Geography: Not hard.

Someone really needs to tell Fox news that Los Angeles is not, in fact, south of San Diego.

Follow up to the preceeding

It’s interesting to watch how each of the media outlets in this country report early (what used to be called “late breaking”) news.
MSNBC :: “DAMASCUS, Syria – U.S. military helicopters launched an extremely rare attack Sunday on Syrian territory close to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the government in Damascus condemned as “serious aggression.”

A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the network of al-Qaida-linked foreign fighters moving through Syria into Iraq. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area because Syria was out of the military’s reach.

“We are taking matters into our own hands,” the official told The Associated Press in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids“

Faux news ::”The official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the special forces action within Syrian territory close to the Iraqi border, was meant to send a message. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area because Syria was out of the military’s reach.

“We are taking matters into our own hands,” the official said.

The attack came just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq said American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an “uncontrolled” gateway for fighters entering Iraq.

Ninety percent of foreign fighters enter Iraq through Syria, according to U.S. intelligence estimates. Foreign fighters often enter Iraq in order to bring cash to Al Qaeda in Iraq’s chief. They also are deadly — trained in bomb-making and willing to sacrifice themselves in suicide attacks.

A senior U.S. military intelligence official said that in July only about 20 foreign fighters were entering the country each month, down 50 percent from six months earlier, and just a fifth of the estimated 100 foreign fighters who were infiltrating Iraq a year ago.“

CNN :: “A missile strike killed seven people Sunday at a compound in Pakistan’s northern tribal border region, a Pakistani military source said.

The missiles hit the compound in the village of Badar in South Waziristan Sunday night, the source said. He did not want his name revealed because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

North Waziristan is a region rife with Islamic extremists near the Afghan border. The source said the strike was suspected to be the work of an unmanned U.S. drone.

Military officials have said South Waziristan is the stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Beitullah Mehsud.“

Yeah, CNN isn’t even reporting the story. No, they’re busy reporting on the OTHER national boundry we violated today. I think at this point it’s interesting that MSNBC (Which I once criticized for being, the “bubble gum of news networks”) and CNN seem to have flip flopped. (Mind you, MSNBC is still partisan as hell, at least to the degree that Faux news is. Sorry I don’t have a clever nickname for MSNBC – too many damn letters….)

Introduction

- or just who does she think she is anyway –

Pretty much precisely cribbed from my information profile but I thought I’d share regardless. Obviously, this isn’t all there is to me, but ’tis a start.

“See, under a big government agenda, what you thought was yours, your income your property, your inventory, your investments, really would belong to somebody else, to everybody else. And it would be shared with everybody else. That philosophy of government taking more, which is a misuse of the power to tax. It leads to government moving into the role of taking care of you and government and politicians and kind of moving in as the other half of your family to make decisions for you.”
Governor Sarah Palin

Gee, sounds to me like the last eight years actually. Apparently she was going after Barney Frank – whose not my favorite person anyway – likely because he’s gay. Or so goes my first thought.

Read the full version here.

Apparently, the US Army is considered about the possibility of terrorists using Twitter. Well, I can’t think of a single medium more suited for short choppy cryptic sentences that mean absolute zero to anyone but the twitterer and the recipient. In fact, I think that might actually be the first REAL application that I can think of that Twitter is useful for. At all.

Still nothing official (and I am searching) on that Syria thing. Hard to believe something like this could just blow over. We shall see.

Note to Administration: Iraq is in fact in Asia.

So is Syria. Anyone ever hear something about “land wars in asia”?

Pretty much confirming Syria’s claims from yesterday, the existence of an unidentified U.S. official screams to me of someone muttering “shit” as they slowly pull their hand from the cookie jar.
“Syria’s state news agency SANA said four U.S. helicopters crossed the border and struck a farm about 5 miles inside Syria before returning to Iraqi airspace. The raid occurred about 4:45 p.m. local time on Sunday, the agency said.“
This is, after all, the fucking middle east. Presumably some upper level commander okayed this. Hm. So the wheels are already turning when I come across a BBC article that states :: “It would fit into a carefully calibrated step-up in US counter-terrorist operations around the wider Middle East.
In July, President George W Bush reportedly signed an executive order authorising limited incursions by US ground troops into Pakistan’s tribal areas, allowing the Pentagon and the CIA – in theory – to go after high value al-Qaeda operatives previously beyond their reach.“

Georgie-boy, are we still holding out hopes of starting World War III in the next ten days?
I find it interesting that my frequently visited corners of the blogosphere are letting this slide – as though the process of incipient election will magically make this sort of thing go away.
He’s still in office til January folks.

Unfortunately the rest of this got zorched when a PG&E truck opted to play handball with a switch or something. So I’ll just cut to the chase. Al-jazeera has a very ….. interesting article on this. And it’s about what I think anyone would have expected. I doubt Syria will tolerate US “adventurism” any more than they have to this point. Certainly not a second time. It would seem that some unofficial but nonetheless cogent change in the military end of US foreign policy is underway. Pity about that whole not keeping the citizenry informed.

Dingleberries

First of all, what the shit? Rhetoric or is Kim Jong-Il just not feeling passive-aggressive enough with the recent concessions to the west regarding nuclear power?

thankfully, neo-nazis continue to have an IQ smaller than the size of their penis and that’s saying something.

Syria protests strongly sorry, I can’t use the original title for this. Reading the article left me with a “Syria…..is angry.” kind of headline vibe. Nonetheless the more I read about this….the more I get angry. At the U.S.
I am really really tired of living in a country where it’s governing body, it’s military and, often, it’s people, think we have some kind of right to violate any nation’s borders, do whatever we want inside them, and get away with it because of a blend of some social darwinianist bullshit (“But we’re the most powerful nation on earth!”) or of course because Invisible-Old-Man-In-Sky told them us too when we went off our meds.
In this *particular* case, it would seem that Syria is adopting a wait and see attitude towards the US vis a vis the upcoming election (aka Stuper-Tuesday), which is commendable given what other responses they could be unleashing. Neither of the candidates who have any chance of winning have intentions of getting us out of there, and neither of them have ever made any statement re: respecting the national territoriality of other countries. So….I’m not sure Syria’s patience is necessarily justified.

Some days, it just writes itself.

So I was in one of those neo-clinics that do drug testing today (Why? Use your imagination, it will probably be far more interesting…) and noted a poster that stated “We Do Immigration DNA Testing” with cheerful letters spelling out Homeland Security Approved! (I don’t know about you, but HSA anything makes me suspicious immediately. And no nothing to do with why I was in a drug testing lab. )
Evidently, DNA testing is used in immigration quite frequently – to ascertain that claimed members of families are who they say they are. I’m not sure how I feel about this. If this were being done to full citizens…..eh, yeah, hell on earth. So one generally files this under security and having *some* controls over who gets in and who doesn’t, given that there’s a cap on the number of immigrations into the country annually.
But it all goes down kind of bitter really.

Moving on…..

Really, you tell me internet – what the hell?
No, really, ex-wizard – actually no, I’m more prepared to believe that than I am the ex-HIV cured by the power of Christ. So…yeah. (And how does one become an “ex-”transsexual anyway? Do you go to a special school while they vatgrow you a new clone body? So then it’s like the Role playing game Paranoia, but with Jesus.)
Ex-Prisoner? (Yes, in the Village his name was Number 69 – which is trite but it’s the best I have.) Now married with a woman who had no uterus. HAD.

For the record, Life changing International ministries, at the above mentioned address, does in fact exist (at least, it does on the internet. The link is here if you choose to rubberneck.)
I’ve searched up and down on both their website and the whole wide world of Tubes and found precious little. Per their site, they are soon to celebrate their 5th anniversary…and yes, there will be a “Prophet” there – though he looks nothing like the former transgendered ex-practioner of the Dark Arts….and his name is Elisah Kwamena Boateng (which isn’t Isaac, no matter how many times you jam it through babelfish) and, also, he’s black. Unlike Isaac who looks white as the undriven snow.
Perhaps somewhat ironically, the theme for their fifth anniversary celebration is, in fact, “Total Freedom”.
The world has always been this weird a place I promise.

And another thing. I’m tired of getting emails from my straight friends telling me to vote No on prop 8. Do you realize who you’re emailing? Besides, I voted WEEKS ago so any power to compel my vote simply doesn’t exist.

Just briefly….

T’was out with the Darling Wife grabbing a few necessaries (Toothpaste and the like if you must know) – and, lo and behold, passing the books section of this retail venue, we see a pair of books, right along side one another, surrounded by Doctor Seuss and the like:
My Dad, John McCain
and
Barack.

Can I really be the only one who sees maybe somewhat of a problem with this? Very loyal party voters will no doubt stick this (well, likely one or the other, probably not both) down their kid’s backpack to get the indoctrination going early.
Sorry, to me, this is like those hate filled bible thumpers who make their six and seven year old kids stand out in the street for hours and hours with YES ON PROPOSITION 8* signs – the kids have no idea, but they are being used.
Really – I’m a believer in teaching our children to think for themselves not “Here think like me, I’m right and – insert sound of moronic buzzing -”

Of course, in finding these books to share I find that they are only two of about six or seven such books. I suppose I missed the PTA meeting titled “Propaganda – start early, start soon.”

* on the off chance that you don’t know this, Proposition 8 is a, well, proposition here in Cali that would alter the state constitution to redefine marriage as being between a man and a woman – in essence to get rid of homosexual marriage and put something in place to prevent it from becoming law again.

Dingleberries

Proposition 8 Where does the money come from?

Track who supports what

Bans in three states on Gay Marriage

Three lawsuits already contesting California same sex marriage ban

Price of crude oil falls for second consecutive day

GOP in tatters, seeking to regroup

Election Day

I think I shall have to negotiate with the Darling Wife to ensure that, come election day, we are amply stocked with wine and xanax* that the next 24 hours will be sufficiently hazy as to render me insensible.
Way I figure it, Election Day will bring one of three things.
1. An age in which, The Candidate will be unable to be questioned without invoking sharp reprisal. (A case could be made that that’s already occurred.)
I figure this to be the most likely. I harbor some vague notion that after election, Obama will reveal himself to be a) a fifth stage invid b) one of the Visitors who are here to help us (and take our water!) c) Jesus, in which case I am in serious trouble.
Each of which calls for progressively more booze. My liver may need tiny little CPR paddles for next Tuesday.
2. An assassination – the notion of a Biden presidency makes me want a bomb shelter, all Cold War style. Stat. And probably a Lloyd Bridges sized tank of Hippie Crack.
2a. That might just lead to riots in certain areas of the country methinks. In which case I should be of sufficiently cloudy judgement so as to not let ethics get in the way of self-preservation.
3. (In my estimation the least likely) a McCain victory. In which case, I’m going to need to be drunk.

Okay, I’ll admit, there’s a fourth, but that’s the same one that’s haunted me every election since, er, 1984**…that just shy of the election something will get blown up and martial law will be declared. (The fact that reality keeps moving closer to this paranoid notion? REASON TO DRINK.)

So, yes, it’s looking quite likely that next Tuesday I’m going to be drinking like Warren Ellis. The advantage here is that, having voted weeks ago, I can pretty much literally hole up in my third floor cave like the hermit from Led Zepplin IV (minus the star of david bit) and look down on the world as it unfolds. If you think my Election-Day-As-Zombie-Apocalypse attitude is out of line, just wait til next Tuesday. Voices will carry.

*blessedly, being insane, I have xanax in sufficient quantities for anything up to a Fortnight Apocalypse.

** Walter Mondale – Ronald Regan. What a pair o’ winners.

Dingleberries

Ack, I’ve fallen behind – real life (ha!) and a good serious dose of Northern California Allergy Season have conspired to make me slack like Bob.
Domestically (if you live in the US) ::
Transit cop may tell all in Sodomy charge
I love, just LOVE how it’s not rape, it’s sodomy. Really, the double standard is just….thrill-a-minute.

And Syria ::
US to close Embassy in Syria to the public

Thursday, the US is planning on closing their Embassy in Syria to the public due to “increased security risk”. This on the heels of an embassy spokesperson who said “”unforeseen events or circumstances may occur that could cause the U.S. Embassy in Damascus to close to the public for an unspecified period of time.“

The U.S. wouldn’t be planning on making any more cross-border raids from Iraq would it? Naaaaah.

Somewhat more topicly,
Syrians prtest US border incursion. No shit? Wouldn’t you? Now before you start cheering just remember pro democracy supporters exist underground in Syria.
(There’s a lot more on the subject here if you are so inclined. Just please please don’t forget that basic human rights of assembly and suchlike are NOT shared in most of the world.

That’s all I’ve got for the moment. News is kind of experiencing an eclipse from Next Tuesday passing in front of the sun like some giant old testament scare tactic …. and bluntly I feel like ass. I do have another two articles in the hopper which I’m going to try to get out before the Day of Fire comes upon us.
Still trying to figure what nature of boozahol would be most ….. Electoral.

Dingleberries

Firstly, you’re not going to want to download anything from this site – I hope you’ve got cookie blocking going: Syria expands troop deployment along border with Lebanon to stop smuggling

Dingleberries

Petraeus got promoted

Possible Syrian Complicity in US Raid

It’s also time for the latest installment of bullshit from the 2008 election.

I still won’t post any links to anything regarding the Yes on Prop 8 Nutjobs here in California. It’s not news. (Which is most of why I don’t spend a lot of time trashing McCain or Bible Action Barbie (now with Kung Fu Grip!) – I take it as lief that no one gives a shit. I certainly don’t.)

General who oversaw ‘tribunals’ at GitMo under investigation for “abuse of power.”
Ya think?

Liz Dole surprises millions by retaining the power of speech

Yet another lean one – it’s raining here and I’m in a good enough mood to disengage from all this nonsense.

And what to my wandering eyes do appear….

Stumping for McCain (I couldn’t make that term up if I tried. Shesh.)

Seriously, why hasn’t he chased a glass of whiskey with a bullet yet?
The scary part, the whiskey and revolvers part, is right here ::

I swear to …..

if I see that damn Obama video (from earlier in the spring) One. More. Time. heads are going to fucking roll.

Election Day 2008

9 am

CNN – per usual, they are trying to turn every dust mote into A SIGNIFICANT EVENT OF MONUMENTAL PORPORTIONS. Signal to Noise is falling rapidly. Not that it has far to fall.

Half an Hour Later….
Yeah, fuck it we need a story here. Um….. :: picks butt ::
That’s pretty much my read on CNN.

FOX – their headlines (which change every few minutes) would pretty much read “Shit, we’re fucked.” if you had the special sunglasses from They Live – mostly, it’s bitching – long lines, HIGH LIKELIHOOD OF VOTER FRAUD.
Basicly, a bunch of “filling our readers with bile and vitrol to make record breaking voter turn out look like a bad thing” – because to them, it is.

Half an Hour Later….
They’ve stopped trying to find the right spin. I suspect everyone’s hitting the coke early today. Find a way to spin it baby…..
Suffer.

MSNBC – kind of has assumed CNN’s old gig – of being up to the minute and informational. Which is fucked up because I’ve spent the last eight years throwing rocks at MSNBC for being, well, just as much of a wingnut as FAUX.
Growing up?
Nah. But at least they’re not blowing it with “Fuck You. We Win.” Unlike, say, almost every other“Liberal and proud of it” person on the Stephenstubes.

Half an Hour Later…..
Yeah, nevermind that shit. In FIVE HOURS AND 30 MINUTES they’ll have live coverage. I guess I’m supposed to care.

Al Jazeera and the BBC will likely keep me better informed than any of the above, per usual.

I haven’t broken open the Amaretto yet. OF course, no one’s screaming voter fraud yet either.
I am however listening to Bob Dylan, which is kind of the same thing.

Hearts and Minds

Our title comes from something LBJ said* – namely “the ultimate victory will depend on the hearts and minds of the people who actually live out there”. Of course he was referring to Vietnam, but I think it’s highly, HIGHLY appropriate to today’s election.

“Early Voting Turnout could Skew Election Returns” which is bad because not feeding your ADD ass is undemocratic
*sigh* That is, however, apparently, all the game they’ve got.

Gee, shucks.

Actually, they’re also trying this bone – which also pretty much reads Don’t Bother, it’ll suck. It’ll be inconvenient and slow, two things that are anathema to any American. (I hear voting also requires you to FUCKING READ but that could just be a rumor. I had the ghost of Che Guevara** read the voting form to me thanks but I understand that not everyone is so…..blessed.)

I think that it’s a triple blessing today, not having cable or otherwise the thing called television – if we possessed such a science fictional widget, I’d be glued to the ceiling right now, sucking on the fumes of raw politics.
As opposed to this, which is – to stretch an already threadbare analogy – a few ounces and a six of shitty American beer.

Geezus, must EVERY media outlet bitch and moan about the long lines? Fuck – long lines? Nothing makes me bloody happier. I welcome these long lines as would a binging coke addict.

FDR-Kennedy*** is going to clean up today. I’m hoping the secret service is staying frosty – because President Biden brings the slightest tinge of vomit to the back of my throat. Seriously – maybe more so than the idea of President McNugget. At least, with him, I’d know what to expect. More of the same – with a thin patina of “I’m a guy who will one day do a formal interview in a sweaty beater with chest hair sticking out” dolloped on top of that Four More Years shit sundae.
And President Palin? Please, do stay away from the blotter today. PLEASE.

Anyway, time for coffee.

Hearts and Minds
Go ahead and start scraping the resin, I’ll wait.

* Of course, this is the same guy who said “Don’t worry son. It’s my prerogative.” while pissing on the leg of the secret service agent being addressed. YMMV.

** Speaking of, did you know someone auctioned off his HAIR last year. Creepy. Also kind of disgusting.

*** also known as The One, and The Messiah, but not – so far as I know – known as Neo. Thankfully. Blessedly I will now suspend my urge to go into a diatribe about white voters, “liberal guilt” and the role of Morpheus as Magical Negro**** – I think we’ll all be happier this way.

**** Though if I may editorialize, I should say that it’s always been my contention that Morpheus, while fitting practically every single aspect of that particular bit of pigeonholing, rises above the material and is an excellent study in faith. Seriously, if you watch the matrix films from the standpoint of Morpheus on a journey as, essentially, a biblical prophet, it’s pretty interesting. Anyway, digression concluded.

A rather vulgar but sincere letter to the US Republican Party

The GOP – the future is there for you if you look up from your dick to see it
Inspired in large part by a conversation I had with a family member, via the net, this past weekend.
Right now, the GOP is at a cross roads. And like in the old stories (which aren’t of course true but they resonate in the psyche for various reasons) the devil is waiting for them. To lead into destruction or to teach a valuable lesson?
We’ll see which.
Right now, supposedly, the Republican Party is allegedly for smaller government, a conservative fiscal policy, and…
er, hey wait a minute. We’ve already hit a few land mines, haven’t we?
Right now, there isn’t a party that is actually advocating smaller government (and certainly not less intrusive – and No, Not Obama) and a conservative economic policy.

The GOP has been propagating the notion that they are conservatives when, in fact, they are not. Not since sometime prior to the Nixon administration has any GOP President or body of congressmen actually been for either of those things. That’s DECADES folks. Nixon finished the execution that FDR started, namely removing any actual solid standard by which our money was backed up with something tangible. Dumb. Triple dumb. (Yes, FDR, you know, the DEMOCRAT?) Since I’ve been alive and watching (say 1984) the Republican Party has meant the following to me
defense spending. Excessively. No matter what. Ideally without congressional oversight.
Multi trillion dollar deficit. It took a democrat to balance the bloody budget. Wankers. Regan, Bush, Bush – each racked up, on their watch, at least a trillion dollars. EACH. WTF? Yes, spending imaginary money that doesn’t exist is Perfectly Conservative, so long as it goes to missiles and shit, right?
The fight against communism*koff*terrorism. And supporting Israel. No matter what.
Being fucking married to -Socially- conservative right wing Fundamentalist Christian groups. Who are assholes, let’s just be honest here, mmkay? For money’s sake, I guess. But really, married. As in Ball and Fucking Chain.
By this point, the Godjobs pretty much dictate party policy. Why the fuck is that? I mean for shitssake, the VP nominee this year actually doesn’t think a sniper or bomber is a terrorist if they’re doing it to anyone in say fifty feet of a place that has any kind of family planning angle. (Of course, terrorism has always been a straw man for the US. We’ve been toppling other people’s countries, secretly, since the 50s. We find the dissatisfied, we train them, arm them, and pay for them. They topple the government, and become just as bad as those they overthrew, but Hey they’re In Our Back Pocket so it’s okay.)

Today, I think the GOP is finally going to get the good assfucking that it so desperately deserves. Maybe, just maybe, this could serve as a wake up call. Jettison the social fundie living in Victorian America nutjobs, flush the tired old men that aren’t doing you any favors and try a return to actual, genuine conservatism. Really.

A few questions.
1.Why does the GOP get so up in arms on the notion of “activist judges”? Is it a control thing? Moreover, do they really think that Chief Justices have just been magically agenda free since 1792? Seriously, since the 70s the GOP has done everything it possibly can to limit the powers of the judicial branch at the local and state level. Hmmmm…..but yet they’re “totally for state’s rights!” Hooey.
2.You guys are still using trickle down economics. Um….huh? (Oh wait, you’re still using it because people Still Buy That Line of Bullshit. Forget I asked.) By the way, please google “economic liberalism.” I’ll wait.
I saw you blush.
3.Environmental policy. What? You said what? STFU and let the scientists work that out, mmkay? Think tanks = bad.
4.Social Policies. Flush. No questions here. Just head scratching. A lot of head scratching.
5.Defense Spending. Please. Really. For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, can we pay our troops more, please? Because that’s more important than another wing of transforming stealth fighter/attack bomber/fusion/neutron/something patriotic/push-button-make-dead things that probably won’t work anyway.
6.Foreign Policy. Where DO you get the notion that if we force the rest of the world to be ‘democratic’ (i.e. like us) that this will benefit us? How will this reduce conflict? How will this benefit us economically? Prove that this is morally and ethically the proper course of action. With facts please. Like in a real debate. Not a political one.
Really, dude, right now you are THE Old Fat Christian-in-name White Male party. This makes you the devil. Oh, and all that stupid crap you do.
Ditch the above, and you’ll have me.
I’m waiting.

“Forecast is for bad craziness.”

Well congratulations donkey party. You achieved your goal – you now control the country (or at least, right now, it very much appears that way). Just a few reminders. I’m going to hold you to the same standard that I hold the Elephantine party. This means I still want out of Iraq, I still want the government out of my fucking bedroom. I still want smaller government. I’d like a decent fucking job.
Don’t give me rights – I already have rights thank you very much – just fucking acknowledge them. I do NOT want special treatment. Not for me, not for anyone.
An end to the oppression of dissent. Yes worldwide, everywhere where we have influence. An end to being the fucking fascist wackjob swaggering loud American that everyone thinks we are (and so far, they’re right). No more bailouts of greedy crooks in the name of “saving the economy”. Don’t mothball the space program. Don’t strip away what few freedoms we have left.
As for the rest of you, my loyally democratic family, friends, and neighbors. No, I will not shut up. I was told to shut up and not ruin the moment for everyone else in 2006. Yeah that worked out well. So while you are enjoying your self-congratulatory little victory party just remember, I had to live through eight years of the Bush administration too….where’s my fucking parade? Take a little criticism, take it on the chin. Truth is truth.
The next two months should be interesting. I expect the GOP and BushCo to try to mine the harbor before the new administration can take possession; we’ll see how they manage to fuck things up worse than they already are. I expect two months of unceasing self-congratulatory wank from the democrats – just like late 2006. And yes I expect to hold them to whatever they promise. Campaign promises time is over.
Change? We’ll see. Ask me again in a year. I hope the lot of you are right.
If I may dip into a self-referential well for a moment, I take as my text PiL. “This is what you want. This is what you get.”

“If you’re against same sex marriage but you laugh your ass off to Will & Grace, FUCK YOU. You are a hypocrite, and you’re not allowed to pick and choose what you like from our culture, and leave behind the burden of inequality. That is just like the fifties, when white people stole rock and roll from black people. I love that song but please don’t use that drinking fountain.”
- Margaret Cho, Assassin

In other news, I would pay good money (mine, yours, anyone’s) to have box seats at the side of the pirrhana tank that is Republican infighting right now.

DARPABerries

If you can’t take the heat stay out of the kitchen. Trite but true.

Much more importantly, the New York Times is reporting the existence of a classified order signed by Donald Rumsfeld in the Spring of 2004 – giving the specops forces of this country “new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States.”

Oh, and in “Gee, we’re living in the 21st century news” – the way is clear for human trials to begin on a potential anagathic.

Do more, do it soon, do it right

Obama team reviewing Bush orders across the board

This, initially made me very happy to hear. Especially if it goes anywhere. Now. Go read that. The whole of it. Then come back, okay, I’ll wait.

Done? Good.

Not a damn thing about closing GitMo, the “patriot” act, wire tapping, or anything like it. You’d think, if it were being considered, that’s the sort of thing that would make the news, neh?
GRRRRRRRRR

Edit There that’s better.

Have a link

No, really, right now, just go read today’s You are dumb. Even if he is really really happy about a democratic president.

How is it already Friday again?

Bailout 2 Democrat Bugaloo …. and just like the first Bailout movie, I have to ask….”why?”

1 in 7 homes in Santa Clara county lose value greater than their mortgages

Net spying firm and ISPs sued over ad system

Courtesy of my lovely wife, Turning Tequilla into Diamonds

Media bias? Surely not………. (Warning :: NYTimes link, will have to log in to see it.)

UN stops delivering food to Palestinian refugees after being constantly blocked by Israeli blockade. Again, why the fuck are we letting Israel get away with this? Ah, yeah, they’re our “allies.”
** rolleyes **

US continues illegal warfare killing ten. But a CIA head claims Queda is extending its reach. Well of course it is. After eight years of throwing our dick where it doesn’t belong we’ve alienated literally millions of people around the world (not including those here)…driving some of them to the reach of extremist groups. Dumbass.

Protests and boycotts erupt in wake of Prop 8 passage
To those of you doing anti-Prop 8 things this weekend, especially those of you out of state….
WHERE WAS ALL THIS OUTRAGE BEFORE NOVEMBER 4??????

In the lighter side of the news ::

Astronomers successfully photograph planets in other star systems.

Doctors in Berlin claim to have cured AIDS patient with elaborate procedure. Which is interesting as this is the third time in my adult life I’ve heard stories of a procedure similar to this one being successful. Normally the stories vanish into the media backwash by now. This one just keeps grabbing more traction.

This has been a real long week (um, it’s Friday?) and I’m running behind on practically everything. I’ll get to your comments though. Promise.

Can’t Be Bothered to Make a Real Post Today

Dingleberries

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – At least 11 people were killed early yesterday, including six foreign fighters, in a suspected U.S. missile strike on Pakistan’s troubled border region of North Waziristan, a security official and witness said.

So…five civilian deaths are acceptable? Oh wait, that’s right, that’s five civilian deaths in a country that
a) we have not declared war on
b) have intimidated and strong armed into allowing us access to their country as a staging ground to invade another country we’ve not declared war on.
c) No, really, FIVE CIVILIAN DEATHS

Okay, yeah, sure, right, whatever. Maybe they weren’t civilians. You know what? I don’t know if they were or not. Neither do you. We will NEVER know honestly – the media is incapable of reporting this objectively. Regardless….read the article. We’re firing missiles – MISSILES – at HOUSES in VILLAGES.

I swear, I hear one more of these milquetoast Obama supporters who think the world was destroyed and recreated in perfect hope and harmony ….. I may just have to squeeze into a wetsuit and go supervillain. It’s Still Happening.

Moving on….

Someone goes postal – or HEY I used to live there.

the Secret Service’s directed energy weapons

Hooray for our signs

No really HOORAY for our signs.

Fine, it’s a culture war. Start fighting.

Having to face the people you oppress everyday – can’t say I have much issue with this. The graffitti and the possible mailings of white powder are a bit much (not to mention stupid).

Iraq cabinet backs pact giving US troops three years
Gee, didn’t take us long to strong-arm that did it? Of course, I do note that 2011 – gee, right before the next Presidential election year. Convenient that.

On a wholly personal note, it looks like I’m getting sick. If I disappear for a few days, that’s likely what it is. Or the Men in Black. Your pick.

Still not feeling well today, so all you get is dingleberries

Federal bailout of big three american automakers looms
So…why? If you don’t let companies fail they will never succeed.

COWARDS.

Remember that golden magical restoration of the economy that many for some reason seemed to think happened a few weeks ago?
Key market indicators in the US fall to record lows.

Another perspective Consumer prices drop 1% worst on record. Isn’t that more engaging?

Yet ANOTHER US military strike in Pakistan. WTF????

This just in….
Gaza shut to fuel and journalists

Israel gives the finger to international requests to ease blockade

Interesting observation from an unlikely source

From Salon.com
The problem with the GOP is that it isn’t conservative enough.

From the article:
Republicans will start out skeptical of most of what comes out of the Obama White House, and this time, it won’t be Boehner’s job to sell them on it. When Bush was in charge, by contrast, that task fell to him — look at the GOP revolt over the Wall Street bailout to see how thankless that task often was. The party will move even further to the right, and a larger Democratic majority might not need GOP votes on as many issues as they did the last two years. If conservatives are right about what the country really wants — limited government, lower taxes, and continued deregulation — their new philosophy could be the path back to Republican power. If not, they might have to get used to being in the minority for a long time.

Which is (or could be, should this actually come to pass) great – but until and unless they divorce themselves from the nutzowackjob contingent that embodies the “neoconservative” movement, no, uh-uh, forget it.

Musings on the intersection of Queerness, Race, and Culture

It has been a really really wretched week. I’m behind of bloody everything. Nonetheless, this one just kind of wrote itself.

(A bit of background – if you’ve not read this you might not get the full context for what follows. Or maybe you will. Hard to say.)

Colby Cash Minorities at war on Obamalands western shore

What? We’re all supposed to get along because we’re each (in our own, generally different ways) oppressed by a majority of Upper and Middle Class Straight White Men? What world are you living in? This isn’t anything new. One of the great powers of any oppressive group is the ability to keep it’s dissidents seperate and squabbling – that makes it difficult for real coalitions to form.
But for coalitions to form, those involved have to want to. Wishing isn’t going to make it so. There isn’t some secret army of love just waiting for the time to strike. Isn’t isn’t isn’t.

the Sad state of gay race relations
How about the sad state of human relations, period?

Dan Savage calls the Elderly on their general prop 8 vote.
*sigh* Look, if you’re opposed to it, then yeah, we’re going to be against you. It’s just that simple. What colour you are, what religion you do or do not practice, none of that should matter. For activists (real ones, not just those who blog about ‘activism’) it’s not as simple as that. If you want to actively change people’s mind about something, be it this or any other thing, you have to
a) identify who you want to change
b) target the identified
c) and by word and by deed convince them

Newsflash – this isn’t going to always work. People, lots of people, don’t like changing their minds. Lots of people don’t like changing their minds on things they consider fundamental (which is to say things that, in their experience and worldview, they’ve never had to question). Yes ignorance is a large part of the equation, but educating people about the issues of this or any other minority group will only go so far.

We want full civil rights.
Well no shit. I think it only needs to be said that everyone wants to be treated equally, with respect and decency. A worthy goal, among the worthiest of goals. (A pity then that human nature is involved. This isn’t a struggle that’s just going to fix itself one day. Homo sapiens and it’s predecessors have always regarded those that are different as potentially threatening or at least something fearful. That’s human nature. You’re not going to fix it so stop trying. Legislation is not going to undo upwards of a million years of primate evolution. It just isn’t.)

Everyone does, of course, deserve fair treatment, with the same rights as everyone else. This is a statement of ethics, specifically mine, but I think a lot of you agree. (NOT EVERYONE FEELS THAT WAY. The idea that everyone is worth the same as human beings is not universal.)

A great many people I know seem to hold the opinion that, eventually, some day, TBLG people will just be accepted, and a great many of them site the civil rights struggles (esp. of the 1960s) as an example.
1. Such a victory is by no means a forgone conclusion. Sorry, but it isn’t. The notion of a “culture war” really isn’t just a bunch of hot air expelled by flatulent neo-cons, there really are groups (multiple, Not Just Two of Them) in this country that are, in many ways, diametrically opposed to one another, in terms of goals, rationale, and – at heart – basic methodologies of thinking. Such a thing is never forgone.
And it isn’t as simple as GOP-Democrat. Period.
2. If you hadn’t noticed, the civil rights struggle isn’t over. Far from it. We’ve come a LOOOONG way, but seldom as far as many (generally white) people think we have.

Black Friday cometh….or would that be Gray Friday?

Weird. But weird in a 1959 – 1978 secret police fascism sort of way. Also, the first I’ve heard of this. Personally, I think it reeks of “Hey, some of you might be getting programming FOR FREE, we can’t have that!” but whatever…..
(The above pro’lly makes no sense to those of you outside the U.S. It barely makes sense to those of us inside said country.)

Whoop – divide and conquer baby.

Bloomberg reports US Durable Orders Fall Twice as Much as Forecast in October

WSJ reports faltering sales demand for expensive goods but moreover claim another record breaking period for increased jobless claims.

Yup, we’re fucked

None of them, NOT A ONE, of the big news outlets is even touching the white elephant in the room right now – which is funny because they *do* mention black friday but nothing else.
Surprised?

the Second US Court of appeals rules that no court order is required to spy on americans living overseas

AAAAAAH lest I or anyone forget that we have a gibbering chimp in the white house, tugging on himself and making up some of the most far removed from reality shit……ah never mind, just ARGH.

CONSUME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The New York Times reports employee trampled to death by consumers.

The throng of Wal-Mart shoppers had been building all night, filling sidewalks and stretching across a vast parking lot at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, N.Y. At 3:30 a.m., the Nassau County police had to be called in for crowd control, and an officer with a bullhorn pleaded for order.
Tension grew as the 5 a.m. opening neared. Someone taped up a crude poster: “Blitz Line Starts Here.”

By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.
Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him. Others who had stood alongside Mr. Damour trying to hold the doors were also hurled back and run over, witnesses said.
(Story continues here.)

I really am ashamed to be a citizen of the same culture-entity / nation-state as these maggots. A throng of people beating down the gates to……………shop at wal-mart?
Consumers. CONSUME. GOD I hate this country sometimes.

Oh, and the national bureau of economic research is fired. Gee, thanks for that insightful revelation there ya jackasses……

Feeling better (finally) than I did last week (or most of the week after that) but still not quite 100%. I should have time this week to catch up. No really.

Presidental Comings and Goings

From here

President Elect Obama has named his national security team. As many predicted, Hilary Clinton has been nominated as Secretary of State.
The rest of the team :
keeping Robert M. Gates, the current defense secretary, for whatever reason
Gen. James L. Jones will be national security adviser (NATO experience, which was expected to go to Dennis Blair and his 32 years of Naval intelligence.)
Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona homeland security chief (Gee, I guess disbanding Homeland SSecurity is right out Mr. President Elect? Fucker.)
Eric Holder Attorney general (former deputy AG during the Reno era)
Susan Rice ambassador to the United Nations (and until recently, his foreign policy advisor).

Oh, and Billy boy spoke.

“As an American, I am thankful that President-elect Barack Obama has asked Hillary to be Secretary of State and that she has accepted. As her husband, I am deeply proud.
She is the right person for the job of helping to restore America’s image abroad, end the war in Iraq, advance peace and increase our security, by building a future for our children with more partners and fewer adversaries, one of shared responsibilities and opportunities.
She has already earned the respect of foreign leaders and diplomats through her work to promote human rights and the empowerment of women through access to education, healthcare and economic opportunity. And Americans know, from her leadership in the Senate on national security, that she will always put the security, values and the interests of our people first.
In her service to the people of New York and our nation, Hillary has demonstrated the knowledge, passion, resilience, and capacity to learn that our country needs at this critical time. She loves being a Senator from New York, but as she has in all the thirty-seven years I’ve known her, she answered the call to serve. I commend President-Elect Obama for asking her to be a part of a great national security team. America will be well-served.”

STFU Bill, you’re not President anymore. You don’t get to-
oh wait.
Bill Clinton mentioned for wife’s senate seat.

Obama has released names of donors for the change over here
(Should I just back the list up to my hard drive now?)

The (NOT making this name up) Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism (which wasn’t founded until last year) justifies it’s no doubt expensive congressional budget by saying scary things that contain no actual new data.
Fear mongering. It’s what’s for dinner.

I wish I had more to say about the situation in India, but after a certain point, it becomes difficult to filter out what actually happened v. what four or five utterly different news agencies says happened.

On the lighter side……
So I’m reading my blogs and I come across this little gem ::
George Bush to receive commendation for efforts to fight AIDS

Relax, the world hasn’t gone any more insane. It’s an award from Rick Warren – whom Bushie frequently cites in his examples of “faith based initiatives”. Like this one.
Bush hailing the power to quit controlled substances. Funny.

Two guys pulling each other off in the bathroom. Just like Larry Craig. Nothing to see here. Move along. Also, George Bush is a mental midget. Which I’ve always wanted to say.

Just a thought…..

So…if gay marriage is not valid, does that mean that someone who is married can get domestic partner benefits with someone else…without it being (legal) bigamy I mean?
Interesting activist thought there…..

Dingleberries

EFF and Bush show down

Zimbabwe declares cholera national emergency

AT&T cutting 4% of workforce

Another reason the US auto industry doesn’t need a bailout….besides you know, it going to the executives, that in a capitalist system businesses need to be able to rise (and fall) on their own for the market to remain competitive, and mismanagement shouldn’t be rewarded.

It’s not even Seven a.m. yet….

I’ve already seen the best thing on the internet today.
And I’m not sure I’d pick “spiritual emptiness” as a global problem in need of alleviation. You can take my spiritual emptiness when you pry it from my cold, dead soul, motherfuckers.
Damn. That sweetens my coffee.

Ah hell…..

U.S. intelligence agencies believe former Pakistani Army officers and its intelligence agency helped the Mumbai attackers, a former Pentagon official claims

On the plus side, this is U.S. Intelligence*, so it’s accuracy is somewhat suspect (to put it very very mildly).

* who brought us such classic hits as “Weapons of Mass Destruction and Al-Queda in Iraq”, “Iran-Contra”, and of course “training Afghani freedom fighters to fight the Evil Communists.” Because all of those worked out so very bloody well.

Monday dingleberries

My coffee maker smells like ozone and burning plastic.
Unless I’ve finally gotten the right blend of overkill, coffee, and insanity to make a Reanimation Brew, I’m going to have to file this under Not Good.

Why yes Virginia, the Catholic church really does think you are a filthy dyke who is going to hell why do you ask?
No really, why do you ask?

Here’s a nifty: the total number of votes (by party) since 1932. Yes, since Hoover. Note the utter lack of distance between the two unhealthy figures. Seriously, in 76 years, less than 100,000 votes different between the only two parties extant throughout the period specified.

Taxman faces ethics inquires. Bless my beautiful blue bonnet and call me surprised and outraged. And while you’re at it, know that while that is news, the way I heard about it made me stupid kinds of happy. Yay for ethical consistency.

Over the weekend, A chicago factory was occupied by those about to be laid off. And then you click the link and your notion of objectivity goes out the window because of the word socialism. *shakes head*

AS of this morning, it continues.

India refusing to take bait. I’d give a lot to know what’s really occurring in the halls of power, both there and in Pakistan. Though I doubt that’d be the full story…..

And finally, the dream ticket for the mnemonicly challenged Romney//Palin 2012. I suppose it depends on how many baby boomers are left in ’12. Why? TV.
You know, I don’t think anyone has ever properly recognized the immense cultural impact that television has had on American culture (other western countries also I expect but America is much younger and so things have less inertia here).
In particular, the widespread sudden availability for the first time in human history the ability to transmit information in a non-static visual medium, right into your home, with live broadcasting (not a film or newsreel that was made weeks or months before) changed things. In particular, I think it established a cultural milestone that, as a people, we have yet to get over.
It is as if the US’ collective memory hit reset sometime between 1950 – 1955 because, really, the conservative elements of our culture can’t seem to remember back further than that. When people talk about things “the way they used to be” they’re really talking about some imaginary place where we’re still in the 1950s. The archetypes and giant looming cultural shadows of that time STILL permeate the public consciousness sixty years later….in an age of nearly limitless information (for those who can afford it).
Anyway, TV gives a culture ADD. Moving on.

Berries of Dingle

In Chicago it’s just business as usual. Nice to see that Second City hasn’t lost it’s history of full and total fucking corruption.

CNN Money blathers about three growing industries – for the record they are education (heh), health care (double heh), and accounting (I suppose we had to get a PVC* in there somewhere).

Why Greece’s Prime Minister still has job security

India calls on UN to ban charity it claims is a front for terrorism
Something I can’t get over is how these attacks occurred so soon after that damn report** was issued naming the world superpowers ascendant to be India and China c. 2025 – but that’s just my brain unable to let go of old data.
Still, in some respects, India’s reaction to all this is ….. kind of familiar don’t you think?

* Privileged Victimized Conservative – I’d mention white but I said “Conservative”

** the country really should have learned not to listen to paid think tanks you know?

Fish day dingleberries

Greek riots continue for seventh day

Most embarrassing re-elected members of congress 2008 edition. No real surprises here but it’s nice to know someone is keeping track of this.

Senate backs off from auto bailout and thank bog for it. Mind, I think they were more interested in “not giving power to them there socialists” (what you and I call unions…) than in not rewarding the white collar fuckos busy lining their golden parachutes, but that’s probably just me.
Again I’ll say it – if a company performs badly, if they fuck their employees, continue releasing substandard product, and remain behind the times they deserve to be eliminated – that’s basic capitalism. A free market isn’t free with eight billion controls in it.
Bailing out every greedy fatcat will not save the economy, it just puts it on life support. All of these stimulus packages only delay the inevitable, which is (at least in part) how we wound up where we are today.
Besides, if you don’t punish people who bring us things like the Subprime lending catastrophe, then there is no incentive for people not to do the same or similar in future.

Oh, and the former chairman of NASDAQ? Busted for securities fraud. Fucker.

a bad idea begins spiraling into a worse idea

Oil prices continue to drop – I believe the last time they were this low was sometime early in the Regan era. I guess it’s morning in America again.

and once again a plague leads to more deaths than it should because people are stupid and refuse responsibility even as they place blame – The way our species behaves in times of pestilence is pretty much proof that we’re doomed.

More from the useless third of the population*

Of all the reasons people gave for opposing the latest automotive bailout bill, the dumbest came from an aviation-industry trade group that said the legislation “sets a bad precedent” by requiring the Big Three to — gasp! — fly commercial Click to read the bilious remainder.

* thanks to Douglas Adams, somewhat distorted.

Catholicism WOW

The Vatican released a striking bioethics document today that condemns not only embryonic stem cell research, human-animal hybrids, and human cloning, but also the commonplace practice of in vitro fertilization that many couples depend on to have children. click link to read the full article.

And this one I somehow missed the first time…..Pope Benedict backs beatification of Nazi era Pope Pius XII
Um, WHAT? How, precisely, please heroic is hiding behind your station and influence and going with the flow? *sigh* But this is the First Cathedral of Jesus Said Breed bitches! so, really, I have no business being surprised.

Midnight Dingleberries

Greek unrest sparks fears of similar outbreaks across Europe

…while Reuters plays it down. Interesting.

Salon also tries to make the auto industry bailout about the Unions (and remember, it’s not like I’m anti-union. For shits’ sake, I’m a Marxist)

And the GOP absolutely buys into the Dems straw man argument.

Really, watching the so-called big two go at it? It’s like watching kids squabble in kindergarten.

Just to muddy the waters further, the UAW blames the GOP for scuttling the bailout.
:: head scratch ::
Okay, no, I’m not as naive as all that – the UAW is worried about their industry going belly up and suddenly, no business = no union, no union = no job. I get that. Doesn’t mean the companies should be any more entitled to special treatment. Sorry. File under “more partisan political bullshit.”
(Because really that’s what you came here for, to see me dismiss this nonsense with a wave of four letter invective. Admit it.)

This article, however, makes me happy. Mostly the one bit. “…the political nature of the House and Senate, which have just concluded a typically unimpressive year.” You can say THAT again. Honestly though the whole article is fresh and very very true.

Confused

Where does this notion come from that the auto industry bailout will somehow affect the unions? Please someone explain to me how any of that money will go to anyone except loser corporate fatcats? With short words of a few syllables and maybe a chart or two?

It seems like every. single. liberal blogger is trying So Very Hard to make this about the unions. How does throwing money at badly run businesses relate to Unions? As far as I can see – the only correlation is that the badly run businesses in question have a unionized workforce. That’s it.
Does a company deserve to fail if it has a union to answer to? Why wouldn’t it? Does having a labor union in it’s employee pool make the company somehow special or better? I don’t think so.

Dingledangleberries

“Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
- Frederich Douglass

Aie. This post has been sitting here undone for days now. Not good. Let’s go ’round the world shall we?

Calm returns to Athens after riots
Or, y’know, not.

:: who stands the most to gain from misinformation? ::

(No, really, if you know, tell me. I’d like to.)
On a wholly unrelated note (and this is from a few bits ago) if you haven’t heard, Sonny Von Bulow finally died after 28 years in coma.

Climate change movement faces tough year
Can I say that I’ve never once heard it called the “climate change movement” or (worse yet) the “War on Climate Change” (Which sounds entirely too much like the War on Terror for me to take at all seriously.)

Erik Prince can can eat the peanuts in my shit – and I expect I’ll get (legally! It’s not January yet….) shot at for that. While you’re still coughing up that McMuffin, go read this happy crappy from the Army Times.
While you’re retching THAT up, here’s something that I was wondering the other day – which state is more corrupt, Illinois or Louisiana?

Thanks to MojoBlog, a new study shows what we’ve already known – Americans are stupid clods who need their head examined………er, I mean that the US has a rather different view of things military re: the US than, er, ANYONE ELSE ON EARTH.

Finally, the yucks just keep on coming. Bush still doesn’t get it. No shit. The last thing he got was, um, some nose candy, pro’lly about five minutes ago.

Invective engine low on fuel. More later when it’s less six o’clocky.

This just in…..

Much like his predecessor, apparently President elect Obama is sucking the glass dick.
WTF?

A berry berry dingle

From the Bear Flag Republic
California in fiscal emergency, governator threatens layoffs
Mind, his office has been claiming fiscal emergency since, oh, the election.
California unemployment rate third highest in the country
State AG Brown asks Cali supreme court to overturn prop 8

Elsewhere…..
the RIAA claims that it’s going to stop prosecuting internet users who steal music And I’ll believe that when I see it.

Ever in the interests of big business, Bushco pushes through auto bailout to a lackluster response (Again, why *does* the dow drop every time government steps in to “help” hm?)

More Bushco firebombing at the last minute – continuing to erode reason by instituting this stupid “conscience” rule so fundienauts can continue to sail the seas of unreason while working for hospitals, pharmacies, and other occupations where RATIONALITY should be the rule of the day….

Monday morning Dingleberries

Tis the Season….
renewed US missile strikes in Pakistan
I expect another illegal raid on Syria within the next ten days…..

See you later alligator – if only I could make boots from your skin…

Caroline Kennedy? Well, at least she’d be an improvement over Hilary.

and Doom and Gloom….
US Stocks still in decline

Manufacturers cut jobs and pay amidst downturn (“Downturn?”)

Hilary absorbs 13 million campaign loan

And just to rub salt int he wound Infant births propel Utahs growth to top in nation and I’m sure they all did it in the missionary position and absolutely no one enjoyed it. With the funny undies. ** roll eyes **

Dingleberries

Clinton Power Grab already in progress

Gay activists woken up with cold glass of water in their face

Housing prices collapsing to near depression levels

Any comment I apply to this one would get me branded anti-Catholic – as though I’m “for” any religion…..What really kills me, is the first article I saw on this, was this piece of apologist trype for the Pope.
Really, we’re well out of the dark ages, can’t we just start ignoring this guy now? What use or value to the world does the title of Pope have or is he just a Faith Based Celebrity? (Not. One. Crack. about the gucci shoes. Promise.)
Yet another “religious” body attempting to parley influence into a foreign country (yes, Utah and California are different countries. Test me on this.) with “Scary Old Man in the Sky” whinging.

And finally…
Wired publishes it’s 2008 Foot in mouth awards…and it irritates me. Two points in particular:
1. “Well, I don’t think John McCain could run a major corporation, I don’t think Barack Obama could run a major corporation, I don’t think Joe Biden could run a major corporation,” Fiorina told CNN as a way of backing up her belief that Sarah Palin wouldn’t have been good at running HP.
The only problem was that Fiorina was one of the most prominent McCain campaign advisers and surrogates.

So what’s the issue? A campaign staffer having the *GASP* audacity to speak her mind. The Horror!

2. Obama did manage to taste the leather of his own shoes, however, thanks to Mayhill Fowler, an undercover blogger for The Huffington Post who famously secretly taped him explaining Middle America bitterness to San Francisco donors.

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

The candidate Speaking His Mind? Without a cavalcade of yes-men and -women censoring and sanitizing everything he says? Oh NOES!!!!!

Doomberries

Unemployment findings hit 26 year High

stocks quietly drifting higher

and the capper

the President elect likely to let wealthy tax cuts stand til 2011.
Fucking bastard.
*listens to the whistling wind of liberal hopes evaporating*

I suppose that could be construed as my “I told you so.” Ah well.
Merry Christmas.

Just one link. Funny.

Will the Feds bust Santa Claus?
This went out to members of the Libertarian Party mailing list – comedy gold!

Dingleberries – or – how much of east/central asia could go tits up in 24 hours

Pakistan shifts troops to Indian border
The good news here is that India and Pakistan have done this dance many, many, many times before. The bad news?
Pakistan has cancelled leave for members of its military due to fears of a confrontation with India following last month’s Mumbai attacks.
I’m hoping it’s just posturing, but it is starting to look like a shooting war might come out of this. Hope not. (and who *were* those terrorists?)

And two (rather highly questionable) sources for news (Actually the same highly questionable source in both cases but whatever…)
Hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis are expected to flock to the tomb of Benazir Bhutto on Saturday to honor their former prime minister, one year after her assassination in a suicide attack.
Sorry, I gotta wonder – did we kill her?
Two Palestinian girls killed..by Palestinian gunmen
Now, combine with this. Season to taste.
The potential for a total bloodbath…high.

All the blues that’s fit to print

From UPI :: India explains moving troops to border.

Massive Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

Some of the world’s reactions

Another interpretation

And yet a third
However, I just don’t buy this “Hammas was unprepared” nonsense. Unprepared? No. Prepared to maximize the damage to their own to manipulate public opinion? Yes. Of course, that’s what all of this is about – manipulation of public opinion – Hammas playing the victim even though they’ve been throwing volleys of rocket attacks et. al. … and Israel trying to “look tough on terrorism.”
Fucking idiots the lot of them.
Israel gets a lot of shit in this blog from me, largely because I think the Israeli government continues to follow a policy of being a bigger more ruthless thug than whomever they are dealing with (or think they are dealing with)…but neither side is unblemished in this matter. Who’s fault is it? Right now it doesn’t matter. Blame only matters when you’ve nothing else to discuss……

…and then there’s this. UGH.

Happy arbitrary time period

Hilary Faye: I told you! How great is Jesus?
Cassandra: Yeah, about that…I’ve decided to devote my life to Satan, instead. But thanks!

Saved! is a great movie. No reason, just felt the need to share the love. Call it unpaid product placement.

Bush, Olmert have no timetable for Gaza crisis end – why would he care? Them there Ay-Rabs aren’t people you know……
Meanwhile, President Elect Obama remains silent on the matter. Typical.
Also typical? Israel rejects Gaza truce call, mobilizes troops.

People shoot up a Dallas head shop – baffling. Guessing it was a robbery.
Also from Faux news –
Woman Dies After 16-Story Fall From Hotel Balcony – just think someone was PAID to write that headline. Mouth breathing fuckos…… (I should think that had the woman fell and lived, THAT would have been a dynamite headline. No, instead we get “Hey, Gravity Works.” Thanks guys.) Also in the blatantly obvious department: Study finds Virginity Pledges don’t work
NO SHIT
Seriously, anyone surprised needs to just stop reading this blog right now and use the Eve of 2009 to take up, I dunno, a coke habit or something. Something Darwinian like that…..

This always makes me sad – Lawsuit seeks to take ‘so help me God’ out of the inauguration. To my fellow non-believers :: You’re doing it wrong.

Ukrainean – Russian gas talks fail. Oops. I guess central asia just isn’t tense enough right now. Let’s up the tension, neh?

Media conglomerates retain ability for greedy amounts of stupid or would that be stupid amounts of greedy?

Users baffled as Zune MP3 players all mysteriously lock up. It wasn’t me I swear.

And finally, further proof in the obvious superiority of straight monogamous committed marriage And Funny!

More Good News…..

and so the two asian crises begin to overlap

Muslims taken off plane…for some reason Apparently something they said. Or maybe they just didn’t want to sit in the back. There are precedents.

Bush still stupid – let’s assign blame, because that matters!

If you somehow haven’t heard, Israel moved into Gaza with ground forces and attack helicopters last night. Good hustle you dumbasses.

Israel lets some foreigners leave Gaza region because, of course, people from other countries are more valuable as people than them Ay-Rabs.
Really, it’s like Bush is narrating the Golden Big Book of Genocide.
More here
BBC News pictures

Gloomy Sunday

Richardson withdraws from Obama’s cabinet – one does wonder why. All of it very surprising behavior for someone who once sought the Presidential seat.

Israel tightens grip and much like the Bush Administration, only counts Israeli lives lost among the dead. As in any war zone, the Noncombatants are the ones who suffer.

Suicide bomber takes out 38 in Baghdad – but hey, Cheney says we are close to achieving our objectives in Iraq. What, shilling the American people? Mission accomplished.
The aforementioned suicide bomber was a woman, which while not unprecedented, is rare.

Bush senior would like to see Jeb Bush in the White House. I’m not sure which dominates more, the urge to kill, stomp, and trample everyone involved in that statement….or the fact that it’s HIGHLY doubtful he could do as bad or worse a job than his brother.
Just say hellfuckno.

Russians raise Ukrainean gas bill because, you know, they can.

It is all about Asia today.

Croatia’s Russian gas imports cut by 18 percent
India turns over alleged evidence of Mumbai-gunmen’s Pakistani ties -
which I’m sure will lead to more sabre rattling.
Israel hellbent on exterminating Hamas and that is like the most understated headline I’ve yet seen in relation to this. Casualties remain on the rise and I tell you, look at the Gaza strip. You are now looking at the next 25 – 30 years of Arab-Israeli conflict.

and a bit from Europe – Extremist group in Greece attacks police. I’m sure at least one blog I read (with a Greek columnist) would swear up and down that “the revolution in Greece goes on.” My own take is that certain groups in Greece recognize the benefit their causes receive from a state of such tension. Which is pretty shitty.

And domestically,
at least he’s not pro-torture – Obama staff names new CIA director. For the record, he would be reporting to Dennis Blair who was also named today.

Spin, spin, spin

Ukranian-Russian gas talks to restart Thursday – makes since, especially as the Russian natural gas supply to Europe dwindles.

Israeli troops deepen push into Gaza, specifically moving into the southern Gaza strip – including a strike on a school that killed 40, which I’m going to just assume Israel is going to blame on the Palestinians for putting their citizenry in harms way or something. Because those citizens have so many places they can go. As long as they’re in Gaza.

Oh, wait, Israel is claiming the school shot at them first. Uh-huh.

And the saber-rattling continues…
India’s Prime Minister accuses Pakistan of backing terror attacks. For more on the Pakistani response to this, read here. I love how the media is increasingly going with the official (Indian) word that Pakistani militants were responsible for the Mumbai terror attacks….that’s almost too neat for me to accept. Of potentially greater interest though is this: what if Pakistan *did* carry out terrorist acts in India? What, if anything, will the new administration do about this…as that would pretty much make Pakistan, you know, a Terrorist Country tm.
(Honestly, should that come to pass my expectation is that Washington will do nothing. The U.S. has never been a bastion of ideological consistency.)

Meanwhile not terribly far south, gunmen raid tv station in Sri Lanka

US Retail sales continue to fall.

And to go out on a better note, a letter to President Elect Obama.

Found news

This man sits in congress. Yes, the national one. He controls laws over you, your body, your children, and other such timely and important things. Really.

Welcome to Arkansas

The escalation has begun in northern Israel. Likely the PFLP from the look of it. Israel fires on UN relief agency convoy.
Red Cross reports pretty grisly findings in Gaza – which is pretty much what happens in a war zone.

Obama warns of long recession if $800 billion aid package delayed – I’m sorry, you mean that recession we’ve been in for over a year?

US envoy in India to douse tension. Yeah, I’m sure it’ll go over swimmingly.

Europe curbing gas usage, Germany meeting demand – top Ukrainian and Russian gas executives meet while now 18 countries are affected.

Payrolls – biggest drop since 1945

Industrial output falling across Europe

Oakland unrest updates here, here and here (if you only read one link, read the last one. It’s poignant.)

San Jose city recycling hauler clearly losing VAST amounts of money to local scavengers – and I gotta say, I love the use of the term scavengers here.
You can tell I’m rolling my eyes, right?

EU Brokering deal on Russian gas

call for truce in Gaza met with gunfire – expectations are for the violence to continue at present levels.

Pakistan ‘irked’ by double standard on Gaza…no matter how badly that makes their government look.

Homeland security has plan if drug violence spills across Texas border – and yes, it involves the military.

Midnight

Russia and the EU sign gas accord

Hezbollah warns Israel against, essentially, starting shit – it’s amazing to me how frequently Mid-East politics remind me of High School.

Egypt playing peacemaker again, gets lip service agreement from Israel (AT least someone is making the effort…) while continuing to bomb Gaza into the stone age.
Interestingly, Israel rejects notion of international coalition, in lieu of Egypt specifically having Gaza border role. What brand of crack are they smoking? Just because Egypt is the one Mid-Eastern country they haven’t totally honked off (Well, in recent memory, somehow) they’re only going to deal with them? Israel is acting like it wants to join the Witness Protection Program.
The world doesn’t work that way……

I’ll confess, when I read Dozens dead from militants’ attack in Pakistan my first thought was “ah, we Americans rolled in and bombed another ‘terrorist camp’ did we?

And in the embarrassing celebrity department, Prince Henry pretty much a prat. And George “Curious” Bush recently claimed to have protested a planned Israeli strike on Iran – dude, SHUT YOUR GIBBERING PIEHOLE!! Is it true? Maybe but probably not – this reeks overmuch of Bush’s typical “We woulda…” sort of attitude which works when ganking a rail of coke at Yale but not so much Anything Else Ever. No, far more it reads like Bush getting his contrary six year old on….because he can. (“Hey, I can start near infinite amounts of shit in the last fortnight of my time in office!” Save that Bush would never say fortnight and if he did it would amount to a camp out on an army base.)

I can’t be the only one who looks at Mr. Bush and can’t help but think of this:

An Open letter to President-Elect Barack Obama

Climbing up on my soapbox this morning.

Over the course of the post World War II arc of history, the United States has engaged in a large number of overseas interventions. Some have taken the form of open and armed activity within the borders of other, generally Third World countries, such as Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Iraq, Panama, Lebanon, and others. Generally, not exclusively, these have been carried out under the auspices of the United Nations. Others have taken darker forms…be it propping up a dictator where that dictator is known to support the US v. rival interests (Marcos in the Philippines, Hussein during the Regan era, etc.), or supplying aid and other forms of covert assistance to areas of gray morality where public policy might suffer in the face of such a public revelation. US intervention in said third world countries creates a cause and effect cycle – both the visible (the intervention leads to alterations in the overall world opinion of the US, and this in turn shapes US foreign policy) and the invisible which, historically, U.S. Policy-makers seem to have an implicit misunderstanding of. (Politicians in general seem to be unable to grasp the basic principals of cause and effect – more specifically how one ‘effect’ in turn becomes a ’cause’ to something else later in history and likely very far removed geographically.) At times it almost seems a matter of policy-making bodies applying the old saw that ‘a tree falling in the forest makes no noise without a witness’; q.v. if it happens when the US isn’t watching then it doesn’t really exist. The government of the last eight years has told us repeatedly that some Middle Easterners hate the U.S. only because of our ‘freedom’ and ‘prosperity.’ (Which is so offensive and inaccurate as to be insulting to anyone standing on the same side of the Atlantic as the speaker. Say, me for instance. Let alone those being referred to.) Missing from this “explanation” is the historical context of the U.S. role in the Middle East, and for that matter the rest of the world. Obviously, a small but growing consensus seems to find that much of the United States’ current turmoil here and abroad can be traced to prior actions during earlier US administrations. Even conservative think tanks know that (at least) “a strong correlation exists between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against he United States.”
The cycle of activity, starts with Intervention. According to the Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy (vol. II), international law defines intervention as “…unsolicited interference by one state in the affairs of another; non-intervention I the avoidance of such interference.” The U.S. acts upon a third world country, taking an active hand in its internal affairs. This can take many forms, but at heart, the definition of Intervention for our purposes involves the US taking activity to alter the internal composition of another country. This could be accomplished economically, militarily or socially. The next stage is Reaction. This is when the country being acted upon reacts to US action – this can be positive, negative, or – as is usually the case, a varied combination of both. The final aspect is Feedback. Feedback when the third world country in question takes action after the intervention that has an impact on decisions made here in the US, either in relation to itself or to the affairs of another country.
It is in the nebulous gray zone after Feedback that directly affects Foreign Policy. Most recently, this cause and effect relation can be seen in how the US deals with international terrorism. Ivan Eland said “Although the Defense Science Board noted a historical correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States, the board apparently believed the conclusion to be so obvious that it did not publish detailed data to support it.”
And this from 1998, well before 9/11. The Bush Administration and it’s cronies in both parties haven’t wanted anyone to see this however, as anyone with two clues to bang together can take this and look at US Foreign policy and recognize we’ve set ourselves up for at least another 20 years of being the antichrist to the extremist groups of the world. (If they villify us the worst thing we can do is prove them right. It makes their agenda seem plausible.) The evidence for this cycle is there, but sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. Most often the US response to the Feedback phase of the cycle is just that – playing right into it. This is the ultimate result of an interventionist US Foreign Policy that this country has propagated since the end of the second world war.
A classic example of this cycle is the Bay of Pigs fiasco, in which the U.S. recaptured a role of intervention activity that it had enjoyed before the Second World War. Cuban exiles, having fled Fidel Castro’s communist seizure of that island, were trained and directed to assault the country in the early days of the Kennedy administration. The revolution occurred in 1959, at the close of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s presidential administration, who went on to approve a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) project to train and arm 2,000 such Cuban exiles. Two years later, despite his own misgivings on the matter, President Kennedy approved the project. Instead of triggering a mass uprising against Castro, the exiles were annihilated by Castro’s forces, seasoned by three years of revolutionary fighting. This increased Castro’s image at home (where he ‘defended the borders from imperialist aggressors’), tarnished Kennedy’s -at that point- unblemished record as a diplomat and negotiator, and drove a firm wedge between the US and the leadership of the Soviet Union, miring both countries much deeper into the Cold War.
But now, nineteen years after the end of the Cold War, repercussions are *still* felt. Relations between the U.S. and Cuba are still largely non-existent, and any attempt at such borders on fallacy. The fact that the Bay of Pigs invasion polarized much of central and South American opinion *against* the US seems to have gone unnoticed.
The United States, historically, was founded on its freedom to keep itself separate from the remainder of the western world (during the antebellum era). After the American Civil War however this changed – in the first half of the 20th century we repeatedly sent Marines to “protectorates” such as Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, many of which resulted in losses of life amongst civilians as well as combatants. When the US intervenes, it does so based on it’s own interests and seldom the interest of the country suffering the intervention.
With the vast dearth of technological and military supremacy enjoyed by the United States, it is ever increasingly tempting for a given administration to seek military options where it comes to intervention. Overt military action, historically, has for the most part been carried out under the auspices of the United Nations. The Korean Conflict, and the 1991 Gulf War in which the US most certainly played a dominant role. Not to be forgotten, however, are the interventions where the US played a participatory but not necessarily dominant UN role – the stationing of marines in Beirut, Lebanon from 1982 – 1983, and air and ground force participation in the campaigns in the former Yugoslavia from 1992 – 2000.
The conflict on the Korean Peninsula, contrary to public opinion, occurred only under pressure from then President Harry B. Truman, who already had an American naval group in Korean waters when he forced the vote in the UN on intervention there, taking advantage of the absence of the Soviet delagtor to the UN. Truman was acting on the idea of Containment (that is, trying to keep subversive communist elements from spreading from one nation to the other). As in later conflicts, the US provided nearly all of the personnel and arms for the ‘police action’ – and in so doing, dominated the proceedings there. Early and succinct victories were dashed however, when communist China volunteered 200,000 troops to communist North Korea – producing a stalemate for two years, until the US and by default, the UN, withdrew armed conflict from the region. (Conlin 893) An armistice, or ceasefire, and *not* a formal peace, ended the conflict, thus explaining why fifty years later, US soldiers still serve duty along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
In 1958, marines were deployed to put down revolution in Lebanon even as Iraq threatened invasion of Kuwait (sound familiar?) – A threat which was forestalled by the threat of nuclear weapons release by the United States. A relatively obscure fact, but a very large precedent insofar as affecting local (especially Arabic) opinion against the US, which was still in the habit of defending monarchial governments against freedom seeking revolutionaries at this point – all under the idea of Containment of the ‘communist menace.’
In the post cold war era, the UN seems even fonder of interventionist activity. At the Emerging from Conflict Conference, “The group agreed that since the end of the Cold War there has been a paradigm shift favoring the use of military intervention into humanitarian crises – spearheaded by the United Nations and by nongovernmental organizations, both of whom support the notion of rights without borders.”
Yugoslavia, a nation formed initially in the aftermath of the Second World War as part of the Warsaw Pact/NATO cold war, broke up in 1992. The previous multiethnic nation splintered into warring factions. Increasing US dominance and influence over the initially NATO directed UN activity (which itself is thought by many to have been used to justify the post Cold War continued existence of the NATO organization) led to a naval blockade until 1994 of the emergent nations of Serbia and Montenegro. Bosnia, also a former part of Yugoslavia, was subjected to maintenance of a no fly zone and periodic bombing by jets that patrolled during the civil war. US forces carried out further bombing campaigns against the Serbians and at least twice shot down jets. When the NATO occupation force enabled Albanians to move back into the region, US forces did little or nothing to prevent similar atrocities against Serb and other (non-Albanian) citizens. The US was viewed as a biased player, even by the Serbian democratic opposition that overthrew Milosevic the following year. Bombing and missiles were used as part of massive NATO air strikes after Serbia declined to withdraw from Kosovo, only muddying the waters further.
Other instances of intervention activity under the aegis of the United Nations include actions in Somalia, where from 1992 – 1994, US soldiers and naval elements contributed to a UN occupation force. Somalia was entrenched in a famine intensified civil war. Perceived as a ‘humanitarian’ action, the US deployment to Somalia involved bombing by US aircraft, raids against one Mogadishu faction, and bias in favor of one single faction. The US has a tendency to take one faction in a conflict instead of remaining neutral, creating a power-over situation in that faction’s subsequent dealings with the United States. This ideological constant of siding with one particular of a number of warring factions under the auspices of “fair and humanitarian” assistance was later to be repeated in Bosnia. (Other instances of US involvement with UN intervention activities include the Gulf War of 1991 and the subsequent occupations and control from later that year up until 2001, and actions in Beirut Lebanon from 1982 – 1983.) The remainder of US interventions, carried out alone or with allies, but not under official UN backing or request, fall into two categories – covert, or secret, activities, and then public ones. Instances of covert activity would include the Iran – contra activity of the Regan era, which in brief included Nicaragua, Iran, hostages, arms, money and multiple violations of both American and International law, the 1973 Chilie CIA commando operation to back a coup, thus ousting a democratically elected president.
Add to the list DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) involvement with the would be nation-state of Kurdistan during the prepatory stages of the first Gulf War. Allegedly, the Kurdish people were promised a political state of their own with US support in exchange for assistance in the coming conflict. The Kurdish people, a distinct cultural and linguistic with at least 20 million people comprising it, may be the largest nation without a political state of their own in the world. The 20th century saw this minority bounced between Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey following the First World War, until they were formally integrated into what became the basis for an Iraqi government in 1958. For most of the time since, however, these people have been engaged in bloody conflict with the remaining cultural factions within Iraq. The UN attempted to set aside a Kurdish neutrality zone in the 1994 aftermath of the Gulf War – which once breached, has elicited reprisal only from the United States and Turkey.
The Vietnam Conflict, despite one of countless errors in its popular perception, was most assuredly *not* an action of the United Nations. In short, the United States graduated from only marginal support of the ostensibly non-communist but very corrupt government of south Vietnam in order to staunch the growth of communist north Vietnam…both of which emerged less than a decade previous after violent resistance to French colonial rule was finally ended. Very quickly, as more support and US military involvement was poured into that small nation, the Vietcong (or VC – the government of north Vietnam) stepped up it’s almost exclusively guerilla war against the south – targeting American installations and symbols of American power with each increase of visible involvement. Very quickly, as the war ground on, VC began making use of neighboring countries fairly unguarded borders with South Vietnam as methods of entry and exodus. This led to expansion (and illegal under International Law, much as such incursioins into Syria and Pakistan are now) of US military forces into two neighboring countries.
The Vietnam conflict spread to Cambodia from 1969 – 1975. A very brief communist uprising in 1967 contributed to North Vietnamese regulars and some guerilla activity moving through Cambodian controlled land to stage raids in South Vietnam. The US forces began action in Cambodia in 1969, clearing the way for the communist rebels to gain further support to oust the country’s leadership a year later. Involving both land, air, and naval elements, the US presence sufficiently weakened the country, allowing the Khmer Rouge rebels new fanatical leaders to rise to power and then seize the country in 1975, leaving a wake of atrocity rivaled only by the Holocaust at that time. Between the massed bombing and troop movements, the US contributed to a mass period of starvation and political chaos. Likewise, in 1971, the US began a command operation into Laos which culminated in a massive bombing campaign for the next two years. The Kingdom of Laos fell like the proverbial house of cards – not to be replaced with an actual government until 1975 with the establishment of the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos. Ironically, the socialist party that became the nucleus of this government was the direct result of North Vietnamese military victories in Cambodia and Laos in April of 1974.

Regardless of the overt or covert nature of these operations, a number of similarities begin to emerge under some scrutiny. In every case, these activities have remained secret or are explained to the american people as ‘defending freedom and democracy, protecting the rights and lives of civillian populations’ or words to that effect. Nearly all of them in fact defended dictatorships controlled by pro-US allies. Further, the US always quite visible calls violence by its opponents as ‘terrorism,’ ‘atrocities against civilians,’ or ‘ethnic cleansing’ but minimizes or defends the same actions by the US or its allies.” (Say, Israel.)
Finally, the conventional wisdom (e.g. official position) on terrorism has always been been that terrorism emerged during the cold war as a successful (in a geopolitical sense) means to circumvent the “bloc system” exemplified by NATO and the Soviet dominated Warsaw Pact. Yet nearly two decades after the end of the cold war, the United States is ‘called upon’ frequently to respond to international causes and deploy forces around the world. Like Batman, the US creates terrorism by repeatedly creating the circumstances ideal for terrorist ideologies to grow and thus invites attack simply because of its presence. Without Batman, there would be no Joker.
In the Sudan in 1998, the US struck hard and fast with bombings of chemical factories by Clinton to get back at Bin Laden? – Pharmaceutical plants alleged to be terrorist owned or controlled sources of nerve gas. In the aftermath of these “counter-attacks” President William Clinton said “Americans are targets of terrorism in part because we have unique leadership responsibilities in the world, because we act to advance peace and democracy, and because we stand united against terrorism.” (Read: Because they hate freedom and democracy. IT’s the same line of nonsense.) In the end, cause and effect remains in the eye of the beholder. Military and political action within the eminent domain of another country will have at least as many perspectives as there are people affected by it, both here and abroad, but unless some fundamental rethinking of US foreign policy occurs at the most basic level, the cycle that has emerged in the last 65 years will remain unchecked.

Mr. President-Elect, this is the legacy of (at least) 65 years of U.S. foreign policy. You can change this. You can render unto the world a new era wherein we really don’t do these things. Close our illegal prisons, stop illegal warfare. Let’s live up to the ideals that this country ostensibly champions. (Call me an idealist. I dare you.) In eight days….

We will be watching, and waiting.

The Panopticon – twice your daily allotment of feces as before. ;)

No, I haven’t gone anywhere. Some things have been changed a bit. The panopticon is a pretty good fit for what I want to accomplish here (they watch us, let’s watch them!)….and you can read it’s original meaning into things and call this an existential statement that we’re all in prison. However you like.
Moreover, making this a little more work safe probably isn’t a bad idea (those lovely letters spelling out the Daily Shit kind of get in the way of that) much as part of me (the reflexive inner seventeen year old I think) is thinking silly reactionary thoughts about that, often incorporating phrases ending in “…the Man.”

You are dumb largely summarizes my thoughts on the Roland Burris two-step. (Surely I’m not the only one out here who last Thursday blinked and wondered Who has How Much dirt on the Dems leadership…..) – as always there are gray undercurrents just below the waterline and most of us will probably never quite know what’s really going on there.
Welcome to politics.

Scott Brown at Wired magazine has inspired me to begin calling our current fiscal woes the Awesome Depression.

Who benefits from our current immersion in economic turmoil? According to the CEO of Six Apart (owners of Typepad, Vox, et. al.*), blogging sites do.

President-Elect Obama has spent a good bit of today trying, it would seem, to react to my rant from this morning. Presumably my vast psychic powers are coming back online. I remain parked firmly in the “show me the money” camp but it’s nice to see Our Fearless Leader at least making the effort to appear so.
On the flip side, the shrub had tv time today. Waterboarding is still okay. Er, something. I’m so happy he’s going to be clearing brush full time in eight days…..

Apparently, this blog comes up most frequently in google searches involving “liberal rants” – which is funny as if I’m liberal then the rest of you are fucked. (I never once said I’d clean the language up. I have to foster that illusion of small mindedness somehow. *snicker*) However, in a broad general sense I suppose wanting to bear Rachel Maddow’s love child(ren) puts me firmly in the Ivory Tower camp.

Oh, and this just in – Israel would like us all to know that most of it’s population agrees with it’s policies on Gaza – oh wait, that doesn’t include the Palestinian population does it?
Yeah, still calling bullshit on that. I expect non-Palestinians are voicing their objections….carefully.

And finally, Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson being given duties at inaugural concert Sunday ….. in a ‘too little too late’ measure to appease us TBLG folk no doubt. Sorry Obama-folk, try again.

* and one of about ten billion former owners of Live journal.

Toys – memetically sculpting the hearts and minds of children since time immemorial

Have you seen this?

Let’s get a picture for this nonsense, shall we?

About as charming as a yeast infection.

Of COURSE the person going through the checkpoint is a woman. Of COURSE she’s wearing some faux stripey french Marxist blouse thing.
Read the comments. Seriously. Though I would suggest having something alchoholic or consciousness affecting handy – by the third comment or so I think that the nicest thing that came to mind was how much better it would feel to slam my fingers in a piano lid.

But wait, it’s not alone!!!!!!
How about the Playmobil police checkpoint? (Don’t worry, the commentary on this one is full of good quality snark.)
Their largest line, judging by Amazon anyway, would appear to be police state toys. There’s a radar patrol, a SWAT helicopter (inexplicably to me, this comes with a jet ski’er. Um…what?) A police car, two kinds of police van (which one is the foresic van?) ….. and then there’s the policeman and crook blister pack. Auhm. Yeah.

So I hit the Playmobil website and found these tasty little gems -
-the Playmobil vending machine – yes your child too can feel the ferocious fucking fun of pretending to plunk coin after coin into this banana yellow monstrosity to get out salty, sugary death food.
Oh but don’t worry, they’re (separate but) equal opportunity toy manufacturers. First there’s the asian, the mediteranian/hispanic, and the african american family sets. There’s also a caucasian family set. Now, this being me, this inspired me to look at the rest of their sets in some detail.
The only places I could see what looked like persons of color were in two categories – the explorer set (and now the link isn’t working for some reason) … and what appears to be a medic in their Soccer set.
WTF? (This is a sore point of mine. Keep in mind that when my daughter begged and pleaded for a Barbie and I finally caved, I made a point of getting her one that wasn’t white. I think the doll was supposed to be african-american but she looked more Indian to me – which is odd because they’re all the same mold just different colours. Anyway, tangency diverted…)

I should note at this point that the item that brought me here isn’t featured on their website. Surprising, no?
Then there’s the Playmobil Bus Stop – which bothers me on some level I can’t quite articulate. (The bus stop features three women, a child, and a single man)
And lest you think they’re Republican idealogues, they’ve also got the Ivory Tower latte swilling liberal set – okay, it’s a cafe with no political angle. I’m on a roll, sue me.

So yeah. All of these are real – I’ve checked. I expect within a few hours of this post, Playmobil will leave me a nice, ‘polite’ email in my inbox suggesting I’ve crossed a line here. In the meantime, I need a bloody shower after that.
And hey, on a wholly related note homeland security secretary confirmations begin today.

Good Hussle.

Forecast for increased “uncertainty”

or as Warren Ellis would put it, Your Doomed World.

After lots of statements about weathering the fiscal storm, Apple stock falls
(Hormone deficiency? Isn’t that politically correct closeted speak for someone being transgendered? )

Intel refuses to release first quarter outlook citing “uncertainty”.

remember that stabilized economy?

Foreclosures up 81 per cent

Iraq president says Not Feasible for Israel to continue existing. Cheery. (Just remember Israel, your Final Solution *koff* in Gaza is the Right Thing To Do. Dumb fuckers.)

the Governator is eating his irony flakes

Palestinians estimate damage to Gaza at about 1.4 billion – at least one other news source today said something about 5 billion. Oops.

Timothy Geithner – I expect you’ve heard it all already by this point.
Really though – yes, he is human and I recognize that government officials tend to be human. Yes, Obama has spun this as a mistake he made.
But really, do we want someone ostensibly to fix our economy who made that kind of mistake on his own bloody taxes? I don’t.
But of course, ObamaCo doesn’t care. Welcome to Washington, D.C. land of business as usual.

Have you heard about this? Bush appointee Bradley Schlozman evidently conducted a (very informal of course) purge of Department of Justice employees who weren’t ideologically pure by his wack ass standards.

He hoped to get rid of the “Democrats” and “liberals” because they were “disloyal” and replace them with “real Americans” and “right-thinking Americans.”

Will this guy get any punishment? Surely not. I think at best, a slap on the wrist.

Hey, Israel – LEARN TO AIM.
I’m still utterly flabbergasted by how not a damn person in the media really has anything critical to say re: Israel. It defies explanation.

another protest of Oakland police shooting turns violent

In what must be Bush’s fifty second “farewell” address, he says he kept America safe. There are actually people who believe him.

What faith in humanity was that again?

On the plus side, Methane on Mars may help terraform it. For when those of us left bail.

the amazing adventures of Cynical!woman

“Personal observation has convinced me that in the power area of politics/economics and in their logical consequence, war, people tend to give over every decision-making capacity to any leader who can wrap himself in the myth fabric of the society. Hitler did it. Churchill did it. Franklin Roosevelt did it. Stalin did it. Mussolini did it. “
Frank Herbert, Dune Genesis*

Let the world be on notice – I am taking the words ‘historic’ and ‘significance’ away from the media and from latte sipping liberals for the next 48 hours. I’m going to be in that short line that is neither “The Cult of Obama Thanscendent” nor the “damnit they elected one of them there nee-grooows” – won’t be watching the inauguration (seen one, seen ‘em all). I think instead I’ll be spooling with the music on and drinking my cynical!juice.
No doubt this will elicit me spam from the tinfoil hat “He’s not a citizen!” contingent. Yeah, go back to Roswell guys. Just be sure to take Rush Vicodin Achiever with you.
No, you wanna get me to Washington? Tell me I can “help the Bushes move out of the White House”. Oh nelly…..

Now some news items that should have gone up on the 16th.

Gaza war recovery plans face huge obsticles

What? Apparently I missed that REALLY BIG NEWS ITEM about how all the Mid-east factions have come to an accord and are going to get along from now on.
And when did the news agencies start calling it a war?

Circuit city is closing it’s doors – okay, aside from all those people who are going to be losing their jobs….no great loss really. The poor (poorest??) cousin of Fry’s was always kind of phoned in to me.

It’s not that we were unprepared it’s that you are too fat WTF? FEMA – I reserve that level of stupidity for that special variety of mouth breather that posts comments on you tube.

The Peanut Butter Lobby isn’t doing it’s job – really, does Peanut Butter have a lobby? I don’t think so. If they did, statements like

U.S. health authorities told consumers on Saturday to avoid eating products that contain peanut butter

would never, EVER get made. Moral here: Political Lobbies – morally reprehensible, but very practical if you have any desire to make money without obstruction.

Reuters says Obama must work for compromise in culture war and after having read the article I say “can’t we just cut the Godboys out of the equation? PLEASE?”

* and for those of you who think I’m comparing the President-Elect to Il Ducce, bang the rocks together – eventually you will make fire.

dingleberries

Gaza homeless total hits 50,000

Israel hopes to complete Gaza troop withdrawal by Tuesday

Gaza fighting pauses but is the war over – of course not. There’ll be more talktalktalktalktalking and then someone else will fear that they’re getting close to resolving issues and have someone killed. This shouldn’t be any different. There’s not even an agreed upon ceasefire. (Though, historically, there usually isn’t.)

From BBC News: Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl – just remember how much ‘good’ we’ve done there, neh? Looks an awful lot like we’re going to go with ‘internal sovereignty’ when it comes time to wash our hands of this.

And if you read no other link today, please read this one – it’s as brilliant a summation of things as they are in the
American political landscape as I’ve read anywhere.

Are radical politics only for the marginalized?

It’s a familiar pattern in U.S. history – a marginalized group, racial, ethnic, social class, or lifestyle embraces radical notions early on in their campaign for equal rights. As time passes, and said group becomes – at least in some circles – more accepted, the marginalized abandon, usually piecemeal, their previous radical ideologies for something more palatable to the mainstream.
Why?
The perception thus created is that radical politics are somewhat adolescent – it’s a phase that a person or a group goes through on their way to becoming mature two party voting members of the greater American community.
But why is that?
More on this after I’ve had some time to think about it.

Here to harsh your mellow ;)

A very interesting post over at Pam’s House Blend – directing me to the civil rights section at Whitehouse.gov

Interesting, moreso if it actually means anything in this administration. Still displeased with the thoughthate crimes provision, but I think we’ll get the democrats to ditch that Orwellian nonsense when we pry it from their cold dead fingers. The rest of it reads okay – get back to me when I see some results.

The Post has a piece on the new face of the site here.

In general the morning has been spent dodging the Cult of Obama Transcendent and their wave of zealous joy (which means music, no television and depriving myself of my precious newsfeeds). On the plus side, George Bush is now back to gathering brush which is much more his speed.

Of course, in a stunning flashback to last year’s bullshit campaign season, the first thing I find on said ‘feeds….a discussion of the First Lady’s dress
Recently….
Ted Kennedy apparently suffers seizure at inaugural lunch – early reports suggested that Senator Robert “Exalted Cyclops” Byrd was also struck but this seems not to have been the case.

(Yes, this guy. He still represents the people of West Virginia)

Just because I know there are people that won’t believe this – yes, a democrat who used to belong to the Klan.

On a related note – Hey good job America, this guy is now your Vice President.

Wow. I wonder if VP Biden is any relation to Prince Henry?

I think now it’s time to resume that media blackout. Have a day!

Biscuits!

Amnsesty International calls Israeli army’s use of white phosphorus in Gaza is ‘clear and undeniable’
Neat article, from the White Street Journal How Israel made Hamas

I’ve been very critical of him and his party (and I will continue to do so) but President Obama seems hellbent on making me happy.
Obama lifts restrictions on Abortion funding
The possibility exists that Obama may adopt a harder line with China for the first time since, um…….shit, sometime before Nixon.
Cornyn leads charge of the old guard stupid GOP – I hope he fails spectacularly. (There is a special blend of stupid and dumb that only exists in office holders that are also Texas Republicans. I wish them mighty FAIL.)
It’s not all wine and roses, but it beats the shit out of Bushco.

And, prisoners at Guantanimo are on another hunger strike

There are lots of songs about Saturday night but almost none about Saturday morning….

Like his Republican predecessors, Obama pushes that damn stimulus package
But what, precisely, does that package contain? What does it do? What’s it supposed to accomplish?
Well, lots of random stuff apparently:

The president revealed more details of his stimulus package, which he said would add more than 3,000 miles of electric lines to transport alternative energy across the country.
Obama also said the plan would save taxpayers $2 billion by making three-quarters of federal buildings more energy efficient and would “save the average working family $350 on their energy bills by weatherizing 2.5 million homes.”
The White House also released a report on the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan,” which calls for greater investment in Pell Grants for college students, a $2,500 college tax credit for 4 million college students and the tripling of the number of fellowships in science to help spur innovation.

Ah…that must be what makes it a “stimulus package” rather than a bailout – it’s distributing random amounts of monies to various “things that need doing” …. thus stimulating the economy. Why…how very un-”Democratic”.
But WHAT all is in the damn thing?
Well, (some of) the details are right here. It’s interesting if dry reading – it’s pretty much the descendant of the Public Works Administration (remember all of those damn Roosevelt comparisons?)
While I still think the money will get siphoned away in large percentage to those other than who (in theory) it was designed for (e.g. the Bailout solution), and have some basic issues with throwing money at an economic problem to make it go away …. (historically, just doesn’t work), if you’re going to do this (and – apparently – we are) the list of where the money is (in theory) going isn’t something I can bitch about over much. I think that likely is wherein President Obama’s real genius lay – in knowing how to get over those who otherwise disagree with his policies.
Well, aside from the straw hat and shotguns contingent, but who gives a fuck about them?
Still going over the lot of it in detail – in general I can say that more of it should be going to Education (ah, yes, but that wouldn’t make it a Stimulus package now would it? ** rolls eyes ** ) and the amounts being spent on some things I should ought be shifted around, but this is just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. Do I think it will help the economy? No. I think it might make things a bit better once the economy improves however. Might.

Elsewhere…..
France putting forward proposal for Europe to take some of the GitMo refugees once they become refugees as opposed to prisoners. Not that I believe anything Faux news ever says about France – it’s like the ultimate Straw Man argument when dealing with a so called “Neo-conservative” (which are neither new, nor of course, conservative).
Interestingly, Newsweek seems to think that Israel’s actions in Gaza are driving away their allies. Really? What a novel concept….I just don’t understand why it’s taken the “media” to get on board with the Israel = dumbass platform. Too often spoonfed I guess. I still haven’t heard a single currently seated member of government do anything but fall down on their knees to apologize for Israel, Republican or Democrat.
Same party really.

Oh, and on a highly pleasant note, a bit of news from mid-week NSA targeted journalists (which is a surprise to….whom exactly?)

Sunday’s got a slave

Hypocritical, the GOP opposes Obama stimulus plan. Now look, I’m no more in favor of flushing money down the toilet than the next woman but really – where was all this objection to the republican authored bailout? Didn’t think so. Kindly shut the fuck up.

pope reinstates Holocaust-denier or more properly, he cancels the excommunication (I can think of fewer things less intimidating than being told that high officials of the catholic church won’t talk to me…..) But the real money shot is down at the end.

Uneasy relations between the Vatican and Israel have been further strained by plans to declare Nazi-era Pope Pius XII a saint, despite widespread criticism of his inaction during the Holocaust.

Ah….WHAT? Someone tell me why it’s ethically wrong to hatehatehate the Pope and his stupid church again? On the heels of that, Der Pope continues to “redefine” Church History in much the manner of the recent “Bush Legacy” nonsense….save that I think every sitting Pope ever has done this. Note to would be “top five worst presidential administrations” – the Catholic Church has been doing it better and longer and no one (else) seems terribly outraged – you should learn a lot from these guys.

Like a chittering trained monkey, poor Joe Biden says he now has to think about everything he says oh you poor flustering baby! Momma’s very very sorry you didn’t learn to…………..hold that shit in by the age of four. Fucking hell what a whiner. I mean, c’mon, let him speak his mind. Let’s see how long it takes for him to make another crack about the population of Indian and Pakistani Americans at his local QuickYMart.
Dumb ass. It would seem that the notion of the VP’s office being redefined to make the President look good by sheer “Please don’t let him speak”ery on behalf of the Vice Preisdent’s office is back in vogue again. See also J. Danforth Quayle*.

In GitMo, lawyers freak out at the sudden prospect of having to follow legal proceedure

Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration’s focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority. ….. A second former Pentagon official said most individual files are heavily summarized dossiers that do not contain the kind of background and investigative work that would be put together by a federal prosecution team. He described “regular food fights” among different parts of the government over information-sharing on the detainees.

In other words, “Oh shit, you mean we need to PROVE these people are terrorists? Run in circles scream and shout!” Yes, you do. Get with it. On a related note or two – A Very comprehensive overview of the history of Guantanamo Bay

For those of you upset about Mohammed El Gharani I suggest you look at the Amnesty International listing for the 2,225 “child offenders” serving life without parole (LWOP) in the American prison system. (Personally I think it’s more complicated than that. Given that I don’t think a lot of people ever become any more emotionally developed than they are at seventeen or eighteen. “Grown up” is a misnomer, when it isn’t an outright lie. Nonetheless, some of those on that list are eggregious beyond words. Quite a few.)

May I say that the spellchecker here on Word Press is eternally at about a fifth grade level of education? Doesn’t care for my two dollar words at all……

A new study finds that human brains are wired to agree with large social groups….which doesn’t explain me one bit. Brain damaged I guess. At any rate, I find it most interesting that the brain interprets disagreeing with a group as a form of punishment. Neat that. But if you’re not interested in being a slave to your own neurochemistry, fear not. Soon, you can get NRE in a bottle (probably as an inhalant, don’t ask me why I think that…..)

This article from Newsweek makes me want to stab my eyes with razors it’s so full of it.

* you may recall one of the many “highlights” (though Not for children) of his time as VP – citing the L.A. riots as a result of eroding moral values and decay of a traditional family structure. You know, the “cause” for EVERYTHING. Just ask one of those neo-cons. No not the ones backpedaling and putting on a festive tie, the other ones.

Happy Mondays

Citing ideology, Obama Signs Two Environment Memorandas, Pledges to Create Green Jobs and a Sustainable Economy
Not sure this is going to work the way it’s hoped to work – unless that’s the point and this is more under the tableness. Yeah I know “Not in Washington!” Strangely there’s a somewhat more informative article on this point here.
Major corporations cut 74,000 jobs on brutal day for layoffs Yes that would be today. Caterpillar alone is cutting 20,000.
European banks feeling the wind threatening to divide the EU. Well, that’s my assessment and I’m sticking to it.
Canadian conservatives to spend what is necessary to (say it with me) “Aid the economy.”
The Federal Reserve says monetary options are limited.
CNNs got a handy dandy little chart for all of this month’s job losses (and let’s face it, what else is CNN good for except lists and pie charts?) Aren’t we having just a cheerful two scoops of sunshiney morning?

Monday afternoon dingleberries

Senate Approves Delay in Switch to Digital Television
Does anyone know where this initiative comes from in the first place? The first I heard about it was, of all places, in my state election package sometime last summer. Only in the last month have we had the bane television here so I don’t know how long broadcasters have been talking about it. Who benefits from this? I find the measure unusual to say the least….

Hully gee, another Bush appointee was corrupt as the day is long. Who knew? Move your own damn Buddha lady…

Have you given real thought to what the new President’s intentions are in Afghanistan? You really should.You can see the quagmire from here.

Just remember kids, The Bailout Works

While surfing the blogosphere today I came across a startlingly accurate indictment of the state of the news media. The Media is shooting blanks. Surprised?

NSA whistleblower Tice suggests credit card companies also shared data with the NSA

Telecommunication companies, such as AT&T and Verizon, are embroiled in lawsuits over their alleged cooperation with the government’s warrantless surveillance. If credit card companies and banks also provided information without a warrant, it’s conceivable they could face a courtroom challenge as well.

What? Get the credit card companies to acknowledge what they are doing about anything ever? Yeah right. Right up there with the insurance companies they are. (The credit industry in this country is absolutely criminal in my estimation.) The two industries are about the two most corrupt or prone to corruption non-governmental agencies in the country in my humble…..

And lest you think I’m letting you get away without reducing your opinion of humanity, 93 year old man froze to death after utility company turns off power – the absolute best part? The city manager blames his neighbors (not, you know, the utility) for the death. Huh?

Tastes like Tuesday

Just because I wasn’t done harping on this – Geithner confirmed as Treasury secretary – if this guy had been a Republican (or Bog forbid, an independent) he would have been CRUCIFIED. Nice to see that the business as usual is preserved. Way to go guys…..
Oh but hey, he’s instituted Lobbying rules…which his boss thought of. I think for my birthday I want a windup Tim Geithner doll that repeats little phrases like “I’m a complete tool,” “careless mistakes,” and “invoice, invoice, RAWR, Invoice!”
Did I really need to know that he was “sworn in inside the gilded Cash Room at the Treasury Department”? Does this sort of thing help me build any confidence in the guy?

Speaking of BAU – Clinton says Israel has right to defend itself AND Robert Gates says Pakistan missile attacks will continue until morale improves.

Seventeen people were killed Friday in two missile strikes in the ungoverned tribal area of Pakistan. A government official and two military officials said they were U.S. attacks. They were the first such strikes since Obama took office Tuesday.
The tribal region of Pakistan has seen a sharp spike in the number of aerial attacks carried out by unmanned drones.
The United States has the only military with drones operating in the area. In 2008, there were 30 suspected U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan, based on a count by CNN in Islamabad.
Gates opened his comments with a clear message that Afghanistan is at the top of his to-do list.

Moreover, a pdf transcript of Gates’ testimony to the Senate ASC outlining his miracle plan for Afghanistan can be found here. The scary part – it’s dated TODAY.

Also, How does Blagojovich retain the power of speech???? If we lived in a just universe, there would be an angry God waiting to strike the son of a bitch dead the moment he turned the pretentiousness turnpike into “I’m going to read you more poetry.”
Though he was on the View (apparently) and talked a lot of smack. About their speed I figure.

NY financier arrested in purported $400 million scam

White House email system crashes likely taking all of my bitching and whining to the Administration with it.

Two wonderful back to back instances of news agencies spending what must be thousands of dollars telling us the very obvious. CNN Money wants you to know that Unemployment is sweeping the nation. It does however, feature a map and some lists.

Really?

And Marketwatch reports that consumer confidence is at an all time low

Honey! Screw this, let’s move to Maryland – Washington housing prices down 19% – what I really love is how every last one of these reports cite lowered housing prices as the reason everyone is freaking out? Everyone WHO? From a purely selfish standpoint, I (And I expect the millions of other poor Americans who live in substandard apartment housing) could care less if the value of so-called homeowners is bottoming out.
Okay, I devolved into hyperbole (mostly – I don’t think your average poor American does care what the housing markets do) but my point is made. I’m thinking the full bore (hey it sells magazines and newspapers) media panic regarding the economy (well, the election was over, they needed Something) might have more to do with why people are freaking out.
And any person below middle class will tell you about the recession we’ve been in for at least two years.

On a somewhat related note – Is the blogosphere replacing print media (in particular the circulated newspaper)? In some respects it would seem to occupy the same niche for different people – frequently highly opinionated, somewhat competitive (in some circles) and everyone’s got one. Rather following the early 20th century model…minus the part about all of them being owned by someone who can control their content.

Thumbelina size 10 on a Wednesday

House Republicans Push Counter-Proposal on Stimulus – tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Jebus that’s so transparent. How does this stimulate the economy? Oh, right, trickle down aka Reganomics. People will have more money come refund time, and they will spend it.
Er, or something. A classically GOP kind of thing to endorse, mostly because it provides the illusion of accomplishing something by giving people a benefit within the duration of their short term memory. This is the sort of thing the conservatives of America need to jettison for the 21st century.

Egypt PWNS the whole Middle East and please, someone, lead in the brainpan if I ever EVER say that again.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt aired its grievances against Iran, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah, saying they worked together in the fighting over Gaza to provoke conflict in the Middle East

Wow. The last time I heard something like that….was in the blogosphere. Well done.

The ACLU is demanding eavesdropping & torture related memos from the White House. Good for them. I’m not sure spending years dragging things through a series of high profile trials are worth it, but letting certain things go isn’t the way to go about it either.

Interesting (possible) case study in the use of the Dense Inert Metal Explosive weapons system as (possibly) used by Israel. There’s plenty of doubt as to the authenticity of this report – but then, I tend to presume that there’s equal amounts of doubt from any Mid-Eastern source on occurences in the Mid-East (much as I’m sure those overseas put forth questions regarding American news. As they should. There’s a reason I am pleased with the above quote.)

Short one today folks. Thumbelina sized in fact.

Business As Usual

Just a warning : I’ve had twice my usual daily dose of growl this morning.

Judge rejects Obama bid to stall Gitmo trial

A military judge at Guantanamo on Thursday rejected a White House request to suspend a hearing for the alleged mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, creating an unexpected challenge for the administration as it reviews how America puts suspected terrorists on trial.

What I want to know is – what is someone charged (ahem) in connection with the USS Cole bombing doing in GitMo in the first place? In any case, army colonels as judges (ah yes, that whole “military tribunal” smokescreen) … isn’t the President their commander in chief? Isn’t this just more thinly veiled partisan politics? I’m willing to bet that Army Col. James Pohl is a card carrying Republican. It’s just a feeling. Of course, on the flip side of this equation, is the notion that we should just arbitrarily set all of these prisoners free in some far country. I don’t think I’m alone in looking at this USS Cole bombing stuff and thinking “What, you mean you have ACTUAL TERRORISTS IN THERE?” I know I’m surprised.

In all, war crimes charges are pending against 21 men at Guantanamo. Before Obama became president, the U.S. said it planned to try dozens of detainees in a system that was created by George W. Bush and Congress in 2006 and has faced repeated challenges.

See, reading this makes me want to haul Bushie and Cheney, and their cronies (who will no doubt be instructed to take the fall – you’d think that post-administration some of them would have the gumption to say “Hell no sir.”) dragged out for trial.
It’s sad though when I picture how it would go down, and how much else wouldn’t get done….oi. I don’t trust the American Justice system with it. Moreover, I don’t trust the media with it. Shouldn’t war crimes trials (traditionally) be done in Helsinki or something? (That’s a joke kids.)

Another farking Murder-suicide … there was one in LA that killed five and then in San Francisco….and Baltimore…and Orlando. The US Army is reporting a spike in suicides (Though only in 28 years of data collection – not sure that means anything.) What – so you want more? Really, just go google “Murder Suicide” – and then click “news items”. But only do this if you can handle the unending misery of suck.
Apparently in the 30s stock brokers would jump out of windows (supposedly)…nowadays, we grab as much artillery as we can and lay waste to our families and loved ones before ending our own show.
I think I like the 30s solution better.

Good news – Iraq tells Blackwater to take a hike – of course, since they’d no longer be immune to prosecution, I doubt they’d want to come back anyway.

Global warming is so fictional NATO holds meetings about it – specifically about how all that untapped petroleum isn’t going to be quite so inaccessible any longer.

Oh, yes, that damn stimulus package – Passed without a single GOP vote …. and you thought the minority party were going to, I dunno, change their ways or not play the Party card. For shame. (It’s not like the Dems are throwing out any olive branches, not that I blame them in the short term.)
But really, just arbitrarily shutting the process down *after* all that dickering about? Childish folks. And it’s not going to make the stimulus package any, er, more stimulating.
They are, one and all, thinking of 2010. Which is sad and stupid.
But hey we should start seeing benefits from the stimulus package in mere weeks. Allow me to call bullshit on this.

Leaders Say Obama Has Tapped Pastor for Outreach Office AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH. What the hell? Separation of Church and State – have you heard of it? Why continue what George II did? Why? Tell me why?

Tim “Rawww” Geithner says plans for banks are in the works. Wait…banks? Like this one? * Either way, he said “We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system.”

But bank stocks surged on hopes the government was moving toward creating a “bad bank” to purge toxic assets from balance sheets that are rapidly deteriorating as the economy worsens. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve cautioned that the economy was still spiraling downward on many fronts.

So…banks having a dumping ground for unprofitable risks taken and failed? THAT’s a good idea……..
You know that you can go here and watch who’s getting the money, right? Good.

Swiss cops find pot field while doodling around on Google Earth

“It was an interesting chance discovery,” said Klossner.

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure it was.

* I know, I know, I’m being too hard on those poor wealthy corporate aristocrats – after all, they aren’t buying that jet anymore (of course not, THEY GOT CAUGHT)….or Maybe they are now that the cameras have largely moved away.

Friday’s Dust Particulates

Exxon Mobil sets record with $45.2 billion profit and they’re not alone.
And if you are surprised by this, by all means, please go find a cliffside and begin conducting human flight experiments. Please.

US Gross Domestic Product down 3.8% in Q4
The Associated Press notes that the Stimulus package isn’t terribly stimulating (Where’ve we heard that before………hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm)

Senate finally musters some outrage for Wall Street excesses …. but you know what, dictating what a privately run business can pay it’s employees is so many kinds of wrong….you want to punish them, eh? Then Stop Giving them Fucking Money you tools.

Holocaust denying Bishop apologizes………….to the Pope – a vice squad handjob would be more ethical.

Alaskans brace for Redoubt Volcano eruption because it could errupt in days or weeks – We’ll see about that. (I’ll bet you can see Russia from that Volcano….)

In Gaza, the ugly spectre of all Film Noir plotlines rears it’s ugly head – Real Estate (Okay, maybe not *all* but….)

Don’t forget the Puppy Bowl is on Sunday at 3 pacific time – I would much rather watch the Rodent Bowl myself, but one takes what one can get.

It’s good to be back….

Dear democratic party sympathetic media outlets::

No, no no no no no NO NO NO. Deregulation is NOT the reason we are in this mess – quit lying and saying that a free market without eight billion controls is the reason for our financial malaise. We are in this mess because people committed crimes, tanked their businesses, and ARE STILL GETTING PAID and will see neither jail time nor any kind of accountability ever. Stupid greedy people who never get caught and will not reform just because you Regulate the hell out of something with increased bureaucracy aren’t just going to magically poof go away.

Now that THAT’s out of the way. Sorry folks, our internet connection fried the better part of a week ago and then we had some issues getting the house network back up. Beyond that my health has been sub-par, which will likely lead to somewhat less frequent posting. Nothing, so far, serious, but my concentration isn’t what it was.
Now, let’s see what we left int he hopper sometime on February 1st….

I want very hard to be surprised
but I’m not not about any of it.
Despite this, the situation didn’t quite turn out the way I anticipated. Which is probably a good thing.

Pope’s fuckery continues to draw fire

Still catching up on things. My loud crabbyness should be about again soonish. Lucky you.

Playing Catchup

First of all, congratulations go out to Johanna Sigurdardottir, Prime Minister of Iceland. You’ve got a rather full plate ahead of you by the way.

In other news – Perhaps at some point in your life someone has told you that “shit rolls downhill.” Well then, Let the fun begin.
What? Surely you didn’t think people wouldn’t try to take advantage of this did you? OF course they will……

Joe Biden let out of his cage for what must be the first time since the inauguration…as I’ve seen very little of him (oh wait, that’s right, that’s what Vice Presidents do – nothing). Evidently, he’s being used to probe Iran to see if they’d be receptive to not being on the brink of hostilities….likely so that Obama can do the same thing if it works out.
Why are we coddling Iran again?

Continue down the current course, then there will be continued pressure and isolation. Abandon the illicit nuclear program, and your support for terrorism, and there will be meaningful incentives,” he said.

What, Iran is the new North Korea? Seriously just cross out Joe Biden and replace it with George Bush and …. well yeah.

Where is the big response to the entirely preventable salmonella outbreak? Somewhere between “clean sock drawer” and “get re-elected in ’10″ on the list of the average government tool.
If anyone involved actually serves jail time, I’ll be surprised. Very very very.
Not terribly impressed with the article but there are dozens on the web where you can read about how the plant couldn’t be bothered to do anything about foods testing positive for salmonella. (I’m not convinced they actually test so much as go through the motions.) I expect, tops, a fine and maybe some symbolic slapping on the wrist but that’s it before the story fades.
Remember, in corporate America, it doesn’t matter how many people you kill either through negligence or greed.

More tax dodginess in the Obama Cabinet. (Though if you think I *miss* Tom Daschle, you’ve another thing coming.) Granted, this does sound to me like the media is now actively trying to get as much dirt as possible – which isn’t something I object to, understand but there comes a point when the search for dirt becomes the story and I suspect we’ve crossed that line.

The White House indicated Solis was in a different category, with spokesman Robert Gibbs saying she was not involved in her husband’s business and should not be punished for the tax lapse.

Was she even married to him then? (I presume so but it doesn’t say.) Lots of citing of “she wasn’t involved” … does her name appear on the paperwork, at all? Does taxation involve more than character concerns for the labor secretary?

Remember how Clinton was going to deal immediately with the Mid-East situation out of the gate? Apparently she doesn’t.

Reuters reports that Executive Pay limits have loop holes – Part of me wants to know how this is news worthy – I mean, is anyone surprised (oh…wait, that’s right, Democrats) by this? Repeat after me – Business As Usual.

Hey stop the presses – Bill Gates did something I like. White western wealth & privilege never looked so….pestilential.

On the flip side of that, The Pope will be speaking to Jewish people – well, addressing. Speaking implies that there will be a dialogue. Outrage continues to burn about the rescinded excommunication (Oh noes, the Catholic Church isn’t recognizing me!) of four “traditionialist” Bishops who deny the historicity of the Holocaust. Most prominantly a certain Mr. Williamson

Williamson, who lives in Argentina and communicates to the outside world through his blog, has not yet done so. The Vatican said last Wednesday that the pope had not been aware of Williamson’s denial of the Holocaust when the pontiff lifted the excommunications in an attempt to start healing a 20-year-old schism.

Do you think “traditionalist*” serves the same purpose in the Catholic Church that it does in old line GOP circles (i.e. a codeword for “is racist”)?

“I ask everyone to believe me that I did not deliberately say something false. I was, on the basis of my research in the 1980s, convinced of the accuracy of my comments. Now I must examine everything again and look at the evidence,” he said.

Well shiver me god damn timbers, you have to research something again? Gee, do you think the evidence has changed in the last twenty years? Mr. Williamson when you recant in a few weeks or months (assuming you do and the the Church doesn’t just brush this under the rug) will you cite “new evidence” or will you cop to having had some bias in your “original findings”?

This morning I discovered Skewz.com. IT sounded like a good idea at the time (though generally, I don’t really need help detecting media bias. It’s not hard folks….) but their user profile system shut me down hard. Declare your position on topical issues on ….. a wholly arbitrary left-right axis! Fun, prizes, bullshit! Whatever. Not that definitions can really be agreed upon but something more to go on than the noise-that-means-nothing “center right”. In English please? So, I guestimated, which is what I presume most of the users do. (Left-Right on “Foregin Policy” – um, the democratic party has a “general position” on foreign policy? Really? Since when? What does it say?) And what is the point of the data point “Election 2008″? What does that mean?
Anyway, on thereabouts as AuntyRanty. Not sure I’ll do much more than check the site out but feel free to say hi if you like.

Regrettably, there isn’t a button on there to dismiss certain “news items” as “irrelevant”. Pity that.

* in point of fact, traditionalist means “rejects Vatican II” – which holds the RADICAL AND MESSED UP NOTION that people who don’t believe in the Catholic Invisible Sky King might actually be worthy of respect and other ideas that are clearly as fucked up as a football bat.

Sad thing – this is GOOD news

Wow, evolution is cleared for Texas schools – what’s next? Will us girls get the vote?

(Sorry, I went to high school in Texas, and had to sit through a whole class period where the coach, you know the one teaching the biology class, handwrung himself nearly to tears at being required to teach principles of evolution – and apologized to the class for it. What’s sadder is that almost no one in the class disagreed with him.)

Sorry, I just can’t believe we are, as a society, still debating this.

Edited on the plus side, there is this which makes me a little happier.

Step On

US Vice President Biden resolves more of same

He said President Barack Obama wants to “set a new tone” in U.S. relations with other countries in the world, but resolutely ruled out the possibility that the United States might surrender its global leadership ambitions.
Biden said Washington will seek closer cooperation with its allies across the globe, having concluded that this advances collective security, as well as its own values and economic interests. But he made clear the United States intends to hang on to its unique, unshared global dominance.

Further reporting across the world wide web is now suggesting that the sky is blue and that water, so the reports go, is in fact wet.

Mr President goes to Indiana pitching his stimulus bill. Really REALLY sick and tired of that damn thing…. you know, I don’t especially care for the thing but at this point I want them to pass it just to STFU.

But House Republicans said they were not the obstructionists because Congress is controlled by Democrats, including Representative Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, and Senator Harry M. Reid, the majority leader.

Newsflash – Congress is made of obstructionists. How many times has the media echoed the following exchange? Party one (usually either media or executive) – “We need swift action.”* Party two (you know, congress, one or both houses) “wankwankwankrhubarbblahharrumphwank”

* and you know, we don’t need swift action, we need successful action.

“House Republicans understand the urgency of the situation and continue to promote an economic recovery bill that will create and protect jobs for struggling American families,” said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the House Republican whip’s office. “The Democrats’ spending bill can pass and be signed into law by the president. When, if and how that occurs is completely in the hands of Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid.”

Well then, we are well and truly over a barrel then.

In related news, the SEC is still the SEC.

Amidst the possibility of an end to the Sri Lankan civil war I do have to wonder – is India feeling threatened by this?

Apparently, the US Army is still boneheaded in dealing with PTSD to say the least.

A map of Prop Eight supporters. /enabling harassment
Seriously, that is a privacy violation. Can you hear the enthusiasm in my voice?

Speaking of Privacy. But it’s Google, so you knew that, right?

Funny in a laughing at you not with you kind of way, 6 Green lessons we can learn from communism. Seriously, it’s comedy gold, made moreso by the dead pan tone of the writing (or possibly the author really means it? Let’s hope not – because if there was ever a bad example of “green” the USSR would be it).

Homework assignment kids, go here and add some rainbows and unicorns to my page. The very notion amuses me endlessly…

The Winter of our Hardship (Reaction)

I don’t agree with this plan (among other things, it relies too much upon optimism*) but damn if President Obama doesn’t make a persuasive argument.

Fond I am of someone who greets the press corps with “Hey everybody.” Though I’m much happier still that he addressed the notion of a non-interventionist economic model. Seriously, if he’s really going to create jobs, and jobs that don’t exist completely at the Upper Middle Class level, then great. We’ll see.

Oh, and OPEC was not formed in the early 70s – HOWEVER, I see how that could be an easy mistake to make.

* in particular the Give it to the States and it will magically produce revenue. (Because no one at the state level is a greedy criminal.)ld be

He says he’s coming in – I feel safer already….

Remember those mismanaged banking institutions that did a fair chunk of their part to get us deep in recession? Geithner is talking about a 2 trillion dollar bank rescue. Reading this makes baby Jebus cry.
But wait there’s more….
Geithner introduces a Financial Stability Plan over on the Treasury dept. website. Apparently if we fix the credit markets, everything will magically knit itself back together. Like the Genesis project from Star Trek.
Um….bullshit.

Governments and central banks around the world pursued policies that, with the benefit of hindsight, caused a huge global boom in credit, pushing up housing prices and financial markets to levels that defied gravity.

Hindsight? Extending credit to someone you doubt can pay it back is stupid from mere foresight. Why does a bank get to do stupid shit and then go crying to the government for assistance again? I don’t get to do that.

Investors and banks took risks they did not understand. Individuals, businesses, and governments borrowed beyond their means. The rewards that went to financial executives departed from any realistic appreciation of risk.

Did not understand? No, more like “Thought they could get away with.” BIG difference. The lending/borrowing was typical wall street short sightedness and isn’t going to be legislated away in a puff of Treasury Department logic. If you want to stop dumbass decisions like those that led us here, you can’t legislate those decisions out of existence, you have to change the culture.

There were systematic failures in the checks and balances in the system, by Boards of Directors, by credit rating agencies, and by government regulators. Our financial system operated with large gaps in meaningful oversight, and without sufficient constraints to limit risk. Even institutions that were overseen by our complicated, overlapping system of multiple regulators put themselves in a position of extreme vulnerability.

You mean the corruption of the SEC? Those checks and balances? By the nigh infinite numbers of golden parachutes possessed by those CEOs? Greed wrecked this. Greed trumping conservative fiscal logic.
Don’t get me started on “sufficient constraints to limit risk”…..

This new Financial Stability Plan will take a comprehensive approach. The
random space here, was this thing edited at the last minute?
Department of the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the FDIC, and all the financial agencies in our country will bring the full force of the United States Government to bear to strengthen our financial system so that we get the economy back on track.

Oh, the FULL force of the US Government? Is that supposed to make me feel better? Change – I didn’t think this would mean outspending the excesses of BushCo. Ugh, I’m moving on to other things before my blood pressure goes up any more than it already has.

FBI raids peanut butter plant suspected in outbreak

The Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Georgia, was sealed off by federal authorities (Emphasis mine.) Monday morning, WABL reported.
The company is accused of knowingly shipping tainted products now linked to nearly 600 illnesses, including eight deaths, in 43 states. The recent outbreak has led to one of the largest food recalls in U.S. history, encompassing more than 1,000 products.

Wow. The Federal Bureau of Intimidation encasing the place in virtual plastic wrap is a hideously amusing image. Still don’t think anyone’s going to jail over this. (Of course, I’d love to be proven wrong on that point, so long as it’s someone culpable and not someone thrown under the bus by those who deserve jail time.) Oh, and by the way, it wasn’t just that plant.

Israeli government elections still tight

San Fransisco court hears federal torture cases but guess what? An administration lawyer pressed ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets. Yes really. The Exec director of the ACLU had this to say

“This is not change,” he said in a statement. “This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.”

Strange, that particular bit didn’t come whistling into my inbox. How outraged are you really? Because whenever a member of the Bush administration broke wind, the ACLU sent me an email about it.

California likely to cut prison population by 40% – it’s hard to say without more information but my gut thinks positively. Of course, it could be Regan releasing all the schizophrenics
onto the streets again….

Meg Whitman to run for California Governor as Republican This puts her into opposition with Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner. Other potential candidates to replace Schwarzenegger in 2010 are Democrats Garamendi, Brown and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigos may also be jumping in to claim the Governator’s job.

Yes, the cynical dial is turned all the way up to eleven today. t?

Credit – the highway to a lifetime of slavery

counterinsurgency expert tells US to call off drone war in Pakistan – You know, I still have tendencies to almost call Pakistan Cambodia and/or Laos sometimes, at least when I’m referring to the fact that we’re still STILL conducting illegal warfare there. How long til they find and airstrike Col. Kurtz, eh?

Continuing from my last post – apparently I’m not the only one who’s finding the “change you can believe” in hype to be wearing AWFULLY thin. The Times compares Obama and Bush’s first prime time press conferences and finds them….really similar. (The last time someone rode in on a wave of ‘change’ was Nancy Pelosi. Yeah, that fizzled too, didn’t it?)

And clearly, I still don’t have “the Geithner” out of my system yet.

Business Week asks What’s missing in Geithner’s Bank Plan? …. and Geithner insists this isn’t Paulson’s Plan…to which I say, duh, no one’s saying they’re identical, just that they suck.

Obviously, I’m guessing you know by now that that ornerous stimulus package has passed. But the citizens for tax justice have just released a report of the Six Worst Tax Cuts within. (There’s also a Two page summary if you don’t feel like slogging through the whole thing (though it’s only 8 pages). My personal summary: lots of tax breaks for the well off, for businesses, and those who got us here in the first place. The rest of us get increased opportunity for debt, which is supposed to be a good thing I guess, given that The Geithner is busy fixing the credit markets.

Wednesday, boils like acid

So I did get that email from the ACLU yesterday – about 45 minutes after (snarkily) making comment on not having done so.

The stories I’ve been watching have turned a bit. Peanut-borne salmonella is supposedly the subject of outrage in Congress – Some small part of me is starting to hope that the relevant parties will actually get their asses handed to them over this. Hoping. It’s certainly a change from what I expect Congress to be doing – like dickering over the draperies. That money figure moves a few billion in either direction every time I see it. Because those few critical billions are all that stand between dark barbarism and ….oh never mind. File under “tax cutty bullshit” and leave it at that. Sometimes the GOP can display the maturity of a 12 year old.

The FCC, apparently to quash the conspiracy theory minded nutters, are now acting to scrutinize stations wanting early DTV switch. Why is this such a big deal in government-oh right lobbyists, I forgot. /P

Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post,about hits the nail dead on.

I’m not an economist, but when Tim Geithner unveils his long-awaited bailout plan and the Dow plunges nearly 400 points, that’s probably not a good sign.

FBI, bailout watchdog expands criminal probes – about damn time.

Who won the Israeli elections? Well, no one.
However, Beiteinu cheerful – methinks forming that government will take a looooooong time.

Don’t forget -fake plastic holiday, coming this Saturday to a relationship near you.

Day of that Dead Saint Guy

In honor of happy hallmark card chocolate and rinky dink relationship maintenance day….

It’s not my fault if the title wasn’t adequate warning.

Regulate this

I grow very very very tired of democrats and their symps chattering that “Deregulation is bad, m’kay?” And given that I am awake at one odd in the am and the wife is sleeping, I’ll give some example vitrol.

From 1986 to 1995 the number of US* declined to 1,645 from twice that due to unsound real estate lending.
Sound familiar?
In 1989, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 was passed by the 101st Congress in the aftermath of the S&L Crisis of the late 80s. It’s what put Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae into the position to FAIL as they have these past many years. It established that states had to determine means of licensing and certifying real estate appraisers, which were largely determined by Federal mortgage regulatory agencies – which should be putting the word “credit” into your head about now. Please do tell me if any of this sounds at all familiar?**
It is, in short, another bogus “fix” designed to let all the crooks form nice respectible looking power blocs to better and more effectively pick each others pockets. And it worked, if you define worked as business as usual (literally in this case). I’m telling you we Need To Toss It Now. Not peacemeal (As is already happening) but a wholesale erradication of legislation that is rooted in the idea of “debt as economy”. We need to adopt a new paradigm or we will drown in the endlessly spiraling web of governmental handjobs faster than you can say “Junk Bond King”.

We desperately need a new way of doing things. A new paradigm of business, a new way of thinking about making money. It’s not going to happen, but it’s what’s necessary if we’re not going to perpetuate this sort of thing. And increased regulation isn’t going to do the job. (Government patent monopolies on prescription drugs and the protectionism that results help make prescriptions needlessly expensive. Take that and shove it up your universal health care the next time someone says that regulation does no harm.)
You know, I think the Bonobos have the right idea. But I guess that makes me a pinko, huh?

*defined as federally insured savings & loans in the United States declined from 3,234 to 1,645.[8] This was primarily, but not exclusively, due to unsound real estate lending

** it also allowed thrift acquisition by bank holding companies. But hey don’t worry, the FIRREA also created the Office of Thrift Supervision…whose entire budget is paid by assessments on the institutions it regulates. Now, go look up “reach around.” If you want live video of said reach around go to this page and read the list of larger institutions currently or formerly regulated by the OTS.

We Used to meet Every Thursday

Geithner defends his approach to banking rescue

“I understand the desire for details and I understand the disappointment about the lack of details,” Mr. Geithner said, departing from his prepared remarks in a three and a half hour appearance before the Senate Budget Committee. “But part of the disappointment is because people were hoping that we do things that, in my judgment, would have been too generous and not responsible for the taxpayers’ money.”

No, we’re not disappointed with the lack of details, we’re disappointed because what details we have, well, suck. (And it’s not just me and a few hate-mongering republicans either. Well, unless you’re one of those folk who think the CATO institute are just closeted Republicans*) If you can read all of his remarks in one sitting you have a far stronger stomach than I do.
Dennis Blair calls the global financial crisis as the primary near-term security concern of the United States.
WHAT? Really, someone needs to tell these intelligence feebs that just because they got to run the country for the last eight years, they really aren’t invited to put any more thumbs in any more pies. (In the event that any of you know what rapidly dispersing aerosol Entheogen Blair is using to achieve this kind of delusion, please, let me know. auntie_ranty@yahoo.com)

Salmon, salmon, salmone, salmonella…
Texas Department of State Health Services recalls all items from closed plant. What’s becoming more interesting to me about this is that the media attention is starting to get blurred – apparently people in the media think that food processing is clean and follows regulations.
Mind you, it should but that doesn’t mean it actually does that in the real world.

Starcrash!
US, Russian satellites grind into each other in space collision

Here’s an inspiring one…
U.S. judges admit to jailing children for money

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – Two judges pleaded guilty on Thursday to accepting more than $2.6 million from a private youth detention center in Pennsylvania in return for giving hundreds of youths and teenagers long sentences.

Such inspirational and uplifting love and respect for The System, eh?

And finally, unlike the rest of the world, America still isn’t over Charles Darwin. Neat article, if not terribly informative. (Well, to Ms. History Major here, very little this visible is.)

You know, I think the Bonobos have the right idea.

*Mind you, I don’t consider the CATO institute’s reports flawless (I don’t consider anyone’s statements flawless. Do you?) – I mean, at one point brown outs were alleged to be more common because we don’t cut down enough trees.

Tread wire on jaded memory

Blackwater is changing their name … to Xe. So much for forgettable and hard to track…..

The Justice Department cops to Bush era State Secrets Privilege … again.

The stimulus package (hah) – breaks down this way, itemized by department or organization. Though I’m still waiting for the House GOP to snivel, wipe their noses on their sleeves, pick up their dump trucks and leave the sandbox.

An interesting piece on Fraud Enforcement – it does advocate some band aids but notes similarities with the S&L crisis of the 1980s. That thinking sounds familiar.

On the flip side of that, the New York Times posts an article in (some) defence of Tim Geithner.

The LA Times wants to know Where’s the Transparency?

Grab your end of days hats, University of Maryland researchers have finished genome sequencing all known strains of the common cold. We’ll see what comes of it.

Banks agree to moratorium on foreclosers – what, do they want a cookie for being good boys and girls?

It’s a drive in Saturday

Whoa, hold up, wait, stop what you’re doing. Ladies and gentleman, bois and grrls, gentlebeings of all genders and persuasions, please – Corporate America has a skinned knee. As such I ask that no one laugh, mock, or contribute in any way to …
oh to hell with that.

the online edition of The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, said the competing choices present a dilemma for the Obama administration, which may fear seeing the industrial icon carmaker fall into bankruptcy and cut more jobs if it’s refused more aid.

Shout it from the rooftops. GM deserves to die! Seriously, if this is true, and that’s really the way they do business (give us money orIt’s your fault!! cried the manipulative ex significant other) then, hey, they deserve to go bankrupt. What, 13.4 billion wasn’t enough? Do you want us to run your business too? Hell, why don’t we just nationalize the damn thing?
(Can you hear the cries of Socialism? No, neither can I. Not in this case.) All of this coming on the heels of GM announcing cutting of about 12% of it’s salaried workforce (which I presume to be executives, likely those who got GM into this position in the first place).

And if you think I’m being harsh tell me this – why should I be more compassionate for an auto manufacturer than we are, as a society, for the individual people in it?
Moreover, I’ve just had it up to here with the notion that no matter how badly a business is run, it just has some supposed right to continue existing. Sure, many dress this up as “But we need to do this for the economy (replace with ‘for the children’ mmkay?) but the fact remains that preventing badly run, or irresponsibly run companies from failing the way things work in a capitalist society does more damage in the long run. It’s the difference between living in a capitalist society and, say, a Corporate State.

Elsewhere….
Canada has no plans to revise fiscal projections – what, they’re not going to massage the numbers? Incredible!

US Airstrike kills 25 in Pakistan – you know, that country we don’t have any active engagement with? Oh, and yes, missiles were fired from drones. What else is new?

Missile attacks in Pakistan by remotely piloted aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency have generally been aimed at foreign Qaeda fighters and Taliban guerrillas from Afghanistan, who take shelter in Pakistan between raids into their country to fight American and NATO soldiers.

The C.I.A. is allowed to conduct an undeclared war. Yeah that’s without precedent. Any surprise that the drones are lifting off from Pakistani bases simply means one hasn’t been paying attention.

Yet another case of ex hackers (in the old form, someone who likes to take something apart and see how it works) whining to the EFF when someone, well, hacks their product – oh no, don’t threaten our monopoly…..
Wow, sounds like……..Microsoft. Take that Apple evangelists.

the film is a sadd’ning bore…

Not content with their attempts in the 1890s and the middle 30s, Mars throwing more invasion canisters at planet Earth. The best part though, is this:

The FAA notified pilots on Saturday to be aware of possible debris after a collision Tuesday between U.S. and Russian communication satellites.

Timely.

In the ‘you’ve fucked it up for the rest of us’ department, peanut growers are reeling from the actions of Peanut Corp of America. I expect soon enough we’ll see some lovingly crafted commercial with soft lighting and a selection of facts on the evening news between two people discussing the health benefits of peanuts, rather like a tollerable version of similar (yet odious) commericals for the Steel Council, America’s sugar growers and, more recently, high fructose corn syrup*

I find it very telling that despite their extortionist threats to the Fed, GM isn’t presenting a unified front with the UAW or taking any steps to make it so or even appear so.

Illinois does not disappoint in dealing out a hand of corruption. Though in following the Q&A, I think they’re splitting hairs and just trying to get ANYTHING they can.

The “changing” face of China – many countries (not just the US for a change) line up to get on their knees for China – I say really, does China coat their diplomats in pure cocaine or something? No matter what China does, now matter how they do it, no matter how many volts they use to do it, no one in Government ever says a bad thing about China. WTF?

Pakistan concedes presence of Taliban entrenched in country….gee, really?

Apparently, this bipartisanship thing just isn’t working. File under BAU.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg home after surgery removes her spleen and part of her pancreas she plans to be back on the bench in eight days. I swear she is made of STEEL.

* my version of that damn commercial would feature lots of shots of HFCS and someone ominously whispering “It’s everywhere.”

Don’t forget your briefcase dear

What. The. Fuck. President Obama has dropped the idea of appointing a single, powerful “car czar” to oversee the revamping of General Motors and Chrysler A task force “to oversee the jump start for the stalled auto industry” will be created – apparently. (A Car Czar? Pleased as punch that was dropped – could you have just set it up as a mirror for the DEA while we were at it?)

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and chief White House economic adviser Larry Summers head the task force, which will be made up of top people from government agencies. Ron Bloom, a corporate restructuring expert, will join the team as a senior advisor at the Treasury Department, but he is not the car czar, as has been reported.

So, once again, rather than let poorly managed businesses fail, we’ll just rescue them, ensuring that everyone knows that no matter how badly you fail, how horribly your greed sabotages your own company, you will never ever have to pay the consequences.
I will be resisting the urge to drink radiator fluid and watch Oliver Stone’s Wall Street I think, but it’ll be a near thing.

On the flip, GOP seen as taking a risk in opposing Obama economic strategy – well yes, because they are taking a risk – though if anyone thinks they are coming off as ‘principled conservatives’ please let me know. To me, their so-called strategy is reminiscent of a large turtle parked in the center of a two lane road. At best.

It sounds like the punchline to a bad joke but, English, French nuclear subs collide in Atlantic. “This is the most severe incident involving a nuclear submarine since the sinking of the Kursk in 2000 and the first time since the Cold War that two nuclear-armed subs are known to have collided,” said Kate Hudson, head of Britain’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. I expect there’s more to develop out of this, given that the first article is understandably threadbare but the second is padded with ancillary details. One hopes the crews of each vessel are alright.

In the doom category, the Japanese economy is shrinking faster than in 35 years

Also in that region, Clinton warns North Korea ‘hey, we’ve changed Presidents – we might actually consider doing something to you’. Which, while doubtful, would be a welcome change of pace from the previous administration where I’m pretty sure North Korea could have deployed nuclear weapons in space and not gotten more than a hollow but stern look from Washington.

Oh, that wasn’t satillite debris raining down on Texas, probably meteors which for some reason seems like calling them weather balloons. (Of course, it is rather fixed in my memory the way people went scouring the Texas plains looking for wreckage of the Space Shuttle Columbia – some parasite wound up putting some of it on Ebay if I recall….)

Dear GOP

Tax cuts – why? Give me reasons. Real ones. Please. Do it now.

Apparently, Geithner’s plan hobbled. In reading what his plan might have entailed I’m glad this horse was shot.

Senior economic officials had several approaches in mind, according to officials involved in the discussions. One would be to create an “aggregator bank,” or bad bank, that would take government capital and use it to buy up the risky assets on banks’ books. Another approach would be to offer banks a government guarantee against extreme losses on their assets, an approach already used to bolster Citigroup and Bank of America…..For one thing, the government would likely have to put trillions of dollars in taxpayer money at risk, a sum so huge it would anger members of Congress. Officials were also concerned that the program would be criticized as a pure giveaway to bank shareholders. And, finally, there continued to be the problem that had bedeviled the Bush administration’s efforts to tackle toxic assets: There was little reason to believe government officials would be able to price these assets in a way that gave taxpayers a good deal.

*twitch*

Monday, the Pirate Bay copyright case began in Sweeden and today half of the charges have been dropped … and it doesn’t sound like the prosecution has much of a leg to stand on remaining.

Don’t call it a concession – Pakistan takes flak for concessions to militants

That’s okay though, apparently, we’re sending 10,000 troops to Afghanistan.

The Wednesday Glooms

I’m irritated – American media outlets apparently can’t be bothered to discuss the retasking of troops to Afghanistan – I guess if it doesn’t involve the economy, no one cares……hells, The US fails to speak up on Pakistan’s truce with the Taliban (which I’m still wtf-ing….).

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, however, was cautious when speaking to reporters in Japan. She said Pakistan’s efforts still needed to be “thoroughly understood” before she could comment.
“Obviously, we believe that the activity by the extremists in Pakistan poses a direct threat to the government of Pakistan as well as to the security of the United States, Afghanistan and a number of other nations,” Clinton said.

None of which says Anything. Oh, in the spirit of not making a big deal out of it, apparently the troop deployment has gone from 10,000 up to 17,000 additional soldiers and marines.

Peanut recall expands – without much fanfare.

Dow Jones continues to drop so you can tell how well that “stimulus package” is going over.

GM and Chrysler asking for an ADDITIONAL 22 billion dollars which is the reward they deserve for ‘restructuring’ that equals reduced output and layoffs. Which is fewer jobs while at the same time preventing cars from getting any cheaper.

Capitalism has cholesterol in it’s arteries

Obama ready to bail out mortgage companies for some reason. How will it hurt the economy to let them fail again?

Companies would get $1,000 for agreeing to give a strapped homeowner a lower monthly payment instead of foreclosing — more if the borrower hasn’t yet fallen behind on what they owe. They can get up to another $3,000 over the next three years. And they get government insurance to cover part of the money they might lose if the homeowner ultimately defaults on the house anyway.

So, if you play nice we’ll give you money. If you don’t break the law we’ll give you more money. And we’ll keep *you* insured if the person we’re defending screws you.
Who comes up with this stuff? Many will cite how ‘ethical’ this is but ethical to me involves getting rid of the mortgage companies. (File under: another ‘industry’ that doesn’t produce anything, not a service, it just ‘owns’, like much of wall street.)
On a purely interesting note – BBC news has a piece on this here…interesting how it seems almost like different legislation, neh?

Auto bailout could come to 130 billion dollars – lovely article that breaks down where the money would be spent, hypothetically. Nonetheless, Moody’s projects that GM and Chrysler both a 70% chance of filing for bankruptcy.

A new study by the Federal Reserve suggests that tax cuts may heighten deflation risks – and after reading that I begin to wonder if a misunderstanding of economic theory is critical to becoming an elected official, either in Washington or elsewhere. Of course, the Fed also predicts that the economy will continue deteriorating throughout 2009. With news that cheerful I wonder how long it will be before we start hearing the word ‘depression.’

Even the price of cocaine is dropping.

Under the Bear Flag, Governor Schwarzenegger says legislators resisting budget plan have a math problem and I’m inclined to agree with him. Of course, I also don’t have the rabid anxiety over taxation that the GOP does either. At least, not in this case. (Do keep in mind however that California has state income tax, unlike some states.)

Burris and his five fold petal of stories, under pressure to resign his senate seat. You know given how vehemently against his appointment certain democrats were at one time and the sudden about face (all within 24 hours) I thought we’d be done with this. Apparently the back room double dealing isn’t over yet.

Robert H. Schuller’s ‘Crystal Cathedral’ is going to need a make over after an unidentified man in his 40s entered this morning, knelt in front of the cross, and shot himself in the head. I suppose it’d be asking to much for Mr. Schuller to take this as a sign and stop broadcasting?

And finally, how (if) will the President convince our allies (we have allies?) to lend their assistance in Afghanistan. Ask the Russians……

Further news of dissatisfaction

California, commonly cited as the 8th largest economy in the world (a disputable ‘fact’) is one vote shy of a budget. And it looks as though GOP lawmakers will continue their stubborn stonewalling as they’d rather be in debt and playing with funny money than appear to pay more taxes (it’s not like any of these Republicans actually will pay more taxes being fairly well off after all…).

The American Spectator has a fascinating article about TARP and the precedents established in FIRREA – as well as why it’s a bad idea.

A federal appeals court has decided that 17 GitMo detainees shall not be released – at least not if they have to be released in the U.S.

After imprisoning the men for nearly seven years, the Bush administration conceded that it would no longer try to prove that the men were enemy combatants. But it argued that the men should not be permitted into the United States, claiming they had “trained for armed insurrection against their home country” in a Uighur camp in Afghanistan.

(How DID we wind up with 17 Chinese Muslims anyway? Somehow I don’t think they were picked up in Iraq. I would really really like to see where all of these ‘suspected terrorists’ got picked up in the first place. Never happen, but it’d be nice. )

Apparently, Secretary of State Clinton isn’t going to ignore the Mid-East indefinitely – al jazeera is reporting that she will attend a fundraiser in Egypt next month for the reconstruction of Gaza. Actually they call it a summit but remember, summits never require attendees to do anything.

Wealthy tax evaders turned over by Swiss Bank – done to avoid prosecution of course.

VEBA not saving as much money as automakers and the UAW hoped – probably because the provisions of that plan SUCK.

Lance Wallach, a VEBA consultant with Plainville, N.Y.-based VEBA Plan, said the UAW already took a huge risk in 2007 when it agreed to set up the plan because it agreed to accept cash payments that were significantly less than the estimated future costs.

Really, in a real (and likely, fictional) economy, business practices like that get ELIMINATED and replaced with something more efficient…not this ‘kissed by momma government skinned knee’ crap.

A new study finds that – amazingly – voting for gay marriage is not immediately a political liability. Wow. I’m so surprised.

That’s sarcasm.

Same as it ever was

Obama Administration Mulls Constitutionality of Copyright Act which is the legal precedent for the RIAA to sue people who participate in file sharing across the internet. Per this court document, the administration will make it’s feelings known by March 25.

Here’s a surprise – both the GOP and the Democrats agree on something, namely that they dislike the idea of ‘the open primary.’
This will almost certainly get defeated which is a great pity.

A proposed constitutional amendment would go before voters in June 2010 instituting a “top-two” primary system, which would effectively eliminate party primary ballots, erase candidate party labels in primary elections and allow voters to choose the two candidates – of whatever party – who would compete in the general election.
An open primary would dissolve the current political primary system, and has the potential to seriously erode party power and change the entire landscape of state politics.

I’m sorry, but the prospect of the above renders me a giddy little schoolgirl. People would actually have to, you know, research the people they were electing. (Actually I doubt that, I’m sure the nazis at both parties would put together little ‘voter orientation packets’ telling them who to vote for.)

A new study finds that Guantanamo Bay meets Geneva requirements

The review, conducted by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, describes a series of steps that could be taken to allow detainees to speak to one another more often and to engage in group activities, the government officials said. For years, critics of the prison have said that many detainees spend as many as 23 hours a day within the confines of cement cells and were only permitted recreation alone in fenced-off outdoor pens.

Oh wait, it was a government conducted study. In the words of Jane Curtain – “never mind.”
Besides, we’re expanding a new detention center…in Afghanistan:

“A light, fluffy foreign policy.”
Hilary Clinton rewrites her script for dealing with Southeast Asia to more evenly conform with the same policy that’s been in place since at least 2001. Good hustle madame secretary.

Thanks to the NY Times, here is a semi-detailed breakdown of where the stimulus package as passed is actually going. Just ignore that every third or fourth item on there reads “tax cuts”.
Are *you* feeling stimulated yet? At next week’s annual budget, President Obama is going to preside over a budget that is 2.7 trillion dollars in the red – but yet he’s instituting a ‘no accounting tricks policy’ …. yet his administration is expected to spend 1.5 trillion dollars this year.
Suddenly I need a drink.

Make that several. And a crowbar. Amazon just recently banned sales of a Japanese PC game that involves stalking and raping women. Yes really.

In Rapelay, gamers direct a character to sexually assault a mother and her two young daughters at an underground station, before raping any of a selection female characters.
Rapelay, which was released in 2006, encourages players to force the virtual woman they rape to have an abortion. If they are allowed to give birth the woman throws the player’s character under a train, according to reviews of the game. It also has a feature allowing several players to team up against individual women.

For the record the game (and others by the same manufacturer “Battle Raper” and “Artificial Girl”) are not available on Amazon US, at least not with a cursory inspection.
I don’t even know what to add to that.

In Italy, new legislation to combat rape makes allowances for mob justice especially of the (Implied) racist variety. Good hustle there folks. While there would seem to be a decent set of provisions introduced (free legal aid – you’d think this would be a given, or at least I would) but there’s a distinct strain of “oh no, foreigners did all this.”
Yeah. Right.

I think I have hit the limits of my cynicism today. Enjoy your weekend.

Friday Biscuits (Delayed)

US likely to pursue owning bank stakes rather than overt nationalization
( Bog, this article is so biased. ) The Federal government is moving to, essentially, nationalize, two banks, but not calling it nationalization because hey, THAT’S NAKED RED SOCIALISM. Or something equally reactionary and uneducated.
Do I really want Tim Geithner having that much *more* influence over banking in this country? I think not. Moreover it’s just bad business – the government is incapable of being a sound and trustworthy business partner which is precisely what, by definition, this nationalization will amount to – and remember that the Fed can alter the terms of this ‘partnership’ any time it likes.
From a standpoint of pure business, that’s stupid.

Governor Schwarzenegger signs new budget into law and not a moment too soon.

President Obama’s flawed plan to deal with the foreclosure crisis – let’s flood Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with 200 billion dollars…instead of what we should be doing, which is getting rid of them.

Let them eat burgers – a private equity boss orders his multimillion dollar business partners to eat burgers at five star hotel admonishing them for failing to appreciate how lucky they were.

A new report suggests that the Pentagon has lost thousands of weapons ‘loaned’ to foreign governments…and they may now be in the hands of terrorists.
(Or, in my estimation, given to ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘partisans’ who now hate the U.S. Think Osama Bin Laden.)

Further proof that Chinese diplomats are rolled in mind altering and addictive substances before being sent overseas

Speak to me of syphilis and greed

Is it just me or is the bullshit oscar hype thicker than usual this year? I could (as in years past) really care less but somehow it seems to be saturating my walls of unconcern, leaving a sensation akin to a minor tickle.
Get back to me when they abolish that stupid rating system, ‘kay? (Disagree? Take it over to Big Hollywood, I understand they need someone to shoot fish in a barrel….)

Nationalization fears dominate Bank of America, Citigroup – because it couldn’t possibly have something to do with the stellar public perception of these two banks being sucking black holes of mismanagement, greed, and stupidity now could it?

Obama plans to slash deficit in half …. and I don’t see how that can be accomplished barring a pact with Satan.
Really – is that the current, up to the minute deficit, or just the 1.3 trillion he inherited from BushCo? Regardless, he’s claiming to have it done by 2013…and I just hope he’s not holding out for some UFO harmonic convergence ‘earth changes’ end of the Mayan calendar ley line nexus nonsense in 2012 to get out of it.

Obamaland widens missile strikes in Pakistan – and for my part I’m just amazed that the press has started acknowledging the CIAs involvement in ‘handling’ the situation. I mean, remember Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare? Or the Freedom Fighter’s Manual or any number of CIA US Army interrogation manuals? (C’mon, it’s not like the Bush administration did anything *new* in GitMo or Abu Ghraib they just did it on a scale sufficient to get caught.)

Don’t forget that image. Ever.

While we’re at it, let’s not forget how many times the CIA has gotten busted drug running – just remember that the next time some nimrod mentions how ‘well’ interdiction is going….
I remember allegations that Bush Sr. had been aware of the Golden Triangle operations in the 70s prior to his election as President…which makes sense as he was director of Central Intelligence then.)

Anyway, back on topic – Official in Pakistan kidnapped – remember that ceasefire looking deal from a few days back? My guess – whatever secret provisions were put in place are now in effect. Expect another wave of disappearances and fact jugglings and I don’t mean from the U.S. (well, not any more than usual).

So much for the Sri Lankan ceasefire. (Which, apparently, happened in the middle of last month which makes me feel woefully uninformed…)

Ack, I think the jadedness is too potent a brew this morning. Time to crawl back into bed for a bit. But I’ll leave you with a bit of the Freedom Fighter’s Handbook.

That's Democracy!

Wheels in the sky keep on turning

Amnesty International calls for arms embargo to Israel and Palestinian armed groups – on the theory (presumably) that without munitions they can’t fight. Sound idea, really don’t think it’ll work (how many countries that supply arms *really* want them to stop fighting?) which is a pity.
On a related note, Binyamin Netanyahu says I won’t wait forever for unity government – here’s an idea, form a coalition government….with Hamas, kay?

Peanut Corp. tells all customers to stop distribution – and I think that about closes the doors on that, save whatever litigation and suchlike remains. Hopefully, it will be substantial. (It kind of chafes to be hoping for litigation…)

Hawaii joins the small but growing number of states to endorse same gender unions. The measure has passed in the House and is looking to be debated by a divided state Senate on Tuesday.

Microsoft asks laid off workers to return some of their severence money citing an accounting error.

The error is believed to have overpaid some former employees and underpaid others. Those that were overpaid were sent letters requesting them to refund the company by sending a check or money order.

Yeah, let me know how that works out for you MS, mmkay?

For those of you who think terrorism doesn’t come to Egypt anymore, I beg to differ. It is however the first in about three years.

On Sunday evening, witnesses described how the bustling scene turned to chaos and carnage following an explosion outside a cafe in the square by the Hussein mosque.
A middle-aged man, Mahmoud, said he heard a loud blast as he emerged from a nearby underpass.
“I saw children and a man who I thought was dead lying sprawled out on the ground. I saw someone’s hand or foot – I’m not sure what it was – and a lot of blood.
“People started running in all directions and they were stepping on those who were still lying down because they were panicking. They were running for their lives.”

Betting someone’s not liking Egypt’s present role in the peace process.

Put on your hip waders, talk of Social Security has reared up in Washington. Especially the bit about ‘fixing it’. I’m sure the Democrats will let us do anything to social ‘security’ when we pry it from their cold dead fingers.
I’d say refund everyone’s money and abolish the thing…but that would involve the government playing with imaginary money orders of magnitude moreso than they are now. And that’s not a good thing.

the second Great…..Discussion

Okay, when do we start calling it “Depression”?

All of this ‘crisis’ management may be doing more harm than good – and for a change I’m not referring to economics, but psychology. Mob dynamics in particular.

Financial fears are hammering asian stocks (It’s fascinating to me to watch Australia increasingly be lumped in with Asia financially.) – because we’ve such reason to be confident in our banking system.

GM and Chrysler may need even more money – and the situation is getting decidedly ‘odd’

Ford, the only U.S. automaker not seeking U.S. loans, said the UAW will accept stock for half of the payments into a so- called Voluntary Employee Beneficiary Association, or VEBA. The Ford agreement appears to require more cash up front than agreements sought by GM and Chrysler to keep $17.4 billion in aid, Brian Johnson, a Barclay’s analyst said.

My imagination runs away with me and suddenly I’m hearing the voice of Sandra Bullock telling me that “in the future all cars are made by Ford.” An employee owned company that has since bought up it’s American competition. An …. odd image that.

A related image comes from the fact that More money is being flushed down the banking toilet. The real kicker (for me) was contained in this bit:

The deepening global downturn is dragging down all kinds of businesses, and, with no bottom to the recession in sight, investors sent Wall Street down Monday. The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 251 points to its lowest close since May 7, 1997, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index logged its lowest finish since April 11, 1997. It’s as if the decade’s dot-com surge, collapse and subsequent recovery never occurred.
The Dow is just over 100 points from 7,000. Both indexes have lost about half their value since hitting record highs in October 2007.
In an unexpectedly assertive joint statement after two weeks of bank stock declines, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and federal bank regulatory agencies announced that the government might demand a direct ownership stake in major banks that do not have enough capital to weather a deeper economic downturn. The government will begin conducting a test of the banks’ financial health this week.
Administration officials emphasized that nationalizing any of the major banks was their least favorite solution, but they acknowledged that some banks may be both too big to fail and too fragile to endure another round of shocks without substantial government help.

(Emphasis mine.) In other words, just the right size to be money hemorrhaging dead weight for years to come. I don’t agree with the nationalizing the banks thing, okay (the government just isn’t that competent okay?) but even if I did, why make them something the government is even more responsible for if doing so wont’ bring them back to solvency? What is to be gained by exercising federal control over them besides changing who the crooks are? Why should an agency directing us into a hole of runaway inflation be made responsible for bank security? And it’s really looking increasingly likely that soon the government will exercise voting stakes as shareholders. I say thee Doom.

the US is to give Israel 900 million dollars for Gaza reconstruction

Clinton said during her Asia trip this month that she would attend an international donors conference in Egypt on March 2 to discuss reconstruction in Gaza.
She provided no other details, but a U.S. official in the United States said Monday that the Obama administration’s donation will likely top $900 million in humanitarian and rebuilding aid to the Palestinian Authority to help Gaza recover from Israel’s offensive against Hamas last month.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the donation had not received final approval, said the exact amount was still to be determined.
The official added that the aid would not go to Hamas. U.S. officials have no formal contacts with the Islamic militant group Hamas, which runs a separate Palestinian administration in the Gaza Strip.

So we’re still pretending that we’re not slavishly loyal to Israel…yet we’re donating 900 million dollars to them? (900 million dollars we don’t have. 900 million that could be spent on ‘humanitarian aid’ that might just be a little more actually humanitarian than rewarding Israel for being prats.)

Party Political Nonsense

Are people still using Twitter? They are? Shit. Why? (Utterly irrelevant to the point of this or any other post but I really missed the boat on the twitter thing. Really and truly. I don’t think I’m missing anything.)

The Democratic Party (ha!) is resisting their President on Social Security (though I note that the article says absolutely nothing about social security, just how Obama feels v. the Party. Which is how the parties want it, you know?) but as has been reported the President is already feeling the lash of not toeing the party line. (Far more about Social Insecurity exists in the second link, which amounts to “same as it ever was”. That and the nightmarish 10.8 trillion dollar debt figure.)

So…yeah. The Dems are clearly choking on this whole economics thing. But is the GOP doing *any* better?
Short answer – No.

Somewhat longer answer – Same as It Ever Was.
The GOP has this wonderful opportunity to redefine itself and become a party of principle but they are wasting it in the name of the status quo (the Status Quo is really everything that’s wrong with the GOP) – they oppose the stimulus plan (which is admittedly broken) but don’t have an alternative to suggest that doesn’t begin *and* end with the hollow prom date “Tax Cuts” (with the unstated but known to everyone rider -”for the wealthy”).

I doubt it will happen, I really do, but I think for real conservatives, the best thing that could happen would be the GOP being widely perceived as doing nothing – good or bad (which, you know, is in fact true in realpolitik), suffer further, get destroyed, and reinvent itself as a Conservative Party. Jettison all of that status quo ‘social conservatism’ (read: Wingnut) nonsense and start again. I can dream can’t I?
The alternative is one in which the GOP recovers – somewhat in 2010 and then further in 2012 and nothing really changes; the big ‘decider’ will be whether or not the dems keep the white house in 2012 – if they do, I suspect the early ‘teens will see runaway inflation unprecedented since the years of the Carter administration.

Obama criticizes critics of stimulus at governor’s gathering.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, one of the Southern Republican governors who have called the $787 billion plan too costly, said he heard nothing Monday to ease those concerns. He repeated his vow that Texas will reject any federal aid that locks the state into higher spending later.

Okay guy, tell you what. Since you’re So Opposed to the stimulus package, when Texas gets it’s first taste of the stimulus package, refuse it. Stand on principle. Don’t take the money.

Texas is among the states that would have to expand unemployment coverage to part-time workers to take full advantage of stimulus funds. That could mean higher taxes after federal funds run out – a major talking point among critics.

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Make no mistake, he has every intention of taking the money – saying it would irresponsible to refuse money for roads (for example). The GOP hates spending on infrastructure, but they’d rather that than people apparently. Not that people will see dime one of this stimulus package.

Glop

The rabid knee-jerk salivating liberal intelligencia that can’t see past it’s own blinders that they too are part of the fucking problem really makes me sick. For years now, both sides of the aisle have stood there, facing forward with their hands over their ears endlessly repeating the same trite phrases over and over again like six year olds on a sugar bender, both so desperate to look different from the other.
I’m short circuiting this rant and going to bed. Instead I’ll leave you with an interesting bit of historical amusement

Ashen Wednesday

“The flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy” – sorry Mr. President but I consider that a flaw, not a feature.

Aside from (again – it’s like he reads this blog) directly addressing my concerns regarding the administration’s handling of the auto industry (“we will not protect them from their own bad decisions” or something like that, which earns him major points in my book), I was utterly underwhelmed with Obama’s congressional address last night.
It’s not like he, really, said anything, certainly nothing new.

Obama hinted at some of the “hard choices” that must be made. Rescuing the banking system, he said, will mean “probably more [money] than we’ve already set aside,” but he didn’t indicate how much more. Democrats and Republicans must “sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me,” the president said. But he did not identify what he will sacrifice.

Mr. Obama, your policy, it is slipping. Fast.

It’s like something’s shooting them down – another satellite comes down this one brand new (and not having collided with another).

The loss of the $278-million satellite came as a severe blow to NASA’s climate monitoring efforts, as well as the builder of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va.

Oops. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess another one of those isn’t going to be forthcoming any time soon. Which does make me wonder – what are Our Fearless and Divine Leader’s intentions regarding the space program again?

And, rather suddenly out of nowhere, apparently US troops are to leave Iraq in 18 months though I do wonder how many of them will be coming home before deploying to Afghanistan. (And, again, how that particular piece of foreign policy is something other than the one we now have with a different coat of paint?)

Perhaps however, the most interesting part of the article is when McCain does the duck walk:

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., insisted in remarks prepared for a speech Wednesday that Afghanistan could be turned around with sufficient resources.
In a speech planned at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, McCain said the United States should brace itself for violence in Afghanistan that worsens before it gets better.

Before it gets better – and that will be when? Oh right, of the numerous times anyone has ever tried to invade Afghanistan, we’ll just succeed where others have failed because of……magic or something. Magic and other kinds of wishing makes it so have no place in foreign (or for that matter, domestic) policy.

In closing, the oddest article on the Peanut recall yet – the Peanut of the Beast.

An outbreak of salmonella food poisoning traced to peanut products has sickened 666 people and is continuing despite one of the biggest food recalls in U.S. history, health officials said on Tuesday.

Fondling my stuffed Ocelot

A major earthquake has devastated most of the California coastline. The beaches have become battlefields and the waves have become a war zone. The self proclaimed “Fuhrer of the New Beach” has seized control of the beaches.

After being inundated with the one two punch of the liberal dribble down of dumb and the republican followup last night, the batteries today are full of the hate.

A winner from the cavalcade of GOP stupid, Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning clutching desperately at some kind of New Age crystal waving cred by claiming to know when Ruth Bader Ginsburg will die – the Supreme Court Justice just recently (as previously reported) came back to work. Note to those brain damaged that might be considering voting for him in 2010 – Malcolm McLaren strives to have this kind of credibility, okay?

Joe Biden claims the Tubes that make up the Internet soon to be replaced with Numbers; JJ Abrams could not be reached for comment.

Bernanke says Hey don’t worry about inflation and then fails to explain how or why. (Magic? Is he going to levitate the Pentagon while he’s at it?)

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Wednesday that he had an exit strategy from the U.S. central bank’s recent massive monetary expansion that will keep inflation under control as the economy recovers. As he had on Tuesday, Bernanke also told lawmakers he saw no need for the United States to nationalize banks, and he lifted Wall Street shares after he assured there was no plan for the government take over Citigroup.

Yes Chairman. It’s all true. God’s an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Washtington is where the monsters live. And apparently, the Federal Reserve is where the good drugs are.

Why aren’t more US Banks actually Failing as opposed to just making exaggerated flailing motions and adjusting their ties? FIRREA

Estimated cost of the Federal government for fiscal year 2009? 410 billion – continuing the BushCo era of big government.

Everyone else is wrong – right everyone? A lovely piece from
Wired Alt Text.

General Dissatisfaction index for the whole of planet earth today? High. The Bonobos definitely have the right idea. Fnord.

schadenfreude

It’s really hard not to read something into the fact that, much as I might want to actually link something to Xinhua, China’s state news agency, I can’t – or rather I won’t – because every time I roll onto that website, my antivirus software flips over like Julius Caesar watching Pokemon. Which is a pity because I think China’s comments regarding the US human rights record would at least be some funny shit. The U.S. yesterday released a report on the global state of human rights, (yes, I laughed too). China of course has it’s knickers in a wad over what this report says about China.

China is rejecting criticism of its human rights record in the State Department’s latest annual report on human rights around the world. Meanwhile, China says people in Tibet – one area highlighted in the report – are happily celebrating their new year.
China responded quickly to U.S. State Department criticism of it human rights record.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told reporters Thursday China is ready to discuss human rights with any country, but only on the basis of equality and mutual respect.
Ma says the Chinese government urges the American side to reflect on its own human rights problems, stop acting as a human-rights guardian and stop using human rights as an excuse to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs.

You know, it’s situations like this which make the word rhetoric synonymous (for me) with “political leaders shoveling horse shit”. Because the beautiful irony is that as long as the U.S. and China have been sloughing these words at each other, it hasn’t ever changed the way we treat each other. (Correction: we continue trading with China no matter how many times they poke us in the eyes or, as it happens, steal our missile technology.)
Let the record show that I’m already prepared to dismiss Hilary Clinton as a complete collect call from the secretary of state’s office. Not unlike the warp nacelles on space craft from the Star Trek franchise (GNDN – Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing).

Obama says the costs of the wars we’re involved with will no longer be kept ‘off the books’ – which is funny as I don’t recall those funds being secret so much as not talked about in Washington (by, um, either side).

We can rest easy – the department of Homeland Security (better known as the SS) is apparently entering a phase of ‘quiet government agency that does nothing and sucks up billions of dollars’ (which is to say, a classic Democratic institution) as they’ve stopped communicating entirely in six second blipverts of buzzwords. A House GOP Blowhard comes down on Homeland Security for not using the word Terrorism more because apparently he can’t get wood unless the word terrorism is in use 24/7 like it’s December 2001 (You know when state and social mandate dictated that terrorism be inserted into every other sentence like some deranged variation of the way drummers from Metal bands speak in concert “How the Terrorist is Dallas Terrorist Texas doing tonight God damnit??”)
The blowhard (and aficionado of Fox’s 24) in question is House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Peter King.

Electioneering now officially underway in Pakistan – though it’s not like this is new. (Coup and counter coup. Remember those?)

Opposition lawmakers in Pakistan have scuffled with police during a demonstration against court rulings that barred two of their leaders from elected office.
Police detained at least 20 lawmakers outside the Punjab provincial assembly in Lahore Thursday, as supporters of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif gathered in protest.
Other supporters of Mr. Sharif’s main opposition party, Pakistan Muslim League-N, took to the streets across the country and burned pictures of President Asif Ali Zardari.

I’m sure continued manhandling by the U.S. will ensure further calm in that region.

GM would be in bankruptcy were it not for government hand outs

GM lost $9.6 billion in the fourth quarter and, perhaps more important, burned through $5.3 billion in operating cash as a global recession pummeled car sales. For the year, GM lost $31 billion including special items for restructuring and other one-time costs. It’s the second-biggest loss in the company’s history.

Take a deep breath and try to work out how much this is the effect of the recession. I mean, it’s not like the notion of American auto manufacturers losing money is a new one – perhaps there’s maybe a …. reason for that?
No, that’s clearly just crazy talk.

GM has about $62 billion in debt, including $20 billion in cash owed to a union-led trust fund that will pay for health care for United Auto Workers employees and retirees starting in 2010. GM has been trying to negotiate a deal to give the UAW $10 billion in cash and the rest in stock. Ford Motor (F) got a similar deal on Feb. 23, so GM may be able to reduce that debt.
GM is also trying to shrink its $27.5 billion in unsecured debt to about $9 billion. The company is negotiating with bondholders. The bondholders may accept a deal, but they may end up with no more than 30¢ on the dollar in cash and the rest in stock, according to a source close to negotiations.

Who runs a business like this? If this wasn’t a monolithic company, it’d have been recycled already.

Jobless claims again up – to record levels supposedly. Do keep in mind – all this is counting is people who have successfully filed for unemployment and I don’t think I need to tell you that state government agencies will do anything they can to *not* pay.
For the administration’s part, there is finally some dawning acknowledgment that the money has to come from somewhere and now the speculation begins on where the cuts are going to come from.

“Having inherited a trillion-dollar deficit that will take a long time for us to close, we need to focus on what we need to move the economy forward, not on what’s nice to have,” Mr. Obama said.

This does not, of course, include what you’re stacking on top of it.
This is the part where the Great And Noble Party gets divided I think. It should prove………interesting, in a schadenfreude sort of way. Of course, it might suck if you’re a democrat.

New Math – driving accountants right to the streets

Obama unveils 3.6 TRILLION dollar budget for 2010

He has predicted the budget deficit for the current year will be $1.75tn, which is 12.3% of annual output and the biggest since World War II.
Planned spending includes $634bn to pay for healthcare reform and an extra $250bn to be set aside, in case it is needed to bail out US banks.

GOP attacks budget calls it loaded with spending – I just call it loaded. 3.6 trillion. Apparently one of the areas Obama is planning on cutting out of the budget is agribusiness which would seem to be code for “farm subsidies” – which is good in the long run but I think quite possibly disasterous (for him) in the short term.

So apparently in 2012, Obama will be running as a third party candidate for the Inflation Party. Higher level members of the democrats are of course praising the budget (pdf located here all 146 pages of it) – probably citing some fictional end to the wealthy getting tax cuts (Oh wait, yep)

Now that there’s no reason to artificially stratify the “support” for the war in Iraq, the Pentagon is allowing pictures of soldiers coffins again. There, joint chiefs, you get a cookie.

Homeland Insecurity chief blathers on about interdiction – and really should Homeland Security be talking so extensively about another country’s problems?

Music executive claims that people would have purchased every music track they got free file sharing.

We lost another of the best ones Wednesday – Philip José Farmer, dead at 91.

A list of five touchy feely ways to save the world that don’t work (though I think the claims are – at best – shoddy when it comes to their so called statistics on landfills.)

On the flipside to that, the possible ecological consequences to spoiled Americans and our bathroom habits

Does this fuck with you the way it does me? Advertisers now able to beam messages directly into your head Now, after a friend of mine sent me this link I drew pause to note the dateline – December 2007. eeek.

Outlook for anger, general disatisfaction, 33% chance of light rage

A meeting of top members of the Washed Up Party (I refuse to call them conservatives because they’re frelling not) all gathered in the same place and none of you told me. Seriously, all of the worst of the old guard? In one place? Damn, without my incendiaries and I. Pity.
I’m not going to dignify those proceedings with any kind of specific coverage – I’m sure the word socialism was on everything and they all felt appropriate threatened by the GAY AGENDA…save for those who were getting it under the stall. Whatever. I’m over it.
With any luck, some charming and useful loony will take the lot of them back behind the barn with a new gun, okay?

Meanwhile back in Obamaland, the Powers that Be Still. Don’t. Get. It. – why is taxation the beginning and end of everything? Reminder, we didn’t *have* Federal Income tax until 96 years ago. If you have to have taxation, apply it equally, as a percentage of income, across the board and be done with it.
But no, the dems (can I call them the Demos?) just can’t be bothered.

It’s looking as though Obama is going to be rid of the so-called conscience clause and I can’t say how that’s a bad thing.

Rich governors of nine states opt to reject extra money for unemployment claims while dancing in a circle shouting “Fuck you poor person!”

The stimulus bill recently passed by Congress includes incentives to states to expand benefits to many more jobless people, including part-time workers and those who have cycled in and out of the work force, who are not covered in many states.
The Republican governors of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas, along with Alaska and Idaho, have raised protests, saying that expansion could eventually require them to raise taxes.

I’m fine with that – provided that we cut off all Governor’s salaries effective immediately. But really, the article contains the ‘golden apple of fuck you’ implicit in it’s text:

Mr. Kight, who worked for more than three decades as an engineering technician, discovered in September that because of complex state rules, he was not eligible for unemployment insurance after losing a job at a major electronics manufacturer he had landed at the beginning of the year.
Unable to draw jobless benefits, he and his wife have taken on thousands of dollars in credit-card debt to help make ends meet.

Emphasis mine – because THAT is precisely what they want. Debt. Individual wealth and fiscal security is apparently no longer the providence of the middle class (and it never was of the lower classes) – just keep owing; hey, it stimulates the economy, our Blessed Leader Says So.

Bring on the Night

Hacker: Don’t tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers: the Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; the Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; the Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it already is.
Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?
Bernard: Sun readers don’t care who runs the country, as long as she’s got big tits.

I’ve been re-acquainting myself with the brilliant BBC series Yes, Minister this weekend. (The source of the above.) I highly recommend checking it out if you are as much of a political junkie as I am.

US Threatens to boycott UN conference on Racism because it threatens to describe Israel as an apartheid like state
Well….isn’t it?

Israel and Canada announced several months ago that they will boycott the Geneva conference, which was intended to carry forward the work of a contentious U.N. conference on racism and intolerance held in 2001 in Durban, South Africa. Israel and the United States walked out of the Durban conference in protest against delegates’ attempts to brand Israel as an apartheid state guilty of racism.

Admittedly, this isn’t something I’ve thought about before. The International Criminal Court defines Apartheid as crimes* “committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”
It goes on to list such crimes as homicide, slavery, sexual violence, enslavement, forced relocation, deprivation of physical liberty, and collective persecution. (There’s a more detailed definition per the UN located here.) Which about fits the bill. Please make no mistake, I’m not saying (by any means) that the Palestinians are blameless…just that they’ve gotten a raw deal and for some reason the US is institutionally committed to maintaining it.
I think I feel opposition to this boycott coming on. Especially given that so far, the Obama administration does seem hell bent on More of the Same re: the Mid-East and Israel as every administration since, well, 1947.

Well that’s okay because the EU is pledging 556 million dollars in aid to Palestine yes, Palestine.

The pledge will be presented formally Monday in Egypt at the donors’ meeting, which is to focus on gathering international aid to rebuild the Gaza Strip. Israel’s three-week offensive there, which ended last month, caused widespread damage.
The executive’s pledge is just part of the EU’s total pledge to the Palestinians. The 27-member bloc’s individual nations were expected to announce their own pledges at the conference. The EU as a whole is the largest donor to the Palestinians. It now gives some €1 billion a year in aid.

It goes on to say that the UN is taking steps to ensure it doesn’t wind up in the hands of Hamas (Not sure I have that much faith in the UN.) But it does elicit visions of a pro-Palestine EU and pro-Israeli US coming to disagreement in the next ten to twenty years.

And elsewhere in the realm of Failures of American Foreign Policy China’s denouncing the US human rights record is still in the news – and you know I’d really like to know what they said. Of course, there is ample proof that both countries are just utterly full of shit.

Last weekend, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held talks in Beijing with China’s leaders and, in public, the issue of human rights was barely mentioned.

Domestically, Americans are increasingly not buying the Obama administrations assurances on budget matters and it’s about time. Has the honeymoon finally ended America?

Apparently, it soon will be ending for the world wide web, at least in part – manifesting a trend many have been predicting for some time now, Hearst Corp continues to try to remain in the early part of the 20th century by returning to a newspaper-like availability policy for it’s online material – and really, I think that at this rate, likely the internet and all of it’s freedoms and limitless possibilities will largely have been legislated out by 2020, save by those willing to serve time for felonies, leaving the rest of us with corporate sponsored nonsense. Which is bizarre to me, as the self same media conglomerates are increasingly making their television pablum (as opposed to their news pablum) more available on-line. Even if much of it is Law & Order Special Victims Unit or any of those shows that fetishize rape, molestation, and incest. (A replicant from Blade Runner would never get modern network television because there’s an entire subculture of viewers that gets weird vicarious victimization and emotional release from these shows.)
Anyway, backing away from the tangential rant, more on Hurstcorp moving it’s head firmly into the middle twentieth century can be found here.

Are threats of bank nationalization to discourage foreign investment? An interesting consequence (and one that would have made me laugh and laugh and laugh had this story gone out on BushCo’s watch, even though quite clearly it was in motion during the Bush administration.)

The battered GOP plans it’s super villain-like comeback

Steele, Maryland’s former lieutenant governor, vowed to bring all ethnic and racial groups, and the “the hip-hop generation,” into the GOP. He also appointed himself Obama’s toughest critic, throwing a rapper’s boast at the new president: “How’ya like me now?”

Oh hell, does this make anyone else (at least those of us Americans who went to public school) think of those stupid rallies in high school where Christian groups would come in to give anti-drug/selling Jesus assemblies who used “hip hop” to “look cool?” (there is a reason I’m using quotes there…) Or how, for most of the nineties anyone trying to talk to (well, lecture) kids would apply some stupid white bread “hip hop” filter to the proceedings? That’s about what this article leads me to expect.
As for the rest, I don’t buy this ‘inclusive’ bit until I personally can show up for a party meeting without being made to feel like I fucked the dog or something. Trust me, were the GOP to jettison their stone age social policy and decide to embrace fiscal conservatism**, they’d have a chance of getting my vote. I’d be really in favor of that. But I’ll be very very surprised if that happens in the next 8- 12 years, if ever.

That’s it for me for now. Beware the ides of march.

* Crimes as similar to crimes defined as “against humanity” which, legally, I believe would be defined as war crimes.

** Continuing on from my last post – okay look, the GOP is conservative in name only on any kind of real issue. I harp on how fiscally conservative the GOP isn’t so I’ll grab another of their favorite buzz words – State’s rights? Bullshit – that refers to that thing that they do to “turn it over to the states” when they don’t want to appear supportive of legislation that isn’t popular at their klan/promise keeper rally or whatever. That’s it. Beyond that, their policies bear striking resemblance to “Fuck the states.”
As for the first point, if you actually associate fiscal conservatism with the GOP then you really have two options -
1. Show me your cryogenic capsule where you agelessly slept away the past 40 years, as I’ve always wanted to see one.
2. Please be shooting yourself in the head, directly I’ll ammend this to Please be Getting Out of My Gene Pool.
Look, with every passing year I find myself identifying more and more as a conservative. But that doesn’t mean “Jesus Whoring Hate Monger” to me. Nor does it mean “supping at the table of any lobbyist who will pay” or “sucking corporate cock.” Just in case there was some ambiguity there.

A fistful of biscuits

Suddenly Clinton has a comprehensive Mid-east plan – which sounds cribbed from the EU, honestly.

In Gaza even the smugglers want open borders – considering that, economically, smugglers have the most to gain from closed borders.

Iran nuke hype well underway

Speaking of hype – Millions panic as the Dow falls below an entirely arbitrary number signifying fuck all

AiG posts Q4 loses for 2008 with a typical reaction from the US (Hint: let’s give them money!) Tired I am (Yoda I talk like) of hearing that every single company receiving monies from the Fed is “critical to the world economy” – they can’t all be critical….

China crashes satellite into the Moon – I love the summation line: “The deliberate move was planned to give the People’s Republic lunar landing experience.”
Does collision count?

A defense contractor torrents plans of Presidential helicopter to Iran (“to Iran”? The torrent was being hosted on an Iranian IP.)

and finally, New England educator wants madness added to curriculum

Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia

Holy shit, Ron Kirk is Obama’s nominee as Trade Representative – which isn’t what the article pertains to but this is the first I’ve heard of this. As anyone who has, regrettably, had to pay attention to Dallas city politics will be familiar with Mr. Kirk’s, uhm, “stellar record”, the contents of the article will be unsurprising. (Hint: if they served on the Dallas city council, pretty much ever, I file them in the folder labeled corrupt and leave it at that. And don’t get me started on the media antics of John Wiley “Coyote” Price*.)

All of those paranoid and over the top fears we (well, some of us) had during the Bush administration? Completely justified (Not, mind, that I needed more; and again I state that the CIA and other intelligence apparatus are corrupt as hell and have been for fifty years, but at least in times past they had to bother trying to be sneaky about being Tools of Pure Evil.)
While I’m on the subject – it turns out that Ninety Two Interrogation tapes were made in 2002 and subsequently destroyed in 2005 (at the advisement of…yes, our boys at Langley, the Central Intelligence Agency).
I’m sorry China, what was that about the U.S. human rights record?

Ms Clinton goes to Israel – article replete with image of Secretary Clinton grasping at straws and/or practicing her Darth Vader remote death grip. Maybe both. This trip to Palestine*koff*Israel is on the heels of an international coalition sending over 4 billion dollars to Gaza. Which is funny given that I’m curious how that money will make it to Gaza…and how that money will get spent. Especially given that

Israel, which has been fighting Gaza militants, refuses to allow building materials into Gaza for reconstruction.

Wow. Of course, the hundred plus rocket attacks made from Gaza since the declaration of ceasefire in January probably aren’t helping that, either.

In closing I have to ask – why is there never a Second Baptist Church? They can’t all be the first right?

* though a brief google search has told me that John Wiley Price bobbleheads are available. Know fear. )

Duck and Cover

Secretary of State Clinton claims that U.S. support for Israel is unshakable citing Unrelenting commitment – which while undesirable is wholly unsurprising. A stream of pure 99 proof rhetoric has thus issued forth, after her meeting with Shimon Peres. Keeping in mind that Israel is still very much in the process of forming a new government so any agreement brokering is going to be, at best, merely laying the groundwork and hoping no one goes back on their given word. She meets with Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu and ‘caretaker’ Prime Minister (which entails what precisely?) Ehud Olmert over the next two days. Also she is expected to meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmood Abbas on Wednesday. Well at least she’s meeting with *someone* from the Palestinian government. But in general, it sounds very much like more of the same. Which is a pity.

Something of a reality check on the 2010 budget (which wasn’t of course, the *actual* budget but really sort of a rough draft – because a democrat controlled Washington can’t do anything if it can’t do it three bloody times*). I really wish I saw more articles like this, but I suppose I should be happy that I’m seeing this at all, and on something national as opposed to opposition where I’m used to seeing it (relatively obscure marxist-libertarian blogs that like six people read for example).
For what it’s worth, I’d like to know where the administration got the math that magically told them “recovery will begin in 2010″ – or is this being derived from the quatrains of Nostradamus? I ask because there is one critical point that just reading mention of makes me want to go into vapor lock:

Economic recovery can help reduce the deficit by reducing the (Emphasis mine.) government’s need to borrow money to fund its efforts. That’s because tax revenue starts to rise as more employers start hiring and boost production, while demand for government services and benefits such as unemployment insurance falls as more people find work.

Borrow from where, the Bavarian Illuminati? Is Futurethink Spacejesus going to loan us a quid? Of course, it actually pertains to the notion of using money that doesn’t really exist and calling it “borrowing”. Perhaps there’s an unspoken notion that the taxation that is set to be enacted on the upper classes** (well, supposedly – it’s not happening til 2011, assuming it happens even then. You know how those PACs and lobbyists are.) And speaking of lobbyists, the whole notion of curbing corporate tax breaks? Behind that 110%, but I’m afraid it’s total bullshit. Seriously – if Obamaland really does somehow acquire some kind of “lobbyist free zone” then guess who doesn’t get re-elected in 2012? Much as I’d loooooooove to see that happen (the lack of lobbyist influence in Washington) I don’t do enough psychoactives to believe it will occur anytime soon. Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will be ‘selling’ the budget before Congress next week. Oh joy – more awesome sound bites of doom. I can’t wait.

Elsewhere….
Big hollywood (no, not the crusty neo-con gimboids; more meaning the industry that spends billions of dollars churning out useless shit every year) are showing their true colours at the penultimate day of the Pirate Bay trial.

Three entertainment lawyers and a Swedish prosecutor demanded jail time Monday for the four defendants in The Pirate Bay trial, though they couldn’t agree on how much. The prosecution is seeking a year in prison for each, while Hollywood is leaning toward the maximum two-year terms.

Tell you what Hollywood – stop churning out fly speckled Ebola poo like Transformers and I might be more sympathetic to your cause. Like say, at all.

Toyota looking to post first losses in 59 years – seeking to emulate US automakers and ask it’s government for a handout. A handout to the sum of 2 billion US dollars. You know, I’m thinking if they’ve not lost money in the entire time I’ve been alive, they probably don’t need a handout. Just a thought.

A new study by the Pew Center on the States claims that 1 in 31 adults are in prison on probation or on parole in the U.S. The study cited an imbalance in the amount spent on prisons v. the amount spent on those in probationary or parole situations even though the latter outnumber the former by a significant factor. Likely, the drug war (which is about the same thing as the war on terror) is a significant factor here in my estimation.
A pdf of the full text of the report (about 48 pages) is located here.

No doubt as part of the Iran!Nukeseleventyone! fear mongering, an interesting bit on the Nuclear Security Administration which is pretty scary, and not just because their initials are NSA.

* in fairness, I expect a GOP controlled Washington sends multiple copies of everything in triplicate three times also but they aren’t as big on this “transparency” thing. Of course, normally, neither are the dems.

** which I keep seeing referred to as “paying as much in taxes as everyone else does” – which while my gut thinks probably has some truth to it, my brain isn’t convinced. Research should follow.

Taxation, party affiliation, and class clash

So, what percentage of the wealthy pay what taxes? As indicated here that’s dependent on how you define ‘wealthy’. Keep in mind that if you make less than a certain amount annually in this country, you *don’t* pay taxes at all. (Nonetheless, in my experience about a quarter of each paycheck goes away regardless. Social Security, Medicare, et. al. – not technically taxation, but it is something the government takes from you, without option, supposedly in return for a service. Supposedly.)
So in that case, hate to break it to you, but the wealthy pay more taxes than the lower classes. But of course, the battleground is (as usual) over the middle class, which I don’t relate to*, but whatever.

For me, the question really comes down to – is it fair to expect the upper classes to pay more taxes than the middle class or the lower classes? The answer is pretty simple – no, it’s not fair. Keeping in mind that I favor a flat percentage rate tax that hits everyone about the same. (Presuming that taxation is necessary. In the theoretical “pure model of ethics” sense, I don’t believe it *is* necessary, but in exchange for certain things, I am willing to be taxed.)

But remember, outrage against possible tax breaks for the wealthy is primarily originating from and regarding the middle class. Should the wealthy have to pay less taxes than the Middle Class? Of course not. But do they?
As much as it threatens to offend my Marxist sensibilities, I don’t think so. (My own issues with his dismissal of the flat tax aside**, this is a very accurate, very straightforward piece.) Certainly, many many groups would claim it so (mostly the GOP who traditionally are more interested in the Upper Classes than the rest of us anyway) – for example, this article by the NCPA. But of course, the NCPA is notoriously right wing (ask that left wing propaganda soldier Michael Moore sometime) so it’s hardly free of bias. (And it wouldn’t hurt to remember that the recent GOP counter proposal to the stimulus package would likely raise taxes.)
Keeping in mind also, that I’m primarily addressing the idea of federal income tax – state taxes are another kettle of fish entirely. (Some states, for example, don’t have them. Moreover, no two states do things quite the same way.)

Nevertheless, I’m not convinced. Maybe I just don’t want to be. I think there is a lot of truth to the above, but the exceptions can’t just be media hype and perceptual drift can it? The sheer amount of partisan disinformation, propaganda, and spin inherent in the whole issue of taxation makes it very difficult to make definitive statements with any degree of certainty. Traditionally, the GOP has been seen to represent white wealthy men and the democrats the middle classes and (some) minorities even though, in the main, the differences between the two parties have only become more and more minimalized since the 1960s. In my own experience, the base of the democratic party has always been affluent white liberals (see also: latte liberal, the ivory tower, et. al.) who have had more in common with the perceived base of the GOP but with a different set of social ethics. So are they really any more prepared or inclined to fairly represent the middle classes come tax time? (I think in general, that the poorer members of both parties, in general, vote because of tradition and where they fall socially on the liberal-conservative axis more than on issues of policy. Which can’t really help any of us in the long run.)

I think the real test will be where we’re at in four or eight years depending on how well the democrats can hold onto the government. Quite a few have noticed an emergent demographic shift that suggests upper class white families are finding greater appeal with the democratic party than they have in recent memory.

I think I’ve lost track of my initial point in my meanderings, so forgive me if this was a bit difficult to follow. I need to come up for air at this point and read what’s been writ. If you want a real reality check, click here and read a letter from someone asking, as I have, who is more likely to raise taxes – Dems or the GOP? Just understand that it’s from 1988.

* culturally, I acknowledge a certain amount of privilege – having gone to primarily middle class schools, being functionally white (meaning: I look white, qed, culturally, I am), even as I try to hack all of that programming. Nonetheless, I don’t relate to terribly much of the above in any case.

** ethically, one of my main points is this: life isn’t fair, but we should strive to make it so where possible and where it is convenient to do so.

Government: Not a term of endearment.

You might remember a case here in the Bay Area that established that Obama’s justice department doesn’t necessarily have any intention of relinquishing some of the vast amounts of authority claimed by the Bush White House. It’s gotten … a lot worse.

(A bit more background if you’re not otherwise familiar with the case.)

Now here’s where it gets scary. A brief filed by the Obama administration Friday (located here) attempts to establish some extremely bold claims:

It is literally arguing that no court has the power to order that classified documents be used in a judicial proceeding; instead, it is the President — and the President alone — who possesses that decision-making power under Article II, and no court order is binding on the President to the extent it purports to direct that such information be made available for use in a judicial proceeding. … There is only one branch with the power to decide if these documents can be used in this Article III court proceeding: The Executive. What the President decides is final. His decision is unreviewable. It’s beyond the reach of the law. No court has the authority to second-guess it or to direct the President to comply with a disclosure order.

So the NSA has essentially offered up the notion-as-law that the President has discretion, not subject to judicial or peer review, to declare something classified and therefore doesn’t have to turn it over to a court.

Otherwise….
Obama sends letter to Russia regarding nuclear capable Iran – where the hell is all of this hype coming from? Offering to ditch a missile defense system? (Er, would this be the same missile defense system that’s been all or mostly talk since Ron Reagan’s 1983 ‘star wars’ speech?) Because…………………..
Still waiting.
Sorry, this whole situation sounds an awfully lot like a certain other President’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” nonsense. Too much for me to be able to believe. At least without something akin to, you know, facts and proof.
As I write this, President Obama is on tv, fielding questions about this. *headscratch*

McCain blasts Obama re: Earmarks, citing desperation to be newsworthy again – earmarks. Yes, because the GOP would Never Ever have earmarks on a bill. Ever.
Kind of like how the Stimulus bill and the Bailout weren’t PRECISELY THE SAME KIND OF LEGISLATION.
Not to mention Mitch McConnell. Oh that’s right, if it’s for defense spending, tobacco, or oil, it’s not an earmark, it’s (in 2009) “fiscal responsibility”. Look it up fuckwad.
Dude, old folks home. Stat.

What was believed to be a Denial of Service attack yesterday on the Pirate Bay wasn’t. Today is the last day of the case which we won’t (for some reason) get a ruling on til April. (Which should give Hollywood ample time to find out if the Sweedish legal system is at all ammenable to bribery.) Electric Pig has 7 Things we learned from the trial.

Steve Forbes wants us to know that 1933 is coming again – which makes me wonder if it will be illegal to own gold coins by April 5? Dumping his ass in the “delusional – no concept of real world” pile with the rest of the head in the sanders. (Forget not that he was involved with the Project for the New American Century bullshit.)

Apparently I’m surfing on this news cycle. Worry not, this should be the last one for the day. (Of I think three.)

Keynesian economics – crediting your way out of debt since…..never

Obamaland Debt you can believe in

“I think if there’s a single episode … that has made me more angry, I can’t think of one (other) than AIG,” Bernanke said, accusing the company of exploiting gaps in the regulatory system and making irresponsible financial decisions. But he said, “We really had no choice” but to prop up the company because the consequences of failure could be disastrous.

Okay Bernanke, fine – you and your Obamaland cronies keep beating this particular dead horse so tell me, disasterous HOW? Disasterous to who? Disasterous in the short term or the long term? Show, don’t tell. At this point I’m resigned to the notion that the “economic recovery” is more an arbitrary experiment in Keynesian economics than anything that has relevance to the real world. (“An economic model pioneered during the Great Depression? Clearly has universal application – roll it out!”)

Comedy gold, even if he does miss a few beats. (And again, though at this point I think it goes without saying, that no I don’t agree 100% with everything he says. Duh. The only person I agree with 100% is myself.)

According to an article in nature, a substance called GML stops the vaginal transmission of HIV. (With a slightly different perspective it’s covered here as well.)

Pressure increases for inquiry into the Bush administration. I don’t think this will go anywhere, still. But I’m increasingly of the opinion that it needs to happen. If naught else, it would create the precedent that you can’t do whatever you like as President and not suffer the consequences (also known as the Ford Doctrine).
With a warrant issued for Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, Bashir attacks west over warrant – I’m just waiting for him to mention Bush as a war criminal if in fact he has not done so. (I’ll be quite surprised if such a statement becomes national news, if only because I don’t think the Obama administration wishes it.)

I have nothing to say about this stupid so called news item about Steele and Rush (which sounds so much like gay porn) save this :: Mr. Limbaugh must have a six foot erection with a giant bottle of pills on top right now. (“They’re TALKING ABOUT ME!!!!!!”) That so much of the ‘debate’ about the future of the GOP hinges on that pill munching hypocrite shows you just how bad the state of American media really is. (We have pretty much long sense hit the age of E!)
It’s called mockery boys and girls.

The California state supreme court reviews Prop 8s same sex marriage ban today – and again, I don’t think it will be overturned but I can hope.

And because I like to go out on a ‘positive’ note – An Israeli air raid on Gaza kills at least three. Didn’t wait too long for Clinton to get scarce did they? (And by way of follow up, the US is definitely boycotting the UN conference on Racism in a show of Ostrich-like behavior rivaling that of the Bush administration.)

Liberal Media Bias

It disgusts me that the only sites I can find talking about this are, literally, Wingnut Daily, Faux News*, a website with the name “stop the aclu” (yes, really) and other such**.

A CCSU student giving a presentation on why students and teachers should have the ability to carry concealed firearms on campus gets a visit from the police because the Professor found the presentation threatening. Sources disagree whether or not the police involved were actual police or campus cops (yes, that does matter to me; one of these is out of line, the other is Business as Usual).

From the Daily Campus:

John Wahlberg was in Paula Anderson’s introductory public speaking class when the students received an assignment to make a presentation about a “relevant issue in the media.” Given the fierce debate about whether or not students and professors should be allowed to carry weapons on campus – ignited by the fatal shootings at Virginia Tech – Wahlberg thought that concealed carry was an appropriate topic for class. It is important to note that while Wahlberg is a gun owner and a Second Amendment advocate, he never threatened to harm anyone during his presentation.
After giving the presentation – during which he advocated for students’ right to bear arms – Wahlberg went to work, where he was told that he needed to go to the police station. At the station, officers questioned him about how many guns he owned and where he kept them.

And yes, Faux news has the skinny here.

Last October, John Wahlberg and two classmates at Central Connecticut State University gave an oral presentation for a communications class taught by Professor Paula Anderson. The assignment was to discuss a “relevant issue in the media,” and the students presented their view that the death toll in the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting massacre would have been lower if professors and students had been carrying guns.
That night, police called Wahlberg, a 23-year-old senior, and asked him to come to the station. When he arrived, they they read off a list of firearms that were registered in his name and asked where he kept them. Guns are strictly prohibited on the CCSU campus and residence halls, but Wahlberg says he lives 20 miles off-campus and keeps his gun collection locked up in a safe. No further action was taken by police or administrators.

Really – unofficial police questioning because someone was “afraid” of the views expressed by another? No charges filed (of course not, no crime was committed) but what the hell – just as a minor favor to a reactionary faculty gun control nut?
I think the part that offends me the most is where I have to go to get the news – this is all over the blogosphere but (with a few exceptions) entirely in the twilight zone of bloggers who take Rush and Michelle Malkin seriously instead of as the brain damaged yobos they are.

*which is in fact the source of this little news bit. Sad, isn’t it?

** Correction, I found an interesting and insightful blog entry on the matter here which I’m adding to my regularly read list I think. Very intelligent and well written.

(Name of Post)

Geography of a recession: NY Times graphic here really gets the point across

NY Times dubs this the Great Recession of 2008 (Clever, no?) Interesting trends are manifesting

The Great Recession of 2008 (and beyond) is hurting men more than women. It is hurting homeowners and investors more than renters or retirees who rely on Social Security checks. It is hurting Latinos more than any other ethnic group. A year ago, a greater share of Latinos held jobs than whites. Today, the two have switched places.

Reuters has the same name and another diagnosis – three years. Maybe it really is looking like 1933 all over again. (Of course, they’re getting this largely from….investment firms Mmmm, can you feel the trust in those predictions eroding yet?)

GM Auditors suggest survival of General Motors is doubtful

The company is seeking nearly $17 billion more in government aid to keep running. But today’s 402-page annual report said that even an influx of government cash may not be enough to keep GM in business.

Mmmm..sounds like AiG, about two iterations ago.

Undisclosed losses at Merrill Lynch bring investigation – 120 million dollars lost in currency markets. And that’s just for starters, well before it’s ‘acquisition’ by “Bank” of America.

What, need a boost? Here’s fun:

BushCo terrorism memo brought to you (again) by the Times.

Oh, but wait -
A Brazilian archbishop says all those who helped a nine year old rape victim secure an abortion are to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Yes really. Hey, thanks, I might have forgotten that the Catholic Church needs to go back to the 1170s where it belongs.

NOW I’m disgusted.

Queen of the Wild Frontier

On this day 173 years ago, a small group of those loyal to the Anglo-caucasians who stole Texas from Mexico died in a fort because of a General’s hubris.
Revisionist? Not so much. You move into a foreign country and fail to abide by the laws there and then call on the country you immigrated from for help.
Sounds a bit like Israel to me.
Apparently I had a bit of Texas hate to burn through. (And really, I want to give a fucking lecture on Texas state history any time I hear Texas politicians speak about immigration policy. Hypocrites.)
Oh wait, one more:
DISD busted supplying foreign workers with fake SSNs Even after being warned in 2004 that it was explicitly illegal to do so, the Dallas Independant School District used 200 series social security numbers on IRS and Department of Homeland Security forms (kept in district which likely made it appealing to those otherwise concerned about getting caught.) At least 26 people were actually using these numbers, and more were used for criminal background checks.
But then, the DISD has always been synonymous for me with corruption (as indeed, most city offices in Dallas have seemed to me.)
Just think – those could have been ANYONE.
(More in this article from the Dallas Morning News.)

Anyway….
American Express demands right to call and text any phone a customer calls from

American Express wants to keep in touch.
So much so that Amex is changing its fine print so that it or its robots can call or SMS card holders on any phone line a member ever uses to contact the company, and the card holder will get the bill.
That change in its U.S. card holders’ terms of service agreement means travelers should be very wary about using hotel phones, pay phones, borrowed mobiles, or satellite phones to call Amex — even in an emergency, according to travel guru Edward Hasbrouck who first brought attention to the change.

The changes, announced on the current billing cycle, go into effect in April. I’m reminded of old Cold War era parodies of AmEx ads : Soviet Express, “Don’t Leave Home.”
Given that I’ve never had a credit card, I’m not crying. But that is pretty sad.

Yet another dismal report on unemployment which is merely one of several I could link to. They amount to the same thing – and I wish I could write far more of this off than I do as fear mongering. Unemployment, allegedly, is hitting the worst point since 1983. Not to worry though, because even Donald Trump is losing money (and I for one am only surprised that it took this long) – and so it is that I pause to have a vision of all of the remaining paragons of 80s wealthy excesses drowning in their own spending in the here and now. It’s nice to think so.

30 Seconds

In stark contrast to yesterday, Barbie today turns 50. Yes that’s sarcasm.

Saudis order 40 lashes for a 75 year old women for ‘mingling’ – “A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house, according to local media reports.”
Can you smell the progress? I mean, we’ve come so far….

Obama says US not winning in Afghanistan

In an interview with the New York Times, he said reaching out to the Taleban could be an option, in the same way outreach had worked in Iraq.
However, the “fierce independence among tribes” in Afghanistan presented different challenges, he said.
A month into his presidency, Mr Obama authorised the deployment of up to 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan.
Asked if the US was winning in Afghanistan, Mr Obama replied: “No.”

Rather than express some kind of sarcastic shock and surprise, I’ll just ask this – if we’re doing better in Iraq than Afghanistan, and yet we’re pulling out of Iraq then why the hell are we committing over 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan? Fiscal bloat? Is there some small corner of budget left that we just haven’t flushed down the toilet yet?

Mr Obama and his advisors are reviewing the US strategy on Afghanistan, and have looked at what has worked in Iraq.

Worked? Define “worked” please. Then, if you would, show me when this actually happened?”

It happened with banks, but this is scarier – the economy is driving consolidation of big pharmaceutical companies

Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. may be the next drugmaker to be bought after Merck & Co.’s $41.1 billion purchase of Schering-Plough Corp. and Pfizer’s $68 billion deal with Wyeth pressure companies to consolidate.

Drug companies + Monolithic consortiums = me scared.

In related to biotech news, Obama lifts Bush restrictions on stem cell research and the media acts surprised – though I think it’s more a matter of the big news agencies just happy to talk about something, ANYTHING, other than the economy.

(Semi-literate witty title)

Not that you can tell (at least, not here) but it’s International Women’s Day. Tell me, why hasn’t hallmark done this one to death?

This is a journey into sound

Alleged al-Queda suspect finally faces court – and I say finally because while he was charged with credit card fraud on his arrest, over five years ago he’s just now seeing a judge.

He was arrested shortly after the attacks on New York and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 and charged with credit card fraud.
Two years later, the US authorities deemed him an enemy combatant and under powers allowing the then US President, George W Bush, to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely without charge, he was transferred to a naval jail in South Carolina.
The US authorities have alleged that he met Osama Bin Laden and volunteered for a suicide mission while he was a student in Illinois.

Oh, and at first glance, apparently the maximum charge for credit card fraud is thirty years. Actually, at a brief hearing, he’s now actually been charged with supporting terrorism and conspiracy; it’s expected he’ll be transported to Illinois for trial, where he was indicted last month on charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism.

NATO plots strategy to fight al-Queda (Since when?) Actually, no such thing occured. The Biden was hauled out to go meet with the North Atlantic Council in anticipation of an April meeting. So the headline should read – Biden talked with NATO higher ups; though if Joe Biden is involved I fear that military engagement will be based on the presence of Afghani convenience stores….

Speaking of – you know how we’re done in Iraq, right? I mean, the administration says so. In that light, and in the light that Afghanistan is going to be just as successful as Iraq, Baghdad has returned to the good old days of mass death by suicide bomb – and I admit I can’t resist the urge to mention that the most recent bomb (the third since Thursday) occured in Abu Ghraib. If I still believed in karma I’d probably site some sort of “KARMA BITCHES!!!!” type thing in much larger type and centered.

Getting away from terror and the tatters of the constitution for a moment, while addressing the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Obama pitches an overhaul of the US public school system. (Mr. President, if you don’t start paying teachers significantly more, you can kiss education reform good bye. Capitalist paradigm folks, it’s not going away anytime soon. Unfortunately, growing up in Dallas, I have ‘fond’ memories of money allocated to school districts going to the board of education, new office furniture, and all sorts of other nonsense places that aren’t teachers salaries.) Might I also suggest losing the paradigm of fifty five thousand standardized tests in favor of a curriculum wherein the students are shown to have actually absorbed the material? I’d be really happy if he has a sincere and informed concept of education reform but we shall wait and see if he does anything besides talk about it.

You know, as sick as I am of the phrase “the first hundred days” and the constant media coverage of everything President Obama does (Do I really need C Span to tell me that at 11:47 am EDT it’s time for the Presidential Poo? I think not…), I think the way the media is presently micromanaging the Presidency is a good thing (if only it were to keep up). It, far more than any policy, is responsible for the degree to which there is transparency in my opinion. Would that this became a constant (and expanded to other areas of government). That’s democracy!

Now some doom and gloom. Texas voting reform might require additional paperwork no doubt as some kind of GOP measure to cut down on the number of people (young people) voting (though political parties are even less differentiated in Texas politics than elsewhere I find).

Attention small businesses – lock up your doors and close your windows because Tim Geithner is ready to help you – the “assistance” which is due to be announced next week, will likely take the form of (wait for it)…making it easy for small businesses to borrow money! Yet another spectacular plan for FAILURE by the Geithner!.

The plan is modeled on the Federal Reserve’s existing Term Asset Backed Securities Loan Facility and would expand the credit to target small business loans, student loans, car loans and commercial mortgages.
Geithner also plans to increase government backing of Small Business Administration loans and expedite SBA loan approvals to jump-start small business lending.

Again, this is to help lending markets, not small businesses. Remember trickle down economics? How about trickle….up economics? Or trickle sideways? I think Geithner could write a whole book on this novel new branch, Zero Gravity Economics!
With any luck, the rag tag fugitive fleet called the GOP will take some kind of dumb outrage and turn it into tax cuts, which would be at least a little better.

United Technologies group to cut over eleven thousand jobs worldwide while, supposedly, Shittigroup is having the best quarter since 2007! (You know, when we were in a recession but no one was allowed to talk about it?) Seriously, do these moneymonkeys want a damn cookie or something? With all the money they’re being given how could they NOT show some improvement? (Oh I know, they have ways. Still, I’m not buying that these numbers aren’t in some way ‘massaged’.)

And in the wtf category….
The state of Connecticut is considering a bill that would legally change the internal structure of the Catholic Church (…what?) Now, I’m no great fan of religion, organized or not, and certainly not of the antiquated dark ages relic that is the Roman Catholic Church* BUT as legislation goes, that bill is both WAAAAAAAAAAY out of line in terms of exercising powers the government just doesn’t have and is complete pork – wasteful spending on a bill that goes nowhere and does nothing.

“For reasons that are unclear, Connecticut has had generations-old laws on the books singling out particular religions and treating them differently from other religions in our statutes,” said the statement issued by Lawlor and McDonald. “That doesn’t seem right. In fact, many of our existing corporate laws dealing with particular religious groups appear to us to be unconstitutional under the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. If that is correct, any changes to that law would likely also be unconstitutional.”

Ecologists state that previous predictions regarding rising sea levels were optimistic – and the climatologists are back to predicting a meter rise in the next 90 years (which I think they stopped predicting back in the 90s, but all of the government studies I read back in the 80s predicted a meter rise, EASY, by 2100.)

Scientists at a climate change summit in Copenhagen said earlier UN estimates were too low and that sea levels could rise by a metre or more by 2100.
The projections did not include the potential impact of polar melting and ice breaking off, they added.
The implications for millions of people would be “severe”, they warned.
Ten per cent of the world’s population – about 600 million people – live in low-lying areas.

* I feel as though I ought hear the Imperial March every time I give the full name.

Don’t Don’t let’s start

I meant to mention this in my last post but forgot. Stem cell research order targets War on Science – I have never understood the stem cell ban, from the standpoint of the anti-choicers I mean. It’s better to waste fetal material than it is to make it useful? (Although I do find some wry, black humor in the way that the news uses the term ‘discarded fetal material. Technically true, but….) I do hope that President Obama continues in this vein and doesn’t stop here, but it’s too soon to tell. In this matter, however, I do have a good feeling.
Yes, really.

Wired has an interesting piece on how with the stem cell ban gone, research should proliferate

The Economist is apparently now suggesting an end to drug prohibition. Yes, The Economist – the article is here. (I recall lots of early to mid-70s SF that depicted pretty much full drug legalization by the early 90s. Hahahaha.) Towards the end of the article, they site previous instances in which they have taken this stance, as if concerned that the article would cost them legitimacy. Join the club guys.

US ship violated international law – what, since when does the U.S. care about international law? Did you sleep through the last eight years. And really, this coming from China. It is to laugh.
(But not as laughable as the concept of the Chinese navy.)

Oh, by the way, Monday all life on earth was very nearly changed – okay not really (only 40 yards. Mind, that’s like saying only 50 megatons), but it does serve as a handy reminder that everything could go tits up with no notice.
Enjoy the perspective shift.

GLAD is challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (which, just as a reminder, President Clinton signed into law between tug jobs) – many people (myself included) forget that this nonsense is on the books.

Our time will come…someday I’m told

I don’t think it’s any great secret that I don’t subscribe to the notion that I have to respect my enemies. At some point prior to starting this blog I realized that I’d had it up to here with the whole “moral high ground” – achieving moral superiority over those I disagree with hasn’t been a priority since. Ethics are personal matters and so long as I don’t step over the line I’ve set for myself, there’s no issue.

So, really, can the guy with this sign please just get hit by a truck? A big green one maybe. I’m sure monster trucks rolling over funny cars at truck rallies go out of control from time to time. That would be nice.

See, no moral high ground whatsoever. Try it sometime. It’s liberating.
That above image has gotten a lot of flack but maybe not the kind you think. Many have come down on Dan Savage for questioning it’s authenticity – which is stupid. It’s GOOD to be critical of anything that appears that black and white (or indeed, anything at all). While it does appear to be germane I have to agree with the criticism Equality California for using it to troll for contributions. I’m reminded of the same tactics being used by the ACLU and – most especially – moveon.org. I couldn’t stand them there, I can’t stand them here.
So yes it looks like any chance of overturning prop eight
is just as likely as it was previously which is to say unlikely. But this isn’t going away any time soon. The tactics need to be changed. This sort of thing is a stroke of brilliance and the way to go about things. A lot of the “say no on prop eight” activists seem (to me) to have rather missed the point. We Lost*. Until that sinks in, we’re not going to get anywhere. (It rather pissed me off when the entire nation opted to protest against Prop Eight….weeks after it passed. What was the fucking point of that? Making a statement? IF this sort of thing had been mobilized prior to the election, it would have made law.)

Of course, on this subject’s far side, are things like this – the idea that we should throw the social conservatives a bone in exchange for equal marriage (which they’d never go for anyway) and push for fucking covenant marriage. Because somehow throwing straight Christian women under the bus is worth it? I don’t fucking think so. But this represents the kind of silliness that people will consider, if only for a moment, to achieve this end. (And speaking of people being thrown under a bus to achieve an end – the HRC is apparently simpering to get some of it’s Transgendered support back by allegedly addressing some of our concerns. Not that it matters – they continue to “push” that particular agenda at the same snail’s pace they always have. Fuck the HRC**.)

Mrft. I hadn’t intended on devoting the full post to this. Now my blood’s up. More later perhaps.

* we lost for a number of reasons, but the two no one seems to want to discuss are how we lost because 1. no, not everyone wants equality. It’s not a matter of ‘educating’ them. Some people just aren’t ever going to want that. 2. A significant percentage of the No on Prop eight leadership were timid of appearing ‘too gay’ or angering the voters. Timid has no place in politics.
Oh, and 3. because the TBLG population of California is not a united front and never has been. The ridiculous levels of racism just after the election certainly do not represent my views, but yet that made a lot of news. (As with any group that loses, it’s far easier to blame someone else rather than accept the blame oneself.)

** I’ve always had something of an issue with the HRC – obviously my big breaking point, and that of a lot of others – was when the GENDA was defanged to make the ENDA without so much as a “we’ll get to you later.” But prior to that, I always took some exception to a group calling itself the Human Rights Campaign but only cared about GLBT rights, and generally in that order (and if you’ve been wondering why I flip the acronym around, that’ s one of the reasons why).

Security is the new Freedom

Mr. President, could you please see your way clear to upholding this notion of “transparency” please and keep us up to date on the Bagram detention center? Especially as you’ve been so kind as to do something about GitMo?

Judge Bates asked the Bush administration in January 2009 to disclose the number of people being held in Bagram, how many of them were taken into custody outside of Afghanistan, and how many of them were Afghan nationals. The administration responded by classifying the key details as secret and redacted them from the unclassified version of the filing.

The administration has been ordered to provide updated information to the Judge presiding by, well, today. Red Cross estimates average around 550 prisoners, continuing the noble democratic traditions established at GitMo and Abu Ghraib.
Oh wait that’s right I forget that Abu Ghraib is now called the Baghdad Central Prison isn’t it? Rather Blackwater – I mean Xe – like of them.

Since I’m on a security roll – Wired gives us a list of the Ten best uses for RFID tags and you know what? Oppressing the state’s enemies is not actually on there. (And if you can’t read the sarcasm implicit in that statement, try reading the list again.)
Of course, advertisers are far more insidious than the government at emulating Big Brother. (Advertisers, being a business, have to be good at it. Well, unless they’re Citibank.) Google’s new Ad Network knows where you’ve been, and what you do. What’s nice about Google (as opposed to, say, the Federal government) is that they actually tell you what they’re going to do (But then, Google’s never really made any bones over the fact that any privacy you experience over their services is not in fact real and is only the product of a deranged mind.) Google will take us all to hell in the name of convenience and user friendliness.

GOP senator apparently desperate to be placed on Terror Watch List Please, Senator, could you continue upholding your noble tradition of representing Congress just as you have been? Thank you.

Ah nuts! Democrats and republicans cry bipartisanship amidst call for food safety fixes – inspired no doubt by the public peanut panic (have you seen those shit eating Peanuts aren’t evil commercials yet?*), a variety of GOP and Democrat congressfolk are making noise about reforming the FDA to insure increased food safety. Anyone want to take a bet on the reform involving increasing the size and cash allotment of the FDA?

* Oh, would you like to?

Oh, wait, that’s not it.

(No, that’s not it either. Though if you get bored, watch that back to back with an ad sponsored by one of the Tobacco companies. Tres Awesome.)

At first I thought I’d found it when I ran across this propaganda piece disguised as educational materials (propaganda – defined as shaping the way people think about something; some of you call it marketing), but no joy.
In fact, after 45 minutes I’m forced to concede that the commercial in question does not exist on the ‘tubes – I know the ad campaign (it runs every five bloody minutes on Food Network; “Peanuts Energy for the good life”)
However, I did find this. I’ve no idea the actual source, but it’s interesting, ahem, food for thought nonetheless.

Angry lunch ladies at the Federal Pen

Pretty much how I’m feeling about things Federal today.
One down, a great many more to go – Madoff goes to Jail. This would normally be the time for someone (maybe me, maybe not) making observations regarding off-colour statements like “Federal pound-me-in-the-ass-prison” (thank you Office Space) but guys like him never go to prisons like that.
Not that I’d wish that on him (or anyone), but I think the people that have helped wreck the economy deserve something a little more punishing than a few years at Club Fed.

Reuters tells us that US businesses claim to be hobbled by health care costs well boo fucking hoo. Oh no, treating your employees like fucking human beings is expensive? Is it cutting into your itty bitty balance sheets? Do you want momma to kiss it and make it better?
SUCK IT UP

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. business leaders urged lawmakers on Thursday to act quickly on healthcare reform, saying American companies were losing out to other countries with cheaper healthcare and healthier workers.

The real irony here is that if true, then sociaism is beating capitalism in a capitalist competition. Which is one very fucked up football bat. What they don’t mention are the countries that have zero health care at all – often countries that the aforementioned big capitalist crybabies often outsource to.

I know who the GOP Presidential nominee is going to be in 2012 – that’s the only reason I can find to believe that Governor Goodhair is actually refusing 555 million dollars. It’s certainly not a matter of principle (Don’t you have to HAVE principles to make something a matter of them?) This does mean that he refuses to expand unemployment (among other things)…all to make him look good. Not that it matters – I mean George Bush couldn’t handle being Governor (a virtually useless job in Texas) and he was President twice.
If my words bear any truth then I’m afraid I will be looking at another four years of “Fuck the GOP”. Which is sad, because in some ways they are so close.

Charles W. Freeman Jr. turned down for director of national intelligence because he is critical of Israel which I think translates into English as “Isn’t a fucking stooge for Israel” or possibly “Doesn’t consider the US’ job to be getting on it’s knees for Israel at a moment’s notice.” WTF? I don’t understand this slavering goosestepping obedience to Israel. If I were a member of the tinfoil hat brigade, and believed that the world was run by Secret Masters – then I’d have to conclude that the Secret Masters live in Israel and thus control US foreign policy.
Which, now that I read that over again, sounds very much like some kind of Protocols of the Elders of Zion nonsense, so I ought, maybe to shut up before a militia carts me off to Montana to make me watch “The Birth of a Nation.”

Late Edition

A member of Congress has been caught helping a bank she has ties to receive Federal assistance – I think that’s the very definition of corruption. California congresswoman Maxine Waters apparently had fiscal ties via family to OneUnited, a bank whose head requested up to $50 million in special bailout funds.

Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, requested the September meeting on behalf of executives at OneUnited, one of the nation’s largest black-owned banks. Ms. Waters’s husband, Sidney Williams, had served on the bank’s board until early last year and has owned at least $250,000 of its stock.
Ms. Waters declined on Tuesday to comment on the meeting, or to say whether her husband still owned shares of OneUnited. Her staff released two letters that showed the meeting had been initially called to discuss industry concerns broadly.

Really. I’m sure it’s just some kind of giant misunderstanding. Honest.

Finally, Barack Obama is facing charges of caving to pro-Israel lobby in the selection of members of his government. Charles Freeman, forced out of the selection process for a top cabinet position because of his lack of a pro-Israeli bias, says this:

“Tactics of the Israel lobby plumb the depths of dishonour and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the wilful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods and an utter disregard for the truth”.

Several but by no means all Israeli lobbyist and interest groups have labeled him various flavors of “arabic agitator.” (Which doesn’t come from the Guardian article but somewhere. I’ll post the link if I can find it.) I love how if you’re not totally for everything Israel does to these people you are clearly some kind of ideological Arabic sympathizer … thing. That kind of “it’s us or them” mentality is part of what’s wrong with Israel in the first place.

Meanwhile, final Gaza toll shows 960 civillians killed

Why so serious A U.S. Army specialist allegedly dressed up like the Joker, stabbed and stun gunned a fellow soldier, drove 200 miles with his girlfriend only to be shot dead by police after aiming a scattergun at them.

The President’s recent action on stem cell research apparently worries some scientists who fear funding from philanthropists might be cut off. (Philanthropists don’t generally involve red tape and oversight – which is about the only issue I can see here.) Beyond that…what could they possibly be bitching about? Or has the bitching just become routine after eight years of a Bush White House?

An apparently suicidal man survives a trip over Niagara Falls – which is sad or ironic depending on your perspective I suppose. He is only the second man to survive such a trip over the 50+ meter drop.

As Augustus Hill on HBOs Oz would put it – Census is senseless. The 2010 census will continue the practice of pretending that families comprised of two or more non-heterosexual family members do not exist. Not terribly surprising but still damned irritating. From a practical perspective this pretty much sabotages any attempt at gathering accurate demographic information for study or analysis….which is, of course, pretty much the bloody point of taking a census now isn’t it?

Let the war over the information directives begin

One of President Obama’s top economic advisers said that the nation’s economic crisis has led to an “excess of fear” among Americans that must be broken to reverse the downturn.
In other words, it’s time to reign in the terror speak. Perception drives reality after all and lots and lots and lots of people actually believe whatever the White House says (for some reason*) and so doom and gloom forecasts need to be reigned in. The end to some of the engineering of the public via fear mongering sounds like a good thing right? Yes because we all know that it always stops there. It’s only a few centimeters to the right to say “no criticism of the economy” and only a few millimeters beyond that to say “the economy is in good shape no matter what.” Just ask the Bush administration (specifically, remember that this recession came out of nowhere. And is a recent thing, not something that’s been getting worse for years.)

National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers said consumer spending seems to have stabilized in an encouraging sign, but he also suggested it was still too early to predict the timing of an economic turnaround.
In the meantime, he told a forum, a problem has been that “fear begets fear.”

Yes, yes, fear is the mind killer. But the moment you start massaging the facts to make everything look like roses we have a problem. On the flip side of all this, it would seem that the National Center on Family Homelessness has been doing a little number massaging of their own…in the other direction. A report regarding the vast number of homeless children issued earlier this week greatly expanded the use of the term homeless to include over a million children who are living with others. The real numbers are somewhere in the vicinity of 330,000 instead of 1.17 million. To be clear, that first number is waaaay too high. (>0 = too high, okay?) and those million or so children that are “doubled up” as the report fails to state are probably in pretty dire straits. The issue here is not that there isn’t a problem that needs to be dealt with, the issue here is that the NCFH positively shoots their cause in the foot by publishing misleading or out and out wrong data in their report in an effort to, presumably, gain attention or funding.

China is worried about US treasury holdings…yes you read that right.

China’s premier didn’t say it in so many words, but the implied warning to Washington was blunt: Don’t devalue the dollar through reckless spending.
Premier Wen Jiabao’s message is unlikely to be misunderstood at the White House. It is counting on Beijing to help pay for its stimulus package by buying U.S. bonds. China already is Washington’s biggest foreign creditor, with an estimated $1 trillion in U.S. government debt. A weaker dollar would erode the value of those assets.
“Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I’m a little bit worried,” Wen said at a news conference Friday after the closing of China’s annual legislative session. “I would like to call on the United States to honor its words, stay a credible nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets.”

Wow. Okay, so the government of one fifth of the world’s population thinks we’re spending too much money. Interesting. It would hold more water if the Chinese government had any credibility whatsoever but it doesn’t. They are worried about the effect of all this on their economy. Which they shouldn’t have to because We Shouldn’t Be So Gorram Cozy With China In the First Place….Damnit.

Of course China’s official news agency (warning: not a safe site – it makes my anti virus break dance whenever I go there) reports only that Tibet enforces new measures to protect UNESCO world heritage site saying that the Tibet Autonomous Region “has enacted measures to conserve the UNESCO world heritage site Potala Palace”..and later having their governmental puppet stooge denounce the Dalai Lama’s anniversary speech, citing a history of Tibetan attrocities in what sounds like a textbook case of the Chewbacca defense – which I suppose means they’ve been at least passively following the Pirate Bay trial.
Just to be clear, that’s China – the country that stepped up security on the anniversary of the Tibet revolt, China who makes a point of pride of being a totalitarian police state, and China, who is always open to speak with the Dalai Lama provided he drops his separatist stance thus ensuring a final “victory” as these propaganda obsessed dictators view the universe.

* rather than, say, taking it as a suggestion for how things are, as certain bloggers do for example.

The Ides of March are Upon You

Does the fight over Prop 8 diminish the court it occurs in? Note that while I disagree with most of the points this article makes, it does offer keen insight into what the California legal system is going through and being – in some cases – reduced to. Just remember that it tends to be the reactionary conservative elements that want to define everything (marriage, what’s human, when conception occurs) so that they can punish anything that diverges. Liberty is quantum in that it exists only as cloud of undefined but guessable probabilities that flee when you try to nail them down. (Which includes taking the previous statement too literally.)

On a related note – Obama is now under the spotlight. Will he move to grant federal insurance benefits to same gender partners of government employees? Government obstruction is citing the Defense of Marriage Act.

In separate, strongly worded orders, two judges of the federal appeals court in California said that employees of their court were entitled to health benefits for their same-sex partners under the program that insures millions of federal workers.
But the federal Office of Personnel Management has instructed insurers not to provide the benefits ordered by the judges, citing a 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act.
As a presidential candidate, Mr. Obama said he would “fight hard” for the rights of gay couples. As a senator, he sponsored legislation that would have provided health benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees.
Now, Mr. Obama is in a tough spot. If he supports the personnel office on denying benefits to the San Francisco court employees, he risks agitating liberal groups that helped him win election. If he supports the judges and challenges the marriage act, he risks alienating Republicans with whom he is seeking to work on economic, health care and numerous other matters.

From the look of things, this may get shot down not out of implicit discrimination, but out of not wanting to pay the estimated 670 million dollars over the next ten years. We’ll see if President Obama gets involved with this or not – I’m not so convinced that it will happen as the author of the above linked article. If he doesn’t, then I’m going to say Bill Clintion six times under my breath and be done with him. If he does I will be pleasantly surprised. I’m not laying down odds on that however.

On the bright side, Obama is moving to abolish Bush era restrictions placed on the Department of Health and Human Services. These are the restrictions Bush put in place just shortly before leaving office (coward!) which allow a wide definition of ‘health care worker’ (including insurance claim adjusters, receptionists, the doctor’s golfing buddies, anyone) to site religious or ethical grounds to refuse a woman care of certain varieties. What’s sad is that this is old news, this went out in late February and I’m only now getting wind of it.

In the state of New York – until just recently women serving in the National Guard were required to undertake mandatory pregnancy tests (!), facing dismissal if they were found to be pregnant. (Which would be fair and equitable if the father was also drummed out of the service. It tends not to work that way.) Women also faced having all of their insurance benefits cut off should they be separated from the Guard. The office of Governor David A. Paterson initiated an investigation that ended this practice, though I do have to wonder how many other states’ Guard have this or similar on the books.

Apparently, GOP Chair Michael Steele has just stopped reading from the script. In a moment of not being a Republican Droid, he told GQ magazine that he thought abortion was “an individual choice.” Almost immediately, the cortex implant from CONTROL seems to have kicked in and he “clarified” his remarks (that’s his trademark you know) saying that it should be left up to the states. Which, as we’ve covered before, is GOP code for “We hate it.”
Rumors that he was being given the new role of Fresh Prince of the GOP have proven inconclusive.

Speaking of CONTROL, The Robot himself, Dick Cheney, says that Obama’s policies are making the US less safe which is nothing new, it’s what he says when The Robot suffers a Hard Disk Read Error and goes into diagnostic. It’s also the same tired nonsense that alleges that Freedom somehow threatens Security. I’ll take Freedom over Security any day. Always.
In particular, the Cheney series Mastermind C-01 was reacting to “President Obama’s call to close Guantanamo Bay, close CIA black sites, make CIA interrogators abide by the Army field manual, define waterboarding as torture, suspend trials for terrorists by military commission, and eliminate the label of enemy combatants.” Yes, all of which a grave threats to the fucking police state that Cheney and his cronies attempted to instigate here for anyone who wasn’t an upper class straight white male christian.

I’m sure Dick would be happy to know that SLA militant Sara Jane Olsen is due to be released from a California prison next week. This is after Olsen, having served for a total of seven years was accidentally released last year. (The parole board had an attack of “let’s give John Hinckley a weekend pass!” and failed to carry the two, thus letting her out early.) She is due to be released Tuesday.

On the other side of the aisle, Maxine Waters defends her actions, suggesting that she was not as influential as the media has made her out to be, while at the same time claiming she was going to do everything she could to help minority banks.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said in an interview Thursday that he advised Waters last fall to “stay out of it” because he knew her husband had served on the bank board.
Frank said Waters was concerned about the plight of minority-owned banks, as was he.
“She acknowledged that ‘Sidney had been on the board. I could have a conflict here,’ ” Frank said. “I said, ‘Fine, just stay out of it, I’ll deal with it.’ “
Noting that OneUnited is based in Boston, he said, “I wasn’t, as chairman of the banking committee, not going to do all I could to keep the only black-owned bank in my area alive.”

Sure, be concerned about “the plight of minority owned banks” – no one is saying don’t do that. Just don’t break the law to do it. And if you’re going to sway my opinion, having Barney Frank come to your rescue probably isn’t the way to go about it.

Fearing that she will attempt to flee the country or move her 70 million in assets, the SEC is to target the assets of Ruth Madoff – evidently, the SEC is scurrying to build a case against Madoff, hoping to freeze her accounts which is believed to be filled with monies resulting from her husband’s crimes.

And finally, word has it that AiG are still a bunch of assholes – AiG which has received (documented) 170 million dollars in bailout money, is looking to pay out 165 million in bonuses. Still calling them “retention payments” (of course), AiGs actions have actually gotten Tim Geithner’s knickers in a wad – which is refreshing rather than being treated to another pointless droning round of “the stimulus is working, all is well.”
And in another about face, Barney Frank is suddenly looking to see if some of that money can be recalled.

Portrait of the Blogger while on hold with the IRS

For those of you who have been waiting for it, AiG sings. This document lost all credibility when it used the word ‘transparency’ (Not actually true, it lost all credibility with the term AiG.), and it’s just another pathetic attempt at legitimizing their obfuscation. (Say THAT six times fast.)

I’m sure that even those of you reading this in a cave have seen the Daily Show video – have you watched the unexpurgated version?
Not for the first time and, likely, probably not for the last, but I find myself wonderinf if it’s really appropriate that the least bought off journalism in this country is on the otherwise lame comedy channel?

In what I’m starting to realize is quite deliberate and to be expected, Obama responds to public concerns and makes a show of outrage at AiG

Obama said he had ordered Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to pursue “every single legal avenue” to cancel the bonuses and a Treasury official said later it would modify a planned $30 billion capital infusion for American International Group to try to recoup the bonuses.

Unfortunately he gave it to Geithner. Seriously – pursue legal action against these assholes. Don’t just cut them off. In related news, it is being cited that Bernanke’s remarks both caused last week’s rally and is heading off a depression. I’m sure the sweet soothing sounds of Bernanke also whiten whites and do dishes. We haven’t had a depression in 70 odd years…but throughout American history (at least since the civil war) that’s unprecedented. Perhaps one is due. Of course, we can legislate it away right. I mean, we can legislate ANYTHING away. No, really.
Well, that’s the democratic party for you. If you artificially manipulate the business cycle, eventually it will correct and it will do so without waiting for some mythical ‘time in which it will be convenient’. Throwing trillions of dollars into an economic meatgrinder to get billions of dollars of returns will not help but it will make sure that the asshats that got us in this mess won’t suffer any deterioration of the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.

Okay, so – since no one else is asking this question – how long after the US pullout of Iraq will the invasion from Iran be? No really – I don’t buy this nuclear program imminent doom scenario any more than I buy AiGs whiny claptrap above. But it’s increasingly looking as though Iran is laying the groundwork for something. I expect that moving in three to six months after the American pullout (at maximum strife and chaos levels) should be adequate for doubling the geographic size of Iran. And it’s not like the countries don’t have a history of opposition (1980 – 1988).

I’m telling you – the bonobos have the right of it.

Some days it doesn’t pay to bathe in razor blades

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to subpoena AiG for list of bonus recipients
Hear hear! I couldn’t be happier, well okay yes I could – it could happen, those responsible could be arrested on corruption charges, and AiG could be allowed to tank. I find myself reviewing the progession of this to the most recent heights of absurdity.

Congressman from Florida introducing legislation to prove natural born citizenship of, for example, President Obama.

Late last week, Rep. Bill Posey, a freshman Republican from Florida, introduced a bill mirroring proposed state legislation in Missouri and elsewhere to require presidential candidates to produce copies of their birth certificates and other documentation to prove natural-born citizenship.

I can’t make shit like this up. So, just to be clear, a card carrying member of the tinfoil hat brigade, one of those clue lacking halfwits who believe that Barrack Obama is not actually an American citizen but presumably some Manchurian sleeper agent from ….. somewhere tinfoil hat people believe in (Atlantis? the Soviet Union?), one of THOSE people, not only was elected to congress but is introducing legislation based on a lukewarm internet meme/conspiracy theory.
In Congress.
See, this is the sort of thing that comes to mind when people talk about eliminating the electoral college. Well, that’s one of the things that come to mind, but it’s the most relevant.
If this guy gets re-elected, then I am personally going to pack Chuck Norris in a shipping crate with half a ton of crack (Don’t worry, I’ll put little Jesuses on the crack rocks) and send him to Florida to kill everyone there.
I think Bill Posey is my new personal synonym for “everything that’s wrong with the GOP.” And also possibly a personal synonym for “deluded fucko.”

Speaking of which – Ronald Reagan must be spinning in his grave – the “enemy of world democracy” Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) was elected in El Salvador.

The FMLN’s journey from guerrilla army to government has many parallels to the voyage made by another group of (confusingly similarly abbreviated) left-wing rebels, over the border in Nicaragua.
Mr Funes’s opponents say he is a puppet of Hugo Chavez
The FSLN, or Sandinista Nation Liberation Front, took power in 1979, establishing a revolutionary government.
Throughout the 1980s the Reagan administration, fearing communism in its back yard, poured money and weapons into the hands of the group’s opponents, collectively called the Contras, to try to unseat the rebels.
Finally, the Sandinistas were voted out of power in 1990.
But fast-forward to 2006, and they are back. The group’s historic and once-feared leader, Daniel Ortega, is president of Nicaragua.
He undoubtedly remains an irritation to plenty in the US government and elsewhere, who still question his commitment to democracy. Yet it is hard to imagine President Obama spending much of his time worrying about Mr Ortega, as President Reagan once did.

Just another little remainder that The War on Communism = the War on Drugs = the War on Terror; they’re all “the war on whomever we don’t like and has stuff to take.” U.S. foreign policy has all the sophistication of 14 year old boys sitting around a table playing Dungeons & Dragons – it breaks down ultimately to enter their home, kill them, and take their stuff. Anything else is propaganda.

MSNBC seems to think that reporting on John McCain’s twitter feed is news. The fact that John McCain has a twitter feed makes me want to staple my eyes.

But not so much as this: the New York Times reports that the Roman Catholic Church has reintroduced indulgences returning to a blunter, more clearly a business Catholic Church, the like of which has not been seen since the Crusades. So yes, you can again buy your way out of the hot invisible place and into the not-quite-so-hot invisible place. (Hey why not, it works for AiG!) Just in case, you know, you might have forgotten why I think the Catholic Church needs to go back to the dark ages where it belongs.

Progressing to where?

America is the only nation I can think of (and sadly the only one I have direct experience of thus far) that has multiple holidays that celebrate, in essence, cultural appropriation. I’m not sure that necessarily applies to today, which I’ve regarded as, essentially, plastic paddy day, for about ten years now but the point itself seems worth making.

Russia is getting serious about it’s sabre rattling, the Russian President is discussing rearming Russia …. because Russia’s been naked and defenseless all this time? Updating the tech and returning us to the brink of nuclear extinction then?

Explaining the move, he cited concerns over Nato expansion near Russia’s borders and regional conflicts.
Last year, the Kremlin set out plans to increase spending on Russia’s armed forces over the next two years.
Russia will spend nearly $140bn (£94.5bn) on buying arms up until 2011.
Higher oil revenues in recent years have allowed the Kremlin to increase the military budget, analysts say. But prices have averaged $40 a barrel in 2009 compared with $100 last year.

Wow, it’s like someone just dusted off the cold war rhetoric c. 1983 and began reading. Aie.

Congress, apparently hungry to follow Obama’s lead in pleasing the angry crowds of the country, is ready to set really really bad precedents in punishing AiG by levvying a 91% excise tax on those bonuses. Never mind that sucking all that cash back into the government goes counter to all of the philo-Keynsian-wankery that characterized the democratic party obsessively until sometime earlier this month (I mean, the democrats haven’t displayed any kind of ideological consistency since, um….ever.) – but establishing a bloody excise tax on the “aid”? Wow, what a tremendously bad precedent to establish.
Is it really too hard to direct the Justice department to go after these fuckers on corruption charges? Is that just too hard?
Of course, I don’t hear any real volume of GOP opposition to this either – you know the party of “taxes are bad, mmkay?” A few (John Boehner of Ohio for one) keep at the old saw of how the dems bungled the whole thing in the first place, but they seem remarkably silent on the issue of threatening AiG with an excise tax, and one at the ridiculous rate of 91 per cent.
Just to be clear, it’s not the taking the money away from the fuckos at AiG I object to, it’s the possible precedent that bothers me…because someday future administrations could drop this on aid packages going to groups that Actually Need The Money.
Amidst all of this Obama seems to be taking flak for not concentrating more on the banking side of this but I think that’s because the public is petty, with a short attention span.

In a show that colonialism is not yet dead, the Pope goes to Africa where the backwards practices of the Catholic Church can do there what it did to Central America in the 20th century. (Going into third world countries and then blathering on about how birth control is BAD makes me go into vapour lock.)

Starting on Tuesday, in the Cameroonian capital of Yaounde, Pope Benedict (known as Benoit in French-speaking Africa) will meet with the country’s leaders and conduct masses for the large Catholic population. He will also meet with leaders of Cameroon’s large Muslim community.
Cameroon has avoided many of the sectarian conflicts that have cropped up repeatedly in Nigeria and Sudan, although the aggressiveness of Muslim and Christian missionaries, and the political use of religion by national leaders found in this country both contribute to violence throughout Africa.
After Cameroon, the pope will go to Angola – site of the first African mission, where Portuguese priests began to convert people 500 years ago. Angola’s newfound oil wealth is just beginning to help the country rebuild after a 27-year civil war, which ended in 2002.
In a speech Sunday, Pope Benedict said he would avoid politics, but would discuss with political leaders the crippling effects of corruption. He also promised to appeal to donor nations not to neglect Africa.

Religionis politics*, but then – he’s the pope, so he knows that. I know some short term good can come of this, but the long term effects make me itch in very personal places.

For S&Gs I opted to take the “How Progressive Are You?” quiz. Comedy gold. Wierd democratic doubletalk on a bun. (For the record I scored 258, “Very Progressive”.)

While I think it’s maybe just a teeny bit whitewashed (I know there was some backlash), there’s a really solid piece on the Bilerico Project today about the propaganda, rhetoric, and other lies disseminated by the pro-8 camp both before, during, and after the election.

*As the article itself states, “By choosing Cameroon and Angola, the pope has underlined the church’s strength in non-English-speaking Africa. Some aid workers say the church flexes its power in French-speaking Africa almost as if it were the state itself. ”

Proud to be part of the Gay Agenda

(Hey, it beats reading me bitch about the market, neh?)

Apparently I haven’t rammed my angry pink triangle of an agenda down your throat enough today. I caught the link for this video over on You Tube and then saw a link to it on the Bilerico Project and so felt compelled to look at it.
Probably preaching to the choir, but it’s precisely the sort of thing I wish I could have sent certain members of Congress (okay, all of them) during the GENDA debacle.

AiG – another view

Some digging into the matter has revealed a few (some inconvenient) new wrinkles. Firstly, it would appear (and I do stress appear) that AiG, in paying that absurd sum, is merely honoring their contractual agreements.
Which is interesting, given that AiG has, to this point, maintained that these were retention payments, not bonuses (and so thus not related to performance). What kind of business signs a contract promising a payment of a retention bonus X time in advance? For that much money?

Other sectors, of course, have some more fundamental questions. As I’ve been pointing out, Geithner was the backer of the original AiG bailout as head of hte New York Federal Reserve (I’m sure he’ll preen on endlessly about how he was kept out of the loop. ) As the article sited goes on to say – since public money is involved, doesn’t (in theory – obviously in practice it doesn’t work this way of course) the public own about 80% of the company? Doesn’t that put us, or more likely the Fed (as the public’s “proxy” essentially) as majority shareholder? Can’t (therefore) we just stop payment?
Of course, the sticky theoretical question that interests me is – could AiG then sue the shareholder, i.e. the Fed, for breach of contract? (Sorry, I couldn’t resist taking this to an extreme.)

But wait, it gets better. Apparently, AiG spent about 90 billion of their bailout on other banks, some foreign and some domestic and some of which received their own bail out funds.

Some of the biggest recipients of the AIG money were Goldman Sachs at $12.9 billion, and three European banks _ France’s Societe Generale at $11.9 billion, Germany’s Deutsche Bank at $11.8 billion, and Britain’s Barclays PLC at $8.5 billion. Merrill Lynch, which also is undergoing federal scrutiny of its bonus plans, received $6.8 billion as of Dec. 31.
The money went to banks to cover their losses on complex mortgage investments, as well as for collateral needed for other transactions.
Other banks receiving between $1 billion and $3 billion from AIG’s securities lending unit include Citigroup Inc., Switzerland’s UBS AG and Morgan Stanley.

Please don’t hesitate on my account to shake your fist at the sky for the presence of Citigroup on that list. The whole sordid affair is reminding me of the definition of a Corporate strategic alliance from the Macintosh Way – “a group of crooks making arrangements to pick each other’s pockets.” (Or words to that effect, I last read it like 10 years ago.) It would seem that AiG is naming names only to spread the damage around, naming a total of 20 other banks faster than you can say “stool pigeon.”

But the worst is not yet come. According to the New York Times, these “retention payments” continue through 2009, with $230 million in bonuses that must be paid by March 2010. So again, I will repeat my no doubt tiresome refrain – why didn’t we just let these guys fail? Why was government intervention necessary? If a company is content with (allegedly) going down the tubes because of bad, unsound, unethical business practices *and* because it is run by people earning millions of dollars in employment contracts regardless of performance, again…in the long run, isn’t it better to let them pay for their mistakes rather than artificially propping up the industry, hoping it fixes itself, and telling those involved “Don’t do that again.” (The way all of these corporate big wigs are getting away with this kind of thing is so reminiscent of the 1980s that I’m amazed I’m not dreaming about Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. Save of course, I remember more arrests in the 80s. During the Reagan era.)

At this point, I’m not in any way convinced that AiG was in any way threatened by reported losses of $61.7 billion in last year’s Q4 so much as their profits were threatened, which of course necessitated government intervention in the form of hand outs.
If anyone can dredge up any kind of contractual statements between the Fed and those who received the bailout money, please send it to me, because from where I’m sitting, there isn’t any such thing.

Discontinue use if skin irritating, scaling, or hyperdimensional madness occurs

First a public service message

Maxine Waters utilizes FIRREA to justify possible conflict of interest

“The federal government has a legal obligation to support minority banks, as explicitly stated in the Financial Institutions Reform Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA). In particular, Section 308 of FIRREA insists that the federal government take an active role in the preservation of the number and nature of minority banks. I have previously worked to ensure that the government is held accountable in this regard, and I will continue efforts to promote the interests of minority banks. As recently as the 110th Congress, I exhibited my commitment through my participation in official Oversight hearings on minority banks, as well as the initiation of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study on the effectiveness of mandated government assistance to minority banks.

She also, of course, cites TARP, but she does give a pretty full accounting of her position. Enough that if it does come out that she had a conflict of interest, I’ll find it easier to accept such a violation as a matter of principle rather than greed – not that that necessarily makes it any better.

Iowa Senator Charles Grassley suggests suicide as option for beleaguered AiG executives Speaking on an Iowa radio station Monday, the Senator said:

“The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better towards them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things — resign, or go commit suicide.”

Resigning would be nice but that’s still not punishment. And while I find a certain reactionary release in the Senator’s words I think that’s a bit much (to say the least)…though (as in any arena) if any of them have a minimum of ties, and truly wished to do so I wouldn’t begrudge them.

The White House is expressing complete confidence in Tim Geithner’s handling of AiG which just proves that someone in the White House, someone responsible for planning, strategy, thinking, and press releases, Needs Their Damn Head Examined. Congress feels rather differently, with the House aiming for AiG bonus legislation next week (That’s fast. I like it when Congress is fast, if only because it’s a remarkable change of pace. Mind, it often also portends mistakes being made. The Jingo*koff*Patriot Act for example.) The backlash continues to gain momentum however, as everyone wants to be seen to be doing something – the Attorney General of Connecticut is expressing doubts that the bonuses are actually required by state law, as cited by AiG themselves (well some of them. Most sources are sticking to “Contractually obligated” but a few are siting state law. Ooops.)

In other, unrelated to AifuckingG news…

The U.S. capital has the highest HIV prevalence in United States, according to the 2008 epidemiology report by the city Health Department. High enough that it fits the UN definition for an HIV Epidemic. If true this would give DC a higher rate of HIV instance than West Africa, with some sources claiming as much as 3% of the total city population infected.

There are apparently still people in this country who think there’s some kind of a right to an assault rifle. The right to bear arms (which is a precedent arising from a misunderstanding of the U.S. Constitution thank you very much. The right to form a militia is, in essence, the right for a community to organize a police force rather than have one instituted from above.) doesn’t allow for the possession of nuclear weapons, either. Per usual both sides are pretty much smoking the wacky weed – all of those “hunters” who seek to take AK-47s to the vast population of Elk and Deer with Kevlar vests (who can’t bloody aim either, given that the purpose of an automatic weapon is to compensate for lack of accuracy) on one side and the fearmongers droning on endlessly about Mexican drug violence on the other (Mexican drug violence isn’t new. Unless by “for at least the past thirty to forty years” is new for you.) Let’s hear it for more lobbyist inspired money waste.

The administration just loves double booking like this…

White House hosts monumental conference on Hateraide – the meeting is alleged to be on the subject of abortion but I can’t help but regard this as a meeting of everything wrong with the country, all under one roof. That roof just happens to be the white house.
Oh if I were a violent woman…..
At any rate, the meeting is with the head of President Barack Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (which leaves just as foul a taste in my mouth now as it would have four years ago).

Of course, certain segments of the would-be Covenant “Quiverfull*” contingent have their own agendas – doctors having to render treatment and aid to someone, regardless of whether the patient believes and cowtows to that doctor’s invisible sky man is anathema to these people – and of course they are portraying it, hypocritical to the last, as taking away their rights.
(And yes, we’re all going to line up and make you perform an abortion doctor conscience. Just like some kind of super villain I am. Puuuuleeeze.)

These merchants of hate and hypocracy

Now, having just said all that, this just came in off the AP wire US to sign UN gay rights declaration

The Obama administration will endorse a U.N. declaration calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality that then-President George W. Bush had refused to sign, The Associated Press has learned.
U.S. officials said Tuesday they had notified the declaration’s French sponsors that the administration wants to be added as a supporter. The Bush administration was criticized in December when it was the only western government that refused to sign on.
The move was made after an interagency review of the Bush administration’s position on the nonbinding document, which was signed by all 27 European Union members as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries, the officials said.

An unnamed source (Who wished to remain anonymous as Congress had not been fully informed at press time) stated

“The United States is an outspoken defender of human rights and critic of human rights abuses around the world…As such, we join with the other supporters of this statement and we will continue to remind countries of the importance of respecting the human rights of all people in all appropriate international fora,” the official said.
The official then added that there was concern regarding “violence and human rights abuses against gay, lesbian, transsexual and bisexual individuals.”**
The official also said that zie was “troubled by the criminalization of sexual orientation in many countries….In the words of the United States Supreme Court, the right to be free from criminalization on the basis of sexual orientation ‘has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom’.”
Now how’s THAT for a turn around? Factor in the Comintern-like “medical” Christian groups gathering at the White House and you’ll get whiplash.
Of course, over 70 members of the UN are still in the frelling dark ages – most notably members of the Arabic community and – of course – countries where the Vatican still holds sway. And social conservatives trapped in the past overseas – just like they do here – continue to make stupid and uninformed comparisons to incest and pedophillia…because you know what? Social conservatives are all pushing the same cart of horseshit, regardless of which religion is hauling the cart.

* I have to say, I have more respect for the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and I think they’re a bunch of looniesth

** I am just amazed he actually said transsexual.

Vive la Commune!

The Federal Reserve announced today that it plans to buy 1.2 trillion dollars in Mortgage backed securities and bonds – specifically it’s doubling it’s purchasing of the Freddie/Fannie debt and increasing it’s planned purchasing of mortgage backed securities from 5 to 700 billion…all this on top of buying 300 billion dollars in long term treasury bonds, all in the name of stimulating the economy.
The reaction? The dollar falls. Every time the government has stepped in and done something to “help” the economy this year, stocks take a hit; on Wall Street, there is no confidence in what government involvement will do. How can the Fed’s economists and fiscal leaders not see this?

There’s lots of news about the AiG snowball going on but I think we’ve fully hit the recriminations & masturbation segment of the news cycle. Everyone is now just posturing and trying to wring what they can out of situation, especially our increasingly populist government (which is fine – in the short term). However, did you know that rental car companies are now seeking a bailout?

Now, Avis Budget Group Inc., Hertz Global Holdings Inc. and other rental-car companies are lobbying Congress to allow them to use Troubled Asset Relief Program funds to finance new auto purchases. The House of Representatives included a clause in a TARP reform bill that it passed last week to give the government authority to back loans to rental-car companies and other fleet purchasers. The bill has now moved on to the Senate.

I’m waiting for one of the fast food companies to come begging for TARP scraps.

Oh, and IBM – please please please don’t buy Sun. Firstly, it’s a bad business idea – Sun isn’t the golden child that it was in the early part of the decade, okay? Second – I know you, I’ve worked for you, you’ll kill open office. And I don’t think I could go back to using Word, you know? (Actually they won’t really kill it – they’ll take it off the market*, rebrand it, and rerelease a gimped version of it 18 months later. I’m not bagging on IBM necessarily, but they acquire a LOT of companies, and most of those companies’ products, in my opinion, get digested pretty quickly.)

The country of Australia censors wikileaks – which for the record is the site with a link just to your right on this page. Why? For posting a list of websites banned by the Dutch. (…wtf?)

The Australian Communications and Media Authority added two Wikileaks pages to its censorship list: one for the Dutch Danish government’s secret index of banned child porn sites as well as Wikileaks’ press release about how the index was used and why the site was publishing it.
ACMA’s list is estimated to hold more than a thousand URLs currently and is distributed to Australian ISPs, which are required by law to make filters available to users.
Wikileaks, the net’s foremost site for leaked documents, responded by announcing the ban, writing “The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship.”

The Australian government has recently been keen on trying to make all ISPs adhere to the ACMAs list. Hopefully it will fail miserably. In related news, the White House Chief Information Officer is back in his office after the FBI raided his office following the FBI arrest of his predecessor on corruption charges (and why is this the first I’ve heard of this?) Apparently, the investigation involves a alleged kickbacks over government tech contracts. Transparency in action.

The Vatican defends Papal stance rejecting condoms which involves Pope Benedict’s statements that distributing condoms “increases” the AIDS problem. Precisely what he said was this:

“You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” he said. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

Going to west Africa and exercising that kind of influence to tell people that condoms are bad and it makes the AIDS problem worse because of your stupid tiny minded political agenda is criminal. The only problem that is increased is that backwards fucking hegemony called Catholicism. I hope it crumbles, I hope it crumbles in his lifetime, on his watch.

He told Cameroon’s 31 bishops that Christians must fight for social justice and urged them to defend the traditional African family from the dangers of modernity and secularization. He also asked them to help protect the poor from the impact of globalization.
Benedict said that while the Catholic church in Africa is the fastest growing in the world, it faces competition from increasingly popular evangelical movements and “the growing influence of superstitious forms of religion.”
The German-born pope also said that exuberant African rites should not “obstruct” the liturgy of the Mass.

Ah yes, we wouldn’t want the new Catholics preserving their own culture now would we? It might get in the way of Catholicism becoming the dominant paradigm in their way of life, eh? The ‘dangers of modernity and secularization’ – which means anyone who questions this fucking German drug dealer pushing his Invisible Sky Daddy Crack. Cultural appropriation and lies to perpetuate itself and overwrite the native culture. Proof fucking positive that the Catholic Church hasn’t changed since the time of the Conquistadors, 500 years ago. (Don’t disregard the recurrence of a certain popular bullshit phrase – “Traditional American*koff*African Families” because we don’t know what that means.) Speaking of, a similar plan regarding condoms and misinformation was in effect for the last eight years in this country, with official sources saying “condoms – bad!” and look how that worked out. (The principle difference is that the Fundamentalist nutjobs fail to understand how this works. The Catholic Church perpetuates it’s own existence by discouraging birth control, as children brought up in a Catholic family tend to become Catholics. However, children brought up in a poor or minority family tend not to grow up to become Republicans, so the BushCo type strategy is ultimately self-defeating.)

* which will be interesting, given that it’s freeware.

2,192

That’s days. Another way of framing it would be six years.
We’re still in Iraq. That’s 2,192 days since it was still very much the general perception that it was shameful to speak out against this bullshit war. That’s 4,259 casualties since this day in 2003. When Apophis rolled into Mesopotamia.
Six years ago today, I came in to work and read an article in the San Angelo Standard Times about a tank crew which had deployed to the Mid-East in anticipation of action. They’d named their tank, quite appropirately, Apophis. I looked to see if I find the article on-line somewhere but their electronic archives only go back to 2004.
I’ve always wondered what happened to them, in the time since.
4,259 casualties since this day in 2003. 4,120 casualties since Mission Accomplished and 3,798 casualties since one or more actors was arrested as Saddam Hussein (I’m of the opinion that the real guy was quite dead by that point).
3,401 casualties since the Handover in 2004, just in time for Bush to get re-elected. And those are just American dead – the numbers of enemy combatants and “collateral damage” range into the hundreds of thousands.
All so that a cokehead frat boy could convince the American people that he was doing something about terrorism.
Briefly…..
For a number of reasons, I’m in a pretty wretched mood today, but let me say that Merriam-Webster have managed to put a giant smile on my face

A debate has been spurred by the possibility of same gender unions in Vermont come September. Much rejoycing.

I reported last night that North Korea is holding a pair of US Journalists near the border with China but the series of tubes gobbled it up. The link works however.

I don’t recall where I got this image, it’s been sitting on my hard drive for a while now (at least three years) but it about sums up my feelings on all of this.

Morning Coffee

Let’s start this off right – from Wikihow: How to recognize bias in a newspaper article – kind of basic, but neat. Double bonus points for suggesting blogs be subjected to the same kind of scrutiny (um….duh).

Following the lead of Governor Goodhair, Sarah Palin rejects stimulus funds in an attempt to increase her GOP credibility. Note that I don’t think a crane could increase her credibility with anyone remotely sane. Also, she’s only rejecting *some* of the stimulus funds. (See, this is a woman who’s high school teachers employed “partial credit” on failing exams.) In fact, she’s accepting over half the money. 69% in fact. (Yes, really. Like the best parodies – it’s both true and it writes itself.) Still 69% of 930 million dollars is a fair chunk of change. Most of it is, allegedly, being directed to capital improvement projects (which the GOP have been quick to point out aren’t really necessary, being – you know – infrastructure) and a boost to her state’s Medicaid.
And while I’m contemplating the at once amusing and yet sheer mortal terror of a Goodhair/Self-Parody 2012 GOP ticket, I should point out that Mark Sanford of South Carolina and – wait for it – Bobby Jindal have joined the ranks of the “Not taking the money” brigade. Are all of them being groomed for something? Do they think they have a shot in ’12? Well Jindal is refusing 100 million – for unemployment benefits specifically…and Sanford will take the money but – supposedly – only to pay down debt.
We’ll see about that.

Federal culpability in the AiG fiasco is starting to come to light. Christopher Dodd is coming under fire for his alleged role in changing the rules being put into place regarding an upper limit for executive compensation – at the last minute – which affects AiG and supposedly others. He claims that he was directed to do so by the Treasury department (not unlikely in my estimation) despite the fact that AiG was a big contributor to Mr. Dodd’s political campaign of last year. (A little over a hundred thousand dollars according to many sources. Which is, admittedly, pocket change to AiG.) Interesting that the above suggests legal documents between the Fed and AiG – though I suspect the “rules” spoken of were internal to the Fed. Again I repeat - if there is such a contract, I’d LOOOVE to see it.
But it gets better.
Apparently, elements of the Federal government knew about the full extent of the AiG bailouts but deliberately kept Obama in the dark which sounds a little too Iran-Contra and more than a little too Watergate to me. Of course the President didn’t know. I mean, why the fuck would he be told anything? While I can most certainly buy that keeping the boss in the dark is standard operating procedure in Washington, it still chafes.

As pressure mounted on AIG employees to return the bonuses, new details emerged yesterday about what the Fed, the Treasury Department and the White House knew regarding the payments and when. AIG executives said the Fed was informed three months ago by the company that it would pay $165 million by March 15 to employees working at its most troubled division. The Treasury and White House said they learned of the payments from Fed officials only days before they were due.

Oops. As recently as March 10, Tim Geithner was claiming to be “stunned” when the bonus payments came out. As Paul Kanjorski (congressman from Pennslyvania) said “I’m sick and tired of hearing the administration and the Secretary of the Treasury say, ‘I just found out about it.’”

In the more good news department, previous projections of the US Federal deficit are apparently inadequate to the task as
the deficit soars past previous expectations. What irritates me? The numbers being bandied about are about half of what I’ve seen to this point. I suspect another white washing occurred and I missed it. (The Federal government would never massage the numbers obviously.) Either way, even with the new math, it’s projected to grow at an estimated one trillion dollars a year for the next ten years.
Did we secretly elect Walter Mondale wearing one of those masks from the Mission Impossible movies? The Congressional Budget Offices estimates that the national debt will make up 82% of the national economy by 2019. THIS NEEDS TO STOP. The Democrats are talking about “adjustments” needing to be made to the new budget going into effect October 1. They need to be talking about Slashing Spending. Nancy Pelosi, of course, dismissed the report from the CBO. Tool.

While appearing on Jay Leno last night (for some damn reason) President Obama compares his bowling skills to participants in the Special Olympics, gets served by the media – thus eroding the cuddly bunny friendly to everyone image of the democratic party, which they have never put themselves out as but lots of people seem to think is there. (And of course, the media is spinning this as some kind of “education in humanity.” rather than what it was – a slip up.)

Both the US and Israel make appeals to Iran by tape today for…some reason. Oh, yes it’s the Persian New Year (And Happy New Year if anyone is reading from there!) but that doesn’t fully explain the sudden and erratic turn in policy – from either country. The U.S. which has been casting about for some way of putting Iran in a bad light, is now randomly being conciliatory. (Maybe they too think Iran might be invading Iraq in about two years.) While I’m not opposed to this possible shift in policy from Washington, I don’t pretend to – from the point of view of the policymakers – understand it.

France is formally requesting to rejoin NATO command – a move which will no doubt create a partisan debate for some time to come in France. I for one hope they can maintain their own way in the alliance without being compromised by U.S. foreign policy.

A tin of biscuits

Full and equal rights – for all African men who wish to emulate conservative European men.

Speaking in Angola, the Pope condemns “corruption” ranting against the number of non-democratic tyrannies scattered about the continent. Of course, he also repeated his words from Cameroon that modern culture is ‘destroying traditional African family values’ (which are not, I should mention, Catholic) and equated abortion with sexual violence.
I’m sure his vision for a democratic and prosperous Africa does not involve any significant role for women, features reinforced dominant male gender roles, a hate for sexual minorities and non-Catholics, as well as advocating that all lands adopt a European cultural model.

Sacrimento Hooverville coming down – but those involved are allegedly being moved into apartments, shelters, and “other accomodations.”

Some stories portrayed Tent City as a modern day Hooverville, a reference to the shanty towns built by homeless men driven into poverty during the Great Depression. With foreclosure rates in the Sacramento region among the highest in the nation, the ragtag camp has been depicted as a symbol of the economic meltdown — people who’d lost their homes and were suddenly pitching tents along
Advertisement
a riverbed.
The truth is somewhat less dramatic.
Although a sliver of the roughly 200 Tent City residents are recently middle class people who lost their homes, the overwhelming majority — 80 to 90 percent by several estimates — have been homeless for years, even decades.

Here’s a local news item on the Tent City from last week:

It remains to be seen how civilized this will actually be – and how much news that will or will not generate. Sad to say, no one seems much to be mentioning the pre-existing homeless problem, only that of the middle-class suddenly faced with a dwindling economy.

The Treasury Department is running job postings for experts on Executive Bonuses. Officially, the ads were placed in October to fill jobs for the bailout (but they run until this Saturday). The job postings list duties like “recovery of bonuses” and ” limitations on senior executives” – maybe if they’d filled those positions the DoT wouldn’t be in this mess.
Or not.
Again, hiring til Saturday. I doubt you could possibly do a worse job than Timothy Geithner

Among the Living

US home resales mysteriously up in February – the mysteriously isn’t mine. I think someone finally realized “hey, houses are ten thousand dollars!” (Last I checked, similar stories were emanating from both Detroit and from Atlanta.)

After much speculation Geithner unveils his master plan, creation of a new entity which will combine resources (funding, legal ability? Of course, he doesn’t say.) with the FDIC, the Federal reserve, andunspecified private companies. The so-called Public Investment Corp. will then purchase one trillion dollars in toxic assets from banks.
Oh, it will also be funded by 75 – 100 billion from TARP.

The initiative will seek to entice private investors, including big hedge funds, to participate by offering billions of dollars in low-interest loans to finance the purchases and also sharing risks if the assets fall further in value.
When Geithner released the initial outlines of the administration’s overhaul of the bank rescue program on Feb. 10, the markets took a nosedive. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged by 380 points as investors expressed disappointment about a lack of details.

Aside from increasing funding for US Black Hole research, I don’t see what the point of this is aside from moving money around (thus ensuring more chances exist to dip ones fingers in the well – ‘sharing the wealth’) and appearing to do something.

Obama appears on 60 minutes in brief – Geithner has job security…..for some reason, and he may be rethinking his Afghanistan strategy (pity that he’s already spent billions on the latter. Well, on the former too actually). Mr. Obama, you were on Jay Leno but recently and now 60 minutes. Your effort to win hearts and minds is transparent. Please return to the work of government. Oh, and lose Geithner – stat.

Or not. Our tech savy leader has, by action, declared George Bush “the Innovator” by adopting Bush’s policy position on file sharing – 150,000$ fine per track – So I must ask, how does the teat of the recording industry taste? (And really, “per track” – so I suppose stealing books or magazines or something one, you know, reads, isn’t illegal? That’s Bush Logic.)

The position — that the Copyright Act’s monetary damages are not unconstitutionally excessive — mirrors the one taken by the Bush administration and should come as no surprise.
Two top lawyers in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department are former RIAA lawyers: Donald Verrilli Jr. is the associate deputy attorney general who brought down Grokster and fought to prevent a retrial in the Jammie Thomas case. Then there’s the No. 2 in the DOJ, Tom Perrilli. As Verrilli’s former boss, Perrilli argued in 2002 that internet service providers should release customer information to the RIAA even without a court subpoena.
Presidential administrations often intervene in lawsuits in which the constitutionality of a federal law is in question. This case concerns a former Boston University student challenging a peer-to-peer file sharing case.
Still, parts of the government’s brief sounded as if it was taken from the RIAA’s public relations playbook.

A summary of the ruling can be found in pdf here (though I do warn – the ‘summary’ is 39 pages.) You can like it, or hate it, consider it theft or not, but the technology isn’t going back in the bottle. But in America it’s apparently still very fashionable for Big Media to fight the future.

Moving on…..
The Pope responds to cries of GITFO and leaves Africa. It heartens me somewhat to know that the RCC has come under immense amounts of fire since The “Doddering old man who doesn’t want anything to change even if people die” Pope was allowed to open his yammerhole and spill toxic crap into the ears of thronging African masses. Personally I’m just glad he’s left Africa and thus won’t be appearing in public there any longer saying stupid shit. Regrettably, he will be returning to the Vatican to continue issuing increasingly irrelevant statements to the world.

U.S. Senator indicted on charges of slashing his girlfriend’s face with glass in a jealous rage. Freshman senator Hiram Monserrate, 41 and an ex police officer was indicted by a grand jury on three counts of second degree felony assault and three counts of third degree misdemeanor assault. If convicted, he faces up to 7 years in prison. Senator Monserrate was arrested after Karla Giraldo’s face was slashed at his New York city home on December 19 of last year.

The gash over her eye required 25 stitches. Both said it was an accident.
Monserrate, who was in Albany on Monday for a legislative session, issued a statement saying he did not commit a crime.
“I’ve said all along this was accident. Karla has said all along this was accident. The district attorney’s politically motivated decision to pursue this case doesn’t change the fact that this was an accident,” he said.
Monserrate told police he tripped while holding a glass of water and that the glass accidentally hit Giraldo.

Holding a glass of water? The glass slipped when he tripped? Not a crime? I hope this jackass cooks.

A new UN report claims that Israel targeted civillians in Gaza. “Civilian targets, particularly homes and their occupants, appear to have taken the brunt of the attacks, but schools and medical facilities have also been hit,” reported Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict. The report is bursting with human rights abuses. Some of the highlights.

In one, she said, Israeli soldiers shot a father after ordering him out of his house and then opened fire into the room where the rest of the family was sheltering, wounding the mother and three brothers and killing a fourth.
In another, on January 15, at Tal al Hawa south-west of Gaza City, Israeli soldiers forced an 11-year-old boy to walk in front of them for several hours as they moved through the town, even after they had been shot at.

Of course despite the report laying some of the blame at Hamas as well, Israeli diplomats continue to insist that this is all part of a pattern of ‘demonizing Israel’ (because any criticism is clearly ‘demonizing’).

Following a few things up from last week
D.C. Health officials state HIV infection is serious but not critical – the shocking part is that apparently the 3% infection rate is accurate. While dismissing a lot of what was said last week as hyperbole, they did site improved antiviral therapies and longer lifespans as being largely responsible for that 3% figure.

Detained US reporters likely being held in Pyongyang. A press release issued Saturday accused two Americans of illegal intruding into its territory after crossing the border from China, word of which hit the internet late Tuesday. A South Korean missionary identified the two women as Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for Current TV.

More Lies about Open Government

Wow. Bernanke says, in essence, that the program won’t work if the banks involved have to admit their involvement. No scrutiny please.
After all, people might see how hopelessly furking corrupt they are. (This video is over two weeks old, by the way.)

Have you heard about H.R. 1207? It’s a bill introduced in congress by Ron Paul (who I do have some issues with but this isn’t one of them) – it proposes an audit of the Federal Reserve by 2010. And why the hell not? The full text is located here. The bill was co-sponsored by these people. Of course, the only ‘news’ agency covering this seems to be WingNutDaily, which doesn’t lend a vast amount of credibility. In any case, the bill (also called the Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009) has been sent to the House committee on Financial Services – with any luck Barney Frank won’t take umbrage at this affront to democratic hegemony and dismiss it out of turn.

Bernard: But surely the citizens of a democracy have a right to know.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: No. They have a right to be ignorant. Knowledge only means complicity in guilt; ignorance has a certain dignity.
– Yes Minister, episode one: “Open Government”

ubi dubium ibi libertas

What is with all of this media attention that the drug war in Mexico is getting – oh, wait, that’s right, there’s that memo that says “fixing the economy is hard, let’s get distracted” from, er, the American people to the powers that be….democratic.
Right, because the Drug War (Whoo!) has only been going on in Mexico for about ten minutes. Sure.
Hey, I’m not the one drinking the bong water, okay?

Obama still trying to contain skepticism on economic plans. I know it would certainly be convenient if everything revolved around AiG Mr. Obama, but it doesn’t. Part of the outrage over AiG is that the American people, who generally display very sheeple-like attitudes regarding bad news, know on some level that the AiG nonsense is only the visible slivers of a much larger problem. It’s not confined to AiG. Businesses are reluctant to work with the government – they fear increased regulation, they (in many cases) don’t want to give up their cushy less-than-legal practices….and at the end of the day, the Federal government has no business running a business. Any of them. (C’mon, again, the proof rolls in that Whenever Tim Geithner speaks the market tumbles.) The Federal government is notoriously bad at spending money wisely.

Some people seem more aware of this than others. The President of the EU calls Obama’s stimulus package “a way to hell”. The rest of the EU is scurrying to appear united and not upset the delicate sensibilities of the market (what, are fiscal traders made of fine china now?) at next week’s G-20 summit. The signal to noise ratio of many in the EU who are shuffling to agree with Obama before next week is a familiar sound – there’s the usual bunch of stuffed shirts wanting to keep as much of the wealth in their corner in the old ways for as long as possible.
G20, when the industrialized countries, and their lapdogs, tell the rest of the world how it’s going to be. Another wonderful vestige of colonial privilege. (For more on the G20, click here.)

Speaking of Europe, it would seem that dissatisfaction is not limited to the U.S. Israeli-Europe ties appear to be deteriorating. But perhaps that’s again just signs that people are getting sick of their shabby crap. And with good reason, too.

The European governments generally accept the Israeli narrative on the Gaza war: It was legitimate self-defense against an Iranian-backed outpost of anti-Western jihadism. By contrast, the European media and public opinion sympathized more with the Palestinian narrative: that Israel used disproportionate force, causing the deaths of large numbers of innocent civilians.

If the Bush presidency was good for anything, I think it may be proven with time to have finally put the nail in the coffin of the U.S. as an unquestioned world leader that the rest of the west will unhesitatingly follow the lead of. Not, in my estimation, a bad thing necessarily.

But hey, not to worry – North Korea has what is believed to be a long range ballistic missile on the launch pad right now – those are the things that (can) throw mystery items like nukes around. Again, like the Bush administration previously, the government is sticking their head in the sand (and their ass in the air) and hoping N. Korea will just go away or something.
Pretext of WMD? Invade and occupy the country for six + years. Increasing likelihood of actually WMD? Ignore it.
In any case, I expect this is just another example of N. Korea fucking around to watch the US Media react. Well, that or sometime soon I will be replaced by a thermonuclear cloud. Cheerful, eh?

Machine Gun a Go Go

Of 2,390 state executions in 2008, 72% are Chinese – and I’m sure there’s a segment of the American population that feels angry that “asia has outstripped us again.”

Amnesty International also reports on countries that handed down death sentences after unfair trials, like Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen. The report addresses the discriminatory manner with which the death penalty was often applied in 2008, with a disproportionate number of sentences handed down to the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities, in countries such as Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and USA. And the risk of executing the innocent continues, as highlighted by the four inmates released from death row in the USA on grounds of innocence.

Full disclosure time – until this past year, I was pretty much all in favor of the death penalty for certain kinds of offenses, thinking primarily from a punishment/”justice” model…not from a political one. It was pointed out to me that I don’t trust the Fed to deliver on certain other things without screwing them up (say, money…) but I was in favor of them having the power to terminate their own citizens? That was an eye opener.
If you’re interested, there is a followup piece here.

Israel, those champions of human decency, apparently used White phosphorus when blasting crowded buildings – here’s a sticky moral question for you: Which is worse: snipers and rocket attacks, or dumping white phosphorus on crowded population centers? Yes this is a trick question – of course the answer is they’re both pretty bad. Context however, demands that I go with Palestine on this.
Hey Israel – that whole hearts & minds thing? Yeah, you’re losing.

Madoff apparently was funding some of the more fringe oriented Transhumanists. A couple hoping to achieve some kind of better or longer living through architecture lost their life savings via losing income from their investments with Mr. Madoff which had helped fund their research and experimental work.
I have to say, that sounds like a neat house – I’d really like to see it. I doubt it will prolong human life but that theory is, to me, a little less wacky than others I’ve heard. It really floors me how extended life is synonymous with “safe and non threatening” to most people. (Really, the only tie this couple has to transhumanism is that this article says they do, so pencil me in as skeptical.) I’m fascinated by transhumanism – I just wish it wasn’t a) often dominated by the lunatic fringe (though generally, in a fairly agreeable way) and b) so damn far away. Like any other kind of “wishing makes it so” human endeavor, I’m fond of the inspiration it provides but treat it with all due skepticism.

Speaking of pseudoscience….
A new study claims that circumcision prevents spread of HPV and Herpes. Just why is the medical establishment is so hellbent on genital mutilation? They’ve been trying to throw out various kinds of justification for decades. I don’t believe this one either. Not for a minute.

This puts a giant smile on my face – I ran across it while surfing (For something FIRREA related I think.) Douglas Rushkoff advocates letting the economy fail.

It is in the spirit of the above that I report that IBM is cutting 5,000 jobs – must trim those payrolls now musn’t we corporate America? So long as the profit margin for corporate america is more important than the workers that make up that corporation (all of them, not just the executives) all the stimulus packages in the world will only be band aids.

see more Political Pictures

Plate o’ Shrimp (Delayed)

For some reason this post has been sitting in limbo for the better part of a week. Not that you’re missing out on anything by it’s absence mind……

Marriage equality bill likely to pass Vermont house, Governor likely to veto – while in New Hampshire, a similar measure having failed on Thursday is being voted on again today ….. but then goes on to zorch a bill enacting certain protections for transgendered folk.
What a mixed up batch today, eh?

Barney Frank called Antony Scalia homophobic – you know what, big deal! That Scalia is probably homophobic is a fact is so underwhelming so as to be beneath notice save for the loftiness of his position. Barney Frank? Hey, he’s transphobic – so what the hell should I care?

Geithner’s regulatory agenda:

The media is aflutter about this radical new idea President Obama has unveiled. I call it a messageboard. Seriously – that we finally have a President who isn’t a luddite with values and vision from the 1940s is commendable but for fuck’s sake, it’s not like he’s reinvented the wheel. (And no, Bill Clinton having read Nicholson Baker does not count.)

Agape, and full of surrender

Yes I’m behind a few days, sue me.

Piffle headed environmentalists hail ‘Earth Hour’ as a big success Yesterday lots of people (and moreover, lots of businesses and other private concerns) turned their lights off to, er, say….something. I think it was “global warming is bad, mmkay?”
We know that. Enough with the rhetoric. You want to do something about global warming? Try keeping those damn lights off. Like most ‘activists’ many environmentalists don’t so much as want change as something to bitch about. I guess living without those lights would be too hard and/or expensive, neh?
Yeah, que the dismissive attitude.

Federal Election Commission has found the PAC of five TARP recipients has doled out 85 grand to members and that’s just by the end of February.

A NEWSWEEK review of recent filings with the Federal Election Commission found that the political action committees of five big TARP recipients doled out $85,300 to members in the first two months of this year—with most of the cash going to those who serves on committees who oversee the TARP program. Among them: Bank of America (which got $15 billion in bailout money) sent out $24,500 in the first two months of 2009, including $1,500 to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and another $15,000 to members of the House and Senate banking panels. Citigroup ($25 billion) dished out $29,620, including $2,500 to House GOPWhip Eric Cantor, who also got $10,000 from UBS which, while not a TARP recipient, got $5 billion in bailout funds as an AIG “counterparty.” “This certainly appears to be a case of TARP funds being recycled into campaign contributions,” says Brett Kappel, a D.C. lawyer who tracks donations. (A spokesman for Cantor did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Hoyer said it’s his “policy to accept legal contributions.”)

Surely, change you can believe in. A bank lobbyist that didn’t (‘natch) want to be identified said, ‘The last thing I want to do is wake up one morning and see our PAC check being burned on C-Span.’ Which is sad because that’s the first thing I want to see, ever, on C-Span.

An interesting yet abhorrent article in Time suggests that faith is the act of powering down* the parietal lobe which is redeeming for the body – but just because it’s biology doesn’t mean it’s good. Jealousy doesn’t do anyone any good either – nor hardwired territoriality, nor a thousand such things. Primates are just wired to do stupid things.

More good news – apparently, there really are other people taking Obama to task about his ‘war on terror’ policy

Hey, Let’s Give Tim Geithner MORE power – oh, too late. Yeah about that. 90% of the TARP funds are committed out – how long before the corporate begging bowls get rattled again? Weeks I’d reckon. Months at most. Geithner of course defends his own actions (Did you expect him not to? Okay, yes, me too a little.)

North Korea is still waving that missile launch around like a giant dildo – and Japan is deploying guided three missile destroyers … just in case. South Korea is warning them away, and of course the US State department does nothing. Hey, they’re good at that. So far I think the latest N. Korean propaganda attempt can be classed as Total Victory.

* like many so-called environmentalists I suspect.

Laughing

Skype for iPhone arrives – surely I’m not the only one amused by this.
Seriously, the charges for data service apparently make up for otherwise lost revenue.
I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.

Expectation breeds weakness

ACK! I’ve been working over this entry about the class meme for nigh over a month now and it’s just become this meandering mess of piss and content without form. Frustrating, moreso by the fact that the thrust of what I was trying to say has gotten lost in the morass – probably because there’s still a lot to think about there. Trying to capture the slipsteam of thoughts on the subject(s) – plural because it’s really so much more than just the one thing – is next to impossible. I may butcher what I’ve got and post it up but I doubt seriously it will make any sense to anyone, myself included…..

Anyway, I’ve been pretty sorely remiss in this space for a bit now, and there’s a bit of a backlog. Still trying to play catch up. We’ll see how successful that is.

Apparently the log cabin republicans are finally getting my telepathic messages or they’re reading this blog or maybe they’re back in touch with the mothership. One t’other. After decades of trying so earnestly to prove to the “adult” GOP that hey, they can reach the bar – no really – so why can’t I have a beer?! it would seem possible that maybe they’re done sacrificing their selves and identity on the altar of acceptance. Good for them.
Hope it lasts longer than five minutes.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield removes Gender Reassignment Surgery from offered coverage. Wait, it was covered? Given that I’m still – constantly – amazed that any insurance will cover it (and cover it as something other than elective surgery) at all, I’m not sure what to think. I know that should this liberal dream concept of “universal health care” come to pass (and I do say if) I expect something akin to a razorblade shit storm where it comes to things like GRS. (Interested in reading more – Bilerico has a piece on this here.)
I remain steadfast in my belief that insurance companies combined with credit companies pretty much add up to the worst parts of the Judeo-Christian conception of Satan.

China is furious at a new US report (and whoo tee doo with a side of “how is this news exactly?”) – in short, the Pentagon engages in light hyperbole (as it, being the US Government, is wont to do) which, much like the facts that the Pentagon is spinning, contradict the pseudo-Maoist Propaganda Machine.
You know, actually, don’t bother reading the article – it’s all either so transparently obvious or just political posturing. I’m not sure why I grabbed the thing in the first place. If I were less inclined to laziness I’d delete any mention of it.

The Deconstruction of Privacy continues. The tech curve is rapidly eroding the once considered solid talking point when defining the point of privacy. And we’re all doing everything possible to help erode it faster.
I’m fine with living in a glass dome that you all can see as long as I can see the rest of you, ‘kay? I’m very much with the author of the piece linked to in that I think privacy should be a basic human right, and to me it is, but ….. I think that, like it or not, that kind of thinking is about 20 years too late.

Picture Pages

see more Political Pictures

Davy Jones – your locker is full.

After spending the morning catching up on my blog reading, it continues to nauseate and disgust me how many “progressive” people are in favor of genital mutilation on the basis of some Very shaky science*, from people who’ve been trying to find a reason to continue that practice for something like 40 years.
(If someone were to advance the notion that the spread of certain STDs could be reduced by – for example – surgically reducing the external female genitalia, heads. would. roll.)
Anyway, moving on….

Spain will now do with the US seems incapable of doing and good on them. It’s about time – I was starting to wonder if previous “threats” to do this precise sort of thing by certain (say, European) powers were going to come to anything. Well the vote’s not in yet but…..

elsewhere in the EU, France is threatening a G20 walkout (remember, this is the country that just recently decided to re-up their NATO command roll). Seeking a stronger regulator of global finances (well, stronger than the US and it’s Albionese lapdogs would like) it would appear that this is more a case of France (among many other countries) no longer being satisfied with U.S. “leadership” in this arena.
Good work America. France – feel free to provide global leadership for a change.

The New Yorker is running a fascinating piece on Syria and the Middle East peace process. Among the highlights? This lovely bit from The Robot.

“Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama” when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a “pro-Palestinian,” who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would “never make it in the major leagues”)

Given the Obama administration’s Mid-eastern policies, I think they’d nothing to worry about – BAU. But it’s not like Cheney has ever had anything to say – here he’s being ironic by being the mouthpiece for the GOP party line c. January 2009. Ironic as the GOP has spent the last eight years being his ass puppet.

Really though can I just say that somehow Cheney wins with the phrase “perfidious Albion”. (Which is so far removed from reality as to be comic. “Albion” has been supping on the cock of the US State Department for decades.)

Obama goes Clinton on DADT

And by “goes Clinton” I mean – fails to live up to campaign promises.

And finally, in an utterly unsurprising turn, Neocon godboy wingnut changes tracks and becomes Democrat. Gotta get out of those tax woes somehow.
No really. That’s why he changed. Such integrity.

* see if you can identify all of the instances of bias in that article.

Green Suitcases and Ressurection Clauses

Tell me, is this weekend Zombie-Jesus We-stole-your-holiday day yet? I want to know because I keep seeing media references to it, and I want to know which weekend my wife has off.

Speaking of such nonsense, a Baltimore woman pleads guilty to starvation death of her son. Okay, deplorable and she needs to get hit by a bus, right? The 22 year old woman has co-defendants, allegedly members of a cult with the mail order ‘deals’ in the back of magazines name “1 Mind Ministries.”
It gets better.
The woman is being released from jail in exchange for her cooperation against her co-defendants. This particular plea bargin includes a “process of deprogramming” clause including

the promise that charges will be dropped if 2-year-old Javon Thompson is resurrected. Ramkissoon’s attorney said his client insisted on the clause, which he believes is a first in American legal history, because she still holds out hope that her son will be brought back to life.

Actual law. wtf?
The five named suspects belonged to a small group of adults, and by default, their children, led by someone named Queen Antoinette.

Really – how many drugs do you need to be on to not read the sign on the wall that says “Not In Touch With Reality, Grab Your Kid and Run”???
Apparently, the extremely convincing Queen Antoinette ordered members to withhold food and water from the child, believing he was a demon who did not say “Amen” after he was fed. The rest of the facts of this case involving dancing around the child with a knife and carrying the body in a green suitcase while moving.

Canoodling with the Enemy

I find that “libertarian” as a word and as an ideological concept is inching up close and right behind “socialism” as a word being presently appropriated by those who lack any real understanding of what the word means. Of particular example I direct you to the Sam Adams Alliance which is apparently neo-con code for “listen to Michelle Malkin speak.”
Sorry I think I have to rearrange my sock drawer that night.

Proposed House climate bill has no fangs – a cap and trade plan that was audacious when first introduced c. 1990 with a few other, fairly random, elements tacked on.
If wishing made it so I’d petition the universe for a passel of climate scientists (hell, scientists period) to run for Congress. That would make me happy. (I can entertain myself with dreams of the “Science Party” surrounded by an art deco future later when it’s bed time.)

If naught else, it would (I hope) put a stop – or at least a crimp – in the Fifth grade antics between the two mobs of angry civics examples on capital hill.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The partisan sniping over President Barack Obama’s expensive 2010 budget plan became a battle of posters and charts in a show-and-tell debate on the U.S. Senate floor on Tuesday.
Republican and Democratic senators paraded to the floor to supplement their debate over Obama’s $3.55 trillion budget with stacks of posters blasting exploding deficit figures as well as highlighting lists of tax cut benefits.

There’s more but I can summarize it for you.
Majority: blah blah harumph open government we’re spending this money FOR THE FUTURE rhubarb harumph.
Minority: blah blah tax and spend harumph Jesus rhubarb freedom blah blah.
Conversely, you could get a monkey (or a six year old – functionally little difference I guess), wire them up on crack and have them bounce up and down screaming “LOOK AT MY CHART!!!!”

The Fed continues trying to strongarm the car companies into acting so that they won’t have to meddle. Nothing much has changed since November IOW.

Israeli installs new PM a giant question mark with the name of Business As Usual which is nowhere near as entertaining as the US having the audacity (after the last eight years especially) to seek election to the UN Human Rights Council because as every democrat knows, it’s easier to fix the outcome when you’re part of the committee. (Mind, the GOP knows the “committee secret” too, but they’re fonder of the three drink lunch aspect I think.)

A sordid fairy tale

Expert on numbers fixing nominated for head of Census Bureau. I’ve pretty much already washed my hands of next year’s census, for reasons I’ve discussed previously, but this isn’t making things any easier. President Obama has nominated Professor Robert Groves, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan to head the Census Bureau. Sounds fine so far, right?

Mr. Groves, who served as associate director of statistical design at the Census Bureau from 1990 to 1992, is an expert on “sampling,” the practice of adjusting statistics in order to compensate for undercounting. This tends to bolster the number of people counted in urban areas that are typically Democratic strongholds. The census, which takes place next April, is used to apportion seats in the House of Representatives and disburse billions in federal dollars

Yes, so statistics should be based on “approximations” and fuzzy logic, apparently? I don’t think so. The only sample we’ll have then is that of the sampler. Not representative of the whole country methinks. Of course, the GOP is screaming – not because of funny numbers which clearly they don’t have a problem with *koff*Florida*koff* but because they think it will increase the number of democratic votes in the inner cities. This despite the Supreme Court having already ruled that such sampling is not useful for apportionment purposes*.

Tell you what guys – let ye who have never gerrymandered cast the first stone, ‘kay? Hear that buzzer? That means you’ve been disqualified so quit your bitching.

No, the issue with sampling is that it flies in the face of what the census is supposed to be doing in the first place. In a statistics class, how many times are the students allowed to just shrug and go for the make-shit-up button? Why should it apply in the real world?
It gets better.
Professor Groves worked as director of statistical design with the US Census in 1990. 1990? Yes, the 1990 which gave us hits like the “1990 census vastly undercounted minority populations in large cities”. Yet his experience with “sampling” is going to correct this problem? Please Democrats, break out the new math and graph this for me.

Speaking of corruption and adjusted numbers, the TARP math is already being fully muddied – to the tune of a 100 million $ discrepancy. Oops, someone forgot to carry the two. It’s getting to the point now that every time I hear TARP or FIRREA or any of those “acronyms that mean you’re getting screwed” I start making up primary school word problems in my head – for the betterment of children’s education of course.

“If the democratic senator takes one campaign contribution of 5,000 $, and another contribution for 16,000 $, and is appointed to the finance subcommitte, when will the recession be?”

On a wholly unrelated note, will someone please tell me who Ted Stevens had to blow to get the charges dismissed? In fine and upstanding criminal form, as the ink cools on the dismissal, the Alaskan GOP is calling for a special election. Why? Because

Alaska GOP Chairman Randy Ruedrich said a special election should be held “so Alaskans may have the chance to vote for a senator without the improper influence of the corrupt Department of Justice.”

My brain collapses under the weight of all of the absolute bullshit in that sentence. On the flip side, it’s taken this long to finally indict Rod Blagojevich but it has finally happened.

with 16 felony counts, among them racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud and extortion conspiracy in a wide-ranging scheme to deprive residents of “honest government,” prosecutors said

Okay, firstly, prosecutors accusing him (or…anyone) of depriving residents of “honest government”? Please. Twelve year old kids can see through that one faster than Michelle Malkin speed dialing Homeland Security during Food Network reruns. Lose the high and mighty – we know you’re dirty too, okay?

* which is itself contradictory; one of the big uses the US census is put to (and the only reason politicians care about the US census at all) is because “the results are used to allocate Congressional seats (congressional apportionment), electoral votes, and government program funding”. source

Marriage, dating, and the vacuum seal of the economy

The Iowa supreme court decided today in favor of legalized same-gender marriage. Wait…..Iowa? Keep at this and they’ll kick you out of the I-states club. (Yes, Iowa.) This activity puts them over the top ahead of Vermont, who voted 94-52 in favor of non heterosexual marriage which is two votes short of what’s needed to override a veto by the state governor, who has promised to do just that. I guess someone had to pee in the cereal, neh?
Yeah, that veto override is already in the planning stages. I hear they’re talking Tuesday.

But don’t whip out the whippits just yet, the U.S. unemployment rate is at it’s highest since November 1983. 1983. Since the year of bloody flashdance. Just to put it in perspective*.

I suspect the complete truth is impossible to discern without having been there but some rather surprisingly stupid actions by Bay area Burners led to the lesson that despite good intentions, no, you can’t walk into any door hippie. And no, you can’t. For a change, I don’t have much to add to that, just read it for yourself.

eHarmony opens Gay and Lesbian dating venues but please don’t support them – the only reason the sanctimonious fucks are doing so is because, well, of a law suit. They *have* to.
Or maybe we should dogpile them. I dunno. I think I’d rather eat my own flesh than do anything to feed the nonsense that is a dating site and the paradigm that goes with it (You there, single person, you are useless if you are alone! I HATE that shit.) but part of me finds some crude appeal in making that the most profitable part of their business, just so they can feel the burn. But my kneejerk is to tell them to fly a kite and hope they hemmorage cash.

And because the whole entire world media seems to be sucking on a crack pipe in an echo chamber with this Obama goes to G20 thing, here, have a video. Then shut up about it.

By the way, what was accomplished at G20? Some photo-ops? A sanctimonious “town meeting” thing? Eight billion versions of OMGWTFGLG20iPoD!?
Anything?
At all?

anyone?
Ah, the Wall Street Journal I knew it wouldn’t let me down.
Wait, what’d they accomplish?

*(Rejected examples included Xtro, Return of the Jedi, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the War on Drugs, and since a lab in France discovered a virus.)

history lesson in three seconds

On this day in 1933, FDR signed unconstitutional Executive Order 6102 making it illegal for private citizens to own gold coins.

Two minutes

US deficit nearly one trillion in first half of fiscal year 2009 which, recall, begins October 1. Apparently, some kind of reward is given for those that break new records in government spending.

A US Judge has ruled that foreign suspects held by the US in Afghanistan do in fact have the right to challenge their detention in US civilian courts just as do those at GitMo. Last year the Supreme Court said that while detainees at GitMo had such a right, the Justice Department (You know, those stalwart nonpartisan guys!) ruled that those being held at Bagram did not have such a right.
Yeah, fuck you Bush Era Justice Department. (In common with the rest of you I have to take my victories where I can get them.)

The national geographic society would like you to know that the arctic ice got smaller, thinner, and younger this past winter this on the heels of a BBC report detailing the rupturing of an ice bridge in Antarctica putting the wilkins ice shelf on the verge of breaking away, and the disappearance of another Antarctic ice shelf puts all of this firmly in the category of Our Doomed World.

Freedom and Unity

Wow. Iowa and Vermont (Vermont?) have their shit together, but California “the great liberal vacuum” can’t. Why not?
I’m guessing it might have something to do with neither Iowa, nor Vermont, being all the close to Mormon country, and not y’know sexy enough* a place to crusade against the Evils of Tolerance and Acceptance.
I suspect that, in the case of Vermont, it might also have something to do with the decision resting before a legislature rather than some nonsense referendum (which doesn’t do much more than tally how many from which side show up**)

Excuse me if I’m sighted singing “Going to the Chapel” anytime soon.

*well, in a funny underwear, polyamory-only-if-it-keeps-the-wemmin-down sort of way

** clearly, the cornerstone of a great democracy

A Long and Pointless Blathering on Media Control

I started this as another attempt at that damn class thing I’ve been trying to wrangle into submission – largely to no avail. I tried a bit of word association to break it up a bit but I don’t think I accomplished much, maybe a little peek through deprogramming. (Word association as deprogramming – anyone who’s ever been in even very low level therapy has probably done some kind of word association, and I figure the rest of you have at least heard of it.) I find it to be a very effective tool for finding where one’s social programing is sitting at (The crusade against learned behavior continues!) and it often gives me some idea where I need to work on some things.
In an effort to maintain some kind of focus, I’m going to zero in on social stratification and the buzz words that go with it.

Lower class? Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. I prefer it to the euphemism “working class” which I think was constructed to make the middle and upper classes feel better. (See also: Liberal Guilt)
Let’s deconstruct, shall we?
Blue collar - makes you think of auto mechanics and Bruce Springsteen doesn’t it? It also (for me at least) elicits images of flag waving jingoism, in much the way that Bruce Springsteen used to, when I was young and foolish.
White collar – honestly the very first thing that comes to mind is someone being led away by the SEC. There’s just something inherently smug about the term. Not sure where that notion was socialized into me but at some point it was.

the Middle Class - American culture is based on the lie that we are all middle class. Television, film, and pretty much all manner of entertainment and information exchange are targeted at the middle class, and if a person is unable to make use of that cultural palimpset, then they find themselves at varying degrees of disadvantage.

In the United States most economists and sociologists tend to accept the existence of six discreet social stratum in the U.S. Social classes in the US exist as divides placed there by the people themselves along certain specific lines, those being income, standard of living, education, and occupation. The middle class also divides into Upper and Working Middle class along lines of subculture. Further, each social class holds certain memes and cultural values that the others do not, but it is a debatable point as to whether this is an effect of social stratification or if this has a causal role. (Heterosexual monogamous divorce rates vary by social class for example, but tolerance of non-conformity, and the ‘protestant work ethic’ are also good examples.)

The wealthy or well off. The smallest group and paradoxically the one with the most influence and power (but which isn’t any more represented by culture than the working poor). Then we have the Upper Middle Class, which – when averaged out with the next class, represent the default assumption of American culture. (Which arises from the belief that America exists as a classless society, which can only be said to be true as a comparative to other societies which maintain class divides more rigid than our own.)

Those who have a degree which has no bearing on what they do for a living (invoking the Mighty Snark, we’ll call this the Call Center Management Class), many of which wind up with those from the next class reporting to them.

And at the bottom exists the working class – one comprised of clerical and “blue collar” workers – what we have in common is that our work is highly “routinized”, meaning it’s repetitive and requires little imagination – and the true lower class which consists of the working poor and the unemployed. I would also suggest that, as class (the social construct) is largely a matter of perception, that race plays a significant role in the divide, which it shouldn’t. You will note I say perception, because factually, the lower class isn’t as divided among racial lines.

Shifting Sands:
Those last two groups also are having their differences eroded by socio-economic factors; this has been occurring since (at least) the early 1990s Clinton era. Further, the predominantly middle class default of American culture is shifting; those with largest control over the media are becoming the dominant force in culture, eroding prior memes which were established in the 1950s (the middle class nuclear heterosexual white family among them).

Of course, here things tend to degenerate into meaningless statistics. (Ultimately, all statistics are meaningless, but more on that in a bit.) The foundation is the problem with deconstructing the class meme (or any meme for that matter). It can’t possibly hurt to remember that everything you read is wrong and everything they tell you is untrue. That you have to be discriminating in what you believe and that thinking for yourself is work but work worthwhile.
Who is “they”? This isn’t a philosophical point – it’s EVERYONE. Advertising is designed to subvert the truth and influence behavior (which sounds an awful lot to me like the definition of propaganda. Hey, it works!)
You can’t believe the government – they use fear (and loathing!) to keep you under control. To influence (again) behavior. Every time you are in an argument with someone who argues the law is good and breaking it is bad – without actually considering the law and it’s implications – you are, essentially, arguing with a meme that has been given human form to walk and fart.

Do you have any idea what television has done to anyone capable of reading this? Perception is reality – and if this is so then the simple act of turning on your television is an act of surrender – potentially at least. You are signaling your willingness to be submit your interpretation of reality before someone else – someone whiter, wealthier, and likely,

Racism, classism, and all of those other “-isms” are learned behavior, which ultimately, are merely refinements of little memes that we pop as children down with our Flintstone’s vitamins.

Of course, certain agencies take full advantage of those toxic memes we imbibe in our milk years. The Mormons, the Republicans – the PMRC, the War on Drugs. All of it boils down to “Repressive forces fighting the war on independent thought.”
There is no objective truth, no 1=1 reality. It’s all a matter of perception – example: I was looking for images of a certain variety; I Googled “Screaming” – but nothing I got came close. On a lark, I Googled yelling, and most (80%+) fit precisely what I was looking for.
But, to me, yelling and screaming are not the same thing. What I think of as screaming – apparently – most people, or most Google search bots anyway, think of as yelling.

Interesting. In looking back over this it seems to have gone off the rails into essaytown and then opted for some offroading in the mudpits near tinfoil city. I suppose I should learn my lesson and recognize that some subjects simply can’t be expressed in a tight tiny little space without at least some little bit of rambly.
Against my better judgement, I’m going to hit publish on this in a second. A heroic (if not masochistic) feat if you’ve read all of this blather. Especially given that I think most of the point I (latter) was trying to make can best be expressed by this image:

Wednesday Evening Biscuits

Pakistan calls bullshit on U.S. … and there was much rejoicing as I’ve been waiting years to see this or similar happen. Iran did the same later on but in a special backhanded sort of way.
Newsflash – President Obama you can’t just flash your Obama smile and make the last eight (twelve…twenty eight…fifty) years go away magically. As good a game as you’ve talked (incessantly) it’s time for you to deliver on that “gaining the world’s respect” thing…it’s not going to be easy.
Speaking of which, Spain, I’m waiting. Please be my hero and make as giant a stink as possible. Really – at the least it will show just how invested the Obama administration isn’t in seeing justice. At most, it will put the heat on Cheney and the rest of those smug bastards.

And in the I’m apparently in the wrong damn state department, New Hampshire passes transgender rights protections into law – by one vote. Mind, it deals with “the bathroom issue” and Not A Damn Thing Else (and really, is this where the focus of our struggle should be? I think not)…but there are similar bills, in varying degrees of activity, in both Massachusetts & Connecticut.

So poopoo on the Prebublickan Potty Patrol.

Deny the last eight years. With extreme prejudice.

CIA to close it’s secret world network of illegal prisons – I just LOVE how matter of factly Central Intelligence (or as they advertise on Death Guild Radio – “the National Clandestine Service”) just acknowledges secret detention (and whatever else) facilities on three continents (at least). Of course, the GovMonkeys immediately turn around and insist “no one should be prosecuted” because, essentially ‘it was legal then’. Which is the shakiest arguement I’ve heard since creationism. Double bonus points for – per their own words – operating these facilities for the last three years on taxpayer dollars even though they haven’t been in use.
Um…uh-huh. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
Oh, but don’t stop sweating yet, Leon Panetta states that the CIA retains the power to detain suspects “on a short-term transitory basis”. which is, of course, up to them to define.
But hey, they’re not subcontracting anymore! We should all be happy. You know, because the CIA isn’t hiring mercenaries anymore. Hully gee thanks Mr. Panetta. Could I get a side of STFU with that?

Ah, turnaround time. Why? Because President Obama has asked for an additional 83.4 billion dollars in war funds. So much for that economy thing. Really, outspending the other side worked so well for Bush (well, in fairness, it is the only way we won the cold war).

President Barack Obama asked the U.S Congress on Thursday for an extra $83.4 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, citing threats from al Qaeda and a resurgent Taliban.
The request, to cover the rest of the 2009 fiscal year which ends on Sept. 30, comes on top of more than $822 billion that Congress has approved to fund the wars since September 2001, Obama said.
“We face a security situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan that demands urgent attention,” he said in a letter to Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, urging lawmakers to approve his request swiftly.
“The Taliban is resurgent and al Qaeda threatens America from its safe haven along the Afghan-Pakistan border.”

Ah, yes, the Taliban is resurgent. Hmmmmmmmmmmm. First of all, if the media can identify that the actual Taliban has just changed names and returned to legitimate government and continued on business as usual (Business as usual? Yep. This is what she’s denying.) why can’t the government?
Somehow Mr. Obama I don’t believe you are planning on rolling into Afghanistan and replacing that nonsense with a just government. I think you’re just going to continue throwing the word Taliban around as a synonymous buzz word for Al-Queda and continue on same as before. Which amounts to doing a whole lot of nothing.

A lovely little piece over on Wired.com about how the promise of a ‘panopticon society’ is coming at least somewhat full circle. Little Brother is watching you

Extensive networks of fixed cameras throughout Britain remain the preserve of the authorities, but these are essentially dumb systems monitoring empty streets in the hope that something significant will happen when they’re pointing in the right direction. An informal network of passersby with camera phones creates a crowdsourced, peer-to-peer network of citizen surveillance.

I can’t wait for phones that feed live footage into a video stream. Even though that will be, I think, the final death knell for traditional journalism (and of all the products of our 20th century derived technical society, journalism – while hardly perfect – is one of the least broken of our cultural artifacts, and yes I say that with a gleam in my eye.)

Since I’m over at Wired, and don’t want to end this on a hideously bad note, I just have to pimp out the Tesla Roadster – please check it out, it’s a moral imperative.

Bitter Biscuits

Nearly a year later, and GitMo detainees are still waiting for their “prompt” habeas corpus hearing per Boudediene v. Bush (which, just to be clear, is a decision The Obamanator had nothing to do with).

Ten months after the US Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the detainees held in US military custody at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba were entitled to a “prompt” habeas corpus hearing in District Court to determine the lawfulness of their detention, only a handful of them have received such a hearing. Amnesty International details its concerns in a new report.
While President Barack Obama has ordered the closure of the Guantánamo detention facility by January 2010, the future remains uncertain for the approximately 240 detainees still held there as the executive review of their cases and of US detention policy ordered by the new President gets underway. So far, this executive review has led to the release of one detainee, to the United Kingdom. No Guantánamo detainee has been charged by the new administration.

That report is available here. Continuing objection to the continuance of Bush era policies at places like Bagram are located here.)

Idaho police mistreat two transwomen after arrest and I tell you I am simply shocked. From the sound of it, Twin Falls police acted like frat boys on a bender, as you’d expect.
I doubt anything will happen to those police. Sad but true. (You will note I’m saying nothing about the rest of the case – yes I’ll concede that having lied to police and being under suspicion of murder isn’t going to make any peace officer terribly well disposed to you, true or not, those who enforce the laws should be held to a higher standard, period.)

Police continue their hunt for the muderer of an Eight year old girl whose body was found in a suitcase – and something odious is leaking from every pore of this story. I can’t *quite* nail down what it is, except of course, that an eight year old’s corpse was found folded up in a box.
Hopefully, whomever is responsible for this will meet a very bad, very long and drawn out, painful, terrifying end.

And lastly in the God is an iron* department, scientists claim to have found a link between oral sex and throat cancer – now before you cry bullshit, they are naming the HPV virus; which I’d like to point out there is a vaccination for. Of course, at this stage, it could also be kissing, smoking, or drinking (or perhaps other forms of fun or alleged fun) so don’t get your knickers in a wad just yet.

* no, I’ve not started drinking from the Jesus Water, tis a reference to an absolutely brilliant story by Spider Robinson with that very title. I urge any reader to go check out any of his short fiction if they are unfamiliar with his works.

Water’s Wet, the Sky is blue

Barney Frank wants a cookie
Too little too late for my sympathy. Try again I guess.
While I’m on the subject, I’m still not a fan of the HRC. Duh. Just in case there was doubt.
/Moment of pure bitchy

Huge Hefner wishes you a happy Pooka day

“Adult” Situations

Amazon.com criticized for removing ‘adult’ books from it’s ranking system where ‘adult’ is a codeword for TBLG materials. Anyone who doubts that last fact can be directed here which makes it pretty clear that American Psycho is included in the ranking system but a book detailing the ban of bisexual, lesbian, and gay people from the military is not.

Certainly many of the books that are no longer ranked are no more “adult” than many of those that are — as the list above shows, the same book, by different publishers, might meet either fate. And Kindle editions of some books remain ranked. “Unfriendly Fire,” for example, is #1 in Gay and Lesbian Nonfiction on the Kindle — even as the hardcover of the book, which was released on March 3, does not show up at all when searched for.

As near as can be determined, this is only (predictably) occurring on Amazon proper – Amazon Canada et. al. aren’t having to put up with this nonsense.
Someone else in the blogosphere inquired about this practice and the response was…almost Federal in it’s whitewashedness.

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.
Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

A partial list of the books being deranked exists here. Remember, they aren’t removing the books from sale …. just pretending that they aren’t there when they have to release their sales figures; it’s well known that many online retailers use Amazon sales rankings as a relative indicator of a given book’s success.
Wouldn’t want any of those fine upstanding repressed straight folk to think any income was being derived from those dirty faggots, dykes, queers, and shemales now would we?

The sad thing is that I can’t really see who specifically being catered to – it’s such an obscure (to most users) barometer of success/failure. It does seem to make hunting for certain things a bit trickier but (for the most part) they are still there with an extra step or two. So…if their intent is to cater to the ZombieJesusDay Right then….well, they’re doing it wrong.
I don’t think these things work, but for those of you who do there’s an online petition that can help you feel like you’ve done something.

Amazon – we still exist, and will go on existing no matter how hard you stick your head in the Box of Pretend World. Ttthhhhllllllpppppptttt!

Edit to the foregoing I can’t really be the only one who finds these a little creepy can I?

Dear right wing tax feebs

No one has increased taxes*. Shut the fuck up. You’re making real conservatives look bad.

* No, you aren’t allowed to protest things “that haven’t happened yet.”

Welcome to Obamaland. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle, it makes sharp right turns

CIA ‘amnesty’ dismays campaigners – um, sure. Dismayed. Right. You know, I kind of hope this costs Obama the next election (actually no, I don’t. I think it will take longer than four years for the Republican party to be reconstituted into something worthwhile….or replaced) – besides, I know that the American people are fickle. As long as they’ve got their cable, their shitty fast food, and their porn streaming in along the ‘tubes, they won’t care.
At this point, I think it’s pretty much a given that Obama’s going to pardon anyone that looks like they might actually see some prosecution. Well, unless the American people exercise Vox Populi (witness AiG) but in this case, it doesn’t actually affect their quality of life, so the outrage will blow over.
I think Salon about called it and did so back in August. Specifically that Obama is only interested in the criminal occurances of the last eight years insofar as he wants to appear to be involved – likely in the time honored tradition of a ‘blue ribbon fact finding team’ which, as all such teams are, given the answers on hiring.
I mean, to go after BushCo he’d have to appear partisan now wouldn’t he? You know, if I believed in any tinfoil hat nonsense about the whole world being run by six people in a locked room, it’d be shit like that that I would cite as evidence.
Of course, I’m waiting for Dick Cheney to speak up. I mean, Mr. Credibility won’t be able to resist rubbing his robotic face in it. Hell, he probably really does think that “this has helped the American people”

“…and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
Dick Cheney NBC’s “Meet the Press”, March 16, 2003

“I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11.”
Dick Cheney, 2nd Presidential Debate, October 5, 2004

“I think there’s overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government.”
Dick Cheney National Public Radio’s, “Morning Edition,” January 22, 2004

“I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session.”
Dick Cheney, 2nd Presidential Debate, October 5, 2004 (Per Senate records, Cheney had only presided over the Senate twice in four years as Vice President prior to this statement)

“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002

Yes, that Dick Cheney. I mean, the way is now clear for Dick to tell the world that he viagra’d himself to videotaped “confessions” – the worst that could happen is that Obama will wait an extra day to Gerald Ford the whole thing.

Keep Your Eye on the Sparrow

Miss him, miss him, miss him – Phil Spector has been convicted of murder, specifically of shooting Lana Clarkson in the mouth thus accruing a second degree murder rap. For the interested, this joins the ranks of bizarre, sleezy noir LA murder trials alongside OJ Simpson and (moreover) the sheer fucking wierdness of the Robert Blake Trial.

Yesterday I reported that Amazon was trying very hard to pretend we TBLG people don’t exist – well now they’re saying That was a technical glitch. Yes really. Actually, at first they blamed a troll on the internet (when the first reaction is to blame someone else…..) but now they’re saying it was “purely an internal error”. Hmmmmmmmm.

Goldman Sachs promises to repay rescue money suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure. This as they posted 1.66 billion dollars in net profit during Q1. Hey, if you’re still turning billions of dollars in profits – you don’t need government assistance. (It received 10 billion last year.) “Profits are down” does not an economic catastrophe make.

Judges in Minnesota declare Franken winner in Senate race. You know, long ago and far away I would have just shot both of them in the head and put a third party candidate in there. Of course, had I awesome judiciary powers, I might well have not waited for the long and drawn out outcome, declared the state of Minnesota contaminated on the grounds that Michele Bachmann exists there and throw a Simpsons dome around the whole works.
(Nothing personal against Minnesota – okay, that’s not true. I can name precisely three good things that came out of Minnesota that didn’t turn sour. A friend of mine named Bonnie, the Replacements, and Youaredumb.net. That’s it. Everything else spoils eventually.)

In another move displaying the type of innovation I’ve come to expect from the Obama White House, The Justice Department hires it’s fifth ex-RIAA lawyer, proving that yes Virginia, law can continue to be rooted in the 20th century and that a scarcity based economy is always the way to go.

Technology – makes a man firm, makes a brain soft

Using system prompt commands may be a sign of criminal activity. A Boston College student has their computer, cell phone, and other items seized after because the command line prompt is apparently probable cause.

In his application, the investigating officer asked that he be permitted to seize the student’s computers and other personal effects because they might yield evidence of the crimes of “Obtaining computer services by Fraud or Misrepresentation” and “Unauthorized access to a computer system.” Aside from the remarkable overreach by campus and state police in trying to paint a student as suspicious in part because he can navigate a non-Windows computer environment, nothing cited in the warrant application could possibly constitute the cited criminal offenses. There are no assertions that a commercial (i.e. for pay) commercial service was defrauded, a necessary element of any “Obtaining computer services by Fraud or Misrepresentation” allegation. Similarly, the investigating officer doesn’t explain how sending an e-mail to a campus mailing list might constitute “unauthorized access to a computer system.”

And why do you hate Freedom anyway?

Trial begins in murder of transgendered woman and I highly doubt the jury will give even the slightest sliver of thought to a thirty odd year old man going to someone barely legal for sex. Also, this sort of thing does serve as a reminder to all of my trans siblings that tis’ a REALLY BAD IDEA to not mention things like, you know, gender status when one is entering a sexual situation. I can’t imagine someone not knowing that before I go into the bedroom with them except in the most unusual of circumstances.
Nonetheless, the “moment of rage” defense is vomitous and I hope he winds up in prison for a very long time.

Verdict in Pirate Bay Trial – Guilty each of the defendants are looking at a year of jail time. The defendants are, of course, appealing – and remain free pending any such action. I expect the political repercussions of this will drive a spike into the middle of Europe. No, I’m not engaging in hyperbole. Of course, despite some opinions I still think the RIAA will implode. Hopefully soon.

Glaxo and Pfizer combine to create new new HIV fighting Voltron which, nevertheless, will I’m sure find some way to do evil anyway. This is the pharmaceutical industry after all.

The NSA has broken a new eavesdropping law and dozens are stunned.

The land of the Scopes Monkey Trial is apparently still administrated by the inbred – as public schools across the state are filtering positive TBLG content from their computers….but leaving the “cure homosexuality” bullshit searchable.
Hey, guys, your messiah doesn’t exist, okay? Now you just keep on perpetuating the 3100 year old sheep herder cultural memes.

Things I’m wondering

Is Xenocentrism cultural appropriation? Is it the same thing or merely similar? If so – why? Is it always such? How?
If not – then why not? Are there exceptions? Is it possible for someone to actually relate to a culture that one didn’t grow up in? (I think so but there are likely perspectives that childhood immersion both provides and prevents.) Does this extend to gender?

I am fucking disgusted

Obama exempts torture staff from prosecution Thursday the Obama administration published four memos (previously secret) detailing legal “justification” for CIA interrogation (wait, torture* – interrogation involves getting intel from it) programs during the Bush era. Following this, President Obama gave assurances that those who participated in these acts will be not be prosecuted.

“those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice… will not be subject to prosecution”.

Fuck you Mr. President. The only thing stopping me from making impassioned statements expressing hope that you might fall into a pool of 12 molar acid or die in a fire is the thought that that would leave The Biden in charge and ….. yeah not worth it.
Seriously, Mr. Obama, WHAT KIND OF SIDE DEAL DID YOU CUT WITH THESE PEOPLE? I really cannot see any reason why you would do this without benefit? Unless you really are so ideologically sold on this increasingly disconnected from reality notion of unity that puts you as “in touch” with the real world as your predecessor. (Apparently in the 20th century we had crooks in the White House. Now we have bluepills.)

This is all on the heels of the release of documents describing what precisely was “allowed”

So, what was allowed?
Prisoners could be kept awake for more than a week. They could be fed nothing but liquid and thrown against a wall 30 times. Prisoners could be kept awake for more than a week. They could be fed nothing but liquid and thrown against a wall 30 times.
Simulated drowning
Using a plastic neck collar to slam detainees into walls.

“One of the documents contained legal authorisation for a list of specific harsh interrogation techniques, including pushing detainees against a wall, facial slaps, cramped confinement, stress positions and sleep deprivation.
The memo also authorises the use of “waterboarding”, or simulated drowning, and the placing of a detainee into a confined space with an insect.

One technique approved but never used (ha!) involved putting a detainee who had shown a fear of insects into a box filled with caterpillars.

Remember those pictures from Abu-Grahb? Funny how nothing we see there corresponds to anything being described here. Again, we’re not really getting the full truth here (all of those blacked out parts of the memos released should attest to that).

Leon Panetta, the Director of the CIA told agency employees that they should be “fully confident that, as you defend the nation, I will defend you.” Just as Attorney General Eric Holder said “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.”

WHAT THE FUCK? Thank you Mr. Obama for effectively raising to the status of law the “I was only following orders doctrine”. I’m sure it will serve our nation’s clandestine service as well as it has for the last fifty years.

Obama said he wanted to move beyond “a dark and painful chapter in our history.”
Aside from pointing out that this does leave those who made these “legal decisions” open for prosecution (well, aside from whatever side deals THEY cut) I have nothing further to add but more frothing anger and outrage.

* of course, lots of things are cited in the “hey we stopped X, Y, and Z” from happening by doing this. People who offer this argument up do rather miss the point.
Besides, do you believe them? I do not.

Congress Swill

Have you heard of HR 1467?

3/12/2009–Introduced.
Safe and Secure America Act of 2009 – Amends the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 to extend through 2019 provisions which: (1) authorize the use of multipoint or roving wiretaps for national security and intelligence investigations; and (2) allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to apply to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to grant government access to tangible items (books, records, etc.) in foreign intelligence, international terrorism, and clandestine intelligence cases.
Amends the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 to extend through 2019 the inclusion of “lone wolf” terrorists as agents of a foreign power, for purposes of the authority to obtain intelligence on non-U.S. persons engaged in international terrorism.

That would be the fault of the following asshats.
* Rep. Lamar Smith [R, TX-21]
* and 17 Co-Sponsors
o Rep. Michele Bachmann [R, MN-6]
o Rep. John Boehner [R, OH-8]
o Rep. Eric Cantor [R, VA-7]
o Rep. Howard Coble [R, NC-6]
o Rep. Mary Fallin [R, OK-5]
o Rep. Trent Franks [R, AZ-2]
o Rep. Elton Gallegly [R, CA-24]
o Rep. Gregg Harper [R, MS-3]
o Rep. Duncan Hunter [R, CA-52]
o Rep. Jim Jordan [R, OH-4]
o Rep. Steve King [R, IA-5]
o Rep. Daniel Lungren [R, CA-3]
o Rep. Mike Pence [R, IN-6]
o Rep. Thomas Rooney [R, FL-16]
o Rep. F. Sensenbrenner [R, WI-5]
o Rep. John Shadegg [R, AZ-3]
o Rep. John Sullivan [R, OK-1]

(Oh, and AG Holder is on board with this too unless he’s radically changed tacks since he went from being a nominee and became an AG.)

The above, in short, pretty much continues the allowance of total
surveillance (maybe on you, maybe just on a brown person) to nigh any degree (as with our media as recently as a year ago) without a warrant so long as some judge somewhere “believes in cause”*), ‘as long as you’re involved or suspected of such in terrorism’ (which has a definition about as tractable as pornography) and, this may continue indefinitely without oversight.

It’s terribly adolescent of me but I’m resisting the urge to replace every instance of PATRIOT with (alternatingly) “Flagwaving” or “Jingoistic”. After the executive branch excesses of the last eight years you’d think I’d be less critical of the legislative branch…and there you’d be wrong. Partisan nonsense.

Moving on…..
Obama’s reprieve for CIA torturers illegal

That particular body of neo-cons that, normally, would be screaming about the notion of “international law interfering with the internal workings of the United States” (Best heard in a sort of Bill O’Reiley monotone) are Being. Really. Mighty. Quiet. Hmmmm. I wonder why……..

U.N. special rapporteur Manfred Nowak told an Austrian daily paper

“The United States, like all other states that are part of the U.N. convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court,”

Reality check – if we bother with silly and irrelevant things like international treaties, or any kind of agreement ever with any other country, we have to actually abide by them or, you know, they don’t mean anything. We can’t just pick and choose when it’s politically expedient.
Ah whatever. Either torture by us bothers you or it doesn’t. For most of you, I don’t think it does. After all, most of the country could care less, right? (Most of my bile is gone, save for a special reserve I’m holding for the liberal blogosphere which doesn’t seem to care…I mean, The Messiahelventyone Hath Spoken, dig?))

This just in, U.S. still sucking the glass cock of Israel. For some reason. Same as it ever was. (See, “white” people don’t commit terrorism, they’re “freedom fighters” – but when those nasty “brown”
people do the same, they are bloody terrorists. How’s THAT for racism for ye?)

* actually I’m not convinced they’d need it. Maybe under Obama they might need a Judge. It’s disgusting how the parties can be told apart only via “degrees of police state bullshit” they’ll allow or put up with.

A Myth of the Near Future

I don’t normally do obituaries on here but this will be an exception. (Though I can recall having done at least one. Whatever.)

Town-scapes are changing. The open-plan city belongs in the past — no more ramblas, no more pedestrian precincts, no more left banks and Latin quarters. We’re moving into the age of security grilles and defensible space. As for living, our surveillance cameras can do that for us. People are locking their doors and switching off their nervous systems.
The BBC reports that J.G. Ballard has died. I first found his work through Michael Moorcock but didn’t really get a taste for his work until last year. The author of Crash, Why I want to fuck Ronald Regan (the last included as part of The Atrocity Exhibition which ought to be required reading) and many many other works was once spoken of, in a review, “This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do Not Publish!” which means he was probably doing something right.
Watching the way Wiki entries get rewritten when someone dies is really really morbid. And by that I mean fascinating.

Just briefly….

I just finished reading this and felt the need to share. Specifically , I wanted to share with you an absolutely brilliant assessment of the Obama Presidency to this point unfettered by ideological doubletalk (which, honestly, is more than I can say for myself sometimes).

Barrack Obama:: Tool-in-Chief

No folks, it’s not part of some “master plan.”
He certainly wasn’t “biding his time, so as to go after those ultimately responsible.”
No, Barrack Obama just wants to pretend it didn’t ever happen. All of those crunchy “he’s really secretly doing some good thing here” arguments I heard after he extended protections to the CIA (what about Blackwater?) just evaporated like a bad fart. He’s now pointedly not going after those responsible for the decisions made – even though, by law, he’s kind of REQUIRED TO DO SO. I’m sure he’ll site some kind of “Not wanting to start a partisan something something” kind of ‘argument’. Citing bipartisanship as trumping ethics makes you a tool.
I say, hey, who besides Barrack Obama can I vote for in 2012? Anyone? My vote is available…..

Most bizarre of all, Dick Cheney just can’t shut the fuck up. He wants to – yes, I’m serious – he’s asking for more documents to be declassified (which, remember, leads to the “Terrorists winning!”)…to prove that torture gets results.
Do the ends justify the means?
NO, they do NOT. Thus and so, Dick, your argument, true or false, has no validity. Zero, zip, nada, none. Dare I say it, you’ve got dick.

I guess, in some kind of attempt to change the subject, Obama has told the cabinet to cut 100 million dollars out of the budget. (Hey it could be worse, the last time a President needed a distraction we invaded Iraq. The last time prior to that, we bombed the shit out of a bunch of factories that may or may not have belonged to al-queda. Of course, that didn’t help Mr. Clinton. Maybe the current democrat will have better luck.) Seriously, this comes out of absolutely nowhere. He gets off the plane and…bang, “hey guys let’s cut another hundred million.”
Guessing those insipid tea bagging things did something, huh? Though how “Taxation” = “excessive spending” I still can’t fathom. Perhaps the GOP Secret Decoder wheel I got in my box of Right Wing Crunch will help it make sense.
(Because really, that “protest” was about as cohesive and well thought out as, um, a “democratic protest” – you know, the kind we had for about eight years. That worked out well.)

U.S. Rep. Jane Harman busted for being on the take. Gee, Israel, smoooooooooooooooth.

The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that sources said Harman, D-Calif., was caught on a U.S. government wiretap telling an Israeli agent she would help AIPAC officials acing espionage charges.
The newspaper reported the Israeli agent promised to lobby House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also D-Calif., who then was the House minority leader, to appoint Harman as chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee once Democrats gained control of Congress

BUSted. Time has been alleging this for something like three years. Though if she’s really been talking to Israeli intelligence then I expect she’ll be dead before she can be found guilty.

Stephen Hawking rushed to the hospital after some weeks of sickness. Here’s hoping that he’s okay.

Look at your game girl

Regretfully, I’m going on hiatus, pretty much immediately – thanks to a bank screwup consuming about 1200 bucks and all of the associated fallout, we’ve been served with an eviction notice.
*le sigh* As I will soon be without (reliable) computer access for the forseeable, it seemed the time.
Now to get packing.

An Observation

“Move forward” apparently is Obamaland code for “we aren’t going to do shit.”

Also – Arlen Spector :: Rugged Individualist! Watch the dems buy it.

It’s great to be back

well, hopefully. Still straddling the line of being one of those damned “statistics” cited in evening news reports, but my head is yet above water. Damnit.
Not, to say, that much has changed in my absence. For example, Nancy Pelosi is just as full of shit as she was in 2006. Being the ranking democrat on the intelligence committee c. 2002 she attended a briefing on, yes, torture. Having since been called out on this, of course, she’s screaming that she was misled.
I could address this with a series of points but why? Ultimately it boils down to

“We were told that they had legal opinions that it was legal and were not told about other legal opinions to the contrary,” Pelosi said of the briefings

Ah, so it was LEGAL? Right-o. Because a fucking congressperson is just going to, you know, take the CIAs word for it that something like this is of course legal.
But more to the point – who gives a set of dingos kidneys if it’s legal or not? I’d at this point like to lump the current ‘debate’ about whether or not it was effective into the same pot – Torture is wrong regardless of whether or not it’s legal or if it gives intel. Period. End of discussion.

Nancy Pelosi has, of course, felt the need to pull on the asskicking handle in my absence – because hey, it’s not her fault, she was misled. I’d like to instigate at this point a policy whereby public officials get thrown out onto the street without pay or benefit whenever they site how something could not possible be their fault. Dodging out of your own responsibilities stops being a life skill when you gain high office. Unless you are a teenager or a gothy emo fry cook at Dennys in your twenties with no life ambitions, I don’t want to hear that shit.

In related news, it’s apparently perfectly okay for the Obama administration to just refuse to disclose further details and information about “prisoner abuse” (TORTURE) and sweep it under the rug.
And, more infuriatingly, watch the democrat lapdogs who voted for this guy stammer and mumble trying to justify how The One is incapable of error. (What, he’s the Obama 9000? I don’t think so.) The “Left”s precious Obama is now actively dodging the ACLU. Why? Ah yes, to protect Dick Cheney and his cronies. Why? (Again, I gotta wonder what Dick has on Obama….)

Okay, so the photos would provide incontrovertible proof that these things not only happened at Abu Grahib but also happened at GitMo, and happen in Afghanistan. Nice.
See, to release these photos – it would stir anti-American feeling and endanger the troops. His words. Look, the only anti-American feeling it’s going to generate is amongst AMERICANS. Rightfully so. And how will it endanger the troops exactly?
Jesus Christ Mister President, why don’t you just ask us why we hate freedom you jackass.
What else can I add to that?

Shaving a wet cat with a dull razor – more on torture

Oh How I Love to watch her TWIST IN THE WIND
Look, no one is debating that the CIA can lie to congress (That is its primary purpose right?) – but in a world where Freecreditreport.com is a lie (don’t believe me? You can’t get that report without having a credit card. Again, without a credit card and thus a line of control from a bank, you are S.O.L.) trying to turn your own lies around on the CIA smells of someone feeling themself sandbagged and having nothing else in their deck to throw into the game.
No great loss really. I remember when Nancy Pelosi as Speaker was accompanied by it’s own particular cult of “She Will Save Us” and I scoffed then too – and was quietly told to let the less cynical enjoy their victory.
Ahem. Fuck that.

Former senator Bob Graham is joining the chorus of I didn’t know likely in exchange for something else later down the line would be my guess.
Jebus, do you have any idea how fucked things are when someone has less credibility than the Central Intelligence Agency? WOW.
Really though, the proof is in the pudding.

Graham is the only other Dem aside from Pelosi to get briefed in 2002, so they are both in effect asserting that no Dem was briefed on the use of EITs that year. The date of the next briefing was in February 2003.

The key word here is DEMOCRAT. Name a single member of the GOP sitting in who can corroborate this? (Not, mind, that they would. After all, the core of the GOP right now is of the masturbates to tortured brown people variety. Right Rush?)

But of course, the Robot has to sound off because he hasn’t done enough this week to end and destroy any tiny vestige of credibility the GOP might still possess.

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) – The CIA on Thursday rejected a request by former Vice President Dick Cheney that it make public documents that he said showed the effectiveness of using harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects.

*QUACK*Torture Works*QUACK*We should show the people how tough and big we are*QUACK* The CIA has a long (over 50 years) history of doing bad things and then not getting caught. But really, maybe just once, we should listen to Dick and watch both the CIA and the socially conservative wingnutjobs of the right wing get sucked into the black hole that would result.
Save of course, that that would insure further Obamanocracy.

When all things began, the brand name already was. The brand name dwelt with God, and what God was, Disneyland

Have you read the NY Times 35 minute interview with Obama? You should.
Especially considering he’s opted to continue perpetuating Bush era policies. It is alleged that he’s reinstating military tribunals in favor of actual litigation….but making lots of empty promises regarding greater rights for the accused. Because that makes up for the last seven years. Or something that is only true in his mind.
As it turns out, aides have made a statement that Yes, some GitMo detainees will face tribunals. That’s very ambiguous terminology, which seems to be an increasing hallmark of the Obama administration, especially when it doesn’t want to admit something.
You know, I’m starting to think that what is happening with the Obama presidency is that we’re beginning to see how unprepared he really was for the job he now has. A common observation very early in the campaign was that he lacked enough experience. Which looked at one way is a plus. But I think we’re beginning to see the downside of that.
The recent way he has ham handed his way into the abortion debate is a fine example. He is, in some socially contentious issues (TBLG issues among them) apparently terrified of making a definitive stance…and when he does do so, he concedes to both sides but commits to neither. (The Notre Dame thing is funny because, had he handled it just a liiiiiitle differently, could have been epic. But it fell short, and his silence since encourages all the talking heads talk in the soup.)
And yet we’re waiting on those campaign promises Mr. President. Tick tick tick tick….

Elsewhere…
Blackwater back to its old tricks oh, that’s right they’re called “Xe” now. Either way the score is the same – two civillians dead.

After yesterday’s announcement by Chrysler, GM announces it will be closing 1100 auto dealerships and I can’t help but wonder what happens when all of these creepy guys that sell cars for a living are unleashed on the workforce. In the short term I suspect they’ll wind up telemarketing. Don’t answer your phone.
Either way, in the case of both GM and Chrysler, I’ve got to wonder how much easier it would be to sack one of those million dollar vice presidents instead of close down their franchises.

The U.S. is dispatching special forces ops to Cambodia er, I mean Pakistan. Just remember *we* are the country that destabilized Pakistan, the reason why they’re now in civil war….and Obama’s engagement policy is near identical to Bush’s Iraq policy.

How’s that for Friday afternoon cheer? Don’t forget to donate to the Make-a-Fish Foundation, an utterly fictitious body dedicated to fighting the nonsense that is intelligent design.

Life in Obamaland Day 119

I intended to start this with a sign of the oncoming end of the universe by mentioning Penn Gillette on Glenn Beck until I hit the internet and found that it was, in fact a rerun. Ah well, I guess the Large Hadron Collider destroyed all life on earth after all.
Still, any time Penn Gillette argues against heterosexual marriage I want to have his baby a little more.

Despite US attempts, photographs slip through their fingers.

So, by raising the price of a car by 1200 dollars we can bail out the auto industry – oh I’m sorry am I supposed to be regarding this as a step forward in energy policy? Because this is a shoddy attempt at trying to write off an auto industry specific bailout as something that it isn’t. If they don’t have the existing infrastructure to do this then who’s paying for it? The government.

The FBI is finally getting comfortable using the Patriot Act – a Seven page report (Warning – pdf) submitted to Congress today detailed 24,744 people who were targeted for warrentless surveillance by the Fed under the Act’s provisions in 2008, up from 16,804 in 2007.

On that note, I’m off to contemplate human extinction

the Tea Leaf Dancers escape from the fortress of the flying lotus

The Obama administration has been denied the funds to close GitMo without further disclosure and I say, well fucking done. The 90-6 senate vote was – somewhat surprisingly – GOP heavy (only somewhat because expecting ideological consistency out of the GOP is a fools’ errand). This should make it that much more difficult for all of those tribunal “terrorists” (sorry but without due process I can’t take that choice of descriptors seriously) to be ferried away to other illegal and secret prisons around the world.
Of course, the reason the GOP did this was to prevent an influx of brown people out of some naieve and extremely misinformed notion of the administration’s intentions. “The American people don’t want these men walking the streets of America’s neighborhoods,” thinks Senator John Thune, an elephant from South Dakota, though he does (at least) go on to say “The American people don’t want these detainees held at a military base or federal prison in their back yard, either.”
So close, but yet so far from…you know, reality. I would opt for mandatory reality checks in congress if I thought it could either be done or be done well, neither of which I believe.
But hey, it beats facing what both parties have done to the world economy I suppose.

120 seconds

North Korea claims to have conducted a nuclear test and the media eats it up…because North Kore is right next to President Bush in the dictionary listing of “credibility.” (Which does bring to mind an interesting point. The Bush administration was real big on “North Korea does not have nuclear weapons” which, of course, was and remains bullshit. I’m wondering what the Obama administration’s stance is – i.e. do they dwell in reality?)

How soon til we invade? Oh wait, that’s right, NO OIL. So we won’t.

Speaking of Obama, he’s selected a gravedigger for NASA though speculation about NASA having a future involving real space exploration and utilization seem overly optimistic. We still don’t have a replacement anywhere in sight for the Shuttles, which will be flying their final flight next year.
Of especial humor – the article asks about “Bush’s” plan for manned expedition to Mars – which is the same plan suggested by (of all people) Dan Quayle during his time as VP….which is just a regurgitation of the exact same plan suggested by Spiro Fucking Agnew – “Man on Mars by 1988!” Yeah, that happened.

I don’t think this is a real bus ad, but what I’d give for it to have been so.

While I’m waiting for the Democrats to elect a liberal President*…

Well, in my absence, what’ve I missed? Not one whole hell of a lot. The sabre rattling continues…..
North Korea wants us to think war is imminent and, um, I guess someone out there is believing it. I think Jong-Il has finally had one Enzyte commercial too many myself….. (Sorry, the ass muppet is a Bond villain – I refuse to give him any more respect than that.)
The US punks out on North Korea. “The line is drawn” or some such empty nonsense – what, did I hear someone say sanctions? From who? We don’t exactly do a vast amount of business with them you know. Calling for sanctions on N. Korea is like threatening to cut someone’s crack off when they don’t do drugs.
Either way, it leaves the dealer holding their genitalia, which isn’t quite dignified.
Tell that to the state department, which spent lots of last week being unable to pick which position they were supposed to be on. I suppose some people don’t see much difference in being unable to pick a tie to wear to work and this. They probably voted for Obama…..

Meanwhile, the Defense Department still hasn’t learned that in the absence of information the people’s minds fill in the blanks just fine. The media, by the way, is fired. Gone is all talk of how wrong torture is….the only thing CNN, Fox, ABC, or any of the majors (save MSNBC which I can no longer see) seem interested in is whether or not The Defense Department Approved Enhanced Intelligence Gathering Techniques (you know, TORTURE) are “effective” or not.
And people wonder why I have no faith on my fellow humans….

Also – and it’s about time – GM is bankrupt. No fanfare, just glad all that pointless biblical handwringing is over.

Sorry for the tardiness of my update, we’re still functionally homeless, living out of a hotel – and the wife is in the late stages of a Warcraft addiction, making the one working laptop we have…..precious. Speaking of which, she sent me the Best Link Ever yesterday – Psychiatrists are moving to classify bitterness as a mental illness.
Remember, happiness is a chemical condition.

* because they really didn’t get one. My present assessment of Mr. Obama is a naked populist who is petrified of making any permanent lasting controversial decisions. Rather like the last Democratic President (You know, Bill?) save that Bill was somewhat more decisive at times.
Wow that makes him look bad doesn’t it?
In any case, please don’t mistake this for some wacky desire for an actually liberal president to come to pass. While I consider the stupid democrats less odious than the stupid republicans, that by no means should be read as an endorsement.

Ice Skating Uphill – the new White House appointees

Yet another mental midget gets a choice Obamaland appointment – Would-be DOD chief over Afghanistan: War ‘is winnable’.
And this guy hasn’t even started the job yet.

The Army general chosen to take over as top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan told senators Tuesday he believes the war can be won if a proper counterinsurgency campaign is undertaken.

No, really, ignore two thousand years of history telling us that no one has ever managed to take the region (let alone hold it), let’s just site those wacky madcap Soviets and then know, just know we can do better, because we are Americans…..
Seriously, is the Obama administration using a Ouija board to select their appointees of late?

Well, let’s see. I expect that a pretty good total train wreck could come out of a collision between the Sotomayor appointment and the signal to noise discrepancy created in the wake of some religious wingnut on one of their little crusades again.
Though, on that last count, I’m amazed that so many otherwise god- (read: lobbyist) fearing Republicans have actually had the gibbering nod towards sentience to come out against blowing people away. Don’t they normally put pictures of the shooters on their websites and call them patriots or some other jingoistic flag toting thing or other?

Nobama

Still think he’s on our side?
By all means, stick your head in the sand – just let the rest of us know that you are opting to do so please?

Dear universe, please give me someone good to vote for in 2012 please? Ideally someone good and Electable.