Iraq War Lies

If nothing else it's important to recall the glaring lies that led up to the launch of the disastrous Iraq War 15 years ago today.

Assured President George W. Bush shortly before the misbegotten Iraqi invasion that wiped out some 100,000 innocent lives:

"I have no war plans on my desk."

No, they were in the desk drawer.

The Downing Street Memo would expose how Bush and his warmongering cabal had contrived reasons to start an unprovoked war.

It was settled. They wanted to invade oil-rich Iraq all along. They just needed a good reason. A reason that a vulnerable American citizenry, still reeling in the wake of 9/11, would buy.

The painful impact of the Iraq war reverberates today and likely will for decades to come. It created today's scourge of ISIS.

Lies can have devestating consequences. They cripple and kill. They perpetuate pain.

As it's been said and written, those who fail to learn from the mistakes of the past, are doomed to repeat them.

That's something for Americans to keep in mind, particularly with the present unprecedentedly disingenuous oval office occupier making sporadic aggressions towards Iran and North Korea.

From Wentz They Came

So I've had this picture in my mind all throughout the Philadelphia Eagles' winning season of my oldest brother Brian smiling big, high-fiving my father after each Bird's victory.

The image is vivid and real as if they were standing right before me. And I'm not so sure that somehow they aren't.

My brother, Brian 

The day this past June that Brian, "Pridewell" we call him, passed onto a better place, I decided in his honor to buy an Eagles baseball cap, like the one he gave me for Christmas about 15 years ago shortly after our Dad passed.

I had lost the original Eagles cap and weeks earlier had spotted its match on a revolving rack of sports teams hats at a shop around the corner; it was the only black Eagles cap with a silver and green eagle head on its crest.

That June Day 

Brian was a huge Eagles fan, having been indoctrinated at a young age by my father Jack McKinney, former Eagles beat writer for the Philadelphia Daily News the year, 1960, Philly captured its last NFL championship.

Throughout his life, Brian treasured his memories, as a boy of 9 or 10, meeting many of the 1960 Champion Eagles, including one of his favorites, "Mr. Touchdown" Tommy McDonald.

My father Philadelphia Daily News' Sports Writer Jack McKinney plays a football game with his friend, Eagles' quarterback Norm Van Brocklin around 1960 when the Eagles won their last championship.

My Dad called the Eagles championship season "the magical season." This Eagles' season, despite it's share of injury disappointments, has been something special, as well.

And it's not over. As I've said for the last few weeks to my brothers, Sean and Brendan and sister Maura (whose birthday it is today), the "Eagles won't forget from Wentz they came."

Maura's SuperBowl
Birthday cake.

There's a big picture message here in the Philadelphia Eagle's success for folks who care to see it.

It's there in Carson Wentz's total committment to his team, despite his season ending injury. It's there in the players' committment to themselves and eachother. It's there in their humility.

Winners are humble and confident -- not cocky. Winners believe in themselves and eachother -- and don't tear eachother down. Winners are leaders who work for the common good.

Our country could use a message like that right about now. Go Birds!

And here's to my Ol' Da' and Pridewell watching the Super Bowl on that giant flatscreen in the sky. Let's get this one.

I'll be wearing my Eagle's hat.

Sideshow

“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims... but accomplices.” ― George Orwell

You know, you just know that Donald Trump has been waiting all his life for this night.

Surely, he's dreamt of his first "State of the Union" address. The obligatory standing ovations. The praise. Oh, the praise.

While corporatist-beholden sycophants worship their President in a sensational sideshow spectacle, Trump smugly looks out at the sea of phony smiling faces, in his best John Candy impression, the one the actor used to portray arrogant, self-righteous schmucks.

And Martha will turn to her husband Fred and comment "Geez, he appears so presidential."

And Fred will say: "Maybe he's not such a bad guy afterall, Martha. Look at all those folks clapping for him."

Then Martha will say: "I've been saying, ya know, we just need to give the poor guy a chance. He's only been in there a year. Geez."

But here's the truth if you're interested, folks. Step right up. The featured freak has escaped the red and yellow circus tent, hijacked the barker’s box and has been peddling his snakeoil for the past year to a nation swindled.

Now, it's all on the chopping block. 

Our Free speech. A free press. Fair elections. Affordable healthcare for the sickest. Consumer and worker protections. Sensible gun law. Clean rivers and streams. Unpolluted air. Wall Street oversight. National monument lands preservation. Social Security. National security.

Truth. Justice. The American way.

And anyone who can get through watching this sad state of our union dog-and-pony show, without at least a mild sense of nausea, should seriously consider whether he or she truly is an American.

Blame GOP for Trump

(Cape May County Herald opinion from a year and a half ago on Trump and GOP complicity, as relevant as ever.)

By Kevin McKinney,  May 11, 2016 

As Donald Trump sells out America, leaving behind a slew of defeated establishment candidates to squirm and sweat before the funhouse mirror in this Twilight Zone playing on an endless loop, one thing is clear: these United States of America aren't what we've cracked them up to be, and we wonder, were they ever?

Our once great nation's standards, values and hopes have seemingly crumbled right before our eyes into a reality TV rubble, where the truth is a joke, the disingenuous reigns, insults are hip, fear motivates and a walking, talking tabloid caricature has a serious shot at the Oval Office.

How did we get here? How did the most powerful democracy in the world become so desperate as to welcome the phony, inciting declarations of a billionaire successfully bidding for the highest office in the land?

The Republican Party only has itself to blame. The unmitigated rise of ‘The Donald’ is as much about the tangible as the intangible, about a twisted, single-minded, conservative ideology which has long catered only to a powerful, select few.

In truth, it’s been a slow fade. Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Trump is just the tip of the iceberg, the most visible symptom of an insidious disease that for decades has been quietly compromising many aspects of American life - our security, health, finances and overall quality - certainly since Reaganomics trickled down, trickled out and left the people dry.

But, only now, in the flotsam wake of unprecedented, ultra-conservative, think-tank-orchestrated, corporation-endorsed, alarmist manipulation of the people's hearts, minds and lives since the watershed 2001 high-jacking of the White House is the devastation suddenly and sickeningly obvious.

Donald Trump is what happens, he's the result, the divine justice administered, in the wake of so much criminal negligence and inexcusable abandonment of the people in their most desperate times of need.

After eight hellish years of George W. Bush's "War of Terror" against the American people - through the inexplicable Sept. 11 failures, Iraq War lies, profiteering and bloodshed, domestic spying, bungled Hurricane Katrina response and the deregulation-instigated 2008 Great Recession - untold damage was done.

Then, while millions of Americans were losing their homes, jobs and savings, obstructionist Republicans blocked hundreds of bills, including those designed to help veterans, senior citizens, women victims of violence, ill Sept. 11 first responders, the jobless, middle class families, teachers and the underpaid.

Today, more than 16 million American children are living in poverty and the richest one-tenth percent of Americans have almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The only time congressional Republicans have lifted a finger for the past seven years was to point it accusingly at the president.

Fear-mongering and personal attacks became common. Trust in the Republican establishment evaporated like so many campaign promises.

Emerging from this atmosphere was the bright and shiny political outsider, ‘The Donald,' to the rescue of the disenchanted.

Promising change in loud, condescending, childlike declarations - repeating his adjectives, "great," "amazing," and "special" - devoid of substance, the grand illusionist gradually won the hearts of the forsaken and desperate.

Who can resist a peep under the sideshow circus tent?

Despite his anti-establishment appeal, Trump, in essence, is the amplified embodiment of everything ugly about today’s Republican Party.

Rock bottom line: Obsessive greed and the relentless pursuit of absolute power, is the mad scientist that inadvertently electrified and enlivened this amalgamation of our lesser selves, Trump, to run amok, deceive, disparage and ultimately destroy with impunity.

Holding America Hostage

It's as if someone is holding a gun to their heads.

They can't talk about it. Not now. It's too early, they say. Just pray.

In the wake of another horribly senseless shooting massacre, this time at Sutherland Springs Baptist church in Texas, where 26 men, women and children were killed, and more 20 injured, while praying, Congressional Republicans insist that it's "too early" to discuss ways of stopping the next one.

They just throw up their hands -- and keep them up. Nothing they can do. Can't talk right now. In fact, they don't like talking about a lot of things.

Like how the National Rifle Association dumped $50 million into the 2016 campaign coffers of Republican Senators and then candidate Donald J. Trump to, in effect, buy an assured Republican majority.

And there's the gun.

Our Republican congressmen, whose job it is to listen to the American people, can't talk about trying to make our country just a little safer. They are being paid to keep their mouths shut and sit on their hands.

They are getting paid to sit idly by while we watch some 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence.

And make no bloody doubt about it. These so called representatives of the people have blood on their hands.

Much of this same crowd are professed Christians who like to talk about prayer a lot. But they are phony Christians. They are the deceivers, the wolves in sheep's clothing that Jesus and Paul warned us against in the New Testament.

James warned that "Faith without works is dead." And these posing Christians are dead inside, corrupted by greedy corporatist policy. 

Prayers can be powerful and are absolutely needed. But talking about prayers without backing it up with urgently needed, doable action, is dead.

Yeah, they talk about prayer, but when it comes to practicing Christian values, even when so many of their brothers and sisters of the same faith were slaughtered just a week ago, they are powerless to take the most basic and sensible of steps to keep killing machines out of the hands of the unstable.

It's long been a matter of record that the overwhelming majority of Americans -- Democrats, Republicans, white, black and brown -- want stricter gun regulations in this country so queerly obessed with firearms.

But all we hear from the National Rifle Association, and their puppet Republican congressmen, is a whole lot more shucking and jiving by about infringing on Second Amendment rights of gun ho gun owners.

Never mind the Second Amendment was written at a time when "the right to bear arms" referred to the single shot musket, which allowed on a good day maybe three lead slug firings a minute.

Today, with the aid of presently legal "fire bump stocks," a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle can be converted into a virtual machine gun, firing hundreds of rounds per minute.

How do these Second Amendment, gun rights advocates reconcile that?

It was "too early" to discuss reasonable gun law changes after the Las Vegas shooting massacre last month that left 58 people dead, and hundreds injured.

And in the meantime, it's getting way too late.

After the Vegas shooting, it was the legality of Bump stocks, that was supposed to be addressed. So, what is Congress waiting for?

Another mass shooting so they can say it's "too early" to amend the laws and simply call for prayers again?

Despite all the posturing last month, bills to make bump stocks illegal are languishing on Capitol Hill.

No one wants to talk about keeping high-powered killing machines out of the hands of killers.

We also know that the Texas shooter should have been prevented from buying firearms for various reasons, including his discharge from the Air Force related to a domestic abuse case and involuntary committal to a mental institution.

Clearly, there is work to do on many fronts to seriously address America's gun epidemic.

The President says the Texas church massacre is a "mental health thing." As if guns weren't involved.

This is the same guy who, earlier this year, signed a bill reversing President Barack Obama's restrictions on mentally ill people buying guns.

While the President and Conservatives stretch the boundaries of reason in responding to these terrible tragedies and shift the blame on anything or anyone but guns, I lay much of the blame on our lip service congressional representatives and the President himself.

We'll never know just how much damage Trump's exhaustive, relentless fear and hate mongering has inflicted on the American psyche these past two years or so.

And that's the whole point. It's not something easily measured.

We do know that hate crimes spiked more than 20 percent in major American cities in 2016 during Trump's divisive, caustic presidential run.

Trump has fanned the flames of hatred and bigotry with his sheer callousness and constant childish, inciting tweets.

As a so-called leader, if the President isn't making this country a better place, he's aiding and abetting the bad guys who want to do it harm.

Thank You Zoe Snifferdink

There's no one to bark and go crazy, attacking the heavy bag when I hit it, as if she was defending me against the bag.

No one to greet me as I come home, her behind wagging wildly and wearing a big hairy toothed smile to see what I maybe brought her.

No one to say good morning with a wild little dance of her own making, up on her hind legs and pawing the air like a whinnying horse -- so exuberant that a new day had dawned and that she was alive to experience all of its wonderful possibilities.

We could play ball, hide n seek with treats, wrestle, or she could dig herself silly outside, hunting down voles like she was bred to do.

Zoe was a dog -- a black and white, rough-haired, Jack Russell mix. But she had more personality, life and compassion than most humans.

I was Zoe's "Uncle," if you will. For the past four years or so, I took care of Zoe anytime her "mother" Mary went to visit family, which was every couple months.

The first time I met her, Zoe jumped up onto my lap, sat there perfectly balanced and licked my face. We've been buddies ever since.

Whenever I picked her up at Mary's, Zoe would go nuts, crying and barking as if to say, "Why so long between visits?"

At the boatyard bungalow in Cape May we had many adventures.

One summer night a family of raccoons showed up in the trees off my backyard and Zoe was repeatedly bouncing off the vinyl lattice fence trying to get at them, much to the amusement of a friend and me watching by torchlight.

I often wondered how things would go if Zoe met a raccoon face to face. The raccoon initially might have mistaken Zoe, who had the same coloring, for another raccoon.

I imagined Zoe running circles around, and occasionally swatting the stunned raccoon the way Cassius Clay punished the lumbering Sonny Liston in their first bout in Miami. Like Liston, the raccoon would finally give up, and retreat to a neutral corner of the yard.

Together Zoe and I hunted and chased squirrels, rabbits, mice, possums, raccoons and the occasional stray cat that dared to venture into our hood. (though I would always allow the rabbits to get a running start).

I remember Zoe, after she had chased a mouse under the stove, repeatedly whining and pawing at the stove. "Zoe you can't get it that way," I told her. "He's not gonna come out with you pawing away like that. You have to wait quietly and be patient."

Then Zoe, seeming to understand me, sat back on her haunches and waited. I never did see her catch a mouse. But a couple months ago, at my new place, a cottage in Courthouse, I awoke on the couch and found a soggy, dead vole on the floor next to me.

"Thanks Zoe," I said, as Zoe looked up from her bone surprised, having apparently forgotten the night's before kill.

Another time, Zoe cornered a possum under the deck in the boatyard; the frightened creature stayed there, frozen all night, or least until we went to bed.

When Zoe's owner Mary would return home after a week or two with family and text me, I always managed to make excuses to keep Zoe another two or three days.

"I know she's having fun," Mary would text generously. "Keep her as long as you want."

Zoe loved tennis balls, soccer balls, anything round. She once sat on the neighbor's back deck, staring at the fence and whining. She had spotted the decorative wooden ball adorning the fence post and wanted it to play with.

For awhile there, I woke up wondering where Zoe was and then found her standing at attention in front of "Toy Corner" -- a cramped space with a TV table wedged between the refrigerator and the bungalow's back door.

It was where I piled all kinds of things I had no other place for -- broken gooneybird chimes, bug repellent, water guns, artist paint supplies -- and Zoe's treats, like rawhide bones, stuffed animals and tennis balls.

Several mornings in a row, she automatically assumed her vigil before Toy Corner, certain that it held a new surprise for each new day. Of course, I'd have to oblige even if it meant sneaking out to the dollar store for a squeaky stuffed hedgehog.

Zoe touched my heart immensely. She was a brilliant, fun-loving and affectionate dog. The best dog I ever knew. I loved her as much as she loved me. And she always entertained the hell out of me.

If we can learn from animals, and I know that we can, Zoe taught me and continually seemed to be reminding me of how precious is the gift of life. 

Just a few days ago, Zoe was tirelessly retrieving Wiffle balls I batted out back.

A day later, she was unusually subdued. I thought she was mad at me for not paying her enough attention.

She wouldn't eat. Suddenly, she had no interest even in a doggie treat or, her favorite, a marrow bone. 

With Zoe resting on my lap, I drove her to the veterinary hospital yesterday morning. It was serious. A dastardly disease that sneaks up on some dogs in the prime of their life.

Zoe died this morning. She wasn't even seven. But she packed enough living into those nearly seven years to fill seven lifetimes.

I will miss her. Thank you Zoe Snifferdink, my pal the Love Pup, AKA the Scruffin' Pup, for immeasurably enriching my life.

Pray -- And Act

The National Rifle Association has bought and paid for Republicans' silence and inaction on America's grating gun-ho epidemic for far too long.

While we mourn and pray for our brothers and sisters, senselessly and tragically mowed down by a crazed man with an aresonal of high-powered weapons in Las Vegas, we must channel our anguish and anger into action.

Arguably, tougher gun laws in Nevada and the nation would have at least minimized the deaths and injuries in the senseless, horrific Las Vegas tragedy. 

Without the readily available bump stock attachment converting a semi-automatic into essentially a machine gun, the mass killer, whose name doesn't need mentioning, wouldn't have spilled so much blood -- 59 killed and more than 500 injured.

The Las Vegas shooter owned more than 40 guns reportedly and 12 were semi automatic rifles converted to machine gun capacity right there in the hotel room with him.

He had no problem amassing a mass killing aresonal, and that simply should not be.

After the worst mass killing in our nation's modern history, will Republicans finally own up to their criminal complicity?

After San Bernadino, Sandy Hook, Orlando, Aurora, Columbine and the like, the Right's glaring inaction on common sense gun safety laws must end.

If President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders truly care about the American people they would indeed pray -- and then act to tighten gun laws, ban bump stocks and do all they can to prevent a mentally unstable person from legally buying guns.

Of course, if they really gave a squat, they wouldnt have started to reverse sensible gun legislation passed under President Barack Obama.

Bottom line. The Las Vegas horror illustrates all over again why we need to get money out of politics.

In the 2016 elections alone, The NRA dumped 500 million dollars into the campaigns of six Republican senators and then candidate Trump. All but one senator won their races.

The Bible that the President was quoting Monday also tells us that we can't "serve both God and mammon." 

And 1 Timothy, 6:10 has this to say about the love of money:

"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." 

In Matthew, Paul has a good deal to say about hypocrites of the faith as well.

President Trump can posture all he wants about praying for the Las Vegas victims and he can cite all the scripture he wants too.

But sadly, it all rings hollow. Something the President never has seemed to grasp: Actions speak louder than words.