What’s
Wrong Today:

From the Information Clearinghouse:
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke to Charlie Rose last Monday. During the interview
on PBS, Mr. McCain downplayed atrocities being committed by Syrian rebel forces
and suggested that he would be willing
to tolerate extremists taking over Syria because they would most likely not be
allied with Iran.

McCain has
been a forceful advocate of US military intervention in Syria. He has spent
months in television and other media interviews trying to make his case and Mr.
McCain continued that campaign with Charlie Rose. Rose
asked about atrocities on the rebels’ side, and McCain replies: (emphasis
by the Wrongologist)

Rose
later challenged the idea of greater US involvement in Syria’s civil war,
noting that — because many of the forces battling Assad have
strong ties to al-Qaeda — there’s a chance that those who take over in the
event Assad falls would be no friend to the United States. Mr. McCain
dismissed that concern, suggesting that any Sunni al-Qaeda affiliated group
won’t be allied with Shiite dominated Iran. All of this from John (watch me sneak into Syria and shake the hands of Al Qaeda)
McCain:

Rose then
asks what if Syria was ruled by al Qaeda and others who have no desire for a
good relationship with the US. McCain replies: (Emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Seems that
Mr. McCain will overlook pretty much any consequence: He is even abandoning his
usual requirement that the US government should implement whatever
military commanders think is right in any conflict.  McCain: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Later,
McCain refers to the US implementing a no-fly zone in Syria:

This makes
McCain look to be totally in Israel’s pocket. He seems to be saying that it is
ok if Al Qaeda takes over Syria, and that is acceptable since they won’t be
allied with Iran and Hezbollah.

This interview actually tells you more about John McCain’s mindset than
he intends. For him the whole conflict exists
solely because Syria is allied with Iran.  If you recall him singing “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb,
Bomb, Iran…” there can be no alternative conclusion.

As an older person himself, the Wrongologist thought
people grew wiser with age, or maybe that’s just Yoda, it certainly isn’t Mr.
McCain.


Then on Thursday, McCain told the Brookings
Institution that
“the Syrian state is disintegrating in much of the country, leaving vast
ungoverned spaces that are being filled by extremists, many aligned with Al Qaeda.”

So, there is no mistaking
the context of Monday’s remarks on Charlie Rose: McCain knows that Al Qaeda controls
much of Syria, but he is still willing to cast a blind eye on them. Indeed,
John McCain and his friend John Kerry, who is giving serious
thought to arming the rebels, are attempting to create a fiction called “vetted, moderate rebel units” in
Syria that the US could send weapons.

While
McCain seems to think that sorting the good rebels from the bad rebels is totally
do-able, the US’s ability to selectively arm certain rebels in Syria has been a
big question mark for a long time, and one of the main reasons for western
hesitancy towards getting involved. 

Look at McCain’s
basic premise:
If Assad wins the war and the Free Syrian Army, the Jihadists and Al Qaeda lose,
the region will descend into extremism. He means that Assad losing would be good for Iran
and Hezbollah, and bad for Israel.

He
ignores that the rebels wiped out Christian villages. They have eaten the organs of their enemies.
They have apparently used Sarin. He thinks we can pick the moderates in this group to support, although he didn’t even know which rebels he met when he secretly traveled into Syria. 

At
this stage of his political life, John McCain is in a permanent stumble. You
could say he’s stumbling forward, or flailing forward. Either way, he
blunders on, slouching toward Middle East chaos and maybe the mushroom cloud.

The Silver
Spoon Team’s Prayer:

Joint
Chiefs Try Explaining Themselves:

Wrongologist’s
Sunday Sermon:

There
are 26 members of the Senate
Armed Services Committee, only seven of them are women. When you consider
that women chair 3 of the 6 Armed Services subcommittees, you can better
appreciate their newfound power. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) chairs the
Subcommittee on Personnel, and she’s been a bulldog on the issue of sexual
assault in the military. In a full committee hearing on sexual assault this
week, the women on the committee pounded away on the witnesses, insisting that
more be done to protect service members and punish wrongdoing.

The military leaders
of the free world were in Senate Hearing Room 216, hunkered down and taking
fire from a 59-year-old woman who had them pinned to a
ridiculous piece of ground to defend and knew it. Sen. Clare
McCaskill,
(D-MO):

When she asked
whether the men wearing the stars had consulted with their colleagues from our
allies, Germany, Australia, and UK, about how it had worked when those military
forces transferred responsibility for prosecuting sexual assault cases from
unit commanders to military prosecutors, all they could say was, “Hey,
thanks, good idea, why didn’t we think of that?”

That struck even
McCaskill’s conservative Republican Missouri colleague, Roy
Blunt,
as a bridge too far. That’s “a terrible answer,” he scolded them.

Republicans
across the spectrum revealed their discomfort with even discussing sexual
assault in the military. But no one did it better than the venerable Sen. Saxby
Chambliss, (R-GA), who basically said “boys will be boys” as he
urged a go-slow approach to reforms:

Yeah,
let’s be careful not to interfere with hormones, because boys will be boys, you
see, so why are we even having this hearing?

And we wonder why it
has taken until now for this issue to get the attention it deserves in the
Senate?

As for the collection
of brass behind the parapets in the hearing room, their argument that changing
the command structure to more effectively prosecute sexual assault would
destroy “unit cohesion” and the military way of doing things seems
ridiculous on its face: How can you
have “good order and discipline” in your unit when soldiers who have
been assaulted are being pressured not to come forward?

It’s time for the
generals and admirals to stand up and own
the unconscionable abuses the current system has produced, take the
necessary steps to change the culture, and end military sexual abuse.

It’s also time for
the vestigial old men of Congress to stop dithering about hormones and the
sanctity of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and get on with this
necessary change.

Obama’s New
Hire:

Congress Gets Ready To Show Off Their
Expertise:

What’s
Wrong Today:

Turkey is a country that has been
portrayed as an example of democracy and progress in the Middle East. The
Wrongologist visited Istanbul in March, and wrote:

Here is a photo of
a street scene in Istanbul taken by the Wrongologist in March:

Turkey has been in the news this past
week because of the widespread government protests. The protests started in
Gezi Park to demonstrate against the “Taksim Project” that will eliminate a
green space in Istanbul to build another
shopping mall. By the way,
Prime Minister Erdogan’s son-in-law
holds the contract for
the renewal of the Taksim area. Taksim is a large square in the heart of Istanbul:

The embattled green space is not visible in the
photo above; it is to the left and behind the buildings at the left foreground
of the picture. The small environmental protest went nearly unnoticed, but when
police brutally intervened to let workers cut some of the trees the situation exploded.
Within a few days over 100,000 were out on the streets and clashing with police
forces. Most of those people did not come out to save Gezi Park but to
demonstrate against the kind of politics that it symbolizes. And the NYT reported that there was almost no press
coverage of the protests:

Most of the locals want the park to
remain a park and are against the larger project to “renovate” the
central Taksim Square. Taksim stands for May 1 demonstrations, the Ataturk
cultural center and common urban space.

June 3: Protesters heading to
barricades in Gezi Park

Many Turks see Erdogan’s plan for
Taksim as partly a “culture war”, since Taksim is a neighborhood with nightlife
and drinking, which Erdogan dislikes. Erdogan has called the protesters “a few
looters.” Thanks to social media, protests
have spread across the country and turned into a general
protest against government policies and in particular against Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The most widely chanted slogan of the protest is
“Tayyip, resign!”

During a press conference in
Tunisia, where he was on a state visit, Prime Minster Erdogan announced
he will continue with plans to develop Istanbul’s Taksim Square despite the
ongoing protests. Upon his return on Thursday, Erdogan accused the protesters
in Taksim Square of being related to terrorism and connected them to the recent
suicide attack against the US embassy in Ankara. Thus, he tries to delegitimize
the protests and play to
his party’s base.

Erdogan is the most
popular Prime Minister in the history of modern Turkey. His Justice and
Development Party (AKP) have won a majority in the parliament three times in a
row and their share of the vote has increased with every election. The party
got more than 50% of the votes in the last parliamentary election in 2011.

So, what went
wrong?

Erdogan’s view of democracy is that ballots
equal power. As his share of votes has increased, he has become more
authoritarian:

• He had the “friendship” sculpture at the Turkey-Armenia border demolished

• He declared “abortion is murder.” Although Turkey is a heavily
  Muslim country, abortion has never been a political issue before

• He has had journalists fired
  from their jobs when they wrote something he did not like. The number of
  journalists in jail right now is at a record high

• He signed new
  regulations that limit marketing and serving alcohol too close to mosques
  and schools. In a country where alcohol consumption is minimal, Erdogan called people
  who drink “alcoholics”

Juan Cole reports: Yalcin Dogan’s Survey from Hurriyet
Online on June 2 showed the following regarding the restriction of alcohol
sales:

• 60.8%
  said the restriction was an intervention into their way of life

• 34.7%
  said they consume alcoholic drinks

• 75.9%
  said the restriction on alcohol would not stop them from using alcohol

Erdogan still relies on “his 50%” of
the electorate and said he has difficulty keeping “his 50% at home” as protests
build in Gezi Park, and in most cities in Turkey.

Questions
from Hugh
Pope, long-time resident of Istanbul, former WSJ reporter and fluent in
Turkish and Arabic:

From
al-monitor.com:
Erdogan’s political fortunes hinge on how the government handles the crisis. Turkey
is not on the brink of a revolution. A Turkish Spring is not afoot. Erdogan is
not a dictator; he is a democratically elected leader who has been acting in an
increasingly authoritarian way.

Why
is a government whose policies consist in part of turning Turkey into a country
of shopping malls linked by highways not satisfactory to the Turkish people?

They
apparently prefer more freedom and less autocracy to more stores and roads!

What’s
Wrong Today:

During the early morning of June 5th, the Syrian army launched a surprise night attack
and overran the insurgency’s positions in Qusayr. Qusayr is only 6 miles from
the Lebanese border. Some of the insurgents managed to flee north but may have
trouble breaking through the cordon that the Syrian army has set up.

Moon of Alabama reports that the
insurgency’s supply line from Lebanon to Homs has been severed. Insurgency
positions in Homs may soon fall to the Syrian army. Freeing the insurgency-held
parts of Aleppo further north will be the next big target.

The Syrian
opposition made a fatal error. Out-gunned insurgents should never make a stand against
a better-armed government siege force equipped with artillery, tanks and
airplanes. Reinforcements came, some professing close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, but the Syrian
Army with its best troops and the urban warfare specialists, Hezbollah, prevailed.

Hezbollah’s
Deputy Chief Sheikh Naim Qassem stated on Wednesday:

The
Syrians are now preparing to move on Aleppo.  Up to 4,000 Hezbollah
fighters
moved north to Aleppo before fighting was complete in Qusayr. Aleppo, a
city of 2 million, is Syria’s commercial center and vital to the retention of
national integrity for Syria.

Events seem
to be breaking in the direction of the Syrian government over the past few
days. The Lebanon rebel supply route is closed for now. This corridor
was the transit point for weapons and
fighters from Lebanon. From Michael Collins:

Score 1
for Assad.

What will
the United States and NATO do if their hopes for Syria fail?  Rebuilding
relations with Assad is out of the question.

John
Kerry’s appointment as Secretary of State changed our direction on Syria. The US
and Russia announced on May 7 that they would try to bring representatives of
the Syrian government and its opponents together to
seek an end to a conflict. 

So instead
of sending weapons to the rebels to increase pressure on the Assad regime and
force it to the table, Kerry held out the threat of providing weapons in the
future as an inducement to make Assad negotiate. “Negotiate now, or we’ll send weapons
later” replaced the position that sending weapons now will lead to meaningful
negotiations later.

But that
strategy has blown up with the Assad regime’s success on the ground.

From Reuters:
Russian, US and UN officials meeting in Geneva on Wednesday failed to resolve
questions over proposed Syria peace talks, including who would take part.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov:

Score 2
for Assad.

As of
today, there is no date for the conference, but it is unlikely to occur before
July. In July, the US assumes the presidency of the Security Council. Samantha
Power, Mr. Obama’s new UN Representative, will replace Susan Rice at the UN.

Time to review
the bidding:

Let’s say
Assad eventually wins and the rebels escape to surrounding Arab countries
where the oil wealth of the Arab kings should provide them with a home, assuming the kings continue their legendary hospitality.

Assad can
hardly savor his victory, because Sunni sovereign and al Qaeda forces are
arrayed against him on all sides. The Sunnis and Shiites could drag this war out
for generations, which means they
might not be thinking quite as hard about New York City or Boston.

Here is
the line-up:

Pro-Assad:
Iran, Hezbollah, (both Shia) Russia

Anti-Assad:
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, Bahrain (all Sunni)

The
US has ties (or conflicts) on both sides: We supported the Shia in our foray
into Iraq and long ago, in Iran. We have been aligned with Sunnis in Saudi,
Kuwait, and the Gulf States. Al-Qaeda is Sunni, Egypt is predominantly Sunni.  

Saudi
and Qatar are backers of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has captured Egypt.

Why is the
US continuing to listen to these calls to get involved on the Sunni side? The
Shia do not pose a threat to America, they only pose a threat to Israel,
through Iran and Hezbollah.

So
choose your proxy war in the Middle East:

Syria, where the
outcome will determine the regional pecking order. Hezbollah’s success in Syria is a
blow to Saudi Arabia and Israel, which have supported Hezbollah’s political
opponents in Lebanon. The Syrian army’s gains are a setback to the Saudis,
Qataris and Turks, all of whom have backed the rebels with money and weapons.

Israel, where their fight with Hezbollah and
the Palestinians will be run by Iran and the US. Iran needs
Hezbollah as a proxy, or it will face direct consequences from Israel and the
US.

This means that all parties are likely to step back somewhat. They will adopt a
wait and see attitude, since everyone knows that intervention on the ground is
dicey, that no clear outcome can be predicted, or engineered quickly.

Is there an
opportunity we are missing by staying on the sidelines in Syria?

No.
The idea that we either look weak or are weakened if we don’t intervene is
agitprop peddled by America’s home-grown chicken hawks and the friends of Israel. Let’s
defend our homeland for a change. We should ignore the Chihuahuas barking at us
from the parking lot.

The Neo-Cons are
barking that we must send more arms quickly before radical rebels gain the
upper hand. But, the radicals have been in the lead from the first moments. It
was very clear at the very earliest part of this civil war when the
revolutionaries seized the city of Homs. They dynamited the local Christian
churches.

The thought
that overthrowing Assad will hurt Iran is embarrassingly optimistic. Iran would
just establish relations with any victorious Sunni government. After all, Iran
has close relations with Pakistan, another Sunni state.

Let’s
remember that supporting Sunni fighters against the Soviets gave us the
Taliban and al-Qaeda. Why would supporting their fellow travelers (and de facto
al-Qaeda themselves) in Syria give us anything better?

Here is your crib note: Assad is not our friend and the revolutionaries are our enemies.
Entering this mess on any side would show that we are again ignoring the Sunni-Shia
divide.

What’s
Wrong Today:

The 39th G8 Summit will be held on 17–18
June 2013 at the Lough Erne Resort, a five-star hotel and golf resort in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It will be the sixth G8 summit held in the United
Kingdom.

To prepare
for the arrival of the special global heavy hitters, the town of Enniskillen in Northern Ireland is getting spruced up. As
part of the plan, the town is putting up fake storefronts on shuttered
businesses:

Marco
Werman of PRI’s
The World spoke with Irish Times reporter Dan Keenan about the efforts to make
the town look prosperous. The audio feed is at the PRI link.

Marco Werman: (Emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Dan Keenan:

More from Keenan: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Werman:

Keenan:

Werman:

Keenan:  (emphasis by
the Wrongologist)

Who
gains from this? Certainly not the G8 moguls, certainly not the people of
Enniskillen, where single home prices have fallen
24% in the last year and the official unemployment rate is 17%.

Unemployment
throughout Europe shows the triumph of the Economic Austerians over the stimulus
by government spending favored by Keynes and many others.  

If
you are a contemporary of the Wrongologist, you may remember that the Sainted Ed Koch did the same thing in the
South Bronx when many of the buildings fronting the Cross Bronx
Expressway were burned out shells. Koch put cute little pictures of windows
with flower pots and curtains on abandoned buildings.

From
ArtNet.com:

1982 saw the city install decals of plants and
venetian blinds in the windows of abandoned buildings in order to hide the
blight. By 1985 the Bronx was considered the poorest congressional district in
the United States

It
was profoundly offensive then and looked fake, probably the way
these phony storefront windows in Enniskillen look today.

Let’s
force the G8 men and women to hold their meetings at real soup kitchens until the official unemployment rates
here and in all the other G8 countries fall below 5%.

Let’s give them some practical input for their decision-making.

What’s
Wrong Today:

What’s
the difference between Iraq today and Syria today? In each country, their own
citizens are killing other citizens.  These
folks are killing one another primarily over religious/political disputes. And today,
no American young men and women are
part of those fights.

Steve
Hynd: If the civil war in Syria does in fact spill over its borders in a
big way and become a wider sectarian conflict across the region, what – if
anything – should the US do about it:

Our experience in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that we will lose no matter which side wins.
The “leaders” we back, because they are the lesser of evils, are still guys you wouldn’t trust to
babysit your family pets, much less an entire country. Seriously, we
trusted Karzai, and he needed weekly deliveries of bags of US dollars from the
CIA to be merely semi-reliable.

In Iraq, Shiites are wasting no time getting even with
Saddam Hussein’s tribe, the Sunni, who ruled Iraq before we decided on regime
change. Now, the Shiites are in, and the Sunni are out. But, the losers are not
amused and have decided to use bullets instead of ballots.

We left the two sides to get back to their 1,000-year
sectarian war against each other. DC seems to ignore that, whether we are
talking Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria or Lebanon, we are really talking one very
large thing: Shia v. Sunni.

It is an irreconcilable feud. Christian v. Jew, Jew v.
Muslim, Buddhist v. Muslim, do not come close to the Shia/Sunni split. There
has been blood and there will be blood.

So, what should the West do? A look at the map above
shows that for most Middle East countries, there is a significant religious divide.
Most of these countries have problems with their minority populations,
including one, Kurds, which are not even shown on the above.  

The New York Times has reported that Syria
is moving from revolution against a despot to a sectarian-driven fight of Sunni
against Shiite and their Alawite cousins which is now “inciting Sunnis and
Shiites in other countries to attack one another”.

The
BBC reports: A call to arms was made by influential Sunni cleric Sheikh
Qaradawi, an Egyptian based in Qatar who has a huge media and online presence. He
urged Sunnis to flock to Syria to fight against Assad, Iran and Hezbollah
saying that “They want continued massacres to kill Sunnis”.

Hatred of
“the other” has helped drive a resurgence of sectarian attacks in Iraq,too,
where 1,000 died in sectarian attacks last month, making it the
single deadliest month since 2008.

Another country must be mentioned: Iran.

Iranians are 89% Shia and they are ever so grateful
that we spent more than $1 Trillion and more than 4,000 US lives returning Iraq
to the Shia fold. Now all they need is a nuclear arsenal to make life complete.

The
problem across the Middle East is that taking sides – even trying to take both
sides to bring about a balance of power – is dangerous meddling with unforeseen
consequences.

What
should we do?

First, “do
no harm” might be a decent beginning principle to observe. That principle indicates
that we should stay the hell out of the Levant. While the Sunni/Shia feud is
certainly the main power struggle going on, there’s also a feud for Sunni leadership between the Saudis and Qatar.

Unfortunately,
the Beltway conventional wisdom has the US on a glide path to intervention on the Sunni side. That’s the religion of al-Qaeda, folks. Anybody
see an issue here?

According
to a recent Gallup
Poll, an overwhelming majority of citizens opposes any United States
military involvement in Syria: 68% of all Americans opposed involvement; 77%
of those over 65 years and 76% of college graduates represent the highest
subgroups opposed to military involvement of any kind.

When 68%
of the people oppose military involvement while Congress supports it, you are
right to ask what type of democracy these folks want to bring to other parts of
the world. 

So, what should the we do in Syria? As
little as possible.

There
seems to be little consensus in the US about a national strategy for such an
eventuality, perhaps because no-one really wants to talk about it.

President
Obama surveys the scene and sees no good option. Having repeatedly called for
regime change, there is no way Washington could claim to be an honest broker,
imposing a no-fly zone and safe havens, or even putting US boots on the ground,
purely for humanitarian reasons.

Gallup
shows that a majority of Americans agree with Obama. They lived through one
long and messy Middle East war, and don’t want another. They no longer believe
in cakewalks. They’re starting to grasp that countries don’t like being
invaded, even by Americans.

In May, Andrew Cordesman examined
the growing US security partnership with Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, and the UAE – established as the predominantly Sunni Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC). He analyzes the steady growth in this partnership that has led
to over $64 billion in new US arms transfer agreements during 2008-2011.

That was clearly
aimed at an alignment of allies to deter Iran, which could backfire badly if that policy now means the US
will be seen as supporting Sunnis in a religious war. US policymakers should be
thinking carefully about the corner they are being painted into by Mr. McCain
and others.

In a
region-wide conflict this security partnership may force our military
intervention on the Sunni side.

In the meantime, we need to stay out of these Muslim
sectarian skirmishes. One more thing: Don’t fall prey to the humanitarian ploy
that we have to get involved because civilians are dying. It’s laudable in
theory, but would fail in practice.

Here is a question for the humanitarian
interventionists:
24% of Americans lack food security. The American U-6 unemployment rate (% of
people unemployed and looking for work, plus the underemployed) is 13.9%. The
US poverty rate is nearly 16%, or 50 million people. If you feel all
humanitarian, how about helping some Americans??

The idea that a Christian-Judeo West should mediate or
police this fight is pure folly. It will only bleed us: Militarily, monetarily and
morally.

Pew
Research reported that the US, despite being the richest country in the world, 24%
of our citizens had trouble putting food on the table at some point last year. We
were close to Indonesia in the survey and 3
times worse than Germany.

Bob
Dylan said it:

Democratic Party, Republican Party, BEACH Party!

Benghazi Eye Test:

Bachmann Hurts Economy:

KFC’s Secret Recipe Is Next:

What’s
Wrong Today:

Our politics are in an
ethical crisis. From Ian Welsh:

Your
morality is what makes you a good wife or husband, dad or mother, even a good
employee or boss to the people you know personally in your place of work.

Ethics is
what makes you a good politician. It is also what makes you a humane CEO. Whether you are a politician or a CEO, most of what you do will affect
people you don’t know, people who are simply statistics. 

Change
Social Security or welfare, and people will live or die, suffer or
prosper.  Change the tax structure, healthcare mandates, trade laws, infrastructure
spending—virtually everything politicians do means some people will win and
some people will lose. 

Our
political system ensures that politicians will do harm to people they don’t
know. But that doesn’t give them the right to protect the people they do know. If they protect their friends and family, they will act
unethically. In the Great Recession of 2008, millions of homeowners and
employees unknown to politicians were hurt and the people (companies) the politicians
and treasury officials did know were bailed out. 

Today’s politicians
also ignore future consequences: They refuse to build or repair infrastructure, to
invest in basic science or education. They refuse to deal with global warming. 
These decisions overwhelmingly affect people they don’t know: Odds are, any
individual bridge collapse won’t hit the politicians. Global warming will hurt
most of its victims in the future.  The rich and powerful in particular,
believe that they will be able to avoid the consequences of these things. Welsh concludes: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

So, our
politics are in an ethical crisis, while
capitalism is in both an ethical and moral crisis:

The current
structure of our economy is designed to impoverish people we don’t know. For the
rich this means cutting the wages of the middle class.  CEOs are obsessed
with “lowering costs” and making profits, and both of those are meant to
extract maximum value from people while giving them as little as possible in
wages, goods and services in return.

Capitalism was originally thought of as a materialistic, utilitarian philosophy
in which the alpha and omega was the maximization of aggregate
utility.

Somewhere along the way, the alpha and omega of capitalism seems to have
morphed from maximizing aggregate utility to maximizing profits for the tiny minority who
possess “capital.”

In April, Forbes
wrote an article comparing Costco with Walmart:

Meanwhile,
Costco’s primary competitor, Walmart, saw an anemic 1.2% rise in sales, while
other competitors such as J.C. Penny and Target experienced even greater
problems with their sales results.

Memorial
Day was originally known as Decoration Day and was
perhaps our most solemn holiday. It was established by a
General Order issued by Gen. John Logan, the national commander of the Grand Army of the
Republic. It was first observed on May 30, 1868, when flowers were
placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington
National Cemetery.

But we now see it as the beginning of summer….celebrated with parades and
picnics and fun and games and three-day sales. The Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So Right will attend a wedding.

The
change began after Congress passed the National Holiday
Act of 1971, which made the day into a three-day weekend.

Here is a photo of the Wrongologist’s father, taken in France during WWII. He was Gen. Patton’s photographer:

Let’s come together to honor those who fought, particularly those who gave their all.

Benjamin Franklin, not necessarily in an eerie foreshadowing of the efforts of John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Mukasey and Eric Holder, but appropriate for Memorial Day Weekend:

Remember those who died to protect our freedoms:

Sen. Inhofe (R-OK) twists his position:

On the way to the Congressional Hearings:

New Normal on Graduation Day: