Benson: Truth in Advertising



Steve Benson, the thin-skinned Arizona Republic cartoonist, bristles if you address him as "young man,"  protesting that he's a grandfather.  Maybe he's just lucky or uses "Just for Men" because his Arizona Republic picture features plenty of dark hair for a granddad.   Judge for yourself and let Steve know what you think.

It's fair to say, though, that Steve doesn't take after his grandfather, Ezra Taft Benson.  Probably the only time Steve prays these days is when he gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror and thanks Almighty God for that.

Homer: Steve Dilbeck

"Arguing that Clayton Kershaw just pitched the best game in history."
http://www.latimes.com/sports/dodgers/dodgersnow/la-sp-dn-dodgers-clayton-kershaw-best-no-hitter-20140619-story.html

Get serious Steve Dilbeck:
1.  It's the Colorado Rockies who hit a buck fifty when they're not playing at Mile High Field in Denver. 

2. It's Dodger Stadium where nobody hits at night.

3. It's a no-hitter not a perfect game.

4. It's not the World Series.  It's a meaningless midseason game between two mediocre teams.

5. It's the Rockies

This is the perfect example of a HOMER, ie, a hometown sportswriter, Steve Dilbeck, hyping the hometown team.  "Listen, the Rockies are a good-hitting team, but they were a deer in the headlights."   At home in their hitter friendly ballpark, the Rockies have 12 players batting over .300.  Their star Troy Tulowitzki is batting .477.  Playing away in other peoples ballparks the Rockies have only three players batting over .300, and two of them together have played in a total of 8 games.  Star Tulowitzki is batting .252 in away games. 

Pitching in hitter unfriendly Dodger Stadium, all the Dodgers pitchers look like they're headed for the hall of fame.  Pitching on the road, they look like a group of good pitchers.

Sandy Koufax pitched the best game I've ever seen pitched.  It was game four of the 1963 World Series against the New York Yankees.  In a day game at Dodger Stadium when the field is hitter friendly,  Koufax beat Hall of Famer Whitey Ford by a score of 2 to 1.  The Yankees scored their only run when Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle hit a home run.  Koufax held the heavy hitting Yankees to six hits, including two each by perennial all stars Bob Richardson and Elston Howard.  Two words sum up why Howard as a young player never played enough to make the Hall of Fame: Yogi Berra.

Don Larsen's World Series perfect game is the best ever.  He beat the best Dodger team ever, and one the great baseball teams of all time in 1956:  Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella (my favorite Dodger), Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo, Jim Gilliam, Duke Snider.  The only Dodger in the lineup that day, including the pinch hitter Mitchell, who wasn't an All Star was Sandy Amoros, the left fielder.  Four of the 1956 Dodgers are in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Pipeline Malarkey

Aren't the folks who oppose the natural gas pipeline from Tucson to Mexico (Republic 5/5/2014) getting a little carried away when they claim the pipeline right-of-way will open up a new route for drug runners and illegal immigrants.  The Republic's own map of the project shows the pipeline follows the route of state highway 286.   Who's kidding who.  An LA Times story from a few years back featured  Sasabe, Mexico as the jumping off point for smugglers of all kinds using the highway 286 route (http://articles.latimes.com/2006/may/18/world/fg-mexborder18), .   Moreover, how much environmental pollution will there be from a pipeline where there's already a road and actually not much vegetation.   Probably a lot less than what clean natural gas can eliminate from the Mexican power plants burning dirty fuel and polluting our Arizona air.  You'd think environmentalists would be overjoyed that Mexico is doing something to eliminate greenhouse gases.

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In 2000, according to the DEA, some 50,800 pounds of marijuana were seized on Tohono land. By last year, the figure had soared to 192,225 pounds. Other authorities put the number even higher. More and more Tohono themselves, meanwhile, have been caught up in the drug trade. "Young Indians," says Coulson [DEA], "carry it over to drop houses" from which the pot eventually finds its way to the streets. 

 

Most every family, it seems, has been touched by drugs, including some of the reservation's most elite. In September, Tohono O'odham police stopped a 1996 Chevrolet Lumina for speeding and discovered six bales of marijuana under a blanket in the trunk. The driver, 39-year-old Nicholas C. Juan, was arrested and now awaits trial. He is the brother of Vivian Juan-Saunders, the Tohono chairwoman.

He isn't the first member of the chairwoman's family to be caught drug-running. Her sister, Mary Juan, was arrested in May 1999 by U.S. Customs officials after they discovered 15 bales of marijuana stashed in her Pontiac Grand Prix and in a shed on her property. Mary had once been a tribal judge. She was convicted in federal court and spent a year and a day in jail. She's out now, raising her three grandkids--her daughter-in-law, busted with her six years ago, moved off the property.

 

(http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jan/08/magazine/tm-tohono2)

 

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“The third is a language that is a mystery to me and perhaps to some of your other readers. It has a degree of importance if it suggests the nationality of a group, other than Mexican, traversing that dangerous stretch of America,” wrote Godfrey Harris of Los Angeles.

The photo was taken by Scott Olson of Getty Images, and he did not address the language question in the caption information he supplied. After readers inquired, a Times photo editor contacted Olson, who in turn checked with the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol to get the answer:
Tohono O’odham.

(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/readers/2010/07/mystery-language-on-a-border-sign.html)

Millennial Marxists: The New Class

The Republic's Phil Boas probably doesn't need me to defend him against accusations of "intellectually laziness" by a defender of "Millennial Marxists."  However, young Marxists and their supporters really do need to read more.  Start with Milovan Dilas's The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System.   Dilas was Marshal Tito's right hand  man until Dilas became disenchanted with Communism.  Dilas was appalled by Communist rulers who were installing themselves as the new privileged class instead of delivering economic equality and socialist democracy they promised the people.  George Orwell, another disillusioned Marxist, explored some of the same themes in his famous works Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.   The prescient insight of Orwell and Dilas is astonishing when we examine the state of Communism today.  Far from delivering political and economic democracy, the remaining Communists states, e.g., China and Vietnam, are ruled by self-perpetuating (nepotism) political elites who control all the state's wealth and power.

The charge by defenders of "Millennial Marxists" that capitalism is responsible for all the world's wars and troubles is particularly galling.   Not only did Mr. Boas neglect the carnage inflicted by Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh and Giap, but he did not explore Stalin's role in starting World War II.  It was Stalin after all who allied with Hitler to invade and divide Catholic Poland between them.  Moreover, though Marxist historians are quick to blame Roosevelt and the Pope for not doing enough to stop the Holocaust, no Marxist is interested in examining how very close the Red Army was to liberating Auschwitz and Warsaw in 1944 when Stalin called of his offensive so that the Germans could finish off the troublesome Poles and Jews for him.

Intellectual laziness isn't the problem here.  The problem is egregious intellectual dishonesty.

What AZ Legislators and California Gangbangers Have in Common

What do our state legislature and California gangbangers have in common.  They both think it's a good idea to walk around with a gun tucked into your pants, with enough showing so that people know you're "packin."   I can't tell you how disturbing it is to walk into a popular Arcadia fast food restaurant and pass a teenager with a gun tucked into his pants headed for a car with California license plates.   The pants were so loose it's surprising they could hold up the gun.  Was he just a teenager strutting his manhood for his gangster pals, or a Jared Loughner stalking his next victim?  How the heck was I supposed to know.   I don't care if a rancher needs a gun to keep the coyotes at bay or someone wants to go turkey hunting, but there's got to be limits.   I am way done with shooting at people and being shot at.   I am now too old to duck for cover and would like a little peace of mind in my old age.

Krauthammer and the Crimea

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-obama-vs-putin-the-mismatch/2014/03/27/e26a27f2-b5d5-11e3-8cb6-284052554d74_story.html

Charles Krauthammer who was born in New York City and grew up in Montreal sat out the Vietnam war when he was still an able bodied man.  Now he wants our children to shed their blood in faraway Crimea fighting Russians of dubious character defending Ukrainians led by people of dubious character.  My answer is NO.

Scotland and Crimea

I've never found explanation anywhere on why the US cares about Crimea seceding from Ukraine, but isn't sending the Marines to Scotland to stop their vote to secede from England.  Maybe it's because England has been taken over by Russian oligarchs and aiding Scottish secession is about the most meaningful thing the US can do to annoy the Russians.

Women Ogling Women's Bodies

Thank you very much, AZ Republic (10/29/13), for alerting us to research saying girls as well as boys are ogling women's bodies,  a vice attributed to our sex-charged culture.   When we take our children to see The Nutcracker ballet this Christmas,  I will admonish my children only to look at the ballerina's faces.

China: The Dangerous Trading Partner

Communist China's recent and reckless sabre rattling in the South China Sea and East China tell us that China is an unstable trading partner and unreliable manufacturing location.  American companies like Apple and Walmart need to relocate that supply sources from Communist China to America and Mexico. 

Steve Dilbeck - California Knucklehead

For want of anything intelligent to say or simply a genetic disposition to boorishness,  Steve Dilbeck of the LA Times calls Arizonans "knuckleheads," a reckless generalization.   Los Angeles may have Clayton Kershaw, a fine pitcher who's never been to college.   Arizona has Roger Angel. 

Firstly, to paraphrase Russell Baker,  people become journalists because they are mathematically challenged, need an occupation less intellectually demanding than engineering or medicine, and aren't motivated enough to get up early in the morning to do something productive like work on a farm.  Of these, the most marginal are left to babble about sports.

Next, California would be better served if its babblers toned down the babble and urged the knuckleheads in their state to stop killing each other over baseball games.   Aping the public bad behavior of its brawling sports teams.  Arizona is the least of California's problems.

Last, Mr. Dilbeck's defense of boorish behavior by Dodgers baseball players, i.e., urinating in a public swimming pool and bragging about it, is substantive evidence that its newspapers employ individuals with a genetic disposition for boorishness and who are very much a part of fueling the mayhem in California.

But perhaps I'm mistaken.   Mr. Dilbeck, being one, is probably California's foremost authority on knuckleheads.

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How sad for you and Mr. Dilbeck if you think Dr. Angel is a sportswriter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Angel

Lower Expectations

We've attended the Arizona Opera for many years.   So did my wife's friend, the priest who baptized my son and his longtime friend and opera date.    The priest's opera buddy was very much unknown back then and we were the only people the priest and his date had to talk to during intermissions.   After the opera we'd escort them back to the diocese parking lot where they parked their car.   I was the closest thing they had to a security detail.   Back in those days I was more than enough to drive off the stray homeless guy who tried to ask the priest's opera buddy for a date.    This little convoy went on for years until the priest's opera date won an election earning her a limo and a better parking space and bodyguard than me.

Years later sitting in the airport waiting for a ride back from grandma's house in Boston I look up and who do you think is sitting right next us?    Our opera buddy and her new bodyguard.   I leave "celebrities" alone.   She never got around to acknowledging us.   I admit that I'm pretty forgettable, but my wife isn't.   And what Arizona politician would pass up the opportunity to kiss an Arizona baby.

Living in a Crazy World

A Native American tribe that has no connection to Phoenix whatsoever, except the phone number of a lawyer who can drive a moving van through a pinhole in the law, can build a big a casino in Glendale.    A local hospital that used to be run by caring nuns but now is owned by a big medical conglomerate headquartered in  San Francisco can run a multi-million dollar raffle complete with a big TV media campaign.  An American Legion post that's been serving veterans in Phoenix for generations can't have a few slot machines to entertain the old timers and keep the doors open.  We live in a crazy world. 

Steve Benson calls Nurses Pigs

Regarding Steve Benson's cartoon (5/22) depicting Medicaid recipients and providers as pigs, most of the recipients are children and mothers.   Most of the providers are nurses and very dedicated.  I know my wife is one.   I don't always agree with Steve, but I'd never call his children and wife pigs.   "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last..."

District 9

The voters of Arizona District 9 sent Kyrsten Sinema to represent them in the United States Congress, its first openly bisexual member.   They made a science fiction movie about District 9; it was set in South Africa for dramatic effect.  No wonder they call us Zonies.

Nobody Here Speaks Portuguese Anymore

The beautiful Latin hymns of my childhood are gone.   The lilting Gaelic of my grandmother and her sisters is a fading memory.   My wife was a grown woman before she discovered her grandmothers were Portuguese and Spanish.   In New World Italian families daughters-in-law were expected to speak English and cook Italian (lucky for me).

I recognized a new contractors accent.   You're from from Brazil.   Why the subject of Portuguese came up I don't remember, but she asked if my family spoke it.  Sorry, no, nobody here speaks Portuguese anymore.

Flash Flood

The river was in such a rage
its waters had reached the flood stage.
I grabbed my old paddle
and tried to skedaddle
but a canoe I forgot to engage.

Clay Thompson: Skandal im Sperrbezirk‏

Eten drinken slapen!  Skandal im Sperrbezirk‏!

(Eat, drink, sleep!  Scandal in the prohibited area!) 

Sit on the porch in the sun in a worn out old robe.  

Scare a few hummingbirds.  Sip a few beers, trying to recall Rosi's number.

Und draussen im Hotel D'Amour
langweilen sich die Damen nur
weil jeder den die Sehnsucht quält
ganz einfach Rosis Nummer wählt

Und draussen vor der grossen Stadt
steh'n die Nutten sich die Füsse platt

Skandal im Sperrbezirk
Skandal im Sperrbezirk
Skandal - Skandal um Rosi

Steve Benson's Lewd Pope Caricature

You be the judge.

Be Like New Hampshire: Do Nothing

Rep. Martin Quezada's Republic column (3/9/2013) arguing for continuing Voting Rights Act preclearance is disengenious and ungracious. Federal protections didn't gift Rep. Quezada an uncontested seat in the Arizona House, the citizens of Arizona did when they established the Independent Redistricting Commission. Rep. Quezada claims that Arizona could get out from under the preclearance requirement by changing its ways like New Hampshire recently did. Really? New Hampshire didn't do anything except point out to the federal government and courts that it was silly to apply the Voting Rights Act and preclearance to New Hampshire in the first place. The New Hampshire in question is ten tiny towns that are 98 pecent white. The biggest has a few thousand citizens and the smallest has nine. The sin that got them on the federal watch list was to have less than 50 percent voter turnout in the 1968 election, when a cold and fog enshrouded New Hampshire was going for Nixon anyway and a lot of the voters decided to stay home. Nothing's changed much in New Hamsphire since then except a lot of people (like Joe Arpaio) with better voting habits have moved there from Massachusetts.  

Latest Hoot: RepublicTells Mayer How to Run a Technology Company

In the latest and greatest hoot, the AZ Republic enlisted a couple of unknown management consultants to advise Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo.   Mayer's sin is telling technology employees that they need to show up at the office for work without first asking for their input on the mandate.

Hello!  Mayer isn't just a pretty face.  She rose through the ranks of software engineering to become a top executive at Google, one of the most successful technology companies in the history of the planet.   Mayer is one of the people, if not the principal person, responsible for Google unseating Yahoo as the search technology that almost everyone uses to surf the Internet.

If you already know the formula for running a successful technology company it might make your new employees feel good to ask them how they feel about using it, but what do you do when they say no?   Say: "Ok, fine, we'll just keep doing the things we do, failing and losing money, while Google beats our brains out."

Who won the Vietnam War

They walked the rounds in on us
methodically adjusting the range
just like we'd been trained to do.
TANKS! Sweet Mary, Mother of God!
They have TANKS!
-- Battle for the Dong Ha Bridge, South Vietnam, 1972

Noting that a Starbucks coffee shop has recently opened in what was once known as Saigon, a Repubic letter-writer (1/13) asks why 58,000 Americans died during the Vietnam war. My question of many years remains unanswered, too. In 1972 almost all American combat forces had been withdrawn from South Vietnam. Although America had conceded defeat, the Communists in the North hadn't gotten the message. They procured hundreds of PT-76 and T-54 tanks and hundreds of 130mm artillery guns from their Soviet allies, and launched a very contenvional military attack on the Vietnamese in the South. If Vietnamization had failed and America was defeated in 1972, something America's left can't stop telling us, why was a massive Soviet and Chinese backed in invasion from the North necessary?  It took three years for the North Viethamese supplied with even more tanks and artillery by their Soviet and Communist Chinese allies to defeat the South Vietnamese. AK-47s, tanks and artillery may be able to force a government on people who don't want it, but they can't stop people from yearning for an American cup of coffee. 

New Year's Resolution for the Republic‏

In the New Year the Arizona Republic should resolve that it will be an alternative to the endless river of humorless "Progressive" and "Conservative" logorrhea we call the media. The Republic will feature the curmudgeons Clay and Doug, and hire an excorist to prevent Doug from being taken over by the Dark Side and Darth Hannity.

Clarence Page and Republic Insult Irish

Bravo to the Arizona Republic for telling off people who hold onto belief in the canard that President Barak Obama wasn't born in the United States.

On the 150th anniversary of the Irish Brigade's fatal assualt on the stonewall at Fredericksburg on the Eve of Emancipation, isn't it about time Arizona Republic apologized for publishing the canard that Irish immigrants were responsible for pushing African slaves off America's ladder of social mobility. Did the Irish write the US Constitution that permitted slavery? Were Washington, Jefferson, Madision, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee Irish? Does Eric Foner's Pulitzer-Prize-winning Fiery Trial claim that Abraham Lincoln, who at first was ambivalent about Emancipation and wanted to resettle freed slaves in the Caribbean, was Irish.

On the other hand all of the North's top generals in the Civil War had an Irish connection: Sheridan, Meade, Reynolds, and Sherman. Even Grant belonged to New York City's Ancient Order of Hibernians.

In the years since celebrating St. Patrick's Day by publishing this canard authored by Clarence Page, neither Page nor The Republic has singled out any other ethnic group and blamed it for America's sin of slavery.   Quite remarkable since not only were the Southern leaders not Irish, but neither were those who led the North's "loyal" opposition:  Clement Vallandigham, Fernando Wood and certainly not August Belmont, leader of the Democrats, who was a German immigrant who came to the Americas as an agent for the Rothschilds.

Chimera: Arizona Jaguar Boondoggle

The idea that the federal government should devote time and money to re-establish the jaguar in Arizona is a colossal, preposterous waste of money, a self-serving, activist driven boondoggle.  There were never very many jaguar in Arizona in the first place and none now. The fearsome predator was so rare even before Europeans arrived that it isn't even a part of Native American folklore in Arizona or New Mexico as it is in Latin America. The riparian habitat along the Salt, Gila and other Arizona rivers that's best for supporting the jaguar is long gone, a victim of humans, starting with Native Americans and then Europeans, diverting the waters for agricultural, industrial and residential purposes. Instead of indulging the fantasies of self-styled environmental activists and wasting money on this chimera, the money needs to be spent on our children or devoted to protecting the jaguar where there are viable jaguar populations and habitats in Central and South America.

Censoring the California Ballot Mess: the Rabidly Dishonest Left

While it merrily prints letters denouncing Secretary of State Ken Bennett for an alleged ballot counting mess, the Arizona Republic has censored reporting on the "ballot counting mess" in other West Coast states. Washington like Arizona had about 50,000 votes to count as of last night (11/20). California is the big story with 1.5 million ballots left to count. San Diego County has more votes left to count than the entire State of Arizona. 758,857 of the uncounted California votes are provisional ballots, as of 5 pm, 11/20.

Being a lot better than California and as good as Washington State may be nothing to brag about, but we aren't going to improve much on ballot counting as long as we allow people who order vote-by-mail ballots to show up on election day and say they need to vote in person, "because the dog ate my ballot."

It is ironic that one letter writer denouncing the Secretary of State invokes Mr. Bennett's unfortunate involvement in the President Obama birth certificate controversy. The fuss over ballot counting in Arizona proves that the "progressive" left is every bit as rabidly dishonest and unreasonable as the "birthers" who bullied Mr. Bennett into asking Hawai'i about the President's birth certificate. Lets hope Mr. Bennett shows more spine this time and vigorously defends himself and Helen Purcell, a decent civic minded woman, who has been most unfairly maligned during this controversy

Moreover The Republican isn't alone in its "unique" approach to the issue.   On 11/21 The Los Angeles Times ran story on Arizona:

"Arizona ballots finally counted -- Latinos ask, Why so long?"  

The Times story by Cindy Carcamo said not a word about the California ballot mess:  1.5 uncounted California ballots, including  758,857 uncounted provisional ballots, as of 5 pm, 11/21.  Nor did it mention that Washington State, which had been running neck and neck with Arizona, still had 25,000 uncounted ballots to count as of 11/21 and was still counting ballots as of 11/22.  The ballot counting issue is only of interest if the "progressive" left can use it to advantage against a so-called Red state.   Nevermind that five of the nine people elected to the House of Representatives for Arizona this year are Democrats.

Ed Montini 's Snotty Secession Column

Dear Ed,

You owe a lot of Arizonans a big apology for a remark you reprinted in you column today about Arizona already having seceded.

The Tea Party crowd and their equivalent on the "Progressive Left" can insult each other as much as they want. It's a free country, but you don't need to endorse it.

There are those among our "Progressive Left" who are are every bit as bigoted and rabidly dishonest, notably Jeff Biggers and your contributor, as Donald Trump and the Birthers. It's time people started acknowledging that fact about the "Progressive Left" instead of endorsing them, "aren't they cute." This morning you should be defending poor Helen Purcell: who's been viciously maligned by the "Progressive Left."

It's intellectual bankruptcy simply to denounce as unpatriotic anyone who disagrees with you. If someone was able to get enough signatures to put a secession proposition on the Arizona ballot, and that's highly doubtful, the "No" vote would be over 99%.

Speaking as someone who's served this great country thanks for spitting my in face on Sunday morning. Things haven't changed much for the "Progressive Left" since the Vietnam war.

----------------------

They walked the rounds in on us
methodically adjusting the range
just like we'd been trained to do.
TANKS! Sweet Mary, Mother of God!
They have TANKS.
-- Battle for the Dong Ha Bridge, 1972

Kiplings Arizona: Carmona This, an' Carmona That!

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires, an' all:
We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.
For it's Carmona this, an' Carmona that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;
An' it's Carmona this, an' Carmona that, an' anything you please;
An' Richie ain't a bloomin' fool -- you bet that Richie sees!

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The Republic and Republican love veterans, as long as they vote and run Republican.  Cross the party line and they'll get trashed you in the blink of an eye. 

More Cocktail Courage and Dinner-table Heroism

It is a complete and total embarassment to journalism and the Arizona Republic that Doug MacEachern's partisan "analysis" of the incident in Libya got published. We have known for a day or two now thanks to the New York Times and Associated Press that America responded immediately to the attacks in Libya. In addition to the fog of war, the Obama administration's response to this incident has been muddled by CIA Director David Patraeus trying to keep it secret that there is a CIA combat force in Libya. The CIA combat force responded within 25 minutes to the attack on the Benghazi consulate. The Americans at the consulate were already dead when they arrived. The two Americans killed later weren't State Department security personnel. They were CIA combat team members who were killed by a hit and run mortar attack. The CIA took command of a predator drone from the Air Force immediately when the consulate was attacked and had it over Benghazi in a hour, but the attack was over and there was nothing to shoot at. A very large CIA combat commando force, not State Department security as MacEachern calls it, arrived from Tripoli in six hours and evacuted the surviving Americans and the Benghazi CIA combat team. Now that the political opportunists in the Cocktail Courage and Dinner-table Heroism crowd have forced the CIA to reveal the presence of its combat force in Libya, American servicemen are in danger more than ever. Thanks a lot, guys.

Dances with Wolves

Congratulations to the Arizona Republic on a remarkable, if not astounding, endorsement of Mitt Romney. Will they elaborate on what in the world they mean by job-creating "animal spirits" that Mitt Romney would encourage? Do they know something the rest of us don't? Is Mitt Romney a shaman. Maybe they the editorial should have been titled "Dances with Wolves."

I am surprised Senator McCain has been aggressive toward the current president in the matter of the attack on the diplomats in LIbya. There is some similarity between this controversy and the attack on the USS Liberty many years ago: was the attack deliberate, why didn't we protect our people, what's being covered up. Senator McCain's father, a great Navy hero, was in command of the fleet to which the Liberty belonged. For years Senator McCain and his father have been unfairly abused by those unhappy with the answers the Navy and the government have tried to provide.  Yet McCain rushes to give President Obama the same treatment.