I never ever thought about clam crap before. Ever. Until I got this today.
Turns out it's an ad for a lumber yard. Mr. B was one of their better clients when he was doing remodeling. But holy cow, that's a freaky way to sell a person a 2 X 4 don't you think?
How about that dude's beard.....Anyway consider this an Open Thread until some more outrageousness is exposed.
Family members said they believe a change in medication, a new therapist who changed Hyde's diagnosis to post-traumatic stress syndrome and alternative treatments caused a decline in Hyde's behavior that began this spring.
Hyde was seeing a psychiatrist and therapist at Kaseman Presbyterian Behavioral Health Care. Since July 1, his care was managed through ValueOptions, a private company that has a state contract to manage behavioral health services for low-income New Mexicans.
A Presbyterian Hospital spokesman said he could not comment on Hyde's treatment because of federal privacy laws.
"We're very confident in the care that was provided," Todd Sandman said.
In the fall of 2004, Hyde's cousin, physician Christian Meuli, said Hyde told him he was upset about his diagnosis change and treatment.
In a letter to Presbyterian Behavioral Health Care, Hyde wrote that he was dissatisfied with his doctor.
"I must emphasize that my life was a joy to live, symptom free, until November 2," he wrote. "Since then, I have been living minute to minute. The side effects are many and unpleasant."
Robert Hyde said when he questioned his brother's therapist about the decision he was told that they would have to wait until John Hyde "escalates."
John Hyde's cell phone records also showed that he made daily calls to Kaseman in the weeks leading up to Aug. 18. His family believes he was trying to get help.
The evening of Aug. 18, Robert Hyde said he was relieved when Sgt. Jan Olstad, head of the Albuquerque Police Department's Crisis Intervention team, called him to tell him officers would be sent to pick up his brother.
"I told Olstad I was worried about it going down OK and no one getting hurt," Robert Hyde said. "He got me calmed down. He told me he had this team that was well-trained."
Police spokesman John Walsh said Smith received crisis-intervention training when he worked for UNM's psychiatric hospital between his employment with the police department.
All officers receive crisis training at the police academy and during ongoing job training, Walsh said in a statement.
It looks like agribusiness caused the world food shortage deliberately.The only surprising thing about the global food crisis to Jim Goodman is the notion that anyone finds it surprising.
"So," says the Wisconsin dairy farmer, "they finally figured out, after all these years of pushing globalization and genetically modified [GM] seeds, that instead of feeding the world we've created a food system that leaves more people hungry.
[...]
The current global food system, which was designed by US-based agribusiness conglomerates like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM and forced into place by the US government and its allies at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, has planted the seeds of disaster by pressuring farmers here and abroad to produce cash crops for export and alternative fuels rather than grow healthy food for local consumption and regional stability.
[...]
Beyond humanitarian responses, the cure for what ails the global food system--and an unsteady US farm economy--is not more of the same globalization and genetic gimmickry. That way has left thirty-seven nations with food crises while global grain giant Cargill harvests an 86 percent rise in profits and Monsanto reaps record sales from its herbicides and seeds.
No, but the multinationals can reap obscene profits on the crises they themselves have created."We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking
we used when we created them."
-- Albert Einstein --
HopeSpringsATurtle recently nominated this Unruly Mob for an Excellent Blog Award, for which we are truly grateful. Unruly, mobbish, pitchfork and torch loaded, yet grateful. The Mob has graciously consented to let me present the following unruly consensus of not only Excellent but Fabulous blogs. So, we continue with the spirit of the award, and following are the blogs we wish to honor.
Len Hart: First, Len's pedigree is just excellent. In fact, I think Len was a "proto-blogger" He's interviewed Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, George Bush Sr., Nelson Rockefeller, Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, David S. Broder, Sen. Fritz Hollings, Sen. John Tower, Beverly Sills, Gloria Steinem, Sen. Sam Ervin, Bella Abzug, George Plimpton, Milton Friedman, Ehud Olmert, John Wayne, Mel Brooks, and many "movie stars", politicians, and other celebs.
When you look at that final "Acts of Bravery" post by DCap, you'll see the first comment is by FranIAm, the next nominee for an Excellent Blog Award from the Mob. Fran is Smart. Funny. Irreverant. I'll do my best to pronounce "masturbatorium." Don't take it personally Fran.
The Florida Legislature is considering a national first: producing license plates with a distinctively religious theme.No kidding.The problem with the state manufacturing the plate is that it "sends a message that Florida is essentially a Christian state" and, second, gives the "appearance that the state is endorsing a particular religious preference," said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.
Florida's specialty license plates require the payment of additional fees,
some of which go to causes the plates endorse.
One plate approved in 2004, displaying the motto "Family First," funds
Sheridan House, which provides family programs but also sees its purpose as "sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Bible" and "information about the Christian faith."
The bill creating the "I Believe" plate would also create an "In God We
Trust" plate to benefit the children of soldiers and law enforcement officers
whose parents have died. It also could face opposition as a violation of the separation of church and state.
An Indiana plate with the same "In God We Trust" phrase has been
challenged by the ACLU, but the courts so far have deemed it legal, arguing that it is comparable with other specialty plates.
This isn't the first time a Florida license plate design has created
religious controversy. In 1999, lawmakers approved a bright yellow "Choose Life" license plate with a picture of a boy and girl. It raises money for agencies that encourage women to not have abortions.
That generated a court battle, with abortion rights groups saying the plate
had religious overtones. But it was ruled legal, and about a dozen states now have similar plates.
A "Trust God" license plate was proposed in Florida in 2003. It would have given money to Christian radio stations and charities, but it was never
produced.
Earlier this year, a legislative committee was shown an image of a
"Trinity" plate that showed a Christlike figure with his arms outstretched. It
and two other plates were voted down.
The group asking for the "I Believe" plate, the Orlando-based nonprofit
Faith in Teaching Inc., supports faith-based schools activities. The plate would cost drivers an extra $25 annual fee.
(I'm a big fan of HP Lovecraft, but technically I am an adherent of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Marinara Orthodoxy if you please.)
People can put whatever they want on their cars. Yellow ribbons, Pink ribbons, plastic Jesuses, Dashboard Shrines, anything. That's perfectly acceptable self-expression. But the state should in no way ever be involved in producing religious iconography of any kind whatsoever at any time for any purpose. Once it starts, it won't stop.
Sinclair Lewis had it right: "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross. "
Buckle up, it's still gonna be a bumpy ride for the next couple years fighting the battle to keep Church and State separate.
The plain fact is that the sacredness of the primary schedule is an undemocratic blight on the presidential election process. Residents of Iowa and New Hampshire don't have some god-given right to exert influence far exceeding their populations. Moreover, the unprecedented length of this campaign is not only an enormous waste of money and resources, it's a waste of the scant attention span that most of us have to devote to the campaign.
For argument's sake, let's say that nobody gets to announce their candidacy or raise a single dime of money before June 1st of the election year. Then...for 12 weeks beginning the first Tuesday before the July 4th holiday, we hold 4 primaries each week from a randomized list drawn up on the same day as the candidates' announcements. (We'll do six in the last week to bring things to a close on a Super Tuesday in September.) Then...two weeks to the conventions and 6 weeks to the general election.
Gotta tell ya, I just love Amy Goodman. Yesterday, she was here in Denver, and broadcast her show.Natural folks to interview in Denver would of course be Mark Cohen from Recreate '68, and the legal director of Colorado ACLU, Mark Silverstein, who has been lecturing/teaching what a person's rights are to protest during the Democratic National Convention this coming August.
You can watch the whole broadcast here, but I am just posting the transcript of the interview with Cohen and Silverstein. (The supplemental links are mine.)
AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Denver, Colorado, from the PBS station KBDI, where Democracy Now! broadcasts here in Denver. Yes, Denver will play host to the Democratic National Convention this August, and preparations are well under way for the big event. It remains to be seen whether the Democrats will ultimately take their fight for a presidential candidate all the way to the convention. But for many activists tired of the two-party system and the ongoing war, they will be demonstrating at the convention, regardless of who the final nominee is.
As Denver readies to sign contracts with dozens of security agencies ahead of the convention, we look at some of the concerns around the rights of the protesters and how lawyers and activists are preparing to protect demonstrators.
Mark Silverstein is on the phone with us, legal director of the ACLU in Colorado. We’re also joined in the studio at KBDI by Mark Cohen. He is an organizer with Recreate ’68, a group of activists attempting to greet this year’s Democratic National Convention with the same demands of accountability and ending the war that animated protesters in Chicago forty years ago. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Mark Cohen, what are your plans for this convention?
MARK COHEN: Thank you, Amy. We plan to have a massive presence during the Democratic National Convention in August. We will be having a number of major demonstrations, including on the Sunday, the day before the convention begins, what will probably be the biggest antiwar march and rally that Denver has seen at least since Vietnam. We’re also working with some of the major immigrant rights groups on the Tuesday, to have what we think will be a very large immigrant rights march and rally.
But we’re not only involved in protest activities. We’re also staging what
we’re calling the Festival of Democracy, which will be a five-day event in
downtown Denver, during which we will have trainings, workshops, teach-ins, and provide people the opportunity to come together and learn about alternatives to the two-party system, solutions that communities can provide to their own problems. We’re also, during that, going to have a 24/7 free health clinic, legal services, two feedings a day in cooperation with Food Not Bombs and other services for the community.AMY GOODMAN: And who is “we”?
MARK COHEN: We are Recreate ’68, which is a group of local Denver activists. We began planning for the Democratic National Convention actually before we found out that Denver had been given the convention. It looked like a fairly certain thing. So we’ve been planning for about a year and a half now. We’ve been talking with the city to try to ensure that people’s First Amendment rights would be protected during the convention. We’ve been working with national organizations, among them United for Peace and Justice, CODEPINK and others, as well as numerous Colorado organizations, to prepare for this event, to try to use the attention and the excitement and the energy generated by this major event to kind of kick organizing in Denver up to another level.
AMY GOODMAN: Mark Silverstein, you’re legal director of the Colorado ACLU. What are the city’s plans for these protests?
MARK SILVERSTEIN: Well, you’re asking me to tell you the city’s plans, and unfortunately the city has not responded to some of our requests for information about those plans. I can tell you that political conventions like this have historically been marked by struggles over law enforcement’s attempt to balance interest in security with the First Amendment rights of the public and protesters. And in the past, that balance has sometimes been subjected to judicial review, and courts have disagreed with law enforcement about the proper balance.
And since 9/11, I think the issues have even gotten more intense. We
know in Boston in 2004, the city provided what it called a “demonstration zone” outside of the convention that the district court said was like a concentration camp and an affront to the First Amendment. But there wasn’t enough time for the court to fully evaluate it and issue an order that would remedy the problems.We have been trying to find out what it will look like, what kind of
regulations will apply to First Amendment activity near the site of the
convention. And so far, Denver has been either unwilling or unable to discuss any of that in detail, pointing to the Secret Service as the ultimate shot caller for security at the convention. And the Secret Service has said, well, it won’t have details to reveal to the public until sometime this summer, maybe as late as August. And, of course, that might be far too late to have any negotiation over the arrangements for First Amendment activity and certainly too late for an opportunity for judicial review. So that’s very much a concern for us.AMY GOODMAN: I’m looking at a piece just recently in the Denver Post, “No Cages for DNC Protesters,” that according to Denver City Councilman Charlie Brown, protesters will not be confined to cages during the Democratic National Convention. The city wants to get away from the long lines of shoulder-to-shoulder, riot gear-clad police that typified security, saying, “We don’t want to provoke violence.” Mark?
MARK SILVERSTEIN: And that’s a very commendable sentiment. And, you know, at the ACLU, we certainly hope that what Councilman Brown says will indeed be the reality. But, you know, there’s a question that I always ask when somebody in government makes an assurance like that. I ask, “Well, how do they know?” because when we’ve talked with the city officials or when we’ve read what’s quoted in the newspaper, the answer always is, “Well, we don’t know yet, because the Secret Service ultimately makes the decision, and the Secret Service isn’t saying, at least publicly.”
So there’s a rumor that there’s going to be a one-mile radius hard security
perimeter around the convention site. And then you can occasionally read in the paper, somebody will debunk that as a rumor. It’s not true that there will be a one-mile security zone around the convention, but yet, when you talk to the city people who ought to know, they say, “Well, we don’t know yet.” And if they don’t know, then how do they know there won’t be a one-mile security radius? There must be some plans already formulated.AMY GOODMAN: Keeping protesters one mile away from the Pepsi Center? That’s where the Democratic Convention is going to be?
MARK SILVERSTEIN: That’s correct. That’s correct.
AMY GOODMAN: According to Colorado Confidential, a web publication, the Denver Police Department is using taxpayer money to buy new security equipment in preparation for the DNC but is refusing to disclose exactly what the purchases are, saying that revealing the information would be contrary to the public interest. Mark Cohen, what do you know about that?
MARK COHEN: We do know that the city council has allocated $5 million for new weapons for the Denver Police Department. We know that in St. Paul, they have issued tasers to every single officer on the force. We’re aware that there are new weapons out there that are being ostensibly used for crowd control in places like Iraq. But we’ve seen a report on 60 Minutes, for example, where they were doing field tests with these weapons, and the people they were testing on were dressed as protesters and carrying protest-type signs. So we have a feeling that the field tests for these new weapons are going to be at the Democratic National Convention and possibly the Republican Convention, as well. So, the weapons that are being designed primarily for military use are going to be used on peaceful, nonviolent protesters.
AMY GOODMAN: One of the things that we’ve seen at the conventions past is the level of infiltration by police and also surveillance. Now, Mark Cohen, you were a plaintiff in the Denver spy files case.
MARK COHEN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what that was.
MARK COHEN: We discovered in—I believe it was 2001, that the—or maybe earlier than that, but we discovered that the Denver Police Department had been keeping what they called “criminal intelligence files” on people who had engaged in no criminal activity but simply exercised their First Amendment rights in protests and demonstrations. There were labels on these files, such as “criminal extremist.” And the information in these files was, first of all, not the kind of information that had any relationship to criminal activity. They had – people had written letters to the editors of local papers - and they had stuck these in files. And they also had a good deal of false information.
My wife, who is a middle-aged Jewish woman, was identified as belonging to a white racist motorcycle gang that dealt in drugs and weapons. So, we’re obviously very concerned about this, especially because we discovered that these files were being shared with other law enforcement agencies. And in the atmosphere after 9/11, this is a very dangerous thing to be identified as a criminal extremist and as, presumably, a security threat. So we did sue the city and got out of the suit a change in policy, which prevents the Denver Police Department from collecting intelligence information on people who are not actually engaged in criminal activity.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we are going to leave it there for now but certainly will continue to follow this. Mark Cohen with us from Recreate ’68 and Mark Silverstein on the line with us, legal director of the Colorado ACLU, I want to thank you both for being with us.
MARK COHEN: Thank you.
Pretty much everybody in Greater Left BlogSylvania has given an emphatic thumbs down to ABC News for their execrable performance 'moderating' last night's so-called debate between the remaining Democratic primary candidates. Crooks and Liars quickly declared, "Attention ABC: You're Hurting America!" and in a later post linked a lot of the reaction from their journalistic colleagues; E&P’s Greg Mitchell called it “perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years.” The Washington Post’s Tom Shales called it “step downward for network news,” and noted that the moderators delivered “shoddy, despicable performances.” Will Bunch noted, “Quickly, a word to any and all of my fellow journalists who happen to read this open letter. This. Must . Stop.” Salon’s Walter Shapiro added:These are typical responses, with more Here, Here, and Here from Huffington Post, Here from Talking Points Memo, Here from Truthdig... A lot of the posts use adjectives like 'shameful' and 'embarrassing' or Josh Marshall's 'unmitigated travesty.' Many quote Tom Shale's editorial, but the best link to and/or quote Will Bunch at Attytood:This is the way it ends, not with a bang but a whimper. If Wednesday night’s fizzle in Philly was indeed the last debate of the Democratic primary season between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, it will be remembered for, well, not much of anything.
Broadcast to a prime-time network audience on ABC and devoid of a single policy question during its opening 50 minutes, the debate easily could have convinced the uninitiated that American politics has all the substance of a Beavis and Butt-Head marathon.
With your performance tonight -- your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods (my emphasis), punctuated by inane "issue" questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters -- you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it's even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to "export democracy," and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, "no thank you." Because that was no way to promote democracy.To say that this is the smoking gun that belies the idea of a left-leaning bias in the media would be a gross understatement of the plain truth. To say that ABC has completely blown their cover as anything other than a shill for the Republican party (and we SO need more of those with FOX, CNN, etc., etc., all acting as Republican megaphones /snark) almost goes without saying.
I honestly don't understand why Democrats haven't learned to ignore the bullshit substance-less questions and simply say, "Okay, that's a dumb question. Let's talk about something people care about, like the housing crisis."Good point. DAMN good point in fact. Why didn't the Democratic presidential candidates - who are vying for the most powerful job in the world, who represent a party that has earned a reputation of being a collection of spineless wimps, who desperately need to shed that characterization - take an opportunity to EMPOWER themselves in the eyes of the US electorate, TAKE CONTROL of the situation and SHOW SOME LEADERSHIP for a change? The fact that they didn't is almost as shameful as ABC's handling of the debate, when you consider it in context.Just bypass the idiotic questioners and talk about the things that the Democratic primary electorate actually want to talk about.
Trust me, they'll get brownie points, and the idiot questioners will look like idiots in the process.
Stephanopolous: (Asks bullshit question about lapel flag pins.)During the commercial break the two candidates let the moderator and news director know that if they don't want to completely lose all credibility with their viewers (which they seem to have done regardless, at least as far as Democrats are concerned) they had better play nice after the break.
Obama: I don't think that question is of much concern to the American people, George. (bonus points here if Obama can cite survey showing exactly how few people actually care about this) And I won't, by providing an answer, embarrass you for having asked it.
Audience: Overwhelming and sustained applause. Several voices can be heard yelling 'Shut up George. Just shut the f#$k up.'
Obama: Instead I'd like to talk about the direction this country should be taking in foreign policy. That OK with you Senator?
Clinton: I'm good to go.
(Obama pulls an egg timer out of inside jacket pocket, sets it on the podium.He talks for three minutes until the sand runs out, turns the timer over, nods to Clinton, who then talks for three minutes.)
Clinton: (takes the timer, turns it over) OK, now I'd like to talk about my plan to provide affordable health care for all Americans.
...
...and so on,
...and so on,
...
Gibson: OK, I hate to interrupt, but we have to break for commercial now.
You know, I started out the day on a natural high. I mean, a high. All the hard work of our local teachers’ union paid off, as we helped to get our school budget proposal passed by a huge margin, the first budget to pass in three years. We helped elect two solid, teacher-friendly, education-friendly school board members. I was juiced.WASHINGTON (AP) April 16 - The Supreme Court upheld the most common method of lethal injections executions Wednesday, clearing the way for states to resume executions that have been on hold for nearly 7 months.The rest here.
The justices, by a 7-2 vote, turned back a constitutional challenge to the procedures in place in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze and kill inmates. Similar methods are used by roughly three dozen states.
The governor of Virginia lifted his state’s moratorium on executions two hours after the high court issued its ruling.
“We … agree that petitioners have not carried their burden of showing that the risk of pain from maladministration of a concededly humane lethal injection protocol, and the failure to adopt untried and untested alternatives, constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in an opinion that garnered only three votes. Four other justices, however, agreed with the outcome.
Roberts’ opinion did leave open subsequent challenges to lethal injection practices if a state refused to adopt an alternative method that significantly reduced the risk of severe pain.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter dissented…
“In a world where some treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred and that each of us is willed, each of us is loved, and each of us is necessary,” the president said, drawing sustained applause.Right. All life is sacred. Let’s think on that one, shall we?
Richard Belzer was talking on AAR yesterday about My Wall Street Journal, a spoof that anticipates the decline of journalism at the real WSJ now that Rupert Murdoch owns the already quite conservative paper. From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Murdoch 'parity' hits newsstandsNo online version has yet been sighted, but the New York Times reports the WSJ sending employees out to buy up all copies before they get in the hands of the public.
A nude caricature of Anne Coulter, a not-so-subtle joke about John McCain and death taxes, as well as a few swipes at media baron Rupert Murdoch make up the highlights reel of a Wall Street Journal satire that was dropped on newsstands today.
Released to coincide with tax day, the newspaper parody titled My Wall Street Journal (a dig at Murdoch's ownership of MySpace, as well as the Journal) hit on the theme of media consolidation. In particular, Murdoch's ownership of Fox News, which the satire implied would have a detrimental and sensationalizing effect on the Journal's reporting.
It seems someone at The Wall Street Journal really likes a biting new parody of the paper — likes it enough, in fact, to leave at least one newsstand with no copies remaining for anyone else to buy.
It was not supposed to go on sale until this week, but some newsstands began selling it early. Last Thursday, Alexander Laurence was working at one such stand in Los Angeles, chatting with a customer, David Metz, when, both of them say, a man in a shirt with a Journal logo asked if anyone had seen a paper that looked sort of like The Journal.
“This guy comes by all the time to bring promotional stuff for The Wall Street Journal — bags, coin trays, stickers,” Mr. Laurence said.
Sure enough, they found what he was looking for. “He grabbed them all, said, ‘I need to buy all of these,’ ” Mr. Laurence said. “He had been going around to different stands, buying them.”
The man paid with a corporate American Express card. “At first he’s saying they have to make a correction or it’s not supposed to be out yet,” Mr. Metz said. “But then he said these are not published by The Wall Street Journal.”
A spokesman for The Journal, Robert H. Christie, declined to comment.
Incidentally, the Murdoch imports at the Wall Street Journal continue to tread on the newspaper's delicate sensibilities. You'll remember Marcus Brauchli, the Journal's managing editor, had a speech ready to welcome his new overlords, but they never called on him. That was just the first humiliation.Here's another very watchable YouTube vid discussing Murdoch's impact on 'journalism' in America so far, and the likely impact on the real WSJ. In case you don't click, I'll give you this brilliant characterization of Murdoch from Bill Moyers, "He is to propriety what the Marquis de Sade was to chastity. When it comes to money and power he's carnivorous; all appetite and no taste. He'll eat anything in his path." Keith Olbermann is none too pleased with Murdoch either.
UPDATE: Huge hat-tip goes to Gary SF in comments. We now have a link to www.wsjparody.com (click the graphic above to go there.) You get a readable blow-up of part of the front page, and ordering info, NOT an online edition. We're breaking our unwritten unruly unrule about not promoting anything commercial for this because:One of the primary reasons
If McCain succeeds, then we're off to a great start on the 100 years in
Even Dick Cheney saw the insurgency coming a decade away. In 1994, Dick Cheney eloquently made the case for not occupying
Yet, as it dawned on the American people that we were looking at an occupation in prelude to a bloody, chaotic civil war, President Bush repeatedly pretended like Iraqis wanted us there as an occupying force. Bush claimed that
Even Saturday Night Live, which may have saved Clinton's campaign when they skewered the media's allegedly unfair treatment of her several weeks ago, now has forcefully lampooned Senator Clinton's claim that she was against the war at the time of the resolution, authorizing George W. Bush to use force in Iraq in October of 2002, three weeks before an important midterm election, of which she voted in the affirmative.
In a sketch that that aired April 12, 2008, SNL parodied the mutually obsequious Congressional hearings that featuring David Petaeus, Ambassador Ryan Clark Crocker and the Presidential candidates. The writers made the case that Barack Obama will be the next president precisely because he was against
Yet there are still plenty of people out there who, to this day, who still do not know better. Columnist William Rivers Pitt wrote a column recently about the liars in the administration. He received this response from a reader, "Your silly column amazed me. Of course none of the people you mention were liars regarding
Pitt listed dozens of lies in response. "Simply stated," Dick Cheney said in a speech to VFW National Convention in August of 2002, "there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction." "There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them," Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said at a briefing in September of 2002. Speaking to the UN General Assembly a few days later the President told them, "Right now,
Obviously Iraqi statehood is not going to happen, but the moral debt we owe the people of that country means we must act as if their people are our own. But in light of these lies, lies that led to an illegal invasion and a ruthless occupation that cost the lives of uncounted scores of their citizens, we must marry the fate of their democracy to the fate of ours. Colin Powell brought himself much shame for participating in this butchery, many of the administration's lies came out of his mouth, but it is his so-called pottery barn rule must guide the fate of the future integrity of the
We can do as Bush asks and let history be his judge. Maybe he'll be foolish enough to test his self-proclaimed immunity to these war crimes by traveling abroad. The heinous Military Commissions Act works against him in other countries, where it can be cited as proof that there's no chance he will be charged in the
But Bush and his fellow war criminals' fate remains beside the point. Until there is peace, burgeoning democracy and prosperity in
What was I saying about fascism again? This just in from the Washington Post to remind us... The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority.Uh huh.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.
Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications.
Me and my big mouth (er, .., keyboard.) Having promised to do a series on fascism in America I find myself with an embarrassment of riches in terms of links to pursue and connections to research. Make no mistake, the idea of a movement to exert fascistic influence over American society is not a rhetorical device, nor by any means hyperbolic. Naomi Wolf points out that it's not hyperbole if one compares present day America to Italy in the 1920s or Germany in the 1930s, when fascists were taking over those countries. And the ten-point blueprint that she lays out for repressive regimes certainly has a chilling similarity to the actions of the Bush regime. Just to remind you, here's Naomi's list:"While communism is the control of business by government,
fascism is the control of government by business."
-- Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - Fascist America --
The aim of Bu$hCo's brand of fascism is not just to provide profits to corporate cronies, but also to put them out of reach of all responsibility for their actions. The heinous acts committed without consequence by Blackwater/KBR mercenaries in Iraq are a case in point. The government has literally become a partner in crime with the multinationals. And then there's this from a recent New York Times:War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
-- George Orwell --
In a major shift of policy, the Justice Department, once known for taking down giant corporations, including the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, has put off prosecuting more than 50 companies suspected of wrongdoing over the last three years.The reaction of the corporations to this new trend are woefully predictable.
Instead, many companies, from boutique outfits to immense corporations like American Express, have avoided the cost and stigma of defending themselves against criminal charges with a so-called deferred prosecution agreement, which allows the government to collect fines and appoint an outside monitor to impose internal reforms without going through a trial. In many cases, the name of the monitor and the details of the agreement are kept secret.
Some lawyers suggest that companies may be willing to take more risks because they know that, if they are caught, the chances of getting a deferred prosecution are good. “Some companies may bear the risk” of legally questionable business practices if they believe they can cut a deal to defer their prosecution indefinitely, Mr. Khanna said.I would be lying to you if I said that this was something new in American history. Watch this clip:
Legal experts say the tactic may have sent the wrong signal to corporations — the promise, in effect, of a get-out-of-jail-free card.
As (James Madison) put it, 'the primary responsibility of government is to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.'One of the things that emerged from the Congress of the Confederation was the Electoral College, the subject of a recent post by law professor Jonathan Turley.
While the Framers were great believers in the natural rights of the common man, they actually had little faith in the judgment of the common man. Indeed, most of the Framers were unflinching, unrepentant elitists. They wanted a representative democracy to create a buffer of educated men between citizens and their government. It was not until 1913 that the country finally amended the Constitution to allow for direct election of senators (who were originally elected by state legislatures).We've seen Turley's views before on various matters, notably the Prosecutors' Purge scandal, and the wider implication that the prosecutors who weren't purged, as well as the one's who replaced the dismissed US Attorneys have turned the Department of Justice into a partisan playground of Republican corruption. It's a good thing at least that the cases are tried before elected and uncorruptable federal judges. Er, nope.. as Turley again points out.
Throughout U.S. history, the Electoral College has worked as designed: to place elections in the hands of an elite. Past controversies involved the same personal wheeling and dealing that we’re seeing today with superdelegates.
This week, Michael Gableman celebrated a considerable victory: the first defeat of an incumbent judge in 40 years for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. His opponent Louis Butler was also the first African American on the Court. Yet, the $5 million race shows the steady trend toward high-priced campaigns to change the make-up of courts by legal and corporate interests.So to recap: The laws of the country are written by bought and paid for corporate-friendly hacks, prosecuted by more partisan corporate hacks and tried in front of judges who are already pre-bribed by corporations before they even take the bench. If the outcome is in question the appeal could go all the way to the ultra-partisan corporate friendly Supreme Court.
The accumulation of all powers,
legislative, executive, and judiciary,
in the same hands
may justly be pronounced the very definition of a tyranny."
-- James Madison --
