WANTED: Extraterritorial location for indefinite detentions, torture of prisoners, and gigantic secret military installation.  Island preferred, remoteness a plus; must be cleared of troublesome natives and provide for completely restricted access.  Ideal landlord would consist of a compliant allied government willing to eat up the obvious bullshit that we’re going to spew trying to explain the patently illegal actions we carry out on their territory.

Contact:  D. Vader, US Naval Observatory.  Seriously corrupt inquiries only.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where our old ally Great Britain will answer the above ad – by cravenly permitting the United States to reverse-colonize Her Majesty’s empire on the island of Diego Garcia.  Upon (and in the waters near to) this speck of coral in the Indian Ocean, the British and Americans have established a base/prison/human rights deprivation facility that has played a larger role in the Global War of Terror than even Guantanamo Bay – a fact to which the Brits, at least, are finally growing wise.

In February, 1899, Rudyard Kipling, poet laureate of British imperialism, published in McClure’s Magazine a poem for an American audience.  In it, Kipling hailed the brash new imperialists on the block, congratulated us on our recent conquests, and – even as the sun was setting on Victoria’s Age – let would-be 20th-century colonialists know what was in store for those who chose to meet their racial obligations by lifting the unfortunate brown folk out of the mire.

Well, Ruddy, you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve finally taken your advice and shouldered the burden.  Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight your resident historiorantologist marks his return from life-duties-related exile with a recitation of this old chestnut – and a hearty round of thanks to Mr. Kipling.  After all, without The White Man’s Burden to guide us, we might never have seen any of this coming…

It must have had a dreamlike quality to it: a summer’s day in Washington, the tanks and troops on the street accompanied by officers like George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower, led by none other than General Douglas MacArthur.  America’s Caesar was wearing a full salad bowl of ribbons and medals, magnificent astride a great horse; to the impoverished veterans he was riding to meet, he must have looked like a mighty warrior of a bygone era.  Then, to their horror, the Chief of Staff of the US Army ordered his infantry to fix bayonets, his cavalry to draw sabers, and his tanks to move forward.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, we’re tonight’s historiorant finds Depression-hit vets of the First World War encamped in a Hooverville in Washington during the summer of 1932.  I’m not saying it contains lessons to be learned about the interrelationships of Republican presidents, veterans, economic depression, and violent authoritarianism, but as St. Colbert once said, “I can’t help it if the facts have a liberal bias.”

From the plebian soldier’s point of view, the social contract regarding wartime service isn’t all that hard to comprehend.  Every generation or so, your country goes to war, with the tacit understanding that the government will: only compel you to bear arms for a limited time; compensate you in some way for your time and effort; and tend to any long-tem injuries sustained while fighting for the government’s causes.  So it is that every generation or so, a group of veterans returns to the United States in full belief that the government which sent them into battle will care for their wounds and honor their service – and in nearly every case, find their naïve hopeful trust violated in the most unconscionable, unpatriotic ways.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight your resident historiorantologist will start looking at how that government treated some of the veterans of a war four generations removed from the Iraq Occupation.  Along the way, we’ll take a look at a war message that doesn’t seem to have lost much relevance – or many talking points – over the past 91 years.

Now with Executive Summary!

Last night, I began telling the saga of the breakup of the Mapleton School District (Thornton, Colorado), and how Barack Obama’s recent celebration at its flagship “small school” highlights his profoundly erroneous stances vis-à-vis school reform and restructuring.  

Tonight, in Part II, I’ll look at the devastating effects of the sundering of Mapleton on the people who had dedicated their lives and careers in service to the community’s youth.  I’ll also examine some of the money issues involved, which might go a long way toward explaining why hucksters like Neil Bush and political animals like Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts Director Michael Johnston have been able to amass fortunes and hoodwink voters into supporting poorly thought-out and badly managed “reform” programs, all the while moaning the mantra, “It’s what’s best for kids.”

I had hoped my first candidate diary would be one of those ones that simply lavish praise upon a presidential hopeful – maybe a nice “Thank You, Barrack, for Today’s Beautiful Sunrise” – but alas, it wasn’t to be.  This is partly my fault (I could’ve written one earlier in the primary season) but it’s also Barrack Obama’s, for his astonishingly poor choice of venue in giving an address on education on Wednesday, May 28.

Even as I write this, the Denver traditional media is tripping over itself with laudatory comments about the Mapleton School District and the school “reform” measures it undertook three years ago.  Regrettably, they’re not going to do much fact-checking beyond the talking point fed to them by District officials, because while it is indeed a fantastic success story that all 44 of this year’s Mapleton Expeditionary School for the Arts’ senior class have been accepted to college, the other numbers, not to mention the seamy history of the reform project itself, paint a far bleaker picture of the effectiveness of “small school reform” measures – and gives at least one voter cause for concern about the educational company Senator Obama is choosing to keep.

Your resident historiorantologist has lately been puzzling over the matter of how it is that Alberto Gonzalez and the current rubber-gavel-wielding “Chief US Law Enforcement Official” have not been brought before the World Court to stand for their crimes.  Clearly, it doesn’t take the piercing legal intellect of a Harriet Miers to recognize that torture goes against everything Americans believe in – our nation is, after all, a product of the Enlightenment, that 200-or-so-year period starting around 1650 in which thinking humans chose to recognize science, redefine the roles of government and the governed, and repudiate things like tyranny.  Given this definition, of course, the aforementioned “legal” experts clearly are not Enlightened individuals, but closer examination of what actually went on before the bar back then shows that the Gitmo Gang would find themselves right at home dispensing “justice” in a court of that era.

So join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll look at criminal justice in the Age of Powdered Wigs – and may find that the current cadre of ethics-averse thugs running our penal/information extraction system would have been right at home in an Enlightenment court.

Lately it’s become apparent to some of us that if one desires to see one’s diary reach the rec list, one’s chances are greatly improved if the title includes a hint of conversion to Obamaism, a pillorying of Hillary, or the old stand-by, BREAKING!!!  Now, by nature, historioranters don’t get to shout “breaking” all that often, but since you all seem to have abandoned Mike Gravel, and have said everything that could possibly be said about Barrackemiah and/or Billary, I’m left with little choice but to pander like Senator Clinton at a Great Silent Majority rally.

So join me, if you will, just outside the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll be scanning the skies, on the lookout for a school-bus-sized piece of space junk that NASA tells us (well, told us – the subject of this story broke literally and figuratively between 1973 and 1979) could crash/land almost anywhere on Earth.  Perhaps in our observations, we’ll even get a glimpse of that rarest of celestial phenomena: A presidential candidate with a viable, workable, ambitious space policy.

For anyone born before 1970 or so, there are certain images that are come to mind whenever the name “Iran” is uttered: stern, bearded men in black robes, angry crowds, graphics depicting blindfolded American citizens with things like “Day 334” stamped over them, Ollie North bravely disgracing his uniform and perjuring himself, John McSame exploring the intersection of 1960s pop music and the idea of raining death from the skies.  In short, the past 30 years haven’t exactly been a model of how nations ought to think of one another.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll take a last look – a Parthian shot, if you will – at the recent history of Iran.  Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get past some of the more extreme caricatures the Traditional Media has been foisting upon us – and perhaps be able to start formulating a de-Bushified foreign policy that relies less on blustering incompetence and more on genuine historical understanding.

One would think that a person who has lived through as much history as John McThuselah would know a bit more about it, but as we are all too painfully aware, historical savvy isn’t exactly a wingnut strong suit.  It’s thus sorta-understandable – even as it remains completely unforgivable – that Angry Gramps would be unable to distinguish between Sunnis and Shias, Arabs and Persians, or really, anyone east of the Ural Mountains.  To the bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran set, “they” are all the same anyway, so any historical evidence that might indicate an outcome (of say, an invasion) other than their liberators-and-roses predictions can be safely disregarded.

Thankfully, we here in the reality-based community know better.  Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, for a look at Iran in the 20th century – and hopefully a slightly better explanation for why the US government is not particularly loved in that part of the world than that old patriotic pabulum, “they hate us for our freedoms.”

According to the latest wire reports, the verdict is in: even (and perhaps especially) he who would be the next Bush doesn’t know crap about Iran.  This is unfortunate; one would think the disastrous invasion of Mesopotamia would’ve reminded us that we’re talking about a region of the world that breaks empires as a matter of course.

Tonight’s historiorant seeks to address just one of the lessons that needn’t have cost us 4000+ of our own soldiers’ lives to learn: that failing to accurately assess an enemy’s capabilities frequently plays a major role in victories and defeats in Southwest Asia.  Marcus Licinius Crassus didn’t appreciate that fact, nor did Hulagu Khan centuries later.  Join in the Cave of the Moonbat, and we’ll see if we can’t help to educate our misguided Republican brethren before they foist yet another hotheaded dumbass upon the American citizenry – and hopefully forestall our getting enmeshed in yet another Carrhae, Ain Jalut, or Chaldiran.