Miss America Is American

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I did not actually watch the Miss America Pageant. While I like the sight of pretty girls as much as the next fellow, I find the whole beauty pageant concept kind of archaic and cheesy.

But like with many televised events (“American Idol,” “Dancing With the Stars,” etc.), who won, who lost, and who said what somehow ends up being reported as actual news.

So when I found out the next day over my morning coffee that the winner was Miss New York, Nina Davuluri, and that she was the first person of East Indian descent to win the crown, my reaction was something like, “Huh. Interesting,” after which I clicked over to see what Dilbert was up to.

The great slavering hordes of the Internet Ignoramii, however, were not so blasé. They immediately took to the Web and showed once again that the ’net disseminates stupidity at least as well as it spreads knowledge. Within moments of the announcement, Twitter blew up with the usual charming folks railing against the idea of a brown person winning the tiara.

“How the [bad word] does a foreigner win Miss America? She is a Arab! #idiots,” wrote one.

“Have we forgotten 9/11?” railed another.

“Congratulations al-Qaida. Our Miss America is one of you,” tweeted a third.

You know, unlike some people on the right who have sounded off recently in the national media and in the pages of this paper, I really am proud of my country. But I have to say I really do start to worry about it when a substantial number of its citizens can’t tell the difference between India and Arabia. Hint: Arabia’s the one with the sand, the camels and the oil, India’s the one with the trees, the cows and the call centers.

Apparently, Fox News Radio host Todd Starnes was miffed because his favorite, Miss Kansas, didn’t win. “The liberal Miss America judges won’t say this — but Miss Kansas lost because she actually represented American values,” Starnes said on Twitter and his Facebook page.

To be sure, Theresa Vail, of Manhattan, Kans., is pretty badass. She’s a veteran of the National Guard, a skydiver, a boxer, and a self-described “grease monkey” who also likes to hunt — with a bow and arrow.

DAAAAAAMN....

She’s a scholarship student in chemistry and speaks fluent Chinese. She rocks a pair of very cool tattoos, which she refused to cover up for the swimsuit competition, saying that her platform was “empowering women and destroying stereotypes,” and that hiding her ink would be hypocritical.

I’d love to have a beer with her, although with that figure, she probably drinks light beer. What the heck. Just this once, I can forgive that. But Starnes and other critics of the choice seems to be saying that Miss Davuluri doesn’t “represent American values.”

Really? She was born in Syracuse, N.Y., to parents who immigrated here 30 years ago. She went to the University of Michigan, where she made the dean’s list, won the National Honor Society Award and the Michigan Merit Award, and graduated with a degree in brain behavior and cognitive science. She wants to become a doctor like her father, her aunt and several of her uncles.

DOCTOR, DOCTOR, GIMME THE NEWS...

Smart, hard-working, focused — sounds to me like both Miss Vail and Miss Davuluri are all-American success stories. But one of them has brown skin and an exotic sounding name, and some people can’t seem to get beyond that, seeing her as just another strand in their ridiculous mental web of imaginary grievances and made-up resentments.

Fortunately, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, and this applies on the Internet as well. The initial wave of racist posts and tweets was met by an even more ferocious wave of online support for Miss Davuluri and derision for the buffoons who can’t tell an Indian from an Arab — or a pretty, bikini-clad honors student from Syracuse from a bomb throwing jihadist.

Let’s let the new Miss America have the last word. Asked about the backlash, she said, “I have to rise above that. I always viewed myself as first and foremost American.”

And isn’t that the truest of American values?

Just Sayin'

In a recent online debate,  some right winger trotted out the old cliche that "Democrats are the real racists because Robert Byrd." 

If your go-to argument to counter the completely accurate observation that today's right wing movement has an ugly strain of racism running through it is to point out that a Democrat, now deceased, was in the Klan in the 1940's and opposed civil rights in the 1960's--over 50 years ago--then you have decisively lost the debate.

Wow. I May Have Been Wrong. Go Figure.

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You know, if this whole Syria thing keeps going the way it seems to be going, I may have to do something unheard of: I may have to admit I was wrong. Shocking, I know.

It’s just been one surprise after another. First, it looked inevitable that Barack Obama was going to, all on his own, order a cruise missile strike on selected, limited targets in Syria, not to topple the Bashar al-Assad regime, but to punish it for using poison gas on civilians.

I’m no fan of either Assad or of poison gas, but as I’ve said here before, getting involved in the dog’s breakfast that is the current multisided Syrian religious conflict will bring us nothing but trouble. And I just didn’t see how a limited strike was going to do any good.

The idea, I suppose, is that Assad would lose a few government buildings, maybe a command center or two, and decide, “Aw, the heck with it, this isn’t worth it,” and get out of the chemical weapons business. Let’s just say I had my doubts.

Then, lo and behold, the lipless little troll actually agreed to give them up. Or so he says.

As I understand it, the sequence of events was this: John Kerry says, in answer to a question about how Assad could avoid an attack, “Well, he could give up his chemical weapons to international control, but there’s no way he’ll do that.”

Russia’s own crazy man, Mad Vlad Putin, goes, “Oh really?” and suggests they do just that. Assad, to the general astonishment of the entire world, says, “Yeah, sure, OK, whatever.”

So does that make it Kerry’s or Obama’s “idea,” since Kerry was supposedly speaking “off the cuff” and not making a serious offer? Or was he making a serious offer couched in an offhand remark? Or was the whole thing really Putin’s idea? Historians will no doubt be arguing about that for a long time, but hey, if it works, it works.

Clearly, that’s a big “if.” Assad could just be stalling for time, although time may not really be on his side. Since President Obama faces an uphill battle getting Congress to agree to the strike, the delay he asked for (and got) on the congressional vote gives him and Joe Biden time to work the phones for an authorization if Assad turns out to be just shining us on.

And whatever else you may have to say about Crazy Uncle Joe, he knows how to work the Senate, while Nancy Pelosi in the House has a much better track record than the current speaker of bringing her caucus in line.

If Assad does back out or drag his feet, he’s given those two some powerful points to persuade the reluctant. And I bet they won’t have to call anyone a “cheese-eating surrender monkey” or accuse them of wanting to cause another 9/11 to do it.

On the subject of that congressional vote, I confess to being a little surprised that President Obama went that way. But I shouldn’t have been. There was really no other route to take if he wanted to stay within the law.

The whole point of an attack on Syria is to punish the regime for violating international law on the use of chemical weapons. But Article One, Section Eight of the U.S. Constitution states that it’s Congress that has the power to “define and punish … Offenses against the Law of Nations.”

Now, you and I know this Congress is about as useful as socks on a rooster, but the law is what it is. And the War Powers Resolution only allows the president to commit American forces in the event of “(1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.” None of that has happened here.

It’s true that multiple presidents of both parties have flouted both of those principles, aided by spineless Congresses that have refused to take action, but that’s a problem, isn’t it?

Anyway, it remains to be seen if these negotiations will result in an actual plan that everyone can agree on. And even if it does, destroying chemical weapons isn’t a matter of dragging them out to the curb Monday morning and leaving them for the trash man.

We’ve been at it with our own chemical arsenal for decades now, and we’re not in the middle of a civil war.

But if President Obama’s “red line” comment and subsequent threat of military action result in even substantial reduction in stockpiles and the cessation of use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, then I will have been entirely wrong about this, and Barack Obama will have been right.

Mark your calendars.

Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Bubble People

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I stood in the window of my office, looking down on a street that was as dark as my mood and as empty as my bank account. From somewhere far off, I heard the sound of a lonely saxophone. I felt a rush of melancholy before I realized it was my ringtone.

I fumbled the cheap cellphone out of my pocket. “Sluice Tundra, private eye,” I said.

“Mr. Tundra?” a female voice said.

“That’s what my mom calls me,” I replied.

The woman sounded confused. “She calls you ‘Mr. Tundra?’”

“We’re not a close family,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“Oh, Mr. Tundra, please come quickly,” she said.

“What seems to be the matter, Miss …”

“Winger,” she said. “And it’s ‘Mrs.’ It’s about my husband. But I can’t talk about it over the phone.” She gave me an address in a neighborhood that was so upscale that even the trash collectors wore Dolce & Gabbana.

When I got there, she was waiting at the door, dressed in a low-cut dress that was as flimsy as the rationale for restrictive voter ID laws. She led me into a luxurious living room.

The guy seated on the couch looked to be in his early 60s. He was a big man, with a disgruntled expression on a red face that looked as though it had never been gruntled. But that wasn’t the strangest thing about him.

“Mrs. Winger,” I said, “does your husband have some sort of immune disorder?” She just shook her head, so I added, “Then maybe you can explain why he’s inside a bubble.”

“I don’t know!” she cried. “It started last summer. And it’s getting worse.”

“I think you’ve got the wrong guy, sister,” I said. “I’m a private eye, not a doctor. I’m not sure what I can do to help.”

“I talked to several doctors. They don’t know what’s wrong. I just need to know who did this to him.”

I tapped on the bubble. It was hard, like plastic. I leaned over. “Can you hear me in there?” I shouted. It was then I spotted the “Romney 2012” pin on his lapel. I had a feeling I knew what this was about. “Mr. Winger,” I yelled. “You know that Romney lost, right?”

“Yeah,” he replied, his face getting even redder. “But only because the takers outnumber the makers! Obama voters just want people to give them stuff!”

“How do you feel about the liberals opposing the president’s proposed intervention in Syria?”

“What opposition? The left are a bunch of hypocrites for being silent about it! Those dirty leftists won’t say anything bad about Obama! Ever!”

“Hmmm,” I said. I turned to his wife. “What does your husband watch on TV?”

“Why, Fox News, of course,” she replied. “Like everyone else. We have it on all the time.”

“And does he listen to the radio?”

“Only conservative talk radio,” she said proudly, adding, “like everyone else.”

I straightened up. “Mrs. Winger, your husband is trapped in the Conservative Bubble. He only watches or listens to things that confirm what he already believes, even if those beliefs have squat-all to do with reality. Like this idea that leftists aren’t speaking up against war in Syria. A lot of them are. Michael Moore, Juan Cole, Markos Moulitsas …”

“Who?”

“See, that’s a sign of being a Bubble Person,” I said. “You complain a lot about what ‘leftists’ say or do, but you really don’t know of any. If you did, you’d know that there’s a lot of arguing on the left about Syria, and a lot of the people arguing oppose intervention.”

“Well, why aren’t the liberal media reporting that, then?” she demanded. “And why are Barack Obama and John Kerry for war in Syria?”

“Maybe because the media aren’t really liberal,” I said. “They never saw a Middle East war they didn’t cheerlead. At least until it goes bad, which it usually does. As for Secretary Kerry and President Obama? On their most ‘leftist’ day, they’re moderates. But you won’t hear that inside the Fox News/talk radio bubble.”

“Well,” she said, her own face beginning to take on the same red shade as her husband’s. “I can see you’re just another one of those people who’ve drunk the Obama Kool-Aid.” As she spoke, the air around her began to shimmer. She was developing a bubble of her own.

“Sorry, lady,” I said. “You asked who did this to him? He did. And now you’re doing it to yourself. There’s nothing I can do for you. I’ll send you a bill for my time.”

I left, headed back to the mean streets, knowing I had as much chance of getting paid as a North Carolina teacher has of getting a pay raise. Some people you just can’t reach.

The Usual Gang Of Anonymous Right Wing Dimwits Continues The Lies On Voter Suppression

My wife Lynn, who's been a poll worker for the Carthage precinct past the five years and a registered voter here in Moore County since 1992, has a letter in the Pilot this week explaining why she's not doing it any more.

The usual gang of right wing fuckwits has showed up in the comments, anonymously attacking her (and me as well, although I'm used to it), and asserting the usual Rethuglican  claptrap about how "it's not a big hassle, why don't you stop whining, and (the biggest lie of all), we need to stop rampant voter fraud."

But even their own leaders are admitting it's not about fraud at all:

"The reduction in the number of days allowed for early voting is particularly important because early voting plays a major role in Obama's ground game. The Democrats carried most states that allow many days of early voting, and Obama's national field director admitted, shortly before last year's election, that "early voting is giving us a solid lead in the battleground states that will decide this election."

Conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly

" I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine.”

Columbus Ohio GOP Chair Doug Preisse, on early voting

"Former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer says he attended various meetings, beginning in 2009, at which party staffers and consultants pushed for reductions in early voting days and hours.
“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.

“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”

So it's not voter fraud they're mad at...they just know more early voters (and African Americans) vote Democrat. I mean, you can't really keep denying it when your party's own officials admit that it's not about voter fraud, it's about suppressing traditionally Democratic voters.

Well, I guess you can. If you're a pathological liar.

Yeah, Good Luck With That One

Florida Man Invokes 'Bush Doctrine' To Justify Shooting Neighbors | TPM LiveWire

Woodward’s attorneys argue that an attack could have been expected based on the words of his neighbors. They go on to mention the “Bush Doctrine,” a concept that justifies a pre-emptive attack based on the need to defend from a threat.

After all, we don't want the smoking gun to be...a smoking gun. Or something like that. 

Well, as a colleague once said, as a lawyer, you can't just stand there and shrug and go, "Eh, I got nothin'," no matter how much you may feel like it.