think, giving the current Congressional Republicans under Speaker John Boehner a pep talk of sorts. The book release was so conveniently timed with the Republican Party trying hard to place sanctions on Iran without even considering that the President of the United States and Secretary of State John Kerry are working through a nuclear deal with Iran while the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has successfully dismantled production facilities in Syria and is in the process of transporting the chemical weapons it found alongside precursor chemicals to a designated site from where the United States will provide the cargo ship and go about destroying the material in international waters.  

D: Man! Did you know Robert M. Gates withdrew his name for director of central intelligence in early 1987 amid the Iran-Contra scandal? It is briefly mentioned on page 15 and caught my attention. There is absolutely nothing divulged there except that the Senate at the time would not confirm Gates because of the overwhelming amount of unanswered questions about his role in the affair.

M: Dude! The Republican Party’s very hedonistic right now because they think they have figured out the recipe for power by purchasing the Supreme Court circa Citizens United, redistricting congressional districts to their political advantage, and voting restrictions that they have in place across the United States, circa Shelby County.

D: Man! Why did you have to use that word? Hedonistic sounds like the Republican Party leaders prefer lounge chaise chairs with staff-installed aquariums in their offices and elaborate atriums with water fountains featuring enormous sculptures in Sheldon Adelson’s homes.

Obstructionist Ship of Fools

(M)an: Dude! Robert M. Gates memoirs, entitled Duty as in being called to serve one’s country, is more like a remnant of the Romney 2012 presidential campaign.

(D)ude: Man! Do you think that former defense secretary Robert M. Gates had anticipated a position in a Mitt Romney White House?

M: Dude! No. I think he was certain that the Bush Dynasty would take control of the presidential reigns once more in 2016, specifically Jeb Bush as the Republican front-runner and definite winner after Mitt Romney’s stint as a one-term president.

D: Man! Where have I heard that before?

M: Dude! This Week With George Stephanopoulos was anchored brilliantly by Martha Raddatz on Sunday and included Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois’s 16^th congressional district, a Republican Party member who extolled the perspectives taken by Robert M. Gates in the book but then insisted he had only read the excerpts pre-released by the book’s publisher.

D: Man! Representative Kinzinger has heroically served three tours in Iraq and has accepted  endorsements by Sarah Palin and sought his present position after redistricting efforts in 2009 resulted in the creation of the 16^th Congressional District in Illinois.

M: Dude! I think Illinois’s Congressional District 16 was reconstructed to throw off redistricting critics across the United States. Kinzinger’s opponent Don Manzullo had represented the 16^th since 1993 and lost the 2012 Republican Primary to Kinzinger after redistricting. And, keep in mind, Manzullo is a staunch Republican, tobacco backing, pro-lifer with ambitions to gut non-defense spending and secure the right for the populous to keep and bear arms.

D: Man! I think the Republican Study Committee was constructed in 1973 to rid all transparency and moderation within the House Republicans. And whatever tactics they utilized and wanted to keep hidden from the American people and the United States press corps worked in their favor in 1995, when the Republicans became the majority party in the House of Representatives with then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s wiping their slate clean by dissolving the RSC and other groups like it temporarily.

M: Dude! Robert M. Gates’ stances in the book match Kinzinger’s sound bites during the roundtable discussion on This Week moderated by Martha Raddatz. Keep in mind that Gates’ book was released worldwide yesterday, Tuesday, January 14, 2014. Kinzinger said,

“You know, it may chip away at that a little bit [Gates undermining President Obama as Commander in Chief], but to be -- I might have to take a different view than the panel. I mean, I think it's important for some of this to come out. I mean, the reality is nobody's been critical of this administration's foreign policy, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, by and large. We haven't heard a lot of it.

For Gates to come out and say, look, here behind the scenes, this is the truth, the President and Hillary Clinton opposed the surge for political reasons. By the way, using politics on foreign policy is absolutely terrible and a leader should never do that.

And in terms of Afghanistan, when was the last time you've -- and I'm a believer in the war in Afghanistan, that we can and should win. When was the last time you have heard the president of the United States tell the American people why we're there and what our interest is? He hasn't talked about it; he's avoided it.

And in fact, in the bilateral security agreement, we're hearing that they're floating a number of 9,000 or 10,000 American troops, when General Allen and generals on the ground recommended at least 15,000 to accomplish the mission. This is important today because America is paying for this, and it's our men and women over there.”

D: Man! That’s a four-part answer by Congressman Kinzinger and I have an analysis, using Robert 

M. Gates’ own words in the memoirs released yesterday. First, regarding foreign policy abroad, Iraq and Afghanistan specifically, I am reminded of the revelations Gates makes early on in his book, unwittingly coming across as a diehard Bush Dynasty fan and fellow warmonger, apparently all constructive social reform recommendations, made on behalf of the Iraqi people by U.S. Military Generals, conveniently overlooked and deliberately pushed aside by Robert Gates as sentimentality.

Page 13: They [Democratic Senators, Fall/Winter 2006] professed to be enormously pleased with my nomination and offered their support, I think mainly because they thought that I, as a member of the Iraq Study Group, would embrace their desire to being withdrawing from Iraq.

Page 26: On February 15, 1991, Bush [41]  had ad-libbed at a press conference that one way for the bloodshed in Iraq to end was, “to have the Iraqi people and military put aside Saddam.” The entire Bush team was convinced that the magnitude of their defeat would prompt the Iraqi military leaders to overthrow Saddam.

(page 26 continued ) To our dismay, almost immediately after our military offensive ended, both the Shia in the south and the Kurds in the north spontaneously rose up against Saddam. They had interpreted the president’s words- aimed at the Iraqi military- as encouragement of a popular uprising. Neither the Kurds nor the Shia- especially the latter- would forgive us for not coming to their assistance after they thought we had encouraged them to take up arms. 

Page 29: Forming a coalition government composed of several Shia parties, the Kurds, and politically acceptable Sunnis after the December election, however, the, was a major challenge. As those negotiations were dragging on, the bombing of a historic Shia mosque, the Askariya Shrine at the Golden Mosque of Samarra, on February 22, 2006, ignited horrific sectarian violence that escalated around the country. By October some three thousand Iraqi civilians were being killed every month. Attacks against U.S. troops increased from an average of 70 per day in January 2006 to an average of 180 per day in October.

Page 33: We [Iraq Study Group] also spent some time talking with the Lt. General Pete Chiarelli, commander of the Multinational Corps-Iraq, who was the direct commander of our troops in the fight. Chiarelli impressed us all with his thoughtful analysis about why we needed to protect the population and get the Iraqis services and jobs- to get young Iraqi men to pick up a shovel instead of a rifle. He spoke of the need for more U.S. civilian aid workers and development experts as well as military efforts, and he observed that something like restoring sewer service to an entire neighborhood could have a far more beneficial effort than a successful military engagement. Chiarelli, echoing Speckhard, spoke at length about the need to improve security in Baghdad as the prerequisite for success.  

M: Dude! Republican Representative Kinzinger’s promoting warfare in Afghanistan and sanctions on Iran is just an overview of what’s at stake in the 2014 United States Midterm Elections. And Bob Gates’ book has been released right in time for the American public to read yet another attempt by the Republican Party leadership to rewrite George W. Bush’s criminality as intellectual prowess and All-American candor. And judging by the reviews, I think Robert Gates almost got away with the objective of the book: To rebrand George W. Bush’s Administration as effective and far-reaching.  

D: Man! I don’t agree! I think Robert Gates purposefully released his memoir prematurely, right at the beginning of the latest attempt by the Bush Dynasty to ascend and overthrow all the achievements made thus far in the peace accords that John Kerry is negotiating and overseeing on behalf of freedom to finally get a chance. Tyranny is always the easier route and this push for sanctions on Iran by the status quo in the United States only reveals how threatened the status quo gets whenever the issue of universal human rights and opportunities expands to include places like the Middle East and Eurasia and Africa.  

M: Dude! The status quo in the United States is the same regarding domestic policy! Look at how Jeb Bush’s son George Prescott Bush has begun a bus tour across the state, running for Texas Land Commissioner, but holding political rallies aligning  gubernatorial Democratic candidate Wendy Davis with President Obama and getting the crowds all riled up against the Democratic Party collectively!

D: Man! George Prescott Bush has adopted the same strategies utilized by Republican Christ Christie in his 2013 gubernatorial race against Democrat Barbara Buono. Like Buono, Wendy Davis cannot be labeled an Obama Democrat or a Clinton Democrat. Wendy Davis is a brilliant candidate for the Texas governorship.

M: Dude! That’s just it! The GOP is always labeling itself Tea Party and each other RINO, but in the end, they are all in the same obstructionist ship of fools together. Thanks to the Supreme Court and gerrymandering, the GOP ship of fools believes it is unsinkable. And it just may be right, if the people don’t cast their ballots on Tuesday, November 4, 2014.

Treachery In Motion

(D)ude: Man! Chris Christie is Governor of New Jersey and Chair of the Republican Governors Association, which leads me to suspect that the George Washington Bridge traffic mess lasting 4 days last September, was actually the strategizing of the Republican Party because of their sincere efforts to import the corruption mechanisms put into place by Republican businessmen such as Mitt Romney, the Koch Brothers, and Sheldon Adelson abroad through their companies and conferences.

(M)an: Dude! Are Mitt Romney and the Koch Brothers the Mao and Stalin that Stephen Hawking forewarns about in terms of particle theorems playfully in his lighthearted and brilliant 2013 autobiography?

D: Man! Seriously! Hawking’s latest masterpiece, My Brief History, has me concerned about quantum fields just as much as the furthering of soul deterioration within the United States status quo political clubs of the GOP since the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in  1991 and the voter fraud campaigns that have been put into place for the 2014 Midterms by Republican state legislators and the Congressional Republicans that have retired to spas across the DC area to tend to their nails and tans in the guise of obstructionism.      

M: Dude! The Republican Party is purposefully coming across as bemused and laid back leaders who are protecting the American people from additional taxes via gutting the attempts of the President of the United States to help the working poor and the middle class. Do you think that the fracking and chemical spill chaos unfolding across the United States, just today in West Virginia where the situation has been declared a national emergency, affects the upper classers and wealthy?

D: Man! Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers are the new cocky klutzes alongside the followers they recruit and train to overturn the system of democratic justice and fairness in the United States that protects people from total anarchical messes, Adelson and Koch recruits like Chris Christie, Edward Snowden and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

M: Dude! I initially believed that there existed a socioeconomic exploitation of the communities where the fracking sites are setup, presuming that the neighborhoods were lower income and working class, but I was wrong. The golf course neighborhood in West Fort Worth where Martina Navratilova once resided is less than a mile away from one fracking site. And there have been reports of minor earthquakes in the Southwest side of Fort Worth. Remember the party with the sudden fireworks-like effects?  

D: Man! I swear that the earth moves under my bed every night I spend the evening with my parents. And the fossil fuel companies are perpetrating fairly respectable communities because of the lack of government regulations and personal accountability. Reminds me of the way Chris Christie presided over his exhaustively bogus apology staged before the New Jersey Press yesterday. Did you notice how conveniently dulled and inaudible the inquiries were and how loud and circumvent Christie’s responses got throughout the 105 minutes worth of jibber jabber?  

M: Dude! Chris Christie is the precursor to the planned treachery being scheduled in those DC nail and tan spas by the gerrymandering and voter fraud scammers that constitute the GOP right now. Chris Christie, Bridgette Kelly, and David Goldstein are the Edward Snowdens of New Jersey, backed by heavy money from underground financiers like Adelson and the Koch Brothers, et al.  

D: Man! Have their financiers too guaranteed them bright futures? Is that the reason behind David Wildstein’s lawyer’s smiling demeanor before the New Jersey Transportation Committee Assembly yesterday? Reminded me of Grover Norquist’s cocky klutzy eyes with which he attempts to seduce cameras and audiences. It’s like he cannot help but showoff that his parents contributed two recessive alleles in order to produce the gray eyes that he accents with salacious eyebrow maneuvers.      

M: Dude! The George Washington Bridge closures of 2013 was an attempt by the Republican Party of both Bush Administrations to make the city of New York vulnerable to a possible attack like nine-eleven-o-one upon the shoulders of the federal government. Likewise, I believe Rudy Giuliani’s bragging to Oprah Winfrey about his record as the United States attorney and mayor of New York City is a breakthrough ah-ha moment that must be delved into by federal prosecutors because Rudy Giuliani is a shady character when considering what he revealed to Winfrey about his run ins with the Sicilian mafia.

D: Man! I remember that interview! And wasn’t Rudy Giuliani on Chris Christie’s campaign bus tour right up to the very last minute?   

M: Dude! These are Rudy Giuliani’s own words: I don't think anybody prosecuted more mafia members than I did. Certainly, no one sent them to prison for the lengthy periods of time than I did. A contract was put out on me the first year that I was the mayor by the Sicilian mafia," Giuliani says. "They offered $800,000 to kill me. Then, toward the end of the time I was the mayor, a particular mafia guy who we convicted and put in jail for 100 years, put out a contract to kill me for $400,000. I kind of felt bad that I went down in value -- I started at 800, I went down to 400. I didn't worry as much about the organized criminals. Now, when we start talking about Islamic extremist terrorism -- that worries me more, because they are suicidal. Part of why I didn't worry about the mafia was because there was a certain rationality to their kind of violence. This other kind of violence is completely irrational violence.

D: Man! Is there an auditor in the federal government that can be assigned to investigate what exactly happened to the Sandy Relief funds under Chris Christie and the “more than $230 million” worth of gold and silver bars from the Bank of Nova Scotia’s vault recovery that Rudy Giuliani had overseen and after which Giuliani insisted on halting the efforts of the New York City Fire Department to recover bodies of their fallen comrades and others who perished on that haunting and tragic day: Nine eleven o one?

M: Dude! I don’t know! I just don’t know. Chris Christie and Ted Cruz were parts of the Bush dynasty. That’s where they got their start and training. And is violence ever rational?

QI [: Questionable Intelligence] and the GOP

(M)an: Dude! Did you catch the moment where Peggy Noonan retracted her phraseology on Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer this past Sunday?

(D)ude: Man! I have the transcript right here! Would you like me to read the bogus she misspoke? If Bob Schieffer had not caught her deliberately faulty statement relishing about how the President of the United States and newly sworn in Mayor of New York were progressive and lefty and washed up like the former Sandinista. Who is Sandinista?

M: Dude! This time I want you to read exactly what Peggy Noonan stated before self-correcting herself due to her intellectual façade being caught off-guard by the always sharp Bob Schieffer.

D: Man! Eh-hem! The funny thing about inequality is it's as if everybody has just discovered this problem of the rich are really rich and the poor are really poor and the middle is not gaining. Yes. And normally this administration [President Obama’s] used to brag about how well the-- the-- the stock market was going and in a way it’s almost the negative side of-- of one argument. But the answer so far to inequality is being presented now even in New York, brand new mayor, progressive, lefty, former Sandinista [Bill de Blasio]-- what he’s saying essentially is the old answer. Sorry. Former-- I beg your pardon, that is not true, former enthusiast for Sandinista like political movement in Nicaragua. But what he’s saying, essentially, is the old playbook, not the new playbook. The old playbook is inequality, I will raise your taxes and I will raise spending. Well, there’s nothing revolutionary about that. That’s the old playbook.

M: Dude! Peggy Noonan may be with the Wall Street Journal and have been Ronald Reagan’s presidential speechwriter, but she is a foul trumpeter of supposedly political maladies befalling the Democratic Party. Instead, Peggy Noonan must be looked upon as a political malady herself for the fate of the United States of America.

D: Man! Who’s Sandinista? To what Sandinista-like political movement in Nicaragua is Peggy Noonan referring? And what about Manuel Noriega in Panama during Reagan and George H. W. Bush’s presidencies?

M: Dude! We’re talking about the South American country Nicaragua first and then I will address Noriega and Operation Just Cause, the code name for the United States’ invasion of Panama in December 1989 by the order of the George H. W. Bush Administration.

D: Man! Okay! Nicaragua? I know it is situated between Costa Rica and Honduras, making it a Central American nation, Mexico being a North American nation and Colombia being a South American nation.

M: Dude! Yeah, you’re on the right track thus far. The United States under the following presidents saw many hardships while the modern-day Republican Party took swift control of Congress and injected their tight-lipped and close-fisted mayhem upon the American people and the world: Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, spanning approximately thirteen arduous years where the Commander in Chiefs were as effective as the obstructionists in today’s Congress under the equally contemptuous leadership of House Speaker Boehner and Senate Majority Leader McConnell.

D: Man! The Congressional Republicans are reacting through inaction upon President Obama and Secretary Kerry’s outlook of a calm and coordinated world with interlacing heartstrings of independency for peacetimes and of trust and assistance when needing restoratives and encouragement. Times like these will require military might on our part, but with our sons and daughters in uniform not fighting, but instructing and building.

M: Dude! Returning to Nicaragua, the Sandinistas are the equivalent of what is the Democratic Party in the United States. Their political party name acronym is FSLN, but that is due to the way it is said and spelled in Spanish and that is Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional, or The Sandinista National Liberation Front. The man who they named themselves after was Augusto Cesar Sandino, the leader of the revolutionaries who fought the United States occupying Nicaragua during that infamous Harding-Coolidge-Hoover time frame.

D: Man! So did the United States side against the revolutionaries?

M: Dude! Precisely. The United States intervened on behalf of the military dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Garcia, the patriarch of the Somoza family who ordered the assassination of Augusto Cesar Sandino and the slaughter of hundreds of Sandino’s supporters and followers, including children, after the last of the United States Military exited Nicaragua, having established a National Guard under the direct order of Somoza.

D: Man! The National Guard under the direction of Somoza executed Sandino and his allies that included children?

M: Dude! Yeah, but keep in mind that during President Carter’s years in the White House, the Sandinistas reclaimed power after ousting the National Guard and the Somoza dictatorship that had embezzled all the foreign aide that was meant for reconstructing the capital city of Managua, Nicaragua after it was hit in 1972 by a massively devastating earthquake.

D: Man! What about after the Carter Presidency in the United States? Was the Reagan Presidency supportive of the Sandinistas?

M: Dude! The FSLN won back power in 1979 and instituted a revolutionary spirit that embraced reviving Nicaragua’s infrastructure, giving workers unionizing rights, women equality, ending the death penalty alongside torture and the political assassination scheme that Somoza had utilized to kill Sandino. But their defining achievement was their campaign to lower the rate of illiteracy in Nicaragua by 38% in the span of six months via successful teacher recruitment and massive participation, almost half a million citizens being  gifted the chance to achieve literacy in order to be able to cast informed ballots in elections.

D: Man! Was Reagan’s Administration supportive of the Sandinistas?

M: Dude! No.

D: Man! Why not?

M: Dude! Upon assuming the United States presidency, Ronald Reagan sided with the rebels known simply as the Contras by instructing the CIA to back them financially at the same time providing them with the necessary weaponry to terrorize rural Nicaraguans as a means to end the social reforms being put into place all over the country by the Sandinistas.  

D: Man! So the methodology for modern terrorism practices around the world were put into place by President Reagan’s Administration?

M: Dude! Yes. Large-scale mayhem was carried out by the Contras under the watchful protection of the CIA ordered specifically by President Reagan.

D: Man! What happened to Nicaragua during the eight years President Reagan terrorized  its citizenry via the rebels, the Contras?

M: Dude! The United States Congress barred federal funding of the Contras in 1983, but President Reagan resorted to covert operations to continue to support the violence perpetrated upon the people of Nicaragua by the Contras. One means of going about this that the Reagan Administration pursued was by selling Iran arms underground and using the sales to fund the destructive rebels, the Contras.

D: Man! Iran and the Contras and the Reagan Administration? Sound very familiar, don’t they?

M: Dude! The Iran-Contra scandal! Remember?

D: Man! Yeah! Oliver North! I remember how our schoolteachers griped about having to watch his trial broadcast on all the major television networks just because North was a relatively attractive White guy that female audiences could tune into to swoon over. I think the National Inquirer and TV Guide made the same dingy observations as the American Press. I think Oliver North was purported to have been shampooing with Pert Plus in one of the op-ed drabs at that time.

M: Dude! Pert Plus is still around and so is Oliver North! He’s a Faux News commentator and has his own 501(c)3.

D: Man! What about Manuel Noriega and Panama?

M: Dude! Manuel Noriega’s history with the United States is more about the division between the modern Democratic Party of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and the modern Republican Party of Reagan and Bush and W. Generally, the Democratic leadership always chooses to do the arduous homework needed to promote international tact and  tactics while the Republican leadership chooses to take on the role of the bully that plummets the world by all means necessary, especially war, blunting the effective intervention strategies of the previous Democratic Administrations.

D: Man! And the American Press sides with the bullying status quo/conservative party because it too doesn’t want, well, homework that involves embracing diversity and personal growth through tasting whatever the main dish of the host culture may be. It’s like the Republican Party would much rather reject the offerings of culinary exchanges between nations, like what’s happening in the Middle East and Asia right now because of Secretary Kerry’s sensitivity and etiquettes. I wholeheartedly believe that John McCain and Lindsey Graham and the Republican Party would begin to throw terms out in public like they do not believe such-and-such or so-and-so because such-and-such and so-and-so were not Kosher or Hilal according to their own individual standards, just another perpetuated biased nonsense reported by the malleable American Press Corps! Goodness, McCain and Graham probably would personally pardon pigs and all things pork so that they may enjoy their weekend hotdog picnics! Do they have the intelligence necessary to understand the difference between the two? There are Kosher and Hilal alternatives now available in select stores. I always found the song, “Do they even know it is Christmas?” insulting to the people of Africa that were the main focus of that song, a successful 1980s fundraiser. Likewise, I suspect the GOP obstructionists lack IQ but excel in QI.

M: Dude! QI?

D: Man! Questionable intelligence!

Transnational Peace 2014

(D)ude: Man! The American Press says it doesn’t get the access that Hollywood gets into the tactics of the Navy SEALs. The American Press ought to know better than to try and criticize the United States Military in this Hollywood versus the American press corps mentality that the Republican Party is pressuring upon the Affordable Care Act.

(M)an: Dude! You saw Martha Raddatz on This Week with George Stephanopoulos! You’re talking about films like the upcoming Lone Survivor starring Mark Wahlberg?   

D: Man! Yeah! The toxic mix of talking about the Military as portrayed by Hollywood and then stating untruths like the United States Military not sharing as much with the American Press as it shares with filmmakers is misreporting!

M: Dude! Or it could be utter nonsense not to be registered by our soldiers?

D: Man! Could be, but Marcus Luttrell’s account of losing his SEAL brothers and additional service members in June 2005 to the Taliban leader Ahmad Shah, is compelling because of the identity of the man who would save the lone survivor Luttrell from the Taliban, the Afghani villager Muhammad Gulab who risked his life and the lives of his family members to tend to the wounded Navy SEAL left to die that horrific day.

M: Dude! Muhammad Gulab? Reminds me of  N. J. Dawood, the Iraqi scholar who gave the Western World a glimpse into the Muslim soul with perhaps the best English translation of The Koran [In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful], Dawood’s translation available as a Penguin Classic since 1956. The line I recall is the one where Dawood translates how Abraham comes to realize his own prophetic insight and informs his father, “Father, things you know nothing of have come to my knowledge: therefore follow me, that I may guide you along an even path.”

D: Man! Things that the American Press knows nothing of come to the knowledge of the United States Military second-by-second. What Hollywood attains as classified is simply historical truths that have aged by the speed of light with all the technology that is being produced via constant utilization by the trained intellectuals/soldiers, both men and women. And the American Press needs to realize that women are doing tremendous work inside the United States Military but that there is the risk of sexual battery by the opposition in remote places like where Luttrell’s team was massacred. What if Luttrell had been a female? Would a woman in his position be left to die or further assaulted?

M: Dude! Peggy Noonan from the Wall Street Journal and David Ignatius of the Washington Post were very insulting in their treacherous sound bites about Senator Harry Reid and, later on, the state of affairs in Syria and Iraq following the Iraqi government losing control of Fallujah to Al-Qaeda militants.

D: Man! You saw Noonan and Ignatius on Face The Nation with Bob Schieffer! How about if we deconstruct the superfluous nonsense Peggy Noonan and David Ignatius spoke on Face The Nation yesterday?

M: Dude! I’ll be Peggy Noonan and you can be both David Ignatius and David Sanger! Eh-hem!

D: Man! Any day now, Ms. Noonan!

M: Dude! There’s a little jujutsu going on there. He [Harry Reid] thinks the government shutdown would be really terrible. I think he [Harry Reid] would love it. It would not be good--It would not be good for the Republicans and I-- I think they would try hard, actually, to-- to see that that didn’t happen but I thought the big thing about the Reid interview is that it was not full of reaching out in committee and we can do this together with the Republicans. It was those bad Republicans and that terrible historically bad Tea Party. So I consider that quite suggestive of maybe a bit of a freeze in 2014.

D: Man! Ms. Noonan, you have deliberately misplaced Harry Reid as anticipating another shutdown when you know that the Republican Party membership is the entity that chose to shutdown the United States government in the first place due to its own deliberate miscalculations and obstructionist agenda. And as far as jujutsu, the origin of the Japanese martial art is that you must discipline yourself to defeating an armed opponent without a weapon or, more recently, a small weapon, and redirecting the armed opponent’s energy against himself instead of directly pursuing and attacking him in return.  

M: Dude! Sounds like Peggy Noonan doesn’t even know what she’s talking about. Realistically, aren’t Secretary John Kerry and the President of the United States basically engaging countries around the world in a game of jujutsu without the need for weaponry and subsequent attacks? I think diplomacy is very much like jujutsu, but what would Peggy Noonan know? She’s staunchly against the current Administration’s attempts to negotiate and actually hold onto a path toward peace and equity at home and abroad.  

D: Man! Peggy Noonan is a war enthusiast, I think. Like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham of the GOP, Noonan wants US to be engaged in all-out transnational warfare, as David Sanger described the alternative to the peace talks that John Kerry is engaging in abroad despite the Fallujah setback. I think the GOP Super PAC money goes to fund troublemakers that rouse terrorist groups. That’s the future of the United States Military that the GOP has anticipated since Reagan and Bush. Otherwise, how can you justify the destructive and annihilating war policies of the GOP in Iraq and Afghanistan and the brutally exhausted economies of the two warred countries?

M: Dude! I think this is a good time to quote the absurdities of Ignatius and Sanger. First, David Sanger: What’s happened here is that as America left Iraq and as leaving Afghanistan and as many perceive the U.S. to be pulling back some from the Middle East, something I think a contention that John Kerry would-- would argue with as he’s there now, you have seen a power vacuum develop. And power vacuums get filled in that region by extremist groups. And in this case the extremist group is the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria which is basically an al Qaeda-Sunni affiliate that wants to not only take back Ramadi and Fallujah but the erase the barrier, erase the border between Iraq and Syria, make the Syrian conflict into a trans-national one. The big question is what could President Obama have done differently? And so we went in to Iraq with the concept that we would somehow change the state, and I think we’ve all concluded that there was a fair bit of hubris to that. But when President Obama came out his view was that a light footprint strategy could keep fighting back against al Qaeda and its affiliates. And I think what we’re seeing now, Bob, is that the light footprint which was basically the use of Special Forces, of drones, of cyber, these weapons that don’t involve Americans to go in on the ground very much or stay very long that’s running out of gas.

D: Man! Wait a minute there, Mr. Sanger! Iraq and Syria are two separate but landlocked nations, and you cannot throw onto them the title Islamic Republic because they are respectively the Syrian Arab Republic and the Republic of Iraq. Afghanistan and Pakistan, however, are the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. The term Islamic Republic implies that there is a combination of religious and secular elements in governance and there are no monarchies.   

M: Dude! The GOP doesn’t even have the temperance to read and comprehend government documents within the United States, how can they possibly know any of what we are talking about here? Take sharia law, the term used to describe Islamic religious law, not necessarily derived to override civil law and common law. It is a third of the componential parts and consists of two branches itself, the fiqh and the Qanun, and came to truly exist after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 CE.  

D: Man! The caliphs that reigned after the Prophet’s death, Abu Bakr and Umar, were interesting personalities. Abu Bakr bought and freed slaves and was father to Ayesha, one of Prophet Muhammad’s wives who would become a political figure who spread the word of the Prophet and rebelled against Umar’s caliphate and even fought in a battle contesting the fourth caliphate Uthman.

M: Dude! But didn’t Ali and Umar encourage the Prophet to divorce Ayesha after Safwan brought her back home after her caravan left her behind accidentally?

D: Man! I think a lot of folks in the Prophet’s life were intimidated by Ayesha because of her intellectualism and passion. The Prophet treated her as an academic and equal.

M: Dude! And David Sanger’s totally out of his mind when he affiliated the Sunnis and al Qaeda. That’s how the GOP gets US Military entrenched in warfare with outrageous and deliberate lies that sound too academic the first time you hear them, but erroneous when you actually go back and read the transcripts.

D: Man! Al Qaeda is neither Sunnite nor Shiite! Sunnites follow the Sunnah, the teachings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad, not to be confused with the Shiites who are literally defined as “followers of the Prophet’s cousin Ali” who they consider the first Imam, the true caliph after the Prophet’s death, being a blood relative of the Prophet’s. 

M: Dude! And secondly, David Ignatius: Well, someone, some-- someone, some group of people is going to have to take on al Qaeda in the Euphrates Valley in Syria and Iraq both. And the danger is that we’ve had coalescence of al Qaeda forces that’s being done now by the Maliki government, the Shiite-led Iranian-backed Maliki government of Baghdad. In Syria it’s being done to the extent it’s being done at all by the government of President Bashar al-Assad and elements of-- of the opposition we’ve been trying to back. I mean while I understand David’s point about the big Spenglerian themes of American decline. As I look at the story, I-- I see little mistakes. It wasn’t inevitable or essential that people would stop paying the Sons of Iraq, the tribal fighters in Fallujah which was just overwhelmed this week, in Ramadi, in these cities to stand up against al Qaeda. That was-- it happened because Maliki let it happen and we basically acquiesced. Same thing in Syria. Secretary Clinton, General Petraeus, Secretary Panetta, all of our top National Security officials said in mid 2012, we've got to get started backing rebels who can suppress al Qaeda. We’re going to have a huge problem. The President decided not to do it. It was a-- it wasn’t a huge mistake, it was a small mistake but today that’s what we’re living with. And there’s going to be a new war against al Qaeda in that part of the world. That’s coming.

D: Man! Huh? What’s Spenglerian?

M: Dude! It’s a confusing mess that Wikipedia even acknowledges as having been misquoted by people who had not touched Oswald Spengler’s 1918 The Decline of the West which argued for German hegemony, a term meaning that the German writer believed Germany deserved to influence the European nations as it willed like a confederation.

D: Man! Was he a supporter of Hitler and the Nazis?

M: Dude! I think Hitler and the Nazis took Oswald Spengler’s perspective to an extreme that the pessimist Spengler could not have foreseen. But Spengler was held in esteem by the Nazis until 1933, when he openly sided against their racialist agendas in the book The Hour of Decision.

D: Man! Kind of like how the Brothers Koch and the Walton Siblings and Sheldon Adelson backed Tea Partiers in an attempt against any government regulation and oversight that paved the way to the present-day obstructionist Congressional Republicans.

Stupidity Begets

(M)an: Dude! Would The New York Times have been any different if Edward Snowden were not White? Would business have gone on as usual and not a nod towards or against any system or order of justice if Snowden were a Middle Easterner?

(D)ude: Man! This is how stupidity becomes criminal! Edward Snowden is how stupidity becomes criminal. And The New York Times is how criminality becomes stupidity.

M: Dude! There is a political double standard in defining terms. When the Republican Party defines terms, it does so quietly and then jeeringly demands immediate alternatives and answers, if challenged. Then, like mafia bosses, the GOP demands an answer to whether the press and critics have attained the same level of comprehension as they certainly have.

D: Man! I think the American Press Corps has adapted well to the deliberate lack of comprehension on their part and on the part of excusing the Republican Party but holding the Democratic Party leadership accountable for every spoken and written word. Stupidity is the stew and the secret ingredient is evangelism. There is more chance for insight watching Joel Osteen reruns than the national news. Have you ever noticed how the critical issues are never genuinely covered in the national news?    

M: Dude! The weathermen and weatherwomen on the national news always choose a dangerous spot on an active highway that has suffered a pileup because of rain or sleet and ice. They look like children ready for a snowball fight or the chance to make snow angels in the treacherous conditions they managed to find for themselves or their audiences, probably both. Their bouncy quilted ski jackets give me the same sort of chills as Victorian porcelain dolls that cackle and blink uncontrollably and Lindsey Wagner’s promo to the Bionic Woman.  

D: Man! There was a knock on my front door yesterday morning and three Jehovah Witnesses carrying their personal Bibles wanted to share God’s words. I told them I preferred my personal copy of The King James Version of the Bible and started to share my perspectives on Proverbs and Psalms. I stopped suddenly when I realized my perspectives were too unique and distinct folly, which the three Jehovah Witnesses might divide and share amongst their brethren at their next assembly.      

M: Dude! How long were the three solicitors of Jehovah at your front door?

D: Man! Less than 9 minutes. I did all the talking, of course, and had a great time proselytizing my audience of three potential plagiarists. I still cannot get over the possibility of the three returning to their brethren with my words of wisdom.

M: Dude! You’re so vain! You’re still overcome by the threat of having your 9-minute sales pitch on behalf of a clearly evanescent Lord being reproduced!

D: Man! I’m so vain that I really think the Psalms are about me? Of course not! One of the three Jehovah Witnesses wrote down their numbers for me to contact them if I felt like discussing the Resurrection and the Afterlife, at least that’s what the brochures they wanted to tout upon told.  

M: Dude! I don’t like those brochures either! They now feature people with undecipherable ethnic identities and auburn hair with occasional blonde highlights. It’s like the parishioners are preparing for that time when we all shall be as one.

D: Man! Are they talking in terms of a smorgasbord or avatar?

M: Dude! Talking about descendants and reproductive freedom, the Affordable Care Act is destined towards success thus far. But with antiabortion legislation being enforced in states like John Boehner’s Ohio- where there is a law known simply as the “Heartbeat Bill” that sides with the life of the fetus over the decision of the mother- there is another trend that the Guttmacher Institute has revealed in its latest press releases.    

D: Man! The Guttmacher Institute? Wasn’t it founded in 1968 as result of the concerns of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon about unplanned and unwanted pregnancies throughout the United States and abroad? And just last year, the Guttmacher Institute was awarded a prestigious grant by the National Institutes of Health, becoming the second institution to be given such an honor without any ties to a University itself.

M: Dude! That’s the one! In its latest press releases, the Guttmacher Institute has found that the protections built in the Affordable Care Act that allow contraceptive coverage with no out-of-pocket cost for women has increased the use of contraceptives, like the birth control pill and the vaginal ring, significantly.   

D: Man! But what is that other trend that the Guttmacher Institute has highlighted in its press releases?

M: Dude! The women- who choose to keep their private health plans that are temporarily protected from the new rules of the Affordable Care Act, private health plans that are referred to in the literature and by the President of the United States as “grandfathered” plans- are being forced to pay for part of their contraceptive care out-of-pocket, specifically for injections and/or IUD forms of contraceptives.   

D: Man! The Republican Party is trying to move the public consensus against the Affordable Care Act, and is weaving religiousness in their tapestry of poverty and destruction that they want to throw over the eyes of the destitute. Haven’t they read American tragedies like Jane Hamilton’s The Book of Ruth or Carolyn Chute’s The Beans of Egypt, Maine?

M: Dude! Those are jarring accounts of what women without resources must endure in terms of the male authority they must defer onto their entire lives.

D: Man! Men are conniving and when men like Mitt Romney insist upon women staying home and raising families without any other avenues for intellectual growth and development for themselves, just tending to the growth and development of countless children in the home, you get enslavement of an entire people, the mother and her daughters and her sons.

M: Dude! Isn’t sex considered the poor man’s polo? It’s contemptible! But if we don’t vote out the Republican Party this November 4, 2014, we will have essentially handed our lives and our sisters and mothers to Robin Goodfellow, let the name and the money not deceive you! Robin Goodfellow will engage in many polo exhibitions. We must protect our daughters, sisters, and mothers as we drown in his vat of venom.