Fort Hood Shooting

I continue to be fascinated by the Fort Hood shooting in Texas last week. The story has it that a Muslim of Palestinian descent born and raised here in the USA and educated by the Army, a Major by rank and a psychiatrist who has been treating soldiers for mental fatigue and stress related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a man of deep Muslim faith who had himself been subjected to anti-Muslim taunting by his fellow soldiers even, finally cracked and went on a shooting rampage on-base where he was able – presumably with the help of Allah – to shoot something like 51 people, 13 of them fatally, using two personally-owned handguns over the course of several minutes and maybe even in two different locations before finally being taken down by four bullets from a civilian policewoman.

I have to admit, that is quite an accomplishment! God must be some kind of good if He enabled that!

Everyone, now including Connecticut’s Jewish (independent right-wing neocon Democrat) senator Joseph Liberman is using this event to make political hay, both on the right and on the left (but mostly on the right).

Political correctness has it that the shooter was a coward and a traitor so woe be to anyone who tries to shed any understanding on how this war on Islam could possibly cause an American soldier to snap. Instead, it is politically correct to brand this as terrorism and the proper reactionary response to terrorism (proper in a pro-Israel sense) is to lash out against Islam.

Oh yay.

Believe This

It was a year ago that Americans voted for change we hoped we could believe in. Today we discover how wrong we were. The Obama administration today set the example for what we as a nation now expect for an elected government to be legitimate.

Jews Don’t Discriminate

Or do they?

Who’d A Thunk

I noticed in today’s news that the brother of Afghanistan’s president is reportedly on the CIA payroll. This is the very same brother who is suspected of being deeply involved in Afghanistan’s corruption, or more specifically, Afghanistan’s booming opium and heroin trade. For more information I point to The New York Times.

Presumably our CIA doesn’t have the resources or the skills needed to determine if this man is indeed involved in the drug trade or for that matter in any other kind of corruption in Afghanistan.

Would someone please remind me what the CIA’s function is?

Moosehead Grows

Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission which we all call LURC (as in lurk or snoop around, “to lie in wait in a place of concealment especially for an evil purpose”) held a hearing Wednesday on the “concept plan” for development of Plum Creek land in the Moosehead Lake region of Maine. The purpose of this hearing was to announce that LURC had approved the plan, thus terminating a process that has been going on for the past four years.

This is all in my back yard, so to speak. Plum Creek owns much of the land in and around Greenville. Plum Creek is a Seattle-based timber management company turned real estate management company when forest development markets soared in the past decade. They bought Maine forest land cheap in the late 1990s and now wish to market some of it to the public for big bucks, a process which, if it happens, could significantly alter the Moosehead Lake area. Likely consequences for my home town would be increased real estate valuations, increased demands for public services possibly including Greenville’s schools, fire department, and police, increased taxes, increased in-town traffic, and a general deterioration of the myth of Greenville and Moosehead Lake being remote wilderness. These potential negatives would supposedly be offset by the increased revenues for Greenville area residents who take advantage of employment opportunities related to these developments.

I personally don’t know what to make of all this. If this development does actually happen, it could and probably would significantly impact me personally. Although there might be benefits, there would almost certainly be drawbacks including significant increases in my property tax burdens. But the larger question is what would become of my town? How will this much development alter the Greenville and the Moosehead Lake that everybody who knows them loves?

Nobody has an answer to that question. Now LURC has made it clear that nobody really cares. It’s the money that counts.

Squatters

Last night I was at the American Folk Festival in Bangor. Friday is the first day of this 3-day 5-stage music and food and craft fair event and the music starts at 6:00. Today, Saturday, is a cold wet day so I think we'll be skipping it till tomorrow, staying home to make blueberry jam instead.
I had an absolutely wonderful evening, though, listening to music and milling around in the huge crowd. I've never seen that many people on a Friday night at that festival. But it was 1:00 in the morning before I got into bed back home. We were even stopped on the edge of our own town in an apres-midnight police roadblock. This morning I was reading a Bangor Daily News blog about everybody bitching and moaning about the finances of the festival. Hey I think the bucket brigade is a wild idea. I enjoy the guilt trip! The one bitch I've had, well there are two truth be known, but the big one is that nobody has been allowed to stand in front of the stage at the Railroad Stage, the biggest stage and viewing area of the festival. Instead, people sit in these folding camping chairs that they all bring with them. It's a first-come-first-served sort of thing where rules of etiquette would forbid any polite person from standing in front of one of these camp-chair space hogs. It's like the seated people have precedence. Well it burns my ass that these people set up camp close to the stage so nobody can go stand down there. It was even worse last year when the festival organizers had set up a VIP seating section and through most of the shows nobody sat anywhere close to the stage, empty seats! What a drag that must be on the musicians!
Well anyway, I've come up with a name for these camp-chair real estate hogs. From now on I'm calling them squatters. Go to hell if you don't like my attitude.

Massholes

I generally don't think of myself as agressive and as I age I am becoming even less so. But I generally don't think of myself as passive aggressive either, as hiding my aggression and venting it in unexpected ways. But I don't know, maybe I should reconsider. I've been spending time on America's Interstates and tollways this summer. Maybe I am inclined towards passive aggression. I'm thinking maybe I need a bumper sticker that reads "Passive Aggressive Driver, Don't cross me" on it.
Here's the reason I'm thinking this.
For some reason it is becoming much more expensive to fly into Bangor or Portland or Manchester than it is to fly into Logan in Boston. My daughter is coming home this summer and is flying into Logan for this reason. You can literally save hundreds of dollars if you are willing to drive into Boston to fly in and out of Logan.
Well I've never been to Logan and up until yesterday I had only driven in Boston twice in my life, once last year to a Red Sox game, and once many years ago at midnight just for the thrill of it. Other than that I have always used either the I-495 bypass or Route 128.
Massachusetts drivers have a reputation. The Urban Dictionary nails it head-on. We have tons of Massachusetts drivers here in Maine since Maine is for them a nearby playground and an easy escape. We know they live up to this reputation. But there's nothing like actually going down there to Boston and being absolutely surrounded by them! Well that is, there was nothing like it until recently. Now half the drivers on any Interstate in the country drive 10 to 20 miles per hour over the limit and will cut you off any chance they get and some states are even considering legislation that gives priority on the highway to the aggressive drivers.
But I digress...
So yesterday afternoon my wife and I drove into Boston and went to Logan to have a look around. As near as I can tell there are only two exits from Logan as opposed to the three ways in. We took the road in that doesn't involve toll tunnels under the city. We came in from the north on US Route 1A. But to get out, we paid $3.50 for the thrill of driving through a mile or two of tunnels until we could come out on I-93 northbound.
Imagine being under the ground in long narrow holes, merging left as lanes end, rounding curves, exiting left, exiting right, far exceeding speed limits, and surrounded by massholes.
So I'm thinking what the nation needs for self defense is some way to fight back and I'm thinking aggressive driving is the problem and not the sollution. Passive driving gets you into trouble, not out of it. So I'm thinking the solution must be passive aggressive - passive agressive driving - like "watch out you massholes, you're dealing with something different here, something unpredictable."
And I'm thinking I should post a warning on the left rear corner of my car to alert them of the danger, thus my idea for this new bumper sticker...
PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE
DRIVER
Don't cross me