Zombies VS Pod People: Best. Birthday. Ever.

She's not the Mayor! She's a POD PERSON!

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. - Henry Louis Mencken

Happy Birthday To Me! The Reddit Politics Page, November 15, 2011.

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back." - Robert Heinlein. Life-Line (1939)

Today is my birthday, a day I have loathed for most of my life.

It has always been associated with disappointed expectations, another year older and a lifetime's dour assurance that there's more of the same to come.


But today I saw the tipping point - the turn away from a baleful future I have been blogging against since the tragedy of  9/11 convinced me to get out of my own head and give a public damn.


I will go on record as saying that today, November 15, 2011 was the day everything changed. The day the future we need became obviously more probable than the future I had been predicting for more than ten years.

I am temperamentally a cynic and while I do know the better side of humankind, and have generally good reason to expect the best of individuals, I have come to have rather low expectations of them in their great masses. My general view of them is well summed up by my choices of intellectual heroes.


I've long considered myself an reflexive conservative; but it is the conservatism of H.L. Mencken and Robert Heinlein.  It is the conservatism of best practices. It is the conservatism that tells me that if I MUST jump from a perfectly good aircraft, I want to have packed both chutes myself.


As a Reflexive-Conservative, I prefer the company of people who embody the self-discipline required to be trusted with firearms and the wisdom to know why, by whom and to what end they are entrusted with my lack of concern.

Rick Perry - A Texan who reflects well on the intelligence of George Bush and the impulse control of LBJ.

This fool just failed the NRA safety course. See if you can count how many critical failures this picture represents. I'm genuinely surprised he's actually holding it by the right end. 


While I will uphold your natural right as a human being to bear arms in defence of your family and person against any forces you feel might threaten your person, your dignity and your way of life, I point out that every society exists in order to let you hoe a row of potatoes in some expectation of peace and the reasonable hope of not being trampled in your own field, and that no society that failed to do that most basic task lasted much longer than a second missed harvest. 


Now we don't mostly live and die by the whim of the weather - but when we are led by people who do not see widespread unemployment, poverty and homelessness to be a problem, well, that is a group of leaders that need to be replaced by those who understand what the point of a civilized society is - lest there become so many victims of Social Darwinism wandering the streets that civil society simply collapses in the face of being obviously pointless.

And yet we have people arguing in favour of Social Darwinism - as if history proved that people forced to the margins and subjected to increasing oppression and poverty simply and politely accepted their fate.

The right of self-defence is inalienable and of course, wandering hordes of wandering, hungry "zombies" are an obvious reason for having the means to defend yourself. But, when emergency planners speak of "the zombie apocolypse,"  they likely mean starving Black and Hispanic citizens deciding to eat the rich, braaaaains first.

When well educated, reasonable, prudent professionals feel a need to prepare the public for the potential breakdown of civil order of that degree, well, first, you should raise one eyebrow and say "indeed"... and you should do it on your way out the door to get any bits of kit you happen to be missing.

But what should first cross your mind (as you fill your shopping cart, mind you...) is how much better it would be to craft a society that was inherently zombie-proof. Because, well, there have been quite a few examples of what might as well have been  a zombie apcolypse, and the reason we lived through it amounted to a lot of people banding together to make sure that the zombies went away. And at some time, it occured to people that it would be A Good Thing to try and nip zombie infestations in the bud.

We call that development "civilization."

When you think of it that way, it becomes pretty obvious that any civilization that has brought the zombie apocalypse upon itself deserves to suffer such a fate.

 Now every single practical guide to survival will tell you that if you are alone in the face of the zombie apocolypse, the best use of your gun is to blow your own brains out before the zombies get to you. This is what europeans realized about the Huns, and that's part of what brought about the age of the Nation State. Not being flayed alive as part of the evening's entertainment is a significant incentive. With so much history to learn from, it should be obvious to the dullest that the only practical way to ensure personal security is in some co-operative way. You have to sleep sometime. This is why the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution is written the way it is.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

When you think of it that way, you also realize that it is very much to your advantage and my advantage to deal with the immediate concerns that we both share. Such as, say, not being shot by fools, rousted by thugs or eaten by zombies. With those matters dealt with, we can spend time on our divergent, individual concerns.

But within the last decade and a bit, pointing out such clearly obvious things to the typical Republican or Canadian Conservative brings accusations of being a "Socialist" and at the same time "a fascist who wants to take away our guns."

Does this look like a "well regulated militia" to you?



Those are citizen-taxpayers, and the children of citizen-taxpayers. Seems to me these guys are the people the 2nd Amendment was intended to deal with, not the people it was intended to empower.

But then, as I said, I'm a reflexive conservative. I expect the cops to uphold the law and protect citizens, not assault the citizenry and spit on the law.



But clearly they do - and clearly the people telling them to do it haven't the first idea why that's an amazingly, vibrantly, painfully stupid thing to do. Because you see, this is not the sort of thing that makes real conservatives happy. This is the sort of thing that made the Civil Rights Act possible, these are the optics that ended the British Empire. When decent people realized what was being done in their name, with their money, while they were being told there was no reason to pay attention to a few isolated malcontents.

Instead, the video shows that the Zombie apocolypse is upon us, and it's lead by men in riot gear, sent by the mayor of your home town. My, doesn't that just that just resonate with your cinematic memory?

The people entrusted with protecting our society are acting as if they were Pod People. And of course, the tide turns when people start to realize that external appearances and the reality of motivations are very much at odds.

As much as the average social conservative might giggle at the idea of hippies getting punched, the idea of a hippie chick getting punched by a cop for presenting a valid court order to an officer of the law... that is quite another thing.  That's not a cop. That's a POD PERSON! That's a ZOMBIE! The APOCOLYPSE is upon us! Jesse Kornbluth put it in this way, and set the twitterversre on fire.

"Many of us have knee-jerk reactions to cops beating citizens. Mine comes from George Orwell, the subject of my honors thesis. He wrote something like this: When I see a policeman with a club beating a man on the ground, I don't have to ask whose side I'm on. But with the exception of the great Colbert, you will look in vain for an intelligent conversation about any of this on television."

I would dryly ask why anyone would turn to their television to hear an intelligent "discussion" about a policeman beating a man on the ground. Perhaps liberals, pacifists and pansies might consider this a time to dialogue and raise conciousness, but a genuine conservative? What, I dryly ask, would John Wayne Do?

John Bernard Books (The Shootist):"I won't be wronged, I won't be insulted, and I won't be laid a hand on. I don't do these things to other people and I expect the same from them." 

 There are some assertions and arguments that will be made in favor of such a thing, but there are some assertions for which the most logical and and appropriate response is a punch in the throat. And should that present the spectre of unreasonable paperwork unworthy of the affront - then turn away from the yammering of fools. I have. And if you are reading this - I suspect you haven't watched much television for the last five years, either.

The conversation IS happening between people who have realized they don't need Tom Brokaw's goddamn permission to have a serious fucking conversation about the moral imperatives expressed by a cop beating supine citizens. To the extent that such an idea needs much discussion, I shall refer you to american history for the sort of conversation required.

"Let us hang together, or we shall most assuredly all hang separtely."

and, of course, should it come to that;  "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes."

That is why I've been smiling all day. It's been my best birthday in literally decades, for today, I have genuine hope that I will see the beginning of something wonderful, instead of hoping I will die before seeing what I most dread.

There will be marching and shouting and yelling and beating and blood and pain for months, possibly years; there might be occasional terrorism and civil wars will continue - though I consider that far, FAR less likely within the US than I did just a week ago. But however it goes down, the only real question for the US Right wing and the Neo Conservative movement worldwide is how long they can postpone surrender, and under what terms they may negotiate a dignified reatreat.

Just in time for 2012, it's the end of the world as we knew it... and it's about time.

I am not Anonymous - but they have a point.

Our message is simple: Do not lie to the people and you won't have to worry about your lies being exposed. Do not make corrupt deals and you won't have to worry about your corruption being laid bare. Do not break the rules and you won't have to worry about getting in trouble for it."

It goes on to warn, "do not make the mistake of challenging Anonymous. Do not make the mistake of believing you can behead a headless snake. If you slice off one head of Hydra, ten more heads will grow in its place. If you cut down one Anon, ten more will join us purely out of anger at your trampling of dissent."

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/06/10/anonymous-warns-nato-this-is-not-your-world/#ixzz1Q1ysqLeN

This is the response of Anonomous to NATO's public musing of how to respond to this widespread network of electronic civil disobedience, which they are trying to represent as "cyber warfare."

The fact that their first response is to publicly muse (quoted below) as to who to shoot does not inspire me with confidence for the future of civilization; at least, not within the framework of the current order of things.

We are dealing with the consequences of a collision between the presumption of an entrenched and increasingly paranoid world leadership and the increasing ability for people worldwide to compare notes and perspectives, share data and network around them. Moreover, the same technology makes large concentrations of power less and less valuable, while being revealed as being less and less effective.

Consider the brutal lesson of Iraq; the great logistical, financial and military concentration of  power against a people who's conventional military was destroyed in days. Turned out that relying on a conventional military as a deterrence against US might was a waste of time. The humble roadside bomb has achieved more against the US than all of the Republican Guards.

This illustrates the problem we all face - the problems we face are ones that cannot be addressed by the institutions we have, and the institutions we have see any attempt to come up with better solutions as direct threats to their power. Now, history has shown what happens time and time again. The status quo, entrenched against an inarguable shift in the circumstances it was founded upon can never win. But it can play for a disasterous outcome, in which everyone loses.

The world is littered with the enigmatic ruins of civilizations in which what little we know is exactly that; faced with change enforced by inarguable circumstances, they chose to argue instead of doing anything useful.

Please consider that Anon has really done nothing more than embarrass governments with their own secrets and rather ineptly concealed crimes of commission and indifference. They have produced documentaries of the sausage-making that is realpolitic and what passes for rational allocation of increasingly scarce world resources. 

Now, I would bet money that many within the various hactivist collectives thought that a few little examples would in fact nudge the world's leadership onto a more rational path. But instead, we get this from NATO (same source)

NATO's report, issued last month, warned about the rising tide of politically-motivated cyberattacks, singling out Anonymous as the most sophisticated and high-profile of the known hacktivist groups:

"Today, the ad hoc international group of hackers and activists is said to have thousands of operatives and has no set rules or membership. It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths. The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted," the report read, also asking, "Can one invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty after a cyber attack? And what response mechanisms should the Alliance employ against the attacker? Should the retaliation be limited to cyber means only, or should conventional military strikes also be considered?"

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2011/06/10/anonymous-warns-nato-this-is-not-your-world/#ixzz1Q1sMPh2e

Boy, talk about bringing a gun to a knife fight. And if you think that's a silly reversal, that the gun will always win... you don't know enough about fighting with knives in the dark.

The only truly deadly ammunition Anon has is the truth, and their weapons upgrades come from Authoritarian responses to the truth, which is starting to convince the thoughtful, intelligent and wired people in the world that the people they work for in the trade of routing, storing and securing data really cannot handle the truth. 

They are in the position of not merely suspecting, but knowing for a fact that the people they report to are less qualified to make important decisions about the future of the world than they are themselves.

Now, all of this is as predictable as the night following the day and rocks rolling downhill. But NATO's reaction is stunningly out of touch. Oh, I'm not at all surprised that someone came up with a military response as an option - obviously, it's a military alliance. It should have been considered in order to be dismissed as a completely nonviable option.  But saying that out loud in public? It shows a complete failure to grasp what military force can possibly achieve.

Suggesting a co-ordinated world war against the ULTIMATE in diffuse targets, a transnational movement of largely independent activists armed with a technology they understand better than our "decision makers" demonstrates catastrophic cognitive failure. Or at least, it demonstrates the totally wishful hope that you, the reader, will remain wishfully complacent long enough for the decision-makers themselves to cash out.

The (rather short) article concludes:

Quite when Anonymous started modeling itself after fictional terrorist organizations is unclear, but the message is just the opposite: NATO is on warning. How they'll respond to this—if they'll respond—remains to be seen, but I doubt that I'm the only person hoping that any response will be far more measured than bringing up conventional military strikes again.

Measured? How about "rational" and "relevant?"

Ok, please folks, don't presume that this is written from any particular political viewpoint or bias. I'm going to leave that to you. Politics and ideology must work from a grounding in reality. You have to deal with "how things are" in order to get to where you can usefully dispute how you wish things to proceed.

Now, I cannot possibly overstate this. Anon is right. The fact that Anon, Wikileaks and LulzSec exist at all, much less scored as many obviously easy "victories" is an illustration of a new reality; the flipside to the erosion of individual rights and the spread of the national-security survaillance state.

Who shall guard the guardians?

Let me point out the painfully obvious.  Where, folks, do you think these leaks come from? Where, people, do you think the expertise was developed? How, dear people, do you think they knew your security was woefully inadequate? Perhaps, most importantly, why do you think they take such serious risks? Just for "Lulz?"

Anonomous hides - obviously - within it's targets. In all probablity, it knows how to evade security because it helped develop the protocols.

But worse, dear people, you have a lot of very, very intelligent people who are annoyed that they are forced to labor in the buggy-whip factories when it's time to make automobiles. 

Yes, this is about DRM, and Intellectual Property, and trans-nationalism. It's about the recognition that while there will be a New World Order, it will actually be entirely new, not all that orderly, and will not be a planetary nation-state, much less the theocratic feudalism that the Bachmans and Bin-Ladins of the world fantasize about. I can't even truly imagine what it will be, much less expect that it will suit my own fancies of how things ought to be - but I do know something must change.

Most people would probably put up with a religious theocracy if it were an otherwise fair, rational, sane and stable place, where people were mostly left alone if they didn't' rock the boat. But in return they would expect a degree of personal security for themselves and their children that people like Michelle Bachmann dismiss as outright parasitism, a communistic expectation of "entitlements" on the order of, you know, not starving alone in the dark.

You can't really dismiss the majority of the population as being "disposable assets" and "useless mouths" without some significant number of them deciding that that rationale may as well apply to you - and thinking that exiting this mortal coil with a loud bang as close to you as possible is as painless a death as they can ever hope to expect, should they loyally depend on you for continued leadership.

You see, this is not really about politics. It's about reality. It's about the fact that the people in charge of the world seem to be unable to grasp it, or are politically unable to come to grips with it.

ALL governments and societies exist because we consent to be governed, to participate and contribute. If we are forbidden our part, if our rights are denied for arbitrary reasons, if our security and dignity as persons are dismissed as unimportant, that consent will be increasingly conditional, even as the respect for the forces of law and order are eroded by the increasingly violent and intrusive flailings of our leaders.

There are a number of very real threats facing us; Climate Change, peak oil, a looming global shortage of water are three, just off the top of my head. Anyone who cares to know about these issues can study them and they can further compare what is known with the policies put in place to deal with these issues by those who are entrusted with the duty to plan ahead and prepare for matters of common concern. To say the match between data and policy created in reaction to data is "a loose fit" would be something of an understatement.

We really do not have the luxury of time - for that time has been squandered by those loudly shouting that reality is all some conspiracy intended to make them change their way of life.

Well, the change is necessary. And it is inevitable. Those who do change have a future, those who don't will join the Anasazi and the Aztecs and their works will one day be mentioned in the same breath with the fabled gardens of Babylon. Why?

Because "reality is what happens whether you believe in it or not." That phrase, coming P.K. Dick - someone known for dabbling in altered perceptions and belief structures - bears a good deal of freight. Standing in the way of that train of thought leads to pretty much the same thing as standing in the way of an actual train.

If you call a general agreement among people qualified to have an opinion that climate change a conspiracy, you are dangerously stupid, on the order of  "stupid enough to play Russian roulette with a semiautomatic pistol."   If you are out there calling on people to pray for rain - as the Governor of Texas did recently - rather than doing anything at all useful in terms of leadership, legislation or allocation of disaster relief funds - you deserve to be on the short list for inclusion in that great volume,  "Footnotes in History."

If you think the answer to peak oil is to drill for more oil - you really don't grasp the concept. And you can't be permitted to fuck up things you don't understand. Because we are all on this one planet. There is no escape for most of us. So those of us in a position to see the inevitable really have little choice in the matter.

Let me underline this, folks. The leaks come from within. They come from people who have access to the data, understand the data, tried to communicate the importance of the data to the organizations they were loyal to - only to be shushed or crushed.

That has been happening, not just for a few weeks or a few years, but for literally decades. 

But you see, it used to be possible to actually shut people up. It used to be possible to contain and manage the rate of leakage. It used to be possible to control communications.

But do you really think that the emergent powers are all that interested in supporting an obviously dysfunctional social order? The people you absolutely must trust to empower and enforce your vision of how you would wish the future to unfold are professionally and personally incapable of believing the bullshit.

They work at DARPA, and CERN; they are data analysts for the RCMP. They are the cryptographers at NSA, they are the hackers the Chinese and Indian governments are sure they have subverted, and they are the media figures the CIA thinks fondly are under their control. And they all talk to each other.

It used to be "we know where you live" was enough. But no longer - for the risk of actual detection is lower than it ever was, while the sheer volume of data that can be trafficked makes it worth the risk. Bradly Manning was ...um... not exactly a sterling example of competent trade-craft. And yet, even he managed to get the data out. Keeping him in a supermax isn't going to shut that barn door.

The IT managers you need to keep your websites up, the  social media consultants you rely on for your image management, the data security specialists and the political advisers, The ones who have to know your agendas and secrets so they can keep them hidden - They have to want to do that.  

It's hard to want to do that when you say things in public that show that you are either crazy, or pretending to be in order to be elected. 

They are the ones who deal with the numbers you need to make your decisions, and they know what the spreadsheets say, what the raw data means and they are increasingly able to speak to one another and make sure that proprietary, secure data that proves that you are full of shit gets into the right hands, without them losing their ability to continue leaking crucial data.

I fully expect the response to Anonymous to be something utterly idiotic, along the lines of Stalin shooting any general competant enough to lead a successful coup against him, while Hitler was on his doorstep.

We have already seen signs of this sort of nonsense in France, (the "civil internet" idea, where nobody is permitted to speak the obvious about the offensive idiocy of their leaders.) We've seen how utterly ineffective attempts to restrict the flow of information are, even in totally authoritarian regimes.

Consider just how much data can be compressed onto ONE tiny SD card. Consider the fact that truly robust encryption techniques are widely available. Consider that the people you most worry about know these things by heart. 

Again, I am not speaking politics here. I'm not speaking to the moraltity or ethics of Anon. I'm sure the membership has as many opportunists and idiots as any other group. But this is one of those points in history when you either get it or you don't. There came a time when it became obvious that Constantinople would fall - and that was clear long before it actually did. The smart people left. And they started leaving a generation before the fall.

There will be no NeoConservative New World Order, because it's got as much relevance to the future of humanity as Hadrian's Wall.  The current way of doing things doesn't work; it merely gets in the way of those able and willing to do something that's useful. Increasingly, manipulation and subversion are needful tactics for individuals to master worldwide, so why on earth should they respect any government or transnational interest group that must be bribed or simply avoided?

The real problem with NATO's response is the failure to understand the great truth of humanity. As a species, interested on a very visceral level in our personal and species survival, we demand of our "top ten percent" just one simple, basic decision:

"Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way."

Who wins a cultural war? The one who gets there furstist with the mostest.

Image via WikipediaWhen the Wall Street Journal publishes a piece like this, you best stop whatever you are doing and pay attention. Because we are not speaking now of subtle indications of possible future unrest, we are talking about immediate, actionable intelligence.

Tax the Super Rich now or face a revolution Paul B. Farrell - MarketWatch

Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2.

Revolutions build over long periods — to critical mass, a flash point. Then they ignite suddenly, unpredictably. Like Egypt, started on a young Google executive’s Facebook page. Then it goes viral, raging uncontrollably. Can’t be stopped. Here in America the set-up is our nation’s pervasive “Super-Rich Delusion.”

The same thing, from a different perspective, to the parents of the potential revolutionaries.

COLUMN — American workers got what they deserved - Holland, MI - The Holland Sentinel

Remember the Reagan standard? Are you better off today than you were a decade ago? Two decades? Three? Unless you make more than $380,000 a year, the answer is no. In fact, your standard of living over the last quarter century has actually decreased while millionaires have added 30 percent to their net wealth. Why? Two reasons.

First, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs went overseas while the politicians you elected did nothing to stop them. Yet you continue to elect leaders who offer nothing but tax cuts, as if that would stem the flow of disappearing jobs.

Did you demand your leaders address America’s trade imbalance or continuous outsourcing of jobs? Did you demand your leaders require foreign countries to buy a dollar’s worth of American goods for every dollar of goods they sell here?

No and no. You didn’t bother. You simply crossed your fingers and prayed, “I hope my job’s not next.” You made concessions to your employer and hoped that would stem the exodus of jobs, or at least yours. How’d that work for you?

I've spoken a lot about this potential over the last decade, and this is a recurring theme. Sane people do not govern or regulate like feudal barons, because, well, history tells us what happens in the historical short term to such barons. When authority abuse becomes pervasive and when those who complain of it are routinely targeted for reprisals, those people who are in authority and the institutions they control cease to be supported by those who pay for them. What happens next? If you are an American, I suggest you re-read the preamble to the Deceleration of Independence and the Second Amendment.

Graphictruth: Civil War

Unless it becomes quite clear that the danger to the administration from the left is just as grave as the danger from the right, and by "danger" I mean a very literal potential danger, there will be no progress. It's not about Left and right, it is about Lawful and Unlawful, a choice between the Rule of Law and the rule of unworthy, corrupt, unaccountable sociopaths. Such people will not simply admit defeat. The only "dirty bomb plot" EVER proven to be greatly advanced past the wishful thinking stage was by a Nazi-identified Maine Millionaire.

And it was apparently aimed at the Obama Inaugural.

It's not cynical to say that might makes right - for no right has ever been established in the face of superior might. So progressives should start thinking as to whether their convictions carry with them the courage to fight, at need. For that need may well come, and  weak Reids will not serve you well.

I expect that the next decade will be of great interest to future historians, and I publicly doubt there will be a recognizable United States for much longer than 50 years. I just hope that the changes will occur with only moderate loss of life.

History and human nature doesn't lead me to optimism on that score, but I still strive to hope.

A Decade Late and a Nutcracking Short

It seems that, at long last, Democrats are growing spines:

Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) on Wednesday delivered a fervent and stinging rebuke to former Vice President Dick Cheney's recent attack on President Obama after the failed Christmas bombing.

"I am sick and tired of the former vice president of the United States taking shots not only at this administration, for problems he was largely and personally responsible for, but by an extension at those of us who served in the military and bring that experience," Massa said on MSNBC's The Ed Show.

"This man suffers from a horrible case of political Tourette's [syndrome], and it's about time that we stand up and kick right back because I'm sick and tired of him kicking us in our shins," Massa said.

Cheney's forceful critique of Obama quickly garnered significant media attention, and several journalists accused the story's author Mike Allen of failing to fact-check Cheney's seemingly curious claims.

"We need to grow a spine and stand up and show America exactly who did what," Massa said, pointing to Cheney's role in the events leading to the Christmas day attempt and the fact that the Bush administration took several days longer than Obama to address the 2001 shoe-bomber incident.

"It was Dick Cheney personally responsible for the release of the masterminds of the Christmas airline terror plot," he said, accusing the former vice president of shifting his culpability to Democrats.

"It makes no difference what we do, this man suffers from political diarrhea of the mouth, and unless we stand up and call it as it is he's going to keep on getting away with it," Massa said.

Reasonable people gave up on the Republican Agenda producing anything even slightly resembling anything it predicted somewhere in 2004. I was certain before the election, which after the whole Texas redistricting fiasco, was clearly going to be a sham at best.

I'd come to the particularly depressing conclusion that the Republicans (The ones with access to power, at least) were, by and large, resigned to being lousy little cheating bastards because in their hearts they knew they could not win on the merits of their philosophy or on the coat-tails of a successful Presidency.

Hell, the time from 2000 to 2004 pretty much proved to anyone with a functional reading level and the ability to run a basic spreadsheet that "Conservatism" as presented to Republican voters and Republicanism as it had been performed upon us all were completely different things, not merely a difference between apples and oranges, but between Bananas and Batshit.

But until now, Democratic elective officials seemed too timid to mention the obvious out loud, and tried to treat their disloyal opposition as if they were sane, competent and honest representatives, capable of contributing a valid and honest balance to the sorts of passionate debates that should - indeed must - shape politics.

Well, I think we know how well that's worked out. And if youda ast me, I coulda tolja. Frankly, I'm moderately and pleasantly surprised that the really freakin' crazy wing of the rethuglicans have not managed to stage an outright coup. And it seems to me that it's increasingly obvious that the sort of people who would be very much in favor of crushing opposition are already well-represented within the various "public safety" organizations.

I returned to Canada just before Obama's election because I did not care to risk what I thought to be a very ugly possibility. This was my thinking in August, 2007:  Quagmire was the plan all along.

So let us look back at the net effects of this administration. The first thing it did, of course, was to squander a budget surplus and start to build the most massive debt in US history, debt that is held in part in the Middle East and in part in China, due to our massive trade imbalances. Laws were passed that gave tax breaks to large corporations moving offshore - taking HUGE tax revenues with them, while monetary and credit policies were pursued that encouraged the middle class to take on unsustainable levels of personal debt. Then, the mousetrap was sprung - completely unconscionable revisions in the Bankruptcy act.

Meanwhile, the War On Terror was declared, and many steps were taken - almost none of them having any effect on actual terrorism, save to increase the potential for it, while obvious precautions, such as securing ports, rail transport and airline baggage screening were dismissed in favor of purely cosmetic harassment that had the effect of ensuring that the American people became used to being arbitrarily questioned and inconvenienced by barely competent officials of the state, often in conspicuous violation of both the Constitution and personal dignity.

The Patriot act - along with widespread, clandestine and illegal activities, such as arbitrary arrest, suspension of habius corpus and of course the quite deliberate specter of torture as one possible fate for Administration critics became part of the national consciousness, with most of us still believing that, fearful and potentially disastrous as these policies were, the idea was to combat terrorism.

But in hindsight, it's clear that our national policies have taken what was a potential threat - one worth attention and concern, but by no means something to panic about - and turned it into a world-wide emergency situation. The only conclusion I can come to reasonably is that US policy has the direct and probably intentional effect of creating conditions where terrorism will flourish, both abroad and domestically.

How will domestic terror arise as a widespread thing? Well, the first acts will likely be "black operations." But Bush's domestic policies and what appears to be a calculated campaign of focused contempt for the sensibilities and needs of the vast majority of the citizenry can be reliably expected to result in an incident here and there, at least if the pump is primed by an example or two that is suitably publicized.

And what that permits is the imposition of martial law, the suspension of elections and the Constitution itself - "for the duration of the emergency."

It is very difficult to impose a dictatorship on a wealthy, secure nation - which is what we were when President Clinton handed off the Presidency to the Shrub. Now we are a debtor nation, both personally and nationally, with such levels of debts that many of us are effectively slaves to giant corporations that are no longer headquartered in the US, making them far less accountable to US law.

What we are seeing is the engineered collapse of the US economy - and far more critically, it's position of moral and social influence over the world's population.

But I am distinctly concerned that this agenda is one that is broadly advantageous to people of power and influence within and without the Government to a degree that it pushes politics aside. To be blunt - I think it's a pretty obvious agenda by now, that the Democrats are not idiots and that they are, in essence, furthering it by offering token and ineffective resistance.

President Obama may be able to forestall this - or he just might be better at swiping and fulfilling the Republican agenda than Clinton was. I found that, as much as I did hope and pray that Obama is as good a man as he seems, I also know what getting to where he is at this time in history implies about the substance within the seeming. So, while a change back to decent and competent government is required and I have hope that will happen... the bulk of US history and my studies of human nature suggested to me that betting my personal pink butt on that outcome would be unwise, when I had a perfectly good Canadian citizenship going to waste.

For the last year, I've been resisting the impulse to disclose how little moved I would be if the US dissolved into the spasms of civil war that some seem so determined to bring about. But aside from the naked odds against such a damn-fool enterprise, there's another dimension to the equasion y'all are forgetting. I doubt very much that the world will be willing to allow y'all to sort it out between yourselves.

However, they would be rather happy to intervene. Altruistically, of course. To minimize human suffering.

Hell, we here in Canada would be happy to secure Alaska for you. Come to think of it, we'd pretty much have to. All that coastline, all that oil, bunch of crazy people who need a federal reality-check?  Not something you leave lying around unattended. Tends to attract flies. White man's burden, y'know.

And good luck on getting it back, once the Alaskan people meet the RCMP and our Medical Services Plan.

But if you really must - well, go for it. Let the United States of America perish and be replaced by whatever smaller republics and client states may remain, with the help of entirely too willing foreign powers.

We all remember how well that whole Balkans thing worked out, don't we? We DO so hope to have an opportunity to do a better job. Practice, you know... Just a little more practice.

Pardon me, I need to go flight-prep my black helicopter.



Money quote from LGF article cited above:

If I still had any allegiance to the GOP, I’d probably be upset. But at this point, the only emotion I have left is amusement. This is where the conservative movement has been heading ever since Barack Obama was elected, and now they’re finally arriving at the black helicopter landing pad.

Quotes just don't come any more apt than this one. But a high five to the utter fucking surreality of Rachel Maddow being mentioned approvingly on Little Green Footballs. I'm sure this stuns the hell out of everyone involved.

Taken together with the John Birch Society becoming part of the "establishment" GOP - surely the End Times Must Be Upon Us.

Of course, as I always say, "Ah, but what precisely is about to End? All that God-bothering and you still seem to think it's a Bad Thing."

Keeping the Moral High Ground.

A little reminder on the tactical and strategic value of maintaining the moral high ground.

t r u t h o u t | The Moral Character of Our Country: "What the revisionists fail to understand is that morality is not a tool of advantage for the strong and/or the privileged to be used and appealed to when it is in their interest to do so, and when it is not, to be modified, ignored, or manipulated. Nor is morality a prop, a façade through which we may proclaim our superiority and/or condemn others. If morality is to have any meaning at all, it must recognize as a fundamental principle the dignity and the rights - the lives and well-being - of ALL human beings. If we do not value persons, all persons, not just members of our particular community, religious group, ethnic group, gender etc., and respect their dignity and their rights, then all other things, whether it is property, possessions, national boundaries, the flag etc., lose their meaning and their value as well. Like justice, morality is blind and requires universal and equal application, holding everyone to the same standard. It is the hypocrite, the rogue nation, that attempts to modify the tenets of morality, or argues that it be ignored, or rationalizes loopholes (collateral damage) through which to pursue their individual or national interest.

Further, the refutation of revisionism rests not on moral argument only but on sound war fighting science as well. Contrary to the view of the revisionists, knowledgeable military tacticians who understand the nature of asymmetrical/counterinsurgency warfare, realize that despite what may have been the perception in the past, morality and military science share common concerns. Consider, for example, the status of noncombatants. While much mental effort has been expended explaining ('rationalizing' is probably better) that innocent deaths, though regrettable, are necessary and justifiable as collateral damage, both the moralists and the military theorists such as Gen. Stanley McCrystal, the commanding officer of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, agree that killing noncombatants is not only immoral and illegal but counterproductive to achieving the military goals necessary for success (victory) in asymmetrical/counterinsurgency war, i.e., winning the hearts and minds of the people. It has become clear, therefore, that morality and military science are fundamentally compatible and the move to abandon or 'modify' the former indicates a lack of understanding of the latter. Collateral damage, then, is not only morally disingenuous, it is militarily unsound and those who advocate that we abandon or modify this particular moral (and legal) criterion are both morally and militarily misguided and lack expertise in both areas of study."

Emphasis mine.

This argument apples just as strongly domestically as internationally. It applies to the "war on drugs, the "war on terrorism" and the "culture war," particularly when we see these situations re-framed in such a way as to make our ethical principles "more flexible" to "fit the emergent nature of the situation."

The author was pointing out the moral dimension of health care reform, and reasoned their way to this observation. Ultimately, all actions are governed by ethics, simple, broad principles from which we draw our morals.

Warfare, far from being a "special case" in which the "ordinary rules" do not apply, is a case wherein the the cause and effect dynamics of human nature are painted in blood for all to see. The Karma of war has sharp teeth and moves swiftly indeed; actions that are unethical, unjust and stupid breed resistance from the enemy and demoralize those who are supposedly on "your side."

This is exactly the situation celebrated by chairman Mao's observation that "The revolutionary swims in a sea of peasants." And that very understanding is being illustrated with rocket grenades built, smuggled and even fired by ordinary Afghans and Iraqis of no particularly fixed religious or ideological orientation more complex than "get the HELL off my LAWN!"



You would think that Republicans would understand that most basic motivation. The fact that they do not indicates some moral and practical confusion as to who's lawn it actually is.

And so I draw the circle closed. When one group of people sees another group of people in terms of a problem that stands in the way of achieving their goals - problems that can, may or must be eliminated to achieve that goal - what we have are incompatible moral structures. It's not exactly a stretch to understand why people targeted for elimination will determine that to be an immoral act, one which entirely justifies a response. Obviously, there are no better placed people to understand the depth of delusion here than - in the alleged words of Boss Tweed - that half of the poor hired to kill the other half.

When morality becomes a means to rationalize expedient action, instead of a framework to define RIGHT action, it becomes, at best, an impediment. It's certainly not an argument that is persuasive to those who, in examining it's tenants, can easily see themselves as being "the next group up against the wall." C.F. The Solidarity Movement.

Ideology counts, but it counts with a sword. And in the other pan of the balance, we weigh the Politics of Personal Survival. That which weighs more, well... I suppose in pragmatic terms, it depends on where the sword cuts - and it's a persuasive argument against using it at all.

Ideological movements tend to create their own antithetical movements which in turn tend to be traduced by opportunistic bastards who see them as a horse to ride to immortality and damnation.

It's an environment that encourages the development of absolute moral systems that work from xenophobic first principles. To mention two, but hardly the only examples, the Dominionist theocratic movements within the Conservative Evangelical Protestant movement and of course the equally un-scriptural and immoral theocratic Islamic movement exemplified by Osama Bin Ladin.

Each show distinct similarities in rhetoric and rationalizations to the equally delusional religions of Communism, Fascism and "New World Order Neoconservativism."

For both groups, "right" is defined as actions that advance the group and "wrong" as things that disadvantage the group - as defined by their hierarchical leadership, of course.

Frankly, I attribute much of the growth of these groups to the breakdown of the concept of the rule of law and respect for the individual, much of which was sacrificed on the alter of the Cold War by all participants.

But ultimately, all individuals of any intelligence must come to the conclusion that if a nation or cause would not hesitate to sacrifice them in the name of "national interest" or "national security" or "for the good of the People" or for the "advance of the Cause," they understand that the most fundamental tenant of the social compact with them no longer exists.

That fundamental tenant is that they are as significant to the society as any other person, that their value does not flow from wealth or position or status; that these things are role and reward, a product of a complex interaction between fortune, necessity, opportunity and education, all of which depends upon those that the pathological narcissist would dismiss as being "Useless Mouths."

When you are somewhere within the top third of the pyramid, it makes very little sense, even in an hierarchical, patriarchal, disorderly authoritarian sense - to blow up the bottom third.

It makes the creation of a different pyramid an imperative, for it defines the leadership as being unworthy, having violated the social compact. Self-preservation is the strongest motivation of all, and there is no higher cause for creating a social order than mutual self-interest.

Therefore, violating that compact is a misdeed that is both grave and self-defeating.

When you have large numbers of people within a culture who see their interests as being in conflict with a much greater number of individual, lawful citizens, and who see no problem with acting unethically toward those people, who rationalize their unethical and unjust activities with exactly the same words and reasons as do incompetent generals who are quite willing to "destroy the village in order to save it," they have made a fateful choice. They have designated more enemies than they can possibly dispatch, and, short of a dignified redefinition of the terms of engagement, they are in a situation defined long ago by the Great Sage of War, Sun Tsu.

12. Therefore, in your deliberations, when seeking to determine the military conditions, let them be made the basis of a comparison, in this wise:--

13. (1) Which of the two sovereigns is imbued with the Moral law? (2) Which of the two generals has most ability? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth? (4) On which side is discipline most rigorously enforced? (5) Which army is stronger? (6) On which side are officers and men more highly trained? (7) In which army is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment?

14. By means of these seven considerations I can forecast victory or defeat.

Note that the moral high ground is Sun Tsu's most important consideration. And here's another observation from him that is of immense importance to the current world situation.

2. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.

"If this be treason, make the most of it."

Fox Populi T-Shirt by webcarve

Whatever you may think of the Daily Kos; as a group they are unrivaled at picking out particularly idiotic statements by Republicans. Of course, the ammunition is provided with political intent - but all the sharp edges were lovingly crafted by the intended targets. If there is one great observation political critique to evolve over the last several years, it is this: "It shouldn't be this easy."

The fact that the following accusation of treason against Colin Powell is compounded by getting a "me too" from a fox news host is a matter that should be of bipartisan concern - and yet it can be presumed it is not, will not be and that pointing it out will be attributed to "political score-settling" or "lib'rul propaganda." I'm no liberal - but I become less and less interested in pointing out the apparently too-subtle distinctions between my own views and those of classical or modern Liberals. I'm unable to find words both small and rude enough to communicate.

And that, dear readers, is a significant problem. That is not merely a "political" issue. For treason is a rather consequential word to be attaching to a disaffected political ally.

If this accusation ever comes to Gen. Powell's attention - and I cannot imagine why anyone would think it significant enough to mention to him, nor would I expect him to consider Fox to be a source of reliable intelligence - I can only imagine that the very apt Patrick Henry quotation I chose to entitle this article might cross his mind.

If Colin Powell is a "Bad Republican," one wonders what a "Good Republican" looks like. Even more troubling, the speaker equates disloyalty to the Republican Party with disloyalty to the state. That is the sort of assumption that should have you checking your personal weapons to make sure they will function properly at sudden need.

But it does lead us to consider what "Loyal Republicans" look like.

Well, there's no lack of examples; Take Sen Dave Vitter (R, LA). Here's how he explains his tactic of holding up Obama's choice for FEMA chief just before hurricane season.

"Almost four years after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, communities like Cameron Parish and Grand Isle are still waiting on an answer from FEMA so that fire stations and other key facilities can be rebuilt," Vitter said. "And FEMA is complaining about a short delay of this nomination vote? It seems like they have their priorities mixed up. I'm eager to end all of this delay; I hope FEMA is."

Gee, Dave, that means that, during those four years as a valued member of the majority party, you were unable to fulfill your most significant duty as a Senator - to get federal dollars for critical infrastructure? You could not shake loose any money for these critical infrastructure matters? Couldn't form some sort of activist coalition? Do a little lobbying of various agencies and federal entities? Schmooze committee heads?

Considering your failure to do your job when you belonged to a party that made every decision in favor of Republicans and controlled every aspect of the decision making structure - perhaps it's not so unreasonable that the White House dismisses this as a purely political stunt. There's good reason to doubt you have any genuine interest in dealing with the needs of those who supposedly elected you. (Assuming, of course, they actually did.)

There is a place in politics for stunts, and it's reasonable to consider the timing, the skill and the objective. I think you need to go ask Ron Paul for a few tips. Because, you see, you don't hold up the President on a time critical appointment when your stated reason for doing amounts to "because I'm incompetent."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was notably blunt:

When asked about Vitter's reasoning, Gibbs said "the best way to get moving on any concerns that he has with FEMA is to get somebody of the utmost regard at the helm of FEMA to make progress."

"And I think his constituents would expect that same level of professionalism," Gibbs said.

One would think - but after eight years of prompt, high quality (R) service, they are probably relieved that the federal government has not designated New Orleans as a nuclear waste repository.

You see, this is the sort of public servant you get when blind loyalty to Party is the only required qualification. And while the equations may have differing variables across the aisle - results do not seem to indicate that they add up to significantly higher values.

There are a lot of places where people have simply given up on trying to get rid of obviously corrupt and conspicuously incompetent leaders. It's clear that the process itself is so badly compromised that going through the motions of participatory democracy seems - and in many cases likely is - a complete waste of effort.

Speaking of incompetence - Colin Powell spent much of his tenure with the Bush Administration trying to fix a fuckup in progress, the completely incoherent and ultimately more than useless detainment program that led the US to national disgrace with the scandals at Gitmo, Abu Ghrab and elsewhere. This article establishes that Dick Cheney was one of, if not the major force behind the completely indiscriminate roundup of apparently randomly-selected victims, a process he apparently still defends as vital to national security.

Fox news - as everyone is well aware, due to the mindless cheerleading of techniques of torture by such leading Republican intellectual leaders as Sean Hannity, apparently concurs that torturing the wrong people is as likely to produce good, actionable intelligence as torturing the right people. That is, of course, a common-sense conclusion - if you understand that torture does not produce high quality intelligence. So, we must presume that the "good results" would be something more along the line of terrifying the crap out of certain target elements - the Iraqi people and, of course, "libruls."

Colin Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence B. Wilkerson has a blistering assessment of the entire program that Powell's team ultimately failed to put an end to, and is unheasitatingly assigning direct responsiblity for that failure to Dick Cheney. (Though no doubt he would consider it as a "credit.")

After a relentless establishment of the reasons for making his statements - foundations that everyone concerned about national security from any perspective, political or practical should read - he bluntly concludes:

Cheney went on to say in his McLean interview that "Protecting the country's security is a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business. These are evil people and we are not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek." I have to agree but the other way around. Cheney and his like are the evil people and we certainly are not going to prevail in the struggle with radical religion if we listen to people such as he.

Fox news would presumably have the ability - as a news gathering organization - to contact people with appropriate, relevant and useful insights into matters of this import. Certainly, you would think that if a man of the stature of Colin Powell had qualms about Cheney's torture program, they would have sources that could have let them know about it.

We can then presume that they are either devoid of contacts that could have told them as matters developed - but that would then establish that they have no useful sources. Of course, by now, a simple Google search could have given them multiple sources to inform their analysis. At this point, we must therefor presume they have the intent of deliberately misinforming their audience, that, or presume they are absolute idiots. One could easily presume that both are true; it takes quite a bit more charity to say that neither is.

But Hannity proves by example that he's not firmly enough convinced that waterboarding is not torture to put his personal pink butt on the line to underline the network's editorial position.

Perhaps we should put the challenge to Rupert Murdoch himself?

I suspect for men of stature such as Colin Powell, being called a traitor to such a cause served and advanced by such people is an honor to be cherished.

As for those who continue to excuse and defend and demand the GOP move even further towards absolute sociopathic authoritarian mindlessness; "Fox Populi, Fox Idiotum."

I suppose Sun Tsu would council me to silence on this matter, but I'm willing to risk it. At this point, those who continue to have faith in this mindlessly evil sociopolitical philosophy are probably incapable of understanding the point I'm making here.

So in plain English, here it is. People this viciously stupid and this prone to violence will have to be dealt with. Nor am I saying that as a rallying cry - I'm stating it as a reality they will absolutely bring about by their own efforts.

You - whoever you are - should be considering how you, your family and the people and institutions you are responsible for might be affected should some fanatically idiotic person act in the manner that Fox news and agitators and propagandists are clearly urging them toward.

The only prudant assumption is that there are people - who are no doubt directly or indirectly connected to whatever circle of hell picks up the phone when Cheney calls - in position to use such a situation as a pretext to take some action you might well consider objectionable.

It's time to abandon the fond assumption that "such things could never happen here." They surely can - just as surely as there were those saying "such things could never happen here" when Caeser marched on Rome.

Nor do I expect that things will unfold much differently in the United States then they did after Caeser crossed the Rubicon.

But there is one lesson of history - repeated far too often, in my opinion - and it is this. It is profoundly unwise to question the loyalty of those who have defended the honor and security of a nation in such a way as to establish that those holding sway over it have no honor and are undeserving of personal security.

When Government Becomes Alarmed By The People

No "Rush" Whining! by webcarve
Create a custom sticker Using www.zazzle.com

Glenn Greenwald: The Ultimate Reaping of What One Sows: Right-Wing Edition:

It's certainly true that federal police efforts directed at domestic political movements -- even ones with a history of inspiring violence in both the distant and recent past -- require real vigilance and oversight, and it's also true that the DHS description of these groups seems excessively broad with the potential for mischief. But the political faction screeching about the dangers of the DHS is the same one that spent the last eight years vastly expanding the domestic Surveillance State and federal police powers in every area. DHS -- and the still-creepy phrase "homeland security" -- became George Bush's calling card. The Republicans won the 2002 election by demonizing those who opposed its creation. All of the enabling legislation underlying this Surveillance State -- from the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act, from the various FISA "reforms" to massive increases in domestic "counter-Terrorism" programs -- are the spawns of the very right-wing movement that today is petrified that this is all being directed at them.

When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you. If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it's going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity. That's its nature.

See, here's where all that talk about "ethics in government" that neocons ignored and dismissed as being the speech of cowardly weaklings comes back to haunt them - exactly as I and many other people said, many times. I'd create links, but jeez, the very idea makes me tired. Search this blog and Google. Or you can just take my word for it. LOTS of people said that permitting these things to stand was a really dumb idea.

Well, could be worse. Hillary coulda won. Oh, wait, she figures rather prominently in the Cabinet, doesn't she?

Power corrupts. Etc. This is why it's a very good idea to sharply limit the power of government to interfere with individual people.

But having said that, there's another thing to be observed here. Greenwald observes in passing, without commenting - but I'm nowhere near so polite. I will observe - and then I will be blunt.

Greenwald cites a New York Times article from 2005 describing the sort of people that were being watched by the FBI, using the questionable powers granted by the Patriot Act.

F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.

After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, John Ashcroft, who was then attorney general, loosened restrictions on the F.B.I.'s investigative powers, giving the bureau greater ability to visit and monitor Web sites, mosques and other public entities in developing terrorism leads. The bureau has used that authority to investigate not only groups with suspected ties to foreign terrorists, but also protest groups suspected of having links to violent or disruptive activities.

But the documents, coming after the Bush administration's confirmation that President Bush had authorized some spying without warrants in fighting terrorism, prompted charges from civil rights advocates that the government had improperly blurred the line between terrorism and acts of civil disobedience and lawful protest.

One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored.

The F.B.I. had previously turned over a small number of documents on antiwar groups, showing the agency's interest in investigating possible anarchist or violent links in connection with antiwar protests and demonstrations in advance of the 2004 political conventions. And earlier this month, the A.C.L.U.'s Colorado chapter released similar documents involving, among other things, people protesting logging practices at a lumber industry gathering in 2002.

The latest batch of documents, parts of which the A.C.L.U. plans to release publicly on Tuesday, totals more than 2,300 pages and centers on references in internal files to a handful of groups, including PETA, the environmental group Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers group, which promotes antipoverty efforts and social causes.

"It's clear that this administration has engaged every possible agency, from the Pentagon to N.S.A. to the F.B.I., to engage in spying on Americans," said Ann Beeson, associate legal director for the A.C.L.U.

"You look at these documents," Ms. Beeson said, "and you think, wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when you see in F.B.I. files that they're talking about a group like the Catholic Workers league as having a communist ideology."

Hm. Just off the top of my head, these people don't sound all that dangerous - except, of course, to major Republican corporate sponsors. On the other claw, DHS is (finally) concerned (pdf) about the obvious fruits of radicalizing "the base" for eight years.

Historically, domestic rightwing extremists have feared, predicted, and
anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States. Prominent
antigovernment conspiracy theorists have incorporated aspects of an impending
economic collapse to intensify fear and paranoia among like-minded individuals and to
attract recruits during times of economic uncertainty. Conspiracy theories involving
declarations of martial law, impending civil strife or racial conflict, suspension of the
U.S. Constitution, and the creation of citizen detention camps often incorporate aspects of
a failed economy. Antigovernment conspiracy theories and “end times” prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons.These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement.

That, and the growing "successionist movement," a matter of arguable concern for any government, regardless of your opinion on the matter. Considering that there has already been one civil war fought on similar ideological grounds and that it's being promoted again by similar idiots.

I happen to approve of a stricter interpretation of the US Tenth Amendment, in theory. In practice, though, I see it as being an issue being brought to the fore by power-mongering pipsqueaks who cannot abide calling a black man "Mr. President," or sending "tribute" to a government that values non-white, non-churchgoing, non-conservative citizens as much, or perhaps a teense more than them.

Photo: The Washington Independent

Scenes From the Real America

How about another excerpt from Rightwing Extremism:Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment (PDF)

(U//FOUO) Lone Wolves and Small Terrorist Cells
(U//FOUO) DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States. Informationfrom law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations indicates lone wolves and small terrorist cells have shown intent—and, in some cases, the capability—to commit violent acts.
— (U//LES) DHS/I&A has concluded that white supremacist lone wolves pose the most significant domestic terrorist threat because of their low profile and autonomy—separate from any formalized group—which hampers warning efforts.
— (U//FOUO) Similarly, recent state and municipal law enforcement reporting has warned of the dangers of rightwing extremists embracing the tactics of “leaderless resistance” and of lone wolves carrying out acts of violence.
— (U//FOUO) Arrests in the past several years of radical militia members in Alabama, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania on firearms, explosives, and other related violations indicates the emergence of small, well-armed extremist groups in some rural areas.

Boy. And they get paid to write such blinding glimpses of the obvious? With such wide-ranging powers and insights, this mild and obvious set of observations is the product of the best and brightest paranoids available?

All this "intel" could have been cribbed from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Let us also observe that it's perfectly reasonable for sane people to be concerned about the sorts of people that the SPLC has been tracking for decades. Sane people can actually be concerned about flaming nutbars while still supporting the rights of gun owners, the Bill of Rights and the principles of individual liberty and personal responsibility. It's not at all evidence of "persecution" to be concerned about people like Tim McVeigh or the Christian Identity people who get all exercised about Race Wars and Religious Cleanings.

Quite aside from the motivations of ideology, people who take the Second Amendment to empower them to mix large batches of ANFO or stockpile large quantities of ammunition without regard to proper storage and handling doctrines. are a matter of legitimate concern for any person within several miles.

Oh, and let us remember, that "sovereignty" does not mean that each and every state would then be free to oppress and persecute whatever sort of people it disapproves of, or legislate whatever consensus morality it's elected officials happen to hold. The 9th and 10th Amendments of the Constitution of the United States is not about the sovereignty of mobs - it's about the inalienable rights of of free individuals. Even the queer black geeky over-edumacated atheist ones.