Blog Against Theocracy, This Weekend!

Nobody cares, really, to what insanities, illusions, delusions, craziness, or batshit nuttiness any one individual subscribes.

That really is between the person and the (imaginary being under the bed of space) thing they worship.

The issue, really, is that whatsoever millennialist/apocalyptic codswallop floats your personal theological boat, it is yours and yours alone, and that in no way implicates any right or privilege for you to spread your idiocies through the machineries of the State.

The blogswarm gathers:

Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors, wrote the best concise description of this blogswarm last year:

The theme [of the blogswarm], like always, is the Separation of Church and State — we are for it. But the variations on the theme are many...This is not a bashing of religion - peeps can believe what they choose, however they choose — but it is a reminder that the Government should keep out of religion, and Religion should keep out of the government.


We have lots of logos this year or you are free to make your own. If you want me to include your logo on this site, email me; my addy is on the sidebar to the right.

Here is how to participate in the blogswarm.

1. Write a post in support of our United States Constitution, specifically regarding the separation of Church and State. You can write your post anytime, but the blogswarm takes place Easter Weekend, April 10-12. Your post will be linked at the Blog Against Theocracy website during and just after that weekend.

If you have any writer's block on this, here are some great websites to get you started:

First Freedom First

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State

The ACLU's religion page

And I also love the blog Talk2Action.

2. Send the URL of your post via this online form, and add any comments you would like to appear with your link. Make sure you provide the permalink to your post and not just your blog. I will receive your link and over Easter Weekend (and just after I'm sure) I will post these to the BAT website.

3. Sit back and enjoy the hits, and know that Thomas Jefferson, Buddha, Mohammed, and Jesus his own self would be proud of you. (Yes, personally? I really believe that.)

Thank you!

Love,

Blue Gal

Frankenfood Up-Date: HR 875 Is World-Wide GMO Authorization Masquerading As "Food Safety" Bill

And it spells disaster for bio-diversity. As I have mentioned before.

It seems that the "new" regime is poised to take the biggest gamble of its and our life-times, opening the door for the "regulation" of plant-stocks by seed producers. This means GMO crops and prohibitions against storing seed, and criminal as well as civil penalties agains farmers, world-wide, who do not pacifically acquiesce to this monstrously stupid, incredibly greedy, monumentally destructive, obscenely short-sighted idea--which, amazingly, is being sold (spun? propagandized?) by the CorpoRats as noble, humane "altruism": feeding the hungry around the world. And ALL for the benefit of Obama's corpoRat masters at ADM, Cargill, and Monsanto.

The following was in my in-box last week, and I almost missed it:

HR 875 Is Not About Food Safety, It's About Genocide of Agricultural Biodiversity

One of the most potentially dangerous bills we've ever heard of is trying to sneak its way through Congress right now, in the sheep's clothing of so-called "modernization" of food safety. HR 875 (text of bill) is a bill put up by Monsanto and other monolithic corporations trying to seize totalitarian control over all agriculture.

It was introduced by Rosa DeLauro, whose husband WORKS for Monsanto, and is ultimately about one thing, defining ONLY their own GMO products as "safe". What makes the bill so dangerous is that it is heavy on penalties including prison time, while at the same time being incredibly vague about what would actually trigger those sanctions. HR 875 is nothing but a Trojan horse, with an invading army to be designated later, in the form of an bureaucratic administrator (most likely a corporate lobbyist shill) with draconian LAW MAKING POWER to make up their own definitions so that all competitors are either driven into bankruptcy or locked up.

There are problems with food safety we can talk about, but HR 875 is not going to make us safer, any more than invading Iraq made us safer. It MUST be stopped.

So in the midst of this attempted Panzer action by Monsanto, are we hearing about any of this in our propaganda based mainstream media? No, they distract our attention talking about Michelle Obama's adorable organic garden at the White House, as if she is making agricultural policy.

But will that little White House garden end up as something like a diorama, a quaint reenactment of what farming used too be like when it was healthy, they way they would reenact Betsy Ross sewing the first American flag? Will they lull us into complacency while down the street Congress at the same time paves the way for breaking the back of every small farmer in the country, turning our entire agricultural system into a chemically overtreated, Genetically Mutated Organism (GMO) nightmare?

Michelle Obama's "organic" WhiteHouse garden has already been criticized by the ag Chemical/pest killer industry for NOT using poisons, as if she were somehow to be blamed for wanting her children's produce not to be fouled with noxious toxins.

Notably

...conventional farming advocates were unconcerned about First Lady Laura Bush's insistence that White House chefs cook with organic food. Former executive chef Walter Scheib wrote that Mrs. Bush was "adamant that in ALL CASES if an organic product was available it was to be used in place of a non-organic product." It's fine for the Bushes to be closet organic eaters, but very different for the Obamas to promote growing food without pesticides or herbicides. I think Americans will be surprised by how much one organic garden can produce.

Obama Dis-Appointments Return As Cheney's Moles

Remember that fella, John O. Brennan, whom the Rightards and a lot of Obamanistas were plumping for a major national security/intelligence post in the new regime?

His nomination was torpedoed because of his direct involvement with the institution of torture as an instrument of official USer policy during the Busheviks' reign.

Mark Crispin Miller, on his News From Underground blog today, repeats this Scott Horton report from his Harper's/No Comment blog on the relations between Brennan and his former boss, Dick Cheney.

In an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross last week, Seymour Hersh stated that Vice President Dick Cheney had “salted” the military and national security apparatus with trusted associates who were able to report back to him on what was going on. Hersh goes on to state that he thinks Cheney’s ability to influence or direct policy is limited. Still, keeping that in mind it’s interesting to watch the unfolding debate over the release of the torture memoranda.

In response to Freedom of Information Act requests, the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel was slated to release four closely guarded memoranda created by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Stephen Bradbury addressing the use of specific torture techniques including waterboarding, holding prisoners in close confinement (in coffin-like conditions), and “head smacking.” Attorney General Holder had cleared the release; it was set for last Thursday. Then something happened. Newsweek’s Mike Isikoff quotes a source close to the issue stating that “Holy hell has broken loose over this.” While the Obama lawyers thought the matter was settled, John O. Brennan-the man Obama once hoped to appoint to head the CIA before a public firestorm erupted over his continuing embrace of torture techniques-launched a rearguard action designed to overcome the decision at Justice. Brennan argued that disclosure of the memos would be harmful because it would “embarrass” and “shame” CIA officers who had used the techniques. That claim is certainly very doubtful, since there are at least as many CIA operatives who have publicly advocated disclosure as oppose it. He also argued that it would be bad policy to disclose techniques used.

Cheney is alleged by Sy Hersch to have planted dozens upon dozens of 'moles' inside the various departments of interest to the former VP--Defense, State, Justice among them--whose job it is to 1) keep Darth apprised of doings inside the Obamanista regime, and 2) to interfere as much as seemly in any efforts to reverse Bushevik policies by the "new" (Geithner, Gates, Mueller, Tolman, and so many more hold-overs) regime...

Will SOMEBODY Please Tell Me Again How Larry Summers Got His Chubby Grubby Paws BACK In The Cookie Jar?

That, in effect, is what Jon Schwarz was inquiring about on his A Tiny Revolution blog yesterday. Put a bit more crudely: What the fuck is this corrupt, conniving, obnoxious, thieving bunco-artist doing within a thousand fucking miles of the Treasury?

Seems that Mr. Summers, whose gifts to the Obamanista regime was supposed to neutrality, his detachment from the wiles of Wall Street, comes equipped with some millions of conflicts of interest. In excess of 3.5 millions of them. Jo-Nathan explains:

Limited
From a recent profile of Larry Summers by Noam Scheiber in the New Republic:

At first glance, Summers might appear to have less to contribute on the bank and credit-market front, the most dangerous part of the current situation. His exposure to Wall Street over the years has been limited...

From the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received about $5.2 million over the past year in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major financial institutions...
In total, Mr. Summers made a total of about 40 speaking appearances to financial sector firms and other places, with fees totaling about $2.77 million. Fees ranged from $10,000 for a Yale University speech to $135,000 for an appearance paid for by Goldman Sachs & Co.

I wonder what would have constituted "significant" exposure to Wall Street. Maybe if he'd worked for D.E. Shaw full time? (Amazingly, Summers was paid $5.2 million for a part-time position. He was still a full-time professor at Harvard. If we're generous and assume he worked 1000 hours a year for them, he was paid $5,200 an hour.)

Then there are the speaking fees. As the Wall Street Journal mentions, they were mostly from the financial sector—including the "giant government bailout" sector, such as JP Morgan, Citigroup, and two speeches to Goldman Sachs. I've pulled out some of the interesting ones from his disclosure form and listed them below the fold (at ATR). W).

Next, note also that Summers worked for D.E. Shaw from October, 2006 onwards, so $5.2 million is likely less than half his total haul.

Finally, the New Republic article omitted that Summers was listed as a contributor to their now defunct eblo Open University. Though as far as I can tell Summers never wrote anything for it, he was mentioned on it several times—for example, when he was hired by D.E. Shaw.

Smoke And Mirrors Propel Market Gains

Ken Silverstein, Harper's Magazine's Washington, D.C. bureau chief and blogger on the ever-valuable Washington Bablyon, pointed out the probably uncomfortable fact that, while he doesn't say so explicitly, the "rally" on Wall Street at week's end was more the result of hanky-panky with the accounting rules than it was any indication of the changing (or improving?) situation in the system:

Where’s the Financial Transparency Obama Promised?
This is an important story from Investors Business Daily:

Accounting rule-makers on Thursday did all they could to make the nation’s credit nightmare go away — or at least go back into the closet — sending stocks higher. The Financial Accounting Standards Board, under heavy pressure from politicians and financial firms, will let companies use “significant” judgment in valuing some assets, notably mortgage securities, rather than relying on current illiquid market prices.

FASB OK’d changes that will also boost capital on battered bank balance sheets. Big U.S. banks are expected to get a Q1 earnings lift of 20% or more from the new rules.

Do I see a bubble forming? This looks like the same bogus accunting garbage that helped create the current disaster.

Lipstick, meet the fucking pigs...

I feel absolutely no embarrassment in letting his typo stand...

And, oh, by the way: Larry Summers? Fuck him!

The Last Straw: Obamanista DoJ Seeks Felonies Against Heroic Utah Enviro-Monkeywrencher

Remember that brave young fellow, Tim DeChristopher, the geology grad student at the University of Utah who, one day last year, after taking his last final, went by a hastily arranged and probably illegal federal energy auction leasing meeting and torpedoed the fucker by biddding on parcels he cou8ldn't pay for, and driving up the prices so far that the Feds had to cancel the auction?

A true hero!

Well, now the Obamafux DoJ has announced it will prosecute the guy on FELONY charges.

ANd now I am done with Obama. Fucking DONE. OVER. I never was a great fan, but the last vestiges of respect I might have felt for the glad-handing ward-heeler are GONE!

Via OPENLEFT/Paul Rosenberg today:

Student Who Distupted Illegal Land Auction Charged With Two Felonies By Obama DOJ
by: Paul Rosenberg
Sat Apr 04, 2009 at 11:30

In the waning weeks of the Bush Administration, Tim DeChristopher disrupted a lease of public lands for oil and gas exploration by bidding up prices against those who intended to drill on the lands if oil or gas was found. (Democracy Now! reported on December 22, and I diaried about it here the following Sunday.) (And I blogged about it twice, here, and here. W.)

The leases were subsequently invalidated, because the hurried process of bringing them to bid violated federal regulations. Although he had no money to pay for the leases when he bid on them, DeChristopher subsequently did get the money to cover them, as the result of becoming an instant folk hero. He was prepared to pay for the leases, but the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) couldn't accept the money, since the leases had been invalidated.

Now, however, DeChristopher is being charged with two felonies, even though the only reason he didn't make good on the payments is because the sales were withdrawn. Apparently, the act of exposing the rigged nature of the bidding was crime enough--"disrupting" the tacit collusion whereby bidding stopped well short of what the bidders were actually willing to pay.

And this is the Obama Department of Justice we're talking about now.

I am done with these right-wing motherfuckers. Done. I never held much hope, of course. I've been around too damned long for much such delusion; but I'll admit I cherished a slender scintilla of "hope."

Obama? Dead to me. Fuck him...

The Simple Calculation On Health Care Reconciliation

Chris Bowers, over on OpenLeft, proposes the following thought exercise:

Let's play Democratic political strategist for a moment. Which of the following two options do you think would be more popular with voters? Is it:

1. Less expensive, more widely available health care delivered through a partisan legislative process that excludes congressional Republicans;

OR

2. The health care status quo, and a bi-partisan legislative process that includes congressional Republicans?

Perhaps I am missing something, but when it comes to allowing health care reform to go through the budget reconciliation process, that is the basic political calculation Democrats need to make.

Unless you are so far up David Broder's butt that you can only see his intestines, it should be obvious that more voters would prefer cheaper, more widely available health care to bipartisanship any day of the week and twice on Mondays. Bipartisanship is an abstract, vague ideal, while health care costs are very real. If anyone actually chooses bipartisanship instead of more widely available health care, then their priorities are out of whack to the point where they are representing David Broder in Congress, rather than their own constituents.

Amen, brother!

(P.S.: The cartoon is by Horsley, yet another casualty of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer closing.)

The Saga Of Sears Island Continues

(I admit to a personal interest and bias in this issue, and therefore am encouraging BOTH of my readers--you know who you are--to join in the effort. Ed.)

Suggesting again the accuracy of Tip O'Neill's pronouncement: All politics is local. As my buddy Suzzzanne (the source of my bias in favor of preservation, if one were really needed) says on her blog:

Sears Island is the largest undeveloped island on the whole East Coast. This island belongs to the people of Maine. Help keep it undeveloped and accessible. Keep it wild so we can hear the birds sing and the peepers peep.

The problem is that, under Bushevik-era, wet-lands 'management' plans, provisions were being undertaken to convert a large portion of the island to a trans-shipment port for container vessels. Suzzzanne's got it covered in this righteous rant, to which I commend your attention and efforts. (Have you ever noticed how, when developers "manage" things, what they're "managing" often manages to die? Or am I just overly sensitive?)

Here's what Suz emailed me yesterday:

We got a major boost in our fight to protect Sears Island from the EPA through PEER yesterday when they strongly recommend against Maine's DOT application to the Army Corp of Engineers for Umbrella Wetlands Mitigation Banking... and we'd like to get this news out. CommonDreams.org picked the story up, but we want a lot more publicity.

Local News picked it up.

And we posted on UTUBE a clip from last weeks meeting where we sounded off...

A nice essay by fellow advocate...

and another by our partner in crime: Ron Huber

So, if either of you, my loyal readers, have any reserves of empathy for good folks fighting a very tough fight, toss the Sears Island folks a nickel or two...

Now Here's Some Cheery News!!!

Raw Story this morning conveyed this nugget:

...research, which appears in the April edition of US-published Journal of Clinical Investigation, demonstrates that THC and related "cannabinoids" appear to be "a new family of potential antitumoral agent."

If true, I have a pretty good shot at "natural" immunity!It starts:

The main chemical in marijuana appears to aid in the destruction of brain cancer cells, offering hope for future anti-cancer therapies, researchers in Spain wrote in a study released Thursday.

The authors from the Complutense University in Madrid, working with scientists from other universities, found that the active component of marijuana, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), causes cancer cells to undergo a process called autophagy -- the breakdown that occurs when the cell essentially self-digests.

Like: "BITE ME!" Heh.

One thing, though: a VERY small "n" = 2.

Hurrah!!! Iowa Legitimizes Same-Sex Marriage!

The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that banning or prohibiting gay marriages is unconstitutional!

Well, OF COURSE it is!

Apparently--or possibly, now, at any rate--the issue will never reach the SCROTUS where, given its composition for the foreseeable future, its fate was probably less than certain. It should have been a foregone conclusion: Slam-dunk, First and 14th Amendment protection. Prohibitions have an intrinsically and inherently religious foundation; that much is evident from the rhetoric of the prohibitors. Ergo, an out-right violation of the "Establishment" clause. If that weren't enough, the violation of the 14th Amendment's prohibition of the selective recognition of rights would, in any honest venue, be determinative.

Of course, the SCROTUS--with its Opus Dei majority, and its connections with a right-wing RC parish in DC--is not an honest venue anymore (if it ever was). How did a secular State put a majority of reactionary sectarians in the position of adjudicating the fundamental principles of a liberal document?

As an aside, few people seem to recognize what an outlier, what an anomaly in terms of the history of the Court, was the Warren Court.

Is ANYONE Surprised When Israel Rejects Previous Agreement On Palestine?

I cannot imagine that anyone who has been non-comatose for any of the last 30 years would be surprised to learn the new Israeli Foreign Minister, the Ziono-fascist Avigdor Lieberman, backed away from the so-called "Annapolis Agreement" reached--amid MUCH fanfare, as well as sheets of self- and mutual congratulations-- by the Busheviks in 2007.

Via TruthDig:

Israel’s new super-duper-ultranationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday dismissed a 2007 agreement with Palestinian officials aimed at discussing the creation of a Palestinian state. Lieberman claims the agreement, made in Annapolis, Md., has “no validity.”

The BBC:

Israel’s new ultra-nationalist foreign minister has said it is not bound by a US-sponsored 2007 agreement to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians.

“The Annapolis conference, it has no validity,” Avigdor Lieberman said.

He was speaking at a handover ceremony at the foreign ministry, prompting his predecessor Tzipi Livni to interrupt and diplomats to shift uncomfortably.

At Annapolis, each side agreed to further discussions aimed at creating an independent Palestinian state.
...
Asked about the new foreign minister's comments, political sources close to Mr Netanyahu were quoted saying they largely reflected the new leader's position.

The Annapolis Agreement, which was one of the weakest agreements ever negotiated with the connivance of the USofA, called only for more talks. The Zionists don't even want to talk.

But this should, as I have said, come as no surprise.

Israel does not want "peace."

Israel wants Palestine, all of it, and empty of those pesky ('steenkeen') Arabs. Israel intends to 'ethnically cleanse' Palestine. And it doesn't care how the cleansing occurs: dead or alive, it's all the same to the IDF, as recent events in Gaza, under a (comparatively) more 'liberal' Israeli Govt., have amply demonstrated.

"Killers on the Roam" -- Cheney's Snuff-Squads Acknowledged

Scott Horton, from his No Comment blog at Harper's:

In the course of a recent college event, Sy Hersh made waves by talking about a targeted killings program operated by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) which he said was being directed out of the White House by Vice President Cheney. Here’s the way he summarized it yesterday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer:

I know for sure… the idea that we have a unit that goes around, without reporting to Congress… and has authority from the President to go into the country without telling the CIA station chief or the ambassador and whack somebody. … You’ve delegated authority to troops in the field to hit people on the basis of whatever intelligence they think is good.

Later in the day, CNN interviewed Cheney’s former national security adviser John Hannah. He started his response by saying that Hersh’s account was “certainly not true.” But this denial, it soon became apparent, rested on a semantic quibble. In fact, Hannah confirmed the existence of the targeted killings program:

There’s clearly a group of people that go through a very extremely well-vetted process, interagency process… that have committed acts of war against the United States, who are at war with the United States or are suspected of planning operations of war against the United States, who authority is given to our troops in the field in certain war theaters to capture or kill those individuals. That is certainly true.

Hannah’s response requires a little bit of unpacking.

In the coded language of the Bush Administration, “war theaters” could mean O’Hare Airport in Chicago, a downtown shopping street in Milan, a mountain top in Macedonia or a fishing village in Gambia—in other words, anywhere. And persons who are “at war with the United States” and have committed “acts of war” against the United States can include people who speak critically of the Bush Administration in the media or who are linked directly or indirectly to any organization that the Bush Administration decides to label “terrorist.” To take a classic example the Bush Administration used in a court case, a little old lady in Zurich who makes a donation to a charity, not knowing that the charity is funding a hospital project in Palestine that is connected with Hamas, can be deemed a “terrorist.” After these understandings have been plugged in, the differences between the Hersh description of the Cheney snuff program and Hannah’s description pretty much vanish.

As Barry Eisler notes in our interview today, the Hersh account is anything but fanciful. An assassinations program certainly exists. Eisler puts it at the heart of his current thriller. I have yet to encounter anyone in the intelligence community who denies the existence of this program, off the record. There are a number of accounts of it in the mainstream media. In addition to the New York Times story that Eisler mentions, look at Michael Hirsh and John Barry’s January 9, 2005 Newsweek story entitled “The Salvador Option.” It deals with the same JSOC operation that Hersh describes, putting it in the context of a specific targeted killings program in Iraq. The objective of the program is to quietly “take out” figures deemed a threat in the Iraq war effort.

In the immediate context of a war and in a theater of intense military operations where terrorist acts are commonplace, such a program may be very difficult to detect. It may also be easier to justify under the laws of war. Removed from such a setting, however, it becomes much more troubling. The key question would be who the Cheney snuff program targeted—how the targets were selected, why and where they were located. This is something Congressional intelligence committees should be aware of, but Hersh tells us they were kept in the dark. As Hersh suggests, this is a very big deal—it is Dick Cheney running a semi-private assassination squad. The program is, as former White House counsel John Dean notes, possibly a criminal operation, depending on the specifics of how it is run and the nature of the approvals obtained. Does anyone at this point really think it is beyond Dick Cheney to do such a thing? The Dick Cheney who introduced the infamous torture program? The Dick Cheney who bullied through a warrantless surveillance program which sifted through the communications of millions of Americans? Why not a snuff program, too?

President Ford outlawed just the program that Hersh describes when he issued the forerunner of Executive Order 12333. It has long been whispered in intelligence circles that George W. Bush turned Ford’s prohibition on assassinations into a dead letter. It’s time now for this aspect of the Bush legacy to be exposed. Did Bush give specific authorization to an assassinations program? And what was done pursuant to this authority?

Whatever advantages such a program may offer in tactical counterterrorism operations, the downside is also clear. What would happen if major powers around the world adopted the same stance that Bush adopted and sent hit squads abroad to “take out” their enemies of choice?

That day may be dawning. Yesterday brought news of the assassination of a refugee Chechen leader in Dubai, who was long thought to be a target of the Kremlin. The United States will not be able to complain too loudly about this. After all, if George W. Bush can have an assassinations program, so can Vladimir Putin. Indeed, so can any world leader.

Welcome to the lawless world of Dick Cheney.

Doesn’t it make you feel safer already?

I know it makes ME feel much better.

Putin, unlike any world leader (except, perhaps, Cheney), knows how it feels to look into someone's eyes and then, deliberately, shoot them.

Does Any of THIS Seem Familiar?

.. Becoming a Banana Republic

In its depth and suddenness, the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets (and only in emerging markets): South Korea (1997), Malaysia (1998), Russia and Argentina (time and again). In each of those cases, global investors, afraid that the country or its financial sector wouldn’t be able to pay off mountainous debt, suddenly stopped lending. And in each case, that fear became self-fulfilling,

... But there’s a deeper and more disturbing similarity: elite business interests—financiers, in the case of the U.S.—played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles, with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse. More alarming, they are now using their influence to prevent precisely the sorts of reforms that are needed, and fast, to pull the economy out of its nosedive. The government seems helpless, or unwilling, to act against them.(May 2009 issue)

Sounds a lot like the rise of the modern fascist State, to me.

But what do I know...

How about this?

.. Despite the limitless gorging on public funds by the very oligarchs (government owners) who caused the financial crisis in the first place, the predominant sentiment from our establishment media now is that Obama needs to force ordinary Americans to "sacrifice more." Back in 2006, Jonathan Schwarz wrote this very prescient post predicting that the U.S. would soon adopt the type of so-called "structural adjustments" which, through the IMF, we repeatedly forced upon other heavily indebted, defaulting nations: whereby we would demand that they pursue solutions that further enriched their economic elites while massively cutting the social spending that provided the barest of safety nets to their ordinary citizens. (26 March 2009)

The modern, THIRD-WORLD fascist, state, that is...

Finally:

... People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they're not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d'état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.

... The mistake most people make in looking at the financial crisis is thinking of it in terms of money, a habit that might lead you to look at the unfolding mess as a huge bonus-killing downer for the Wall Street class. But if you look at it in purely Machiavellian terms, what you see is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the federal government into a kind of giant Enron — a huge, impenetrable black box filled with self-dealing insiders whose scheme is the securing of individual profits at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, previously known as taxpayers.

... As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below. (March 17, 2009)

This strikes one as not being that much of an accident or act of god, and more a whole lot of wealthy speculation, innit?

What was it Judge Brandeis said about people and wealth?

We can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of a few. We cannot have both.” -Louis Brandeis, U. S. Supreme Court Justice, 1916-1939

The wealthy are opting out. Molotov cocktails are pretty easy to manufacture...

(DOTOF™: Energy Bulletin)

The Birth Of A Socialist

From Faux Noise:

Three alcohol-fueled fights erupted at a Michigan auto dealership last week on the day employees were told the business was closing, another sign of a community on edge as it tries to deal with the flailing economy.

The first brawl took place outside Wayland Chevrolet at about 1 p.m. on Friday after several employees visited a bar. Police were alerted to the dispute, but it was broken up before they got there, Wayland Police Chief Dan Miller told FOXNews.com.

"Had they been sober, this probably wouldn’t have happened," Miller said.

Local news station WWMT-TV captured the second altercation at about 2 p.m. The video shows a scuffle, with employee Jason Stanton knocking another worker to the ground outside the dealership.

Later, Stanton explained what set him off.

"Does it matter how hard you work, because there is somebody a little bit above you that has the right to control every decision and every effort you put forward, don't you have a right to be a little bit mad when somebody says hey we're all done?" Stanton asked WWMT-TV. "It's terrible, horrible."

The third fight followed an incident between two salesmen at a pizza restaurant next door.

Wayland Chevrolet blames the shutdown on the downturn in the auto industry and the scheduled closing of General Motors Corp.'s metal stamping factory this year in the Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming.

"I think people are just on edge," Miller said. It’s unfortunate, but it just adds insult to injury when they go out and get intoxicated."

Miller said disorderly conduct and assault charges are possible while they try to identify the employees involved.

The dealership employed about 30 people.

This is only the beginning. Just wait til "ThePrez" gets finished killing off the UAW: Another 5 MILLION unemployed (and probably unemployable) workers, with access to alcohol and guns.

What, you thought that WASN'T the plan?

Puh-Leeeez! Use your fuuking brain.

Blaming unions for the conditions of the fate of the Big Three is like blaming the passengers on 9/11 for crashing their planes into the WTC. It took Nixon, the Arch-Puke, to go to China. It's gonna take a black Dim to kill off the Unions (and Social Security, too, but that's a little later.)

No Nation, No State, No People May Regard Themselves As Civilized,

Or be regarded as civilized by the rest of the "civilized world," which promulgates the profit motive in the treatment of its sick, injured, or imprisoned.
That means, unfortunately, US.

Not that THAT should come as any sort of surprise to anyone who was more observant than a sponge.

ANOTHER Heroic Waste Of Time: ACLU vs. PATRIOT ACT

Silly, fuzzy, hopeful, naive widdle Wabbits!

The ACLU, noting the USAPA is due for reconsideration/ renewal in December this year, is calling on Congress and "thePrez" to use the opportunity presented by the "re-authorization debate" (as fucking IF) to repair some of the most egregiously intrusive, anti-democratic facets of the hastily passed (but carefully written) attack on America's civil liberties that sprang into being within mere weeks of the 9/11 'terror' attacks and though largely unread by those who were charged to vote for or against it, passed almost unanimously through BOTH Houses of Congress.

The ACLU report identifies sections of the Patriot Act that need to be amended. These are:

1. National Security Letters (NSLs): The FBI uses NSLs to compel internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people. Government reports confirm that upwards of 50,000 of these secret record demands go out each year. In response to an ACLU lawsuit, Doe v. Holder, the Second Circuit Court of Appeal struck down as unconstitutional the part of the NSL law that gives the FBI the power to prohibit NSL recipients from telling anyone that the government has secretly requested customer Internet records. The FBI has admitted numerous incidences of NSLs being improperly used.
2. The “Material Support” statute: This provision criminalizes providing "material support" to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since September 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations. Federal courts have struck portions of the statute as unconstitutional and a number of cases have been dismissed or ended in mistrial. The law gives the government the power to shut down charitable organizations suspected of financing terrorist activities with virtually no notice and no due process.
3. The 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: This past summer, Congress passed a law to permit the government to conduct warrantless and suspicion-less dragnet collection of U.S. residents' international telephone calls and e-mails. The ACLU and many other similar groups are seeking amendments to provide “meaningful privacy protections and judicial oversight of the government's intrusive surveillance power.”
   

The ACLU report charges that “More than seven years after its implementation, there is little evidence to demonstrate that the Patriot Act has made America more secure from terrorists. But there are many unfortunate examples that the government abused these authorities in ways that both violated the rights of innocent people and squandered precious security resources.”

It declares, “The framers of the Constitution recognized that giving the government unchecked authority to pry into our private lives risked more than just individual property rights. These patriots understood from their own experience that political rights could not be secured without procedural protections. The Fourth Amendment mandates prior judicial review and permits warrants to be issued only upon probable cause.”

“Stifling dissent does not enhance security,” the report concludes. It contends that the Patriot Act “vastly – and unconstitutionally – expanded the government’s authority to pry into people’s private lives with little or no evidence of wrongdoing.”

Little is known about the government’s use of many of its authorities under the Patriot Act, but raw numbers available through government reports reflect a rapidly increasing level of surveillance. The statistics show skyrocketing numbers of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders, National Security Letter (NSL) requests and Suspicious Activity Reports while terrorism prosecution numbers are down. The government has increased the numbers of terrorism investigations it has declined to prosecute.

"ThePrez has been ambiguous (or is it ambivalent) about his positions vis a vis the Bushevik-era endeavor to suppress dissent, monitor innocent citizens'/civilians' communications, trample on Constitutionally guaranteed civil rights, and promote unlimited Governmental surveillance. During the Campaign, he said he'd work to repeal it. Of course, nobody with more brain thqan a legume thinks or ever thought that that was ever gonna happen. He has neither the stones nor the mandate for such a sweeping rebuke to the Fascist/CorpoRat State interests of whom he, after all, is the supreme representative. Now, and presumably with the approval/connivance of the Obamanauts, FBI Chief (and Bushevik hold-over) Robert Mueller has already approached the Senate Intelligence Committee arguing for the complete, total re-authorization.

Remember, please: No President, not one of the 43 since George Washington, has EVER voluntarily ceded back to Congress and the people ANY powers they arrogated to the Executive for the purposes of handling exigent 'emergencies.' St. Barry, "thePrez," is NOT going to be the one who does...

Whither, Messr.s Heinrich And Teague?

Via DownWithTyranny--

Yesterday Blue America hosted a live blogging session with Maryland Congresswoman Donna Edwards. In the course of answering a question, she brought this up:

On health care-- I’m an original cosponsor of H.R.676 (Rep. Conyers)-- I think we must have a marker for a public plan option however this debate shakes out in the end-- otherwise we never will address cost and we’ll never get to single-payer. Now as you can only guess, the insurers, and for-profit hospitals and all the industry are marching the halls of Congress to keep the basic system that’s in place. So, in these coming weeks after we settle the budget next week, we need an all out push for H.R. 676 so that a progressive voice will be in the mix when the final bill is crafted. We need more co-sponsors on H.R. 676-- so get to work!

Here's an alphabetical list of the most current (the 111th Congress) co-sponsors (principal sponsor is again John Conyers):

And the list follows (scroll down). On it is the name of Ben Ray Lujan, one of three, newly elected, New Mexico Democrats serving in the House. Conspicuously (imho) absent are the other two: BOTH Martin Heinrich and Harry Teague.

I am sure both Mr. Heinrich and Mr. Teague have principled reservations about signing onto a bill--i mean, it's only a resolution, really--which urges the United States to institute a health system under which:

• Every resident of the US will be covered from birth to death.

• No more pre-existing conditions to be excluded from coverage.

• No more expensive deductibles or co-pays.

• All prescription medications will be covered.

• All dental and eye care will be included.

• Mental health and substance abuse care will be fully covered.(1
)
• Long term and nursing home services will be included.

• You will always choose your own doctors and hospitals.

• Costs of coverage will be assessed on a sliding scale basis.

• Tremendously simplified system of medical administration.
• Total portability-- your coverage not tied to any job or location.

• Existing Medicare benefits for those over 65 will be vastly improved.

• No corporate bureaucrat will ever come between you and your Doctor to deny your care.

If you'd like to read the actual legislation, the whole bill (PDF) is online. The idea is simple-- Medicare coverage for every American.

So, Rep.s Heinrich and Teague--Marty! Harry! If I may call you that--c'mon, fellas, what's not to like? I hope it's just that you've been a little dlatory in signing on, right? You've been busy. Lots of pressing decisions. I'm sure Ben can help you out...

International Magistrates Target Bushevik Barristers For War Crimes

Scott Horton, the ubiquitous one, posted the following on his Harper's/No Comment blog:

Bush Torture Lawyers Targeted in Criminal Probe
One of America’s NATO allies—which supported the Bush Administration’s war on terror by committing its troops to the struggle–has now opened formal criminal inquiries looking into the Bush team’s legacy of torture. The action parallels a criminal probe into allegations of torture involving the American CIA that was opened this week in the United Kingdom.

Spain’s national newspapers, El País and [Público}(Público) reported that the Spanish national security court has opened a criminal probe focusing on Bush Administration lawyers who pioneered the descent into torture at the prison in Guantánamo. A source who preferred to remain anonymous advised that University of California law professor John Yoo, former Department of Defense general counsel William J. Haynes II (now a lawyer working for Chevron), former vice presidential chief-of-staff David Addington, and former attorney general and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales are all targets.

The case was opened in the Spanish national security court, the Audencia Nacional. In July 2006, the Spanish Supreme Court overturned the conviction of a former Spanish citizen who had been held in Guantánamo, labeling the regime established in Guantánamo a “legal black hole.” The court forbade Spanish cooperation with U.S. authorities in connection with the Guantánamo facility. The current criminal case evolved out of an investigation into allegations, sustained by Spain’s Supreme Court, that the Spanish citizen had been tortured in Guantánamo.

The Spanish criminal court now may seek the arrest of any of the targets if they travel to Spain or any of the 24 nations that participate in the European extraditions convention (it would have to follow a more formal extradition process in other countries beyond the 24). The Bush lawyers will therefore run a serious risk of being apprehended if they travel outside of the United States.

Judge Baltasar Garzón is involved in the investigation, according to the El País report. Garzón is Europe’s best known counterterrorism magistrate, responsible for hundreds of cases targeting the activities of ETA and related Basque terrorist organizations. He also spearheaded the successful investigation of Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organizations operating in the Maghreb region, including Spanish enclaves in Morocco. But Garzón is best known for his prosecution of a criminal investigation against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet that resulted in the issuance of an arrest warrant for Pinochet while he was visiting England.

.Call me petty, but I for one am delighted at the thought that the members of the Bushevik regime will have to keep looking over their shoulders for the first sign of apprehension (as it were) when they travel abroad. The gutless Obamistas won't do anything, so I'm glad the international justice league is on the case...

Lest Anyone Think Bill Greider's Lost His Edge ...

Here's Greider's latest piece from The Nation, in which he caustically derides "thePrez"s" real money version of the Monopoly Game:

President Obama has invented a new board game for Wall Street money guys to play that promises to be a lot of fun. It's very much like the regular Monopoly game that kids play--only better--because this one uses real money, provided courtesy of the taxpayers. The best thing about Obama's game is nobody loses. Usually, the winner in Monopoly is the one who winds up with the most money. In the Obama version, the losers get any losses back from the government at the end of the game. The president has promised.

The guy is a genius. He located these two whiz kids--Tim and Larry--who are smarter than God about financial matters. President Obama commanded the advisors to solve the financial mess, raise the zombie banks from the dead and start the good times rolling again. This game is what they came up with. It's a very complicated game and not everyone can understand it. But the Wall Street titans smell hope. For this Monopoly set has no "Go to Jail" card in the deck.

It starts just like the real Monopoly game. The president hands out tall stacks of cash to all the players--hedge funds, insurance companies, big-time investors, any well-heeled capitalist with a serious taste for acquiring greater wealth. The players then roll the dice and move their little titan icons around the Monopoly board. They can buy up properties wherever they land, sort of like landing on Boardwalk and Park Place. Only in this case the properties are the nearly worthless financial assets held by the country's leading banks, like the mortgage-backed securities now known as "toxic assets."

The banks are glad to be rid of their rotten stuff and will begin to feel better about lending again to commoners. The titans accumulate a stack of property cards and sell them off to other players at extraordinary profits. At least this is what Tim Geithner and Larry Summers told the president to expect and he believed them. Before you know it, everyone will start feeling better about themselves. The once worthless financial paper that no one would buy will begin glowing with rising value. Now wealthier titans and much relieved bankers will buy more cars and houses, hire more gardeners. More jobs, more hope, everything starts rolling toward national recovery. Everyone is a winner, even the losers.

Only adults are allowed to play this game. It is much too complicated for ordinary citizens so sophisticated financiers are needed to do such tricky deals. But Americans at large can have fun watching the action and rooting for various participants. The contest will be a welcome distraction from other anxieties. Who is going to accumulate the tallest stack? It's like Monopoly Olympics for the grand masters of the universe. Will Warren Buffett take a seat at the table? Bill Gross, the PIMCO bond king, is salivating at the prospect of double-digit returns and says Obama's game is "win-win-win." Can billionaire George Soros resist such an opportunity? Will legendary traders at Goldman Sachs square off against James A. Baker III's Carlyle Group with its oil-rich Arab backers? What a kick that these famous people will be playing with our money.

But, remember, this is not about a few shrewd players accumulating more wealth. It's about saving the country. Everybody will want to do their part. Obama has shown them the way.

Probably there are some naysayers in the public who won't get it. They will whine about the odd ways in which winners always seem to get another chance in US capitalism to win again. Some people will look around them and complain that things do not seem to be improving in their neighborhood. They will attack our president personally, try to undermine his authority.

President Obama can charm them out of their anger. He might say, "Hey, guys, lighten up. It's only a game."

You can see, he hasn't lost his touch for the gentle art of snark, with a touch of snarl...

Tom Ferguson On TRNN, Part II: "thePrez" and "The Street"

TRNN's Paul Jay speaks to Thomas Ferguson, professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Boston on the Obama - Geithner plan. Speaking to what he would have done instead, Ferguson says, "I would have done it as Roosevelt did with the New Deal. You gotta make the banks write down the bad assets, and you gotta get the bad assets out of the banks, throw them into something owned by the people of the United States, and then try to sell them back." He says, "the simplest way of doing it is taking them over."
FYEIEIO, Part 1, here: