A moment of truly spine tingling synchronicity:(cue the Twilight Zone theme music…): Just as Clint Eastwood was proving that 82 is too old to vamp, back in Afghanistan, a member of the people once described as Clint Eastwood in a turban was proving that 70 is not too old to die fighting.

*A nightime raid by Australians had drawn the ire of President Karzai. Responding, a U.S. spokesman offered the current blanket categorization that if you are military age and dead, you are a Taliban. The wrinkle here is that we now recognize that Pashtuns never quit.

Now, let me say at once as a nineteen year old with noncomforming paperwork, that I am fully in sympathy with a rule of thumb that recognizes my military worth.

That said, the idea that any random dead 70 year old is in fighting trim does give pause, closing the circle back to Clint who just yesterday had occasion to question the wisdom of undertaking our excellent Afghan adventure, albeit his 82 year old brain blamed Obama for going in rather than his real blunder, doubling down.

* " the raid killed 70-year-old Haji Raz Mohammed and his 30-year-old son, Abdul Jalil, and a spokesman for the provincial governor said the two men were not part "of the Taliban. Captain Einert said the two men were “military-aged” insurgents."

Listening today to my obligatory dose of drivel from Rush Limbaugh (weep for Rogie–he listens so you don't have to) I was surprised to hear that we remain a beacon of social mobility.

The proof that your destiny is not written on stone, per Limbaugh, *Paul Ryan's journey from mowing lawns, orphaned as he was at 16, to the nomination for Vice President. (A heartbeat away, blah, blah, blah, etc.).

Always unencumbered by reality (where our social mobility had so diminished as to put us behind France, which, as Ariana Huffington once wryly remarked, is as counter intuitive as if we were statistically to surpass France in afternoon sexual encounters) Limbaugh in this was more mendacious than is the norm, even for that pulsating, globule of lying fat encrusted shit.

Not, of course, that Ryan did not lose his father at 16.

That said, his father's father, and Ryan's great-grandfather before him were serially executives of P.W. Ryan and Sons

The Ryan family, in short, were the elite in town, and young Paul's stint of lawn mowing was no more proof of humble beginnings than my boyhood experiment at self employment in the Brooklyn subway with a shoe shine box that my mob lawyer dad gave me when I was eight. (Parenthetically, the apex of my work ethic; all downhill since then)

*He told a story about mowing yards in his early twenties, making some extra money. He didn't think that was his destiny. He didn't think that was the rest of his life. While he was doing that, in his mind, he's planning his life, he's planning his future, determining for himself what he wants to be. And this is the life that's been sucked out of so many Americans. This is the Americanism that's being denied so many people. They're told daily by their leaders, by their president, their political party, that that America doesn't exist. And furthermore, it never did, they're told. This game has always been stacked against you. The rich, they make sure that they got everything and that you've got nothing. It's a cynicism that destroys the very things about humanity which set us apart. And they do it for their own power, all the while claiming they're the ones who have all the love and compassion for people, when it's we who do.

"No fuckin' way". The nurse had asked of I wanted to be resuscitated if my shit went south while they were fixing my broken neck. She was surprised. "Really?" "Really, no heroics. They always work out badly "

We only rarely are given the gift of choosing the better end, and more often fate and an archaic system of laws that enshrine an outmoded mandate against suicide condemn the terminal sufferer to extended agony. So deep is the hold of the old priest ridden theocratic regime, that in all but a few states one choosing to exit is condemned to slapdash and frequently painful methods, despite the advances of medicine that put within technological reach an assisted death with dignity.

More poignantly, even one who has made essentially the same decision as that which surprised my nurse, may find herself trapped in a prolonged nightmare because she can no longer effect her own release and the laws conspire to prevent assistance from the most logical source (her doctor). Thus we are left to the merciful intervention of our closest loved ones, with terrible consequences to them, both psychic and legal.

If you do not own your own life, and thus the right to end it, you own nothing. Only the stale echo of a regime that once made suicide a cause for eternal hell fire enforced by the priests' possession. of the key to the hallowed cemetary, prevents us from demanding this elementary and elemental right.

Fuck Yahweh, his messengers, prophets, shills, scribes, and hustlers.

Freedom. Freedom to live, and freedom to die.

Because the Repugnants in the Senate minority routinely refuse confirmation of any presidential nomination, Acting Director Edward De Marco's tenure as overseer of the now nationalized mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is unprotected from termination by replacement should a new acting director be named.

That said, his refusal to comply with an administration "hail Mary" maneuver in the waning minutes of the last quarter of the game gives us a further opportunity to assess the strength of spine which stiffens our feckless Prez. He has belatedly (but at last) , come out with a housing foreclosure intervention proposal with at least the hope of bringing some relief to underwater borrowers. De Marco has refused to implement the plan.

An executive with a shred of self respect (let alone an instinct for self preservation) would surely find it expedient to give De Marco some other duties and install in his place a civil servant more prepared to cooperate in bringing relief to the beleaguered voters borrowers and associated observers of the political scene who shortly will need to decide in whom to place their trust going toward.

This has the potential to be for Prez a defining moment. I'm laying seven-to-five that when the Senate reconvenes in September there has been no new Acting FHFA Director named, and no principal reduction program undertaken. Of course, I have been burned before betting on Obama's fighting spirit. You are free to fade my wager if you are still a true believer.

I have elsewhere voiced my opinion that under the regime of George W. Bush it made sense for to conduct one's business as a christian church. The tax benefits alone are substantial. More importantly, your self declared religious enterprise is entitled to numerous exemptions from otherwise onerous public laws

Indeed, careful tax planning mandates at least two for profit corporations, one accounting on a cash basis, one on an accrual basis, as well as a non profit charitable/educational foundation, and, of course, a church. Alas, not everyone has a taste for stepping up to the altar, so to speak, and I have really only found one enthusiastic practitioner of this program, namely me. Happily, the latest jurisprudence generated by the intersection of health care policy and religious zealotry promises to extend to the simple but pious layman some of the aforementioned exemptions from laws of general application. Thus, the injunctive relief just granted to several Catholic business owners, who balked at providing contraception to the daughters of satan women in their employ. If, reasoned the judge, the state's interest in mandating contraceptive coverage was waivable for a church, how important can it be? You still can't avoid property taxes, provide a parsonage free of imputation to the cleric of income, nor escape the FICA burden, without proclaiming your religious purpose, but at least you needn't enable those sluts female employees in their licentiousness, if God tells you not to.

Just to flesh out the scenario, let us suppose that Scalia has blown a brain aneurism reaching for a high note while jovially regaling fellow opera buff Ruth Ginsburg with his favorite Scarpia aria. “Presto, Nino, i fortissimo” urges the cagy Ginsburg, taking note of his rapidly reddening face. His body has barely hit the floor when she calmly conveys both the awful news and her own resignation to the White House. She fears that she may not herself survive till 2017.
 
Desperate to save some scrap of legacy, Obama names Elizabeth Warren (just narrowly defeated by Scott Brown in Massachusetts) and David Cole, (son and intellectual heir of Robert Cole, constitutional scholar and liberal giant of Berkeley’s law faculty).
The predictable Repugnant howls are followed by a filibuster which is obviated when Joe Biden casts the deciding vote to uphold the ruling by newly appointed parliamentarian Tom Daschle who found against the attempt by Mitch McConnell to continue debate on the rule change for judicial confirmations first threatened when Dick Cheney presided over the Senate.
Lame duck coup or the salvation of the Republic

The last time I bought sneakers (Nikes, sz 15), the cute girl at the register asked me "Are these for you?  Oooh, junk!". (Wherein the noumena of the large footed.)

I do not bring this up in an act of shameless self-promotion (ed note: Yeah, right!) but as the result of random thought associations provoked by the fortuitous juxtaposition in the Times of two stories from what we may (without condescension) call the frontiers of sexual behavior.

The first concerns a man who, inter alia, sought sex in closed places.

In his toolkit for achieving more and better orgasms, was 30K in high fashion apparel, including the cited iconic high-heeled pumps.

The second (and far more interesting story) is about laboratory confirmation of the old "closeted queen on an anti-gay mission trope". (If we are free-associating to government spies and high-heeled pumps, can J. Edgar Hoover be far from mind?)

What do we learn from this?

1.  Don't cross dress if you have feet longer than 12".

2. Deforming your instinctive sexual promptings by superimposing some archaic morality will end wth you confined to a duffel bag, virtually or F2F.