Piracy On the High Seas

I am somewhat loath to discuss Israel’s latest examples of aggressive self-defense. I belong to an online political discussion group with some friends. We have virtually stopped any discussion of Israel because it immediately devolves from a discussion into an emotion-filled argument with unspoken charges of anti-Semitism directed at any criticism of Israel. Let’s just say for the record that Arabs are Semites too, the cousins of the Jewish race if you believe your Bible stories…or your Qu’ran.

Doesn’t Israel have the right to defend itself? Of course it does. But that right falls a bit short of piracy on the high seas and the murder of civilians (I’m going to keep my criticism to the issue at hand rather than get into any kind of hoohah). Uri Avnery made some interesting points in his own critique on his news site. The arrival of this aid ship wasn’t any surprise to Israel. They’d had months, nearly a year, to prepare a response. And basically, they had three choices. Let the ship go without incident, and undermine their own blockade by doing so. Stop the ship and inspect it for articles of military use…and then let it go, affirming their right to blockade but giving a measured response to a humanitarian effort. Or put their knives between their teeth, drop onto the ship in the middle of the night like a swarm of pirates 35 miles out to sea and when the unarmed civilians aboard try to defend themselves with deck chairs and other improvised weapons, mow them down rather than throw a few canisters of tear gas. Guess which they chose? Arrrrrrrrr, right you are, matey!

Avnery compares the situation to the Exodus incident (a MAJOR motion picture by Otto Preminger from the book by Leon Uris, with Paul Newman as the handsome Israeli!) from Israel’s formative years. Why had the British done something so completely stupid? They weren’t stupid people. No, their actions came from arrogance, Avnery suggests, and that arrogance turned public opinion against them. Israel’s arrogance (and bunker mentality) is fast turning the world against them and they stand to lose their only Islamic ally, the Turks, because of it. Pretty soon, all that will be left to them is the US and as had been noted (in an article I can’t find right now because the net is acting wonky), the new generation of American Jews is not as solidly gung-ho behind Israel as the previous one. Only the Christian right (Glenn Beck IS Christian, isn’t he? We’ll find out when he reveals God’s Plan later this summer) in unquestioning in their support and heck, they’re seeking Armageddon!

The only problem will be finding a replacement for Paul Newman. Hey, Jake Gyllenhaal makes a great Persian!

Responding to Botched Terrorism: I Can Shake My Fist Louder Than You Can

With the world reeling from President Obama’s surprise announcement of Supreme Court Justice–his old friend from Harvard and the U of Chicago Law School, Elena Kagan–you know, the one who’s never sat on the bench? I mean seriously, who announces something like this on Sunday night–you’re supposed to do it at 4:00 Friday afternoon!

I still have to weigh in on the idiotic and unconstitutional Arizona law requiring cops to get ID from anyone they suspect is an illegal immigrant without racial profiling–HEY, all you guys in front of the Home Depot, get out your birth certificates! Vere are your papers! Ach, so, Mr. McCain-o, you were born in Panama, eh, John? or should I call you Juan!

Now, let’s turn to the response to the botched bomb in Times Square. I know, I know, so last week! The would be terroist, Faisal Shahzad–such a loser, not only did he botch the bomb, but he botched the bomb after botching the run-through and then he botched his getaway!–is actually an American citizen. Well, again the Constitution has become a worthless piece of paper–except for the Second Amendment, we can’t have a no-gun-buying list because that would infringe upon the rights of REAL Americans (according to Lindsey Graham). There has been so much fist-shaking (or as one commentator mentioned, “length” comparing) about ignoring Miranda rights for terrorists, stripping them of their citizenship, throwing them against a wall and shooting them, you’d think we were in some bizarro US. Or a 1984 world where Big Brother is some mythical real American, played by Bruce Willis or Kiefer Sutherland! Imagine, Glenn Beck being the voice of reason! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Let’s zip up our flies, gentlemen. the US court system can handle these kind of things without any help from the paranoid fist-shakers. If it can’t convict terrorists caught practically red-handed and we have to throw away our freedoms, heaven help us, the grand experiment turned out to be a failure.

Beckstianity 101–Social Justice is un-American

Now I don’t like to knock a guy twice in the same week. Not that I think it’s unfair, but it always strikes me as a lack of imagination on my part. Surely there’s someone ELSE you can lampoon, Greg. Oh, of course there is–and stop calling me Shirley. But Glenn Beck, bless his pointy little head, has managed to do so.

Of course, last Thursday’s cartoon wasn’t really a mock on der Beckstein (although the text was ). Getting Eric Massa on his show SEEMED like a good idea at the time. How was Beck supposed to know that a Democrat might not be disloyal to President Obama? Or that he would think that male-on-male tickling orgies might be misconstrued as sexual in nature? Or that he would take little Glennie to task for the alacrity with which right-wing commentators and Teabaggers call everyone they don’t agree with Nazis or socialists?

OK so his counterparts on Fox News all told him so. Can’t blame a guy for trying, right?

But he also managed not only to reveal that he never actually listened to the lyrics to “Born in the USA”. I guess for the last 25-and-a-half he’s been looking at the FRONT of the album cover with The Boss’s tight-jeaned butt smiling at the camera in front of a flag, head-banging along and singing BORN IN THE USA every time it came around. Yeah, Baby, Born in the USA! And for 25.5 years he never actually “listened” to the lyrics to find out what Bruce Springsteen had to say. Well, I can understand that, sometimes even us boys from Jersey find it hard to understand New Jersey. But to ADMIT IT, as if he just found out something everyone in America already KNEW! that just boggles the mind.

Only to be topped by his warning to the faithful. Now if you thought 25+ years of cluelessness was bad, check out the evidence of a LIFETIME cluelessness. He told his audience that if they heard the words “social justice” in their churches, they should run away as fast as possible to find some other church that did NOT believe in “social justice”, because “social justice” was nothing less than a codeword used by Nazis and Socialists! Now I’ve commented before on the peculiar form of Christianity some people espouse, the Calvinist belief that the poor are miserable, not just because they deserve to be, but because they WANT to be. Because if they didn’t “want” to be poor, why they’d just pull themselves up by the bootstraps and make a Horatio Alger success of themselves. So any talk of “social justice” actually allows them to go along, living off unemployment and welfare. This he says, in the middle of a recession where 1 out of 6 people of working age is either unemployed or underemployed. Way to go Glenn!

But the corker is that hitherto, lots of church leaders thought Glenn was the bee’s knees. Now, they’re up in arms–because if there’s one thing that Christian churches have in common, it’s preaching charity, helping your fellow man, fighting for social justice, because their founder, that #$%^&* liberal Jesus Christ, said it was important. More important than praying as a matter of fact. Even the Mormons, who most people figure on being iffy Christians–and Glenn Beck, having been raised Catholic, converted to Mormonism in his adulthood. Looks like SOMEBODY hasn’t been paying attention in church for a long long time. I mean, we all try to not listen to sermons, but usually some of what was said sinks in after a few decades of repetition. But it’s just like Born in the USA. Glenn Beck just doesn’t pay attention. He’s off in his own little world, dreaming dreams no man ever dreamed before, because they’re too #$^&*( crazy to begin with.

Well, Glenn’s finally “clarified” his statements–I think now he says he meant Big Government instead of Nazis–and apologized in the standard approved format and his faithful congregation have returned to the fold, knowing that Glenn didn’t really mean what he said, even though he did when he said it. But myself, I’ve got to wonder–does this man even HAVE an attention span?

I guess we’re lucky Eric Massa didn’t try to tickle Rahm Emanuel

Poor Glenn Beck! He was sure he was onto the key to the downfall of Obama’s socialist fascism. Rush Limbaugh told him not to do it. Bill O’Reilly told him not to do it. Michelle Malkin told him not to do it. But…he did it. He booked Eric Massa.

Eric Massa had been loudly proclaiming that he was being forced out of office because he was the key vote for dooming health care. Salivate, Glenn, Salivate! What did they do to you? What kind of pressure did they put on you? Well, I have non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. NEVER MIND THAT–the WHITE House–what did they do? OK, there were these sexual harassment allegations. AH-HAH! And those weren’t true at all? Well, of course, I groped a few people. Guy people. I mean, who doesn’t when you’ve had a few?

Ummmmm…

And then there were the tickle fights. Nothing sexual at all there. How can you say that’s sexual harassment?

Ummmmm…

I’ve been fighting these charges all my life. What we need to do is campaign reform! Stop calling each other names like socialist, fascist! You can be a progressive and a fiscal conservative at the same time! What we don’t need are these teabaggers pretending the deficit didn’t happen until Barack Obama took office.

Ummmmm…

Don’t worry Glenn, you didn’t waste our time. THAT night. Now try not wasting it every OTHER night!

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ABOUT MEH

Cartoons and text by Greg Uchrin (aka Gregorius alexandrinus), with the able assistance of Fred and Bert Squirrel, with special appearances by George Dymme. Published once a week on Mondays.

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