State of the Union: Not As Bad As They'd Have You Believe.

 thepilot.com:

This past Tuesday, President Barack Obama enraged the American right wing by going on national television and pointing out that the United States of America isn’t the barren, benighted hellscape of economic misery and brutal political repression that they make it out to be.

After being introduced by Paul Ryan, the reluctant speaker of the House, the president began his final State of the Union address by talking about the things that have gone right on his watch:

We’ve recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations. Our automakers have had a better year than any year in their history. Millions more Americans have access to needed health care they weren’t previously able to get. Millions more Americans than before are “able to marry the person they love.” And, he said with a grin, “gas under two dollars ain’t bad either.”

The president even praised the reluctant speaker for not shutting the government down. The RS’s response was to sit there, stone-faced, as he did for most of the speech.

This may have seemed a trifle ungracious, but I just figured that the RS was trying to get his mojo back with the Teahadists who have been shrieking for his head since he declined to destroy the country in the name of saving it.

Actually, “stone-faced” was pretty much the entire GOP response during the speech. Republicans wouldn’t even applaud the usually dependable crowd pleaser about how “the United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth.” They wouldn’t applaud the president saying we need to “hunt ISIS down and destroy them.”

They wouldn’t even applaud a proposal for a massive effort to cure cancer. Is the GOP so anti-Obama that they’ve actually become pro-cancer? I’m not saying they are, mind you, but as the folks at Fox News say, it “raises questions.”

Pessimism and doomsaying, it seems, have become the Republican brand. Their front- runner’s latest book is even called “Crippled America,” and his campaign theme is “America is losing everywhere.” (Funny, I remember when such talk was regarded as treason.)

Over the last seven years, the right has gone from sneering, “What has Obama accomplished?” to bitterly attempting to downplay everything he actually has accomplished.

They’ve held dozens of totally symbolic votes, for instance, to repeal Obamacare, that “job-killing takeover of the health care system” that didn’t take anything over and, judging from the low unemployment rate, doesn’t seem to have killed very many jobs.

There have been so many successful Democratic initiatives described as “job killers” that it’s a miracle anyone’s working at all, if the Republicans are to be believed. (Let me just suggest that perhaps they’re not.)

At least in the short run, pessimism appears to be good marketing. Gloom and doom seem to be striking a chord among far too many Americans.

A startling Pew Research study from last year shows that whoever they are — old or young, black or white, Republican or Democrat — more Americans will tell you that their side is losing than will tell you they’re winning. Another poll last year found that 75 percent of the Americans polled said, “The American dream is suffering.”

But in the long term, Americans are not born pessimists. In the second poll I just cited, fully 72 percent of the people who said the American Dream is “suffering” said they themselves were happy with their own lives and were either “living the American Dream or expect to.” That’s extraordinary.

If there’s one thing history has taught us, it’s that the person who brings us the most hope and the most optimistic view of America is the one we eventually choose to lead us. Remember, if you will, Reagan’s “Morning in America.” Remember Clinton’s “I still believe in a place called Hope.” Remember George Dubbya’s “A More Hopeful America.” And of course, remember Obama’s “Hope and Change.”

Those phrases were (and still are) widely mocked — by the people who lost to the candidates who embraced them. Both the Republican and Democratic candidates in the upcoming electoral slugfest would do well to remember that.

When the president ends his speech by saying, “I stand here confident that the state of our Union is strong,” and your only answer is, “Oh, no, it’s not,” then you are not, my friend, pursuing a winning strategy. Nor, more important, are you pursuing one that will lead to a better America.

Another Great ICE CHEST Review!

Thanks to Rosi Hollenbeck of Manhattan Book Review for this fantastic review of ICE CHEST:


"J. D. Rhoades has written a whip-smart and really funny crime novel. Where characters could easily fall into stereotypes, Rhoades finds ways to make them fresh. The dialogue is snappy and entirely believable. There are twists and turns galore and enough heroes to populate a war movie. If you only read one crime novel this year, make it this one. You will be entirely entertained."

You Don't Gotta Have Faith

 thepilot.com

I know it’s an article of faith on the right that President Obama’s Jan. 5 announcement of various executive actions to help reduce gun violence is a tyrannical and blatantly unconstitutional overreach of power. It’s an article of faith that it’s an attempt to deny law-abiding citizens the weapons they need to keep them safe.

But faith, as defined by Paul the Apostle in the Book of Hebrews (Revised Standard Version), is “the conviction of things not seen.” And if you look at what the president actually said and plans to do … well, there’s not a lot to be seen, tyranny-wise.

First, he wants to apply the already existing system requiring a seller to run a background check on people purchasing firearms to anyone “in the business of selling guns,” including at gun shows or over the Internet.

This is an interpretation of existing law that has been supported by such screaming liberals as George Dubbya Bush, Honorable John McCain, and — oh, yes — 90 percent of Americans. At one time, it was also supported by the NRA.

But since the GOP (Grumpy Obstructive Party) has abandoned every principle or belief it ever had other than “if’n Obummer is fer it, we’s agin it,” even the massacre of schoolchildren couldn’t persuade the Republican-controlled Congress to let that pass. As right-wing icon Joe the Not-Plumber put it, “Your dead kids don’t trump my rights.” Catchy slogan, that. Maybe the NRA should put it on their flag.

Second, President Obama wants to make the existing background check system stronger and faster by hiring new examiners and modernizing the computer systems of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). He also wants to strengthen the enforcement of existing gun laws by adding more ATF agents.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has vowed to fight funding for these measures, which puts the GOP in the strange position of opposing effective enforcement of the existing law (see “if’n Obummer’s fer it,” above).

Third, the president wants to take steps to keep the mentally ill from acquiring firearms, a measure widely and vigorously opposed by such paragons of sanity as James Yeager, the fellow from Tennessee who declared on YouTube back in 2013 that he was going to get his gun, fill his backpack with food, and “start killing people” over the last set of proposed executive orders before anyone had read them yet.

Or the people currently barricaded with their guns inside a federal building, promising to “kill or be killed” if anyone tries to dislodge them because “God told them to.” Or Ted Nugent.

Mr. Obama’s speech did not address confiscating those people’s weapons. He does, however, want to fund expanded access to mental health care, “ensure that federal mental health records are submitted to the background check system, and remove barriers that prevent states from reporting relevant information.”

Now here, I’ll allow, we have a provision that will require some scrutiny and a light touch. While I have no problem keeping firearms out of the hands of someone who’s expressed an immediate desire to do themselves or someone else in, no one wants to see people stigmatized and excluded from firearms ownership because, for example, they were once treated for depression or an eating disorder.

As for people who frequently go on the Internet and post long, incoherent screeds in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS with LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!, they should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Finally, Mr. Obama wants more research into “smart gun” technology that allows the gun to be fired only by its actual owner, so that, for example, some kid doesn’t accidentally shoot himself or someone else, or someone who steals the gun can’t use it. “If a child can’t open a bottle of aspirin,” he says, “we should make sure they can't pull a trigger on a gun.”

OK, Mr. President, that may be a bad example. I still struggle to get the aspirin bottle open, whereas most kids I’ve seen can do it with ease. But we take your meaning.

It’s one thing to have faith in the unseen and the unknowable. That’s spirituality. But to have faith in something contradicted by what’s right before your eyes, such as the assertion that “that speech was President Obama exercising tyrannical power to take away all our guns” — that, my friends, is pure wingnuttery.

The End of the Beginning, Not That Some Will Ever Admit It

thepilot.com

If you listen to the doomsayers of our so-called liberal media and to the dire pronouncements of the Frightened Right, you might be tempted to just give in to despair and fear. But let’s look at how some of their previous predictions have turned out:

Remember how Ebola was this terrifying epidemic that was, in the words of CNN commentator (and thriller author) Robin Cook “the scariest thing we can deal with”?

Remember when the panic was so severe that New Jersey Governor and B-list presidential candidate Chris Christie was, on the most dubious legal authority, locking a nurse up in a “quarantine tent,” even though she was showing no symptoms of the disease, purely because she’d treated Ebola patients in Sierra Leone?

Remember how it was going to jump the oceans via international travel and ravage the U.S. any day now?

Well, I’m pleased to pass on this piece of good news: The World Health Organization has declared Guinea, the country where the outbreak began, to be Ebola-free. Sierra Leone was declared clear of the virus in November, and Liberia got a clean bill of health in September.

A couple of cases have since been reported in Liberia, but it does seem as if the major outbreak is over and the disease is in retreat. And, in case you didn’t notice, the mass outbreak that had Americans running in circles with their hair on fire never materialized.

Remember how, when the Iranian nuclear deal was announced, the American right wing, the congressional Israel lobby, and Our Friend Bibi were all shrieking that the dastardly Iranians would never follow through, claiming that they’d be cheating right from Day One, and acting as if President Obama had ensured that we’d be seeing mushroom clouds over Tel Aviv and D.C. within this decade?

Well, I’m pleased to pass on this good news: According to a story in the New York Times, “A Russian ship left Iran on Monday carrying almost all of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium, fulfilling a major step in the nuclear deal struck last summer and, for the first time in nearly a decade, apparently leaving Iran with too little fuel to manufacture a nuclear weapon.”

There’s still a long way to go, but the world is measurably safer from the threat of an Iranian nuke than it was a year ago.

Remember how Daesh (aka ISIS, ISIL, etc) was supposed to be this unstoppable force of invincible desert warriors, unable to be beaten except by a massive influx of American ground troops? (Not that anyone on the Right would actually admit to advocating that, but they’d deride everything else, including airstrikes, as weakness and appeasement.)

Well, I’m pleased to pass on the good news that those invincible desert warriors just got vinced. Daesh just lost the key city of Ramadi to Iraqi troops. Fact is, they’ve lost 40 percent of the ground they took since last year.

It’s gotten to the point where their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had to send out a message to his troops trying to rally their spirits: “If we are killed and the wounds are numerous and the problems amassed against us and the hardships are great, then it is no surprise either.” No, it isn’t, Bubba, and don’t let it be a surprise that it’s going to get a lot worse. This is not the speech of someone who’s winning.

This is very likely why they’re desperately lashing out with attacks like the one in Paris. But even on that front, the news is encouraging. The Belgian police reportedly just broke up an attack planned by ISIS in that country on New Year’s Eve.

Ten major Daesh leaders, including “several external attack planners," have been killed in anti-Daesh coalition airstrikes in the past month, according to coalition spokesman Col. Steve Warren. And the mastermind of the Paris attacks, as we know, was killed by the French police.

So does all this mean that everything’s coming up roses, that all the bad times are over and that, in the words of that annoyingly catchy tune from the Lego Movie, “everything is awesome”?

No. But it means that, despite a sensation-driven media and a grasping political party, all of whom follow a business model based on convincing us all that everything is awful and that the only response to terror is to surrender to it and be terrified, things are getting better.

As Winston Churchill famously put it in 1942, after the Allied victory in the deserts of North Africa: “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

There are those who’d deny all hope, for their own selfish gain. But when they do, try looking at their record for prediction.

2016: The Year In Preview

 thepilot.com:

As another year draws to a close, many columnists and pundits are looking back at the year gone by. But as you well know, this column is always looking ahead. Therefore, we present for your delectation our annual Year in PREview:

JANUARY: President Obama finally caves in to pressure from the American right and uses the words “Islamic extremist” for the first time in a nationally televised speech. All the terrorists immediately lay down their arms and surrender to local authorities. “We have survived the infidel’s smart bombs and drone strikes,” states former jihadist Ali Wali ibn-Babali. “But no one can resist being called by that … that name!”

FEBRUARY: The nation is shocked when The New York Times reports a surprise win in the Iowa caucuses by former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore. Half a dozen other news outlets follow suit. Two days later, the Times admits that its story was wrong and that its only source was a prank phone call from a 16-year-old in Arizona. The paper promises an investigation to determine what went wrong.

MARCH: Faced with sagging poll numbers, Donald Trump takes the unusual step of announcing his proposed vice-presidential pick months before the GOP convention. In front of a crowd of cheering supporters, he announces that he’s choosing Russian President and right-wing darling Vladimir Putin. “Sure, he murders journalists and brutally invades weaker countries just because he can,” Trump bellows, “but at least he’s a leader!” Trump’s poll numbers immediately skyrocket among Republican voters.

APRIL: Donald Trump becomes the presumptive Republican nominee when all the other candidates either disappear or die under suspicious circumstances. Presumptive vice-presidential nominee Vladimir Putin releases a statement that reads: “Putin very sad. But presidential campaign not for weaklings. By the way, Putin was nowhere near any of them. Putin have witnesses.”

MAY: The New York Times claims to have obtained a memo from inside the Clinton campaign regarding potential campaign slogans. Choices reportedly include: “Hillary: Amnesty, Abortion, and Appeasement” and “Hillary: Forced Gay Marriage For Everyone.” Fox News begins a five night series on “Slogan-Ghazi.”

JUNE: The “Slogan-Ghazi” scandal collapses when the source for the bogus “memo” is revealed to be a satirical article published in a junior high school newspaper in Petaluma, Calif. The Times promises an investigation to find out what went wrong. Fox News continues to report the story as true, because, as Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy explains, “We just really hate Hillary Clinton.”

JULY: After the mysterious disappearance of front-runner Donald Trump, the Republican National Convention nominates Vladimir Putin as its nominee, who delivers his acceptance speech shirtless and on horseback. “This ticket is just so manly,” Fox News analyst Andrea Tantaros bubbles, before swooning and falling into the arms of vice-presidential nominee Chuck Norris. The confused and delusional Norris spin-kicks Tantaros off the stage.

AUGUST: Congress opens the first of what will prove to be 17 separate investigations of the “Slogan-Ghazi scandal.” Hillary Clinton, despite having garnered a winning number of delegates at the previous month’s Democratic convention, resigns her campaign, saying, “You know what? (Bad word) this (bad word). You want it, Bernie? You got it. And good (bad word) luck.”

SEPTEMBER: A hastily reconvened Democratic convention quickly nominates Bernie Sanders for president when all of the people who previously said, “I like Bernie better, but we all know Hillary’s going to win,” actually vote their real preference.

OCTOBER: Republican nominee Vladimir Putin’s poll numbers begin to slip when his campaign ads show clips of Latinos, African-Americans, Muslims, and LGBT people being rounded up and shoved into cattle cars. “OK, granted, Putin’s promising a mass internment and probable slaughter that would make the Holocaust look like a Sunday School picnic,” a visibly desperate Sean Hannity insists, “but at least he’s a real leader.” Fox co-host and Putin fangirl Kimberly Guilfoyle attempts to put a good face on the situation before she finally cracks: “At least Putin doesn’t wear mom jeans. … Oh, to heck with it, I’m terrified. How soon can I move to Canada?”

NOVEMBER: To the relief of millions, Bernie Sanders wins the U.S. Presidential election. The New York Times headline the next day, however, reads “Romney Elected in Landslide.” Within 12 hours, the Times retracts its story, admitting that its only source was a late-night drunken voicemail from Karl Rove.

DECEMBER: Fox News, insisting that The New York Times’ retraction of the Romney “victory” story is “nothing but political correctness run amuck” starts a series of investigative reports on “how Sanders stole the election from Romney.”

In short, the coming year will most likely be just like the one just gone by, only weirder. Have a good one!

One Guy's Christmas Movie List

 thepilot.com

It’s Christmas week, folks, so let us put aside our political differences and get into heated arguments over the eggnog about something really important: Christmas movies.

You know how I love to create controversy, and if there’s any topic that’ll do it, this is the one. We all have our favorites; we all have the ones we love to hate. Here’s my own list.

1. Christmas Movie I Just Don’t Get: “Love Actually.”

I know quite a few people who will swear to you that this 2003 multi-plot-threaded rom-com is the greatest Christmas movie ever made. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of those people are female.

The movie certainly has a lot of eye candy for the female gender, what with having Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson — even Alan Rickman before he got all creepy in the Harry Potter movies.

To be fair, for the fellows, we also have Kiera Knightley, Emma Thompson, and the hot blonde from “American Pie” and “Scary Movie.”

But when a movie starts off telling you how romantic airports are, you know you’re getting farther away from reality than even a romantic comedy can justify.

And I’m sorry, but it’s not even all that funny.

2. Christmas Movie That’s Not All It’s Cracked Up To Be: “A Christmas Story.”

Yeah, I said it. OK, Darren McGavin’s a hoot as the creatively profane dad who wins the lamp shaped like a lady’s leg, and I’ll grant you that “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid,” is a passably quotable catch phrase — barely.

But plotwise, the movie’s a mess, stitched together as it is from several short stories by Jean Shepherd. The Chinese restaurant scene is flat-out racist. And that Ralphie kid is just creepy to me.

3. Christmas Movie I Love Even Though a Lot of People Hate It: “Four Christmases.”

Anyone in a so-called “blended” family should be able to relate to this tale of an unmarried but committed couple (Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon) who always leave the country for the holiday to avoid dealing with their eccentric parents, all of whom have divorced and started new lives.

However, when a historic fog grounds their flight and they end up being shown on the TV news story about stranded passengers, they find they can’t avoid spending a raucous holiday with each of their parents and their new families.

I love everything Robert Duvall’s ever been in, but his turn as Vaughn’s crusty, bitter father is one of his unsung gems — both hilarious and ultimately heartbreaking. Dwight Yoakam as the charismatic minister who inspires Vaughn to epic levels of overacting in the Nativity play is also not to be missed.

The movie got terrible reviews, but my friends and I get together and watch it every Christmas season if we can.

4. Flawed Christmas Movie That’s Still Destined to Be a Classic: “Elf.”

Hijinks ensue when Buddy, a human child raised by Santa’s elves, decides to return to the big city to find his birth father.

Will Ferrell plays yet another version of his hyperactive man-child character, and the whole “Central Park Rangers” plot feels like a tacked-on attempt to generate menace with a ripoff of the nasty black horsemen from the “Lord of the Rings” movies.

But the character of Papa Elf is Bob Newhart at his deadpan best, and I defy you not to get all misty when the entire city of New York, including a bar full of bikers, joins together to refuel Santa’s sleigh with Christmas spirit by singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” led in song by the just-plumb-adorable Zooey Deschanel.

5. The Greatest Christmas Movie of All Time, The One By Which All Others Are Measured and Found Wanting: “Die Hard.”

I really don’t see how anyone can argue with this. It’s the story of a man willing to risk everything and overcome impossible odds, just so he can “get together, have a few laughs” with his family at the holiday season. I mean, really, how heartwarming can you get? …

So that’s the list. Let the arguments begin! But play nice. After all, it’s Christmas.