♦ Former Homeland Security Boss Tom Ridge says we don't need no steenkin' Constitution for dealing with accused terrorists. And perpetual TV presence Pat Buchanan says we should withhold medicine from accused underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The theory is, the bad guys are willing to kill, torture, violate all the rules, so we have to be willing and eager to do the same. Near as I can ascertain, the difference between the way the terrorists think and the Ridge-Buchanan mindset is ... what, exactly?
♦ A decade ago Americans weren't routinely polled on whether or which alleged criminals should be tortured, so I'm unable to present comparative stats to back up what I'm about to say. Seems to me, though, that in the good old days of the Clinton,
first Bush, or Reagan administrations only a small sliver of utter whack-job Americans would've supported torture. Well, those days are gone, and a fresh poll from Rasmussen finds that 58% of Americans want torture for the alleged underwear bomber. Waterboarding is what Americans want, specifically, and specifically waterboarding is torture, and always has been so classified. And sure, Rasmussen is a Republican- and thus torture-friendly outfit, which is why they ask such questions. But still, if 58% of Americans are into torture then a majority of Americans share the Ridge-Buchanan mindset. It's the complete opposite of the George Washington mindset, but that's no longer surprising. And so it goes, and there we are. This is your United States of America in 2010. Does it make you proud? It makes me sick. There are days when my optimism is enhanced by good mood or cheap alcohol, but most days I seriously doubt the Republic will survive the hell it's been dragged through, the hell brought about by so many years of such shallow leadership by such unprincipled Republicans and such cooperative and collaborative Democrats, with "the news" brought to you almost solely by corrupt corporations that have been allowed absolute control over every channel, every network, every newspaper, every newscast.
♦ Corruption is a constant in government, but when corruption becomes the expected procedure and overriding hallmark of a government, that's a government that's doomed to collapse. Welcome to America, and join me in wondering how much time she has left.
♦ A federal appeals court has ruled that a California police officer can be held liable for injuries suffered by an unarmed man who was Tasered during a traffic stop. The decision, if allowed to stand, would set a rigorous legal precedent for when police are permitted to use the weapons and would force some law enforcement agencies throughout the state — and presumably the nation — to tighten their policies governing Taser use, experts said.
♦ The New York Times got its hands on an unpublished Defense Department report that contains really nothing you wouldn't have guessed — the Bush-Cheney administration's early strategy in Afghanistan was enormously stupid and driven by politics, dumb penny-pinching, and an ignorance of and disinterest in what the US military might need to conquer and hold a notoriously unconquerable country. (Login as unknownnews with password unknown.)
♦ Blackwater's mercenaries will get away with at least 17 murders committed in September 2007, thanks (again) to misconduct at the US Justice Department. The judge who made the ruling, Ricardo Urbina (appointed by Clinton in 1994), has made awake and aware rulings on Guantanamo issues and in my opinion he has this one right too, so please direct your anger in the appropriate direction — toward Blackwater, toward the criminal ineptitude of the US Justice Department under Bush-Cheney, and toward present-day Attorney General Eric Holder, who will almost certainly respond to this ruling the way he's responded to everything else that implicates the Bush-Cheney administration — by investigating nothing and disciplining no-one.
♦ Erroll Southers, the Obama administration's pick to head the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), abused his then-authority as an FBI agent to investigate the man his estranged wife was dating some twenty years ago. And much more recently, he gave Senate officials misleading preliminary statements about it as his TSA nomination was announced. Double fatal flaws, if you ask me. Sure, being a nosy liar is just a job requirement to run an agency like TSA, where nosiness and lying are in the mission statement, but the nosiness is supposed to be within legal bounds and the lying isn't supposed to be to Congress.
♦ Only two days after the TSA issued its latest round of ridiculous fake "security" rules keeping US-bound international passengers in their seats for the last hour of their flights, the new rule was quietly rescinded, but not before TSA sent a subpoenas to two bloggers who dared to publish the regulation. The
agency promptly backed down after the Electronic Freedom Foundation (donate) came to the rescue. Does the management at TSA want the agency to be seen as a punchline? Is there no-one in the upper levels at TSA capable of considering the public's obviously expected response to such nonsensical and ineffective security theater beforehand?
♦ Gay marriage is legal in New Hampshire. So far the world hasn't ended and the heterosexuals are still married and God hasn't struck the Governor dead, but we'll keep you posted if such things happen.
♦ A California man is pursuing a novel but brilliant defense on pot charges. It's entrapment, he claims, since Barack Obama ran on repeated claims that it's wrong to prosecute medical marijuana users, and yup, he's a medical marijuana user.
♦ Washington state Rep Mary Lou Dickerson (D-Seattle) has proposed legalizing marijuana and treating it the way the state treats hard liquor, by selling it legally in state-run liquor stores where buyers have to be 21 and there's a heavy tax. In other words, she's proposing something sensible, so of course HR 2401 (pdf) has no chance of passing, but it does have several sensible co-sponsors. And interestingly, Seattle Mayor-elect Mike McGinn says he likes the idea. What the heck are they smoking up there?
♦ School administrators in New York have suspended a 10-year-old for possession of peppermint oil. Always, always and without exception, "zero tolerance" is a synonym for "zero intelligence", and it's something we should have zero tolerance for.
fascism : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
♦ Here's about 1/3 of what you need to know to understand the economic meltdown, in one straightforward New York Times headline: Banks bundled bad debt, bet against it and won. (Login as unknownnews with password unknown.)
♦ Crafting a brilliant video, these guys want to inspire you do what you should already be doing — banking with a local bank, instead of with a giant criminal enterprise like Bank of America or Chase or any of the other giant banks. Please click and watch and think about it. I'll just add, credit unions are also an option worth considering.
♦ The Obama administration has a rather lame and tiny program that's supposed to help people in danger of losing their homes. But (haven't you heard?) it's rather lame and tiny by design, so it hasn't accomplished much. And anyway, to Obama's people it's the bankers who need to be saved, not their victims.
♦ We give President Obama a lot of complaints because, let's face it, he deserves a lot of complaints. He's a go-along-to-get-along guy when America desperately needs a complete about-face on any number of fronts — war and peace, civil rights, the environment, the economy, on and on. But in the interest of fairness, we're adding a new feature for the new year, giving him a pat on the back when he gets something right, and this week Obama got something right: Obama didn't overreact à la Bush to the explosive underwear bomber, and thus didn't help amplify the terror, which was the modus operandi of the Bush-Cheney administration.
Also, the Obama administration has released another month's worth of White House visitor logs, without even being sued, and President Obama has again and forcefully spoken against government secrecy. Of course, the latter is a little odd, considering the Obama administration's routine efforts to keep the illegal acts of the Bush-Cheney administration cloaked in secrecy. But wait, there's more: Labor Secretary Hilda Solis seems to give a damn about labor rights. And that's about it.
♦ There's an ever-present notion out there that Obama's smart as heck and he's playing chess when everyone else is playing checkers and all that, and well, I have my doubts... but I really like the picture our friend J. R.Mooneyham is painting. It's an interesting and (cross your fingers) plausible theory and I'd love it to be true. Could what looks like a doublecross be by design? Is Obama intentionally deflating expectations so that later, when he breaks his principals out of mothballs and perhaps accomplishes a fraction of the goals that the Left and left-leaners care about, the enthusiasm and applause will be greater just out of relief? "So maybe there's hope yet for those of us wanting to see real change, as opposed to mere smoke and mirrors inadequately shielding an apparent extension of past Bush policies in most areas of government. Maybe Obama's showing us the worst possible scenario now, in order to better leverage our appreciation and enthusiasm later, when he (and the Democratic Congress) needs it most: the next Presidential election."
♦ The always-insightful Steve Benen explains the rules for terror-related political whining: "If terrorists successfully attack during a Democratic president's first year in office (first attack on World Trade Center), it's the Democrats' fault, and the attack is good news for Republicans. "If terrorists unsuccessfully attack during a Democratic president's second term, it's the Democrats' fault the terrorists even tried, and the attack is good news for Republicans. "If terrorists successfully attack during a Republican president's first year in office (9/11), it's the Democrats' fault, and the attack is good news for Republicans. "If terrorists unsuccessfully attack during a Republican president's second term, it's only because the Republican is "taking the fight to the enemy," and the attack is good news for Republicans. "If terrorists unsuccessfully attack during a Democratic president's first year in office, it's the Democrats' fault the terrorists even tried, and the attack is good news for Republicans."
♦ Eight CIA officers were killed last week, in a single suicide bombing at at Forward Operating Base Chapman in occupied Afghanistan. Our sincere condolences to the family and friends of the dead. And that said let's add the obvious with a sad sigh: This happened at an American military base in an occupied foreign country, and it's not hard to understand the why of it. If America was occupied by a foreign power that constructed military bases here in my country, you can bet your life I'd be in the resistance, doing whatever might convince the occupiers to leave my country. Wouldn't you? Especially when...
♦ ... American-led troops were accused yesterday of dragging innocent children from their beds and shooting them during a night raid that left ten people dead. Afghan government investigators said that eight schoolchildren were killed, all but one of them from the same family. Locals said that some victims were handcuffed before being killed.
♦ Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered increased enforcement of his nation's sexual segregation. Hospitals, office buildings, primary schools, and public parks are among the places where the genders are strictly separated.
♦ Nobody who's in the slightest cognizant of the hows and whys of war can be terribly surprised to learn that a document, loudly trumped by the Times of London a few weeks ago as proof that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, has been determined to be fake. US intel experts can't or won't say for sure whether the fakery was sourced in Israel or the UK, and since it's US intel experts talking the US can' be ruled out either.
♦ Israel will allow 700 new apartments to be built in disputed territory in East Jerusalem. The announcement has been "slammed" by the Obama administration. Whatever "slammed" means, rest assured it won't interrupt the flow of US dollars to the Israeli government.
♦ Mordechai Vanunu, the guy who blew the whistle on Israel's up to 200 (as of 1986) nuclear weapons, has again been freed by an Israeli court. He will apparently be allowed to kiss a Norwegian woman, so long as their pillow talk isn't about nuclear weapons.
♦ The American Center for Law and Justice, the arch-right anti-freedom group founded by Pat Robertson, has established affiliate organizations in Europe and, now, Africa. At the latter office they're hoping to insert fundamentalist-friendly and everyone else can go to hell language in the constitutions of Kenya and Zimbabwe.
♦ The US State Department is in quite a tizzy as Japan's new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, seems to be less willing than his predecessors to take orders from Washington. Heads are being furiously scratched in DC because the US wants to move its Okinawa Marine base to a different part of Okinawa, but P.M. Hatoyama hasn't instantly said YesSir YesSir three bags full.
♦ Kurt Westergaard, the Danish cartoonist who drew cartoon images of Muhammad to infuriate Muslims, had his home broken into by an axe- and knife-wielding man on Friday. It looks like more than a mere burglary, as the alleged perp is a Somali who presumably wanted to do more with his axe than merely grind it.
"The original sin of the good-riddance decade came in December of 2000, when the United States Supreme Court intervened to stop a complete recount of the votes in Florida and then declared George Bush to be the president.
This extreme judicial activism was not merely a devastating assault on American democracy. It set in motion the Bush presidency, and with it the pathologies that the Bush/Cheney administration imposed on the country in the form of unnecessary wars, failed economic policies, assaults on civil liberties and crudely divisive and hyper-partisan governance."
"In essence, this entire charade perfectly encapsulates the method of operation for the Religious Right in 2009 and presumably for years to come: generate a phony controversy, raise money off that phony controversy, scream and yell about the fact that nobody is taking this phony controversy seriously, make bold threats and declarations regarding this phony controversy, and then move on to generating new phony controversies and starting the entire process all over again."
"Obama and the Democratic leadership are pushing right-wing corporate policies. That's not a theory. And it's not about "ideology" in the sense these comfortable gentlemen are speaking when they explain that we have to be "pragmatic" and "realistic". It's about hungry bellies and broken limbs that might be yours and your children's and siblings' and friends' in the very near future. This isn't abstract; it's about the simple, obvious fact that which way the money goes determines how our lives go. Our lives. We don't actually care about which politician you happened to fall in love with."
"For some years after 9/11, passengers were forbidden to get up and use the lavatory on the Washington-New York shuttle. Zero tolerance! I suppose it must eventually have occurred to somebody that this ban would not deter a person who was willing to die, so the rule was scrapped. But now the principle has been revisited for international flights. For many years after the explosion of the TWA plane over Long Island (a disaster that was later found to have nothing at all to do with international religious nihilism), you could not board an aircraft without being asked whether you had packed your own bags and had them under your control at all times. These two questions are the very ones to which a would-be hijacker or bomber would honestly and logically have to answer "yes." But answering "yes" to both was a condition of being allowed on the plane! Eventually, that heroic piece of stupidity was dropped as well. But now fresh idiocies are in store. Nothing in your lap during final approach. Do you feel safer? If you were a suicide-killer, would you feel thwarted or deterred?"
"What I don’t understand is the idea that Americans are entitled to perfect security. Here we are (and for the record, all the troops stationed everywhere in the world are you and iI) crashing around the globe and blowing shit up, yet those of us in God’s country should face no threat. And for the most part, we don’t face any threat. Nobody’s bombed any of the weddings I’ve been to over the last few years. I’ve never thought, I don’t think I should go downtown, because somebody might suicide bomb where I shop. I’m convinced that the Canadians will launch their plan for world domination any day, by invading the social and evolutionary cul-de-sac of America where I live. But as of yet I have not had to contend with RCAF close air support in the neighborhood."
"It absolutely defies the imagination that the Republican Party hasn't been sentenced to death by hanging, drawing and quartering after the crimes of the last decade. But no, remarkably, they are in the midst of an amazing revitalization now, courtesy of their aggressive deceits and the utter capitulation of the party nominally in charge."
"Again, my friends and colleagues in the media have two choices in covering this. You can just copy down what the Republicans and Vice President Cheney are saying, and click "send," call it journalism, or you can actually fact-check those comments and put them into context. Your choice. It’s your country."
♦ Continuing its startling decline, the Washington Post last week reprinted an article from The Fiscal Times, not as an opinion piece but as straight news. The Fiscal Times is a propaganda joint opposed to Social Security and all other "entitlement" programs, and it's funded by billionaire conservative Peter G. Peterson, a former Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, former CEO of Lehman Brothers, co-founder of Blackstone Group investment firm, etc. Got it? So running a Fiscal Times article as straight news is kinda like printing a Pat Buchanan piece as news, not opinion. It's just something a mainstream, serious newspaper wouldn't do and wouldn't consider doing.
♦ There's been plenty of chuckling over an ABC News report that two of the purported plotters of the underwear bomber's mission had been released from Guantanamo by the Bush-Cheney administration, and sent to "art therapy". But one of the two has been in custody for eleven months, which means the story is at least half wrong, and it's ABC News, which is really the Washington Post of TV journalism, so who can really be sure about the other alleged plotter?
♦ I first started noticing the demise of the Washington Post in the mid-2000s, while Deborah Howell was the paper's ombudswoman. She repeatedly and reflexively seemed to cave in to right-wing complaints, and by habit she sided with the right-wing spin that was creeping into the paper's news coverage. There were other, presumably prouder moments in her journalistic career, which came to a bloody end in New Zealand last week when she was fatally struck by a car. For me, though, I'll always associate her name with end of the Washington Post's run as a good newspaper, and may they both rest in peace.
♦ There's been a big decline in journalism jobs over the past two decades, and Zandar, a blogger I like, has found a great graphic to illustrate it, but he/she just uses the graphic to hang a joke. I'm seeing two things in it, though, that are actually news to me — good news. First, the decline in journalism jobs started well before the internet took off (though it's gotten dramatically worse since), so the problem isn't entirely due to the rise of the web. And second but more surprising to me is that even with the huge decline, there are still more working journalists in America that there were sixty years ago. Thus we see again that the quality of journalism is collapsing, as vividly and as much or more than the number of journalism jobs.
♦ Unlike every other blog on the internets, I shall not bore you with any year-end lists or a decade's retrospective. I have no wisdom to offer about the turning of a new year or the end of the 00s, at least nothing worth the bother of writing or reading, except perhaps this. It was the crappiest ten years for America and the world since I've been a cognizant adult, and for all of Al Gore's faults and shortcomings, I doubt it would have been even half as crappy a decade if he had been sworn in as President after winning the 2000 Presidential election.
♦ I have long thought highly of Barbara Ehrenreich, and her struggle with cancer, and with the charlatans who make a living by lying about cancer, just moves her up another notch in my estimation.
♦ Rush Limbaugh was hospitalized with chest pains last week. After being discharged from a Hawaii hospital, the famed drug addict and multi-millionaire told reporters that "the American health care system... is working just fine, just dandy". That probably sounds very convincing to the people who listen to Limbaugh, but we're not among them, and the above really isn't newsworthy by our standards.
♦ The tax on "Cadillac health plans" that provides so much funding for Obama's health care reform is one of the bill's major problems. It's basically a cancerous growth, since good health care is something that ought to be encouraged, not discouraged, and since the tax is based on dollar figures and the bill does little to control the skyrocketing costs of health care it means that more and more people will inch into "Cadillac" territory every year.
♦ And the constitutional question remains a real nagging problem. Right-wingers make a lot of ludicrous arguments about a lot of things, but it doesn't seem ludicrous to me to complain — constitutionally — about being required by law to become an insurance company's customer. And with so many arch-right faces on the court, balanced only by the middle-of-the-road picks of Clinton and Obama, it seems entirely plausible to me that the grand health care reform of 2009/10 could be flushed away with a single court ruling.
What got our attention was the utterly predictable right-wing backlash over the equally-predictable left-wing rejoicing at Limbaugh's brief misery and hopes for his death. And I'll agree up-front that such rejoicing is tacky (see the comments below this coverage if you need an example). Still, tacky or not, rejoicing seems a perfectly reasonable response. If Rush Limbaugh was dead we'd certainly be delighted, and if there's a philosophical problem with that I'm not seeing it. We're not praying for his death, like the crazy right-wingers pray for their opponents' deaths, and we're not plotting his death or even hoping for his death. But c'mon — we cherish democracy, truth, an informed electorate, and peace on earth, so we couldn't honestly feign sadness or indifference at the death of someone who's been so very successful at undermining democracy, telling lies, misinforming the electorate, and pushing war wherever possible.
♦ Anastasia D. Kelly has resigned as AIG's Vice Chair for Legal, Human Resources, Corporate Affairs and Corporate Communications, in protest over pay curbs imposed by the Obama administration. She stands to collect about about $2.8M in severance pay.
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♦ The so-called war on Christmas continues, even as Christmas fades into memory. Congressman Henry Brown (R-South Carolina) has proposed a legal scolding for saying "Happy Holidays".
♦ Lawyers representing actress Demi Moore have sent a legal threat to the weblog Boing Boing over its published speculation that a publicly-published image of Ms Moore may have been Photoshopped to artificially enhance her skinniness.
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