On Behalf of Truth, Justice and Shirley Sherrod, Olbermann Leaves a mark...

Substantially expanded.

A Special Comment about La Affaire Sherrod: (H/t All That Natters)

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Let that stand in all it's magnificence. I can but raise my lighter high...

From the transcript:

Let me make this utterly clear: What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites, is the utter and complete perversion of journalism, and it can have no place in a civilized society. It is words crashed together, never to inform, only to inflame. It is a political guillotine. It is the manipulation of reality to make the racist seem benevolent, and to convict the benevolent as racist — even if her words must be edited, filleted, stripped of all context, rearranged, fabricated, and falsified, to do so. 

What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites… is a manipulation. Not just of a story, not just on behalf of a political philosophy. Manipulation of a society, its intentional redirection from reality and progress, to a paranoid delusion and the fomenting of hatred of Americans by Americans. And nearly every last word of it is never, in any tangible sense, true. Ask Shirley Sherrod. 

But this evil has not become institutionalized just because of the hard, soul-less work of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes and the scum Breitbart. Our society has not bought into the premise of this 24-hour parade of feces dressed up as news just because of a clever marketing plan. The assassins of the Right have been enabled on the Left.

The legitimate media didn't first look at the whole videotape. We didn't first ask if the doctored clip perverted by the scum Breitbart didn't seem to be leading up to a "however." We didn't, even today, when even this network let this pornographer of propaganda Breitbart come on and spew his lies and his venom and his fraudulent self-defense like a quack doctor attending a life-or-death surgery, we didn't once…consider the source.

Shirley responds.



The whole affair is covered in excruciating and embarrassing detail on Media Matters - and even here, despite everything, despite the obvious facts in evidence, it's clear that the right wing and conservative posters are either wilfully missing the point, or even more disturbingly, incapable of comprehending it. Read the comments for yourself.

President Obama. This incident has been pointed to as a "teachable moment." The time has long passed to play patty-cake with the pooh-flingers and panderers. It is, indeed, time to simply put the rock in the hole. It's clear that people who would do such a thing have no regard for civilized behaviour, that they are cheats, liars and propagandists.

There is no place here for "dialogue." No room for understanding. No room for compromise. They will not suffer such a thing, so you may as well admit it. They refer to it as "Cultural warfare." You are in their minds the icon of everything unholy, and they are perfectly willing to tear your nation down around their own ears rather than suffer the "unholy" ideals of the "liberalism" they think you champion.

One comment from Media Matters shows how deep and ancient the hatred is:

I will take a liberal over a progressive or communitariast any day. Too bad the liberal party has been taken over by radicals who used to live in communes, wear flowers in their hair, hate the establishment, call the military baby-killers, call the police pigs, burned their brains with acid, pot, and cocaine, and said that you should never trust anybody over the age of 30.

Great group.

Yep. Those people, who protested the war, marched with MLK, campaigned for Bobby Kennedy, worked their asses off to pass the Equal Rights Amendment; those who bled and puked during the Stonewall Riots; those who stood up intending only to mildly assert out that rivers should not catch on fire all by themselves, that air should not be poisonous, that water should not be toxic, that equal access to education is a damn right, and if it ain't, it ought to be; those that championed the rights of the disabled, those that spoke up against racism... hell, those who fought and died side by side under the bombs of the Stukas, the first to die in hopes of arresting the Fascist tide - these are YOUR people, Sir!

Yeah, some of them were outright Commies, most were not. For what the "left" is, as described by "rightists" of the authoritarian stripe are those that hold humanity to be capable of improvement, that each person must and can be expected to live up to their own better nature and that Civilization that does not support this end is no civilization at all. I don't call that "Liberalism." Unless you'd call C.S. Lewis, Gandhi and Jesus Christ "godless liberals."

Brietbart, on the other hand, stands firm with the dark and bankrupt side of history, in which the dominant assertion is that humanity is depraved, damned and doomed from birth to always make the wrong choice, that women are inherent vessels of sin and that children are wilful little spawns of hell that must be have thier disobedient natures crushed so they may earn salvation through robotic obedience to "proper authority." It is a long and brutal history of spiritual and physical abuse that runs from the very Pyramids to Augustine through George Wallace and now dribbles and spurts from the toxic twerps on "Fox and Friends."

They have picked you as being the nail that must be hammered down, the man who represents, however imperfectly, everything they despise. They want to defeat you and destroy you. And don't take that as an impersonal distaste, if they could skin you alive and draw and quarter you live on FOX, not only would they do so, FOX would gain it's highest ratings ever. It's personal. It's as personal as it gets.

And for everyone, who they CAN get to, who they can destroy, who serve as their surrogate targets, it is personal. You owe them your position, and you owe them better.

Sir, you wished to be a Leader. Lead. 

Perps And Consequences

The war on drugs has to be one of the single stupidest policies ever devised.



Via: Medical Coding Certification


Even if every single thing D.A.R.E. and the various "drug warriors" said about slippery slopes and inappropriateness for medical use were factual (a matter of some considerable dispute between those who care more than I, one way or the other), the unregulated consequences predicted by the pearl-clutching nannies would still be less severe than the current state of affairs.


This is leaving aside the entire question as to whether people should be "permitted" to use drugs - since it's clearly failed to change drug usage in any detectable way, it's my presumption that the war is exactly what it seems to be - an ongoing war against people, and that the violence and repression is not a means to an end, it is the entire point. 


I refer to it as the "Bigger Hammer" theory of governance. If things don't go as you desire, if people don't behave as you think they should, pull out your biggest hammer and hit them as hard as you can. I'm quite certain I've referred to it as the Gallagher School of Public Policy. I had no actual idea at the time that it is also Gallagher's idea of Public Policy. Go figure. 


So like I said above, the whole point is to smash shit. That's the whole act. Smash shit, say something viciously stupid, and the audience laughs nervously. Confuse that with approval, and carry on.


Speaking of assholes who smash people when they don't behave as he thinks they should; Mel Gibson is selling his property and returning to Australia. It seems hardly worth commenting about - but that certainly didn't stop people. Eww. I do so enjoy seeing all the upstanding people crawl out from under their rocks to assure us all that it's all the victim's fault for making the perp angry enough to beat her up.

If I need to explain why this is so very wrong to you - well, I doubt I can. But you should probably seek help.

This cycle has both personal and political relevance - and I wryly observe that my advice to Democrats would be to take out a restraining order against the radical right, rather than to attempt to reason with their perps; advice that is even more relevant to the serial abuse victims of the Moderate Right.


Without in any way trying to discount the personal impact on people who are victimized personally by real abuse and sexual violence, it's worth observing that it is not a separate thing; moreover, it's most likely a public expression of much worse private behaviours. 


Not that it will stop the shouting of abusive, hateful perps that I'm an evil abusive perp. Here's the tactics directed at the NAACP with professional and amateur variations.








Um. There IS a racist element. I wouldn't say it's the only questionable thread, it's one of many sorts of grouchy, mean spirited, simple-minded and ugly messages to be found.



They should be condemned, if for no other reason than to keep the Tea Party on point. When you accuse critics of being racists for having noticed not even subtle racism, it makes people watching wonder if your stated politics is just another Jim Crow Shuck and Jive.

Rebuttal to Bill O'Reilly's Opposing Gay Marriage by Ishtarmuz shows the technique of fisking to good advantage. But to be quite fair, it was aiming plunging fire a great big fat soft target. 

Shame, blame and patronizing dismissals of the validity of the person and their plaints are, of course the very first response to anyone who dares to "whine" about ill treatment within such a dynamic, at least, before the tapes are released to the press.

For the coverage of this particular weeks events - hell, these cartoons tell you all you need to know. The difference between an ethicist, a comedian and a clown? Comedians are funny.  

That's because they tell the truth, regardless of consequences. Clowns, on the other hand... clowns exist to enforce social norms and, just for extra fun, scare the crap out of children. This usually happens because children have a far better grasp of the difference between "normal and to be expected" and "justice." 

There are lessons from history to be studied, lest we all find ourselves living in times even more interesting than our current state of disarray. This history of the troubles supported and encouraged in Argentina by Authoritarian Catholic Fanatics who failed to pacify Algeria and failed to assassinate France's Charles De Gaulle. More than 30,000 "disappeared". In the end, such a revulsion was bred toward the Catholic Church that one of their worst nightmares came true, aside from the consequential fact that barely a quarter of the population are practicing Catholic. It does not seem from this remove that the proponents are a much better class of leader - it was that such self-inflicted karmic wounds tend to attract predators. The issue of same-sex marriage was an opportunity to split an opposition coalition - and it seems to have worked quite well.

Examples of the obliviousness to the consequences of the authoritarian mindset abound. The ACLU, in speaking of Yet Another Ham-Fisted Backdoor Ban on Abortion, quotes the legal decision, and of course mentions the impact upon persons such a law would have.

The idea of providing patients with thousands of scientific studies dating back as much as 100 years would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous. A woman's health and well-being are best supported when she can trust that her doctor will provide medical information that is accurate and unbiased. Rather than ensuring that a woman's choice to end her pregnancy is meaningful and informed, this law forces her doctor to provide her false and misleading information, undermining the trust between a woman and her doctor.

Fortunately, Judge Laurie Smith Camp found that compliance with the law "would be impossible or nearly impossible," and would likely deter physicians from providing abortion care in the first place. Additionally, Judge Camp determined that "no such legislative concern for the health of women, or of men, has given rise to any remotely similar informed-consent statutes applicable to other medical procedure."

Both the court and the ACLU seem to have missed the larger point, save in the title itself. "Respecting Women's Decisions." 

Those who demand respect for their authority without respecting those they are given authority over deserve neither respect, nor deference, nor obedience, particularly when they abuse the law and society and the intelligence of critics and courts in so doing.

This is something that is intuitively understood by the least and youngest among us. Bullies may steal your lunch money but it's no great achievement; they deserve no respect, no allegiance, nothing but contempt.

When those in power conspire to use the law against the helpless, seemingly just because they can, and when the authoritarian fringes cry out in protest against entirely basic human rights being asserted in court, it's clearly time to sharply curb the presumptuous bumpkins and abusive toads who seem to think that power only exists to be flaunted and abused. A general disrepect for the values and visions of the Authoritarian of the Moment emerges. Resistance and evasion emerges quickly, more and sharper oppressions follow, derision and disrespect ensues, until you find yourself in something that might be called a "Cold Civil War."

Well, it's really no wonder there's such fear and loathing and suspicion of authorities, government, media and law enforcement. For, all too often, it's seen as a means to an end, which is quite at odds with any piously stated ideals. 

The way we avoid that is that we adhere to the ethical prime directive, which is to live your life while avoiding harm to others; a concept that scales perfectly well to churches, governments and corporations. Why? Well, because! 

Because when you don't - this is your legacy.

The Man

The Mess

The annoyingly correct Dennis Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich is never so annoying as when he's gloating. This is a particularly long and pointed gloat, looking back to his career-stalling battle with the banks in a battle to privatize Cleveland's public power system. It's worth a read, but in a sense it merely underlines the two first paragraphs.

t r u t h o u t | My Battle With the Banks: "Once they were as gods, but the deities of the American banking system are now in ruins, plunged from their pedestals into the maw of taxpayer largesse. Congress voted to give the banks $700 billion, lifting them temporarily out of their sepulcher of debt, while revealing a deep truth about the condition of America's financial powers:

They never had the money they said they had as they constructed their debt-based monetary system which now lies in ruins. Their decisions on behalf of depositors, shareholders and investors were lacking in basic integrity and common sense. Green gods bailing out with their golden parachutes."

To me, the moral of the story is not Dennis' ultimate vindication, or the obvious other lesson - that had he behaved as his political contemporaries of the day on the Cleveland City Council, he would probably now be much better known. But he was unable to pay the price required to avoid the fate of a time in the political wilderness. Moreover, he knew that "the worst that could happen" was not as bad as those on the other side of the table thought.

Sometimes there are more important things at stake than an illusion of prosperity, success or influence, particularly if that illusion is bought with a betrayal of trust. And in this one instance, Dennis' narcissic tendency does serve us; Dennis found himself at a crossroads where he had to choose between an illusion in which "everyone who mattered" would think well of him and the ability to look in the mirror and see the man he wished to be.

Narcissic traits are not bad or good - it's a place, a way of being. It's how you behave in order to fulfill those needs that matter. Dennis likes to think well of himself - but is unwilling to delude himself about the face in the mirror.

An annoying, shrill little man with a track record of being correct on the facts and on the principles. Annoying enough to be shot at. Annoying enough to have made powerful enemies - and tasteless enough to do a public war dance upon their fiscal graves. Oh fortunate sin! It makes him human enough to be tolerable. Otherwise we'd have to found a religion around him.

At the end of the day, when the pennies are counted upon the kitchen tables of the world, money - even the hard money that Ron Paul and his followers swear by as the antidote for the current mess - is simply a symbol for value; of honest effort and honest reward. It is nothing more than a system of notation, and if that system has been corrupted, then the sensible thing to do is to stop using it. The collapse of a system does not mean that real value has evaporated; whatever that was real will still be real, and the people who make real things and do things of real value will still be making and doing.

Belive me; the US dollar is not the only means of accounting. Gold works. Man hours work. Kilowatt-hours work. Pork bellies, diamonds and Euros work. And - whatever we may think of it - bricks of opium, bales of tobacco, barrels of whiskey and kilos of cocaine are all commidies of enduring value; always have been, most likely always will be.

But the most fundamental currency of all is a handshake and the iron-clad-determination to live up to it. All things of real value derive from that, all artificial means of accounting for value are simply a means of allowing the arms to stretch further than they otherwise could.

That is the purpose to money and at the root of it, the reason why we have civilizations and laws and cultures and religions - to enhance, expand and enforce a network of trust. Those who hold power have the responsiblity and the duty to be especially trustworthy; not because of any higher calling, but because that is what the job is all about, and it is such an essential duty that humanity cannot long do without it.

When people start behaving as if they have an inherent right to power and have the inherent right to use it, defend it and expand it at the expense of those who donated it, it is inevitable that they will be replaced, because they become too expensive to be useful. They cost more than they are worth. Loyalty is withdrawn, alliegance evaporates, illusions vanish in the cold light of personal circumstances.

Now, hierarchical structures exist for the primary purpose of keeping the marks in line; keeping those on the bottom fed just enough to to work, without feeding them enough that they can afford the capacity to thin; to keep the donors donating whether they wish to or not, and of course to keep every level of the pyramid below the top bamboozled and ignorant in service to that end.

But that ship - all moral compasses aside for the moment - has sailed into the harbor and sunk with all hands. The genteel conspiracy between the great powers of media, religion, business and government has been exposed as a conscious fraud and a conspicuous failure.

Right or wrong, for good or for evil; they are doomed simply because ...oh, I hate to use such a term, but English is so limited ... because the "global consciousness" has evolved to a point where their tools and techniques can no longer work, and competing tools and techniques offer far more advantage to the vast majority of individuals who would never once be considered for membership in the "power structure." It's not just that they are corrupt failures - although that's the case here in North America - but that even if they were icons of integrety, they are still trying to do things in a way that is out of touch with the needs and capacities of the times.

That evolution is as much technological as spiritual, as much pragmatism as principle; it's certainly not driven by particularly enlightened motives - but as always, the cold laws of ethics define what will work and what will not work over time, regardless of how enthusiatically we wave our flags and incence.

Instead, we look at the choices made in our names by those who are wielding our power and, given the opportunity, start talking to one another about the matter, replicating on the Internet the exact same process that happened in Europe during the Enlightenment in coffee houses and taverns over pipes of "sauced" tobacco.

People are comparing notes. Ordinary people of ordinary means are capable of fact checking statements made today by their leaders against statements made last week and graphing in real time the return on investment of their donated power. Anyone who wants to can fire up a spreadsheet and plug in the numbers. And like all investors, they have every right to expect a positive return on investment. More to the point, right or wrong, wise or foolish - all of them do.

Alas, "western civilization" shows every sign of being a vast Ponzi scheme in the process of disintegration; and not just the one pillar of it - the construct we refer to as "money," but also the false Christianity it depends on to keep the sheep from reading their financial statements, the false politics that is arranged to prevent any real, meaningful positive change for individuals and the false culture created by a corrupt media that depends on very carefully not telling the most important stories of the day.

All these great powers have lost the trust of anyone who has honestly examined the available evidence - and the ability to disciver and evaluate has become pervasive. Increasingly, everyone that can has or will soon. What will happen then? Well, I cannot say for sure. But what I can say is that the consequences will be of far less importance to most people than the doom-sayers invested in the current "pyramid power" scheme would suggest.

Increasingly, the question of whether one should "go along to get along" will become more and more of an obvious choice; aside from the moral dimension, aside from the question of eventual ethical consequence compared with immediate necessity; the point is that there is now a vast array of real choices emerging for real people in real situations in the real world. The false illusion - "Maya," if you will - is falling away to reveal something that is not so much higher and more spiritual, though there is that aspect to it, but to reveal fundamentals.

"Before Enlightenment; hew wood, draw water. After Enlightenment, hew wood, draw water."

The hewers of wood and the drawers of water are those from whom all power flows and who ultimately support all that is civilization. They are the ones who buy the party boats and the Manhattan penthouses. They are the ones who create the real wealth. And they are the ones who can and increasingly will decide with whom and under what terms they will share it.

Our current system depends upon the vast majority of us toiling in some form of slavery; physical, mental, economic. We are held at gunpoint, by guilt, by ignorance, and all of this is due to the fact that our lords and masters are not very good at their jobs; know they are not, and know that if anyone drew aside the curtain to see the Great and Terrible Oz - they would be honestly unimpressed.

Certainly there's not much evidence that the current crop of Oz-wielders are very good at pressing buttons, much less understanding what those buttons actually do, unlike the fictional Great and Terrible Oz who was a master of using the art of humbug to inspire practical ends.

But in fact, whatever we think of those people who currently hold power, and whatever changes this new perception brings, there is something to remember here; we are all human beings, nothing much has changed on that end of things and nothing much can change. We hope we can become better human beings, but we won't become better people by trying to amputate or deny aspects of our humanity for "the greater good," or for any other reason. If there's any lesson to be taken from the last several millenia - I'm looking at YOU, "saints" Paul and Timothy - it's that.

If you are gay, you are gay. As far as I'm concerned, it's simply no longer reasonable to think of homosexual orientation as being a "choice." The only choices come in light of accepting one's orientation as a fact and then acting upon that fact in a way that allows one to sleep at night in good conscience. This is a particular example of a general principle; we all have various pediclictions with potential ethical consequences. If you need power to make your nipples hard, you are in exactly the same situation.

These orientations are basic, and they are either curses or blessings depending on what we do in order to get our needs met. Morality aside - because if our morality gets in the way of doing the right thing, much less understanding that we are doing viscerally wrong things - it must and it will be put aside.

What we need is an understanding that our lusts and needs must be informed; for those who's lusts are either frustrated or unfettered become monsters and parasites.

Our basic neurology defines us in unavoidable ways. Some of us are social. Some of us relate better to abstracts, others to the concrete. Some of us can grow things, others would starve in a garden. We all have sexual preferences - and these preferences vary far more than "conventional wisdom" would prefer. Some of us need power and authority, others of us cannot function without someone without someone capable of creating a context that makes our work meaningful and valuable.

Society is a matrix of trust and while it's possible to lie and cheat, to take advantage of power and position to gain benefits that are disproportionate, unearned and undeserved, there is no free lunch. Ultimately, such people undermine the trust their entire scam depends on and that leads to a general, cyclic housecleaning.

Yes. This has happened before. It will probably happen again. It's happening right now - and that's the important thing to remember here. The people who want to stampede you into supporting their schemes and dreams of staving off their personal disasters do not deserve your support. Nor is this a moral, political, conservative, liberal statement. It's a statement of fact.

They have fucked up. They are asking you to permit them to fuck up at your expense a little longer. They are saying that it's better, somehow, for them to fuck up in known ways rather than to risk the prospect of fucking up in different and potentially more informative ways. Most importantly, they wish to prevent anyone else having a chance to prove they might fuck up less at a lower price - in the face of overwhelming evidence that almost any randomly selected person could achieve that very minimal standard.

You are being asked to send good money after bad - and in every single aspect of our culture and economy; you are being asked to support a social system that has no problem with what happened to ordinary people (who happened to be black) in the aftermath of Katrina. You are being asked to support a petroleum economy that can no longer sustain itself or even replace it's rotting infrastructure. You are being asked to incur unsupportable debt in order to prop up a literally bankrupt monetary system. And you are being asked not to even ask why, much less what possible benefit might come to you or your family.

In terms of faith and religion, in terms of the dominant cultural themes, it's all Gays and Abortion, all the time, and not a damn thing about how, where and by what means spirituality might inform and improve the lives of people outside of the big boxes filled with rotting mutton.

From a pragmatic, moral perspective, I have come to the point where I wonder aloud if it would be such a bad thing if everyone who professes the sort of faith on display at such places as the Wasillia Assembly of God were to disappear. Let us take it as a thought experiment - let us ask ourselves if, were The Rapture they devoutly pray for to occur, would those who remain be better or worse off?

The answer is obvious to me; any religon that is founded on the idea that there are vast swaths of humanity they are doctrinally permitted to visualize writhing in the flames of a fictional hell, encouraged to visualize and celebrate pissing upon sinners from a great height would neither be recognized nor particularly missed by anyone trying to live as Jesus taught.

Anyone who would squander monies donated to a church to do good works upon such a mean-spirited and dishonest exercise as California's Proposition Eight is in no sense qualified to be a worthy steward of God in any way I can bring myself to accept. Any such religion asking for your support, much less demanding it, any leader of such a religion who will not accept the reality that their actions and choices are violations of some of the most basic principles upon which all religions have in common is undeserving of your support.

Religions have a place. They serve, when they serve at all, to inform people as to how to live better than they could on their own; they exist "in order to make good men better."

Should they instead decide to exist to excuse bad acts and encourage fools to act in concerted folly, they will pay a price. If you continue to be part of that group, you will be part of the pool from which that price is extracted.

Ask any Hugonaut. Or for that matter, any member of the Catholic Hierarchy in Quebec old enough to have lived though the Quiet Revolution. Ask them what happens when it becomes clear to the majority of people that they are actually better of seeking advice, guidance and and leadership from others who are more willing to accept the value of tolerance and the virtue of trying to be virtuous instead of merely asserting it while wearing a funny hat.

The thing to understand here is that there are inherent differences between human beings; our different needs and variations in ambitions are the things that make a society work, and wherever society starts to see such differences as a threat, making it impossible for certain sorts of people to live openly, honestly and ethically, to that extent that society will suffer. They will suffer the lack of their honest potential as well as paying the price of them meeting their needs in the way that circumstances demand.

Ultimately, if we meet our needs to the benefit of other people around us, we will be known as good people; if our existence is at the expense of the people around us, well, the "why" of it matters little. You see, there are times when society can tolerate a high parasite load. There are other times in which it cannot. And there are times when society realizes that it's time to shave themselves bald and burn the bedding.

This is a bad time in human history - from the perspective of bedbugs and crab lice. From the average human perspective, though, we can do without crab lice a lot better than crab lice can do without us.

A functioning civil society requires a functional morality that informs and empowers positive moral choices. There are several sorts of people that are particularly valuable and paradoxically, particularly dangerous to society. When society is about to collapse, you have only to look at your political and moral standard-bearers to discern why this has occurred and adjust your own understandings of what sorts of belief structures are ultimately cancerous to you and the people to whom you owe consideration and due regard.

And this brings us back to Dennis Kucinich. Dennis plays the "everyman" in our little morality play; the everyman placed in a position of authority, facing threats by those who think themselves more powerful and more deserving. Dennis is a person who grew up in hardscrabble circumstances; who knows poverty - and who thereby knows that being broke is nothing particularly to fear. Money is simply a means to an end, and if you allow the means to get in the way of the end - maintaining the essential social, family and economic relationships that make for a just, open and functional society, you will have failed.

And you will know that. You see, that's the ultimate price.

Knowing - in the moments of sobriety, between jolts of power, whiskey and religion - that your choices have led you to deep into the Place of Decision, and you, arrayed in all your pomp and your power are on the wrong side. That you have the starring role in your own personal production of Faust. That this IS hell, nor will you ever be allowed out of it. Not, at least, with the trappings and trinkets that dragged you to such depths of foolishness in the first place.

Wexler and Kucinich introduce Articles of Impeachment

One wonders if Bush will return from his European trip, or just head straight for Dubai?

Congressman Wexler just signed on as co-sponsor of Dennis Kuchinich's articles of impeachment, as shown in the text of this letter that I just found in my in-box.

Our effort to hold the Bush/Cheney Administration accountable has taken another dramatic step forward. Last night, Congressman Dennis Kucinich introduced the first Articles of Impeachment ever to be introduced against President Bush. It includes, in total, thirty-five Articles detailing this Administration's blatant abuse of power. Today, I enthusiastically co-sponsored this vitally important bill.

I am grateful for Dennis' leadership on this issue and for the steadfast support that countless Americans have given to both of our efforts to redeem our government and expose the crimes of Bush and Cheney.

I will now expand my efforts to secure impeachment hearings in the Judiciary Committee for these new Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush.

Many of the charges against President Bush are well known – and would shock the conscience of everyday Americans if only the national media would be willing to report on these stark facts.

The Articles present a stunning narrative of offenses that have go well beyond previous crimes committed by any US chief executive. In fact no President or Vice President in history has done more to undermine our constitution.

These charges are broad, with 35 separate allegations including the deliberate lies regarding WMDs that led us to war and the approval of illegal wiretapping of American citizens. The Articles also include new allegations of high crimes – including the explicit approval for high Administration officials to violate treaties and US law banning the use of torture.

The Democratic Party gained a majority in the House and Senate due in large part to our promises to end the corruption of the Republican majority and to hold the Administration accountable to the law. This courageous bill is a crucial step towards fulfilling this promise, but – like the Articles against Cheney – they require your support to convince Democrats and open-minded Republicans to support this bold but necessary action.

Time is running out so we must work together to spread the message and apply pressure.

First, please encourage your friends and family members to sign up at WexlerWantsHearings.com – as it will allow us to keep in touch with you and speak to a wider audience. If you haven't yet put in your phone and address, please sign up again, as we will be doing telephone town halls in the near future.

Second, call your representative and urge them to support Impeachment hearings.

Finally, contact newspapers, news stations, and your favorite bloggers and urge them to report on this movement. We need to keep Impeachment a significant news story until the Democratic leadership sees the value in it.

McClellan Agrees to Testify:

I was pleased to inform you yesterday that Judiciary Committee Chairman Conyers met my call to have Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan testify under oath. I am thrilled to inform you that McClellan has agreed to testify on June 20th at 10AM. This will be the first step in what we hope will be ongoing and deepening examinations of the stark evidence and charges against both President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Thank you for your continued passion and advocacy. Your support means so much to me.

Sincerely,

Congressman Robert Wexler

So far, blog reaction has been muted and MSM reactions - well, I've not found any. (Contrast that with the first rumors of Clinton's impeachment.) That could change with your help.

Ralph Nader says:

Volumes can and will be written, about what can go down as the most serious abdication of impeachment responsibilities by a Congress in its history. No other president has committed more systemic, repeated impeachable offenses, with such serious consequences to this country, its people, to Iraq, its people and the security of this nation before, than George W. Bush.

It is never too late to enforce the Constitution. It is never too late to uphold the rule of law. It is never too late to awaken the Congress to its sworn duties under the Constitution. But it will soon be too late to avoid the searing verdict of history when on January 21, 2009, George W. Bush escapes the justice that was never pursued by those in Congress so solely authorized to hold the President accountable.

It's damn important to go through this process now. Why? Because that will put the next president - whoever they are - on notice that we will not tolerate this, nor will we allow them to put the powers Bush illegally, immorally and unconstitutionally claimed in their pocket.

So, if you are a Republican and don't see the point to this - think of what a Democratic president could do using these powers to track down and punish "alleged war-criminals" and "co-conspiritors." If one can be detained without trial on suspicion of terrorism, certainly it's even more reasonable to detain those who have arguably committed or facilitate treason.

So, let us do this right, by the book. And do it now before either "side" is surely in power. Right now, Nancy Pelosi has a duty to the Republic - and that duty comes before her duty to party or personal ambition.

Hail Dubya, ITMFA

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from my Impeach Gallery

More designs soon. Meanwhile, if you'd like to run off a few million yourself on sticker stock - please do!

While I'd love you to support myself with a few sales of these designs, if you want to make a lot to support this campaign, I would rather you set up your own store, or printed them out yourself. This version is approved for that use.

Is there any point to another election?

I read the blogs, of course. I'm not going to cite anyone, because that would tend to assign blessing or blame where none is due. I will only say that this rant has been provoked by my dear blogfriend and contrary inspiration, Echidne. I will not reveal what particular post, because that would suggest that her pebble implies approval with the direction of this avalanche, and I see no good reason to assume that.

But I will state that Echidne seems to be one of the few, left or right, that seems to give a crap about the fate of those on "the other side," a virtue that I am finding it difficult to claim, even as the "right " shoots at me as if I were wearing a Leftists' red cap.

Well, it IS called a Liberty Cap.

Still, even from the more aloof and not entirely unbalanced perspective I generally try to maintain, it's almost impossible to notice the radical hatred on the "right" and the nearly delusional wishful thinking on the "left." To the extent there IS anything on the "left" of course. From MY perspective, Hillary Clinton is a moderate Republican, and the fact that she's an Ovarian American is one of the few things in her favor.

Liberals love to think she's as liberal as they are, feminists would like to think that her gyno-Americanism would override her wardrobe of scarlet ambition - but I tend to think that of all the candidates, it's probably John Edwards who wears the skirt in the family.

And I'm not saying that as an insult. There is a yin and a yang, and from my perspective, Hillary's yang hangs to her knees, and anyone who's yang is shorter, or who's yin is wider is probably more welcome in polite company.

But "Polite Comany" and "world leader" don't usually go hand in hand, so don't think I'm saying this as a put down. I respect Hill enourmously. I'm just not sure she deserves (in either the usual or the ironic sense) to be President.

A big, long, knobby Yang ain't a bad thing for a US President - unless you are betting on her to act according to your particular preconceptions of gender-based solidarity. And I personally think it would be better in some larger and less immediate sense if she were assured enough in her own gender to not try to counter-program her own femininity.

On the other hand, I bet you would get your ears most righteously pinned back should you even imply she "owes the movement" anything much more than a polite nod and a handshake. Hell, I'd probably do it on her behalf.

But still and all, there is a mess that needs cleaning up, and women are mentally better at sorting messes into useful piles. That's a vast generalization of course, but ask any woman and she'll tell you. Hell, just observe the distintions between men and women in the wild - and then try to act on the assumption that these distintcions are mere social artifiacts.

No, wait. I've got a better example. TRY do things the opposite gender is famous for doing effortlessly in the same way they do it. You may be able to get the job done just as well - but you won't be able to do it just as well if you try to do it the same way. There are some things no amount of enlightenment and social awareness can transcend. And that is why I'm concerned, not about what game she plays, or to what end, so much, but if she is allowing herself a home-gender advantage, when the world situation is positively screaming for it.

I AM impressed by how she handled Bill's messes without undermining the good Bill is capable of, OR doing anything to enable him in his folly beyond that expected of a proper partner and spouse. That speaks to me of a sharp focus on the relative importance of various things. But I am as yet unconvinced.

I should also mention that of the very great female leaders in history, all of them seemed to come to power at times of great social change, where the masculine approach of sudden violent action would be about as smart as lighting a match in a powder shack.

For that very reason alone, I am predisposed to a woman president. Not because they are "just as good" as any male; but because women and men are non-interchangeable. We have different inherent advantages and deficits, and those of us who unabashedly exploit the former while ruthlessly compensating for the latter are worthy of anyone's vote. And I do think B and H do compensate well for each other's lacks. Politically. I'm just not sure if they see a larger advantage than their own careers.

So if she is elected, I do hope she can rise to the example of Elizabeth the First and transcend the example of Cleopatra. But, well-endowed as she is, I'm not sure it's Motherwit she's endowed with. Still, Bill does have some of that.

Personally I think power is what makes HER nipples hard and I think that's how she should be judged - how well she will use the very thing she wants in the worst way** and how much we should charge her for the pleasure.

As opposed to, well, the other way around, how much we will be charged for the pleasure of her leadership.

This, by the way, is an arrogance and folly that seems endemic of all the "first tier" candidates and the pundits that shill for them; that we should somehow take pride in our support of one or another, rather than the fact that they should be personally thanking each and every one of us willing to part with five minutes or a spare dollar to help them along the way.

I'm Not Leftist at all (I keep protesting) but in some respects, Hillary is still to the right of me. Not because she wants to be, I think, but because she and her husband have made political expediency into an art form. In other words, she's just as Liberal as any Canadian Liberal. She says what she has to to get elected, then she will do what she needs to do to stay in power.

But what I do know is that she shares something in common with all of those on the other side of the asile - the idea that there ought to be people in charge, that without the Rule of Authority, Chaos Will Ensue, and that she is qualified to rule.

The last point is for all of us to determine, but I observe that the first two assumptions are fallacious - but very convenient to those born with access to power and the ambition to secure more of it.

If this were Canada, with Canada's particular ways of applying pressure to the powerful, I'd vote for Miz Clinton in a heartbeat, believing as I do of her as I do, because in Canada, there is the understanding that you elect a politician that would like to be honest* - and then help them keep their promises. She's every bit the man - and woman - that Jean Chretien ever was. And she probably has a better command of both French and English.

Honestly, I don't much care for her personally - but the history of US politics shows that likable people are either too squeamish for the job - Jimmy Carter - or are simply panderers to those they want to be liked by, like Regan and Bush. I'd rather have a president I was personally disappointed by, but respected for their sheer brilliance. Nixon and Bill Clinton come to mind for very different reasons.

I don't need a leader, personally - but this country and the great bulk of the population does, so it's a critical issue, that quality of "leadership."

Both panderers and idealists are lousy leaders. I will state up front that Hillary is obviously neither; but she IS is a third thing - the sign of a leader that many will follow to hell, and that might well lead us there just to prove she's got the power to do so.

Furthermore, my gut says that Hillary won't do the right thing if it gets in the way of the politically expedient thing, which means no radical departure from the last fifty years of stupid. I say that even as I remind myself that "politics is the art of the possible." I believe that Hillary is enamored of power itself, and will do whatever it takes to keep it.

Again, if this were Canada.. but it is not, and those that most need a good leader and a champion, those who most deserve a light on a narrow path toward a brighter future are, I think, likely to be disappointed.

I simply cannot forget, nor easily forgive the fact that both Bill and Hillary were quite upbeat about "welfare reform" here in the US - possibly the single most mean-spirited piece of social legislation short of the Enclosure Acts that brought many of our forebears to North America. At the very best, they held their noses as it passed, and took some credit for it to gain points with the wealthy and powerful.

For myself, I have a more workaday perspective on such folks.

"The Gangs of New York" documents what they found, coming here in search of a better life. The full scope of the tragedy is encompassed in the observation that they actually DID find a better life, one well worth engaging in gang warfare to defend - even as Boss Tweed, who reminds me rather a lot of both of a slightly imprudent Bill Clinton and a somewhat better and more intelligent George Bush callously remarked that "you can always hire half of the poor to kill the other half."

Think on that, as the repugnant wing of the Republican party tries to squeeze more out of the poor to enrich (and please) the sort of rich person that thinks their wealth is degraded somehow by the lack of sufficient abject, humiliating, exploitable poverty.

I don't call myself a Progressive - but both Shit and Progress Happens. I happen to believe that the essential difference between shit and progress is pretty much where it gets dumped, and to who's advantage.

My belief in progress begins and ends at the sincere belief that no person and no institution that wishes to survive should try and stand in it's way. Both social conservatives and so-called progressives tend to do this. One wishes to stop it, the other to "guide it." I think the first to be suicidally futile, the other hilariously futile, with the preditive and practical value of a Hal Linsay novel.

Yeah, I know, he doesn't think they are fiction. And he shares that touching conceit with those who Envision A Better Future For Humanity - a future most often envisioned without any broad or significant human contact.

I prefer to watch the splendor of the great leaderless parade from a safe vantage, knowing that altering the path of progress is like playing traffic cop in a cattle stampede.

My obvious cynicism is not because I do not care about individuals. I care about little else; I see both church and state as barely tolerable institutions that exist only for the aid and comfort they give to individuals, and only to the degree they serve individuals humbly and impartially. I see these institutions as being powerful only to the extent that people see no choice in giving power to them. I, personally, see that donation of power as a great mistake, even though I admit that pretending otherwise would have shown me greater personal profit.

My goodness, even in the last decade, had it been within me to hold my nose and speak as Coulter or Limbaugh have - and honestly, I could do better, were I unburdened by conscience or the perception of the individual consequences of people taking me seriously - I could have become rather well-off. Certainly well-off enough to relocate to a country where the poor are agreeably and institutionally oppressed for the benefit of the sort of people I would have become and likely to stay that way long enough to die smugly of old age.

But I do not see it as "better" that one be a hammer than a nail. Given that dichotomy, I prefer to be the light fixture in the workshop. This light shows me clearly that those who think only in terms of hammers and nails are utterly screwed.

I do not champion any particular ideology. I've tried out various ideologies, and all of them, to one degree or another, tend to justify the need to break eggs in order to make a omelets for whatever group or segment of the population they most value.

I value the individual - but not as an expendable resource. That is why I'm a Libertarian. I'm an individualist first, last and always, and it's as good a label as any for those who need labels, though I could be just as accurately called a disciple of the Eight Immortals.

At base, I do think that every individual is connected with every other, and that John Donne was correct in saying "Send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

I just don't happen to think that being connected to all gives me the right to pro-actively act in "their own interest," when really it's my comfort and security that I seek to defend.

Consider the ever-so-pious liberal attempts to ban smoking.

At the root of it, it's disrespectful of the needs and desires of individuals, which are considered far less important than the mild preferences of any group of like-bleating sheep. Side-stream smoke, at least when banished to separate rooms or outdoors is far less of a threat than, say, automotive exaust.

But that sort of Liberal is very dependant upon their Limosines - where they will likely light up in private, even as their conservative counterparts indulge themselves in the joys of non reciprocal oral sex.

With Illegal immagrant male minors of African descent.

Yes, I do prefer the hypocrisies of liberals, being a white citizen of legal age. But they are hypocracies, nonetheless, and I DO smoke.

Moreover, I enjoy it.

Anyhoo; I harbor no illusions that all individuals are equal, much less equivalent, much less interchangeable. Indeed, it's the very most dear topic of the bloggers who's critical insight I value most - that women and minorities are considered as groups, with group characteristics that devalue and degrade any particular individual. I find their arguments to the contrary both effective and persuasive, for their arguments match my experience.

I have known many individuals, of all genders and races, and I've never met one person who fit any particular stereotype unless that was their individual goal in life.

Pretty much, the only people I know who celebrate and revere stereotypes as their personal ideals are drag queens, Evangelical/Fundamentalist Christians and Anne Coulter who somehow manages to maintain an improbably high heel in both camps.

Though I don't doubt her XX credentials (or even consider claiming the right to demand a blood test) , she portrays femininity more than just being female, somewhat in the way a successful trannie does, which probably explains the wide perception that she is one.

Personally, I much prefer Ru Paul, who is twice the woman Anne is, and a far more credible actor. Genuine Drag Queens and Kings are a lot more fun to be around, which is really how you tell the difference. They know they are sacred clowns. Ann just thinks she is sacred and justified - which makes her a self-nominated sacred cow, all ready to be tipped.

Even Ru Paul know there is a time to be in drag, and a time to NOT be in drag, and that each has different standards of virtue and fabulousness. The comparable Christianists seem to believe they can't properly revere their stereotypes without forcing everyone else to dress and speak just as they do.

Now imagine how truly Unspectacular it would be, how very UN-festive it would seem, if Mardi Gras was compelled by law, 24/7, 365, and if "certain people" were compelled by law to be mostly naked save for feathers and beads. Yeah, I'm talking about you and your pale, flabby, wrinkly self. It takes a lot of work to be fablulous, and frankly, I have better things to do, and I imagine you think you do too.

As well we might, given a social matrix that allows us to clothe our shortcomings. :P But if it were compulsary (eithier legally or just in a practical sense, as it was in ancient Greece, )

It would be as small-minded, as proscribed and as essentially dull and vapid as any Christianist social matrix. Take "Antigone."

Please.

Of course, we would all get used to it - much like we have gotten used to excusing other intuitively stupid things, like supply-side economics, or the inherent benevolence of human nature, and we would excuse it with shared fairy tales as to how awful things would be if we did not choose to sacrifice some of our freedom to stave off the evil day.

Thus is it now, and so it was in the days of Sophocles and FDR. Different fables, pretty much the same rectal burning the fables are supposed to distract us from. Could be worse, they say; it could be SQUARE, like the OTHER people want to use on you.

And so each individual is imposed upon by the groups purporting to represent their interests; whether it's Hoffa or Bush, and as one mexican peasant put it, after being "liberated" once again, this time by General Pershing; "What does it matter? You ALL steal my chickens."

And in "stealing those chickens" from the Masses, in order to Properly Feed the Great Struggle , my feminist and "racially aware" compadres tend to miss an essential point - in exactly the same way that Dominionists, Patriarchs and white racists do.

There is a great amount of value in individual variation; culture and genetics count for some large part in this; far more than either racists or their ideological foes would care to admit.

I oppose oppression based on any perception that any particular distinction is sufficient to indicate social or biological superiority or inferiority. Certainly there ARE individuals that are, I'm afraid, somewhat overall less capable in general than others. I'm one of those; though I do choose to believe that my greater needs for support are matched by my unusual, if narrow ranges of skill. What I am good at, I'm VERY good at, and there are enough that value what I can do that I've never had to be seriously concerned about what I cannot. And yet, I cannot honestly pretend that the greatest of my advantages are the result of practice. I was born with them - and some of what are my greatest advantages kinda suck for me in a slightly different light.

Due to having my nose rubbed in the matter, I have an intimate appreciation of the variation and value of humanity. I've come to hold nothing but amused disdain for those who think that any particular description of how people should be is preferable to the simple idea that, so long as you mind your own business to the extent you can, and to the extent that you cannot, honestly render value for value, you and yours will be safe and warm in the sort of community that best suits them.

What more does anyone really need?

This vision is inclusive of those who are excellent at making money. Most people are not, it's a rare and valuable skill - for after all, the very activity of gaining great wealth increases general prosperity. Or at least it does when those skilled in making wealth remember that they would not have been able to apply those skills without help, encouragement and the investment of both cash and sweat.

They should know, understand and appreciate that their talent is rare and very much appreciated by those who do not share it - even as they appreciate, use and celebrate abilities that would never truly flower without their support and patronage.

It takes a largish village to raise a child, in part because there is no guarantee that any particular set of parents has all the insight and experience that any particular child will need to be their best - nor is there any way to predict what it will be ahead of time.

That is why I absolutely reject ANY faith or culture as inherently inhuman, obviously unethical, deeply un Christian and inarguably stupid that excludes any choice or life-path that is not directly and provably harmful to others - and I specifically spurn those who base the sum of their faith not on what they are and what they do, but on who they are not, and what they do NOT do.

Note that I abstain from calling social champions of exclusionary faith - such as Huckabee, Bin Ladin, Pat Robertson or Orthodox Druidry by the name they would arrogate to themselves, or referring to their refuges from reality as Churches, Temples, Ashrams or Faith Groups.

Conformity is not faith, and a conformity so insecure that it cannot exist without forcing public obedience to overt exhibitions of that that faith on everyone else is utterly, totally fucking worthless. It has not even the significance of a drag review. It hasn't the social importance of a Folsom Day Parade. It doesn't have the spiritual significance enjoyed by Our Ladies of Perpetual Indulgance. All these things, after all, challenge conventional assuptions and therefore promote the testing and examination of valid spiritual and social truths.

Christianist fetishism celebrates the ideal of eliminating fun for themselves and everyone they can intimidate, in order to eliminate anything that might test their shallow, bitter and pointless faith in their own moral superiority.

Any faith that regularly encourages it 's members to cause (or at least excuse) harm to others, even family members, in the here in now, in the name of "saving their souls" shows an arrogance and indifference toward the very words of Christ that disqualifies them from ANY valid observation of the Numinous.

Unfuck them, say I; they might not appreciate it; but far more significantly, they certainly don't deserve it, much less the right to any genetic payoff.

Perhaps I can sum this up in one or two more graphs and keep it all within the bounds of reason. I have come to think that it may not be reasonable to expect that the vast problems of this great, inept and debtor nation may even be addressed by a federal election. It may be time to admit that we are not one great culture, but at LEAST two, with incompatible ideas as to what "great" means. I am starting to believe that we should each of us declare for the outcome we prefer - or abandon the right to a preference.

There seems to be a huge discordance between the coasts and the interior states, the cities and the countryside; the sophisticates and the viciously ignorant Siberian peasantry who indulge in religiosity as a hangover cure for their own workaday brutality.

Yes, clearly I have my own value judgments going on here. I will unabashedly admit that I'd rather trip over any number of "commies", "niggers," "faggots" "feminazis" and "preverts" on the way to a well-stocked library. None of them ever beat the crap out of me for reading books for fun. Hell, many of them handed me books to read and lived lives worth remembering.

I'm predisposed to forgive many putative faults in those who hand me mental chocolate!

I will delightedly admit that I would rather put up with all of the downsides of a civilized, coastal culture than the inbred, small minded, dead-end reflexes of a long-gone inland agrarian culture that I doubt was worth the powder to blow it to hell at the hight of the family farm.

Certainly I know of few social stories that elevate the life on a farm over the opportunity to successfully escape it.

Now, I don't mind if you find my choices repugnant nor will I even say that I honestly reject all that is middle America. Frankly, given the Internet, it SHOULD be possible to have and value both, if Middle America would allow it.

However, I know that it will not, and that many Middle Americans would love to see me dangling from a lamp-post, along with all the others they call "Liberals".

I cannot help but take that personally. So, forgive me, or not, but if it comes down to a choice between me and mine living, and all the people who would like to see me and mine dangling from lamp-posts dead, I know what I will choose. I know who uses "diversity" and "tolerance" as bad words - and how little I need their continued existence as a cultural, religious or selection of like-minded individuals.

Tolerance has limits even among the tolerant. Tolerating those who would kill you or worse because you are forgiving, tolerant and therefore "weak" is suicidally foolish.

Increasingly, I see the difficulty of governing a nation divided so, on the cusp of ignorance and enlightenment, between those who hope and strive for a better future for themselves and others, and those who fear any change that might possibly affect what little they are and what small prizes they have gained at the expense of "lusers" they despise.

I know which side of the balance I am on - for being who and what I am, I have little choice in the matter. I've not been able to "go along to get along" any time in my memory, so I must go with all the other liberals, faggots, artists, dykes, feminists, intellectuals, geniuses and mentally handicapped that do not fit the mold of "good Midwestern stock."

And frankly, after seeing what has come of following your fears and prejudices these last years, the blowback of your bleating conformity and unreasoning panic; the spiritual rewards of your sacrifice of anyone but your own - well, I have to say that if napalm and cluster bombs MUST be pissed upon someone from a great height, why NOT you? How have you in any way earned a justifiable moral exception to the violence you have empowered and affirmed?

You certainly have earned it as much as any Iraqi, and FAR more than the average Iranian - even as your churches and dear leaders cheer the idea of paving Iran in green glass.

Oddly, you seem confused that those who live downwind might object to such an obvious national security imperative. (That would be sarcasm.)

You demanded it be done to others - and their children. You would wish it done to even more. Have we not all heard calls for bombing the Madrases? Madrases are indeed evil places - but they are evil places filled with children who are slaves to that evil. You would rather kill them than save them, for the outcome of one is cheap and sure, while the outcome of the other requires effort, heart, and not a little heartbreak - and you don't even consider your own noncompliant offspring worth a moment's sorrow.

Of these children - those of others and those you choose to reject - you either said, or silently assented with the idea that "nits breed lice."

Indeed they do.

One sort of bloodsucking oppressive patriarchal religious dictatorship is pretty much the same as any other, and "nits" raised in either result in lice distinguishable only by other lice.
Speaking for humanity in general, I think we would all love to see a war of extermination between the crab lice and the head lice ... if only, of course, it were not our human heads and pubes as a battlefield.

But having that wistful vision, it's difficult to pass the products in the supermarket aisle designed to remove lice from one's follicles without wondering what tempting products are available to our long-suffering planet.

So, you in the Midwest have a choice. You can either do as generations of your smarter and less compliant offspring have done; allow the scales to fall from your eyes, regard the consequences of your social and religious indoctrination and move to a civilized state, or you can face the just wrath of the world, perhaps including those civilized states.

Should you MANAGE to cheat your way to another electoral victory, do NOT expect those of us who share more worldly values with most of the world to spend many drops of blood or any large number of tears for the fate of you and yours.

I know that if I see black helicopters flying cover for white tanks heading east on I-80, I will wave that UN flag like a madman. I will of course take sensible precautions as well; hiding a few things in undisclosed locations - but a rational paranoia does not preclude a certain schadenfreud at the rewards of irrational and vicious paranoid revenge fantasies acted out upon innocents thought to be safely powerless.

Fuck you all to death, with the sharp and unwelcome objects you made for profit and intended to inflict upon others, you and the religious leaders who told you Haliburton and Exxon belonged in your Ethical Fund.

May you rot in the various hells you would wish upon others, after no more painful and humiliating a death than the god you worship would consider the due of sinners such as yourselves working for the OTHER god you worship even more faithfully.
---
*An honest politician is one who stays bought.

**Better than many, not as well as some, at least as well as any serious competitor.

When Morality Becomes Idiocy - the prosecution of sexually exploited children.

blog.myspace.com/duckydoolittle

I'd have more to say about this - but I'll defer to an expert. Besides, if you need an explanation as to why this is fundamentally unethical, immoral and operationally stupid, you probably wouldn't read my blogs anyhow...

Change the System!

A child can not legally consent to sex, so why does our system prosecute child prostitutes as criminals? Once locked up they receive virtually no counseling, psychological care, or help finding a safe place to live. Sadly, when young people get out of lock up, they usually return to the streets. Experts agree that prosecuting sexually exploited young people further traumatizes them and makes it more difficult for them to create any kind of stability in their lives. Sign up for the National Juvenile Justice Network email list and raise your awareness. Learn about how you can support valuable legislation and care for children who need your voice, awareness and light.

(As with all of my posts of this nature ~ please re-post and share freely.)

[EDIT: Just to clarify, I am speaking of American girls. If these girls were not American citizens they would be protected under immigrant sex trafficking laws. But because they are American citizens they do not qualify for the benefits and services given to non-citizens. We just need to recognize valid need for our protection. They have slipped through a very large crack.]

tag: child sex trafficing, child prostitution, morality, law, ethics, church-state, moralism

Blood Guilty Churches

Blood Guilty Churches is very possibly the most important thing you could read this year, whether you are Christian or not, Left, Right or Center.

It is expecially useful if you are trying to speak to those who blindly assert that this is "A Christian Nation" with a president "Appointed By God." These are assertions based, after all, on the Bible and therefore will stand or fall on how well the Good Book agrees with what those folk SAY the Bible says.

A chunk that is admittedly more than common fair use is required to fairly and properly represent this work. This section is the conclusion, and you should now go and read from the beginning to see how solidly each premise is established.

Profile of the Man God Hates

Scott Peck defines evil as, “The exercise of political power—that is, the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion—in order to avoid…spiritual growth.”[186] He says lying is both a symptom as well as one of the causes of evil.[187] There are several other remarkable facts about evil people revealed by Scott Peck’s book. He wrote in 1983:

“Because their willfulness is so extraordinary and always accompanied by a lust for power—I suspect that the evil are more likely than most to politically aggrandize themselves. Yet at the same time, being unsubmitted, their extreme willfulness is likely to lead them into political debacles.”[188]

Peck reveals the evil can never admit they’ve done anything wrong. They can never say, “I made a mistake.” They have to maintain the appearance of perfection—else the whole edifice of their personalities will crack. Peck explains, “Because they cannot admit to weakness or imperfection in themselves, they must appear [not to suffer deeply.] They must appear to themselves to be continually on top of things, continually in command. Their narcissism demands it.”[189]

Marked by the “appearance” of competence, the evil are driven by fear. Peck says, “They are terrified that the pretense will break down and they will be exposed to the world and to themselves. They are continually frightened that they will come face-to-face with their own evil. Of all emotions, fear is the most painful. Regardless of how well they attempt to appear calm and collected in their daily dealings, the evil live their lives in fear. It is a terror—and a suffering—so chronic, so interwoven into the fabric of their being, that they may not even feel it as such.”[190]

If we take Scott Peck’s analysis and compare it carefully with a profile of the evil in the Bible, we can see remarkable similarities.

There are seven attributes of a man that God hates. God lays out the psychological profile of those traits he abhors. The following are from Proverbs 6:16-19 in the Amplified Version:

1. “A proud look [the spirit that makes one overestimate himself and underestimate others].

2. “A lying tongue,

3. “Hands that shed innocent blood,

4. “A heart that manufactures wicked thoughts and plans,

5. “Feet that are swift in running to evil,

6. “A false witness who breathes out lies [even under oath],

7. “And he who sows discord among his brethren.”

Selah! Pause and think on these things.

Now go and rub the noses of your "Christian" brethren in this truth. For extra credit, "Do We Finally Have a Christian President" is asked - and you get to answer that for yourself.


tag: Katherine Yurica, ethics, morality, Bible Law, Biblical Law, Abominations, Blood Guilt,