Morning Coffee (96)

Time to make the doughnuts. Only here, it’s time to make the Coffee. And what a sweet nectar it is. I haven’t had the chance to Brew in a while (six days). And if I had the chance, there wasn’t much to talk about. But today…

Thompson Quits, People Wonder if He Ever Started:

For those of you who track such things, you’ll know that Fred Thompson has abruptly withdrawn his name from the Presidential race. This probably didn’t surprise you. For those of you who don’t track such things, the district attorney guy from “Law & Order” was sort of running for President, but he just stopped.

Hailed as the second coming of Ronald Reagan by many supporters, Thompson got a late start on his run. In March 2007, he began to think about running, but rumors flew and supporters lobbied for him to run prior to this even. He continued to hem and haw, but everyone knew he was going to get involved in the race. Republicans everywhere rejoiced. He didn’t formally announce his candidacy until September. His campaign staff was plagued with cohesion issues; members of the staff took issue with the influence Thompson’s wife Jeri had in campaign issues. Worse, his schedule was extremely light for a would-be contender, and he was perceived as rather lazy and his laid back style did little to assuage the fears that he really didn’t want to be running in the first place. I, for one, have questioned his desire all along. He might have been a good candidate, and based on his showing at the last Republican debate, he was just coming into his own on this campaign. But it was too little too late. He failed to win or even do well in Iowa or South Carolina, which were two states that most aligned with his style and politics. While the prospects of him running were apparently exciting, his campaign and message utterly failed to excite anyone.

And by the wayside goes another candidate, into the bone yard of failed bids and shattered hopes. With that we’re left with, on the Republican side, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Ron Paul. Who will be the next victim to the brutality of Republican Presidential politics? To borrow a phrase from Orwell, no candidate is perfect, but some candidates are less perfect than others.

We May Have the Naked Cowboy…:

…But we don’t have a Naked General; General Butt Naked to be precise. Score one for Liberia. While the moniker might be hilarious, there is nothing funny about the man and what he’s done. Gen Butt Naked, also known as Joshua Milton Blahyi, was a warlord who claims that he and his men were responsible for killing more than 20,000 people between 1980 and 1996 when the fighting in Liberia’s civil war stopped.

In 1980, the then Mr. Blahyi claims to have made a pact with the devil (who called him by telephone), and soon became General Butt Naked because of his unit’s habit of charging into battle, well, butt naked save some combat boots. They did this to frighten the enemy, which has been done in combat since man began to wear clothes regularly. Butt Naked’s men would strip naked and get drunk or high before going into battle, and would kill anyone they saw while sometimes wearing women’s clothes or purses. The devil, who General Naked spoke to regularly, also demanded monthly sacrifices, and Gen Butt would routinely kill children to satiate Satan’s desire for blood.

But Satan’s grip was wrested from the General when in 1996, God appeared before him in battle and told him he was a slave to Satan, not the hero he thought he was. Butt then became a born-again Christian and became a minister. I imagine he doesn’t go by Pastor Butt Naked.

This week though, Blahyi, who lives in Ghana, has returned to Liberia to face the truth and reconciliation commission. Good on him, because he could face death. And he should. Becoming a Christian and repentant doesn’t exactly make up for killing or helping to kill, brutally, 20,000 people.

In a similar vein, it was recently revealed in a report by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) that 5.4 million people died in the Democratic People’s Republic of the Congo during a decade long conflict, which is still going on, between the government and various armed groups. The IRC estimates that 45,000 people die there a month. However, most of the deaths were the result of non-violent causes, like diseases. Children under five years old accounted for nearly half the total number of deaths. It’s amazing that most of us have probably never even heard of the fighting in the Congo. But we’ve all heard of Darfur in Sudan, although no one really seems to care about either all that much. What’s interesting is that the estimate for the numbers of deaths in Darfur is a lot lower than in the DPRC (200,000-400,000 with 2.5 million refugees). I guess when Don Cheadle and George Clooney make commercials about it, people (sort of) listen. At least Darfur has name recognition. We all know something terrible is happening there, even if we’re not sure exactly what. We can’t even comprehend those numbers, as Stalin points out.

Heath Ledger:

I have to make mention of something that’s not really big news, especially considering the state of our world. I frequently lament over the inordinate amount of press that is given to our aristocracy, our celebrities, as if there lives are worth more than anyone else’s. So here I will be a hypocrite, and give press to a celebrity, although the man no longer needs it. Heath Ledger, he who played in “10 Things I Hate About You,” “A Knight’s Tale,” and the new “Batman” film, died yesterday. I will not speculate on his intent to die or his state of mind leading up to his death, because I don’t know. I will leave that to other rags, even CNN, which seem to care more about the grisly details than anything else. I will only say that it is unfortunate that Mr. Ledger has passed, whatever the circumstances, because he was a talented actor, and a fairly newly-minted father. I enjoyed his films, and I enjoyed his acting style. I am greatly anticipating his performance as the Joker in the new Batman film, and was long before he died. Realistically, he will not be missed, because I didn’t know him. What I know of him, however, is forever captured in his performances in his films. Thus I, like you, can always see him as we saw him. But it is a shame to think of what he might have done in the future, of which we will now be deprived, and it’s a shame that his daughter will grow up without her dad. And you know what? It just sucks that he’s dead, plain and simple.

Today’s Coffee is pretty weak, especially for those of you who’ve grown used to the more dense variety of late.

Word of the Day: Effusive: (adjective): Excessively demonstrative; giving or involving extravagant or excessive emotional expression; gushing.

On This Day in History: Roman Emperor Theodosius I proclaims his nine year old son Honorius co-emperor (393). Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, figures out that she’s pregnant (1533). Her marriage would end in a nasty separation... North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming that it violated their waters while spying (1968). They still have the ship and have turned it into a museum.

“A single death is a tragedy, are million deaths is a statistic.” – Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili (Stalin).