Discourses

Glenn Greenwald's Fallacies on Progressives and Ron Paul

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 19:35:00 +0000

If anyone needs further evidence of the devolution and diffusion of the left in the West, you need to look no further than Glenn Greenwald's paternalistic piece on why progressives should stop acting like petulant children and vote for a person who will cut his taxes.

Here is but one snippet by this progressive-turned-libertarian shill:

Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform — certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party — who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial.

Whatever else I can say about Glenn Greenwald, he thinks I should be supportive of Ron Paul (oh, wait, only telling us about the candidates and why Ron Paul is so much better [which is his way of saying an endorsement]). That is an ironic choice of a word when describing what I should feel for Ron Paul, seeing how the doctor does not seem too enthused about someone like Glenn Greenwald, if one believes Rep. Paul's ex-staff worker. I guess being homophobic is acceptable, so long as you think correctly on the Iraq war and the Patriot Act. Who knows, maybe he will dedicate some of his column space in the future on the greatness of Pat Buchanan (whose politics closely resembles Rep. Paul's).

And yes, Glenn, I actually do think of myself as flamboyant about civil liberties, to the point I have dedicated a good part of this site to criticizing President Obama, but as a progressive I am also flamboyant about other crucial issues, like civil rights--a strange omission in Glenn's column (until I emailed him my criticisms and he changed his article to address it at the end) and with good reason. That's because Greenwald's preferred (I mean compared) presidential candidate is not only non-flamboyant about civil rights but opposes it absolutely as a violation of the rights of property owners (the favored caste of all libertarians). In fact, Rep. Paul has opposed the Voting Rights Act throughout his entire political career, along with the Civil Rights Act. You see, Ron believes a property owner should be allowed to exclude anyone from his/her business, including people based on their race. Of course, Glenn does not have to worry about getting himself excluded anytime soon. The Jim Crow laws in the pre-civil rights era did not make him sit in the back of a bus.

But when it comes to violating the Constitution, Ron Paul has no problems whatsoever, on the condition that you are born in the U.S. to parents who are undocumented. That is right, Ron Paul wants to roll back the 14th Amendment, which he never liked as an apologist for the Confederacy in the Civil War, and advocates eliminating the clause that grants citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. And he wants to abolish public assistance to undocumented immigrants, including schooling for their children (even those born in the U.S.). Naturally, Glenn, as a native born citizen of the U.S., is not acquainted with people who will be impacted by this policy (or not enough for it to be a priority for him), so the lack of care over such folk is of no consequence to him or his presidential vote.

And it is not just the right of people born in the U.S. to undocumented parents that Rep. Paul wants to do away with. He is not too supportive of the living ones who would dare demand a living wage, as well. Rep. Paul opposes the Wagner Act, which gives every American the right to collectively bargain in a labor union (which is what created the middle-class of this country after World War Two). And he opposes a minimum wage law as a means of "helping" poor people by subjecting them to the whims of companies would prefer slave labor, if they could get away with it. In fairness to Dr. Paul, he is not only an advocate of abusing adult workers. He supports spreading the social Darwinistic joys of this survival of the fittest (and starvation of everyone else) by 'liberating' our children from those evil public schools and sending them to the workforce, like Henry Frick's 10 year old dynamite specialists in the mines of late 19th century Pennsylvania. Apparently, none of those issues should count to me when considering a presidential candidate.

Another issue I am flamboyant about is reproductive choice. Like most progressives (should), I see women as full human beings who should be treated equally as men, and that most certainly includes the right to decide when/whether to terminate a pregnancy. Ron Paul is an opponent of allowing women to have such a choice. Indeed, Rep. Paul claims to be "strongly pro-life" (anti-choice). Glenn will not have to care about this issue anytime soon, as a man who thinks I should either ignore or downplay something that is not on his horizon, and as such not vital, but that which providers of women's reproductive health have to live through every day--and by live through every day, I mean a country filled with religious zealots and terrorists (almost all Republican voters) who may attack and kill you for reaffirming a woman's Constitutional right.

Another Glenn Greenwald item that was not mentioned in his column for Ron Paul is the one issue that all libertarians care about the most, greater than civil liberties, greater than foreign policy, and that is economics. Of course, as a new-fangled supporter of the rights of the proprietor, Glenn should know all about this, as he would benefit mightily by the abolition of the progressive income tax and its replacement with a regressive national sales tax. After making himself a millionaire off the backs of (mostly) progressive readers who purchase what he writes, the recension of the income tax would be a blessing and clear financial motive for his vote (oops, I mean his comparison). That is because Ron Paul has been a longtime supporter of the elimination of the income tax, including the proposed "fair tax" (that is, if by fair, you mean to wealthy people).

Another issue Glenn completely bypassed (until the end, when he put in a paragraph addressing some of the aforementioned, following my criticisms that I emailed to him), again, for the same obvious reason he did not want to address his views on taxes, the supposed violation of the Constitution that Rep. Paul thinks Social Security has become. Naturally, Glenn does not have to worry about this. He has enough money saved up from years of legal practice and book sales in the 2000s to keep himself in a position of ease, but over half of all elderly people in the US depend on Social Security as their primary source of income. Rep. Paul believes we should rollback and eventually abolish Social Security.

And what about the corporate ownership of our campaigns? Yes, that is another issue that I, as a progressive, am very flamboyant about (it might arguably be the most important issue in American politics), because corporations have a corrupting influence on our polity and have contributed profitably to our wars and increasing police state. Ron Paul not only supports this, he supported the Supreme Court's Citizens United vs. FEC decision, which further humanizes corporations and equates corporate money with speech. Then again, Glenn feels the same way as Ron Paul and every Republican presidential candidate, so it is more than understandable why he conveniently absented any mention of the criminal enterprise that is our system of private campaign sponsorship.

But most offensive of all, even worse than the omissions (until I pointed it out to him), even worse than the apologia for a man who sees Glenn as a moral defect, and the rest of us as individualistic atoms waiting to be freed into a world filled with unaccountable private corporations, is the fact I am having my intelligence insulted as a progressive for not bowing to (an endorsement masquerading as a phony informational session on the progressive credentials of) Rep. Paul because he is good on about one-third of the issues, as if the other two-thirds are not crucial enough for me to care (well, not crucial to Glenn Greenwald because he has healthcare and a house to live in, and an education that is paid off). As if my only choice is between Ron Paul and Barack Obama, since that is the only comparison allowed for progressives, an offense not only committed by Glenn but even other progressives (when attempting to browbeat me into voting Democratic).

Has it ever occurred to the ex-lefist-turned-libertarian lemmings (i.e., people like Glenn Greenwald and Alexander Cockburn) that I should not have to choose between a libertarian and a neo-conservartive/liberal like Barack Obama? Of course they do not know about the Greens or Socialist Party because as libertarians the thought of voting for people who would more heavily tax or regulate Mr. Cockburn's country estate or Glenn Greenwald's income is beyond the pale of consideration. Well, as a progressive, it is not beyond the pale of consideration to me.

I know of no laws that will restrict me, as a Democrat and progressive, from voting or writing in whoever the Green Party or Socialist Party nominates. And guess what, Glenn? That is who I will likely be voting for. A candidate who is good on 100% of the issues, not two candidates (Paul and Obama) who are, at best, good on a third and are really two sides of the same corporatist coin (since they have the same views on trade, deficit reduction, and single-payer healthcare). Mr. Greenwald, sadly, does not see that because he is a Cato Institute-funded libertarian, disingenuously attempting to obliquely fool people into voting for a person who sees fetuses and corporations as being more human than we are.

But hey, that's OK. No need to worry about deporting babies born in the U.S. for having the wrong parentage. No need to worry about poor people having to pay a 27% national sales tax on everything to subsidize the rich. No worry about abolishing or rolling back what little social safety net we have in this country. No need to worry about having Supreme Court appointees who will view women as broodmares. No need to worry about states continuing to be allowed to violate the due process rights of gay couples who want to marry. At least we will not be spied on or go to war, while we live in rags (after the minimum wage and unions are outlawed), die from a lack of healthcare in a ditch, and not allowed to vote after states (upon the repeal of the Voting Rights Act) require us to submit our DNA as the price of admission to get into a voting booth. After all, you don't have time to address any of this when doing a positive writeup on Ron Paul.

Post-Script: Hey Glenn, thanks for re-writing your column to address my critiques after I posted this. You have a strange way of responding.

Why I Am Not Supporting Ron Paul

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 04:23:00 +0000

If you were to listen to the cheerleaders in our gated communities of this country, you would think that Ron Paul was the greatest thing since sliced bread. The near cultishness of these followers, including a close friend from my undergrad days, is alarming and yet at the same time amusing (rivaling any hippie commune in the late '60s). There is just something about watching a white person under the age of 40 wanting to keep his stock options untaxed, and his porn unmonitored, that makes you wonder about the future of our increasingly trivial polity.

There is even an attempt by right-wing Ron Paul supporters to try to appeal to progressives to vote for their most favored libertarian.

Sadly, many of the libertarian lemmings on the left will be crawling over to the Ron Paul train on their hands and knees, as they always do (yes, Mr. Cockburn, that includes you) when faced with the possibility of selling their souls, but I will not be one of them. Take the libertarian appeals with a grain of salt because they continually whitewash every single one of the less savory aspects of Ron Paul with ad hominems and defenses that would be handled quite differently if committed by someone they politically disliked.

Ron Paul: The Good Side

This is not to obfuscate the positive contributions of Ron Paul on issues that count (and there are a few). One, he is opposed to our interventionist foreign policy, voting against the war in Iraq (although it should be noted that Ron Paul, in spite of what he and his defenders say, voted in favor of the war in Afghanistan back in 2001). And this is not a recent or newfound position. Paul has been one of the more consistent critics of our foreign policy since the beginning of his Congressional career, dating back to the '70s, opposing the existence of NATO during the Cold War. He is the most vociferous and erstwhile opponent of our imperial ways of any presidential candidate in the two major parties since Dennis Kucinich.

Two, Ron Paul is the only candidate in the current presidential field (in the two parties) who openly condemns the war on drugs, our government's addiction to law enforcement movies to execute this incarceration spree, and what it has done to us politically and economically. Paul is not the only elected official willing to challenge the war on drugs and our prison industrial complex (the result of the war on drugs), but he is the only one who is running for POTUS who thinks this way.

In addition, Rep. Paul opposes the Patriot Act (from the start and still does to this day), the National Defense Authorization Act, and he is on record as wanting to abolish foreign aid to the apartheid state that is Israel. Those are not minor stances. He has taken them time and again, even to his political detriment in his own party. It is also why he will never win the presidential nomination in the Republican Party (who supports all of those policies as a matter of principle). It is also why I at least have some modicum of respect for Ron Paul and believe him to be the only member of the stupid party in Congress who is not bought and sold by some interest group.

None of these positives should be ignored when passing any judgment on Ron Paul or his ideological inclinations, and it is why I understand some progressives for taking a serious look at Rep. Paul's candidacy.

Ron Paul: The Bad and Ugly

Unfortunately, Ron Paul has a downside, and the reservoir of that downside is as immense and deep as any of the other congregation of bigots in the Republican presidential field.

No matter how much anyone wants to sidestep it, the blatant racism and hatefilledness of Ron Paul's newsletters back in the '90s is sickening. Here are just some of the views that Ron Paul wrote/signed off on.

"If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be." - Ron Paul, 1992

"Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal." - Ron Paul, 1992

"We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such." - Ron Paul, 1992

"What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn't that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?" - Ron Paul, 1992

Contrary to the complaints by Ron Paul supporters of a media conspiracy in bringing up the newsletters, it is nothing new. The media has given extensive coverage to the newsletters throughout the 2000s, even back when Paul ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 (the details of which I gave coverage to on this site). According to Ron Paul, he never wrote any of this, or cannot recall it. Paul himself has stated that he never read his own newsletter, but merely signed off on it. It has been rumored more than once that Lew Rockwell (the chairman of the Ludwig von Mises Institute) wrote the offending passages which, if true, shows that racialist attitudes on the libertarian right are no less foreign today than they were 60 years ago when libertarians opposed the civil rights movement on the grounds of states' rights (the same enabling concept that makes them sympathize with those who owned the very people they denigrate today).

Even assuming that Ron Paul is telling the truth, and let us say he is, he signed off on this newsletter and employed a white supremacist to write under his masthead. If he did not read it, he is even worse for being a fool and incompetent, something Paul is not noted for being, which led me to believe four years ago (and today) that he is lying through his teeth about writing/reading his old newsletter. He almost certainly did read it before he signed off on the passages, at the very least (and likely wrote it). In fact, contrary to what Ron Paul supporters will tell you, Paul himself took responsibility for what he wrote/signed off on (depending on who you believe) back in 1996.

Do I believe for one minute that Ron Paul is the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan? No, that seems very unlikely when considering that Paul has never ran his campaigns based on those issues. What is more more likely is that Paul wrote/signed off on the newsletter's racism because he knew such expressed sentiments with his (almost exclusively) white readership would sell. After all, it was a profit-making enterprise, something that should be familiar to anyone who believes money is the most important thing in life.

Ron Paul and Libertarians: In the Heart of Evil

Position-wise, and most dangerously, like with all libertarians Ron Paul supports unregulated capital. He can call himself an opponent of corporatism, but he only opposes direct government subsidization. Something you will never hear Ron Paul say is that we should take it a step further and abolish all preferential tax credits for corporations (save for an abolition of the tax code) and for that matter eliminate corporate charters and contracts enforcement for corporations, since all of the aforementioned take place under the watchful eye of our government. Why would he support such government ownership and oversight of the rules? Because libertarians believe that corporations are humans and that we are atomistic individuals who should selfishly pursue money in this system of unfettered capitalism (i.e., economic stratification, poverty, and misery for most of the population).

That might not sound so horrible, if you have economic resources or if you play a game of Monopoly. What Ron Paul does not stress and what his supporters hate to mention, is that this means the abolition of child labor laws, the abolition of the right to collectively bargain (and for any unionization, at least legal recognition [a 20th century invention in the U.S.]), and the abolition of public education and what remains of our lessening social safety net, particularly Social Security and Medicare, which Ron Paul has declared un-Constitutional and should be abolished. Here is Rep. Paul in a more open moment.

Naturally, as a presidential candidate, Ron Paul has partially reversed himself and now states he likes these programs after all. And the best way to preserve the social safety net? By cutting the living daylights out of it, of course!

Think about this. Ron Paul considers Social Security slavery, but wants to preserve it by abolishing education and public housing. This hypocrisy should not sound unfamiliar because Rep. Paul feels the same way about those who have been real slaves in this country. Again, I will let Rep. Paul speak for himself.

This is not some newsletter. It is the honest expressions of the man. Ron Paul supports the Confederacy and lives the illusion that the best way to get rid of owning other human beings is through market forces (i.e., buying their freedom and compensating those who owned and treated slaves like animals), even though the market supported and made slavery viable for over two centuries (the first holding company on the New York Stock Exchange traded and sold slaves). This is not unlike his son's declaration that the civil rights movement was unnecessary because market principles (the real motivating fetishism of libertarianism) could have eliminated segregation.

What Rand and Ron fail to note is that these institutions were culturally and politically supported (and overwhelmingly so by those at the top of the racial caste), and no market in the world is going to change what politics and culture maintains (for example, there is a supply and demand for harvesting and selling of human organs, but our cultural mores and laws do not permit it). Moreover, slavery in the U.S. became the most profitable institution in American history because (not in spite of) the capitalist industrial revolution with the invention of the cotton gin. Actually, many historians date Eli Whitney's invention with being one of the economic rationales to spread slavery, which became a lightening rod politically throughout the early 1800s after U.S. expansion westward. If Ron and Rand Paul had it their way, we would still be dealing with these issues today because they never would have adjudicated and resolved them in 1865 or 1965 (back when the market and Southern culture commanded their presence).

I am not of the mind that either of the Pauls are white supremacists. They are libertarians and motivated by other factors first (primarily economic), but like with Barry Goldwater's opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act their ideology embodies its greatest weakness--to recognize that markets do not answer all problems in society and sometimes, dare the thought, government intervention is necessary to remedy quandaries not infrequently caused by their side, and politically and culturally defended as traditions in need of preservation (a phenomenon of the right that plagues us to this day on gay marriage). And they recognize this, which is why the catchall defense for the failures of the market for libertarians is to blame what few government regulations that do exist (even when never used), or opine about the importance of maintaining unregulated capital over all else (even if/when they do not provide for optimal returns). The blind faith in the correcting nature of their economic system (which encourages people with economic resources to dismantle the commons and segregate themselves from everyone else) borders on the kind of ignorance one typically sees in a religious person who rationalizes the inattentiveness of their skygod after a prayer is not answered.

The inability of libertarians to care one wit for someone who does not have disposable income is the most grievous part of their ideology. Notice again the hypocrisy of a Ron Paul or most libertarians' refusal to want to abolish state-contracts enforcement or corporate charters, while simultaneously advocating for the elimination of the National Labor Relations Board and the right of a working person in this country to form a labor union and collectively bargain for a higher wage (since that means legal and state recognition of such organizing, which situationally is interpreted as 'big government'). And that is the kernel of the evil, yes, the evil, of libertarianism and of laissez-faire capitalism. The legal/state preservation of the owning class over (and at the expense of) everyone else. It is why at the end of the day the right in this country supported and fought to preserve slavery, opposed the abolition of child labor, opposed unions, opposed the income tax, and public education. Libertarianism (just a more socially liberal strain of conservatism) is an ideology centered on the negation of civilization and denial of society to dodge paying its bills. That is the fatal flaw of libertarianism and no cutbacks on military spending and non-enforcement of anti-terrorism laws will ever be able to mitigate it.

Sounds like a harsh judgment to our stockholding friends? This is the world we lived in before the age of child labor laws and the 8 hour work day (maladies that were abolished by government, contravening market forces).

This is the kind of society we had before there were unions, OSHA, and safety regulations for workers, like coal miners.

About half of my family tree was wiped out by that industry in the pre-union and pre-OSHA days from black lung and mining accidents. The fate of those men (my grandfather, great grandfather, great-great grandfather, and at least a dozen great uncles and cousins, all killed by that industry's safety standards under the invisible hand) is of no consequence to the libertarian because, after all, it is the market and the market can never be wrong (and should only be 'corrected' by trying to buy it). Like the tollbooth, to the libertarian we are only human if we can afford to cross their arbitrary/state-sanctioned and enforced rule of corporate humanness. Otherwise, we are just expendable atoms.

If Not Ron Paul, Who?

I know what I have written is heretical to the Ron Paul supporters and will get me flamed or red-baited, but I do not care or expect a libertarian to understand. You cannot be that narcissistic and then pretend to care about people outside of your life after reading one blog post. It is an appeal to anyone who views those below the upper 1% income tax bracket as full citizens that should be given equal treatment and the same opportunities in life. To them, to you, who should I vote for?

If you read this blog or any of my posts, including the ones in the 'best of' blogroll, I am no friend of Barack Obama. I voted for him back in 2008, knowing that I would not vote for him in 2012, foreseeing many of his betrayals. That is because Barack Obama was never a real progressive. Yes, that is hard for Ron Paul supporters or any person who watches Fox "news" to believe. You think he's a Communist. A Communist who gave us a "government takeover" of healthcare. You will never hear them tell us how a government subsidy for a private insurance plan is the same as government ownership and takeover because to them if the government so much as passes wind at someone less fortunate than they are, then that is Communism. I debated a fellow once, where I live in the South (yes, he is a native Southerner), who assert to me that libraries were Bolshevist because they were supported by government. That is how reactionary our politics has become in this country, a contribution given to us in part by the Ron Pauls and libertarians.

Barack Obama, the "Communist-socialist Islamist," is the same "Communist-socialist Islamist," who has given this country payroll tax cuts, extension of the Bush tax cuts (after running against them), support for free trade, opposition to a single-payer healthcare system (real socialism, for those of you paying attention), appointed a deficit panel that wants to gut Social Security, caved in to Republicans for a Congressional (and extra-Constitutional) "super" committee to legislatively address the deficit (and put Social Security and Medicare on the table for cuts), and appointed to his economic team the very people (Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers) who pushed for the recension of the Glass-Steagall Act back in the late '90s, helping to facilitate our economic collapse in 2008. I either anticipated or knew all of that was coming (excepting the Bush tax cut extension), and yet I still voted for this man, just to spite the Republican Party of the Bush era, which I blamed partly on voters like myself who pulled the lever (or punched the chad) for Ralph Nader back in 2000 (buyer's remorse is always 20/20).

What I did not expect, and what has disappointed me to no end, is the level of depravity and constant flip-flopping of the Obama administration on the few issues he ran on back in 2008 that attracted me to vote for him, especially on the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, and national security vs. civil liberties.

This was Barack Obama back in 2008.

In the past three years, President Obama has gone back on every one of those sentiments (with the notable exception of an executive order banning torture). The current administration has supported the extension of the Patriot Act, warrantless searches (which he previously critiqued as violating Constitutional values), turned whistleblowers like Bradley Manning into criminals (after giving support to laws that would protect them), and has expanded on George Bush's actions with even greater calumnies, like having a personal private hit list filled with the names of alleged (but not charged) terrorists (including American citizens), who are to be killed on sight by our government. No charges, no trials, just murdered. This administration has already killed our own citizens in this manner. We afford trials for the likes of Jerry Sandusky and Jeffrey Dahmer, but if you are deemed to be a terrorist (on the word of one person [with absolutely no legal oversight]) then you can be killed.

And then there was the National Defense Authorization Act. President Obama has threatened to veto the bill because of his opposition to some parts of the legislation. But like with our pullout from Iraq, it is not a policy outcome he wants. Indeed, he supports the worst parts of the bill, according to one of its sponsors, Rep. Carl Levin. And just what are the worst parts of the bill he supports? The arrest and detention of American citizens by the U.S. Army without warrant, held (potentially for life) without charge or access to an attorney and family. In essence, the current administration in theory is supporting (or so reassured by one of the bill's sponsors) the ability of the U.S. government to disappear its own citizens, negating the Fourth and Sixth Amendments, habeas corpus, and the Posse Comitatus Act. On my most cynical day as a voter in 2008, I never anticipated or imagined this.

On account of the aforementioned, and these are only some of the administration's deviations, I will not and can not in good conscience support his re-election.

So, if not Ron Paul or Barack Obama (or anyone in the Republican field), who should I support? I honestly do not have an answer at this point. I only know who I will not be voting for, and it will not be Barack Obama or Ron Paul. Why sell my soul to vote for one imperfection over another? If I do vote for anyone, it will be a real progressive, something which those of us on the left need to take to, instead of going into a coalition with people who want to abolish the tax code (and this country's poor) so we do not go to war over moderated believers in the system and all of its moles. These candidates are two sides of the same coin, as much as they would like to portray themselves as being agents of change. Doubt me? Ask Ron Paul and Barack Obama their view on universal government-run healthcare.

National Defense Authorization Act: Declaration of War Against Us

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 01:47:00 +0000

Whenever future civilizations, studying our downfall and ultimate demise, wonder when our empire decided it best to feed on us, arrest us, oppress us, and utilize outright state-sanctioned murder to protect the property of its elites, they will need to look no further than the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act. This fine piece of legislation passed through the Senate today with a 93-7 vote.

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20 Things You Should Know About the Bill That Could Ruin America

Last week the U.S. Senate passed 93-7 a version of the National Defense Authorization Act that includes provisions giving the military the right to detain you forever and without charge if they think you're some kind of terrorist. Consider it an early holiday present! There is no exchange policy, sorry.

President Barack Obama can get rid of the Act's indefinite detention provisions by using his veto powers. He says he might do just that, so there is hope. But Hopey could also change his mind at the last minute and let the language become law. Civil libertarians from all sides of the political spectrum are very anxious about the final call he'll make.

Even though you can't do much to prevent the provisions from taking effect, here's a list of 20 details about them. Maybe the info will come in handy when you finally flee to Saudi Arabia ISO political refugee status and have to explain how your country was oppressing you:

1. The provisions were passed as part of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—enacted for the last 48 years or so to provide funding for the military and all our wars. (The act for fiscal year 2012 awarded $662 billion for defense spending.) Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) took the lead in promoting them, making passage a bipartisan effort/failure.
2. Initially the provisions passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without a single hearing. The Senate didn't want to spoil the surprise for everybody.
3. Because of the provisions, the NDAA now says the military can detain anyone deemed to be "a part of" or deemed to have "substantially supported" Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or "associated forces." You can be on the battlefield, or you can be PayPaling money to your local terrorist cell while sipping your latte at a Starbucks—doesn't matter. Even though we captured Saddam, Osama, and Anwar al-Awlaki, these powers are still necessary. Don't question.
4. The bill grants power to the military to arrest U.S. citizens on American soil and detain them in military prisons forever without offering them the right to legal counsel or even a trial. This isn't a totally new thing: "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla spent three-and-a-half years as an "enemy combatant" until he was finally charged. But Padilla's detention was unusual and sparked a huge outcry; the new provisions would standardize his treatment and enable us all to become Jose Padillas.
5. Some people are trying to say that language regarding indefinite detention (Section 1031) doesn't apply to American citizens, but it does. However, the mandatory detention requirement (Section 1032) includes an exemption for American citizens, which means the military doesn't have to imprison you forever and ever "unless ordered to do so" by the president. You better remove that Nobama bumper sticker from your truck.
6. The provisions could last as long as fruitcake lasts. We covered this earlier.
7. Many important people oppose the provisions, including FBI Director Robert Mueller, the CIA, the military, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, the Director of National Intelligence, and your mom (unless she's a U.S. senator).
8. A group of 26 retired generals and admirals wrote a letter to the Senate saying the provisions "reduce the options available to our Commander-in-Chief to incapacitate terrorists," and will "do more harm than good." The Senate obviously ignored them.
9. According to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who opposes indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, an American can be deemed a "terrorist" after just one hearing. Finally, the government promises to work efficiently on something.
10. Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) tried to kill the provision on indefinite detention with an amendment that required Congressional review of these brand-new military detention powers, but his effort failed 60 votes to 38.
11. All the Republican senators supported the provisions except for Paul and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL).
12. Former Vice President Dick Cheney was in attendance for the vote on behalf of the waterboarding lobby. Every time he heard the words "indefinite detention," he got an erection.
13. None of this stuff will ever affect people who are innocent of terrorism-related crimes, unless the government wrongly accuses them.
14. As pointed out by Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald, the provision dispenses with Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution, which provides that nobody can be punished for treason without heightened due process requirements being met." Goodbye, Art. 3 Sec. 3! Send our regards to the 4th, 8th, and 14th Amendments.
15. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of the provisions' most vocal supporters, put it this way to the New York Times: "Citizens who are suspected of joining Al Qaeda are opening themselves up 'to imprisonment and death ... And when they say, "I want my lawyer," you tell them: "Shut up. You don't get a lawyer. You are an enemy combatant, and we are going to talk to you about why you joined Al Qaeda."'" Shut up, fool! Lindsey Graham hates it when you talk.
16. Some of the senators who passed this shit don't really know what they are talking about when they talk about "enemy combatants" and their status under existing law.
17. President Barack Obama has stated he'll veto the provisions because they would "raise serious and unsettled legal questions and would be inconsistent with the fundamental American principle that our military does not patrol our streets." They're also confusing.
18. The provisions will militarize America even further and—in Graham's words—"basically say[s] in law for the first time that the homeland is part of the battlefield." Your backyard is a microcosm of the war on terror. Just think of that every time you host a barbecue.
19. They could disappear from the NDAA if the House and Senate conferees who meet in conference committee this week decide to get rid of them.
20. Texas Republicans have somehow worked sex with animals into all this.

Now for the good news: Greenwald at Salon says none of this indefinite detention without a lawyer stuff changes the status quo that much. It only codifies what's already been happening in the U.S. for the past few years. So you've been living under these conditions for a while now, but look—you're still not in jail. Just be more careful about what sorts of opinions on the government you post on Twitter, and don't say anything nice about Al Qaeda, and you'll be fine.

http://gawker.com/5865089/20-things-you-should-know-about-americas-most-horrifying-new-law

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Nice to see the Republicans in Texas were able to use the bill to change the UCMJ to legalize bestiality for our military personnel. I guess we now know their values and what makes them tick.

Out of fairness, I will list the seven Senators who still believe in some modicum of human freedom. Yes, dear right-wing left, there are Republicans on this list (even a couple of tea partiers). Let them receive praise, as they deserve, alongside anyone else remaining who still wants to preserve our basic constitutional rights.

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Tom Coburn (Republican-Oklahoma)

Tom Harkin (Democrat-Iowa)

Mike Lee (Republican-Utah)

Jeff Merkley (Democrat-Oregon)

Rand Paul (Republican-Kentucky)

Bernie Sanders (Independent-Vermont)

Ron Wyden (Democrat-Oregon)

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Next to these seven brave souls, an entire chamber of Congress today decided to declare war on the citizenry of this country. Understand that this legislation, if implemented, means the end of habeas corpus and your 4-6th Amendment rights in our Constitution. That is not being rhetorical. It is the cold hard reality of the bill.

One, our army will be able to, in the name of anti-terrorism, conduct domestic law enforcement functions, which countermands the Posse Comitatus Act. And you are wrong, Sen. Rubio. The army will be operating as a domestic police force, which is exactly what the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits. You do not need to be on a military patrol to constitute the act's ban on using the army to enforce civilian law. As a lawyer, Senator Rubio, you understand and know about this law (I learned about it as an undergrad and in law school) and you know that it bans the use of the army to enforce the 'laws of the land' (i.e., civilian law). There is no way you can be honestly ignorant of this.

Two, our national government (through our army) will also be able to use the military to arrest you (yes, native-born American citizens [and yes, even those of you who are non-Muslims]) without warrant, search your property without a warrant or cause, and hold you indefinitely without charge. And yes, that means potentially you could be kidnapped by your government and sent off to Guantanamo Bay (although one can only hope the president's executive order banning torture is being followed there).

Three, our national government, under the guise of national security, will have the right to use anti-terrorism as a rationale to have you assassinated on American soil--again, without charge or trial, and on the sole orders of the POTUS. And this not only applies on American soil. You can be given the same treatment abroad, as well. In other words, this law basically declares war on you no matter where you are, and do it without any legal recourse and ability to challenge a charge made against you (since any charge will be made without the benefit of counsel or in a civilian court).

There is no shortage of hyperbole to call this for what it is because the summation of this bill is to cancel our rights. It is a rank assault on our Constitution and worse on all of us as American citizens. We are not to be trusted with rights that we claim to have, by a document that is to no longer apply to our lives, because the likes of Joseph Lieberman and John McCain say so. And while I commend President Obama for denouncing parts of the bill, there are more than enough votes to override his veto (if this were to happen). I do not think I need to tell you what the Republican Congressional leadership and every one of the party's presidential candidates not named Ron Paul think. Of course, you already know the answer.

These are the same people who compare a government subsidy for a private insurance plan to a communistic threat to American values, but who simultaneously support domestic law enforcement tactics that are right out of North Korea. Even Cuba (yes, Cuba) requires its government to charge you with a crime after arrest. On his worst day as president, Lincoln admitted that the suspension of habeas corpus was his worst act and one he felt would damage his judgment by future historians. We are now enshrining a totalitarian government in our country and making it, as Chalmers Johnson called it, our mortal enemy and nemesis. And even if the courts rule it unconstitutional, consider that 93% of the US Senate felt it acceptable to allow the U.S. Army to arrest you without warrant, hold you indefinitely, possibly torture and/or kill you, without charge, without trial, without legal recourse, regardless of your innocence, guilt, or global residence.

I spend quite a bit of time on this blog chronicling the crimes of this country, especially our corporations and government (at this point seemingly joined at the hip), but even Wal-Mart has an appeals process for employees before firing them (even though such a policy is only in its corporate guidelines, not in its charter). We have a Constitution requiring our government to charge us with a crime after arrest, to respect our privacy and personal property, and almost the entire Senate today desecrated the memory of James Madison, shredding over two centuries of the rule of law and the bedrock of our liberties in this republic. Even if we survive this assault legally, we now know what the U.S. Senate thinks of us and our laws and traditions, and sadly I doubt today will be the last day we see the likes of a John McCain (or whoever replaces him) expanding the powers of our police state to abolish the remainder of our rights, so that we are mindless automatons living in a shell of a liberal Constitution as meaningful as the Soviet Union's constitutional provisions protecting free speech under Stalin. If that is not evil, then I will never know what is.

The Phony Post-Racist America of Herman Cain

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:40:00 +0000

There is something about the sight of a black man talking like a white Southerner from the 1950s. Yes, that sounds like a harsh assessment of Herman Cain, but there is no other way of judging a person who says the things Herman Cain says. You know something is wrong when an African American who lived through the civil rights movement, while freely admitting he never took part in it, spends his time talking about states' rights, the very concept used by the Dixiecrats of his era and state to rationalize opposition to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act.

If Herman Cain's worldview had won out in the 1950s and '60s, he would not be voting or running for higher office. Whether he likes to admit it or not, he is a free rider and beneficiary of a social and political movement supported by the very forces he claims have "brainwashed" his own community.

This is not to say that one must be a liberal or leftist in all cases without being something like a 'traitor' (fill in community appropriate treasonous name). Actually, I have worked with African American academics in the past who were fairly conservative, a more prevalent phenomenon than people realize. It should be no more notable than being a white leftist (as I am), in a country filled with white people, especially white men, who are predominantly right-wing in their political orientation.

What I do not find acceptable is the notion that anyone joking with a white supremacist like Neal Boortz (a man who started his political career as a speech writer for Lester Maddox [the last open racial segregationist governor in the U.S.]) about having possibly been owned by Mr. Boortz's ancestors, as though there should be nothing funnier than the notion of a black person being owned by a white supremacist's family 150 years ago.

What I do not understand is how anyone, black or white, can call himself a believer in a religion whose founder told us to love everyone, including our enemies, can publicly declare that under no circumstances would he ever employ a Muslim (imagine, Herman, if the boards of exec two decades ago at Godfather's Pizza had the same attitude about employing black people?). Again, I will let Mr. Cain speak for himself.

What I will never understand is how anyone, regardless of your race, can say that racism is not a factor in economic inequality in American life. I write this as a white man (transplant) living in the South, it is noticeable down here as much as anyplace in the U.S.--something Herman Cain should know as a lifelong Southerner. So, am I to believe the fact that black unemployment is twice as high as white unemployment, all of this is based solely on the inability of black people to find a job? Until the 1960s most African Americans in the South were not even allowed to vote and were systematically cut out of housing and jobs by discrimination. The residue of that still persists in this country today in our inner cities and rural areas, and even our suburbs. Tell me, dear white readers, when was the last time you were pulled over for "fitting the description" of a crime suspect? When was the last time one of our so-called brethren of a lighter hue experienced the opportunity to have 41 bullets unloaded into us for reaching for our wallet or just shot in the back, execution style, while being restrained (without cause)? When was the last time you ever saw a white presidential candidate have his citizenship challenged (note, John McCain was born outside of the U.S.)?

Herman Cain knows all of this, or at least he should, since he is on the side of the people who claim that Barack Obama is a Muslim socialist/terrorist sympathizer from Kenya.

And for those who say I am being overly critical, I challenge you to ask Mr. Cain his view on the Confederacy and the Confederate battle flag, or about the efficacy of joking with the speechwriter for Lester Maddox about being owned by his ancestors, etc. Cain knows good and well the Confederate battle flag was put on the Georgia state flag back in 1956 as a protest against the civil rights movement and the Brown v. Board of Education decision (a decision that, like the civil rights laws of the '60s, Cain was a beneficiary of). You will probably not see Herman Cain talking about that issue anytime soon, unless compelled by reporters, because he is campaigning for the votes of people who support the Confederacy and Confederate battle flag, and who 50 years ago thought Mr. Cain should not be allowed to legally vote or sit next to them on a bus. Doubt me? Go to rural Georgia (Cain's home state), say Watkinsville, and ask a native 70 year old white man there his view of Atlanta or Detroit, and then listen to the response (which you already know will be coming). Those are Herman Cain's voters.

Is it any wonder he thinks black people are 'brainwashed'? Long before Mr. Cain and his friends thought universal healthcare was a Communist plot, they thought something else was proof of America's leftist conspiracy against freedom and democracy. Yes, civil rights.

And that is why in Herman Cain's world, a white Republican who goes hunting at a place with 'n*gg*rhead' inscribed on a rock, and calls him brother onstage at a debate is not racist, but a liberal comedian who makes fun of his campaign is. And that is why Herman Cain is on the wrong side of history now, as his supporters (i.e., the opponents of the "negro Soviet republic" they deemed the civil rights movement to embody) were five decades before.

The Wall Street Demonstrators

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 20:57:00 +0000

It is rare that a group of demonstrators in this country spark something in me that gives me a ray of hope. Mostly because people in the U.S. are so utterly docile, it is very difficult to feel anything but despair and cynicism about the polity. Then every once an awhile my fellow citizens will surprise me. This last week has been a pleasant surprise.

To be sure, our beloved respectable fourth estate thinks the youngins' to be misdirected. How dare they spend time going after the same people who gave us the greatest economic destruction in the past seven decades? Here is that bastion of leftist bolshevism (according to the right), The New York Times:

Members retained hope for an infusion of energy over the weekend, but as it approached, the issue was not that the Bastille hadn’t been stormed, but that its facade had suffered hardly a chip.

That blurb in itself is enough to elicit my support.

Here they are getting arrested and treated like criminals by the armed guards for our criminal business class.

Speaking of which, here is how the New York Times initially portrayed the mass arrest, before realizing that it made the mistake of telling the truth the first time.

What about the veracity of the critiques of the demonstrators from the mainstream, corporate-owned media (i.e., media with a vested interest, even the liberals, with protecting Wall Street)? The one most bandied about by the respectables is that the demonstrators have no direction, no organization, no demands, and a lack guidance, and that it is just a bunch of young people letting off steam. I wonder, dear readers, was this question ever thrown out to any of the business-backed teabagger demonstrators? No, that never happened. In fact, here is a New York Times article neutrally reporting on a teabag demonstration on Tax Day back in 2009. Notice, from this liberal icon of newspapers, nothing about how they were unable to figure out the electoral demands of the demonstrators. Of course, you could tell by when/where they were demonstrating, but I digress.

How about the teabaggers who showed up at presidential speeches with firearms, threatening violence? No, the media had a very different response to them. In fact, since when was it a rule that demonstrators needed to have a five point political agenda with electoral demands? Is it not obvious enough what they are demonstrating against by their presence? Of course, they had the same response to the anti-war demonstrations back in the '60s.

Then again, just envision what the response would be from Fox "news" if one of the demonstrators showed up on the doorsteps of Wall Street like this:

.....my guess is they would have called for the death penalty or a surgical strike from one of our drones. Oh, but the kids lack direction in their demands.

All of us, every non-millionaire in this country, should be supporting what these demonstrators are doing. They are not just getting arrested and brutalized by the thugs in the New York City Police Department. They are laying themselves on the line for us and our future. I cannot count the number of students I have seen graduate in the past few years working as barristas and entry level, minimum wage jobs (and those are just the ones working). Just like in the UK and Tunisia, this world's governments are run by old people who are taking the futures of this planet's youth and relegating them to a lifetime of poverty and economic servitude, without a care in the world.

Unless the people getting dumped on by their governments stand up and scream, from the rooftops, and on the streets, I can guarantee you that not a single one of those phony, do-nothing candidates will even pretend to care. The system is broken, everyone can see it. Our government represents the interests of the business class of this country, the sponsors of our politicians, like the Roman patritians of old. These criminals run our economy and way of life with a gun to our heads, knowing that they can pull the trigger at any moment and finish us off, and then have the same government rob our futures and bail them out for their malefesceance. There is probably not a single corporate executive for a Fortune 500 company who deserves anything less than a lengthy prison stay and transfer of their loot to the very people they have spent the past few decades pilfering.

Remember the 'too big to fail' banks? The institutions, like Bank of America, we gave nearly a trillion dollars of tax monies to (all pure deficit spending)? Now, that same Bank of America, not satisfied with stealing our money and using billions to give their executives bonuses on our dime, have decided to charge us an extra $60 a year to use our debit cards (i.e., we have to allow this capricious company to charge us $60 to have the privilege of taking out our own money). Such believers in financial responsibility.

These folks are fighting our fight, fellow progressives (for that matter, anyone who is willing to read and think). And the response of the thugs of the NYPD have had one positive affect. It has led to the intervention of many of our members of the armed forces, including the Marines (with respects to addictinginfo.org).

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Semper Fi: Marines Coming To Protect Protesters On Wall Street

October 1, 2011

By Michael Hayne

The thousands of indefatigable Wall Street protestors, risking their eyes and recording equipment against Wall Street’s personal jack-booted thugs in the NYPD, recently garnered even more support– the US Marines. That’s the type of support that may make an NYPD cop think twice before he decides to go all Tiananmen Square on a group of teenage girls, armed with chalk and cardboard signs (maybe it’s because they are spelled properly?).

The Occupy Wall Street movement may have thought it broke new ground when the NYC Transit Union joined their movement, but that ground just tipped the Richter Scale with news that United States Army and Marine troops are reportedly on their way to various protest locations to support the movement and to protect the protesters.

Here’s the message Ward Reilly relayed from another Marine, on his facebook page:

“I’m heading up there tonight in my dress blues. So far, 15 of my fellow marine buddies are meeting me there, also in Uniform. I want to send the following message to Wall St and Congress:I didn’t fight for Wall St. I fought for America. Now it’s Congress’ turn.
My true hope, though, is that we Veterans can act as first line of defense between the police and the protester. If they want to get to some protesters so they can mace them, they will have to get through the Fucking Marine Corps first. Let’s see a cop mace a bunch of decorated war vets.I apologize now for typos and errors.
Typing this on iPhone whilst heading to NYC. We can organize once we’re there. That’s what we do best.If you see someone in uniform, gather together.
A formation will be held tonight at 10PM.
We all took an oath to uphold, protect and defend the constitution of this country. That’s what we will be doing.

Hope to see you there!!”

Kudos, Mr Reilly!Thank You for having the courage and foresight to see past the transparently false and empty patriotism perpetually touted by the defense skanks and petro whores in Congress in order to keep their campaign coffers filled to the brim. Meanwhile, your brothers and sisters suffer massive cuts and are forced to live with PTSD, with little if any help from the very government and country for which you have sacrificed so much. Thank you for recognizing this movement not as a bunch of screaming white liberal kids with Henna tattoos, but as a universal and profound rejection of the unchecked and undue influence the plutocrats on Wall Street have had on the decision-making in Washington. Thank You for your service, and thank you for seeing through all the mountains of bullsh#t being shoveled around the clock by the Koch Bros. puppets in Washington via their lapdogs in the media.

It’s safe to say to if Mr. Reilly and his fellow marines lend their voices, it could be a defining moment that gives the Occupation of Wall Street movement the just right amount of fuel it needs to catch fire. After all, it would be interesting to see the media ignore NYPD cops pepper spraying decorated war veterans, assuming the donut marchers dared to even consider the notion of trying.

Michael is a comedian/VO artist/Columnist extraordinaire, who co-wrote an award-nominated comedy, wrote for NY Times Laugh Lines, guest-blogged for Joe Biden, and writes a column for MSNBC.com affiliated Cagle. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Seriously, follow him or he’ll send you photos of Rush Limbaugh bending over in a thong.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/10/01/semper-fi-marines-coming-to-protect-protesters-on-wall-street/

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This makes even more sense than the students, when you think about it. No one has been sold a bigger bill of goods than the people in our military. Being sent off for several tours, fighting wars of preemption for no good reason, watching many of your friends die, and meting out numerous killings on others (while having PTSD issues ignored by your superiors and branch, under the false notion that only 'weak' people seek help), from all that our government has compelled these men and women to endure. And for what? So, the capitalists of this country can keep the sweeper on, sucking dry like vampires the middle-class into extinction, and subsidizing politicians who blame it all of gays and Mexicans. No one has a greater interest in the future of this country than those who have most recently served it, and to those young men and women on those streets I wish I was near New York to join you. I think this the happiest I have been in many a year. You give all of us hope.

Assassinating The Constitution: The Murder of al-Awlaki

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:20:00 +0000

With the recent murder of Anwar al-Awlaki by the U.S. government, courtesy of President Obama, you would think that such a blatant disregard for our Constitution would be controversial and widely opposed. Of course not. This is how you can tell we are becoming increasingly a police state. Few, if any, pundits, politicians, or people in the know even bother to publicly express that an accused terrorist, born and raised in the U.S., deserves the same right to a public trial (with presentment of evidence) that we afforded Charlie Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer.

Why? After all, al-Awlaki was a Muslim of Arab descent, so you know most people on the right have no qualms about disemboweling him. Because tomorrow it may likely be you, if you ever bother to dissent or oppose the actions of your government, that's why.

Credit to be given, because I do not pretend to be a fan of a person who thinks that the slaveholders were right in the Civil War, Rep. Ron Paul has been one of the few Congressional voices of reason on this issue.

The fact Paul would talk like that while running for President of the U.S. in the Republican Party, where candidates trip over themselves to love Jesus and hate Muslims more than the next person (just ask Herman Cain how many Muslims he plans on employing), that is no small thing. It takes guts, and if nothing else I give the man his due for saying the obvious: we are killing our own citizens without charge, based on a claim by an official without evidentiary offering, or public trial, on the notion that they deserve to die for being who they are. This is an assault on our Bill of Rights and every one of our rights as citizens of this country.

How can one say that al-Awlaki ever was a terrorist? What evidence does our federal government have? Even if we assume that al-Awlaki was a spiritual godfather of the Fort Hood shooter, and inspired al-Qaeda converts, and was genuinely an unrepentant terrorist, what evidence do we have that he is guilty of these crimes? Notice, you do not see too much offered by our government in that department. Assuming they have evidence, why do we accept that our government would keep secret evidence that it supposedly has that one of our own citizens (born and raised in this country no less) is who they say he is?

And who is to say that if it is acceptable to have our government kill our own citizens without charge of any crime, and if it is OK to have 'enhanced interrogation' techniques (which it would not surprise me to find out that we are still using, in spite of what President Obama says), why not extend this to other groups of people? Why not anti-Wall Street demonstrators? It is not like the same federal law enforcement agencies had any problems with engineering the murder of Fred Hampton through the Chicago Police Department. Why not just kill on sight anyone accused of being a violent criminal and just be done with the 4-6th Amendments altogether? If killing Anwar al-Awlaki without anything resembling a trial is OK, we can have that discussion now, because it seems unlikely that our government is going to stop committing these kinds of crimes, and is almost certain to expand them. Indeed, unless our courts step in and put a stop to it, this murder is just the beginning, the harbinger of only worse and even greater volume of abuses to come.

You think not? How many of you know that a good chunk of the employment pool for Google comes straight from the NSA in Fort Meade? How many of our citizens know that our president has a hit list with other Americans on it, to be killed on his orders alone, without charge, without trial, without any respect for the rule of law? How many of our citizens know that our government actually has a secret interpretation of the Patriot Act that allows the administration to do whatever it wants with regards to the law, and then not explain itself to us or even Congress? And how many of our citizens know that our government can come into your home, without warrant or cause, take your property without telling you and get away with it (on the condition that you are a suspected terrorist [not according to any legal standards, but the subjective opinion of a non-legally trained bureaucrat])?

And to those deluded white conservatives who continue to live the dream that Obama is a Marxist-Leninist, ask yourself: do you not find it odd that Dick Cheney and George Bush Jr. praise Obama for what he has done in assassinating bin Laden and al-Awlaki? That is hardly an accident. They understand that your supposedly Islamist president is no different than any of you. You just cannot own up to it. Well, maybe you should ask al-Awlaki's family. I am sure they could give you an earful.

Melting Ice, To The Right's Delight

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 02:16:00 +0000

I guess this is not enough proof to the people who think everything is a theory, except the notion that a 2,000 year old dead carpenter is coming back at any moment to take them to a nice place after they die.

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Canadian Arctic nearly loses entire ice shelf

By CHARMAINE NORONHA - Associated Press

TORONTO (AP) — Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in newly published research.

The loss is important as a marker of global warming, returning the Canadian Arctic to conditions that date back thousands of years, scientists say. Floating icebergs that have broken free as a result pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes. The breaking apart of the ice shelves also reduces the environment that supports microbial life and changes the look of Canada's coastline.

Luke Copland is an associate professor in the geography department at the University of Ottawa who co-authored the research published on Carleton University's website. He said the Serson Ice Shelf shrank from 79.15 square miles (205 square kilometers) to two remnant sections five years ago, and was further diminished this past summer.

Copland said the shelf went from a 16-square-mile (42-square-kilometer) floating glacier tongue to 9.65 square miles (25 square kilometers), and the second section from 13.51 square miles (35 square kilometers) to 2 square miles (7 square kilometers), off Ellesmere Island's northern coastline.

This past summer, Ward Hunt Ice Shelf's central area disintegrated into drifting ice masses, leaving two separate ice shelves measuring 87.65 and 28.75 square miles (227 and 74 square kilometers) respectively, reduced from 131.7 square miles (340 square kilometers) the previous year.

"It has dramatically broken apart in two separate areas and there's nothing in between now but water," said Copland.

Copland said those two losses are significant, especially since the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf has always been the biggest, the farthest north and the one scientists thought might have been the most stable.

"Recent (ice shelf) loss has been very rapid, and goes hand-in-hand with the rapid sea ice decline we have seen in this decade and the increasing warmth and extensive melt in the Arctic regions," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado, remarking on the research.

Copland, who uses satellite imagery and who has conducted field work in the Arctic every May for the past five years, said since the end of July, pieces equaling one and a half times the size of Manhattan Island have broken off. Co-researcher Derek Mueller, an assistant professor at Carleton University's geography and environmental studies department, said the loss this past summer equals up to three billion tons. Copland said their findings have not yet been peer reviewed since the research is new, but a number of scientists contacted by The Associated Press reviewed the findings, agreeing the loss in volume of ice shelves is significant.

Scambos said the loss of the Arctic shelves is significant because they are old and their rapid loss underscores the severity of the warming trend scientists see now relative to past fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period or the warmer times in the pre-Current Era (B.C.).

Ice shelves, which began forming at least 4,500 years ago, are much thicker than sea ice, which is typically less than a few feet (meters) thick and survives up to several years.

Canada has the most extensive ice shelves in the Arctic along the northern coast of Ellesmere Island. These floating ice masses are typically 131 feet (40 meters) thick (equivalent to a 10-story building), but can be as much as 328 feet (100 meters) thick. They thickened over time via snow and sea ice accumulation, along with glacier inflow in certain places.

The northern coast of Ellesmere Island contains the last remaining ice shelves in Canada, with an estimated area of 402 square miles (1,043 square kilometers), said Mueller.

Between 1906 and 1982, there has been a 90 percent reduction in the areal extent of ice shelves along the entire coastline, according to data published by W.F. Vincent at Quebec's Laval University. The former extensive "Ellesmere Island Ice Sheet" was reduced to six smaller, separate ice shelves: Serson, Petersen, Milne, Ayles, Ward Hunt and Markham. In 2005, the Ayles Ice Shelf whittled almost completely away, as did the Markham Ice Shelf in 2008 and the Serson this year.

"The impact is significant and yet only a piece of the ongoing and accelerating response to warming of the Arctic," said Dr. Robert Bindschadler, emeritus scientist at the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

Bindschadler said the loss is an indication of another threshold being passed, as well as the likely acceleration of buttressed glaciers able to flow faster into the ocean, which accelerates their contribution to global sea level.

Copland said mean winter temperatures have risen by about 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade for the past five to six decades on northern Ellesmere Island.

http://news.yahoo.com/canadian-arctic-nearly-loses-entire-ice-shelf-214311365.html

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How about that, hoaxers? I guess you owe an apology to Al Gore after all. Of course, I am sure it will be forthcoming, just like the way teabagger and ex-Congressman/current Governor of Georgia decided to ax his state's climatologist out of fear at the chance he might say something about global warming.

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Gov. Nathan Deal signs executive order to replace state climatologist David Stooksbury

ATLANTA — Gov. Nathan Deal has dismissed Georgia's longtime state climatologist, but there was confusion about what transpired and the climatologist says he was never told of the development.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports (http://bit.ly/oXjVfI) that Deal signed an executive order Tuesday appointing a state employee to take over the state climatologist's job.

The new state climatologist, Bill Murphey, works in a meteorology unit for the state's Environmental Protection Division in Atlanta. Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said in an email that Deal wanted to consolidate the work within the division.

Murphey would replace state climatologist David Stooksbury, who is also an associate professor of engineering and atmospheric sciences at the University of Georgia.

Stooksbury told the Journal-Constitution that he has had no direct communication from the governor's office about the change.

http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/5319074113f34100ad84fb2145c91434/GA--State-Climatologist-Switch/

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Notice, Mr. Stooksbury went out of his way not even mention his views on climate change, knowing what would likely happen to him in a state filled with folks who view corporations are more human than us (not including fetuses, naturally). Apparently, even that was not enough to save his job, since Stooksbury's lack of slavishness and willingness to be controlled by the governor meant the possibility he could commit the heresy of saying what we already know about climate change. If only our budding John Waynes were as critical-minded of their own myths as they are of scientific fact. If only.

Guardian of Wall Street: Anthony Bologna

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 20:01:00 +0000

By now, many of you know that there was a demonstration recently in New York City, protesting the criminal enterprise that is the managerial class on Madison Avenue, the same gang of unconvicted felons who destroyed our economy and way of life, and will probably pauperize us again before long (thanks in no small part to a two party system that represents the interests of these corporate campaign sponsors). Low and behold, our nemesis on Wall Street apparently have nothing to worry about because they have some close and good friends on the New York City Police Department. Enter the newest hero of the upper 1% income tax bracket of this country, officer Anthony Bologna.

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Occupy Wall Street: 'Pepper-spray' officer named in Bush protest claim

Anthony Bologna, NYPD officer named in pepper-spray incident, is accused of civil rights violations at the time of the 2004 Republican national convention protests

by Karen McVeigh

A senior New York police officer accused of pepper-spraying young women on the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrations is the subject of a pending legal action over his conduct at another protest in the city.

The Guardian has learned that the officer, named by activists as deputy inspector Anthony Bologna, stands accused of false arrest and civil rights violations in a claim brought by a protester involved in the 2004 demonstrations at the Republican national convention.

Then, 1,800 people were arrested during protests against the Iraq war and the policies of president George W Bush.

Alan Levine, a civil rights lawyer representing Post A Posr, a protester at the 2004 event, told the Guardian that he filed an action against Bologna and another officer, Tulio Camejo, in 2007. The case, filed at the New York Southern District Court, is expected to be heard next year.

Levine said that when he heard about the pepper spray incident "a bunch of us were wondering if any of the same guys were involved".

The lawyer said Posr was arrested on 31 August 2004, after he approached the driver of a Volkswagen festooned with anti-abortion slogans.

His arrest was not directly related to the protest against the Republican convention, but was at a time of heightened tension in New York.

Levine said: "Police contend that Posr hit the man with a rolled-up newspaper. He said he was just talking to the guy. Bologna ordered another officer, Camejo, to arrest Posr."

Posr was charged with two counts of disorderly conduct and one count of second degree harassment, and held until September 2. On November 8, all charges against him were dropped.

Levine said that, in a departure from normal police procedure, his client was held in a special detention facility, at Pier 57, where he and others arrested were held until the protests were over.

The Guardian asked the NYPD to respond to the naming of the officer and the allegation that he was previously the subject of a civil rights complaint, but a spokesman said the department had not yet decided whether to comment.

Bologna's name appeared on Twitter and on activists' websites after the incident on Saturday. YouTube footage appears to show a white-shirted NYPD officer firing the spray into the eyes of the protesters, who are penned in by other officers with orange netting. As the officer walks away, two of the women crumple to the ground, screaming in pain.

There were a number of clashes between protesters and police at the march, when protesters moved uptown from their base at a park in the Financial District. There were about 80 arrests.

Hacker collective Anonymous claimed responsibility on Monday for posting Bologna's details, which they said was in retribution for the pepper-spray incident.

The online postings identified Bologna as a deputy inspector of Patrol Borough Manhattan South, and revealed his phone number and family details.

The information, posted on a site called Pastebin, included a statement which read: "As we watched your officers kettle innocent women, we observed you barbarically pepper-spray wildly into the group of kettled women. We were shocked and disgusted by your behaviour."

"You know who the innocent women were; now they will have the chance to know who you are. Before you commit atrocities against innocent people, think twice. WE ARE WATCHING!!! Expect Us!"

Since the post, other activists have followed suit, urging people to call his precinct to complain or to call him directly.

The move drew a mixed response from the Occupy Wall Street activists who have been camped out in Zuccotti Park for nine days. Many say they were angry about the "brutal and unnecessary" tactics used by police at the weekend.

Hero Vincent, 28, an artist from the Bronx, said: "I think it should be out there, so that people know what's going on and if people want to enter his precinct and ask that he should be fired, they can. We are a peaceful protest. For them to attack us is wrong."

Vincent, who was arrested for resisting arrest on Saturday, claimed he was kicked in the stomach by officers.

But there was also disquiet over the officer's family details being made public.

Another protester, who did not want to be named, told the Guardian: "My dad is a police officer and he got a lot of death threats. I don't know if his family details should be out there. But if the information is correct and he has a rights case against him, I'm extremely concerned that he was put into what was a very tense situation."

One protester, Jeanne Mansfield – who said she was standing so close to the women sprayed in the face that her own eyes burned – claimed other NYPD officers had expressed disbelief at the actions of the senior officer.

In a vivid account of the incident in the Boston Review, Mansfield said: "A white-shirt, now known to be NYPD Lieutenant Anthony Bologna, comes from the left, walks straight up to the three young girls at the front of the crowd, and pepper-sprays them in the face for a few seconds, continuing as they scream 'No! Why are you doing that?!'"

Despite her attempts to turn away from the "unavoidable" spray, Mansfield, who took part in Saturday's march with her boyfriend on a whim after "stumbling across" it, said she suffered burning and temporary blindness in her left eye and tears streaming down her face.

She continued: "In the street I shout for water to rinse my eyes or give to the girls on the ground. But no one responds. One of the blue-shirts, tall and bald, stares in disbelief and says, 'I can't believe he just fuckin' maced her.'"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/27/occupy-wall-street-anthony-bologna

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Officer Bologna, it takes a really brave 240 pound man to pepper spray and assault peaceful demonstrators, not the least people who are unarmed, not harming you or anyone else around them.

Just in case any of you would like to have the professional contact information for this swell member of the law enforcement community, here it is:

Anthony Bologna

NYPD Deputy Inspector
Patrol Boro Manhattan South

Phone: 212-477-6181

Oh, and by the way, Anthony, on the off chance you are reading this. From one Italian-American to another, which I write with its full meaning and intent: Fuck You.

Southwest Airlines: Where Only Straight & Heavily Clothed Can Fly

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:52:00 +0000

In the past several years, I have made light of the clothing policies of the commissars that masquerade as stewards/stewardesses of Southwest Airlines. As a class, the employees of this company are starting to remind me of so many of the bullies who become cops in this country. Apparently, the Republican voters of this country do not want you kissing in front of them, either--that is, if you are gay or a lesbian, of course.

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'L-Word' star kisses girl, gets escorted off plane

By TRACIE CONE - Associated Press

A lesbian actress who starred in "The L-Word" said she kissed a girl — and got escorted off of a Southwest Airlines flight on Monday for doing it.

Leisha Hailey took to Twitter to call for a boycott of the carrier after a flight attendant told them other passengers had complained after witnessing the affection.

Her first tweet said: "I have been discriminated against." She later added, "Since when is showing affection to someone you love illegal?"

Southwest Airlines Co. responded on its website that Hailey was approached "based solely on behavior and not gender." The airline's four-sentence response said passengers were characterizing the behavior as excessive.

A discussion followed on the flight, and the airline said it "escalated to a level that was better resolved on the ground."

Hailey was a musician before joining the cast of the Showtime drama featuring the lives of lesbian friends and lovers living in Los Angeles. She played the character Alice Pieszecki.

The actress and her unidentified girlfriend were on a flight from Baltimore to St. Louis. The kissing occurred in the air and a discussion followed when the plane landed.

Hailey said the encounter between the couple and a flight attendant was recorded.

A message seeking comment from Halley's spokeswoman, Libby Coffey, was not immediately returned.

Southwest's website says it is the official airline of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Herndon Graddick, senior director of programs at GLAAD, said in an email that "GLAAD contacted Southwest to call for additional actions beyond tonight's statement that ensure all customers feel comfortable and welcomed while traveling."

[snipped...b.s. paragraphs about Green Day singer and director Kevin Smith getting kicked off Southwest flights, which have nothing to do with what the hate-filled wretch who 'escorted' Leisha Halley and her girlfriend from their seats]

Halley is preparing to launch a 21-city tour to promote breast cancer awareness.

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/l-word-star-kisses-girl-gets-escorted-off-005638058.html?nc

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Congratulations, Southwest. Prohibiting lesbian pda apparently is OK. After all, you are the official airline of the people you discriminate against. Maybe we should find out who the 'offended' employee was at Southwest and stage a gay and lesbian kiss-in at his/her office. I am sure the official airline of gay people everywhere would appreciate that, and sadly probably not an infrequent number of young Republican men who are in the closet and hating themselves and everyone around them for it. I cannot wait for the day when stories like this are relegated to history texts (assuming anyone will be able to read in the next generation).

And to that tightwad Southwest employee, I have a gift, just for you.

Wait for it.......

A Real Call For Life

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 20:58:00 +0000

For those in the U.S. paying attention to the news, and probably many outside of America at this point, in about two hours or so the state of Georgia is about to murder Troy Davis. He was convicted of murdering a police officer back in 1989 on the manufactured evidence of coerced 'eyewitnesses' (thanks to the threats by the police to those witnesses [if you believe those who recanted]). Amazingly, one of the to two remaining eyewitnesses who maintains Troy Davis's guilt is the second murder suspect.

Do I know that Troy Davis is innocent? To be honest, I do not. There is a chance he might have done it, although it seems unlikely.

What I do know is that there is probably not too many prosecutors in the U.S. today who could re-try this case, with what is left of the crumbling 'evidence' that condemned Troy Davis two decades ago, and gain a conviction with any reasonable jury.

Then why would I call such an act murder, if I do not know the man is innocent? For the same reason I would oppose taking the life of the man who murdered James Byrd in Texas. Because we are sinking ourselves to barbarism by killing people who are restrained from violence and unable to harm anyone. We are a society that because of the death penalty, our penchant for violence, which includes cheering throngs at the thought of killing people, even if they are probably innocent. Because at the end of the day, when all else is said and done, while justice dictates that we imprison someone guilty of a serious offense, or set them free if he or she turns out to be innocent, we gain absolutely nothing by physically destroying people as a political statement against the act of the very thing we perpetrate on others.

I understand that makes me an evil doer in league with criminals, according to the law and order fetishists (people who usually vote for a party that allows companies to blow up their employees in a mine and call it commerce, coincidentally). Such is the mentality of so many of my fellow citizens at not being allowed to gain some masturbatory kick out of killing people, which in their mind makes you the moral equivalent of the convicts they want to kill. I understand that there are some decent folk who believe the only way to govern society is through retribution (and who do not give standing ovations to the death penalty in debates), but consider what we have reduced ourselves to. A country with otherwise normal people who become consumed by the desire to take life, the same desire we hypocritically claim to oppose when another filled with such similar passions commits the act of murdering the wrong person. But killing people who are restrained and with no ability to defend themselves (I have yet to see a case where an executed person in this country was anything else), people we deem unworthy of life for a previous act, that is somehow perfectly acceptable.

For any reader who considers him/herself a Christian, imagine your most favored carpenter reacting like this:

Or this:

That is what a culture of death (not the one you contrive out of concern for the status of the pre-born or a piece of tissue) does to you, to all of us. We have created a system where any honest person in a position of authority has to know there would never be enough to put Mr. Davis on death row today, but cannot own up to the mistake, out of concern for costing the state in a lawsuit, and because deep down too many prosecutors in this country prefer to protect their careers over anyone they have wrongly convicted and/or killed. We pretend to hate bureaucracy in so many ways in this country, but when it comes to that apparently imperfection is the preference of the day. More than anything, that is why Troy Davis should not be killed. His life, even if he is by some chance guilty (and it is more than doubtful that he is), should not be snuffed out by the state but preserved, as we practice what we preach when we lecture the Chinas and Saudi Arabias of the world about the importance of respecting the lives of its citizenry. If we cannot respect the lives of our citizens (and that includes those convicted of criminal offenses), then we have no right or business to expect any peace towards those these same elements the respectables deem worthier of life. In a society in which we allow the state to kill in our name, it makes murderers of us all.

Tea Party: Let the Uninsured Die.....

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 20:46:00 +0000

This is the contemporary face of the Republican Party folks. The party of Lincoln to the party of social Darwinism, unless you are a corporation or fetus, of course.

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Audience at tea party debate cheers leaving uninsured to die

by Rachel Hartman

If you're uninsured and on the brink of death, that's apparently a laughing matter to some audience members at last night's tea party Republican presidential debate.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a doctor, was asked a hypothetical question by CNN host Wolf Blitzer about how society should respond if a healthy 30-year-old man who decided against buying health insurance suddenly goes into a coma and requires intensive care for six months. Paul--a fierce limited-government advocate-- said it shouldn't be the government's responsibility. "That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks," Paul said and was drowned out by audience applause as he added, "this whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody …"

"Are you saying that society should just let him die?" Blitzer pressed Paul. And that's when the audience got involved.

Several loud cheers of "yeah!" followed by laughter could be heard in the Expo Hall at the Florida State Fairgrounds in response to Blitzer's question.

You can watch the exchange below:

Paul disagreed with the audience on that front. "No," he responded, noting he practiced medicine before Medicaid when churches took care of medical costs--a comment that drew wide audience applause. "We never turned anybody away from the hospital."

Paul voiced support for legalizing alternative health care and argued that the reason medical costs have skyrocketed is that individuals have stopped taking personal responsibility for their health care.

Though Paul spoke to the larger issues of health care and government-backed health insurance--both pivotal in the 2012 election--the audience's reaction has overshadowed the substance of the exchange between the candidates. And the day after the event, Texas Gov. Rick Perry offered his own criticism of the audience response.

"I was a bit taken aback by that myself," Perry told NBC News and the Miami Herald of the audience reaction after appearing at a breakfast fundraiser in Tampa Tuesday morning.

"We're the party of life. We ought to be coming up with ways to save lives."

The campaigns for Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann did not immediately respond to The Ticket's request for comment.

Conservative Andrew Sullivan writing for The Daily Beast's The Dish Tuesday noted that the United States obligates society to save someone in an emergency room. "America, moreover, has a law on the books that makes it a crime not to treat and try to save a human being who walks into an emergency room. So we have already made that collective decision and if the GOP wants to revisit it, they can," Sullivan wrote.

Sullivan also decried the audience reaction, writing: "Maybe a tragedy like the death of a feckless twentysomething is inevitable if we are to restrain healthcare costs. But it is still a tragedy. It is not something a decent person cheers."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/audience-tea-party-debate-cheers-leaving-uninsured-die-163216817.html

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Imagine

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:53:00 +0000

This is how I choose to commemorate tens years of war and a government that tortures, spies on, and kills people under the guise of freedom.

If only....

The Passion of David Letterman

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:38:00 +0000

Apparently, making light of a departed al-Qaeda leader joining his predecessor makes you an anti-Muslim, according to al-Qaeda.

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David Letterman Targeted With Threat From Jihadist Website

Group lashed out at late night host over his jokes about an Al Qaeda leader.

By Gil Kaufman

David Letterman is currently on hiatus, but that hasn't stopped the late night legend from angering some people with comments he made before taking off for summer vacation.

According to reports from SITE Intelligence Group, which scans the Internet for terrorist activity, Letterman has been marked for death by a jihadist group for comments the "Late Show" host made on June 5 about Al Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri, who was killed earlier this summer during a U.S. military strike in Pakistan.

The threat on the Shumukh al-Islam web forum, which called for followers to "cut the tongue of the lowly Jew and shut it forever," said that Letterman -- who is Protestant -- should be punished for his comments about the man who had been considered a possible replacement for late terror leader Osama bin Laden.

"He showed his evil nature and deep hatred for Islam and Muslims, and said that Ilyas Kashmiri was killed and he joined bin Laden," wrote someone calling themselves Umar al-Basrawi on the site, according toEntertainment Weekly. "We ask Allah to paralyze his tongue and grant the sincere monotheists his neck."

The FBI is reportedly investigating the threat and Letterman has been informed of the posting. The incident appears to have been inspired by a joke Letterman made in which he announced the death of Kashmiri, which involved the comedian making a slashing motion across his throat.

"He said that Kashmiri was killed in an airstrike in Pakistan ... then, he showed his evil nature and deep hatred for Islam and Muslims, and said that Ilyas Kashmiri was killed and he joined bin Laden. Then the despicable one put his hand on his neck and demonstrated the way of slaughter!!" wrote al-Basrawi.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1669250/david-letterman-jihadist-threats.jhtml

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

What I do not understand is that if it is blasphemy to note that your replacement leader (killed by the same people) is joining his predecessor, does that mean al-Qaeda thinks that Kashmiri is not in paradise with Osama, or vice versa? And if it means that one of them is not in paradise, how does that reflect on our holy warrior friends to pick a leader (Kashmiri or bin Laden) who is not currently enjoying the afterlife with his 72 virgins? And taking offense at making a symbolic choking reference! Dave, welcome aboard the heretic camp.

Of Riots and Dispossession

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 22:10:00 +0000

For those who thought the British government might reassess its budget cuts, or the impact of austerity, have their answer in the response of British PM Dave Cameron. His days of appealing for respect and understanding of youngsters with hoodies are officially over. Cameron understands the same principle as any other conservative politician in Europe or the US. Hating young people, especially young people of color, sells and sells very well. I suppose it should not shock anyone, but it never ceases to amaze me to see the love of property exceed the love of our fellow species, even if it means relativizing the impoverished as being less than full members of society. If inequality was a crime, high treason would not be enough to punish those who have turned people under the age of 25 in Great Britain into a generation of disposable garbage.

This is not to endorse the rioting, self-evident is the fool's errand of attacking shops owned by those with barely more money than the folk parceling up their goods, or even burning down and attacking your own neighborhood (punishing no one except yourself and your peers, instead of the banks, corporations, and the media outlets centered on keeping Europe and Great Britain of, by, and for the wealthy). The greatest sin of the youth rioters was not replicating their energies at the gates of Buckingham Palace and parliament. I can think of fewer states in the West, other than my own, more unjust in the way it has decided to destroy the lives of an entire group of people with poverty, unemployment, and debt as the current Cameron government. Say what you will about the French, but they knew who to go after when they 'rioted' in 1789. For some reason, young and poor people in Europe and the U.S. have a difficult time collectively realizing who their real enemies are (and it is not a small shopkeeper). It could be the cumulative effect of the utter brainwashing of our culture that diverts, privatizes, and individualizes our common experience to such extremes that we prefer simulated lives over real ones.

Even the Romans, the empire that so many neo-conservatives, classic liberals and their fellow denizens at the CATO Institute base themselves on, knew the importance of the bread and circus in maintaining social peace. What we have, the real crime scene in England, all across Western Europe, and North America (where conservative governments have become predominant in the last several years) is a divorce from the reality of our society, the belief that we have nothing to keep, no obligations, no values (unless you are a fetus, naturally), etc. That all we have are individuals, but what this philosophy fails to recognize (and willfully so) is that we no longer reside in a world of individuals, or at least since the pre-industrial age. The banks that have moved towards electronically monetizing our lives, the employers that drug test us and treat us like a cost and commodity to be processed, to the descent of our largest employer becoming a global corporation that refuses to hire most of workers full-time, give them benefits, and compels almost a fifth of those employees (in the US) to take public assistance, while selling over 70% of its stocked items from a country that can be best described as a wage haven. We live in a world of power, and that vacuum has been filled, replacing the civic culture we once had, and the social capital we no longer use. It is in that environment that the unconvicted felons we elect tell us to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps. It is in that world the elected criminal class of our society have turned themselves over to the old patronage system by becoming repositories for lobbying influence and accompanying campaign cash from the very interests we are prohibited to mention or question without having our citizenship questioned, the very same entities who diminished our real estate and banking markets, amassing trillions of dollars of debt, stealing hundreds of billions of our money (trillions if you count the monies that the Federal Reserve decided to manufacture for the purpose of toxic asset consumption). Those very same criminals who now tell us we are out of money (surprise), and that we need to pay the bills for the society they have wrecked, devalued, and want to continue to cheapen so they do not have to be inconvenienced with things like paying taxes for young people to go to college, receive an education or, dare the thought, get a decent paying job.

It is in that light I introduce the reasoned perspective of what could be considered as an unlikely source, comedian Russell Brand.

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Big Brother isn't watching you

Dismissing rioters as mindless is futile rhetoric. However unacceptable the UK riots, we need to ask why they are happening

by Russell Brand

I no longer live in London. I've been transplanted to Los Angeles by a combination of love and money; such good fortune and opportunity, in both cases, you might think disqualify me from commenting on matters in my homeland. Even the results of Britain's Got Ice-Factor may lay prettily glistening beyond my remit now that I am self-banished.

To be honest when I lived in England I didn't really care too much for the fabricated theatrics of reality TV. Except when I worked for Big Brother, then it was my job to slosh about in the amplified trivia of the housemates/inmates. Sometimes it was actually quite bloody interesting. Particularly the year that Nadia won. She was the Portuguese transsexual. Remember? No? Well, that's the nature of the medium; as it whizzes past the eyes it seems very relevant but the malady of reality TV stars is that their shelf life expires, like dog years, by the power of seven. To me it seems as if Nadia's triumph took place during the silver jubilee, we had a street party.

Early in that series there was an incident of excitement and high tension. The testosteronal, alpha figures of the house – a Scot called Jason and a Londoner called Victor – incited by the teasing conditions and a camp lad called Marco (wow, it's all coming back) kicked off in the house, smashed some crockery and a few doors. Police were called, tapes were edited and the carnival rolled on. When I was warned to be discreet on-air about the extent of the violence, I quoted a British first-world-war general who, reflecting on the inability of his returning troops to adapt to civilian life, said: "You cannot rouse the animal in man then expect it to be put aside at a moment's notice."

"Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing we want you to say the opposite of," said the channel's representative.

This week's riots are sad and frightening and, if I have by virtue of my temporary displacement forgone the right to speak about the behaviour of my countrymen, then this is gonna be irksome. I mean even David Cameron came back from his holiday. Eventually. The Tuscan truffles lost their succulence when the breaking glass became too loud to ignore. Then dopey ol' Boris came cycling back into the London clutter with his spun gold hair and his spun shit logic as it became apparent that the holiday was over.

In fact, it isn't my absence from the territory of London that bothers me; it's my absence from the economic class that is being affected that itches in my gut because, as I looked at the online incident maps, the boroughs that were suffering all, for me, had some resonance. I've lived in Dalston, Hackney, Elephant, Camden and Bethnal Green. I grew up round Dagenham and Romford and, whilst I could never claim to be from the demographic most obviously affected, I feel guilty that I'm not there now.

I feel proud to be English, proud to be a Londoner (all right, an Essex boy), never more so than since being in exile, and I naturally began to wonder what would make young people destroy their communities.

I have spoken to mates in London and Manchester and they sound genuinely frightened and hopeless, and the details of their stories place this outbreak beyond the realms of any political idealism or rationalisation. But I can't, from my ivory tower in the Hollywood Hills, compete with the understandable yet futile rhetoric, describing the rioters as mindless. Nor do I want to dwell on the sadness of our beautiful cities being tarnished and people's shops and livelihoods, sometimes generations old, being immolated. The tragic and inevitable deaths ought to be left for eulogies and grieving. Tariq Jahan has spoken so eloquently from his position of painful proximity, with such compassion, that nearly all else is redundant.

The only question I can legitimately ask is: why is this happening? Mark Duggan's death has been badly handled but no one is contesting that is a reason for these conflagrations beyond the initial flash of activity in Tottenham. I've heard Theresa May and the Old Etonians whose hols have been curtailed (many would say they're the real victims) saying the behaviour is "unjustifiable" and "unacceptable". Wow! Thanks guys! What a wonderful use of the planet's fast-depleting oxygen resources. Now that's been dealt with can we move on to more taxing matters such as whether or not Jack The Ripper was a ladies' man. And what the hell do bears get up to in those woods?

However "unacceptable" and "unjustifiable" it might be, it has happened so we better accept it and, whilst we can't justify it, we should kick around a few neurons and work out why so many people feel utterly disconnected from the cities they live in.

Unless on the news tomorrow it's revealed that there's been a freaky "criminal creating" chemical leak in London and Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham that's causing young people to spontaneously and simultaneously violate their environments – in which case we can park the ol' brainboxes, stop worrying and get on with the football season, but I suspect there hasn't – we have, as human beings, got a few things to consider together.

I should here admit that I have been arrested for criminal damage for my part in anti-capitalist protest earlier in this decade. I often attended protests and then, in my early 20s, and on drugs, I enjoyed it when the protests lost direction and became chaotic, hostile even. I was intrigued by the anarchist "Black bloc", hooded and masked, as, in retrospect, was their agenda, but was more viscerally affected by the football "casuals" who'd turn up because the veneer of the protest's idealistic objective gave them the perfect opportunity to wreck stuff and have a row with the Old Bill.

That was never my cup of tea though. For one thing, policemen are generally pretty good fighters and second, it registered that the accent they shouted at me with was closer to my own than that of some of those singing about the red flag making the wall of plastic shields between us seem thinner.

I found those protests exciting, yes, because I was young and a bit of a twerp but also, I suppose, because there was a void in me. A lack of direction, a sense that I was not invested in the dominant culture, that government existed not to look after the interests of the people it was elected to represent but the big businesses that they were in bed with.

I felt that, and I had a mum who loved me, a dad who told me that nothing was beyond my reach, an education, a grant from Essex council (to train as an actor of all things!!!) and several charities that gave me money for maintenance. I shudder to think how disenfranchised I would have felt if I had been deprived of that long list of privileges.

That state of deprivation though is, of course, the condition that many of those rioting endure as their unbending reality. No education, a weakened family unit, no money and no way of getting any. JD Sports is probably easier to desecrate if you can't afford what's in there and the few poorly paid jobs there are taken. Amidst the bleakness of this social landscape, squinting all the while in the glare of a culture that radiates ultraviolet consumerism and infrared celebrity. That daily, hourly, incessantly enforces the egregious, deceitful message that you are what you wear, what you drive, what you watch and what you watch it on, in livid, neon pixels. The only light in their lives comes from these luminous corporate messages. No wonder they have their fucking hoods up.

I remember Cameron saying "hug a hoodie" but I haven't seen him doing it. Why would he? Hoodies don't vote, they've realised it's pointless, that whoever gets elected will just be a different shade of the "we don't give a toss about you" party.

Politicians don't represent the interests of people who don't vote. They barely care about the people who do vote. They look after the corporations who get them elected. Cameron only spoke out against News International when it became evident to us, US, the people, not to him (like Rose West, "He must've known") that the newspapers Murdoch controlled were happy to desecrate the dead in the pursuit of another exploitative, distracting story.

Why am I surprised that these young people behave destructively, "mindlessly", motivated only by self-interest? How should we describe the actions of the city bankers who brought our economy to its knees in 2010? Altruistic? Mindful? Kind? But then again, they do wear suits, so they deserve to be bailed out, perhaps that's why not one of them has been imprisoned. And they got away with a lot more than a few fucking pairs of trainers.

These young people have no sense of community because they haven't been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron's mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there's no such thing.

If we don't want our young people to tear apart our communities then don't let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.

As you have by now surely noticed, I don't know enough about politics to ponder a solution and my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials, venerating, through my endorsements and celebrity, products and a lifestyle that contributes to the alienation of an increasingly dissatisfied underclass. But I know, as we all intuitively know, the solution is all around us and it isn't political, it is spiritual. Gandhi said: "Be the change you want to see in the world."

In this simple sentiment we can find hope, as we can in the efforts of those cleaning up the debris and ash in bonhomous, broom-wielding posses. If we want to live in a society where people feel included, we must include them, where they feel represented, we must represent them and where they feel love and compassion for their communities then we, the members of that community, must find love and compassion for them.

As we sweep away the mistakes made in the selfish, nocturnal darkness we must ensure that, amidst the broken glass and sadness, we don't sweep away the youth lost amongst the shards in the shadows cast by the new dawn.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/11/london-riots-davidcameron

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It is a sad world when a comedian sounds rational by comparison to the average British politician.

Thief Fest 2011: The Unconstitutional Disaster of the Congressional Super Committee

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 02:59:00 +0000

The fact we are where we are at right now with the budget deal, the resulting market collapse and downgrade, even though the administration used those possibilities to browbeat us into agreeing to a deal the week before, is symbolic of what has become of the Democratic Party in the US. Imagine a 3-inch elephant holding to heel and herding an entire flock of donkeys (and the donkeys emanating with pride at getting the miniature beast to stop scaring them by caving in to all of its demands and then following it with a mass display of hari-kari). In my adult life, and this goes back to the Clinton years, I have never witnessed such a gutless display by the national Democratic Party towards its voters as I have seen these past two weeks. You would almost think that we should be thankful to the House Republican caucus for even allowing us to live. I am sure if the Democratic leadership could negotiate that away, they most certainly would.

And it is not just the budget deal, which was a Republican budget ‘compromise’ (i.e., everything the Republicans want with nothing in return for progressives). Worse than even that, our beloved Senate Democrats have come to the rescue of the Republicans in the House by appointing its newly minted members of the vaunted ‘super committee’ that will deal with budget cuts. And of course, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is not going to appoint members who represent the views of what the Democratic base is like, minus possibly Sen. Patty Murray (Sen. John Kerry has a much more moderate voting record than anyone likes to give him credit for). Understand, one non-progressive member with a slew of conservative Republicans means that there will be a conservative majority and cuts that only conservatives will want to have included in the future for the budget (i.e., Social Security, Medicare, and anything else not related to the Department of Defense).

Enter Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s last pick, Senator Max Baucus, probably the most odious Senate Democrat since Joe Lieberman (before he finally quit the party back in ’06). The same Max Baucus who has been a longtime recipient of corporate campaign money, the result of which was his influence in killing the public option in Obama’s health care bill back in ‘09-10 (with the full support of the Obama Administration).

Max Baucus has never met a corporate interest he could say no to, or an intern or lobbyist for that matter. Putting this waste of Senatorial space on a right-wing-contrived committee (which goes outside of the scope of what Congress is supposed to be doing in Article 1 of our Constitution), a committee that is designed for the sole purpose of destroying Social Security and Medicare (and giving every last dime of our tax money to the upper 1% income tax bracket), is a crime of immense proportions. Essentially, the Democratic Party has declared war on its voters and gone in league with the Republican Party to gut every last vestige of the New Deal and Great Society programs that once made the Democratic Party worth voting for.

At this point, there is only one solution, the defeat of every last anti-progressive Democrat in the US by electoral non-cooperation. There would be no Max Baucus, Lawrence Summers, or Timothy Geithner without us. They have to come to us, the progressive base, to get votes. The Republicans (Attila the Hun types who view anyone to the center of Jefferson Davis as Satanic) will deem all non-Republicans as socialists (just as they red-baited Bill Clinton in the ‘90s, even while he was signing NAFTA, GATT, the Welfare Reform Act, and the Defense of Marriage Act). That is what Republicans do, or at least the incarnations since the Reagan era, and when you negotiate with Republicans this is what you get (i.e., Republicanism). If you want to stab us in the back (the people who put you into office) then you should be replaced, and if that means allowing by omission the Republicans to win then so be it. That is the fate we deserve for having a party filled with jellyfish leaders.

And when we are in the minority, for which we truly deserve to be right now, we should waste no time whatsoever in assigning the blame and holding to account the Obamas and Reids for what they have done to us, as a party and a country.

Give the conservatives in the GOP credit. They know and understand that much in their party, and they have no quandary about seeking ideological purity, and have done so to the point of getting what they want (and winning elections in the process). There is no reason why we should avoid doing the same. And if it means being a permanent minority to prevent our backs, knees, and throats from being slit by DLC-third way corporatists then we do not deserve to win to begin with. I will take that, and losing to an honest person who is wrong, over someone who pretends to care by waiting for the first opportune moment to throw me to the ash heap.

And, lastly, before I leave the fine reader, I would like to ask, where is the Constitutional challenge to this committee? Where in Article 1 of our Constitution does it give Congressional leadership the right to negotiate away the budgetary process, which is supposed to be under the control of Congress (as a body), over to a White House-brokered special committee with 1/45ths of the US Congress in it? Could anyone reading this imagine what James Madison would think to see his entire article in our Constitution rescinded by a 'compromise' with a branch of government that is not even supposed to be writing our budget or acting as a legislature? With the notable exceptions of Rep. Ron Paul (to give him his due) and Dennis Kucinich, very few members of Congress have spent anytime addressing this issue, to the media or the public. Of course, you will not see this type of objection from our Congressional leaders, Republican or Democratic, never mind the White House. No, so long as you give them what they ideologically want (cutbacks in social spending), the Constitution and the entire budgeting process be damned, to which I say, damned you, Congressional Democratic leaders and the White House for what you have done to our party and this country. It will take a generation to undue the damage you have done with this deal. This is the poison pill you have given us, and may it come back to haunt you all.

Cowardice as Compromise: The Courage of Barack Obama

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 03:40:00 +0000

If you listened to President Obama for the past week, you would think this country was about to implode if we did not 'come to a deal' of sorts with House Republicans. And like the weakling he has been from day one of his presidency, by compromise, of course, he means doing what the Republicans want him to do (be it caving in on shutting down GITMO, civilian trials for terrorist suspects, redoing the Patriot Act to eliminate its civil liberties violations, the public option in health care, support for gay marriage, and now budget cuts of the very programs given to us by the president's party). And what did the House Republicans like John Boehner want? Naturally, to gut social spending and keep Bush's tax cuts for upper income earners. And what did Obama give them? Deep social spending cuts and a continuation of Bush's tax cuts for upper income earners.

And how poignant that we allow Standard and Poor's and Moody's to sit in judgment of the US government, threatening to give us junk bond rating status if a 'deal' was not reached. These were the same crediting agencies who gave AIG, Bear Sterns, and Greece AAA ratings. And instead of being fitted for orange jumpsuits and a life behind bars, we continue to allow the very entities who destroyed our economy and way of life, along with giving them our tax money (under the guise of being too big to fail), to compel us to reduce a debt that is of no consequence to our economic well being.

Why would I write such a heretical thing about our capitalist system? Because from the very start of this country's existence, we have run a huge national debt. The only time in American history we consistently balanced our budgets, year after year, was in the 1830s, which presaged several economic collapses in subsequent years. At the time the US was founded, our debts then were greater (as a percentage of our GDP) than they are today. And the response of then-Secretary of Treasury Alexander Hamilton was to encourage the creation of a national bank (subsidized with tax increases), so to fully fund the debts of our states, exclaiming that our national debt was a blessing to the US. Much like the free trade orthodoxy that pollutes almost every business and economics department of our universities, when in fact the US developed into an industrial superpower as a protectionist state well into the middle part of the 20th century, likewise, the US has never been a nation predicated on balancing its budgets (but was created and has funded itself on debt from the start of our history).

Indeed, during our greatest economic booms, like WWII, we ran annual deficits as a percentage of GDP more than twice as high as we do today. The dollar did not die, our economy did not leave us. We had full employment with federal government expenditures as a percentage of GDP around 45% (today, the media and its lackeys in Congress would have you believe we need to 'cap' that spending at 18% or risk doom).

How could it be that this entire debate is overblown and manufactured? Does it not matter at all that we have $14 trillion of national debt? No, it does not. We are no longer a poor nation of farmers, as we were over two centuries ago. Our GDP is over $14 trillion. Moreover, the debt ceiling is wholly unnecessary to the debt 'crisis', and its existence is emblematic at how it has become what it is at this hour. The only thing that really matters to the US government, other than the value of the dollar, is that we can meet the interest payments on our debt. So long as we can pay the interest, the rest of the debt is of no significance. No one will be collecting, no future generations paying, anymore than the grandchildren of Alexander Hamilton did after he drastically increased our debt burdens to the highest levels in our existence. And that is the sham of the debt ceiling debate. From the beginning, it was something that was contrived, so to use as a trojan horse to give Congress and the White House what they really wanted--cuts in federal spending (and not to corporations).

The most fraudulent of Obama's claims (and the Republicans he is flacking for) is the supposed need to 'reform' Social Security. You will never hear this on Fox 'news' or anything owned by Rupert Murdoch, and probably not even CNN at this point, but Social Security has a $22 trillion surplus. That is right, Social Security has a greater surplus than our entire national debt (157% more, to be precise). So, what is needed but to cut it! It is that same neo-liberal mentality in corporate America that gives us a business community that has since 2009 collected and sat on over $2 trillion, making record profits while refusing to use those reserves to expand or hire (thereby extending our recession). We, the people, the live ones, not the preborn or those with the word incorporated or ascription of millionaire at the end of their names, need more financial discipline, to have our money that we paid into these programs taken from us so that millionaires can continue to get a tax cut. Regardless of how Obama likes to call it, that is what he is doing.

From the start of this debate, the House Republicans controlled and dictated the terms of the agreement. The only real quandary that occurred was within the House Republican caucus, between the teabaggers and House Republican leaders who wanted to 'compromise' by cutting 'only' $2.4 trillion, as opposed to $4 trillion. The Senate Democrats, never mind the House Democrats, have never been a part of the debate or negotiation process with the president (that is, until the last minute for the Senate Democrats). Obama handed to his opponents the terms, accepted whatever agreement they generally came to, and then called it a compromise. If this is compromise, schoolyard bullies everywhere should rejoice. They have just been renamed peacemakers.

Why in the world would anyone support or vote for this? I guarantee you that is a question no one will be asking in the mainstream news. If you have been paying attention to what happened to The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur at MSNBC, and how he was strong-armed from the supposedly left-wing channel for being 'too critical' of the administration, you probably have a good idea as to how this proposal is going to be portrayed in the news media (i.e., like a 'grand compromise' that staves off certain financial collapse).

And to anyone who lives the illusion that this was not driven by the Republicans, and that Obama might not have caved in to the GOP, take this line from a CNN article, on one of the stipulations of the deal:

Obama would be able to request only up to $1.2 trillion in additional debt ceiling if the special congressional committee fails to agree to at least $1.2 trillion in cuts.

In other words, the debt ceiling will not go up until the POTUS goes to Congress and allows them to decide on another trillion in spending cuts. For all intents and purposes, Barack Obama has made himself a hostage of the Republican leaders in the House of Representatives. Remember those Bush tax cuts he campaigned against? He extended them last year, is continuing to support them now, and will not take the issue up again until 2012 (right before the election). Is there anyone reading this willing to bet me that Barack Obama will manifest within himself the gumption to take on this issue in 2012 and repeal those tax cuts? I think you already know the answer, but if any of you are willing to bet me, you are welcome to name the wage because I am more certain of President Obama's continued avoidance and oblique support of those tax cuts than I am of myself still breathing this time a year from now.

Eventually, those of us on the real left (who still bother with electoral politics) must become more openly critical of what is happening. It is not that I think it will matter ultimately, as Barack Obama seems bereft to take a stance on whether water is wet anymore (without fear of someone calling him an Islamic socialist), but if nothing else we must make our voices heard. The teabaggers will feign outrage at not being able to decapitate our government and turn this country into a 19th century mine shaft filled with child laborers and only property owners voting, but the sad truth is this proposal gives the GOP everything it wants with absolutely nothing in return (unless you count saving dollars off the backs of the poor and elderly an accomplishment).

And to think, according to the freepers and denizens at redstate.com, this is what socialism is supposed to look like. It is at times like this I think back to the quote from Gore Vidal that the US has one political party with two right-wings.

A Nation of Breiviks: Yahoo Message Boards

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 17:35:00 +0000

It never ceases to amaze me to read the Yahoo News messages below its articles. If ever you wonder what real conservatism in America looks like, just read them sometime. For your elucidation, to understand the evil we face in this country and in every Western country filled with these sociopaths, I am offering this post filled with their kind screeds below a Yahoo article on the massacre in Norway this last Friday.

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

Bernie

"If he did this to send a message to the government to stop "liberal" immigration and Islam, then I have to applaud him. How far do you think this country is from the same behavior the way our goverrnment shoves these mexicans down our throats or allows Islams to remain after 911 and build them a big mosque to make their plans in."

Idrathernotsay

"i blame the ILLUMINTI and that's final. knight's templar prob hides the fact of freeMASONRY"

HighFlyte

"How much do ALL those Muslims cost the people of Norway?? Do they PAY their way or just latch on and start sucking the nation dry, you know, like here in the states??"

PTHawk

"You see? It is'nt just moo-slums that are being provoked into extreme violence by islam.Islam is the source of most of the worlds violence and it is fear of moo-slum violence that prevents people from speaking out."

Boyd

"This would never happen in the U.S. well unless the Libturds get their way and want to ban guns.
He would have been shot down like the mad dog he is if this happened here and the deaths would have been a lot less.Let this be a lesson to you idiot Liberals out there. if you dont have guns you cant protect yourself agains mad gunmen."

Filthy Animal

"Hey libtards, maybe he can be 'rehabilitated.'"

Clint

"I in no way condone what this guy did, and I don't understand killing children when killing the men in power responsible for his anger would have made him more of a martyr, vice a demon. But at least this guy stood up for what he believed in and had the balls to pull it off. We had men like that here in the US once, they were called patriots and drafted our constitution among other things. Read sometime how much rotten gorilla warfare they used in the Colonial wars. Americans today are just soft, little football-watching, pacifists who are letting their own country slide down the tubes by a Marxist president. Sad."

PeteJohnson

"Libs begging for someone with a gun to save them.. Ha ha ha how ironic!!"

John

"I would say this guy is more like a liberal. Out of touch with reality and tweeting all day. He thinks TV is reality. So the last so called right wing nut job was McVeigh. So lets all now bow to the Muslims since it wasn't them BUT we'll just forget abot the 2,740 victims of 911 and all the troops that died getting Osama. That's how the liberal mind works. We'll just forget the British Bus bombings, Spain train bombings, 911 and now disarm all the white people. LIBERALS ARE A DISEASE!"

VladTheImpaler

"Why don't these people carry guns? I carry my Ruger Alaskan (.454 Casull) all the time. Just do it!! Hell you don't have to carry hand artillery like I do...a 9mm, .357 mag, .44 mag, 10 mm, .40 cal will do just fine. If just one person in that crowd was packing heat, let's say a .454 Casull and he/she drilled the #$%$cker in the head at 40 yards, his head would have exploded and he would have dropped where he stood--deader than hell and many lives would have been saved. Just remember, contrary to popular belief, God DID NOT create all men equal; Samuel Colt did. And I, Vlad the Impaler, challenge ALL you bible bookworms to prove me wrong!!!Take this friendly bit of advice from someone who knows what they're talking about."

NoObamaZombies!

"Honestly... if he has been watching what the "anti christ", Obama has been doing... I understand his motives! He is trying to save his country from Greece's fate. That is what is happening to America, under Obama. If you dont understand that, you have not been following the news!"

PhilippeBailet

"Dear Norwegians, how's that gun control thing working in your socialist paradise?!? ;)"

Laura

"To all of you people saying that we Christians make excuses for 'Christians' who do things like this, while we group Muslims into one generic group of killers: Muslims have a looooong history of killing 'infidels' (by which they mean, anyone who is not Muslim). So, when a Muslim commits an act of terror, he is acting, not as an extremist, but as an adherent to the Koran. Christians, on the other hand, are known for being peaceful. I mean real Christians, not Catholics or Mormons. Christians are forbidden by the Bible to murder for the sake of spreading Christianity (Roman Catholicism has almost as long a history as Muslims of torturing and killing those who would not convert to their false religion). Of course, there are Christians who have murdered. True Christians will repent of their evil and make restitution as much as is in their power. Someone who calls himself a Christian, however, and does a murderous act, must be called into question whether he truly is, or whether he is merely using the name of Christian. He must not be considered a Christian unless he really and truly repents.
This murdering dog who did this terrible act in Norway, and is unrepentant, is not going to be considered Christian by any stretch of the imagination. He may be right-wing, but he's no believer."

Mr Peck

"Typical Liberal Behavior, just like the guy in Tuscon....another nut bag libkook whacktard"

Christine Pritchard

"Conservative experts are learning that innocent children across America are having trouble sleeping at night. They live in constant fear. They can't stop thinking about President Obama's diabolical plan to mandate Death Squads to kill their grandparents, and take from them everything they hold dear! Their screams can be heard across the nation and our tears are falling into a puddle that cries out for restoration!"

Greg

"I'm not sure what's scarier. a guy killing kids or a govornment brain washing at a youth day camp. This is straight out of the Hitler play book kids. Indoctrinate at an early age by brainwashing to be loyal party followers."

The Bargain Shack

"This guy may be another government black ops agent. Timothy McVeigh was a CIA asset, and the Oklahoma City bombing was carried out by the U.S. government to stir up resentment of the militia movement, and to use as an excuse to take away more of our freedoms."

Liberals R Brain Dead

"Another Marxist Leftist along with Ted kaczynki Janet Reno and others who have committed horrific acts so as to force their beliefs on others."

VoteOutTheDevil

"Obama is a radical terrorist but he is half white, half black, half Muslim, half Christian and all Communist!"

Phx70

"Left Wing Liberal Democrats have killed more innocent people than anyone. It's called abortion. Democrats kill babies, defend murderers from capital punishment, defend the rights of terrorists that kill our own, and hate Jesus: The only one who died for their sins."

Kneil Buddee

"It was just a matter of time before liberalism made someone lose it. Better stop catering to gays and mooslimes libs."

Fruity

"well at least he killed socialists, they are a cancer and they desire to tear down the USA look what Obama has done he has singlehandedly destroyed the us economy!!!"

TheTruthSpeaker

"The anti-Christian, anti-conservative bigotry here is staggering. America is spiraling towards a civil war quicker than in the 1850's. You liberals can run your mouths but when the shooting starts, you will only be running."

Dennis

"Had he killed Muslims, I would have no problems with the guy."

Korean Ma ssage Girl

"We need to bring him here to California to kill all the Mexicans here."

ObrTim

"As history tells us, The Cultural Marxists are much more destructive than this guy or one hundred more of him could ever be. They are responsible for the racial, social and moral breakdown of the West. It's no accident the West is collapsing from within . Their goal is to destroy every vestage of Western Civilization so they can FORCEFULLY INSTALL A JEWISH Marxist Dictatorship on the FORMERLY WESTERN WORLD - If you think that's a conspiracy theory, you're no student of history. JUST TAKE A LOOK AT WHAT THEY DID IN THE FORMER SOVIET UNION and TAKE A LOOK AT WHO DID IT."

Da Man

"hard to believe he isnt somehow a muslim"

Rob Zinger

"200 years from now when the planet is infested with illegal immigration, islam and sharia law, people will look back and realize this guy was a hero. He is ahead of his time."

Robert

"muslims need to be stopped now... we need a modern day Hitler to handle them"

Pete Johnson

"The bombing, the shooting, the ridiculous response time, and the insane sentencing all on LIBERALS WATCH!!! This is ALL Liberal ideology at its finest!! Typical Liberal FAIL!!!!!! Liberals the whole world is waking up to your failures!! You let your citizens DOWN. Funny how the whole world sees you for what you and your ideals are and yet you maintain that your ideology is superior to EVERYONE else in the WHOLE world! Its called psychopathic delusions! You think you are above everyone else despite your constant failure!"

Pete Johnson

"This is a man of ACTION!! We could use him here in America!!"

Professor

"There is no excuse for what this nut did but consider that Norway is a Marxist country run by liberals with little or no national pride who has recently opened its borders to Muslims. If we continue to follow Obama, we will reach that point soon."

African King

"Let us not forget that Nelson Mandela was the head of UmKhonto we Sizwe, (MK), the terrorist wing of the ANC and South African Communist Party. He had pleaded guilty to 156 acts of public violence including mobilizing terrorist bombing campaigns, which planted bombs in public places, including the Johannesburg railway station. Many innocent people, including women and children, were killed by Nelson Mandela’s MK terrorists and yet liberals uphold this monster as a hero, how sick is that!!!"

Rob E

"I only wish he'da started in NYC, San Fran, or D.C,...a MUCH more target rich environment in those areas. Communists....you scream for diversity. THIS sort of behavior is the natural and expected reply. Multi-culturalism breeds strife and death. This wicked tree is beginning to bear fruit, just as those intent on destroying the West had hoped."

Mark

"How could this guy be at two places at once...what is the time frame between both incidents? Something smells in Norway!!!! Lefte Wing cover up!!!"

Robert S

"He probably felt helpless,...his leaders all bought by the Euro socialist, government run media daily throwing out its brain washing spew, his country being infiltrated by people who only want to take advantage of it and impose their beliefs and his own elected officals supporting it, his political ideology constantly being lied about and demonized...no political solution in sight. Sound familiar...I wonder how many of these time bombs are walking around in our country and when this reckless president and his communist agenda will set them off."

Laelia A

"He should have killed muslims, not Norwegians."

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

Now, just imagine those posters in a voting booth. I give them credit for stating what they really think. Yes, I know what you are going to say. They are just posting stuff, mostly trolls, blowing off steam, etc. Well, so was Mr. Breivik. And it is no accident that Breivik copied Timothy McVeigh's fertilizer bomb. Does anyone doubt that the right-wing has an insufficient number of armed violent types in this country who are liable to act on this ideological inclination? Just in the last three years, right-wing terrorists in the US have ambushed and murdered police officers because of a contrived outrage over the thought of Obama 'taking their guns,' conducted a deadly attack on a Unitarian church, suicided themselves by flying a plane into an IRS building, murdered an African American security guard in front of the Holocaust Museum, and conspired to assassinate police officers at a funeral to start a civil war.

It would be nice to say that this will be the exception and not the future, but I would not hold out on that one. I cannot understate the importance of how the election of a black man to the White House has done more to awaken within the minds of many white people in the US a sense of racial consciousness that has not been expressed so openly since the South in the 1950s. And as whites become an increasing minority (and we will be in the next few decades), it is only going to get worse. Ethnic nationalism, and the fear that whites (in the US and Europe) of future oppression at the hands of the coming majority, is going to manifest itself in ugly ways (like anti-immigrant legislation targeting Mexicans and anyone who comes from a Muslim background), also including acts of terrorism from those white Christians who feel as though the democratic process is not representing their viewpoint. I think that whatever else you can say about Mr. Breivik, he is the wave of what will be coming in the next several decades. I hope I am wrong about this and that the Timothy McVeighs and the Hutari militia are just a mirage.

Of course, in the end, the white right will lose. The right has put itself in such a position that it cannot co-exist with a free society whose demographics is fading with the landscape. Even if they were to succeed in establishing an apartheid state (to keep themselves in power), the right would only be giving themselves a stay of execution for their brand of politics, but it will not stop them from trying.

Good Enough for Fort Meade, But Not Rupert!

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 08:22:00 +0000

One of the ongoing hypocrisies of the media coverage of the implosion of Rupert Murdoch is the sensationalism of the stories around his editors' involvement in wire tapping of phone conversations, stealing cell phone data (of a murder victim no less), and the possible repeating of such tactics on 9/11 victims, as if the wall of privacy, so great is our respect for it, should never be violated. What few commentators, especially in the mainstream media, bother to mention is how the UK now has the highest per capita use of cameras by its government, covering the moves of millions of its citizens (in some cases for parolees, even in their own homes). Or about how our government since 2001 that has been cataloging every one of our phone calls, spying on our emails, IMs, chats, all without so much as a warrant or cause? We express feigned shock and outrage at a corporation (capricious as it is) for doing what we tolerate our own government doing to us on a daily basis (when our Bill of Rights is supposed to protect our rights from that government).

How convoluted of a society do we have to be living in for federal law enforcement to arrest hackers when we employ hackers as 'advisors' to our DOD security systems? How much like The Matrix are we becoming when that same government threatens to have you thrown in jail for opening up a neighbor's snail mail, and allowing corporations to sue you for millions for downloading one of their products on bit torrent, and yet simultaneously conducts extensive warrantless searches and monitoring of our online activities, etc., the exact kind of behavior that would be illegal for us to partake in?

Can anyone fault News Corporation for thinking, even if only for a second, that there was nothing wrong with its activities? Right now, as I write this, there are civilian contractors in the U.S. who use satellites to spy on us, and monitor our movements, without charge, without evidence, and without any legal oversight (operating on the orders of our government). Our law enforcement, under the Patriot Act, can literally break into your home, take your hard drive without informing you of the theft, and not only is it legal, it is an increasingly accepted custom of evidentiary gathering in anti-terrorist cases (with the distinction of what it takes to be a 'terrorist' decided upon by a member of that bureaucracy, not a prosecutor and court).

Sounds conspiratorial? Consider the story of Aaron Swartz. His crime? He conducted too many online researches, apparently, attracting the attention of federal prosecutors. Oh, by the way, Aaron also just so happens to be a founder of an organization that is critical of the federal government's habit of spying on its citizenry.

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

Feds Charge Activist as Hacker for Downloading Millions of Academic Articles

by Ryan Singel

Well-known coder and activist Aaron Swartz was arrested Tuesday, charged with violating federal hacking laws for downloading millions of academic articles from a subscription database service that MIT had given him access to via a guest account. If convicted, Swartz faces up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Swartz, the 24-year-old executive director of Demand Progress, has a history of downloading massive data sets, both to use in research and to release public domain documents from behind paywalls. Swartz, who was aware of the investigation, turned himself in Tuesday.

Disclosure: Swartz is a co-founder of Reddit¹, which like Wired.com is owned by Condé Nast. He is also a general friend of Wired.com, and has done coding work for Wired.

The grand jury indictment accuses Swartz of evading MIT’s attempts to kick his laptop off the network while downloading more than four million documents from JSTOR, a not-for-profit company that provides searchable, digitized copies of academic journals. The scraping, which took place from September 2010 to January 2011 via MIT’s network, was invasive enough to bring down JSTOR’s servers on several occasions.

According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Swartz was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Boston this morning where he pled not guilty to all counts. He is now free on a $100,000 unsecured bond. His next court date is Sept. 9, 2011 and he’s represented by Andrew Good of Good and Courmier.

The indictment alleges that Swartz, at the time a fellow at Harvard University, intended to distribute the documents on peer-to-peer networks. That did not happen, however, and all the documents have been returned to JSTOR.

JSTOR, the alleged victim in the case, did not refer the case to the feds, according to Heidi McGregor, the company’s vice president of Marketing & Communications, who said the company got the documents, a mixture of both copyrighted and public domain works, back from Swartz and was content with that.

As for whether JSTOR supports the prosecution, McGregor simply said that the company was not commenting on the matter. She noted, however, that JSTOR has a program for academics who want to do big research on the corpus, but usually faculty members ask permission or contact the company after being booted off the network for too much downloading.

“This makes no sense,” said Demand Progress Executive Director David Segal in a statement provided by Swartz to Wired.com before the arrest. “It’s like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library.”

“It’s even more strange because the alleged victim has settled any claims against Aaron, explained they’ve suffered no loss or damage, and asked the government not to prosecute,” Segal said.

JSTOR doesn’t go quite as far in its statement on the prosecution — though there are clear hints that they were not the ones who wanted a prosecution, and that they were subpoenaed to testify at the grand jury hearing by the federal government.

We stopped this downloading activity, and the individual responsible, Mr. Swartz, was identified. We secured from Mr. Swartz the content that was taken, and received confirmation that the content was not and would not be used, copied, transferred, or distributed.
The criminal investigation and today’s indictment of Mr. Swartz has been directed by the United States Attorney’s Office.

When asked about this, Christina Sterling, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said, “I can’t speak specifically about this case, but fundamentally speaking, the U.S. Attorney’s Office makes own independent decisions regarding prosecution based on the merits of a case.”

But the feds clearly think they have a substantial hacking case on their hands, even though Swartz used guest accounts to access the network and is not accused of finding a security hole to slip through or using stolen credentials, as hacking is typically defined.

In essence, Swartz is accused of felony hacking for violating MIT and JSTOR’s terms of service. That legal theory has had mixed success — a federal court judge dismissed that argument in the Lori Drew cyberbullying case, but it was later reused with more success in a case brought against ticket scalpers who used automated means to buy tickets faster from Ticketmaster’s computer system.

“Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars. It is equally harmful to the victim whether you sell what you have stolen or give it away,” said United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz in a press release(.pdf).

The indictment (.pdf) accuses Swartz of repeatedly spoofing the MAC address — an identifier that is usually static — of his computer after MIT blocked his computer based on that number. Swartz also allegedly snuck an Acer laptop bought just for the downloading into a closet at MIT in order to get a persistent connection to the network.

Swartz allegedly hid his face from surveillance cameras by holding his bike helmet up to his face and looking through the ventilation holes when going in to swap out an external drive used to store the documents. Swartz also allegedly named his guest account “Gary Host,” with the nickname “Ghost.”

Why would Swartz want to download what is likely gigabytes of information? His history includes a study co-authored with Shireen Barday, which looked through thousands of law review articles looking for law professors who had been paid by industry patrons to write papers. That study was published in 2008 in the Stanford Law Review.

Swartz is no stranger to the feds being interested in his skills at prodigious downloads. In 2008, the federal court system decided to try out allowing free public access to its court record search system PACER at 17 libraries across the country. Swartz went to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals library in Chicago and installed a small PERL script he had written. The code cycled sequentially through case numbers, requesting a new document from PACER every three seconds. In this manner, Swartz got nearly 20 million pages of court documents, which his script uploaded to Amazon’s EC2 cloud computing service.

While the documents are in the public record and free to share, PACER normally charges eight cents a page.

The courts reported him to the FBI, which investigated whether the public records were “exfiltrated.” After in-depth background searches, a luckless stakeout and futile attempts to get Swartz to talk, the FBI dropped the case.

The same anti-hacking statute was used to prosecute Lori Drew, who was charged criminally for participating in a MySpace cyberbullying scheme against a 13-year-old Missouri girl who later committed suicide. The case against Drew hinged on the government’s novel argument that violating MySpace’s terms of service was the legal equivalent of computer hacking and a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

A federal judge who presided over the prosecution tossed the guilty verdicts in July 2009, and the government declined to appeal.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/07/swartz-arrest/

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Think about that. Our government takes $700 billion of our money to bailout banks, all pure deficit spending. The same government, under two administrations (Republican and Democratic), have spent over $1.6 trillion of deficit spending to give tax cuts to millionaires. Our banks and financial institutions wreck and destroy our economy, and not a single CEO has been held accountable, even the ones who knew they were selling toxic assets and betting against them in private (an act of fraud and violation of securities law). Nothing. But download articles from JSTOR, from unprofitable, almost never read academic publications, and well naturally that is a different story.

I will go out on a limb here and say that Rupert Murdoch, even if his managers did hack into the phones of 9/11 victims, will not only remain free and unpunished, but his news service will remain as defiantly dishonest and sleazy as ever, without fail and with the complete support of the media establishment and our so-called socialist president. And your government will continue to treat the rest of us like subjects to be spied upon at will. Still, we can rest easily tonight. The fifteen readers of International Organization will not have to worry about their subscription rates being devalued by an illegal download.

The Greatness of Phil Ochs

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 05:21:00 +0000

I do not delve enough on this blog into cultural topics. It is a deficit and one I do periodically lament. I am not sure why, to be honest, because I am every bit a part of this society as the next person. And musically, I pretty much listen to almost all types, even the occasional country music song, along of course with classical, jazz, hip-hop, rap, punk, and rock. Still, I have not always been what you would call a fan of folk music. To be sure, because of my upbringing, I grew up with union songs like this.

Nevertheless, outside of the standard union ballads of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, since they wrote so many labor songs, it was not until my adult years that I began to explore and gain a greater appreciation for folk music. My discovery of Phil Ochs was a revelation for me. I did not begin listening to Ochs until I was in college and I wondered how on earth I had not heard of him before, although I had grown up after his death. Well, this may be why so few Americans know of the sacrifices made by our laboring classes in the 19th century to bring us the 8 hour workday--because the people who own this country, and your contract, do not want you to know.

There is no better time than the present to remedy this shortfall. Without further ado, one of my favorite folk songs from one of this country's most underrated folk singers.

OK, he had another that I am really partial to, as well.

Whoever posted those, a million thank yous.

And to those of us who have these songs handed down to us, we should do more than just appreciate them. We should disseminate them en masse. Who knows, in maybe a few more years the wars really will be over. The peoples we bomb, occupy, and oppress deserve nothing less.

New York: Victory for Human Rights

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 03:55:00 +0000

To the tens of readers, I know politics in the U.S. can be a depressing topic. Rarely is there any good news, and it is bereft. Our president stabs us in the back on leaving Afghanistan, refuses to support gay marriage, and the other party is populated by the ancestors of those who tried to destroy this country to maintain ownership of an entire race of people like chattel (and who deep down still think that way today, particularly when telling us why we should be setting up a system of internal passports for anyone who looks remotely Mexican). Yes, I confess, life here can be rough for a progressive.

However, we do not lose every battle. Every once in awhile, we win. Today in the state of New York, we won.

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Gay Marriage Approved by N.Y. Senate

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and MICHAEL BARBARO

ALBANY — Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born.

The bill was approved on a 33-to-29 vote as 4 Republican state senators joined 29 Democrats in voting for it.

As the Senate debated the measure, supporters and opponents from around the state packed into two small galleries overlooking the chamber. When the final vote tally was read, the crowd screamed and hollered, began to chant “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” — and to yell “thank you.” A minute or two later, when Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo entered the chamber, the crowd cheered again, rushing the edge of the galleries and chanting the governor’s name.

Senate approval was the final hurdle for the legislation, which was strongly supported by Mr. Cuomo. The Assembly approved changes made by the Senate, after passing an earlier version last week. Mr. Cuomo was expected to sign the measure soon, and the law will go into effect 30 days later, meaning that same-sex couples could begin marrying in New York by midsummer. “I am very proud of New York and the statement we made to the nation today,” Mr. Cuomo said.

The bill’s passage followed a daunting run of defeats in other states where voters barred same-sex marriage by legislative action, constitutional amendment or referendum. Just five states — Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont — permit same-sex marriage. It is also legal in : the District of Columbia.

The approval of same-sex marriage represented a reversal of fortune for gay-rights advocates in New York State, who just two years ago suffered a humiliating and unexpected defeat when a same-sex marriage bill was easily defeated in the Senate, which was then controlled by Democrats. This year, with the Senate controlled by Republicans, the odds against passage of same-sex marriage appeared long.

But the unexpected victory had an unlikely champion: Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who pledged last year to support same-sex marriage but whose early months in office were dominated by intense battles with lawmakers and some labor unions over spending cuts.

Mr. Cuomo made same-sex marriage one of his top priorities for the year and deployed his top aide to coordinate the efforts of a half-dozen local gay-rights organizations whose feuding and disorganization had in part been blamed for the defeat two years ago.

The new coalition of same-sex marriage supporters brought in one of Mr. Cuomo’s trusted campaign operatives to supervise a $3 million television and radio campaign aimed at persuading a handful of Republican and Democratic senators to drop their opposition.

For Senate Republicans, even bringing the measure to the floor was a freighted decision. Most of the Republicans firmly oppose same-sex marriage on moral grounds, and many of them also had political concerns, fearing that allowing same-sex marriage to pass on their watch would embitter conservative voters and cost the Republicans their one-seat majority in the Senate.

Leaders of the state’s Conservative Party — whose support many Republican lawmakers depend on to win election — warned that they would oppose in legislative elections next year any Republican senator who voted for same-sex marriage.

But after days of agonized discussion capped by a marathon nine-hour closed-door debate on Friday, Republicans came to a fateful decision: the full Senate would be allowed to vote on the bill, the majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, said Friday afternoon, and each member would be left to vote according to his or her conscience.

"The days of just bottling up things, and using these as excuses not to have votes — as far as I’m concerned as leader, its over with," Mr. Skelos, a Long Island Republican, said.

Twenty-nine Democrats voted for the measure, joined by four Republicans: James S. Alesi of Monroe County; Stephen M.. Saland, from the Hudson Valley area; Roy J. McDonald of the capital region; and Mark J. Grisanti of Buffalo.

Just one lawmaker rose to speak against the measure: Rubén Díaz, Sr. of the Bronx, the only Democratic senator to cast a no vote.

“God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage, a long time ago,” Mr. Diaz said.

But Mr. Grisanti, a Buffalo Republican who opposed gay marriage when he ran for election last year, said he had studied the issue closely, agonized over his responsibility as a lawmaker, and concluded he could not vote against the bill. Mr. Grisanti voted yes. “I apologize for those who feel offended,” he said. “I cannot deny, a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is, the same rights that I have with my wife.”

The legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States is a relatively recent goal of the gay-rights movement, but over the last few years, gay-rights organizers have placed it at the center of their agenda, steering money and muscle into dozens of state capitals in an often uphill effort to persuade lawmakers.

In New York, passage of the bill reflects rapidly evolving sentiment about same-sex unions. In 2004, according to a Quinnipiac poll, 37 percent of the state’s residents supported allowing same-sex couples to wed. This year, 58 percent of them did. Advocates moved aggressively this year to capitalize on that shift, flooding the district offices of wavering lawmakers with phone calls, e-mails and signed postcards from constituents who favored same-sex marriage, sometimes in bundles that numbered in the thousands.

Dozens more states have laws or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage, many of them approved in the last few years, as same-sex marriage moved to the front line of the culture war and politicians deployed the issue as a tool for energizing their base.

But New York could be a shift: It is now by far the largest state to grant legal recognition to same-sex weddings, and one that is home to a large, visible and politically influential gay community. Supporters of the measure described the victory in New York as especially symbolic — and poignant — because of its rich place in the history of gay rights: the movement’s foundational moment, in June of 1969, was a riot against police inside the Stonewall Inn, a bar in the West Village.

On Friday night, as the Senate voted, a crowd jammed into the Stonewall Inn, where televisions were tuned to the Senate hours before the vote began. Danny Garvin, 62, said he had been at the bar on the night of the riot, and came back to watch the Senate debate Friday. On the streets where police beat gay men in 1969, on Friday crowds cheered, as police quietly stood watch. Bernie Janelle, 53, turned to her partner of 16 years, Cindy Hearing, and said, “I’m going to propose to her on Sunday.”

Senate leaders hoped to limit debate to just a few speakers, angering some on both sides of the issue. Mr. Diaz was repeatedly chided for overstepping the two minutes he was allotted to explain his vote, while Kevin Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat, erupted when he and other supporters learned they would not be allowed to make a floor speech.

"This is not right," he yelled, before storming from the chamber.

During a brief recess during the voting, Shirley Huntley, a Queens Democrat who had only recently come out in support of same sex marriage, strode from her seat to the back of the Senate chamber to congratulate Daniel J. O’Donnell, an openly gay Manhattan lawmaker who sponsored the legislation in the Assembly.

They hugged, and Mr. O’Donnell, standing with his longtime partner, teared up.

"We’re going to invite you to our wedding” Mr. O’Donnell said. “Now we have to figure out how to pay for one."

Just before the Senate’s marriage vote, lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly also approved a broad package of major legislation that constituted the remainder of their agenda for the year. The bills included a cap on local property tax increases, and a strengthening of New York’s rent regulation laws, as well as a five-year tuition increase at the State University of New York and the City University of New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/25/nyregion/gay-marriage-approved-by-new-york-senate

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Yes, I know, it is not perfect. Yes, churches can continue to be bastions of bigotry, in spite of this law, and I know that New York is just one state, but it will be (excepting the short time California legalized it) the biggest state to legalize gay marriage to date. And to those younger folk, perspective is in order. This is just the beginning.

With New York as the largest state to legislatively pass gay marriage, many other states will surely follow. True, for those of us living in the Western world's version of Afghanistan (i.e., the Bible Belt), gay marriage will likely require a Supreme Court ruling, but even that may not be as far off as we think, either. The more states who legalize gay marriage, beyond just state court rulings making it possible, and with now for the first time a clear majority of Americans in support of marriage equality, it is only a matter of time until our institutions respond to the pressure and expand it everywhere.

That is right, my dear Christian readers. It is coming to your town, and hopefully one day to your village and church. I anticipate the coming apology of the Southern Baptist Convention to the LGBT community somewhere around the year 2234.

Considering where we were at even twenty years ago, this is not a minor achievement. In 1990, 80% of Americans thought homosexuality was 'immoral.' Today, 57% support gays in the military and 53% support gay marriage. Twenty years from now, it will be the norm, to the point that to even think the way the average conservative Republican does today will court the rightful comparisons of those who supported bans on interracial marriage. It is a beautiful world after all.

And to those few Republicans in the New York Senate who voted in favor of this bill, to be fair, let them receive credit here.

Senator James S. Alesi of Monroe County

Email: alesi@senate.state.ny.us

Senate Office Phone: 518-455-2015

Senator Stephen M. Saland, from the Hudson Valley area

Email: saland@nysenate.gov

Senate Office Phone: 518-455-2411

Senator Roy J. McDonald of the capital region

Email: mcdonald@senate.state.ny.us

Senate Office Phone: 518-455-2381

Senator Mark J. Grisanti of Buffalo

Email: grisanti@nysenate.gov

Senate Office Phone: 518-455-3240

I know it is easy to discount these people since they are members of the stupid party, but they took a stand, in spite of their own party and warnings from conservatives that their vote would guarantee an opponent in the next primary. And their stand helped make gay marriage possible in New York. For that reason alone, they deserve some recognition and support. If you have the time, contact these senators and thank them. They need to know that their vote was appreciated.

Going To Jail For Healthcare

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 20:14:00 +0000

It is a sad commentary in our society that millions of Americans must go to jail or the military to get adequate health care. Here is to the Potemkin village that kills over 45,000 Americans every year for not being economically viable.

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Man robs bank to get medical care in jail

By Zachary Roth

Some people who need medical care but can't afford it go to the emergency room. Others just hope they'll get better. James Richard Verone robbed a bank.

Earlier this month, Verone (pictured), a 59-year-old convenience store clerk, walked into a Gaston, N.C., bank and handed the cashier a note demanding $1 and medical attention. Then he waited calmly for police to show up.

He's now in jail and has an appointment with a doctor this week.

Verone's problems started when he lost the job he'd held for 17 years as a Coca Cola deliveryman, amid the economic downturn. He found new work driving a truck, but it didn't last. Eventually, he took a part-time position at the convenience store.

But Verone's body wasn't up to it. The bending and lifting made his back ache. He had problems with his left foot, making him limp. He also suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis.

Then he noticed a protrusion on his chest. "The pain was beyond the tolerance that I could accept," Verone told the Gaston Gazette. "I kind of hit a brick wall with everything."

Verone knew he needed help--and he didn't want to be a burden on his sister and brothers. He applied for food stamps, but they weren't enough either.

So he hatched a plan. On June 9, he woke up, showered, ironed his shirt. He mailed a letter to the Gazette, listing the return address as the Gaston County Jail.

"When you receive this a bank robbery will have been committed by me," Verone wrote in the letter. "This robbery is being committed by me for one dollar. I am of sound mind but not so much sound body."

Then Verone hailed a cab to take him to the RBC Bank. Inside, he handed the teller his $1 robbery demand.

"I didn't have any fears," said Verone. "I told the teller that I would sit over here and wait for police."

The teller was so frightened that she had to be taken to the hospital to be checked out. Verone, meanwhile, was taken to jail, just as he'd planned it.

Because he only asked for $1, Verone was charged with larceny, not bank robbery. But he said that if his punishment isn't severe enough, he plans to tell the judge that he'll do it again. His $100,000 bond has been reduced to $2,000, but he says he doesn't plan to pay it.

In jail, Verone said he skips dinner to avoid too much contact with the other inmates. He's already seen some nurses and is scheduled to see a doctor on Friday. He said he's hoping to receive back and foot surgery, and get the protrusion on his chest treated. Then he plans to spend a few years in jail, before getting out in time to collect Social Security and move to the beach.

Verone also presented the view that if the United States had a health-care system which offered people more government support, he wouldn't have had to make the choice he did.

"If you don't have your health you don't have anything," Verone said.

The Affordable Care Act, President Obama's health-care overhaul passed by Congress last year, was designed to make it easier for Americans in situations like Verone's to get health insurance. But most of its provisions don't go into effect until 2014.

As it is, Verone said he thinks he chose the best of a bunch of bad options. "I picked jail."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110621/ts_yblog_thelookout/man-robs-bank-to-get-medical-care-in-jail

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We sometimes forget the victims of the crime that is our private health insurance-dominated system. Here is another. Think of this the next time Rick Santorum tells you our government employees were fighting the Germans to give you this.

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Uninsured man's self-treatment for toothache hastens death

by Eve Samples

It began with a painful toothache.

But Mark Erdman was not one to slow down, so he didn't.

The 49-year-old Palm City resident kept working, kept hitting the gym every morning at 5.

Without health insurance, he delayed going to the dentist for as long as he could. Over-the-counter acetaminophen and ibuprofen helped him endure the pain.

Erdman had done well during the boom years as a self-employed gutter and insulation contractor, but his business did not survive the construction bust. Private health insurance was unaffordable for his family of four, even after he landed a new sales job.

"We were making six figures and had money in the bank, insurance and everything — and we just lost it all. Lost it all," said his wife, Renee Erdman.

That was bearable because she still had him, her husband of 19 years.

He was the life of the party, the father of her two children; the Pop Warner football coach and the guy who would change a stranger's tire on the side of the road.

Now, she has lost Mark, too.

The Tylenol and ibuprofen he had been taking for his toothache contributed to fatal damage to his liver and kidneys, Renee said doctors told her. At one point, he took eight over-the counter pills in a single day. He knew it was more than the recommended dose, but he never expected it to take his life.

Mark died last Thursday at Florida Hospital in Orlando, where he had been transferred with hopes of receiving a liver transplant.

"It's so sick. It's like he was unknowingly killing himself," Renee said Monday. "And should you find yourself without insurance, forget it."

Mark was initially admitted at Martin Memorial Medical Center, which does not perform organ transplants. A hospital representative in Orlando told Renee a liver transplant would cost $195,000, with 50 percent of that to be paid up front, as she recalls it.

"I just sat there and said, 'I don't have that kind of money laying around,' " she remembered.

Last week, Mark got Medicaid coverage after Renee called the offices of U.S. Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Tequesta, and state Sen. Joe Negron, R-Stuart. Mark suffered damage to his brain before a transplant became possible.

"We had to take him off of life support," Renee said, her voice breaking. "It's just, who knows about this? Most people I talk to, they don't know this will shut your body down. Mark didn't know."

Acetaminophen can cause serious, sometimes fatal, liver damage if taken in higher-than-recommended doses, according to a consumer update from the Food and Drug Administration. Even at the recommended dose, people who have three or more drinks a day are at greater risk of liver damage, the FDA warns.

Renee wanted to share Mark's story as a cautionary tale.

"Maybe this doesn't have to happen to somebody else," she said.

Mark was always going out of his way to help other people. When he was running his own business, he would drive to Boynton Beach every morning to pick up an employee who did not have his own car, Renee said.

"Everything he did, he did it 100 percent," said Billy Baker, their son Tristan's basketball coach.

Now, family and friends are trying to help Renee, a stay-at-home mom to 9-year-old Kara and 15-year-old Tristan.

An account has been opened at First People's Bank. Contributions can be made at the bank to The Mark Erdman Family Benefit Irrevocable Trust or sent care of the Law Offices of Marc S. Teplitz, 73 SW Flagler Ave., Stuart 34994.

"He was a very positive man, and a very loving man and a giving man," Renee said.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-03-16/health/fl-toothache-to-death-20110316_1_liver-transplant-health-insurance-toothache

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This is what our country reduces its own citizens to. Meanwhile, bankrolled teabaggers tell us that being able to choose your doctor or having insurance is 'all about freedom.' Of course, that is on the condition you can afford it. If not, then you deserve to die. Sounds harsh? Here are the teabaggers responding to a man with Alzheimer's appealing for health insurance.

Life in these United States. Sometimes I wonder if this is what it was like before they had universal healthcare in the rest of the industrialized world? I do not recall reading about the Germans acting like this when they received their universal health coverage, over a hundred years ago, or the British in 1948, or the Canadians in 1984. Why is it that the slightest reform in this country, be anti-slavery, civil rights, even public education, causes so many of our people to respond with such violence and stupidity?

Meanwhile, if you do not have health insurance and need it, and you are not too poor for Medicaid or old enough for Medicare, our jails and military await you.

The Case of Anthony Weiner

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 18:46:00 +0000

One of the least appealing features about being a political scientist in the U.S. is the intense media scrutiny of the personal lives of political figures. I have never considered such peccadilloes to be of much interest to me, so long as it does not impact their job, violate any laws, and the person is not being a two-faced hypocrite. This is why I tend to have a great distaste for Republican sex scandals. Not because of the scandal per se (minus the law-breaking aspect [if there is one]), but because it is a party whose adherents constantly tell us how to live our lives and how the government should be legislating morality on us all, when they are themselves violating the principles they claim to believe in. There are few worse crimes in my eyes (other than those of a purely criminal nature) than hypocrisy.

I have looked back on Rep. Weiner's career, and I cannot recall the last time he advertised himself as a 'family values' type of officeholder. Not one denunciation of anyone else for his/her private behavior. Not a single call for resignation of any of his political opponents for being unable to keep their marital vows. Anthony Weiner is many things, but he is not a hypocrite.

As far as I can tell, although who knows how this will play out in the coming days and weeks, Rep. Weiner has violated no laws. His greatest moral crimes are being a louse, as a husband and person, and a liar (to his wife and his constituents). He did not even have sex with anyone he sent sext messages to (which in itself would still not be against the law). He did not pay anyone for sex, like Senator Vitter and Rep. Ken Calvert have done (and ended up getting re-elected anyway). He has not harmed anyone other than his wife and probably his marriage. If Rep. Weiner is to resign over what he has done, up to this point, someone needs to explain to me why Senator Vitter should still be allowed to occupy space in the U.S. Senate, never mind Rep. Calvert (who was arrested after being caught in the act with a prostitute in his own car).

If Rep. Weiner should be excoriated for anything, it is his habit of sending unsolicited sext messages and pictures to women, many of whom were simply trying to engage him in political conversation. This is a past-time I do not engage in, so maybe I am wrong in what I am writing, but it would seem common sense to me for a man to not send women (he has yet/never met) compromising pictures of himself and sexually suggestive text messages. Maybe this is what our culture has come to, that it is suitable now for people to behave this way, that we have finally come full circle and drafted a member of Congress to be the first guinea pig for ethics in social media networking. And one cannot use age as an excuse because Weiner is a 46 year old man, much older than myself, and a man who did not even start using the internet probably until he was in his 30s (in other words, he did not grow up with the internet or utilize it for the purposes that has ensnared the congressman in his current quandary).

Rep. Weiner's interactions with women on the internet, though, is the part I find most interesting, more so than his pictures or messages (which the media concentrates on [OK, so I posted one with Charlie Sheen pasted in the background]). With the recent advent of social networking in our lives, what is normal conduct for people online? It seems to me from the message boards I read that people and the messages/responses they post are more licentious and aggressive (and abusive) than how we behave in everyday life. However, much of that is on account of the anonymous nature of being online. Weiner behaved the way he did as a public figure, never attempting to hide his identity from anyone (until he was caught, of course). It makes you wonder what he was like when he was posting anonymously or meeting women on the streets. It does not bode well for him as a person, but then it is entirely possible he lived a different life online.

Still, if Weiner did live a different life online, if indeed he treated women he ran into more respectfully than the ones he sent messages to online, why would he continue to act the way he did in his own name, without any attempt to hide the conduct? It is all speculation to me, but I surmise any person who starts sending half-naked pictures of himself to women he has never met is most likely a sexually aggressive person in the flesh. But I could be wrong. The internet age has changed a lot in terms of how people behave and interact with each other, even the language that we use (much of it coarsening over time, replete with emoticons and slang).

Last but not least, if what Anthony Weiner has done is terrible in sending non-nude (albeit inappropriate in light of the fact his were unsolicited) photos of himself, what about those politicians who have posed completely nude? I do not recall too many Fox 'news' correspondents raising a stink about these photos.

Indeed, in the case of Scott Brown, Fox 'news' cooed over his nude photo.

If that is acceptable, and if none of the women Anthony Weiner sexted file a complaint over his conduct, then what is the difference between them? Why is Schwarzenegger/Brown's nudes acceptable and Weiner's partial-nudes reprehensible? Why is it OK to pose nude, and talk about how you are bringing the 'sexy' back to Congress, but if you are half-naked and doing it online (assuming the other party's consent) it is wrong? Is it because of the medium involved? And while I personally think Mr. Weiner's behavior is worse, in light of the fact he sent his pictures to individual females as a married man (and at least one of those women was only trying to engage him in a political discussion, not elicit pictures of his pecks), I still think it is a perfectly legitimate discussion and debate to have. So, to my tens of readers, what doth thou thinketh?

Death of Our Constitutional Republic #1: FBI Widens Rights Violations

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 03:31:00 +0000

In the first installment of what is likely to become a long, long series, our beloved government is permitting its law enforcement agencies to re-write its rules to allow the snoops increased powers over your lives.

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F.B.I. Agents Get Leeway to Push Privacy Bounds

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation is giving significant new powers to its roughly 14,000 agents, allowing them more leeway to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention.

The F.B.I. soon plans to issue a new edition of its manual, called the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, according to an official who has worked on the draft document and several others who have been briefed on its contents. The new rules add to several measures taken over the past decade to give agents more latitude as they search for signs of criminal or terrorist activity.

The F.B.I. recently briefed several privacy advocates about the coming changes. Among them, Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that it was unwise to further ease restrictions on agents’ power to use potentially intrusive techniques, especially if they lacked a firm reason to suspect someone of wrongdoing.

“Claiming additional authorities to investigate people only further raises the potential for abuse,” Mr. German said, pointing to complaints about the bureau’s surveillance of domestic political advocacy groups and mosques and to an inspector general’s findings in 2007 that the F.B.I. had frequently misused “national security letters,” which allow agents to obtain information like phone records without a court order.

Valerie E. Caproni, the F.B.I. general counsel, said the bureau had fixed the problems with the national security letters and had taken steps to make sure they would not recur. She also said the bureau, which does not need permission to alter its manual so long as the rules fit within broad guidelines issued by the attorney general, had carefully weighed the risks and the benefits of each change.

“Every one of these has been carefully looked at and considered against the backdrop of why do the employees need to be able to do it, what are the possible risks and what are the controls,” she said, portraying the modifications to the rules as “more like fine-tuning than major changes.”

Some of the most notable changes apply to the lowest category of investigations, called an “assessment.” The category, created in December 2008, allows agents to look into people and organizations “proactively” and without firm evidence for suspecting criminal or terrorist activity.

Under current rules, agents must open such an inquiry before they can search for information about a person in a commercial or law enforcement database. Under the new rules, agents will be allowed to search such databases without making a record about their decision.

Mr. German said the change would make it harder to detect and deter inappropriate use of databases for personal purposes. But Ms. Caproni said it was too cumbersome to require agents to open formal inquiries before running quick checks. She also said agents could not put information uncovered from such searches into F.B.I. files unless they later opened an assessment.

The new rules will also relax a restriction on administering lie-detector tests and searching people’s trash. Under current rules, agents cannot use such techniques until they open a “preliminary investigation,” which — unlike an assessment — requires a factual basis for suspecting someone of wrongdoing. But soon agents will be allowed to use those techniques for one kind of assessment, too: when they are evaluating a target as a potential informant.

Agents have asked for that power in part because they want the ability to use information found in a subject’s trash to put pressure on that person to assist the government in the investigation of others. But Ms. Caproni said information gathered that way could also be useful for other reasons, like determining whether the subject might pose a threat to agents.

The new manual will also remove a limitation on the use of surveillance squads, which are trained to surreptitiously follow targets. Under current rules, the squads can be used only once during an assessment, but the new rules will allow agents to use them repeatedly. Ms. Caproni said restrictions on the duration of physical surveillance would still apply, and argued that because of limited resources, supervisors would use the squads only rarely during such a low-level investigation.

The revisions also clarify what constitutes “undisclosed participation” in an organization by an F.B.I. agent or informant, which is subject to special rules — most of which have not been made public. The new manual says an agent or an informant may surreptitiously attend up to five meetings of a group before those rules would apply — unless the goal is to join the group, in which case the rules apply immediately.

At least one change would tighten, rather than relax, the rules. Currently, a special agent in charge of a field office can delegate the authority to approve sending an informant to a religious service. The new manual will require such officials to handle those decisions personally.

In addition, the manual clarifies a description of what qualifies as a “sensitive investigative matter” — investigations, at any level, that require greater oversight from supervisors because they involve public officials, members of the news media or academic scholars.

The new rules make clear, for example, that if the person with such a role is a victim or a witness rather than a target of an investigation, extra supervision is not necessary. Also excluded from extra supervision will be investigations of low- and midlevel officials for activities unrelated to their position — like drug cases as opposed to corruption, for example.

The manual clarifies the definition of who qualifies for extra protection as a legitimate member of the news media in the Internet era: prominent bloggers would count, but not people who have low-profile blogs. And it will limit academic protections only to scholars who work for institutions based in the United States.

Since the release of the 2008 manual, the assessment category has drawn scrutiny because it sets a low bar to examine a person or a group. The F.B.I. has opened thousands of such low-level investigations each month, and a vast majority has not generated information that justified opening more intensive investigations.

Ms. Caproni said the new manual would adjust the definition of assessments to make clear that they must be based on leads. But she rejected arguments that the F.B.I. should focus only on investigations that begin with a firm reason for suspecting wrongdoing.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/13/us/13fbi.html

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Amazingly, this is not much different than how the Syrian government monitors and keeps track of its citizens, which our State Department uses to criticize the Syrians. If we used the standards by which we judged the Syrians, our government would have to indict itself, but of course we know the likelihood of this occurring. And just imagine, this is what it is like living under an "Islamic socialist who hates America." Take a moment to envision what Sarah Palin's national security policies would be like. And notice the lack of criticism of this manual from the leadership of our two parties in Congress. Apparently, the party of dinosaurs-walked-the-earth-6,000-years-ago is more worried about the 'Communist' government forcing you to purchase a private health insurance plan. I am sure the ex-Stasi agents are having a good laugh.

Bin Laden may be dead, but his spirit of getting our government to destroy our liberties is alive and well. RIP, right to privacy. You were a wonderful right while we had you.

Moron Report #46: The Rick Santorum Express

noreply@blogger.com (TA) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 01:13:00 +0000

It must be tough being Rick Santorum. He was annihilated by over 700,000 votes when he ran for re-election five years ago (to an anti-abortion Democrat, no less). Worse (for him), the ex-senator from Pennsylvania is most known to people under the age of 30 as the combination of fecal matter and lube not infrequently found inside of the very folks he would just as soon see in prison (or worse). But good ole Rick is fighting the good fight for every right-winger's most favored Bethlehem carpenter. And how do you best deliver the message that healthcare is un-American? You hide behind military veterans, of course.

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Santorum: D-Day Troops Fought For Health Care Freedom

by Jillian Rayfield

Newly minted GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is appalled that President Obama would disrespect those who fought at Normandy by not trusting them to make their own health care decisions. "Those Americans risked everything so they could make that decision on their health care plan," he said Monday.

Santorum was speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania to mark his official entry into the race for president, and railed against those who oppose Paul Ryan's (R-WI) proposal that effectively ends Medicare as we know it, and instead gives seniors a voucher to buy their own plan. These people, he said, "want to hook you."

"They believe in themselves, the smart people, the planners, the folks in Washington who can make decisions better than you can," he said, using what he called "Mediscare" as an example. "They're saying to seniors, 'you need to trust us. We are the ones who are gonna make decisions what every senior can have. We cant trust seniors to make decisions.'"

But, Santorum said, what he and Paul Ryan want to do is "give people the resources to go out and choose for themselves choose what's best for themselves."

Unlike Obama, he continued, who is spitting in the face of those Americans who fought on D-Day, 67 years ago today. "Almost 60,000 average Americans had the courage to go out and charge those beaches on Normandy, to drop out of airplanes who knows where, and take on the battle for freedom," Santorum said.

"Average Americans," he added. "The very Americans that our government now, and this president, does not trust a to make decision on your health care plan. Those Americans risked everything so they could make that decision on their health care plan."

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/santorum-d-day-troops-fought-for-the-ryan-plan.php

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I am certain the irony is completely lost on the ex-senator that the surviving veterans of the Normandy invasion are now all on government healthcare (Medicare), and they were dependent completely on government healthcare while they were charging those beaches 67 years ago. But no, they were trying to take out those German 88s for everyone else's 'right' to overpriced private healthcare, insurance bureaucracy, and a system that kills over 44,000 Americans every year for a lack of access. Surely, all of this was lost because otherwise Mr. Santorum would not have delivered that speech with anything resembling conviction. Then again, he is a member of our stupid party.

Welcome to my hall of shame, Rick, right alongside the ex-governor of Alaska and some idiot who mistook some ashes inside of an urn for cocaine. You are a deserving addition.