The Chris Moeller Archives

Rooting against Rocky

This is a critically-important meditation on the United States and its profoundly-immoral military and surveillance state.

"Our latest overseas adventures would not be possible were it not for the manipulation of the home-front climate. We watched the Egyptian army depose an elected president, we read accounts of Washington’s role in it, and Secretary of State Kerry told us they were “restoring democracy.” On Thursday the Egyptian army’s puppet president extended the reigning state of emergency by two months. Please speak into the microphone, Mr. Kerry. 

"The Syrian chapter is yet to conclude. I suggested in this space last week we might think of the Cuban missile crisis. In the scheme of things, Obama would now be the Khrushchev figure and Vladimir Putin the Kennedy cutout. It is the son of perverse, I know, but for the moment it is hard to arrange the chess pieces otherwise."

How does a guy learn to think and write as expertly as Patrick L. Smith?

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United States Senator John McCain is making Vladimir Putin look more reasonable by the day. He’s behaving increasingly like a man who could benefit both intellectually and emotionally from a protracted return to solitary confinement.

McCain has been virtually wrong on everything this year. He's claimed that the NSA spying program operates under court supervision even though Edward Snowden-leaked materials reveal that it often doesn't, and even that unexamined intelligence records regarding U.S. citizens are shared with Israel, a country that a 2013 top-secret intelligence community budget request identified, along with China and Iran, as a target for U.S. cyberattacks.

He's promised that we will "soon" see evidence that Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons, but the political showdown over using U.S. military force against him came and went without any evidence being revealed. When he's not playing video poker in the Senate chambers during the first meaningful war debate in that house in a decade, he's traveling to Syria to meet with rebel groups increasingly dominated by jihadists and by al-Qaeda, and voting to arm and train them. And of course, McCain still views our nation's excursion into Iraq as a success so there's that on his resume.

Now consider that this is the brand of politician (and I use the word “brand” very purposefully) that gets treated with the utmost respect—and even deference—by virtually every corporate media outlet in the country. He appears on Sunday morning television more often than Kenneth Copeland.

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A puzzle: Kerry Rhodes has been a standout NFL defensive (strong) safety for nine years. He was voted the 4th best player at his position just last year by a website called profootballfocus.com. He is currently without a job in the NFL although he has not retired. Oh, and there's this entirely unrelated note: Rhodes was photographed during the offseason kissing an out gay man on the top of the head while on the boat.

Now, also unrelated, these are the teams that gave up 299 or more passing yards during Week 1 of the NFL season…

Baltimore (445)
Dallas (428)
Green Bay (404)
Minnesota (357)
Atlanta (341)
Denver (335)
San Diego (329)
San Francisco (322)
Philadelphia (308)
St. Louis (304)
Carolina (300)
Arizona (299)

Additionally, Tampa, Miami, Indianapolis, and Seattle all entertained tryouts at the defensive back position last week but none of those teams tried out Rhodes.

The whole thing is entirely dubious. There is some outrage needed here, but for me, it is unfocused. What could possibly explain all of this when the facts are so unrelated? Perhaps they aren’t unrelated at all. I’ll bet Rhodes is being blackballed because he’s African-American. Yes, that's it. Also still out of work is NBA veteran Jason Collins, who came out of the closet as gay publicly this summer, and who is likewise not retired, but is, yes, African-American. And also out of work is NFL punter Chris Klewe, who is neither African-American nor gay, but was outspoken last season about gay rights. He must be secretly African-American.

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An arresting name for a fantasy sports team-- or a reality sports team for that matter-- would be the Pangaea Colliders. Pangaea, of course, is the supercontinent that existed during the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic periods of 200 to 300 million years ago, and the name “Colliders” would pay tribute to the shifting tectonic plates of our planet that divided this supercontinent into the scattered, smaller continents we enjoy today. This hypothetical team could claim virtually the whole of Earth as a home television market. If their games didn’t sell out, they’d have to black out the entire planet.

posted by CM @ 12:18 PM