pot-shots

pot shot!

The AAPD has decamped the last of the Occupy Ann Arbor tents from Liberty Plaza. The city council and mayor finally concluded that it was now politically safe to do so. And so they did.

Bug out fail. Admittedly this small time grifter isn't the brightest star in the sky but it would be informative to see why his go-to-ground efforts failed.

Prominent neo-conservative blowhard Robert Kagan explains why it's America's duty to the world to spend huge amounts of blood and treasure to police the globe. So embrace the suck and "git r done" America! The world needs us!

Neo-cons pushing us into another war nobody wants

"These let’s-bomb-Iran crowd consists of the same politicians and pundits that not so long ago were warning that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the world-as-we-know-it would come to an end unless the U.S. invaded Iraq." [American Conservative]

Why Republicans can't do foreign policy without seeming like hypocrites

Leon Hadar has a piece over at The American Conservative where he posits that libertarians can't do foreign policy because of their convictions. What that really amounts to is that libertarians only will engage in wars of defense on American soil or the high seas. They would not roam the world looking for monsters to destroy. Republicans have the same problem though. Call it cognitive dissonance or call it hypocrisy the outcome is the same. You can't call for the the government to leave you alone at home and then send the government's soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen all over the world to rebuild nations and reformulate their cultures more to our liking. That in a nutshell is what the neo-conservative, Christian zionist wing of the GOP do on a regular basis.

America will be permanently at war. So get used to it.

"In previous decades, the military and the American public viewed war as an aberration and peace as the norm."  But not any more. (Greg Jaffe @Washington Post)

What imperialism, globalization, and neo-con leadership (from both parties) leads to. Endless war, endless casualties, billions of dollars wasted.

Weblog

My back yard, a rose in a vase, and Molly

Garry Lillie dies at 70 (Ann Arbor.com)
Lillie was an Ann Arbor-based realtor, Vietnam veteran and life-long veteran's affairs advocate who was well liked. I met him a few times and he seemed like a good guy.

Things are bad out there: "You know the economy is in bad shape when customers can’t afford to shop at dollar stores anymore." (Slate)

The end of "right-wing progressivism" (Jack Hunter AKA The Southern Avenger @ American Conservative)
America can't afford to "make the world safe for democracy" or anything else. We're broke, exhausted, and have problems of our own we need to deal with.

Mobile credit card reader app makes a great simple money launderer (Popular Science)
"A simple tool that can turn any iPhone into a credit card machine can also be a simple way for crooks to steal cash, hackers demonstrated this week. Square can eliminate the hassle of money laundering."