This essay was originally published on Wed Jan 02, 2008 on La Naranja Grande. I have tweaked it somewhat to better represent my current views on the matter.

As a person who has spent a certain amount of time in the belly of the military/industrial complex beast, I figure my observations on the matter are at least as good as anyone else’s.

While there are unquestioned parallels between what’s happening now and the takeover of Nazi Germany, some of the people who object to those comparisons will retort that it’s impossible that their behavior emulates the Nazis, as they are Jewish, black, or whatever. Likewise, some mainstream media corporations will state that comparisons to the Nazis are laughable because they have “an extremely diverse readership/employee base/non-discriminatory policy”, blah blah yadda blah.

The need to hide their agenda, combined with the need to build a powerful support base in an extremely racially diverse nation has required the neofascist movement to approach the construction of their “New American Century” with more strategy and stealth than their predecessors.

The blatant lie that the current version of capitalism is a meritocracy is how the neofascists have managed to (thus far) successfully hide their agenda from the bulk of the American public.

Today’s run for bottles and cans brought me into the Bubble Zone of suburbia. The Bubble Zone is where people with more money than brains live. This is the legendary Gold Coast of Long Island. Pristine and well maintained roads that date back to the late 1600s wind through immaculate expanses of land dotted with huge, well hidden estates. These places have not seen anything even remotely resembling a kid knocking over another kid for their lunch money in approximately 200 years (with perhaps the single exception of 9/11, as this area was home to no small number of affected brokers for Cantor Fitzgerald, six-figure income executives working for Marsh Insurance, etc).

Everything is beautiful and peaceful here and so it has ever been since at least 1950. You would never know, walking around in this area, that millions of Americans are unemployed, losing their homes, starving and struggling to pay for their medical care. This is the type of place where Bill O’Lielly and Hannity and most of Parasite Petey King’s constituents live – a land that doesn’t believe in the change that’s badly needed a mere 3 miles down the road.

But there is one thing that has been perennially true since the days when I was one of these upper middle class cluetards and walked amongst them regularly, and that is that people with more money than brains LITTER. Their kids drink beer in the woods and depart, leaving the evidence. Their adults are just as bad. Give a rich bitch a place to throw a bottle or a can that isn’t a garbage bin and I guarantee you, honey, they will throw them there by the shit-ton.

So I wandered the Bubble Zone seeking bottles and cans, and lo, I most assuredly found me some; along with no small amount of golf balls, baseballs, softballs and tennis balls. It was this last which led me to the discovery of the remains of… well, I guess it could be called lunch… for yet another American upper class suburban cluetard for whom even these idyllic surroundings are not enough of an escape from reality.

Our rich bitch, who shall remain nameless, went to Walgreens to pick up her prescription for Buspirone. We should all be glad that Buspirone, unlike it’s contemporaries Xanax, Paxil, Zoloft, etc is apparently “not addictive” and has “no contraindications with alcohol”, because even the idyllic surroundings of the LI Bubble Zone tennis courts AND Buspirone were insufficient to calm her delicate nerves. For lo, the rich bitch decided to wash down her Buspirone, some Greek yogurt and 75% of a package of fresh raspberries (the other 25% having been thrown away) with two boilermakers.

Now this was of some interest to me, little miss Bottles n’ Cans, and was the only reason why I was bothering to peek into this bag of refuse in the first place. I shall give credit where it is due – she could have chosen worse beer to create her boilermakers. Blue Point does some nice beer, although I infinitely prefer Hoptical Illusion to the two bottles of Summer Ale that she opted to profane with an airplane bottle of Skyy Vodka each. But after all the difference between Hoptical Illusion and Summer Ale well describes the difference between a wild eyed, crazy redheaded ex-Sergeant who survived 9/11 and, well… what?

What kind of a too-frail-to-survive-reality creature is it that needs to wash down her antidepressants with two fuckin’ vodka boilermakers at the tennis court in order to get through her beautiful suburban day?

Is this that American Dream princess that the sexist guy at the bottles n’ cans machine was talking about while he was making fun of me, maybe? The one who gets by on her looks and whose man ensures she doesn’t have to work? Sheeyit, from the looks of this fine dining experience, she needs to work her ass off just to deal with a broken nail!

Folks, when the shit eventually DOES hit the fan, and the rot that these upper class cluetards are allowing through their venal greed and fear to eat away at the rest of our nation eventually DOES come home to them, do you really think such as we will be in trouble? Do you really think these folks are ready for prime time Apocalypse disaster or warfare? Are they even going to have a prayer in hell when the time comes when they have to compete for food and shelter with the poor and the middle class that they have left hanging out to dry for generations?

Is this the American Dream, or the American Induced Coma?

Do people who have everything they want and STILL need to lunch on boilermakers and antidepressants to keep what little reality that can still reach them at bay REALLY DESERVE a future where they remain untouched in their Bubble Zone, while the rest of the country is breaking it’s back for nickels and dimes?

–Thx for the FP, EKH.

Here we go, here we go, here we go!!!

Reporting from Washington — U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.

A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

It would seem a lot of legal and judiciary-related logjams have suddenly and mysteriously cleared now that Sonia Sotomayor has been confirmed by the Senate to take her post as a Supreme Court Justice.

Very much still under the MSM radar and not even receiving much well-deserved attention here, another very important legal milestone was reached yesterday as ex-FBI translator Sibel Edmonds was finally allowed to testify in full before the Ohio Elections Commission at a hearing held at the National Whistleblowers Center. Previous attempts to bring her testimony to the attention of Congress and other legal authorities were stalled by the DOJ’s invocation of the State Secrets Act. That didn’t happen this Saturday, and the genie is now out of the bottle concerning bribery and corruption charges that may be brought against several currently serving and former members of Congress, as well as high ranking members of the Bush administration’s State Department.

It would seem that Sotomayor’s confirmation was the Occam’s Razor needed before many of the accountability issues were addressed. It may be premature to celebrate, but good things appear to be happening. At last. At last.

H/T to HSaive of the V911Truth list.

In this American Stupid News edition, “All The News Our Military/Industrial Complex Masters Tell Us To Print Department”, the New York Times continues in the proud tradition set by Judith Miller to foster still more unnecessary American meddling in the affairs of sovereign nations, according to computer material captured from the NY Times in recent hours and under review by bloggers with more than two brain cells to rub together in their heads.

Because, you know, in a world where the value of the US Dollar is falling like a rock and our economy teetering on the brink, we simply NEED more wars and more crime in our own streets to, as Ebenezer Scrooge would surely have said, “decrease the surplus population”.

Those uppity South Americans are starting to have the nerve to want to run their own countries! Don’t they understand that The Supreme Deity, Caucasian Blue-Eyed Only-Jewish-If-There-Are-Jews-In-The-Boardroom Jesus(tm) intended them to forever serve as fruit, vegetable and cocaine farmers for the United States military/industrial complex?

It is no longer enough to strategically deploy thugs and goons from the CIA and WHINSEC/School of the Americas to perform select assassinations and “enforcement” to derail these uppity notions. No, now we suddenly need THREE AMERICAN BASES IN COLUMBIA to help right wing dictator Uribe serve as not just any fascist puppet, but OUR fascist puppet. Where have we seen this formula before? Noriega? Bin Laden? Saddam Hussein?

We are expected to believe that FARC are the ones running drugs to fund their operations, that they are “rebels” and “terrorists” – we are expected to believe this after what we KNOW the CIA’s been doing in other third world nations around the globe and ESPECIALLY in Central and South America for DECADES?

Chip Tatum, the CIA operative who is being interviewed in this 1998 video was “disappeared” one month after this was filmed. There were reports of his badly tortured body washing up on a Panama beach in 2007. This is not the only information available that details cocaine-related air traffic coming through Mena Airport, Arkansas while Bill Clinton was governor, but it is the most damning.

Should the United States build military bases in Columbia, those of you with connections on the street, just watch how the nose candy starts to flood into this country past the entirely complicit noses of our intelligence agencies and the Department of Hopeless Insecurity. Watch how the price drops so that our children can afford it, much as is happening with heroin now. Heck, the first hits might even be free. Watch how local police are crushed between a citizenry forced to a life of crime by their addictions, and the corrupt “law enforcement” and military authorities placed above them who are ALREADY funding their own black and rogue operations by BRINGING ILLEGAL HARD DRUGS INTO THIS COUNTRY BY THE SHIT-TON.

When the Taliban were running Afghanistan, whatever else might have been wrong with that, one thing that WASN’T happening was kids in the greater NYC area, to include Long Island, able to get hits of heroin for five bucks a pop. Now WE’RE supposedly running the show over there, and there’s more horse riding up and down our streets than you’d see during the fucking Triple Crown. Think about it.

The best thing – really, the ONLY good thing about this bullshit-stinking propaganda piece is the comments section. You can only cry “wolf” so many times before the people you are making suffer by doing so start to get a clue. Go below the fold for the best of the best, the Comments Section’s Greatest Hits, and see for yourselves that the rest of America is finally starting to wake up.

President Obama’s attempt to ameliorate angst between a cuff-happy cop and a Harvard professor is causing a certain amount of spazz hissy fits amongst the American craft brewing scene. The New York City Homebrewer’s Guild e-list is abuzz with discussion of the Wall Street Journal article describing the reactions of American breweries, large and small, to the choices chosen for the President’s table.

First of all I am glad he invited Professor Gates as well as Sgt. Crowley, because that is only fair. I therefore retract my comments yesterday about drinking beer with stupid people. Inviting the professor makes the gesture more genuinely about fairness and enlightenment, a real effort to promote what we valkyries call “frith” (sacred hospitality) and “grith”, the “peace” which is part of my username, Randgríðr.

Initial announcements did not infer that Gates would be invited too, which was making it look like the President was willing to reward over-enthusiastic law enforcers who end up victimizing innocent citizens. That really pissed me off. But the issue is now moot, so enough said on that, and I am pleased that the President has chosen a way of solving this issue which is well known to be linked to (if not founded in) my own religious tradition.

Anyway, it would seem that Jim Koch of the Sam Adams brewery, Bill Manley of Sierra Nevada, and several other craft brewers have weighed in on the subject of what frosty libations should be offered at the Presidential table. One unfortunate but notable absence is Garrett Oliver, one of the founders of the 22-year-old NYC Homebrewer’s Guild; brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery; and author of “The Brewmaster’s Table”, an authoritative reference on the pairing of food with beer. I am guessing that Mr. Oliver is probably in his way trying to be classy by not saying anything, but I am just another sarge-mouthed tough cookie from Brooklyn and have no such worries, so I am willing to pipe up, LOL!!!

The article is a bit silly in that the thrust of it’s message of protest is that the three beers chosen (Red Stripe, Blue Moon and Bud Light) are apparently all owned by foreign corporations. It is true that Red Stripe is a beer based out of Jamaica, but Blue Moon originally hails from a small craft brewery in Tennessee that was purchased several years ago by Coors, who now distribute it nationwide.

As to Anheuser Busch, don’t EVEN get me started. Does Barack Obama know that John McCain paid for his eight frigging houses by marrying the sugar momma who was heiress to that fortune? As if that beer wasn’t a joke already. Never in my lifetime will I pay money for that stuff. I will only drink it if 1) it’s free and 2) it’s the only thing around. However I will most gladly pick up and cash in the empties, and I say that with a vengeance. That bastard can bloody well help ME pay for MY house, he already has enough of his own, LOL!!!

As for my own brewing activities, this is a very busy time of year for me as a mead specialist brewer. Pennsic, the SCA’s two week private renaissance event, is in progress and all my medieval re-enactor friends who are heading off to it this week are wanting to bring bottles of my own frosty libations; plus there’s a contest to enter and bulk varietal honey to arrange delivery logistics for. So the BrauFrau is bizzy bizzy. I must get back to it, in fact.  

The precedent for padding American mainstream news media with stupid, pointless and occasionally inflammatory Rovian “distracto-stories” that was laid during the Bush administration shows no signs of slowdown, much less reversal, under the Obama administration.

Then as now, I have learned that when such examples of mediocrity appear on the front pages, it’s time to check my “Rove-Free Zone” list of credible news sources to find out just what they are meant to distract us from. Here are the latest examples of this. Enjoy.

Here we have from the “Who Gives A Shit Department” a stale story about a not very bright football player who shot himself in the thigh with a gun he was carrying in a Manhattan midtown club on, ready for this? Nov. 29, 2008. Yeah. That’s right. November of last fucking year. Maybe he’s about to give birth from the experience or something, but for whatever reason, THIS is considered front page news. As a matter of fact, he’s very likely being penciled in to President Obama’s “Drink Beer With Stupid People” program schedule as I write.

From the “Crumbling Cathedral Of Agriculture Department” the NY Times brings us this stirring tale of how a couple of rich people took a failed granary and turned it into an art museum. Because, you know, in a country that could easily feed the entire world if it could figure out how the fuck to stop starving it’s own people, the world NEEDS more art museums. Next up will be an eleven page magazine feature on the Ayn Randian right wing Republitard scientist who invents edible paint and canvas so that the millions of currently homeless and jobless Americans can eat the fucking paintings. This is front page news to the New York Times, folks. Enjoy.

By the way, if you really want to know what’s actually going on in the world, the best two places to check are STILL both Spiegel, Spiegel Am Der Mauer and Dandelion Salad. Here’s a blast from the past: remember when front page news actually used to be about our interactions with other nations? Yeah, remember that? This front page Spiegel story on relations between the US and Israel is something neither Newsday nor the New York Times would DARE touch, and a key quote from the unintimidated German paper indicates that it’s been a political hot potato (especially in the New York/Long Island area) for decades:

Israel has had many a conflict with former US administrations, but in most cases the public only learned of the conflicts after they had been resolved.

Oh, and here’s another “look backwards” that some might find unwelcome – remember the ACLU? Remember them? How they used to fight for civil liberties and stuff? How odd and quaint! Why, the ACLU is almost as old-fashioned and strange and nerdy and geeky as those wacky folks who like to dress up in medieval clothing and hit each other with sticks! Here’s a look back into a yesteryear that the Obama administration finds so distasteful that they’d rather let it KEEP HAPPENING than actually look at it. I can’t wait to see the art museum they make out of Guantanamo Bay. Watch out for the lampshades.

You want to monitor the real enemies of the state? We need a database of THESE pieces of shit because most of them, like this one, ARE repeat offenders. And they need to end up in the hoosegow. At best.

Seriously. These mad dogs need to become an endangered species. They need to be collectively put out of our misery.

You want to see an end to fraud, waste, abuse and corruption in our government? Watch how the statistics go down if you start removing military and DoD contractor rapist and sexual harassment scumbags from the equation. Bring a set of downhill ski gear, you’re gonna need it, because that curve is gonna be steep.

Coming to you hot off the web page presses via The Cute Husband Who Works There(tm), this just in:

NEW YORK (July 16, 2009) – Four of the nation’s leading experts in suicide research, including Dr. John Mann of Columbia University Medical Center, will carry out the largest study of suicide and mental health among military personnel ever undertaken, with $50 million in funding from the U.S. Army.  The announcement came today from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which signed a memorandum of agreement with the Army in October 2008 authorizing the NIMH to undertake the investigation with Army funding. Study investigators aim to move quickly to identify risk and protective factors for suicide among soldiers and provide a science base for effective and practical interventions to reduce suicide rates and address associated mental health problems.

Follow the link for the rest of the press release.

Since 2006, the average number of military suicides has skyrocketed. The last statistic I saw was 18 per month. This hidden casualty rate, part and parcel of the generally piss poor way veterans have been treated by the Bush administration, remains hidden in part because were these statistics common knowledge, the military would have difficulty meeting it’s enlistment quotas.

This iconic image is of Private First Class Joseph P. “Doc” Dwyer, a soldier from Long Island, NY. This obviously heroic, strong and compassionate man is one of far too many who are no longer with us. After his discharge, his life fell apart in a horror show of PTSD. He began “huffing” (inhaling solvents) and abusing alcohol and pills to ease the painful memories he brought home with him. Shortly after his friends tried to do an intervention in 2005, he shot up his apartment.

He overdosed on prescription medication and inhalants in North Carolina on June 28th, 2008. He was 31 years old. He is as much a casualty of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as anyone who died in the line of duty.

A Columbia University professor has also been noteworthy for her effort to draw attention to the plight women in the military currently face. In parallel with Col(ret) Ann Wright, Congresswoman Jane Harman and Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN), Columbia journalism professor Helen Benedict has recently published “The Lonely Soldier”, a collection of non-fictional stories told by women stationed in Iraq about the additional pressure they face dealing with sexual harassment and rape by those who wear the same uniform and serve beside them. For a short time there was a play, The Lonely Soldier Monologues, that was based on the book. This effort brings home the equally hidden statistic that one in three women serving in the US military today is raped by someone in her command. As Rep. Harman put it, a woman is more likely to be raped by a fellow servicemember or contractor than she is to be shot by the enemy.

Military sexual trauma is only part of the equation. PTSD; repetitive deployments of people physically and/or mentally unfit for duty; a concentrated effort to deny veterans their benefits based on trumped-up “pre-existing conditions”; the resurgence of “Spin Codes” (secret and discriminatory codes embedded into a servicemember’s discharge paperwork which can interfere with their ability to get a job or claim benefits) – all of these play a role.

I greatly look forward to what this study will reveal; and I equally look forward to the tepid response by the wholly-owned mainstream media who would like this oh-so-bad-for-the-war-business issue – and it’s sizeable crop of “problem children” for whom the big lie no longer works to simply… go away.

While the Times presents this disingenuous analysis of Cheney’s secret CIA hit squad, and yet more smoke and mirrors are fed to the Washington Post with desperately-toned CYA backpedaling statements like “The program was active in fits and starts, and it was essentially killed in 2004 because it was deemed ineffective, former and current intelligence officials said. It reemerged briefly in 2005 but remained largely dormant until this year.”; more pieces to the puzzle can be found in an article which ponders aloud whether British weapons scientist Dr. David Kelly and American colleagues Benito Que and Don Wiley, all of whom worked together to assess Iraq’s WMD status AND all of whom were found dead under suspicious circumstances, were victims instead:

“According to Post reporter Joby Warrick, Bush’s finding “imposed no geographical limitations on the agency’s actions” and that the CIA was “not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive.” This implies that targets could be hit anywhere, including on the soil of a NATO ally or inside the United States itself.”

This article also mentions how convenient Bruce Ivin’s “suicide” (a biochemist we are expected to believe chose an overdose of Tylenol as his way out, knowing full well he would languish in excruciating pain for days before he’d actually expire) was for those investigating the domestic anthrax attacks.

The NYT quickly tries to atone for it’s shameless GOP ass kissing (“Mr. Cheney has never been accused of reckless openness about intelligence programs”) by implying that the program was flawed more by incompetence than malice, but the statement “The real surprise is that in eight years of off-again, on-again brainstorming, planning and training, the program did not kill a single terrorist. It did not even mount an attempt, C.I.A. officials say.” still begs the question: Who DID Cheney’s goon squad kill?

The Times is even ballsy enough to mention that the CIA’s illegal activities relevant to this program came to the attention of Italian authorities who attempted to prosecute them in absentia, but strangely fails to mention the subsequent all-too-convenient “suicide” of Adamo Bove, the IT guru who was the Italian prosecution’s primary witness!

The Bush administration has left behind a long trail of convenient “accidents”, “suicides” and at least one “disappearance”.

Everyone from Pat Tillman to “DC Madame” Deborah Jeane Palfrey to Mike Connell (the IT guy who tweaked the Ohio vote at Rove’s behest and who was about to sing)…

“Muscles” Leola McConnell, Bush’s supposed dominatrix who was disappeared 3 months after writing a tell-all book detailling a bisexual three-way she had in the early 80’s with Bush and his then-roommate at Yale, Arthur Ashe. Ashe was later appointed Ambassador of Poland. Poland is on record as being one of the countries that hosted illegal “extraordinary rendition” prisons. I am guessing they had a little reunion with “Muscles” in Poland shortly before her death…

An IT worker in Greece who found evidence of the CIA’s warrantless wiretapping, and who, like Adamo Bove, was “suicided”.

Fourteen internationally known scientists who specialized in developing antidotes for biotoxins/bioweapons…

Six members of the USAF crew at Minot (including the commander) who handled the nuclear missiles which were almost “accidentally” rerouted to New Orleans. Most were “suicided” or met with fatal accidents within a two week timeframe…

Two paymasters at Baghram Airbase, Afghanistan, one of whom warned her family before she returned from leave to see to it that there would be an investigation “if anything happened to her” because “she’d found something she did not like”. She and her predecessor were both found shot in the back of the head execution style on the base…

With “protection” like this, who needs the mafia? Perhaps more to the point… who needs TERRORISTS?

Today I attended the press conference that NYCCAN (NYC Coalition for Accountability Now) held on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan. Press were there from 1010 WINS, WOR, NY1 and WFUV. I don’t know if what we had to say will make it past the phlanx of mainstream media editors, but we’ll see.

NYCCAN has collected 68,000 signatures from the citizenry of New York City on a petition to request a new, impartial and scientific investigation of the events on 9/11. The petition has been presented to the City Council and it is very likely to be approved for addition to the November 3rd ballot. If you are a resident of New York City, it is not too late to add your signature to the petition. If you are someone who lost a family member or friend; a first responder who assisted at the sites; or a survivor of the attacks you can also sign a different petition to show your support for a new investigation.

As a survivor of the attacks with an unique perspective on the whole thing due to my military background, I was one of the people asked to present a statement to the press. It’s below the fold for those who care.

The 9/11 Truth movement has picked up an enormous amount of steam and is becoming more legitimized due to a peer-reviewed paper that was published in April by an international team of scientists which reveals that nanothermite particles were found in four different samples of dust from the World Trade Center. In this interview for Russia Today, one of the team members, Danish chemistry professor Niels Harrit, explains what was found and the questions this raises about the credibility of the official story.

In parallel with NYCCAN, Richard Gage of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, is presenting this evidence at the National Convention of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in Washington DC this week. He and other members of AE911Truth have also brought this testimony to members of Congress.

NYCCAN and AE911Truth are not wild-eyed conspiracy theorists. The objective is to point out the fallacies and gaping holes in the logic of the official story, and to demand an application of the scientific method to answer the many questions that never have been answered concerning 9/11.

Given the sheer amount of prevarication and dishonorable behavior the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have engendered, it is only common sense to also closely scrutinize the events of 9/11 which served as the impetus for these invasions. The focus of NYCCAN is on asking questions in a scientific and methodical fashion and obtaining the answers to those questions. Their ultimate goal is to establish a new commission with subpoena power and the ability to place people under oath.

Many activists here and elsewhere are concerned with the long list of war crimes committed by the Bush administration: torture of prisoners of war; abductions, renditions, “disappearances” and “suicides”; warrantless wiretapping and illegal surveillance; the deliberate outing of a CIA agent; no-bid contracts; legal contractor loopholes that allow them to get away with rape and murder; the CIA flooding our streets with heroin and cocaine and illegal handguns in order to foster the artificial continued need for a police state; the extortionate cost of prioritizing military and “security” objectives at the expense of our growing numbers of homeless, jobless, sick and hungry people; the list could go on but I am sure the reader gets the point.

Should it come to light that it was a conscious subversion of our intelligence community which contributed to the deaths of innocent civilians and noncombatants on 9/11/01; last I noticed that too is a war crime according to the Geneva Convention, and it would be that war crime which led to many of the others. The people responsible for this war crime MUST be brought to justice if we are to restore full faith in the ability of our government to truly protect it’s citizens.

From a personal perspective, working with NYCCAN is difficult, although this is hardly a reflection on the friendly, eminently sane and compassionate people I met today. While I am a pretty tough cookie, 9/11 was not a walk in the park. It’s not easy to deal with the memories and the emotions. It really is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. However I am mindful that I am not alone in what I have to face as I work for this goal, and it is as much a duty to those who share my burden and to the country I originally oathed myself to serve as anything I ever had to do during my enlistment.

Those of you who are in a position and of a mind to do so, I hope that you will join me in support of NYCCAN.

My statement to the press follows.

My landlord has a history of sending people over to do work on the house without calling first, so the first inkling I will have that this is happening is the guy showing up. He does this primarily to be an asshole, but as you read on you will learn that there are also other reasons.

Most of the workers he sends over are hispanic and many either don’t speak English or pretend that they don’t. This represents more than a major inconvenience. My area has suffered from a lot of home invasions (an outgrowth of the CIA happily flooding it with heroin and cocaine traffic). There have been at least two instances of a guy just randomly showing up and climbing up on my deck with a ladder. The first time it happened I spent a nervous fifteen minutes standing in the kitchen with my Ruger ready to blast a tootsie off if it stepped where it didn’t belong.

Another time I came out to go to the store to find one of them blocking the car in the driveway with a lawnmower while he TOOK A NAP on the front lawn.

I am fully aware that during the Bush administration as well as possibly currently, a lot of these “workers” also were not quite who they were pretending to be. I have been very active with CodePink and Veterans for Peace, and I am quite sure this (along with my blogging) has earned me a dossier. I also have several exes who are still linked to the the military/industrial complex whose sanity and morality leave a lot to be desired, and a few of them have stalked me on and off since 1993.

Yesterday I went out to do some errands at around 2pm. I returned at 4:45pm and the door to my house was wide open. It is fortunate that at around 3:30 a family friend showed up and sat on the steps for about an hour because we’d miscommunicated about when and where we were going to meet. Nothing appeared to be missing, but it was pretty scary to both the friend and myself that this was done.

I was told that the worker “went to the house while I wasn’t there, saw something that made him nervous, and left.”

The next door neighbor who is a local police deputy, his wife, and several other right wing cluetards in the neighborhood (a percentage of whom also probably aren’t quite who they say they are) all seemed to find this very interesting and amusing.

The next door neighbor on the other side, who is the press secretary for my local (Democratic) Assemblyman, probably also heard the commotion because last night she very kindly left a house light on so that it would illuminate the front of our property. We have a motion detector light but the additional coverage was appreciated.

The worker was supposed to reschedule for the morning, but part of the whole “control freak” thing the landlord and/or his goons have going on is that I am expected to remain in a form of house arrest all day long waiting for these cluetards to show up. After it got to be 2pm I called the landlord and said he would now be expected Monday. He showed up 15 minutes later as I knew he would. When people play childish head games the best way to handle them is to return the favor, so when dealing with these infants, reverse psychology is my friend.

However, today was going to be even a little more different. I am tired of being harassed by possible wingnut SOA graduates and Hopeless Insecurity goons pretending to be immigrant day laborers. I am generally a shy person, for all that I am loud at the keyboard; when people put me down I tend to withdraw into myself and try to ignore the harasser. I am much better at defending other people than myself, in other words. However as the years have progressed it has not been lost on me that a lot of the same faces seem to be popping up over and over again when this type of harassment occurs.

Recently I was subjected to an especially foul sexist tirade from one of them and it’s really gone across a line here. I am 100% out of the shit taking business, and it’s time these jackasses got the memo.

So when the shithead showed up, I shot him.

With my camera. ;-7

Now I have his face. A security system is going in around my house Real Soon Now(tm). If this guy is anything more than a mere day laborer, and he comes sniffing around here again with doors mysteriously getting left open, he will be hunted down either by myself or… and this is something he REALLY doesn’t want… my husband.

This is going to happen to every single one of these assholes who come sniffing around my house in the future.

Because due to my background in a classified environment I happen to know that IF this creep is something other than what he says he is, the fact that I now have his photo is very, very, very bad for him, and very good for me.