Curb Your Enthusiasm
Barack Obama won convincingly in South Carolina, getting twice as many votes as Hillary Clinton. I’m happy for him and his supporters.
The rest of the analysis is hogwash. The combined turnout for the South Carolina primaries was about 40%. Not bad for second worst state in the nation for voter turnout, only Hawaii has lower turn out for Presidential elections, but not that great for a state that has open primaries and no party registration.
If this meant that South Carolina’s 8 electoral votes would be cast for a Democrat I might be a bit happier, but come November, South Carolina will vote for the Republican, not in any great numbers, but sufficient to put the state squarely in the red column.
Clinton still leads in the delegate count, and “momentum” exists only in the mind of the media pundits. They are trying to push things to an early conclusion, and it isn’t going to happen.
In other news – “none of the above” is gaining on Rudy Giuliani and Ron Paul for fourth place in the Florida Republican primary.
15 comments
So… who wants to take a shot at guessing what Redneck USA will do if Obama becomes Prez? 😉 Or Hillary for that matter… though she is at least white.
Wonder what Obama would do if he hears that a ‘good ol’ boy po-lice man’ beats the crap outa some nigger for looking at him?
And…
Oh… never mind.
We have progressed a little bit beyond the 1950’s in the South, but the Klan Krap never completely fades, Kryten.
Now we have the problem of those who never experienced segregation not understanding what those who did are talking about. They don’t understand why their parents are going ballistic about certain words, because everyone they know uses the words all the time. They don’t understand the context, and their parents don’t understand why their kids don’t get it.
There are still areas off the beaten path where you can find the “old rules” intact, and people need to be aware of it, because their lives may depend on it. In addition to knowing where you are, you need to know “when” you are in the social evolution of the South, and to some extent in a number of larger cities.
We’ve come a long way, but the road isn’t any shorter.
That’s true (and for the record, those issues are NOT exclusive to the USA!) South Africa and many other nations still have inter-racial tensions and problems. Apartheid may be *officially* dead, but many still believe or practice it out of sight. Even some parts of Australia still resent the Aborigines (what we call the ‘Indigenous Population’ now).
I think the real issue for me is the *Justice* system generally and the dramatic change in Police attitudes and behavior in recent years. And not just recently.
When I visited NYC some 20 odd years ago, I decided to go for a walk just after 10PM. My body hadn’t adjusted to the time zone difference and I was curious. I’d arrived at my Hotel about mid-afternoon, and gone exploring for awhile, then had a nap. I must say I was fascinated. 🙂 But the change late at night was dramatic! The big Hotel foyer doors were closed and two big *doormen* were guarding them. When I approached the doors to leave, one walked over and asked where I was going. He was polite but weary. Having returned from Cambodia and the Mid-East o few years earlier, I could sense the tension. I asked what the problem was, and I was informed that the streets at night could be dangerous for a tourist on their own. After some discussion, I convinced them I could take care of myself and went out. The parting advice from the doorman was “Just look crazier than everyone else. You should be OK.” The change from the day was dramatic. After awhile, I became disoriented and lost my bearings for a bit (probably jet lag etc). I saw a lot of Police patrolling in pairs during my walk. I approached a pair on a corner to ask directions. When I got to within a few meters, I was ordered to stop and not come closer. I tried to say I was a tourist and lost, but they kept telling me to keep my distance. They directed me to a Police Station (Precinct House? I think it was) a few blocks away. The Police station was in absolute bedlam and stank! In the end I just left and retraced my steps and managed to find the Hotel. I felt people watching me as I went, and could sense some calculation whether I was worth the trouble. I found myself moving as I did in Cambodia when we entered a large village! I could never shake that feeling and it stayed with me to this day. It was just so incongruous! I kept saying “Get a grip! This is America!” But I couldn’t shake the feeling of someone deciding whether or not to attack me.
However, on the plus side, I did discover the wonderful NY Deli’s (during the day). LOL I practically lived in Blooms and others. 🙂
We had a similar situation in the Northern territory. You didn’t go out at night unless you really had to.
In the USA, the Police powers are growing and Police are harming and killing more citizens than ever. They cite the dangers of the job. I saw a report recently that said that in fact Police security was quite good. More tradesmen are killed on the job (especially fishermen!) than Police. So for me, it just looks like an unofficial Police State. And that’s the problem. The USA has more people per capita in Prison than any other Nation. That’s insane. It seems to me the Police cause more problems than they solve.
To me the question is: Why do groups such as the KKK exist today, and who is controlling the agenda and fueling the fire? I am sure it’s more political these days rather than based on ignorance and neo-religious (pagan) beliefs (I mean as the driving force).
Then of course I see things such as this Baptist minister teaching his flock to hate gays etc and attacking Heath Ledger and claiming it’s God’s justice for his role as an actor in Brokeback Mountain. When I see news clips of young children spewing hatred for a group of people, I shake my head and feel that the World is *normal* again, and I understand why groups like the KKK exist.
You know… tolerance can be a vary good thing, it can also be an anchor around your neck. Some things should NEVER be tolerated. What evil has been done in the name of tolerance and intolerance? And of course we have Political Correctness now. LOL Another term for control.
I once new a lady from Louisiana, and she was wonderful in so many ways. 🙂 We had some great conversations and she went out of her way to help people when she could. But on rare occasions, she would say something that would make me look at her to see if she was joking with me. But she wasn’t. And I’d sigh. I am not saying all are like that, she is the only Southerner I got to know at all well, and 99% of the time, she was a wonderful person. I guess that’s a better average than most of us! I am not perfect and don’t claim to be. But I will try to catch myself when I say something intolerant and try to change that little attitude in myself. It’s very difficult and confusing at times. All I have to do usually is think of the bodies of innocent children I saw in Cambodia. It’s easier to group people into simplistic categories I guess.
I am not at all sure what the answer is. I have ideas about that… But who truly knows.
This Republican “law and order” garbage is really annoying for me because I spent a decade in law enforcement. I wanted all of my resources committed to preventing and solving crimes that had victims. I had no interest in vice crimes, because no one was safer if I made an arrest.
People like Rudy Giuliani made their reputation supposedly fighting crime at a time that everyone in the field knew crime was about to take a nose dive when the “baby boom” hit 46, because crimes are committed by males between 15 and 45. If you look at the statistics, you’ll see the crime rate dropping in 1992 and going down ever since.
All of the policy changes and extra prison sentences and different policing methods had no effect – the crime rate is directly proportional to the number of males between 15 and 45.
A lot of people who understood what was going to happen cynically used the knowledge to start programs that they could claim had an effect on the crime rate, but that’s a lot of garbages.
We are wasting billions of dollars on the “war on drugs” that would be better spent on education. It’s cheaper to send a kid to college than to prison, but politicians can’t get re-elected unless they can scare people, and then claim to have removed the threat.
I hear what you are saying. And please don’t get me wrong. In my 14 Months in the USA, I made some great friends. 🙂 And even got a to know a couple decent cops (who spent most of their time bitching about politicians and their superiors etc!) LOL They figured I was safe to vent frustration on, and I was. I always keep stuff people tell me that might be sensitive between us. Was one of the things that got me in hot water in intel later. 😉 But I figured if I had to compromise my principals to get the job done, it wasn’t worth doing.
Having worked in law enforcement, it must be tough on you to see what’s happening. I know it was tough on me to see Howard destroy everything I worked for.
What do we do when the *solution* becomes worse than the *problem*?
I sometimes think now that maybe I should have… played ball with the others I worked with back then. I burned almost all my bridges and paid the price. I knew way too much about *things*. The way *things* were done, and who did them. I know I am only still alive today because I did manage to keep a few high-profile friends who had at least some scruples, and I took out some insurance with certain… powerful old family members… who worked in construction and the docks etc.
It was like living in two worlds when I was a kid. But I learned how to survive, leaned the value of silence, and keeping eyes & ears open. That part of my family came from very tough places, and had to be hard to survive. But they always looked out for family. They hated the mafiosi families, because they said the mafia just made things bad for everyone. Was OK to take a little hear and there, do special favors… but nothing to heavy. The Italian/Sicilian mafia families were bad enough, but now we have the Russian Mafia, and they are far worse! Life means nothing to them. You don’t get warnings or chances. You just get dead. They are bad in the USA too I hear.
Sometime I really wonder who is actually running things.
To understand Russian organized crime you have to understand the Soviet penal system. The KGB wore different hats in the Soviet system, but criminal policing wasn’t one of them. The regular police, the militia, dealt with standard crimes.
In addition to their intel role, the KGB were the border guards, the political police, and the prison guards.
In a Soviet prison, criminals had higher status than political prisoners. The KGB didn’t arrest them, so they didn’t care, and the criminal class was useful on the outside in dealing with problems where a KGB presence would be embarrassing or cause a problem with the militia.
Russian organized crime is the Soviet criminal class being lead by former KGB officers. They have dossiers on people, so they don’t worry about being caught or prosecuted, it isn’t going to happen. They are as ruthless as any drug gang on the planet, and are much better organized. Essentially the police are fighting black ops, not crime, and most police departments aren’t prepared for it.
They are a valid target for counter-terrorism forces, but they are classified as criminals. The same goes for many drug gangs, but the counter-terrorism people won’t accept the responsibility, so a lot of police the department are militarizing.
The military and the police are two separate entities with distinctly different “rules of engagement”. In the Air Force, for example, there are two separate specialties depending on whether an individual is working in law enforcement or working in security. The security specialty is close to being an infantryman, with law enforcement is like a civilian police force. For years it was easy to tell because law enforcement wore the blue uniform and carried pistols, while security wore fatigues and carried M-16s. The weapons difference is still there, but everyone wears green camo these days.
Too many police departments have forgotten what their primary job, protecting citizens, is and have gone “cowboy”. It isn’t a good thing.
That’s what happened here under Howard. Dunno what the f***** moron was thinking!! He gave our bunch of incompetent, corrupt buffoons (ASIO) too much power and took away what little oversight they had! ASIO make the current day CIA seem very competent and efficient! I wouldn’t trust ASIO to tell me the time with any degree of accuracy! And thanks to Howard, ASIO now have semi-police powers (previously reserved for the Commonwealth Police, our equivalent of US Marshals/FBI kinda)! God help us! The only saving grace is they are too incompetent to abuse the new powers (so far! They are slow…)
Yeah… I know how bad it can be.
Here, Howard tasked ASIO with the *Russian* problem! *sigh* That was the Com. Police’s job, and they were doing a good job too! They busted up a couple big Russian drug rings here. ASIO have managed to do nada in 4 years! There are only two outcomes possible with ASIO, either they will screw up big, or nothing at all will happen. I refer anyone who doesn’t believe me to the Chasers incident at APEC.
A big problem in mixing internal and external tasking is that you can’t use the same people or they get “made”, marked as agents and worthless for infiltration. You need specialized units to deal with the job and you need to take the long view.
I remember being assigned to work at a local college that was host to a traveling Russian high school basketball team on a “good will” tour. Their minder was a KGB officer I had run into in Frankfurt. I thought he was going to have a cat when he saw me. He was playing equipment manager, or some such dubious role. It didn’t occur to him that there really weren’t that many Russian speakers in the US,
I ran into him again in San Diego at a Russian art exhibit. He must not have progressed very rapidly, or he was trusted only on trips to the US. Again, it was just that I was one of the few people around who spoke Russian and got “volunteered” to help. I tired to convince him that it was just a coincidence, as seem to constantly happen in Dr. Zhivago, but he was really rattled. I thought it was funny.
I think part of the Chasers incident was locals ticked off by being told what to do by “Feds”, you get that a lot in the US. Just a few of the lads having a bit of fun at the expense of the “know-it-alls”.
The Chasers incident was actually a bit more than that. 🙂 They went through two (supposedly) high-security checkpoints supposedly staffed by ASIO, but were in fact staffed by a private security company ASIO hired. The Chasers were only caught when they got nervous because they had gotten all the way to the Hotel where Bush was staying without being stopped. It was a local cop that pulled them over because they did a sudden U-turn in the van they were driving. Trust me, the local Sydney Police were not at all amused! They wanted to throw the entire crew in prison and throw the keys away. They did in fact get charged, but when it was pointed out how embarrassing it would be for the Gov, they dropped it with a slap on the wrist.
I learned some Polish and Russian. I’d had a Polish girlfriend many years earlier, and spent a Month with her in Warsaw visiting her family. They taught me to drink (as only a Pole can!) They made their own potato vodka. Thank the stars my Grandfather had taught me to drink (he said it was necessary to be a good soldier!) After a week, I could breath after throwing down a glass… and they stopped laughing at me and saying “Drink! Drink!” all the time! LOL
There was a Restaurant (Rasputin’s) we kept an eye on in Sydney. Was a favorite place for visiting Russians. Was owned by a Russian man & wife. We found out the man used to be GRU. Anyway, we got on well, and I loved the food! I remember the first time in there, the man came over and asked if I would like a drink. And I said ‘Yes please. Pertsovka please.” And he looked surprised, and asked how I liked to drink it. I said “cold in a chilled glass of course.” And smiled and he laughed and brought 2 frosted glasses and a bottle and sat and drank with me. 🙂 Pertsovka is a Russian Pepper Vodka. I liked others too. Now and then, when I would go in on a busy night, one or more people would suddenly leave. And we had a couple people outside to follow them. 🙂 We built up a useful profile on the Russian who’s who that way. That was how I met the Russian Consulate Liaison officer. He asked me if I would stop going there as they were getting complaints. LOL We discussed it and came to an arrangement. 🙂 We understood each other and we often went there for dinner. One day, ASIO raided the place. *sigh* Almost destroyed a years worth of work and effort. DIO is much higher on the pecking order than ASIO. So suffice to say they caught hell! The Liasion looked at me after the dust had settled and said “ASIO, yes?” And I shook my head slowly and sighed and said “yes. You are enjoying this aren’t you?!” And he said “My friend! Never! ” And I said ” Bullshit!” And he laughed and said “We have some like them too.” And I said “Yeah, but you can get rid of yours when they do something stupid. We are civilized here. I envy you. I need a drink!”
The Russians always laugh (At least, the senior ones I met did. The field op’s rarely laughed.) It’s as if they get the joke, and laugh because they know you don’t! I could never shake the feeling that the joke was on me. 🙂
BTW, That liaison ended up working as a senior manager at a large diamond mine here. He was a Geologist and Gemologist before he began his career in *politics* it turned out. 🙂 We kept in touch for awhile, and he said that with the bad economy in Russia, it was a very good job to have. 🙂
Privatizing too – Howard really did have terminal Reaganism.
Don’t underestimate the “humor” of cops. They would know damn well the whole thing was embarrassing, and when in doubt follow the rules to the letter. Following rules is the ultimate revenge of malcontents in a bureaucracy, because nothing can get done if you follow all of the rules. I would do that whenever I felt the management needed a reality check. It usually took two days until they surrendered and stopped whatever it was they were doing to annoy me. In addition to nothing getting done, a mountain of paperwork gets generated and the bosses have to initial it.
If I was working and discovered a major breech, I would certainly want the rest of the world to know if my guys were involved. I would have been royally ticked off if someone had erected all of those barricades in my jurisdiction because the locals would all be annoyed and take it out on my people.
I’ll never forget when the Air Force security people called us in to ask if we knew that the little bar we went to near Rhein-Main was owned by “COMMUNISTS”. As if we could miss the East German flag, the German Communist Party posters, the portraits of Marx and Engels that the place was decorated with.
We went there because they had the right beer on tap at the correct temperature and to harass the owner about capitalizing on the weakness of the working class. He always responded with the proper party slogans about imperialism and oppression, so it was a nice quiet place to get drunk after too many hours in an airplane.
This was the time of the “guest workers” in Germany, so most of the bigger places had Serbs behind the bar, Greeks working restaurants, and Turks doing the manual labor.
We were a little annoyed because we knew the security people had several people they sent to the bar, so we told the briefer that while their people spoke pretty good German, it was with the wrong regional accent and they need to stop wearing American shoes when they were supposed to be undercover. They also needed to learn the proper tipping method. They really were bad and obvious.
I know all too well the problems of agencies stepping on each others operations. We didn’t do it because we were passive, pure intel collectors, but we lost a lot of rich veins to other agencies stumbling in and having our operation discovered in the aftermath. PITA, you have to go back to work.
Oh! Yes… You are very probably correct about the Police. LOL The Gov and ASIO tried to blame the Police, when it was the local Police who were the only ones who were on the ball. So, I am sure they were annoyed! 😉 And few Aussies blamed them (only the hard-core “Howard Can Do No Wrong”(tm) morons.) At a conference, the NSW Police Minister basically said that if they had been in charge, Chasers wouldn’t have gotten within a km of the hotel. Probably right too! 🙂 I also heard that Chasers only tried the stunt because they discovered ASIO were in charge of security, and knew it would be a disaster, and didn’t like Howard at all! The Howard Gov had been trying (unsuccessfully) to shut down the ABC. 🙂
I got on very well with the Police, especially the Commonwealth Police. We told them when ASIO were going to do something stupid, and they told us things. 🙂 Whenever we had an op on, it was SOP to liaise with the Police and not tread on their toes. Wasn’t just courtesy, it was their turf and they knew things we didn’t. Sometimes we needed the Police to make sure things stayed quiet in an area for a while, or for possible backup, or to make arrests, etc. I never had any trouble with them. 🙂 My liaison watched too much spy TV and had a wicked sense of humor! So you can imagine the fun we had. 😉 My Russian friend used to call him the Pink Panther, and my police friend liked that and it stuck. LOL
It was all complicated at times. And usually just boring and tedious! Yeah… lot’s of paperwork. 🙂
It’s just a guess, but I doubt the ASIO ever consult the local police, which is pretty much the problem the FBI have – they tell you, they don’t ask you. It’s a mistake that can cost lives, as locals know what’s going on – who’s dangerous and who’s not.
Cops are nosy, but they will help as long as it doesn’t put them in a jamb.
Boring and tedious is the part that never gets into the novels. Three hundred pages on breaking a single source code is not exactly going to fly off the shelves.
It became very complicated here. When Malcolm Fraser was PM (Liberal Party like Howard), tried to establish a new Federal commission called the National Crimes Commission. This was about the time I started with DIO.
I should mention BTW, that the department was actually called JIO (Joint Intelligence Organization) when I began with them. During the 80’s, there were many changes, including the addition of Counter-Terrorism, and JIO was groaning under the weight of it all! Eventually MAJGEN John Baker decided to move the core function of strategic level, all-source intelligence assessment to a new agency, DIO. JIO went back to being responsible for geographic, infrastructure, economic intelligence and Counter-Terrorism. You can see an interesting paradigm shift by the fact that JIO was always headed by a civilian, such as my boss Mr. Marshall, but in 1989 it changed to a Military commander MAJGEN Baker, which essentially forced the move to split it into two groups.
Anyway… back to my story! LOL Where was I? Right… Fraser! Another useless PM we really didn’t need! Thankfully, his reign was short-lived and Bob Hawke (ALP) won the next election. He stopped the useless National Crimes Commission and created the National Crime Authority (NCA). The difference was that the NCA had full oversight and was publicly answerable, but the Fraser NCC would have been controlled wholly by the Federal Gov and been a secret organization.
One of the primary reasons for the NCA, was to investigate crimes committed across borders, especially Police corruption which was rife in the ’70’s and 80’s, and the growing Organised and white-collar crimes.
When NCA was tasked to investigate Police Corruption in NSW, I was *loaned* from JIO to help with analysis tasks and strategies. The first thing I recommended was moving the Task Force headquarters from Sydney (in NSW) to SA (Adelaide)! Having the HQ in the same place where Police Corruption was being investigated was stupid at best! Secondly, I recommended that all security be handled by the Military Police. This advice wasn’t taken, and security was given to ASIO, And I went to my superior and offered my resignation. They refused to budge on ASIO, and eventually the HQ was bombed and a Snr Detective killed, and most records of the investigation were destroyed.
If there is ANY possible way to do any task incompetently, ASIO is guaranteed to find it!
When Howard came to power, the first thing he did was disband the successful NCA, and replace it with Fraser’s NCC. THEN, to make his power complete, he also merged the Office of Strategic Crime Assessments (OSCA) and the Australian Bureau of Criminal Investigation (ABCI) into the NCC, and expanded the powers of ASIO. Thus ensuring nothing would get done and nobody had the whole picture on crime in this Country. And ensuring Howard’s friends, the white-collar corporate criminals would stop being thrown into Prison! I hope there is a VERY special Hell for Howard and Bush!
That is so similar to the way the Republicans has structured Homeland Security and the intel people – centralized control and more secrecy, with more military people in charge. I’m certain there is a lot of backlash within the various subgroups at the loss of autonomy and coordination is probably worse. Things once worked by informal arrangements between groups, NSA would hand stuff off that they weren’t proficient at to agencies that were. I would be willing to bet the “accidentals” get erased now, instead of being passed on because now you have paperwork to fill out.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodies, “who polices the police”, is an old and vital question. Whoever takes over from Bush is going to find that a lot of records are missing and a lot of crime was ignored, and these are the people who claim to represent “law and order”.
Exactly. I really think Howard used the same book Cheney et all were using. But it couldn’t work here. 🙂 Howard never had the almost unlimited power Bush/Cheney have for a start, and people here know their rights! 🙂
As I said before, yes. Who watches the watchers? 😉
It will take a very long time to fix what Kissinger/Cheney/Rumsfeld etc have done. Possibly generations. Will take some time to fix things here, but probably not so long.
Oh well… I guess we’ll see. 🙂 Good luck to us all!
So… you feel better now knowing we Aussies really understand what you have been going through? 😉 Mind you we blame the USA for all our recent problems! LOL Sorry about that. Ahem. :(Not you personally, and the many like you of course! We do know there are a few good Americans. And not just the dead ones!) LOL
I couldn’t resist! 😀