White collar Joe Scarborough & Co. display their elitism

Joe Scarborough this morning commented on Rod Blagojevich's sentence of fourteen years calling it "total BS." Of course, it's not unexpected since he and his group swim among the white collar elite. Perish the thought that they would accept such a sentence to one of their own.

White collar criminals get away with far too much. You know that what Blagojevich was convicted for was not the only time he had his hand in the cookie jar. Who knows how many people have been hurt by Blagojevic­h's chicanery? Who's in power due to Blagojevich's receiving bribes to get them in? What have the people in Illinois have been deprived of because Mr. Blagojevich peddled his influence? We'll never know, but people who get in due to bribes are NOT the type of persons who will work for the people. And those good candidates who actually would work for the people are deprived of the offices.

What really amazes me is that we have all these draconian laws and sentences for the 99% such as three strikes laws, severely harsh drug laws (I believe all drugs should be decriminalized and treated as a major health issue) or, as an excellent example, a woman getting three years in prison for lying on a federal application while no wall street executive even goes to trial for the fraud they perpetrated on the American populace.

As for the Morning Joe crew's comparison to child molesters averaging "only" 9.5 years. That's apples and oranges. I agree that 9.5 is way too short for those creeps, but that is an issue that needs to be addressed on its own terms. Blagojevich's judge should NOT be comparing sentences for other crimes (same with the crew's Conrad Murray's conviction re Michael Jackson's death argument) when considerin­g Blagojevich's sentence.

Unfortunately, that's the problem with white collar crime. Nothing immediately tangible can be gleaned from their reprehensible actions. No blood, no body, etc. Yet, I would submit the damage the white collars cause is among the worse of the worst: violating the people's trust and literally destroying thousands of lives in one fell swoop. All in the name of bribery or profiteering from the power of the office.

We need to continually impose harsh sentences on all these charlatans to let future potentiall­y corrupt politician­s know that the book will be thrown at them HARD if they're caught. We need to hammer them and hammer them hard. Maybe that will make them think twice before violating the trust of the people and breaking the law.

Best news I've heard all day

George W. Bush cancels visit to Swiss charity gala over fears he could be arrested on torture charges

Mr Bush was due to be the keynote speaker at a Jewish charity gala in Geneva on February 12.

But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the country.

Criminal complaints against Mr Bush alleging torture have been lodged in Geneva, court officials said.

I'm one of those that believes what goes around comes around. I'm waiting for the "comes around" for Bush and his evil cronies...

World copes with upheaval, Americans get anxiety

This really frosts me. Time magazine has put out the Dec. 5 issue on its web showing the covers for different areas of the world. Europe, Asia and South Pacific get a cover with the shot of a man wearing a gas mask with his fist raised over his head. In big, bold letters in the center of the magazine are the words "Revolution Redux."

I can get into that. I mean we have the Arab spring, the Occupy cities and such. Nice to blast the masses with that kind of cover.

Now...what do you think the cover is here in the United States? A cartoon with the headline, "Why Anxiety is Good for You"! Say, what? Sort of reminds of the George Carlin bit on manly Football versus pansy Baseball ("In football, you have TOUCHDOWNS!" "In baseball, you run for home...")

Excuse me, but that's ridiculous! Revolution is certainly in the wind around the world, and the common folk are trying to put a stop to the "haves" stomping on the "have nots" throats... Yet the American people get an anxiety cover? ...And it's good for you!?!?

Does Time think that we're too ignorant or perhaps uncaring enough to warrant a revolution cover? Maybe the staff at Time just believe that we are all so wrapped up into ourselves and our anxiety that they will sell more magazines with that headline as the American lead. Who wouldn't want to be mollified from the fear mongering rhetoric coming from our leaders? I mean, maybe they think we don't give a rat about the uprisings around the world. Only in America!

But I must admit that cynical me thinks it's that they don't want to give we, the people, any blatant ideas that might possibly harm the power elite's status quo. Sort of like telling us that it's OK for the politicos to instill fear in us. Thus we must keep on abridging our civil rights in the name of fear because it's so good for us to be very anxious and afraid... Thank you, Time! I feel so much better now that I know my anxiety is so good for me!

Gee...DOJ decides lying to the people is not a good idea

I would like to say this is great news, but why on earth did we have to go this far in the first place? So the Department of Justice is backing off on trying to be able to lie to the Ametrican people. How noble!

The Department of Justice has canceled a controversial planned revision to Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) rules that opponents said would have allowed federal agencies to lie about the existence of records.

I would love to know the name(s) of the maroon(s) who thought up this crazy idea in the first place. He/she/they actually thought that the ability to lie to the American people was good for our democracy?

In probably one of the most understatements of the year the DOJ said this:

...the DOJ wrote that the proposed rule “falls short” of its commitment to transparency, and it “will not include that provision when the Department issues final regulations.”

Really? I certainly hope that these creative DOJ officials who came up with the crazy idea in the first place will be named. Obviously, they are not working in our interest and should be removed.

"It's all b******t, and it's bad for ya!"

So said the immortal George Carlin in his last HBO special back in 2008. It's even worse now.

And here we have a great example of that from our fearless leader President Barack Obama. It was during an interview last week with ABC's Jake Tapper. Here's what the President said:

The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded. And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.

"Those of us in leadership"? I haven't seen any kind of leadership in Washington, D.C. in years. We can't get judges approved, any kind of serious laws passed, no job reform, no sane budget reforms, just to name a few.

"We are on their side"? Let's see, Obama has generated more contributions from Wall Street than the Republican candidates combined. Two points here: The contributions sure would indicate that Wall Street is very happy with what Obama is doing and have confidence that he will keep on keeping on for the good of the financial industry. Secondly, who do you think Obama is going to cater to when he gets re-elected? Certainly not the 99%.

...people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded...

This one's a softball. What about the "Irresponsible," "reckless" banksters who threw our country into a great recession and put millions out of work not being indicted? How about the British Petroleum oil company executives responsible for the Gulf spill last year not being touched? How about the Bush Administration's war crimes not even being addressed any more by Obama and the political elite (though the world, by which I mean everyone but the U.S., Israel, and England, believes war crimes were committed)? Not to mention, they are all now making a fortune hawking their books and doing interviews on the backs of those whom they killed or permanently ruined.

I could go on, but one gets the drift. The really sad part is that Obama, and really any of our political elite, can says prevaricating words like the above with a straight face, and no one, let me repeat, NO ONE, will bat an eye or at least throw follow-up questions challenging such lying statements. And I do mean lying statements.

So, bottom line, look at how much BS is packed in that one paragraph by Obama. Amazing, isn't it? Carlin's the man!

I know I'm repeating in this post the same old that have been said for years by the left, and more specifically the progressives, but maybe, just maybe, if enough people write and talk about it, something might just be done down the road. I have high hopes for the "Occupy" protests, and I really hope this is the beginning of the end of the select few decimating our country.

Key reasons behind OWS

There are some terrific graphs on Alternet.com that "shows exactly what motivates the Occupy Movement.

Some of the summary of the graphs:

1. "The productivity/wage chart says it all. From 1947 until the mid-1970s real wages and productivity (economic output per worker hour) danced together. Both climbed year after year as did our real standard of living. If you’re old enough, you will remember seeing your parents doing just a bit better each year, year after year. Then, our nation embarked on a grand economic experiment. Taxes were cut especially on the super-rich. Finance was deregulated and unions were crushed. Lo and behold, the two lines broke apart. Productivity continued to climb, but wages stalled and declined. So where did all that productivity money go? To the rich and to the super-rich, especially to those in finance."

2. "In 1970 the top 100 CEOs earned $45 for every $1 earned by the average worker. By 2006, the ratio climbed to an obscene 1,723 to one. (Not a misprint!)"

3. "To add financial insult to injury, the richest of the rich pay less and less each year as a percentage of their monstrous incomes. The top 400 taxpayers during the 1950s faced a 90 percent federal tax rate. By 1995 their effective tax rate – what they really paid after all deductions as a percent of all their income – fell to 30 percent. Now it’s barely 16 percent."

4. "Right now the number of unemployed for 26 weeks or more is at record levels. Many of the long-term unemployed will never work again."

These are just a few of what the graphs indicate. Most of us know about all this, but it's really discouraging to see it all in one fell swoop. Hopefully, Occupy Wall Street and the other Occupiers around the world can shake up the status quo enough that the people can regain control of our governments and have them work for us instead of the very, very few.

Democracy Now! - the people's news

The New York Times has a really nice article about the news show Democracy Now!. I am a faithful viewer of the broadcast, which airs live Monday through Friday at 8am EST on 950 stations.

In the article, the author brings up this point:

Last week, no United States television network covered the filing of a lawsuit in Canada by four men who said they had been tortured during the Bush administration and who are seeking Mr. Bush’s arrest and prosecution. But one of the men, Murat Kurnaz, a former prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, was interviewed at length by Ms. (Amy) Goodman and her co-host, Juan Gonzalez.

So typical. Leave it to the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM - thank you, Ray McGovern for that phrase) to leave the ex-President alone, even though there are millions around the world who believe this person is a major perpetrator of serious war crimes.

Thank goodness we have Amy Goodman and her crew to keep us informed of what is really going on. Not just what the FCM want us to know while keeping from us what we need to know.

Obama should look here before there

During President Obama's statement regarding the death of Qaddafi, he had this to say (emphasis mine):

And we call on our Libyan friends to continue to work with the international community to secure dangerous materials, and to respect the human rights of all Libyans –- including those who have been detained.

First of all, this is awfully patronizing. What... The Libyans were just about to violate the rights of THEIR detainees, but thank goodness Obama was there to shake them out of that sensibility? Of course, this is just more of the "American Exceptionalism" attitude that is thrust upon a world deemed beneath the U.S political insiders.

But more importantly, let's look at a glass house here. What human rights have we, the U.S., respected to those detained by us?

Have those imprisoned in Guantanamo had due process? I think not. Were they not tortured? And anyone who says that they have had their rights respected is either simply lying or grossly ignorant.

Chomsky on Obama and Social Security

Noam Chomsky was on Democracy Now! Tuesday the thirteenth. He was on for the full hour (after the news headlines, of course), and he had some very interesting things to say. Here are a couple of thoughts that I found of particular note:

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, what is your assessment of President Obama, whether we’re talking about his new jobs plan or whether we’re talking about his foreign policy?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, I can’t say that I find it disappointing, because, quite frankly, I never expected anything. Actually, I wrote about it before the primaries, just based on his record on his website.

But I find this the most interesting thing he had to say:

AARON MATÉ: Noam, you mentioned entitlements, and obviously this is an issue that’s come up a lot in the deficit debate. Governor Rick Perry, the Republican presidential hopeful, has called it a Ponzi scheme. But even Democrats seem to buy into this narrative that it’s in crisis. Can you address that?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Social Security is not in any crisis. I mean, the trust fund alone will fully pay benefits for, I think, another 30 years or so. And after that, taxes will give almost the same benefits. To worry about a possible problem 30 years from now, which can incidentally be fixed with little—a little bit of tampering here and there, as was done in 1983—to worry about that just makes absolutely no sense, unless you’re trying to destroy the program. It’s a very successful program...

...But I think, myself, that there’s a more subtle reason why they’re opposed to it, and I think it’s rather similar to the reason for the effort to pretty much dismantle the public education system. Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat. And that’s a notion you have to drive out of people’s heads. The idea of solidarity, sympathy, mutual support, that’s doctrinally dangerous. The preferred doctrines are just care about yourself, don’t care about anyone else. That’s a very good way to trap and control people. And the very idea that we’re in it together, that we care about each other, that we have responsibility for one another, that’s sort of frightening to those who want a society which is dominated by power, authority, wealth, in which people are passive and obedient. And I suspect—I don’t know how to measure it exactly, but I think that that’s a considerable part of the drive on the part of small, privileged sectors to undermine a very efficient, very effective system on which a large part of the population relies, actually relies more than ever, because wealth, personal wealth, was very much tied up in the housing market. That was people’s personal wealth. Well, OK, that, quite predictably, totally collapsed. People aren’t destitute by the standards of, say, slums in India or southern Africa, but very—suffering severely. And they have nothing else to rely on, but what they—the, really, pittance that they’re getting from Social Security. To take that away would be just disastrous.

It's really sad that the Mainstream Media will not have anything to do this giant of our time. Not even Rachel Maddow (I even emailed her about having him on. Of course, no reply back.) or Keith Olberman. I would love to hear their reasons for not giving Chomsky air time. Is it just them or their media overlords?

CNN: Sex is "worse" than severe bodily harm

Here is a prime example of what's wrong in our society. Today, a little after 1:00 EDT, CNN anchor Randi Kaye was relating the story of the Miami University scandal. Convicted swindler Nevin Shapiro lavished money on the Hurricanes' football team for years.

As Kaye related what money Mr. Shapiro lavished on the players, she said this:

The alleged gifts are jaw dropping. Listen to this. They include hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, cars, jewelry rides on his yacht, paid trips to high-end restaurants and nightclubs. But that was just the start.

Now comes the really bad part of her quote (Emphasis mine):

Shapiro also said the players were offered bounties for injuring players on opposing teams. But what's even worse, the former booster says he paid to get prostitutes for players...

"What's even worse"? Are you telling me that paying to have a young, virile college athlete spend time with a hooker is WORSE than paying the same player to hurt and possibly MAIM another human being?

What a pathetic comment on our society. What I don't know is if the writer of the piece was pandering to the viewing audience, thinking that CNN's demographic actually thinks that sex is WORSE than severe bodily harm, or if the writer himself (or herself) actually thinks such a bassackward thought.

If it's only in the writer's mind, he/she is one sick puppy and needs a reality check (Therapy, as well?). If the line was specifically targeted for the audience, CNN must really think that we're more hung up on sex than violence and the Corporation is preaching to the choir. Either way it's absolutely despicable.

As George Carlin said:

I'd rather have my son watch a film with two people making love than two people trying to kill one another.

It is the responsibility for CNN and all the media to keep that in mind when covering their stories.

"Entitlements" is a dirty word

Last week, my brother and I were lamenting that the word "entitlements," representing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, etc., had such a negative connotation. We felt that it should not be used when discussing these issues.

Well, yesterday, Miles Mogulescu over at the Huffington Post coincidentally addressed this issue. I agree with him wholeheartedly!

Every time someone else in a discussion starts to talk about "Entitlements", they should say, "Oh, you mean the Middle Class Safety Net." Whenever someone talks about the need for "Entitlement Reform" or "Entitlement Cuts" they should say, "Oh, you mean shredding the Middle Class Safety Net."

He eloquently puts forth the reason he, my brother and I dislike the word:

It has the ring of spoiled children who are entitled to something that they don't really deserve. It's also not accurate. The middle class pays for its Social Security and Medicare with their payroll taxes during their working life so that they have something to fall back on in their old age. They're "entitled" to it, not because they're spoiled children asking for treats from daddy, but because society promised it to them in return for 40-50 years of having payroll taxes deducted from their paychecks.

He challenges the media to quit using it:

To win the political debate, Democratic office holders; liberal news hosts like Lawrence O'Donnell, Rachel Maddow, and Ed Shultz; progressive websites like The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and Talking Points Memo; liberal columnists like Eugene Robinson, E.J. Dionne, and Paul Krugman; and progressive publications like The Nation and Mother Jones, have to change their political vocabulary.

Hear, Hear! I vow NEVER to use that word again. From now on "Middle Class Safety Net" supplants the "E" word in my lexicon. I challenge anyone who reads this (the few who do) to do the same and to pass it on to all of your family and friends, and, if you're a political writer, incorporate the phrase into your writing.

Anyone remember 90% income tax?

Richard Wolff, author of Capitalism Hits the Fan, was a guest on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! last Thursday. Below is a very telling quote from the interview. I highly recommend you seeing the whole thing. It's in transcript form, plus there is an video of the interview as well:

The most amazing thing to me is that we talk about fixing a government budget that’s in trouble, and we don’t talk about the revenue side in a serious way. That is an amazing thing. If you look at what happened to the American budget over the last 20 or 30 years, the culprit is obvious. We have dropped corporate taxes. We have dropped taxes on the rich.


Let me give you a couple of examples to drive it home. If you go back to the 1940s, here’s what you discover, that the federal government got 50 percent more money year after year from corporations than it did from individuals. For every dollar that individuals paid in income tax, corporations paid $1.50. If you compare that to today, here are the numbers. For every dollar that individuals pay to the federal government, corporations pay 25 cents. That is a dramatic change that has no parallel in the rest of our tax code.


Another example. In the ’50s and ’60s, the top bracket, the income tax rate that the richest people had to pay, for example the ’50s and ’60s, it was 91 percent. Every dollar over $100,000 that a rich person earned, he or she had to give 91 cents to Washington and kept nine. And the rationale for that was, we had come out of a Great Depression, we had come out of a great war, we had to rebuild our society, we were in a crisis, and the rich had the capacity to pay, and they ought to pay. Republicans voted for that. Democrats voted for that. What do we have today? Ninety-one percent? No. The top rate for rich people today, 35 percent. Again, nobody else in this society—not the middle, not the poor—have had anything like this consequence.

So, over the last 30, 40 years, a shift from corporate income tax to individual income tax, and among individuals, from the rich to everybody else. To deal with our budget problem without discussing that, putting that front and center, making that part of the story, that’s just a service to the rich and the corporations. There’s no polite way to say otherwise. And there’s something shameful about keeping all of that away and focusing on how we’re going to take out our budget problems by cutting back benefits to old people, to people who have medical needs. There’s something bizarre, and the world sees that, in a society that has done what it has done and now proposes to fix it on the backs of the majority."

As for the current "crisis," it's very simple. At the end of it, the rich will be richer and the poor will be poorer.

What we're looking at is Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine tactics: Create a crisis, panic the people through media ("Stock Markets Tremble As Debt Ceiling Debate Rages In Washington" - headline in HuffPO), then push through the agenda (cut SS/Medicare/Medicaid, etc.) saying, "We HAD to do it to save the planet."

Have we ever had a moment's peace?

I really like what Patrick Smith, who writes the Ask the Pilot blog over at Salon:

I hate sounding conspiratorial, but it often feels as if these warnings serve little purpose beyond keeping the American populace frightened and easily manipulated, lest it regain consciousness and dare interrupt the torrent of cash pouring into the coffers of the security-industrial complex.

Personally, I don't think this idea is that conspiratorial. The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is a great source to explain how this works.

For decades now our politicians have been utilizing the "Fear Factor" to push their agendas. I remember spending two thirds of my life under the umbrella of "The Cold War." Any day the Russians were going to drop their atomic bombs on us. We just HAD to HAVE a "mutually assured destruction" scenario to maintain the balance and thwart those bad guys. Thus, our Military/Industrial Complex (MIC) churned away accumulating massive profits as we constantly built up our weaponry.

Of course, once that threat was finally gone(Whew!), we felt relieved that it was over, and we could have peace across the land. Wrong!

Obviously, for the MIC, a new threat had to be found to keep the massive profits humming right along. Welcome to the nebulous, shadowy world of "Terrorism"! Now this is perfect! Its can never be fully extinguished. Someone, somewhere in the world will be hating the U.S. at any time. Voila! We now have a never-ending story for which the MIC can forever profit. Good one!

So here we are. The bottom line is what Mr. Smith says:

Nobody will admit what's obvious...that we cannot protect ourselves from every conceivable threat.

However, that is the sacrifice we must make if we are to be an open and free country.

You ain't in it!

George Carlin sums it up quite nicely (NSFW):

Solving our debt, naive though it may be

I'm am going to make this short and sweet. Excuse my naivete, but this is how it should work. If we're going to have income tax, it should be on a sliding scale. The lowest wage earners get the lowest tax rates, the highest wage earners get the highest tax rates (and I'm talking about the 90% range as it was in the 50s). The smallest businesses get the smallest tax rates, the biggest corporations get the highest tax rates (and I'm talking about corporations such as GE that didn't pay any taxes in 2010. In fact, it got a $3.2 billion tax refund!). No loopholes whatsoever.

We have a choice. As Chalmers Johnson says in his Blowback trilogy, we can be either an empire or a democracy, but not both. Therefore, we should cut defense spending by at least half, more likely three quarters and eliminate the majority of our bases around the world and in the United States.

According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories.

We should quit invading and bombing countries that do not have any imminent threat against us.

We should not even THINK of cutting entitlements. I agree that we continue to try eliminating waste in the systems. That's always a good thing. However, cutting benefits is outright wrong. We are not animals who throw the sick and infirm out of the pack.

Any Senator or Representative who disagrees with this is not representing our country honestly and should be voted out of office. Of course, this goes back to my "people are not smart" opinion.

But this is how it should be.

MSNBC's "Moral Outrage"

So MSNBC suspended Mark Halperin last week for calling President Obama a "d*ck." The exact quote: “I thought he was a kind of a d*ck yesterday...”

Now I'm not going to get into the discussion that Halperin was goaded, that everyone on the set acted like a bunch of high school kids who were giggling over at a one-cheek sneak, or perhaps the Morning Joe new producer didn't know how to work the 7-second delay. Instead I want to address MSNBC's statement after the corporation suspended Halperin indefinitely;

Mark Halperin's comments this morning were completely inappropriate and unacceptable. We apologize to the President, The White House and all of our viewers. We strive for a high level of discourse and comments like these have no place on our air. Therefore, Mark will be suspended indefinitely from his role as an analyst.

Inappropriate and unacceptable? Yet it was totally appropriate and acceptable to fire Phil Donahue for his anti-war beliefs leading up to the Iraq War? A war, I might add, that cost hundreds thousands of deaths and injuries, displaced millions more and sent the country of Iraq back into the Stone Age.

Here is a part of the memo which stated that Donahue was a

"difficult public face for NBC in a time of war......He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives."

Instead of canning him, how about having THAT kind of "high level of discourse"? Nope. Instead, MSNBC chose to gag any kind of discussion that opposed the war.

So calling the President of the United States a "d*ck" is inappropriate and unacceptable for MSNBC, but jumping on the War Wagon leading to the ruination of millions of lives is perfectly acceptable and appropriate.

"High level of discourse," indeed.

Another shining example of "The People" NOT being smart

Last summer, I wrote about how "The People" are not smart.

Another fine example has come to the fore in Illinois:

(Former Illinois Governor Rod) Blagojevich becomes the second straight Illinois governor convicted of corruption. His predecessor, George Ryan, is now serving 6 1/2 years in federal prison.

What's really ridiculous is the current governor and state congress leaders seem to be right in the thick of some questionable activity judging from this comment:

Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady:

“I'm glad that the verdict is finally in on Rod Blagojevich. However this closes only one chapter of Democrat corruption in Illinois. Illinois Democratic politicians who now try everything they can to hide their past support of Rod Blagojevich should look themselves in the mirror and remind themselves that little has changed since the day Blagojevich was arrested.

“Our current governor (Pat Quinn) has appointed lame duck legislators to high paid positions after they changed their views and voted for late night tax hikes. The Speaker of the Illinois House (and state Democratic Party Chairman Mike Madigan) is partner in a law firm that has reaped millions in appealing tax assessments in a relationship that even Forrest Claypool (now a member of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Administration) said ‘has caused our taxes to go up and the level of faith in government to go down.’”

I ask you, just what are the Illinois voters thinking? Another excellent example of the people NOT being smart.

Over the past year I found a great quote by George Carlin reinforcing my argument regarding "The People" not being smart:

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize that half of them are stupider than that.

Unfortunately, it's just not Illinois' "People." This is why our country is in the horrible shape it's in. Guaranteed.

One of my all-time favorite headlines: "Obama Transparency Award given in secret"

That has to be one of the more Orwellian headlines I've ever heard of. The reason it was given in secret?

If the ceremony had been open to the press, it is likely that reporters would have questioned the organizations' proffered justification for the award

The link provided will navigate you to an open letter demanding that the "Transparency Award" be rescinded. It is signed by numerous individual whistleblowers and organizations.

I'm sure quite a few of you won't go to the site, so I'll run off a few of the 13(!) reasons the letter gives for rescinding the award:

1. President Obama has not decreased but has dramatically increased governmental secrecy!
2. There were 544,360 requests for information last year under the Freedom of Information Act to the 35 biggest federal agencies -- 41,000 requests more than the year before. Yet the bureaucracy responded to 12,400 fewer requests than the prior year, according to an analysis by the Associated Press.
3. Ignoring his campaign promise to protect government whistleblowers, Obama’s presidency has amassed the worst record in US history for persecuting, prosecuting, and jailing government whistleblowers and truth-tellers.
4. President Obama has initiated a secret assassination program, has publicly announced that he has given himself the power to include Americans on the list of people to be assassinated, and has attempted to assassinate at least one, Anwar al-Aulaqi.
5. The Obama Administration is also busy going after reporters to discover their sources and convening grand juries in order to target journalists and news publishers.

If you're interested in the entire list clink on the link. This is a chance for you to add your voice to try to stem the tide of civil rights violations by our government by signing the letter.

The neverending story: The War on Drug$

There will never be an end to the United States' War on Drugs. There is just too much money and profit involved for The Powers That Be to give it up. Think of how much would be lost if drugs were decriminalized. The police would have a dramatic drop in arrests, thus smaller police forces would be needed, the courts would have tremendously fewer cases on the docket, thus leading to less court time and less cases for lawyers and, finally, the Prison Industrial Complex would suffer major drops in profits (and guards - the union would not like that at all).

I believe all drugs should be decriminalized and treated as a health problem. Glenn Greenwald wrote a white paper on Portugal's decision to decriminalize drugs almost a decade ago:

On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were “decriminalized,” not “legalized.” Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm.

Mr. Greenwald's closing paragraph sums it up nicely:

The Portuguese have seen the benefits of decriminalization, and therefore there is no serious political push in Portugal to return to a criminalization framework. Drug policymakers in the Portuguese government are virtually unanimous in their belief that decriminalization has enabled a far more effective approach to managing Portugal’s addiction problems and other drug-related afflictions. Since the available data demonstrate that they are right, the Portuguese model ought to be
carefully considered by policymakers around the world.

It's very interesting reading and I highly recommend it.

Of course, there are those who agree with my assertion of dumping the War on Drugs. An example is The Wire creator David Simon, who was asked by Attorney General Eric Holder to create another season of his fine series. Simon's email response was,

The Attorney-General's kind remarks are noted and appreciated. I've spoken to Ed Burns and we are prepared to go to work on season six of The Wire if the Department of Justice is equally ready to reconsider and address its continuing prosecution of our misguided, destructive and dehumanising drug prohibition.

Unfortunately, as blog writer Ray Gustini of The Atlantic Wire says,

The exchange has at least clarified one thing: the chances of another season of The Wire are now exactly the same as America having a rational dialogue about drug law reform.

Of course, I will never see what should be done to handle our country's drug problem. We'll just keep pouring money into the rabbit hole so that The Powers That Be can keep making those profits and generating revenue from the masses. Maybe the right kind of people will be able address this issue correctly in the future.

Always remember, in these kinds of issues...follow the money.

My view on the OBL affair (As if anyone cares...)

George Carlin once said the he leaves symbols to the symbol-minded. I like that turn of the phrase and agree. I also agree with Glenn Greenwald:

The killing of Osama bin Laden is one of those events which, especially in the immediate aftermath, is not susceptible to reasoned discussion. It's already a Litmus Test event: all Decent People -- by definition -- express unadulterated ecstacy at his death, and all Good Americans chant "USA! USA!" in a celebration of this proof of our national greatness and Goodness (and that of our President). Nothing that deviates from that emotional script will be heard, other than by those on the lookout for heretics to hold up and punish. Prematurely interrupting a national emotional consensus with unwanted rational truths accomplishes nothing but harming the heretic (ask Bill Maher about how that works).

I'm especially disturbed that it was a "shoot to kill" operation, though there has been some backtracking from that original statement. I want our country to take the moral high ground. We may not have been able to take him alive, but we won't know for sure if that opportunity was rejected outright until the video (if there is one) of the operation becomes available. I would like to see how the whole thing went down; however, I doubt we see that in our lifetime.

I'm really not interested in the dead photo of OBL. I really don't care one way or the other if it's made public. I'm really amused, though, by the argument that making the photos public will "infuriate" the Middle East. Let's see... We invade their countries, decimate the towns and countryside, murder 100's of thousands of civilians, make millions of other civilians refugees and now by showing the death picture they're really, really going to get mad? Now that's funny!

I was really disgusted the original "propaganda" that was tossed out there by Obama officials saying among other things Obama used a woman as a shield, he was armed, etc., thus making him even more dastardly. Or as Greenwald puts it:

Virtually every major newspaper account of the killing of Osama bin Laden consists of faithful copying of White House claims. That's not surprising: it's the White House which is in exclusive possession of the facts, but what's also not surprising is that many of the claims that were disseminated yesterday turned out to be utterly false. And no matter how many times this happens -- from Jessica Lynch's heroic firefight against Iraqi captors to Pat Tillman's death at the hands of Evil Al Qaeda fighters -- it never changes: the narrative is set forever by first-day government falsehoods uncritically amplified by establishment media outlets, which endure no matter how definitively they are disproven in subsequent days.

Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 21 years, calls them the "Fawning Corporate Media" (FCM). I agree. A very interesting man. There's a DVD series running around called "Speaking Freely." He is one of the speakers. He gives a fascinating talk on how the CIA went from an information gathering agency (Truman's intent) to becoming the President's personal, private army. I highly recommend it.

For me, it was the Bush Administration that elevated OBL into the major symbol that he is by making him and his minions an army to be fought on the field of battle. I've always believed these thugs should have been treated as criminals and international detective work used to apprehend them.

Of course, if one does not celebrate by shouting "USA,USA" you will be looked at strangely. Again Greenwald:

"Recall what happened in 2003 when Howard Dean interrupted the national celebratory ritual triggered by Saddam Hussein's capture when he suggested that that event would likely not make us safer. He was demonized by political leaders in both parties, with Joe Lieberman finally equating him with Saddam by accusing Dean of being in a 'spider hole of denial.' That will be the same demonizing reaction targeted at anyone who deviates from today's ritualistic script."

I agree.

Of course, the far-reaching impact will most likely be the re-election of Obama. I figured he would be re-elected already (barring unforeseen disasters), but this about clinches it. Or as Matt Taibbi puts it:

First of all, for the next eighteen months, Obama is going to respond to every single foreign-policy question by holding up Bin Laden’s head and swinging it in front of him like a lantern (metaphorically speaking, of course). It doesn’t matter what the question is: ask Obama about the Irish debt crisis, he’ll answer, "The Irish have been important allies in our fight against terrorism, which as you’ll recall resulted recently in the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden …

Finally, way too much coverage the last four days. But that's the 24-hour cable news FCM. And while that's loudly been going on, two nobody Republicans quietly filed for the candidacy of the presidency and the abortion law (trying to tax health plans involving abortions) is quietly being passed in Congress. From Daily Kos:

"According to the National Women's Law Center, the bill will increase costs and taxes for millions of women and small businesses, which, as as David Waldman pointed out yesterday, completely violates those precious Tea Party values of shrinking government and cutting taxes. In fact, it will raise taxes on men too—because anyone who has a health insurance policy that covers abortion, whether they use it for abortion or not, will not be allowed to take a tax deduction for that insurance policy."

Who knows what else is currently being quietly done behind the scenes? Then we will look up one day and say to ourselves how did THAT get by us????

Lying on the Senate floor...think about it...LYING!

It really galls me not only what Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said in the Senate, but how most of the media is making light of it.

To say on the Senate floor an outright lie and making that outright lie a part of the permanent record is totally uncalled for. Think about it. Here is a a U.S.Senator blatantly lying about Planned Parenthood's function being over 90% abortion related. Total falsehood.

Fortunately, it was such an outright lie that the media picked up on it, and now the public has been informed that about three per cent of Planned Parenthood is about abortions.

The scary thing is that had no one called Kyl on his lie, there would be those who saw him make the statement thinking that 90% is the correct figure. I mean, to an average viewer, why would a senator lie about such a thing on the Senate floor? There will be those who heard/saw what he said that will now be going around thinking that Planned Parenthood is all about abortions ("Why, they devote 90% of their time to it!") never realizing what a lie that was. That's the dangerous part.

And to have a staffer say that the lie was not intended to be a factual statement? So...we now know that anything Kyl says on the Senate floor cannot be construed as a factual statement. I'm certainly not going to believe any stats he comes up with for the Senate record will be true. Of course, Kyl is backpedaling on the backpedal by claiming he "misspoke." Well, it certainly looked to me that he was reading from text when he gave that lying speech. Perhaps his keyboard "mispoke" as well. From now on, I'll figure he's just making up any figure to jive with his position on an issue. As far as I'm concerned, John Kyl has no more credibility as a U.S. Senator. Good luck, Arizona.

What I also find particularly interesting is the lackadaisical attitude by the media. For me, this is a serious breach of trust by an elected official. Yet most of the media is treating it as a humorous gaffe. Or even worse, they just shrug their shoulders and generalize that all politicos lie, so what's the big deal? Let's poke fun at it. Until we treat these liars seriously, they will just keep on shining us on.

What the deification of Reagan really means

There is a new Gallup poll out that finds Americans believe Ronald Reagan is the greatest President. Huh? For me it just shows how ignorant the American people are and how vastly they are influenced by current events. I'm speaking specifically here how our politicians have celebrated the 100 birthday of Reagan and how the main stream media goes along with the glorification.

Never mind all the horrific things Reagan did while in office. On Democracy Now! last week, one of the greatest minds alive, Noam Chomsky, offered his take on Reagan's Presidency. Please take careful note of the last sentence (Emphasis mine).

This deification of Reagan is extremely interesting and a very—it’s scandalous, but it tells a lot about the country. I mean, when Reagan left office, he was the most unpopular living president, apart from Nixon, even below Carter. If you look at his years in office, he was not particularly popular. He was more or less average. He severely harmed the American economy. When he came into office, the United States was the world’s leading creditor. By the time he left, it was the world’s leading debtor. He was fiscally totally irresponsible—wild spending, no fiscal responsibility. Government actually grew during the Reagan years.

He was also a passionate opponent of the free market. I mean, the way he’s being presented is astonishing. He was the most protectionist president in post-war American history. He essentially virtually doubled protective barriers to try to preserve incompetent U.S. management, which was being driven out by superior Japanese production.


During his years, we had the first major fiscal crises. During the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the New Deal regulations were still in effect, and that prevented financial crises. The financialization of the economy began to take off in the ’70s, but with the deregulation, of course you start getting crises. Reagan left office with the biggest financial crisis since the Depression: the home savings and loan.


I won’t even talk about his international behavior. I mean, it was just abominable. I mean, if we gained our optimism by killing hundreds of thousands of people in Central America and destroying any hope for democracy and freedom and supporting South Africa while it killed about a million-and-a-half people in neighboring countries, and on and on, if that’s the way we get back our optimism, we’re in bad trouble.


Well, what happened after Reagan left office is that there was the beginnings of an effort to carry out a kind of—this Reagan legacy, you know, to try to create from this really quite miserable creature some kind of deity. And amazingly, it succeeded. I mean, Kim Il-sung would have been impressed. The events that took place when Reagan died, you know, the Reagan legacy, this Obama business, you don’t get that in free societies. It would be ridiculed. What you get it is in totalitarian states. And I’m waiting to see what comes next. This morning, North Korea announced that on the birthday of the current god, a halo appeared over his birthplace. That will probably happen tomorrow over Reagan’s birthplace. But when we go in—I mean, this is connected with what we were talking about before. If you want to control a population, keep them passive, keep beating them over the head and let them look somewhere else, one way to do it is to give them a god to worship.

Today's current god is Ronald Reagan. Who will be next? Until this passivity of the American people can be overcome, we are in for more extreme power of the wealthy and more control over the rest of the population.

Eugene Robinson is flat out wrong

Last Friday, on the Rachel Maddow Show, there was this exchange between Ms. Maddow and Eugene Robinson, MSNBC political analyst and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for “The Washington Post” (courtesy of the Rachel Maddow transcript):

MADDOW: Do you think that the long-time strategy of America‘s sort of addiction to dictators, supporting despots in the name of stability - do you think that addiction may be weaker now than before this happened?

ROBINSON: Well, just in numerical terms, I think there are likely to be fewer of them, fewer American-supported dictators because this region was particularly thick with them, and they seem to be falling by the wayside.

I don‘t think we will ever get to the point where an administration will say we will never have a relationship, friendly or cooperative relationship, with a despotic regime.

We have a relationship with China and China has a despotic regime. And it was good that we talked to the Soviet Union, et cetera, et cetera.

But the sort of client relationship that we‘ve had with some of these countries, I think, that era may be closing, and we‘re going to have to figure out what replaces it, what sort of relationship replaces it and how it can be adapted to the different situations in different countries.

First off, “sort of addiction to dictators”? Excuse me, but the U.S. wants dictators in power in those countries where we want to exploit their resources. God forbid the people rule the country (aka: “democracy”). We would have no control over the country.

It is far more in our interest to control one dictator by giving him money (or anything else he wants) and reinforcing his power than a citizenry who could change their minds if they determine we’re exploiting them. So “sort of” is weak at best.

And what’s this rhetoric from Ms. Maddow about “supporting despots in the name of stability”? I think Ms. Maddow is smart enough to know that the “stability” line is just a U.S. front for exploitation of the country’s resources. Come on, Ms. Maddow! Really! Of course we want “stability.” We certainly don’t want the people of a country rising up in defiance of our exploiting their resources at their expense. A dictator will do nicely to stop that from happening, thank you! I think Ms. Maddow should clarify her mention of “stability.”

Secondly, Mr. Robinson’s comment that “the sort of client relationship that we‘ve had with some of these countries, I think, that era may be closing”? I don’t believe that for a second. The U.S. will continue to front dictators to make it easier to exploit their national resources, and not rely on the whim of the people regarding the interests of the U.S. at the nation’s expense.

As Noam Chomsky points out:

…there is a playbook: whenever a favored dictator is in trouble, try to sustain him, hold on; if at some point it becomes impossible, switch sides.

Then, of course, we work to put another dictator in place.

As an example of this, let’s look at Chomky’s take on Bolivia:

Bolivia is a striking example. The mostly white, Europeanized elite, which is a minority, happens to be sitting on most of the hydrocarbon reserves. For the first time Bolivia is becoming democratic. So it's therefore bitterly hated by the West, which despises democracy, because it's much too dangerous.

And that’s why I believe Mr. Robinson is flat out wrong in saying that this type of client relationship such as we had in Egypt is “closing.” I predict that if a “democracy” does arise out of this protest in Egypt, the U.S. will work to undermine it and bring in a new authoritarian regime.

The sad part is, I remember as a child learning in school that the U.S. was out there fighting for democracy (i.e., truth, justice and the American way). Turns out we've been exploiting countries and fronting vicious dictators for decades. I wish it were not true. Unfortunately, I feel it's too late for us to change our ways...at least in my lifetime.

Bush's world just got smaller

This is the best news I've read in a long time.

It's really nice to know that there are those out there who refuse to take the United States position of "looking forward and not backward."

According to the article,

Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod's annual dinner on Feb. 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.

So Mr. "Heh-heh-heh" decided it might not be prudent to take a luxury trip to visit the Swiss.

Former U.S. President George W. Bush has cancelled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture, rights groups said on Saturday.

The reasoning behind the move toward legal action according to Reed Brody, counsel for Human Rights Watch,

"President Bush has admitted he ordered waterboarding which everyone considers to be a form of torture under international law. Under the Convention against Torture, authorities would have been obliged to open an investigation and either prosecute or extradite George Bush."

My favorite quote from the post is also from Mr. Brody, "He's avoiding the handcuffs." Brody goes on to say,

"I think George Bush's world is a very small place at the moment...He may enjoy some kind of impunity in the United States, but other countries will not treat him so indulgently."

I sincerely hope with the bottom of my heart that the world will continue shrinking for this person. I hope that he and his cronies will somehow, somewhere be held accountable for their actions, which among other things cost the lives of thousands of Americans and tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans.

A bridge (name) too far

There is some noise being made about renaming the famed Coronado Bridge in San Diego to the “Ronald Reagan Bridge.” I live about 60 miles east of San Diego and am still within San Diego County. I really can’t believe that The Powers That Be would even consider such a thing.

Over at Firedoglake, David Glenn Cox rants about the new Time magazine cover which has a photoshopped picture of Ronald Reagan and President Obama arm in arm. He is quite amazed by the fact that a Democratic President would allow such a thing to happen without a hint of squawk. His very nice overview of Reagan is very apropos of why I feel Reagan should not have his name replace the Coronado Bridge.

Forget that the Reagan administration was corrupt up to its eyeballs. Let’s forget that the Reagan administration generated wars that killed thousands of innocent civilians in Central America. Let’s forget that the Reagan administration sold the chemical weapons to Saddam that were used to gas the Kurds. Let’s forget that the Reagan administration traded arms for hostages and sent birthday cakes to the ayatollah.

After we’ve forgotten all of that, we are left with the administration that shifted the tax burden from America’s wealthy to America’s working class. An administration which declared ketchup a vegetable to skirt Federal law on providing school lunches. An administration that bought plastic Air Force bombers for three quarters of a billion dollars a copy. Plastic dreadnoughts, too expensive to risk and too expensive to throw away.

I have said in the past that as far as I'm concerned, both the Democratic and Republican parties are essentially made of the same cloth. So it's really not surprising to me that the Time cover would demonstrate that notion. Or as Bill Hicks once said:

I'll show you politics in America. Here it is, right here. 'I think the puppet on the right shares my beliefs.' 'I think the puppet on the left is more to my liking.' 'Hey, wait a minute, there's one guy holding out both puppets!'

All in all, I can’t understand why Ronald Reagan is so revered in this country. Now that his 100th birthday is this Sunday, I'm sure we're going to get tons of accolades about him, perhaps all the frakkin' year. Yeesh!

Browsers on the wrong track

The Mozilla Corporation has announced that it will add a "do-not-track" feature on its Firefox web browser. This is in response to the Federal Trade Commission's request for web browsers to employ a feature to help maintain users' privacy.

There is a problem with this feature, though.

For Firefox's tool to work, however, tracking companies would need to agree to not monitor users who enable the do-not-track feature. So far, no companies have publicly agreed to participate in the system, but Mozilla urged them to join in.

Huh? I really hate to break this to Mozilla, but asking companies to honor a do-not-track request is about as reliable as asking a financial institution not to create credit default swaps. I think the corporation will have to do better than that. Let's look at it this way:

Last month, however, Microsoft said it would revive a powerful privacy feature in its Internet Explorer 9 that would let users stop certain websites and tracking companies from monitoring them.

The Wall Street Journal reported in a front-page article last year that Microsoft removed similar features from Internet Explorer 8 after online advertisers expressed concerns about the impact on their business.

Hmmm... "...concerns about the impact on their business." So I'm wondering what has changed that Microsoft can get away with the privacy feature on IE9? Have these "concerns" gone away in just one year? I'm surprised that Mozilla thinks that these companies and their "concerns" are going to honor the corporations request. I wouldn't hold my breath...

Google is also tinkering with a tracking feature. The problem with both Microsoft and Google is that it's just not as easy as checking a box to enable the feature:

...these tools still aren't easy to use. Microsoft's feature requires users to create a list of tracking companies they want to block. The Google tool is not embedded in its Chrome Web browser. Instead, users will need to download software onto their computer, according to the person familiar with the tool.

For Firefox, one does just need to check a box.

Once users enable the feature, Firefox would broadcast a do-not-track message to each website a user visits, and to the many tracking companies that are hosted on that website.

Mozilla is asking those who receive the do-not-track request to stop collecting data about the user and stop using that data for marketing purposes. That is one step further than most opt-outs that tracking companies offer, which prevent data usage but don't prevent data collection.

Obviously, in this 21st century technology, it should be no problem to keep anyone from tracking you with the simple click of a button. The 500-pound gorillas just choose not to. I'm sure it makes the corporate images look good with their gyrations.