The state of the Union

 Dunblane "Slam" Doerr, U.S. Very Special Agent, testifying
before a House Committee against HR 6357.

A U.S. congressman has introduced a bill to make it illegal for your government to kill you without due process.

Last Friday, US Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced HR 6357, a bill which aims to ‘prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens’ by the federal government. In other words, in the Land of the Free, they need to pass a law to prevent the government from indiscriminately murdering its own citizens.

However, the bill has run into unexpected opposition. Rep. DeLancy Street, the much-loved Plutocrat Party congressman from New York, spoke against it in a House chamber populated by four congressmen, 17 ushers, and one spectator.

According to the Congressional Stuck Record, Rep. Street delivered himself of the following comments:

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to Bill HR 6357 introduced by my distinguished colleague Mr. Kucinich. This is a deeply flawed piece of legislation which will drag this great Congress's name through the mud in 49 states plus Arizona.

At my instigation, the nonpartisan Center for Citizen Assassination conducted a study of the projected outcomes were this bill to become law. The resulting report should be disquieting to any fair-minded person.

According to the CCA analysts, every "black ops" killing is directly responsible for creating 2.7 jobs. That's 2.7 tax-generating, "shoot-ready" jobs in high-tech fields such as drone piloting. But that's only the tip of the lettuce -- er, strike that -- of the iceberg. 

Domestic assassination further supports an administrative staff of 72,477 federal workers (women and minorities especially encouraged to apply). With our country's well-known employment problems, I hardly think it is time to put these patriotic men, women, and trans-sexuals out on the street. And for what, I ask you, for what? To prevent the removal of members of hate groups brought the attention of our government through the tireless cooperation of the Southern Propertied Watchbird Center?

At this very moment, no less than 2.5 million hate group members identified by the SPWC are being targeted for

The transcript of the congressman's remarks ends at this point.

Olympian detachment

Max Hastings of the Financial Times is worried that Britain will detach itself from the European Union in a fit of absent-mindedness. (Registration required for link.)

A new YouGov-Chatham House poll shows that 57 per cent of respondents want a referendum on continued British membership of the EU, in which 49 per cent would vote to leave. The poll also asked so-called “opinion-formers”, who unsurprisingly make a different judgment: 53 per cent oppose a referendum, and 63 per cent favour continued membership. But it seems rash to underrate the danger that, during the next decade, Britain will leave the EU almost by accident, because nobody has sold the arguments for staying in.

Righto, Max, nobody has "sold" the arguments for staying in, as long as you don't count the Labour and Tory parties, the BBC, virtually every British daily paper, and the rest of the "opinion formers" to which he refers. 

Interesting phrase, that. Apparently it is now assumed that in the U.K., you have opinions formed for you by Those Who Matter. D.I.Y. opinions are no longer à la mode.

Hastings has exercised his cerebrum in root cause analysis.  

The nation currently lacks a vision of how it will earn its living through the 21st century, a vision that the coalition government seems unable to provide. 

Could there be a more concise "vision" of statism? God help a Britain where individuals decide for themselves how they will earn a living. That's the government's job. The Soviet Union never failed to tell its miserable population how to earn a living.What's that, Comrade? You feel the call to dedicate yourself to astronomy? Sorry, Boris, it's just not on. Report to the Magnetogorsk steel plant Monday at 6 a.m.

British EU membership has been a key element in the nation’s identity for 40 years. But it is now in serious question, because many British people see not just the euro, but also the EU, as a failure. They wish to escape, though with no coherent or credible idea of where else to go.

Why must they go anywhere else? Why can't Britain just be Britain? (Well, for one thing, it's now a Bantu-Islamic catchment area, but that is -- in the currently ubiquitous phrase -- another conversation.)

As British as rain, steak-and-kidney pie, and the EU, eh, Max? Begging your pardon, but it has been a key element in the identity of the trans-party, trans-national, trans-everyone-but-themselves financial Establishment. The rest of the British people have a bad attitude about the EU partly because people like you have never been willing to permit them to vote in a referendum on the subject. They are stubbornly cross about being told which shoe they are to put on first in the morning by a professional technocrat elite in Brussels.

The difficulty facing the political class, including those who recognise the economic importance of EU membership [who else but the political-economic limousine class?], whatever its difficulties, is that nobody today knows what the Europe of the future will look like.

Or maybe they know, and that's why they want no part of it.

A semi-appreciation of Gore Vidal

Well, gosh. The old boy's pegged out. I will miss him.

Probably not many on my conservative side of the political spectrum feel the same. But I admired him without, usually, agreeing with his arguments. He was the rare leftist who could write with elegance and spirit. (The late Christopher Hitchens was another. I miss him, too.)

I've read Vidal a fair amount, although not much in recent years. When I sampled his later essays, they seemed like the doodles of a crackpot. How to account for an obviously intelligent man indulging in such tosh? 

Here's my guess. Vidal had the temperament of an artist. He wasn't a great one, but still, an artist. He approached every subject as a writer, a craftsman, not a critical thinker.

As the years added up, I suspect this world began to seem less and less real to him, as happens to some aging people. Eventually it became a kind of game: to see how far he could go with outrageous, absurd positions while still being entertaining and retaining his old style and wit. I haven't read any of the obits, but I suppose the words "style" and "wit" will figure prominently, and fair enough.

Unlike today's young left-wingers, Vidal actually knew history. His historical novels like Julian, Creation, and Lincoln display insight into personalities, times, and places. I haven't read his campy stuff like Myra Breckinridge and don't intend to, but at its best his fiction does him credit. As do some of his essays and articles, mostly the earlier ones.

Finally, I respect him as a homosexual who didn't conceal it but, as far as I know, kept it a private matter. I'd like to believe there are still many gay men like that. If so, they just go on about their lives normally and you don't hear about them. It's the screaming faggots that get the media attention, of course.

The journalists with literary pretensions will doubtless claim that he was the last in some great line, the torchbearer of a generation of whatever. Baloney. Gore Vidal wasn't part of a pack; he was Gore Vidal. And that wasn't so bad.

Summertime ... and the viewing is queasy

How loathsome does the background of a film have to be to cancel out technical virtues? It's a question that comes up for me often these days, and I have trouble resolving it about the 2001 movie Training Day.

I first saw it some years ago on video and was sickened by its LA inner city setting. Yet scenes from Training Day have stuck in my mind since; feeling slightly guilty, I borrowed the Blu-ray disc from Netflix to see how it would go down on a second viewing.

No route around it: the script and direction are far superior to most bent-cop action movies. The storyline doesn't try to outsmart itself or its audience -- aside from a few contrivances, it actually makes sense, with just enough, but not too many, twists. Director Antoine Fuqua and David Ayers, the script writer, build dramatic tension by tightening the screws within scenes as well as from one to the next. Finally, Denzel Washington -- as the narc who makes his own law -- is both winning and creepy, with immense screen presence.

But that's not why I'm bothering to write about Training Day. It has one other -- I suppose you have to call it -- distinction. I've never seen a film that so unsparingly portrays the dysfunctional world of inner city black and hispanic life. It's all there: the ugly clothes and tattoos, the incessant vulgar language, the ear-battering rap music, the threatening attitudes, violence. No sentimentality, no hearts of gold.

The "making of" feature on the disc shows that it was actually shot in some east LA hellhood, with real gang bangers as atmosphere and real rap "stars" in supporting roles.

What am I complaining about? Shouldn't the sets, actors, and extras for a drama be as realistic as possible, particularly when the environment is essential to plot points?

Yes, but. I don't blame the director and actors for creating a vivid, if often disgusting, picture of the terrible life "style" of the urban underclass. Still I'm appalled by an audience that considers it cool, or just normal, hey it's all good.

What would an audience who lived in Los Angeles in the 1930s say if they watched Training Day and saw what had become of parts of their city? Oh, sure, there were mean streets in the city then too -- Raymond Chandler sometimes described them -- but at their worst nothing like the depravity in this film.

Out of curiosity I looked at the customer reviews at Netflix and IMDb. To judge from the writing, most were by young people, and rightly touted it as an exciting movie. Maybe it's asking too much for sociological comment too. But nothing I read indicated any reaction other than acceptance of the blighted life that drug dealing, the welfare state, and the Mexican invasion have created. Sometimes, tolerance creates the intolerable.

Latest event at Olympics: Free speech tossing

 Thought criminal (before the purge)

It's no longer just a case of Black Run America, as Paul Kersey styles the U.S. It's now Black Run World. For example:

A Greek triple jumper has been expelled from the Olympics after she posted a racist joke on Twitter.

Voula Papachristou was kicked out of her national team for mocking African migrants and expressing support for a far-Right political party.

The Olympics, which began in the world's first democracy, have now signed on to the Universal Tyranny. Welcome to the world of You Can't Say That. Up next: the world of You Can't Think That. You need words to be able to think forbidden thoughts, and the political correctness police will abolish words that offend any group. No trial, no appeal. You have been warned.

Freedom of speech: going, going ...

The corporate-Olympics complex

 Member of elite anti-Pepsi unit prepares for action.

If you've planned years in advance to gather tickets for the London Olympics, flown 8,000 miles to get to London, paid over the odds for accommodation, and negotiated satanic traffic jams to reach the stadium ... don't wear a Pepsi T-shirt to the games or the "security" crushers might toss you out on your ear.

Games boss Sebation Coe warned anyone wearing a Pepsi T-shirt is likely to be booted out because it would upset sponsors Coca-Cola. And he only said spectators in Nike trainers “could probably” be allowed in although Adidas are also backing the event.

Coe defended the draconian move and said it was to protect corporate sponsors who have paid a fortune to be involved.

No concealed carry permits will be issued for Pepsi cans, even to licensed Pepsi executives, said U.K. Defence Secretary Ronald Cleave-Simple. "Better safe than sorry," he said.

Light airplanes towing Pepsi banners will not reach
the Olympics stadium, officials have vowed.

Olympics Security officials told Reflecting Light that they know of no specific plans targeting the games with Pepsi paraphernalia. The threat level remains at the newly created category of Coca-Cola yellow.

About 12,000 police, 3,000 volunteers, Typhoon fighter jets, helicopters, two warships and Pepsi disposal experts are also part of the vast program aimed at securing the London Games.

 Specially designed Coca-Scopes can destroy a Pepsi can
at a range of 5,000 meters.

London's Olympic Organizing Committee said in a statement that the anti-Pepsi plan was "big and complex, but we have the best brains in the security business working on this — Home Office, Metropolitan Police, MoD (Britain's defense ministry) and the newly created 25th Coca-Cola Armored Regiment."

In a tense 11th-hour meeting, security heads and Adidas Brand Guard leaders are reported to be debating the advisability of tasering Nike-shod spectators. "You'd think it was a no-brainer, the kind of decision we're trained for," said an unnamed party to the talks. "But there are fears that tasered individuals might react by making sounds that would distract the athletes."