Well, It Ain't Raining This Saturday

On the one hand, the American political right has no problem at all with cloaking itself in the bloodshed yesterday in Paris:

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/because-twitter-is-our-national-id-here-are-the-worst-conservative-reactions-to-the-paris-attacks/

Particularly remarkable is the Judith Miller response. After all, can anything Coulter or Malkin say not be an already broken record? Ms. Miller shows herself to be incapable of reflection. I guess this was already a proven fact about her, given the interviews she gave recently whilst pushing her memoir, see, e.g., her conversation with Jon Stewart, which is surely preserved on Youtube. Ted Cruz of course lept to the battlements. Editorial comment from Digby:

Sen. Ted Cruz found time to talk tough with a statement worthy of Sarah Palin:

We must make it crystal clear that affiliation with ISIS and related terrorist groups brings with it the undying enmity of America—that it is, in effect, signing your own death warrant.

Yuppers, that will have them quaking in their suicide vests.

On the other hand, there's this today from Henry Giroux:

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/33604-terrorizing-students-the-criminalization-of-children-in-the-us-police-state

The simple concept behind Black Lives Matter in self evident. Yet one of the two major political parties must find an obnoxious counter: "why not all lives matter?" Why not indeed. would that it were true. Way back when I was less than 40 and riding around the country in a van full of musicians, the GOP managed to nominate Ronald Reagan for President. The GOP had been utterly humiliated only a few years previously by the criminal corruption of Richard Nixon, and the country had more recently voted in a kind, reasonable man, Jimmy Carter, who suggested that we wear sweaters in the winter rather than turning up the heat so much. This advice was as Republican as Calvin Coolidge, but it managed to offend Mr. Reagan, an aging California movie star who spent his time in toastier climes, behind the wheel of a Borax mule train. Reagan kicked off his campaign against Carter with a speech at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Mississippi. This was where the three civil rights workers had been found, buried in an earthen dam, and where the sheriff's deputies who murdered them were featured on the cover of Life, chawing their Red Man and grinning at the Yankee cameraman. From an account of the murder investigation:

It is not known whether the three were beaten before they were killed. Klan informants deny that they were, but there is some physical evidence to the contrary. What is known is that a twenty-six-year-old dishonorably discharged ex-Marine, Wayne Roberts, was the trigger man, shooting first Schwerner, then Goodman, then Chaney, all at point blank range. (FBI informant James Jordan, according to a second informant present at the killings, Doyle Barnette, also fired two shots at Chaney.) The bodies of the three civil rights workers were taken to a dam site at the 253-acre Old Jolly Farm. The farm was owned by Philadelphia businessman Olen Burrage who reportedly had announced at a Klan meeting when the impending arrival in Mississippi of an army of civil rights workers was discussed, "Hell, I've got a dam that'll hold a hundred of them." The bodies were placed together in a a hollow at the dam site and then covered with tons of dirt by a Caterpillar D-4.

You can see, from the grins on the spectators behind the two defendants, that it was all pretty much an open conspiracy. The two deputies were acquitted, by the way. This was Reagan's kick-off venue, 1980. Take our country back, they like to chant. Three "experts" have now determined that Tamir Rice was justifiably killed by police in that snowy Cleveland park. Nothing to see here, move along.

As rust never sleeps, nonetheless, I'll now ascend my tin roofs and sweep the leaves off yet again. Assuming I return to earth in a controlled manner, you can look (or listen) for me on the Prairie Home Companion radio show next Saturday, November 21. I'll be the one with the fiddle.