When swine flew?

The Black Dahlia Solution site was the first to openly speculate on Edwin "Flyboy' Burns. But then the jet-aged author got anonymously clewed into trouble with the sharks over at bethshort dot com. Chiefly, I think because of his lack of sympathy for his main characters. I don't think the crypto's all there. Ed was barely literate. The true story of the Black Dahlia is first and foremost a senseless tragedy played out by people with their wings already broken. Grounded by total war. And the whole Degnan thing doesn't fly, but it may've happened just that way. It begins where it ends; the City of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, California USoA.

Gene Lyons

Injudicial Inquisition

Gene Lyons

Buggy whips

The Odessa Steps

Gene Lyons

A movement among the ruins

Barry goes to Baghdad

Get out the brass bands for the homeward bound Obamas. The President and First Lady's spectacular attendance at the NATO bash in Europe went off like election night. Right on key and on cue. He's getting up the taxpayers share, over there. As you were. Money? Remember the Marshall Plan?

Your local newspaper, if you still have one, will gush with praise for the trip.

This morning we'll learn that the CiC has visited US troops currently garrisoned in Baghdad for the first time. The visit was kept necessarily secret. However, by once again laying out a clear and viable US exit strategy for the war in Iraq. This is become a most singular historical and military achievement.

Delivered on time to the troops who need it most. The first and only exit strategy this bad war ever had, or will ever need. Wagon's Ho! Aye,aye Sir. By your leave, Sir? Carry on lads and lassie. Leave. This must have been a great lift for those gritty grunts. You read it here first.

The highlight for me was the visit to Turkey where he proclaimed the first plank of what might become an Obama Doctrine, the US does not make war upon religions. Well, not anymore. That's a good place to start not making war on. In 20/20 hindsight.

A social and political pragmatist, he cut through NATO like Play-dough. I'm buying the sea-lift we need to bring the troops home on an even more accelerated pathway. To begin to relax and refit for those coming home now and recalibrate those who must remain to guarantee an effective retreat. Afghanistan should be held down tight until the situation in Iraq is again stabilized.

Then get out. One of my offshore readers has already got me up about the Barry thing and perhaps, thought it beneath the new president's dignity. Nah! Come on. He can call me Matt. Okey? I don't mind. Really, I don't. Hillary was nowhere to be seen. But the quality advance work surely shows.

Yankee go home

A good war or bad the boys coming back from the front lines need total rehabilitation into civilian life. They will need public resources beyond anything contemplated today or there will be another cycle of gun violence and reaction such as has spun our political and social systems out of control for three generations now since the end of the Second World War.

They, by manipulating their position as heroes in the militarized civilian life of the cold war, had to formalize their unrecognized and untreated post traumatic stress disorders while sublimated within the larger social context. Bingo, your culture of cartoon violence, Sir. Your next course is a war of neo-colonialist expansion and the destruction of markets and jobs here at home.

It starts with a big scare and then features a new face, and then, like a movie descends into some stylized stage violence resulting in a facile happy ending, where Reagan and the Seventh Cavalry ride in and rescue us from the natives. We're suckers for that one. But it was all a fraud.

Americans above all things hate atheists, and retain the right to be free of such spoken obscenities in their lives. It's who we are, and they're all we have left to take our problems out on. The first Amendment guarantees it. So if you don't believe in a God you should keep it to yourself or risk disturbing the peace. Then Communism is right out for most Americans.

Another thing we don't like is newspapers. We used to, but not any more. Their bulky, inky waste product has become noxious to us. Most enjoyable to me will be the fall of the New York Times. The former newspaper of record became the weapon of character assassination in the vast plot to topple Bill Clinton. Seditious treason is another thing we Americans really can't stand. It's seems we'll watch it on television, but won't pay for it. Later, Clinton was exonerated of any wrong doing. His pursuers are still out there, there just aren't that many left.

And lastly, Spam is another thing that drives Americans crazy. We need to get our U.S. Postal Service into the E-mail business. Mail is mail and Americans are concerned about the security and sanctity of their private communications over this new routing technology. A new and vital sector for an old and stressed system but still a vital one. Print is dead and here we are still around in need of some information service around here! Ding-a-ling. Reality calling! More for Social Security pensions, Dimmi! This is my country. And this is my blog. Bligh me!

Aloha to Bri, on the way to Hawaii. And what are you going to buy me?

Gene Lyons

Off with their heads