Where Hoodlums are not the Ones Wearing Hoods

As Mexico announced the capture of the leader of one of it's largest cartels, it displayed him manacled and standing between two marines. The curious part about the photograph was that the marines wore masks covering their faces. I think its because no one is safe from the ruthless, blood-thirsty drug cartels' retribution. 3 years ago, after the Mexican government honoured the mother of a soldier killed in a gunfight with another drug kingpin, the cartel executed the mother, sister and aunt, the very next day. 

A Friend in Need

NETANYAHU EXTENDS A HELPING HAND TO ROMNEY

Anyone else think that Binyamin Netanyahu's harsh criticism of the Obama administration's Iran policy is timed to give the flagging Romney campaign a pick-up? According to the New York Times, the Israeli Prime Minister, an inveterate and unapologetic hawk, who's been at cross purposes with Obama pretty much since 2008, said:

Addressing reporters here in Jerusalem on Tuesday, Mr. Netanyahu unequivocally rejected those comments and slapped back at the United States. Speaking in English, he said, “The world tells Israel: ‘Wait, there’s still time.’ And I say, ‘Wait for what? Wait until when?’ Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.” In his remarks, made at a joint news conference with the visiting prime minister of Bulgaria, Boyko Borisov, Mr. Netanyahu also said: “Now if Iran knows that there is no red line, if Iran knows that there is no deadline, what will it do? Exactly what it’s doing. It’s continuing, without any interference, toward obtaining nuclear weapons capability and from there, nuclear bombs.”

Netanyahu has made no secret of who he would like to be the next US President. Romney has been reeling on multiple fronts - failed convention, falling poll standings, an avalanche of criticism on his foreign policy mis-steps  including an unforced and unforgivable error in omitting to mention the troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan in his convention keynote. With his criticism of the Obama administration's approach towards Iran, probably unprecedented in its public and pointed nature, Netanyahu just opened up a new foreign policy front for his man in the game. I will wager that this will not be the last time Netanyahu intervenes in the US elections to advance his right-wing agenda. His statement will doubtless seize the next news cycle (and change the topic from how badly Romney is losing) and he just opened a barrage of attack ads that will describe Obama as weak-kneed, weak-on-Israel and dangerous for America. I'm waiting for one that juxtaposes an Ayatollah with a mushroom cloud. I might even hold my breath for it.

Ouch!

Harry Reid on Paul Ryan's Arithmetic Skills:

Being questioned by the press he said he ran that in about two hours and 50 minutes. That's pretty fast. I'd like to take a minute and apply the Ryan math to my marathon times. I'll just pick one marathon time. I ran the Boston marathon. And using the Ryan math, my time would not have been a world's record, but within minutes -- minutes -- of a world record. I could have made the Olympic team. Using Ryan math, I would have been superb. Well, Ryan's math doesn't work in marathons because you know what, Mr. President, you can always check someone's math and his math doesn't work for running a marathon or anything else. The Ryan math doesn't work with his budgets, it doesn't work with Medicare. It doesn't work with his tax plan. It doesn't work with anything that he's suggested and opined about.

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/reid-knocks-paul-ryans-math-on-marathons-everything

Lance Armstrong: Prince of Thieves

For the longest time Armstrong was pretty much the only cyclist I knew by name and the only I cared to know about. He almost single-handedly popularised cycling as a sport - there may be five people in the world outside France and the cycling fraternity who heard the words Tour de France for the first time, without also hearing his name in the same breath. His life-story was heroic - a near-fatal battle with cancer, a record-breaking, epic-making come-back to the sport he loved and a devotion to the cause of finding a cure for cancer for which he raised millions and millions of dollars. No one's ever accused me of being a sports-addict and even for me he raised the bar for what a single human was capable of in life. An unbeatable, indefatigable champion of sport and for the afflicted. Unfortunately - it looks like he was beatable and defatigable, at least in his sport. If you still needed proof that drugs fuelled Armstrong's performance (and this writer doesn't here's apparently a book to end your illusions. The book is told through Armstrong's former team-mate Tyler Hamilton but nine other former Postal teammates cooperated with him to corroborate his account.  Count them. Nine.

As Christopher Keyes' article, reviewing the book, says:

The drugs are everywhere, and as Hamilton explains, Armstrong was not just another cyclist caught in the middle of an established drug culture—he was a pioneer pushing into uncharted territory. In this sense, the book destroys another myth: that everyone was doing it, so Armstrong was, in a weird way, just competing on a level playing field. There was no level playing field. With his connections to Michele Ferrari, the best dishonest doctor in the business, Armstrong was always “two years ahead of what everybody else was doing,” Hamilton writes. Even on the Postal squad there was a pecking order. Armstrong got the superior treatments.

So Armstrong was a champion at cheating and gaming the system as well.

I guess I'll go back to worshipping at the altar of Howard Roark. (And no Paul Ryan, this does not mean that you get my vote.)

The Politics of Inclusion

Its rather thrilling to witness the Democratic Party's unabashed embrace of the LGBT community and their rights. Every single speaker, including Michelle Obama seemed to mention gay marriage either directly or euphemistically. At moments like this, you realise that you don't have to feel excluded to feel not-included. And that inclusion is a nice, toasty state of being.

Home is where the Hearth is?

My partner left home two months ago. And I know not when he will return. When I might next see him sitting on the couch watching grossly graphic medical programs on TV, while the dog fights his Macbook Air for real-estate on his lap. Filling up any available storage space in the bathroom with ever more exotically scented products from The Body Shop. Wafting the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee through the house each morning while getting me used to the privilege of having tea magically appear bed-side everyday. Engulfing me in his warm embrace every night. The hearth to complete our home.

He left because the system made it untenable to live at home with dignity. Climbing up Maslow's ladder of needs - physiological well-being, financial security, love, self-esteem and self-actualization - is an impossibly slippery task if you're an immigrant in the US looking to establish a career in an H1B-poor profession and if you happen to love someone of the same sex*. To have a loved one attempt the climb under those circumstances is to bear witness to the following.

To see him forced to stop working in the field he loves - and because of that, in this country have his access to healthcare severely restricted. To see him battle dozens of small everyday humiliations; small enough to be invisible to others but sharp enough to shred self-esteem. Like being unable to drive legally, in a country hostile to public transport and therefore becoming dependent on others for many of your transportation needs. Or having to hear care-less (hyphen intended), spiteful remarks made within hearing range by thoughtless acquaintances. To hear him describe what his self-actualized life would look like and then watch him chafe daily at not being allowed to start on that journey. To find yourself powerless to pull your partner onto firm immigration ground based on your own immigration/citizenship status to ensure his or her continued loving presence in your home*. To feel him silently, unhappily count down the days to his departure but know that he was already gone. To watch your home turn into a house.

I know what must happen now. But moving on, when you stayed put, is difficult. Surrounded by missing Minis and un-adopted brindled quadrupeds; unoperated coffee-makers, unvisited theaters, Body Shops.

My partner left our home two months ago. I'm afraid I know when he will return.

-----
*Straight couples with discordant immigration statuses can sponsor their partner's visa through marriage which is recognised by the federal government. Gay couples are not as fortunate since the 1998 Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA) prevents the US federal government from recognising same-sex marriages for any purpose including spousal immigration.