Rational Paranoia

When They Come for Your Guns...
by
critter183

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Despite my overall optimism about the eventual futility of trying to impose a totalitarian state upon us, it's clear that that for whatever reasons (and I frankly abstain from speculation, as I simply do not care what their alleged reasoning might be) it is becoming prudent to consider taking individual and collective actions to forestall such tragic foolishness.

Call Me Paranoid. Pentagon Creating Red State Officer Corps: "When I get really paranoid, and I look at how the Pentagon enabled Bush to deceive and defraud the US into the Iraq war, when I see how the military is happily helping Bush and company destroy constitutional freedoms, like right to a trial, habeus corpus and privacy... I wonder what advantage there might be to have an army intentionally recruited from the most conservative states. It's not healthy. It counters the American way of diversity. When I'm really paranoid, I think that, like the book, Can't Happen Here, an army of handpicked conservatives from conservative territories would be much easier to manage, much easier to command to get to do things that you and I might find intolerable.

I add to this the recent change in the law eroding Posse Comitatus restrictions in the US and it adds up to some more evidence that the US could be tottering on the brink of totalitarianism. These are just pieces, parts of a big puzzle. But I think it's important to talk about these. I wonder if the German people talked about the ominous developments that happened in Germany before it metamorphosized into a thing of horror. "

Clearly, not enough. And clearly, there are those who think that a general miasma of fear, coupled with intense religious indoctrination can duplicate the remarkably desperate conditions that made Hitler's rise to power possible. But let us also consider what happened to Hitler, militarily, when he tried to invade and control the Soviet Union - a swath of territory of the same approximate size as the United States and Canada.

Consider also that Hitler's war machine hit Russia at the peak of it's capability, with overwhelming individual superiority, superior weapons, superior tactics, against a demoralized and decapitated military and a population that had no love for their government.

It should have been a "cakewalk." And it was. Until they reached Stalingrad - possibly the most comprehensive "fuck you" delivered in military history.

Our military has been sharply reduced in effectiveness, and clearly it's leaders betray no great competence or grasp of either military or social realities. This may well be due to a general exodus of liberal and nonpolitical officers and enlisted personnel - accelerated by purges of officers resistant to the Bush White House line.

The first to be pushed to the door was Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East who suddenly announced that he was accelerating his retirement which would take effect in March. Abizaid, who speaks fluent Arabic, was criticized by some in Washington for being too concerned about Arab sensibilities.

Getting the bum’s rush with Abizaid will be Gen. George Casey, the top commander in Iraq who had called the idea of a troop escalation unnecessary and possibly counterproductive. The New York Times reported that Casey would be replaced in February or March, several months ahead of schedule.

Fred Reed, writing at Lewrockwell.com, predicts that this increasingly delusional officer corps will interact with enlisted personnel who are in full and bloody contact with an unforgiving and futile reality to produce open rebellions.

Above all, they are realists. If the new radio doesn’t work, or Baghdad turns out to be a tactically irresolvable nightmare, the enlisted guys feel very little urge to pretend otherwise. This is why officers do not like reporters to be alone with the troops. And they seriously don’t.

The standard response of the officer corps is that the troops cannot see the Big Picture. (Unless of course the enlisteds say what the officers want to hear, in which case their experience on the ground lends irresistible authority). But the Big Picture rests on the Little Picture. If a soldier sees slow disaster where he is, and hears the same thing from guys he meets from everywhere else in the country, his conclusions will not be without weight. Sooner or later, on his third tour with a pregnant wife at home and seven friends killed by bombs, he will say, in the crude but expressive language of soldiers, “f___ this shit.”

By contrast, officers can’t conclude anything but the positive. There are several reasons. Career officers, first, are politicians. You don’t get promoted by saying that the higher-ups are otherworldly incompetents. An officer’s loyalty is to his career, and to the officer corps, not to the country or to his troops. If this sounds harsh, note how seldom an active-duty officer will criticize policy, yet when he retires he may suddenly discover that said policy resulted in unnecessary deaths among the troops. Oh? Then why didn’t he say so when it would have saved lives?

There is a curious moral cowardice among officers. They will fly dangerous missions over Baghdad, but they won’t say that things aren’t going well. They don’t go against their herd.

Further, and I want to say this carefully, officers often are not quite adults. They can be (and usually are) smart, competent, dedicated, and physically brave, and some are exceedingly hard men. But there is a simple-mindedness about them, an aversion to the handmaidens of introspection, a certain boyishness as in kids playing soldier. A lot of make-believe goes into an officer’s world. Enlisted men, grown up, see things as they are. Officers are issued a world by the command and then live in it.

Of course, that's why God issues sidearms to Sargents - to ensure that when reality fails to impress a butterbar, he may be promoted to Hero, First Class (posthumously.) The author continues, with this trenchant and accurate observation:

Officers remind me of armed Moonies. There is the same earnestness, the same deliberate optimism-by-policy. Things are going well because doctrine says they are. An officer is as ideologically upbeat as Reader’s Digest, and as unreflective. This is the why they don’t learn, why the US is again flailing about, trying to fight hornets with elephant guns. “Yessir, can do, sir.” Well, sometimes, and sometimes not. It is not arrogance, more like a belief in gravitation.

The date for the article is given as Oct. 2, 2006. We wonder aloud why this and many other clues are not being added up by the average American. Karen Kwiatkowski of Military Week provides a chilling insight in her essay, Dead Man Walking.

To imagine freedom from our current foreign policy imbroglio, we step into dangerous territory. It is estimated that 60 million American voters have a financial stake in the military-industrial complex, not counting those who invest in the many American companies that rely on militarism abroad and at home to provide shareholder dividends. As we contemplate a draft, we forget that we really and truly don't need one. Undereducated and underemployed young people may complain, but they don't really count. Increasingly, college students are willing to take any paying job, including one offered in the name of “service' and patriotism. Their parents and grandparents will accept the draft as well, in the name of that societal restructure that Eisenhower warned against, and has now become the norm.

Thus, the dead man walking is not just our increasingly confused and cartoonish Mr. Bush. We see dead men walking in the discredited Republican party, once valued for both fiscal restraint and political seriousness. We find them in the United States Army, and in nearly every office of the E-ring of the Pentagon. We see dead men walking as we watch the young men and women who have been sent to the Middle East to spread “democracy' at the point of the gun, to occupy in a land that will never accept our occupation, and doesn't need it. Finally, here at home, many Americans who otherwise would stand up and act to reject their government instead cower. Because for all of our understanding of the farce, and our recognition of the cure -- leaving Iraq immediately -- too many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, burdened by personal and national debt -- to the tune of $440,000 for every American household. At least 60 million of us truly believe we need that Department of Defense paycheck, that military contract, that service-sector job that sucks greedily at the military-industrial teat.

Thus, Americans of all parties seem to be nastily cheering George W. Bush as he marches into the valley of the shadow of death, fearing no evil and intending even more murder, more destruction, more breaking of banks and breaking of hearts. Better him than us, we mutter. But we are all dead men walking.

My conclusion is still one of guarded optimism, in part because I do not believe that our military-industrial complex is composed entirely of stupid people. At some point, the gravy train has to end, the smart people take what they have and what they know to get a new train rolling. So very much of that "shock and awe" technology apples to space and energy applications - which are an astonishing opportunity sector - and yet lose none of their inherent defense applications.

This can happen quickly and dramatically - if sixty million Americans realize the power of the retirement portfolio. And that is simply one potential check. Another is even more obvious; that whatever provisions Bush has made to impose his will on the American people by force, that imposition will require the obedience of a cohesive force that is willing to fire on American Citizens. I think that it's not all that likely that there will be such a cohesive response. But in the unlikely event there is an attempt by this administration to suppress increasing public unrest and opposition to his impeachable lunacies, there is this.

The Second Amendment.

TOWARDS A MEEK MILITIA

by Peter J. Mancus, Attorney at Law

12. What is the point of all this? People who will not communicate with like-minded, concerned citizens, those who will not use the First Amendment because they are afraid government monitors their communications and they will be tagged as being a troublesome maverick, to me, do not act prudently.

13. If you ever bought a hunting license, bought reloading equipment or any firearm related product mail order or on a credit card; if you ever wrote a check to a place that sells such equipment; if you received a gun magazine at home; if you ever wrote a politician about a gun or right issue; if you ever wrote a letter to an editor on a related issue; if you ever wrote anything on the Internet; if you ever sent anything via email; or if you ever wore a T-shirt that carried a pro-right message, you have already broken "radio silence". In that sense, you are no longer "incommunicado". Your idea of being discreet so that government cannot detect you, therefore, is to me, at best, non-persuasive.

14. Instead, I submit it is best to adopt SAC's approach: develop the capability to inflict an unacceptable retaliatory blow, flaunt it, show it off, demonstrate it without actually firing anything off. I also think it is best to adopt the Corps' approach: think deeply about developing new tactics and test them. To do that, however, people who fancy themselves to be freedom fighters--leaders or followers or both--have to communicate with one another. Without communication, if you believe in a poor tactic, until you know better, you will try to implement that poor tactic. If you have a great tactic, but will not share it, if and when you die of old age, disease, in a car wreck or are killed by a criminal or a SWAT team, your good idea dies with you.

Mancus's overriding point is that the essence of a civilian militia composed of armed citizens of EVERY state, region, color, and political persuasion is that it is a credible deterrent to those who - like many supporters of George Bush - seem quite willing to participate in a domestic Kristalnacht. The clear intent of the 2nd Amendment is to empower armed citizens to band together in "well regulated militias." The meaning of "well-regulated" was, at the time of the writing - trained, drilled and prepared to use their weapons in both individual and collective self-defense. It did NOT mean "under patent of authority" or some-such. The framers saw such "authorities" as being as potentially dangerous as outlaws and pirates.

An armed society is, I suggest, a courteous society. Like many of my fellow bloggers, I decry the lack of civility and contempt for the rights of the individual that has been displayed both by our government and by the "nattering nabobs" of the Chickenhawk Right.

I believe it's time for those who do not romanticize the gun as a magic penis nonetheless take up the rationalizations of the Armed Right, for those rationalizations and justifications - for that is all the NRA is reduced to - are nonetheless absolutely correct.

Consider, if you will, the potential of a force drawn from the Red States being dispatched to suppress "insurrection" in a Blue State such as California, where "insurrection" might be defined as, say, a Governor taking steps to ensure the security of that state without reliance on National Guard troops who can be redeployed at the whim of the President.

Now let us consider the fact that California is about the size of Iraq, even more urbanized and replete with weapons sources for materials capable of being transformed into weapons and held by those who understand the meaning of the words "I Swear to Uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, Foreign and Domestic."

I SWEAR
by
webcarve

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tag: 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment, a well-regulated militia, self-defense, liberty, freedom, culture war, terrorism, war on terror, clash of civilization, oath of office, bill of rights, uphold and defend the constitution, impeach george bush

How stupid do you have to be...

...to be a paid conservative columnist at Townhall.com?

THIS stupid.

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her.

There are, of course, NO "ill-favored, grossly overweight" Republican women. At least, not after the DMV opens again on Monday.

All your fat chicks belong to US, Medved!

What sort of amazing, delusional universe do you have to belong to in which this explaination of homophobia would make everyone shrug and say, "oh, well, that's ok then."

Lest I be accused of using "fair use" to distort his overall point - such as it is - I challenge you to read the whole thing without squicking on some level.

The following material is satire. It's sad that it has to be said, but we are occasionally read by those who honestly believe they ARE right because they are Right.

Medved reveals that a certain sort of "social conservatism" is more pathology than policy by, essentially, opening up his personal skull to show us the maggots infesting the necrotic tissue that used to be his brain.

He's proud of their manly tumescence, you see. And he just can't imagine what sort of irrational Scoleciphobic could object to him crooning to the few strays lounging on his pillow in the morning.

Shudder! Liberals allege that some people are born with maggots for brains, but this sort of disgusting behavior is a choice! To choose to celebrate such an unfortunate pathology as a lifestyle, to pick one's nose and hand wiggly examples proudly to horrified friends and colleagues - that is a violation of All Normal Family Behaviors. For the Sake of the Children, this cannot be permitted.

I say we worm him. Worm him NOW! And I'm not afraid to be accused of being "politically incorrect," or even "indulging in hate speech" for saying it, because I know people like Medved hate all those who tell the truth about their deviant maggoty nose-picking fetish.


Hat tip to Spocko via Echidne.

tag: Clash of Cultures, homophobia, Michael Medved, Tim Hardaway

What he said.

I wish I had something more original to say ... but these folks left me nothing to say other than "Click Here."

Of bloggers and bigots - ThoughtCrimes.org

Making Martial Law easier in the dead of the night.

More On The Unattainable Perfection. Special note for the term "The Guilt Industry."

the view of eating and exercise as a moral or religious enterprise or a competition as to who can get closest to an almost nonexistent thinness without dying, without dying EVER!

Crunchy goodness, every one.

Screw the left and the right - let's get REAL.

Coyote Angry: One Nevada Dimwit's Point of View

We (as in the democratic party) just don't get it. We're so wrapped up in party politics and being on the "right side" of every itty-bitty issue that comes up so as to remain in good standing with the cool kids that we completely forget who it was we were supposed to want to represent. Let me remind you. It was regular people. Not party hacks, not wanna-be blogging mega-stars, not just the all-important and ever snarky Las Vegas pundits and definitely not the ultra-rich and uber-cool folks in Pacific Palisades who do not give a rats ass about Nevadans even on a good day.

A big amen chorus to that - and let's send that out to the Republicans, Libertarians and Greens too. SCREW your ideology! Take those knee-jerk special interest "litmus test" issues off the table. All politics are local, so let us not beat folks up for serving their constituents first and their party second. Most importantly, let us get back to basic, bread-and-butter politics. Tell me what's in it for me, that I should vote for you.



I do care about a woman's right to choose. But that concern is overridden by MY right to choose what is important to me.

I don't happen to be a womb-bearing American, so I'm not even sure I have a right to a vote on this one, assuming one ever comes up. But I've been listening to these arguments since Roe v. Wade and they have not changed a whit on either side; which tells me one thing for sure. Whatever is being argued about, it ain't the issues either side is apparently arguing.

Since that's clearly the case, either talk about what you are really trying to achieve, or shut UP already. The way forward here is less doctrine, more positive and practical outcomes to individual Americans, WHATEVER their political beliefs.

You want universal access to family planning - good idea. YOU want (ideally) no abortions, because Abortion is Bad. I have a hard time arguing that an abortion is anything other than a "least worst" outcome, so I'm all for doing everything possible to provide superior choices to abortion and ideally, no need to consider that final choice at all.

And if the Abortion Debate were actually about abortion, instead of an argument as to who gets to commit an act of social engineering upon which class of despised persons, the debate would have ended at that point of commonality.

I think that this issue illustrates the ethic I wish to speak of better than any other. Good governments exist to expand choices, opportunities and liberties. Bad ones exist to restrict options, compel obedience and restrict liberties.

If the only options presented are to change who is oppressed every four to eight years, any actual liberty, any "right to choose" OR "right to life" is conditional and therefore a despicable illusion.

If this current government were a restaurant, it would have only one menu option - the "Family Values Meal," it would cost three hundred bucks, and it would be peanut based, because "average Americans" aren't allergic to peanuts. (The price of your meal would cover the complementary epinephrine injections to those who might request them.)

We have had far too much of our economy, our personal freedoms and our individual dignity sacrificed at the altar of ideology, despite the constant failure of that ideology to produce anything resembling the results it predicts. And we have to be very sure that we do not replace one set of ideologues with another, equally clueless set of beltway commandos.

I'm a Libertarian, but I'm a realist first. We have governments because we cannot do without them, they do things that cannot be done efficiently or fairly by any other means.

This is not to say that our current government IS efficient, fair, or does anything like what it should be doing as well as it should. It isn't. But then, that's what elections are all about.

I believe that if there is to be a government, it ought to do something useful and beneficial for the people it taxes and governs. I hardly think that to be a controversial idea, either. I've spent a lifetime putting up with being treated disrespectfully by governments, kept waiting in line, being judged on my "worthiness" for benefits, access or even consideration. I have learned - as has every other American - that the less you have to interact with government, the better off you will be.

And yet we pay for the privilege of this system of indignity.

Do you think it's reasonable that you or I have a harder time getting meaningful access to my government than, say, Paris Hilton? For that matter, do you think it reasonable that ANY elected official or functionary realistically has to give such a vapid twit priority over actual tax-payers? Does it seem to you like that's a good use of their expensive time on your dime?

But I'm not saying she should not be heard. I'm saying we all deserve the same respectful consideration as taxpayers that she, as a rich twit with the financial capacity to make some officials life hell, gets because they cannot afford to piss on her Pradas.

I passionately believe that the government that governs least governs best, but there are people and groups, cultures and subcultures, marketplaces and crossroads that need to be lightly, fairly and evenhandedly governed.

Let's not confuse that with "administered" or even "policed." Those might be the means, but they aren't the ends, and a lot of folks confuse the two.

Don't.

There are lots of ways to govern situations that do not depend on saying no and backing that up with force and compulsion. Those should be tools kept in the "sharps" drawer for special occasions.

The best way to govern is to concentrate on outcomes, and then consider the best way - here and now, in this particular community - to get there. That means increasing options, not restricting them. It means putting decision making power in the hands of the consumer of services as much as possible, and if not possible, as close to them, physically and hierarchically as possible.

As I write, I'm listening to re-runs of the Carson City Speachification on CNN and everyone I've heard has had good things to say. Of course, after years of listening to Clinton, Gore, Bush and Kerry, Tickle me Elmo would be a relief. It was nice to see some people throwing down and using words like "wrong" and "mistake" and "morality" and suchlike.

But I'm yet to be convinced that these are more than words.

Everyone there wanted out of Iraq. But few spoke about "Then what?"

But they are all on point about energy independence, universal health care, un-assing from Baghdad, at the very least and fixing education so that it prepares kids to work in the 21st century instead of the 19th.

This seems like a plan and about all I could expect in a few minutes, but I expect specifics in the next couple weeks, although Joe Biden gave us some good stuff on Iraq and education.

I missed Obama's bit, and I'm disappointed at that. I am convinced of two things; I will not be supporting Hillary Clinton or Dennis Kuchinich. One other candidate - and I misremember which - made a very serious point; the next president will have ZERO margin for error and I think both are predisposed to make some serious, ideological mistakes and diplomatic gaffes. I don't think Clinton realizes that this is not just more politics as usual - and more importantly, I think she's needed more in the Senate, and can do more there better and longer than she could as a highly controversial President.

Kucinich - well, he came across as a smug jackass; I found myself offended by his "no strings" stunting, because, well, he DOES have strings. And any politician who forgets he's beholden to them what brought him to the party ain't the sort of person who's got the judgment to be president.

Besides, it would be a waste of a perfectly good rabble-rousing ringtailed sumbitch. I want him in a position where he can kick ass, take names and not worry about being Mr. Popularity. I think he's my choice for Energy Czar, because I think he's probably not as vital to the senate as Sen. Clinton. On the other hand, he's a committee chair in the process of kicking ass and taking names, so maybe I should rethink that thought.

But it's not just the big names that are interesting. It's the small candidates that bring some of the more interesting ideas to the party. For instance, I was a little stunned when hard-line Liberal and dark horse candidate Mike Gravel came out with a proposal to eliminate the IRS and replace the IRS with a sales tax and a "prebate" covering the necessities of life.

It's not a bad idea, actually, and it's hardly original - but it's just so not socialist; it's a minarchist solution - if you grant that there is a need for social spending and non-Straussian views of poverty and welfare.

I happen to feel that's painfully obvious. But solution that just happens, with no ear-flappers or administrivia involved? No review committees? No preferences? No paperwork? Where's the socialism?

He's also an advocate of Direct Democracy. I'm not sure what I think of this yet - I need to read it instead of just skimming but while the man IS a flaming liberal and gloriously unapologetic about it, he's not a moonbat. Again, not presidential timber - too old, and we need two terms for sure. But definitely worth thinking of as cabinet material. And I'm starting to change my mind about this two year-long election cycle, because I'm sure glad I tripped over him.

Anyway, while I cringe at the idea of two years of unabated politics, THIS time, we have a LOT of thinking aloud to do as a nation and a people. I'm starting to thing that in these exceptional circumstances, two years is barely enough, and I suppose I must resign myself to doing my duty as a citizen. Indeed, so long as a single American is at risk due to the irresponsible choice of this as yet unimpeached president, I can do no less.

tag: Iraq War, universal health care, education policy, energy policy, morality, ethics, foreign policy, democratic presidential candidates, Nevada Caucus

Britney Spears, Rehab & Craig Fergusun, from the heart.

Brit goes into rehab after a spectacularly public meltdown and Craig Ferguson refuses to make jokes about it. Kudos to Fergie and good luck and a virtual hug. (if acceptable)

St. Paul Pioneer Press | 02/21/2007 | Britney is in rehab: "Britney Spears entered rehab Tuesday after a bizarre weekend that included shaving her head and getting a new tattoo. Spears' manager, Larry Rudolph, told People magazine's Web site that Spears, 25, had voluntarily checked herself into an undisclosed treatment facility. 'We ask that the media respect her privacy as well as those of her family and friends at this time,' Rudolph was quoted as saying."

I wasn't planning on blogging today, I still feel like used dog food - and told I smell somewhat like it as well. So next stop, bathtub.

But this clip came up on GMA as my wife was preparing her mind for the day. Ordinarily I'd have a punchline for that setup, but they get a free pass just for putting it up.

Her quote "I love him even more now." Craig is her favorite late night host and she watches him whenever her schedule allows. I have to agree - and his stock has gone up considerably in my eyes with this monologue.

Can't say my respect for the studio audience went up, though. They were all so sure that this was all a set-up for a crushing put-down.

But he didn't go there. And on his next show, it was "I hear Britney Spears has gone into rehab. Good for her. That's it, that's all I'm going to say" or words to that effect.

So I tracked it down, in case you had missed it- CBS gets props for putting the clips up themselves, though I wish they'd allow the embed code.

You see, I blog about ethics. And Craig's monologue was about being an ethical comedian, of considering the role of the jester in society and going after people who deserve to be taken down a peg or two. It's easy going for the cheap laughs, it's easy to add to someones misery by putting the mockery they are suffering in the tabloids onto television. It's so easy that those of us who live by the pen sometimes deserve to be whacked with it.

Hell, I've profited by Britt myself - that gawd-awful statue of her, pregnant on a bearskin. I still get traffic from that post! (and was shocked to find just how much I've gotten in the last few days!)

In preparing for this article, I found her being reviled online for her lack of underwear and pubic preparation, for being a "skank," a "whore" and a great deal worse - by genetic republicans who think they got a gawdamn fust 'mendment right to check out her - and I quote - "meat flaps."

Those same folks will be showing up in their Pentecostal churches come Sunday to hear a hellfire sermon about how all this proves that women who do not accept the guidance of a "good man" - like Herr "meat flaps" - are doomed to hellfire and deserve all the harsh treatment as "loving correction" for their sinful ways.

Well, if I'm going to be preached at, I prefer Colin's credentials to those of anyone else. He's in the been there, done that and remembers enough of it to tell you that you need to take a hard turn now, because the bridge is out, girlfriend.

I too have been there and done that; I too have been misused by people - and for a lot less money than you have.. You'd be amazed at how little money needs to be at stake for some people to screw you over; some apparently do it just for fun - and the only way they can get in a position to do it and then get away with it is to betray your trust and shatter your self-image so badly that, frankly, you will seem too crazy to take seriously.

But those who have been there and done that aren't so easily fooled, and we say welcome to the club, darlin'. You hit the wall hard and public. That's actually a good thing; you won't have to make any excuses or think you have to pretend to keep up appearances.

Being crazy for a time is a hell of a lot better than being stuck on stupid for life.

Fortunately, you have two of the best reasons in the world to unwind your shit and deal with it. You have money which can buy you time and privacy. You don't actually NEED to work on anything that pays money. You need to be working on you. Trust me when I tell you, putting this off with drugs, with alcohol, with work, with relentless activity is just gonna make you go "pop" again, and again until you take the time.

Now, your professional friends will be suggesting all kinds of radical quick fixes - so the gravy train will keep on rolling. Don't listen to them; listen to the folks who are your real friends. And also sisten to the folks like Craig and me, who give a damn because we honestly know how some part of what you are going through must feel like, because I wouldn't wish your real friends to have learned what we have. It's not easy, or quick to get through stuff like this - but it's possible and it's not just worth doing to survive, it's worth doing because in the end you will be a better person for it.


tag: Britney Spears, rehab, Craig Fergusun, common decency, culture, Britney Spears naked, bald

Oh, please Jesus, SOMEONE take them!

From the "and you thought Islamist Fanatics were scary stupid department."

LiberalsMustDie.com - Reports Coming In That Iran War Beginning!!! YES!!!

This could be the beginning of the End Days!!

"We are beginning to move aggressively to try and identify and root out the networks that are involved in helping to bring Iranian-supplied [bombs] into Iraq," Gates said. If you can't solve Iraq, enlarge it. While you were sleeping, the war with Iran might have begun.

I am so excited!

Take me Jesus, I am ready for you to come back to Earth!!

Supid is as stupid does...

The sort of people who star in this clip can be found here, at "liberalsmustdie.com".

If your entire premise is that "liberals must die," because your faith and beliefs cannot stand against a few pointed questions and a hard rain of facts - you are too damn stupid to breed, much less teach children.

Of course, us Libertarians may argue about Evolution, but we have great faith in Social Darwinism! A little too much, truth be told, and there's history behind us; there's any number of examples of wacky bible cults such as what infest our Body Politic at the moment that went down the toilet after the millennium-before-last.

Of course, if you really want to understand these folks - read their literature, and the folks that advertise in it, and who buy those sucker mailing lists.

Anyway, the hard core 6000 year creationist world view is depedant upon a literal - sort of - reading of the King James Bible - the most beautiful and least accurate translation there is. We have come a long way and found quite a few more original sources than King James's translators had.

Even IF I grant the "inerrency of God's Word" as presented in the King James - just for the sake of argument - I sure as hell do NOT grant the unspoken assumption of "inerrnency of comprehension" that's clearly being claimed. The folks depicted are clearly those who could not be trusted to assemble a bicycle from the instructions.

But let us go one step further. If you believe the Word of God is true, maybe you should actually take it at it's word. When it's silent on a topic, maybe YOU should be too. But these folks rely heavily on the Doctrine of Original sin - which is not explicitly in the bible. That was St. Augustine's bright idea. In fact, the various stories of Genesis have no conclusions to them, no explicit "moral." They are supposed to provoke questions, not supply definitive answers.

Further, if you are looking for condemnation of homosexual behavior, you will find the Bible a week reed. It's prohibited for "a man to lie with a man as a woman," which is in the Levitical code, and is apparently as tortured a phrase in Hebrew as it is in English. The law of Parsimony suggests that if God had wished to say that he disapproved of men having sex with men, he could have said so. Social context suggests that this was a prohibition of engaging in sex with Caananite temple prostitutes and priests - who apparently dressed as women. As for Lesbianism - the bible says not word one. Well, unless you read The Book of Ruth in a certain way, in which case it might be advocating committed same-sex relationships.

The "sin of Sodom" - google that for any number of perspectives - is most persuasively, from both text and culture, the abuse of strangers under the protection of Lot's household. At the time and even today, hospitality is sacred, an issue of importance beyond almost any other cultural imperative. hospitality and shelter were matters of survival.

I have immense respect for the Bible - and the Word in general. But I have far, far less faith in my fellow person's ability to read than I do in God's ability to write. Hell, that's a major theme with the Prophets. Where do these folks get the idea that their wackadoo world view, only vaguely connected to the Bible - is the result of any special understanding of God's Word? Because it's a truly "special" understanding, worthy of the "short bus." Don't take my word for it - ask any serious theologian. Or better yet, study a few dead ones; they aren't likely to be biased against these folks.

I commend to you St. Julian of Norwich. And I ain't even a Catholic. But then, more than a few of the catholic hierarchy of the day would have called her anything but "Catholic."

tag: creationism, ID, hate speech, patriarchy, Republican Values, clash of civilization, culture war

Missing in Action

My apologies for my absence this week. I don't have any co-bloggers to cover for me, and I've been too sick to even work on spiked articles. That's how I missed yesterday's radio show too. I was too sick to even fake it.

Theories Evolve while Doctrine is just Static.

The New York Review of Books: Evolving Evolution

A must-read "review" of From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design by Sean B. Carroll, Jennifer K. Grenier, and Scott D. Weatherbee,
serves as an overview of the last twenty years of evolutionary biology. Apparently we have a much deeper and more profound explanation of the mechanisms of evolution than I was taught in school. The link above goes to the Amazon.com page for the book, which contains much praise for the book itself, though it's stated to be a dense and difficult read.

The upshot is this makes evolution a far more robust theory than in my youth, one with real predictive value and engineering applications. That of course is the essence of any scientific theory - that one can use the theory both to explain what is known and to suggest directions of inquiry toward what is not yet understood.

Tip o' the hat to Mike the Mad Biologist for this excellent bit of brain candy.

And since we ARE tipping Mike, it should be observed that Intelligent Design and Creationism both fail predicatively and in the realm of engineering utility. I mean, unless by "utility," you mean they are useful in discounting the importance of stack emissions and heavy -metal contaminants.

tag: evolution, ID, intelligent design, evolutionary biology, theory of evolution,

NCLB? It's Relevance Free!

Daily Kos: Education Reform: The Curriculum

Until we re-think and rework the curriculum devised by the Committee of Ten in 1893 , education "reform"—standards and accountability, raising the bar, imposing rigor and so on—will produce little but political noise, student hoop-jumping, educator burnout, ever-escalating costs, and increasing societal inability to meet the demands of an unknown future.

A must read for everyone concerned with education, especially this bit.

Successful human functioning requires (a) ready access to the whole of one's knowledge via memory, (b) skill in identifying what one knows that’s applicable to the situation at hand, (c) an understanding of the systemic relationships between specific things one knows, and (d) the ability to predict or anticipate the consequences of the interactions of those things.

Consider the impact on society and politics if we started teaching to this standard in kindergarten. It would vastly expand the Reality-Based Community.

There are some profound thoughts in this, with a coherent plan of action that it appears can be implemented at the teacher level, at least to some extent, without the need to seek out approval. It's certainly applicable to charter schools, and I shall be suggesting that the Washoe County School District take a serious look at applying it.

The full-blown idea, plus supporting archives is at Marion Brady's site, complete with the expected PowerPoint presentations.

tag: education reform, Clash of Cultures, physics, math, biology, science, learning, teaching, theory of evolution

Zibiggy has a plan:

Expressed in an address to Congress, the sum of which is "DO YOUR JOB."

But seeing that it's Zbigniew Brzezinski (May St. Vidicon of Cathode be praised for clipboards), there is a great deal of the precise and the specific in support of his blunt "suggestions."

It's amazing how much a mind can be improved by a prolonged lack of power and patronage.

Blog For Arizona: Brzezinski's Warning to the Senate

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD’s in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the “decisive ideological struggle” of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America’s involvement in World War II.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran—though gaining in regional influence—is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Deplorably, the Administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East region has lately relied almost entirely on such sloganeering. Vague and inflammatory talk about “a new strategic context” which is based on “clarity” and which prompts “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world. Those in charge of U.S. diplomacy have also adopted a posture of moralistic self-ostracism toward Iran strongly reminiscent of John Foster Dulles’s attitude of the early 1950’s toward Chinese Communist leaders (resulting among other things in the well-known episode of the refused handshake). It took some two decades and a half before another Republican president was finally able to undo that legacy.

One should note here also that practically no country in the world shares the Manichaean delusions that the Administration so passionately articulates. The result is growing political isolation of, and pervasive popular antagonism toward the U.S. global posture.

Zbiggy needs to include footnotes! But the essay, in the whole, is well taken - it does not take a giant, pulsating brain such as Brzezinski's to see what rough beast is shambling toward Persia. But he does name that beast more fully and damningly and publicly than most in the political establishment would dare.

The Administration clearly wishes to cast us into a protracted war with Islam in general - World War III is terminology that the Right Wing has floated several times to describe it, as well as the term "clash of civilizations."

I would call it a clash of realities - the term "civilizations" is a bit oxymoronic in my view, considering the leading proponents for this clash on both sides of a divide that I see as being both intentional and convenient to the Idiologues of Islam and the Chickenhawk Castastrophizers of Christianity. In fact, there's little support for either group among the religiously moderate or the moderately religious - in either religion. Sojourners criticizes the war, while Liberal Islam Network cautiously explores the possibility of religious dissent. Interestingly enough, when religious conservatives of all sorts thump their scriptures, yelling loudly about what "The Good Book" has to say, reading the book itself brings a new, and far less "conservative" perspective on the original intent.

When you think of it - all this "clash of cultures" nonsense may well bring to pass the exact opposite; two cultures, so long completely and blissfully ignorant of the values and tenants of the other, discovering that what they have "always known" about the Infidel Other is in fact nonsense, and their greatest threats and foes are those who make a fine living pointing out the Evils and Dangers of the Others.

tag: Christianity, Red Letter Christians, Islam, Religious Fundimentalism, Clash of Cultures, WWIII, armageddon, Unintended Consequences, antiauthoritarian, Iran, Iraq War, Bush's Agenda, Planned Iran War

A Graphictrivia Special Entry.

Falling for things like this is why I rule at Trivial Pursuit, even though it bores the stones off me.

"A fact a day keeps the bible away." That's a bloody great bumpersticker!

africans - The return of PURE FACT

One thing I do delight in receiving, however, is factual information. My father once told me that a fact is like a lump of coal - solid, carbon based, and it burns brightly in the darkness. Compared to fact, whimsy and humour are like damp pinecones. Bloody useless. With a body of knowledge built on undisputed fact, a man may argue flawlessly, assured that he is more right than any callow dissenter. Armed with fact, wars can be won, and enemies crushed. A fact a day keeps the bible away, my grandfather used to say. He was a naval man, and did not gladly suffer a fool. He lived and died by the fact.

I've taken the liberty to go ahead and scour my email inbox, and pluck out the best facts I could find, for your perusal, and the embroadening of your mind. I have decided to do you this kindness, because today I am feeling benevolent. Don't hesitate to soak in what you can, because my mood won't last, and I'll probably beat you for trying to steal my thoughts.

Um, no, I didn't bother to fact check the factoids related at the link. Take this article - and source - seriously at your own risk.

The Death Throes of the Hierarchy

A great explanation in 30 seconds, with implications.



And the implications ARE:

Simple: No one group, person, class or creed can determine "what's important" any more than they can choose what people "ought to be protected from." And that's just ONE implication - uncomfortable to Conservatives.

Information is education. It's now accessible to anyone, anywhere, at a price that's a lot lower than libraries. Once a person has "learned how to learn," they don't NEED a university to become educated. That's an implication sure to be uncomfortable to Liberals.

Yep, XML is not just a powerful tool, it's a powerful idea; the idea that information can (and should) be separable from presentation bias.

We are looking at a fundamental change in how we relate as human beings, how we communicate, indeed, this will affect how we think.

Those who thought that Armageddon was coming at the millennium were correct in a sense. It has. Those who still await the Messiah while staring at their screens are blind.

"In the beginning, there was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Now, lest you accuse me of committing heresy, I suggest I'm only committing an observation. My personal faith is not dependent upon the end of the world as we know it. In my lifetime, that's already happened several times, and a couple times each in my parents and grandparents lives. But this is significantly different from even such a fundamental shift as the Enlightenment or the Industrial Revolution. This is a quantum leap in the ability of human beings to communicate, to learn, to understand and - possibly the most practical difference - to do business without intermediaries or recourse to the offices of government.

Of course, we had to be ready for such a change, and I'm astonished to say, it appears that the preceding social and scientific upheavals have prepared us for that.

Despite all appearances and local anomalies, the world as a whole has become surprisingly more decent, livable and civilized over just my lifetime. We are now outraged at what would have been commonplaces for our parents and unquestionable, doctrinal realities for our grandparents.

George Bush - one of those anomalies - has tried to return the world to an older, more comfortable place for him and his ilk, where the common folk are but pawns and profit centers; electronically chained serfs to the New World Order.

It's a tried and true formula. A little more than a century ago, during the reign of the Robber Barons here in the US, it worked perfectly - until their sheer greed led them to folly, and yet they still managed to retain enough power to set up conditions for the Great Depression in '29.

There was not just one foreign war during that time - there were several, with appalling loss of life, losses that continue to affect many countries to this day.

It has taken a bare six years to go from applause to outrage here in the US. The fact that we get little or no credit for that speaks well, I think, of what the world expects of us - and the far higher standards they expect of themselves. Even fifty years ago, the general world reaction to the use of torture by the US would be, and I quote, "so?"

At that time it was a commonplace, a routine thing, both foreign and domestic. Now, it is still depressingly common as a form of governance, but it's becoming a guilty secret; a thing to be ashamed of; something definitive of lesser peoples and futile powers.

The difference is awareness - and the ability to communicate effectively to organize in opposition to, or in avoidance of coercive force.

And therein begins the seeds of peace; not from altruism, but from the realization that the use of naked force to control a population that can easily learn to create it's own counterforce is both terribly expensive and futile in the fairly short term.

The above link leads to a firm that markets new and used vehicles developed for the South African Defense Forces during the long struggle to end apartheid. These are arguably some of the very best such vehicles on the market. Our troops SHOULD be using vehicles this capable in Iraq.

And yet - there is no apartheid in South Africa, the long struggle to maintain control ended, not so much with a bang as a whimper of utter exhaustion, and I doubt you will find all that many Southern Africans pining for the Good Old Days, a grim, paranoid fortress state that in its way was as much of a prison for those it deemed worthy of it's "protection" as those it more honestly and ruthlessly oppressed.

As beautifully designed and brilliantly engineered as these marvelous sculptures of war are, they are symptomatic of a problem that is far better addressed by the means of Gandhi and Desmond Tutu than by the Sjambok and the testicle crushers of previous Administrations.

All of these things are the fruits and symptoms of the chaos Alvin Toffler predicted,
but he also missed the mark in his seminal work of the 70's, Future Shock. He saw chaos as dangerous and completely alien to the human psyche, a stance that while considerably better founded in the scientific consensus of the day, is essentially no different than the anti-science Dominionist Theocrats of the far and winged Right.

In fact, we seem to be adapting well to an increasingly chaotic world, and possibly this is due to the fact that all organic systems - us included - are chaotic systems.

But it does require letting go of Newtonian, deterministic and behaviorist approaches to the economy, to governance and, indeed, to all levels of human governance. We must adapt to the idea that it's impossible to "see the big picture" without changing the picture simply by looking at it. One abandons aiming for particular outcomes and instead navigates into a range of favorable possibilities.

When you start realizing that large chunks of immutable order are clamped into place and kept in rigid alignment to one another, the result is paradoxically a great deal of chaotic friction leading to far less than perfect order, you start realizing that Order, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a terrible master.

tag: libertarian, web 2.0, , YouTube, video, antiauthoritarian, minarchy, infoarchy, chaotic systems, patriarchy, oligarchy, tyrrany, opression, armageddon, information armageddon, Alvin Toffler,

A Soldier's Duty: Lt. Watada

UPDATE: Mistrial:

The court-martial of Lt. Ehren Watada has been ruled a mistrial because of a dispute over a pretrial agreement. Watada’s attorney, Eric Seitz, called the ruling a “significantly positive event,” and said he hoped it would put an end to the case.

First Lieutenant Ehren Watada still refuses Iraq deployment orders, calling the war illegal. A six-year prison term could result. His preliminary hearing was yesterday; trial commences Febuary 5th.

"WATADA: Certainly. I think that when we take an oath we, as soldiers and officers, swear to protect the constitution — with our lives as necessary — and those constitutional values and laws that make us free and make us a democracy. And when we have one branch of government that intentionally deceives another branch of government in order to authorize war, and intentionally deceives the people in order to gain that public support, that is a grave breach of our constitutional values, our laws, our checks and balances, and separation of power."

A lot of people think of this young man as a "coward" for refusing to "do his duty." It's true that in nearly every other military, there would be absolutely no room to argue that he is refusing to do his duty. But the United States is an exception; unlike every other military power I'm aware of, the oath is to the Constitution, not to the Crown or to Civil Authority, and that makes a huge and sometimes awkward difference.

It is ordinarily assumed that superior officers ARE obeying their oaths and issuing legitimate orders. When circumstances arise that make that assumption unreasonable or impossible, an officer has a higher loyalty - to their oath. And there is a procedure to test and resolve such questions, because the alternative is to give orders he's reasonably certain to be illegal.

Therefore, when a commissioned officer says to a superior, "I request and require written orders to that effect, Sir." the challenged officer knows that is a means of perpetuating evidence for the eventual court-martial. Since the orders in question have to do with the legitimacy of the war itself, he's got both the duty and the right to refuse unfounded orders until the matter is resolved in just such a court-martial.

Watada has questioned the validity of an order under the terms of the Constitution. The conditionality and legality of the order now becomes a matter of fact to be determined. The shock and awe comes in when we realize the scope; he is questioning the validity and legality of the President's orders in his military capacity as Commander in Chief.

Watada must be well aware that this is career suicide and likely to dog him throughout civilian life. Indeed, he may well have to leave the country after facing whatever legal consequences may ensue. So the consequences he faces are as grave as those any other officer of his rank in combat. Different, but no less severe.

He is not facing a mere slap on the wrist and a dishonorable discharge. The stated charges carry a maximum of six years hard time and a dishonorable discharge. However, military courts have wide latitude and the charges he's facing are in all likelihood "placeholders" while the prosecution attempts to build a strong case on unassailable grounds that will see him in Leavenworth for the greater part of his life. Indeed, it would be no less than the proper duty of the prosecution to make every effort to see him dance at the end of a rope.

This is a legal No-Man's land and there's not a single person involved who will have a single clue about the outcome, except that it's some variety of "bad for Lt. Watata." He is staking "His life, his fortune and his sacred honor" on this matter.

The path of cowardice would be to serve as ordered, despite his qualms, knowing that to do so would be to betray his conscience and (in his view,) his oath. Many officers have taken a quieter path of protest, simply resigning their commissions, or leaving active duty service.

I'm certain Judge Advocate Generals office has offered him some sort of plea, probably a rather attractive plea, that anyone looking for a "way out" due to cowardice would have jumped at. I can't imagine any sane reaction from SecDef other than "make this go away!"

Instead, he is choosing to face the full might of an angry Defense Department and Administration, who accurately see him as personally challenging their basis of legitimate authority.

But those questions have been politely asked and brusquely dismissed. We have been lied to, we have seen organized campains to discredit civilians who ask, we have found out that our government wants the ability to simply disappear people without question, and we cannot help but wonder if "asking questions" will be considered a good reason for indefinite detention without trial.

WATADA: The constitution was established, and our laws are established, to protect human rights, to protect equal rights and constitutional civil liberties. And I think we have people in power who say that those laws, or those principles, do not apply to them — that they are above the law and can do whatever it takes to manipulate or create laws that enable them to do whatever they please. And that is a danger in our country, and I think the war in Iraq is just one symptom of this agenda. And I think as soldiers, as American people, we need to recognize this, and we need to put a stop to it before it's too late.

There are a lot of things you could call him, but I think that "Coward" ain't one of 'em. Please take a moment and consider why some folks might want you to think he is a coward and trying to escape his duty, rather than an officer who is trying to fulfil it. And then ask yourself, if there is the slightest question as to whether or not he's right, don't you want to see that sorted out?

Whether or not you agree or disagree with the Lieutenant's stand, it's impossible to understate the potential social and legal consequences here. The Army, the Defense Department, the President, and indeed Congress and the entire government are as much on trial here as one young first Lieutenant.

And if he prevails in either a legal or moral sense - this war, and all the further conflicts and military involvements the "global war on terror" surely implies will face increasing skeptical review. Given the stakes, it's a review that EVERY American needs to make, if only because every NON-American has been keeping their reviews current since at least '03.

It will surely bring increased Congressional oversight and it certainly will add fuel to those questing for grounds to impeach the President. Indeed, if the Lieutenant is permitted to call in his defense witnesses he should obviously call, it will in fact be preliminary hearings to that effect.

If Lt. Wataba is willing to stake his future and reputation upon the legality of orders he might find himself giving - is it not reasonable to ask George Bush, Commander in Chief of all American Forces to stake his future and reputation upon them as well?

As a matter of record I will state this; any trial that is legimately attempting to establish the facts of this case and which does not have George Bush on the stand under oath is not to be taken seriously and no verdict should be considered less than a badge of honor.

tag: Leutenant Watada, , george w. bush, constitutional, commander in chief, unitary executive, George Bush, impeach bush, national security

Chief counsel for committee that probed Nixon wants similar Bush probe

The chief counsel to the committee that investigated abuses of power by President Richard Nixon in the 1970s tells RAW STORY he’d like to see a similar inquiry into clandestine intelligence operations under President George W. Bush.



read more | digg story

Beam us up, Spocko!

Revisiting the Law of Unintended Consequences

It's refreshing to know that this issue isn't being ignored simply because I haven't blogged about it for a few days. I admit that sounds arrogant as hell, but really, it's just thanksgiving that my unaccountable ability to shut down a discussion threads - something akin to a nun at an orgy - does not apply to the internet as a whole. At any rate, the far-right hate media, such as the far-too-common examples on KSFO are finding out what happens when their free speech is piped out of their comfy little call-screened ghetto.

A graphic summation of Hate Talk Radio 560 from YouTube - one of several possible examples to be found there.



Meanwhile, they continue their attempts to "blog." Melanie Morgan actually writes for World Net Daily, proving for sure that here ideas are not the result of some strange manifestation of Tourette's Syndrome. In Death by Liberal Activism, she takes on the Godless Liberal Hordes of the Weather Channel, dastardly advocates of that Liberal Chimera, Global Warning. I'm not quite sure what the title has to do with the topic, other than the usual - equating "death" with "Liberalism."

Project much, Mel?

And considering that even George Bush has accepted - kinda - the latest reports on global warming, it's a little silly for her to be continue beating a overheated horse. Silly, but apparently profitable.

She is proudly headlined as a World Net Daily Exclusive Columnist. I think we can let that observation stand, with all the dreadfully obvious conclusions left unstated.

Lets return to KSFO and the Not Ready For WorldNetDaily Players.

David Gold The most loquacious, and I grudgingly admit, not at all bad. I suspect he may be a real conservative, instead of the expected Rovian Tool Rabbi Daniel Lapin One entry, but a surprisingly good one. But then, he also blogs here Toward Tradition and here at rabbidaniellapin.com Welcome to my Blogroll, Reb Daniel!		Lee Rodgers One Entry: "INTERNET LIARS AND OTHER ASSORTED LOW-LIFE" We love you too, Lee! Officer Vic Has written nothing. Of course, given the quality of his spoken words, it's a blessing if he is, as I suspect, functionally illiterate.

So, two that WorldNetDaily wouldn't consider because they express individual, considered conservative opinions, and two that are - shall we say - sub-par even by WorldNetDaily standards. One made the cut, because of her mastery of that Rovian Rhetorical tool, innuendo. combined with a complete lack of that great Liberal value - any evident sense of proportion or of the absurd.

But all told, I'd have to say that I'm grudgingly impressed. I had expected the lineup to be all wing-nut, all the time, and this post to be yet another exercise in duck hunting with claymore mines.

As I've observed more than once: "It's not SUPPOSED to be this easy!"

Maybe - just maybe - there is hope for America, if otherwise sane and sensible Conservatives intelligently (and as far as I can tell, honestly) advocating their considered positions without slavish adherence to the ever-changing and never-conservative Administration line.

I should like to publicly ask both both Rabbi Lapin and David Gold to express their personal positions on fair use, copyright, and the reasonable consequences of speech in the public square at public expense.

If Lee Kelso, Officer Vic and Melanie Morgan are not a textbook example of The Tragedy of the Commons, I don't know what is. That link leads to a particularly good, well-balanced Wikipedia article, I should add.

Rabbi Lapin has written an excellent piece touching some of these issues already - (I Warned You that Ancient Jewish Wisdom Discouraged Investing in Sirius Satellite Radio,)
I hopes for an excellent discussion of the topic.

tag: KSFO, Hate Radio, Hate Speech, Fair Use, Spocko's Brain, YouTube, Broadcast Spectrum, FCC, Disney, ABC, Viacom, SLAPP Suits, Unintended Consequences

The Rise and Fall of the American Empire

Thanks to Wot is it good 4

Demise of GOP just took turn for the worse - Scarborough Country - MSNBC.com

Republican senators are now turning their rhetorical guns away from Democrats and toward one another. A few conservative Republican senators, whose votes usually cheer me up during bleak political times, are actually accusing Virginia’s senior senator, John Warner, of providing comfort to terrorists. The White House even got involved in the name calling when Tony Snow suggested Warner’s actions could embolden the likes of Osama Bin Laden. Story continues below ↓ advertisement The message from the Bush administration seems to be this: “Thanks for carrying our water on this miserable war for four years. Now we’re going accuse you of helping terrorists.”

How pathetic.

The entire strategy of the Bush Administration - from day ONE - has been to vilify critics rather than to engage them - and by "critics," I mean anyone who disagrees to the slightest extent. Joe Scarborough places himself squarely in the terrorist/liberal/peacenik camp with the following accurate observation:

Even if you agree with me that this war was worth fighting as long as we believed Saddam Hussein had WMD’s aimed at America, at some point you have to face the facts: the Bush administration was wrong about those weapons, wrong about the nuclear program, wrong about their refusal to quell rioting early, wrong about Bremer’s gutting of the Iraqi army and police force, wrong about refusing to kill or capture al Sadr in 2003, wrong to tell the generals not speak of the coming insurgency, wrong to stubbornly refuse to give generals the troops they needed to win this war, wrong to make the “Mission Accomplished” declaration, wrong for the VP to claim that the insurgency was in its death throes and wrong to push a surge plan that the president’s top generals opposed.

The list could continue for pages but I will be generous to the White House and leave it at that.

At some point, GOP senators and congressmen need to understand that this war is no longer a battle between Republican war heroes and Democratic 60s hippie freaks. The lines have now been blurred by Bush’s bungling war strategy. Now we find ourselves in a fight between war heroes and war heroes. Former secretaries of Navy and former Vietnam POWs. Conservative Republicans and protectors of the president.

And as I recall observing on my radio show Saturday, Download wma file even if you agree with the "Project for a New American Century's" "Rebuilding America's Defenses", there is a right way and a wrong way to go about creating an American Empire. It was not the Legion's might that established and maintained that empire; it was good roads, reliable commerce and general prosperity that made it's more oppressive aspects tolerable to most folks.

In order to build and maintain an empire that is more than fleeting, one has to be clearly superior to the alternative. In that we have failed utterly.

I of course oppose the idea of empire - the time for empires is long gone. They bring no benefits to the table that are not better achieved in simpler, less expensive and far less violent ways. In point of fact, there is no great profit in supporting an empire - and a great deal of both tangible and intangible wealth to lose.

This stark reality overcomes all else; if more than 70 percent of the privileged citizens of the Empire's heart disapprove of it's running, then I'd say that the rest of the world has every reason to be skeptical about joining up. And I would add that should we be so foolish as to continue, the empire might become manifest - but the capital might well be in Europe, South America or China.

tag: American Empire, miserable failure, George W. Bush, PNAC, Neocons, unitary executive, commander in chief, cause for impeachment

Lincoln on War Powers

I wish to take this bit out of context, because I really wish to focus just on Lincoln's words, which are of critical relevance today.

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Our little Churchills: "s this letter from Abraham Lincoln, written while a member of Congress in 1848, to William Herndon (h/t FMD). Herndon had argued (echoing the claims from the White House and the likes of Joe Lieberman and Bill Kristol today) that the President had the unrestrained power to wage war against Mexico in order to defend U.S. interests regardless of the views of Congress or anyone else -- a view which Lincoln (accurately) found repulsive to the core principles of our political system:

[And here I cite the entire letter -BK]

A. LINCOLN.

ON THE MEXICAN WAR

TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, February 15, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your letter of the 29th January was received last night. Being exclusively a constitutional argument, I wish to submit some reflections upon it in the same spirit of kindness that I know actuates you. Let me first state what I understand to be your position. It is that if it shall become necessary to repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the Constitution, cross the line and invade the territory of another country, and that whether such necessity exists in any given case the President is the sole judge.

Before going further consider well whether this is or is not your position. If it is, it is a position that neither the President himself, nor any friend of his, so far as I know, has ever taken. Their only positions are--first, that the soil was ours when the hostilities commenced; and second, that whether it was rightfully ours or not, Congress had annexed it, and the President for that reason was bound to defend it; both of which are as clearly proved to be false in fact as you can prove that your house is mine. The soil was not ours, and Congress did not annex or attempt to annex it. But to return to your position. Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after having given him so much as you propose. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him,--"I see no probability of the British invading us"; but he will say to you, "Be silent: I see it, if you don't."

The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood. Write soon again.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.

Glenn continues:

The view of America as advocated by George Bush and his followers is as antithetical as can be even to the views of the individuals to whom they claim allegiance. They exploit historical events and iconic individuals as tawdry props, and they neither understand them nor actually care about their meaning. They turn them into cheap cartoons -- Churchill! Lincoln! America! -- drained of their actual substance and converted into impoverished, degraded symbols used to promote ideas that are the exact opposite of what they actually embody.

And here I segue; for while Glenn clearly feels (using such laden language as he does) that this is a most cynical policy, I have reason to believe that this is the result of a confusion of thought, of the most fundamental sort of "magical thinking." There is, I suggest, a genuine inability on the part of the Right to understand the distinction between symbolism and reality, just as there is a general misunderstanding of the difference between power and force.

One of my Sifu's favorite stories about his teacher was a vivid demonstration of the distinction between power and force. His master would toss a pine board in the air, and strike so hard on the way down that splinters rained down upon the awed students. "That is force," he said, disapprovingly. He would then toss another board in the air and strike it so that it fell at his feet - neatly split lengthwise. "That is power."

Power is force used with control to achieve a precise, determined end without fuss. We used to be a powerful nation. Now we are a forceful nation - and the rest of the world is picking splinters out of it's hair.

Moreover, we have demonstrated the problem of using force in an indiscriminate, uncontrolled and unconsidered way - it creates far more issues and enemies than can be addressed.

The response of a powerful nation would have been something along the line removing the Taliban from play, securing the Afgan-Pakistani border and a number of very public trials and convictions, involving the sorts of persons who could be tried and convicted. For the remainder - let us say that knowing who is involved opens up a range of potential, precise actions.

But that, of course, would have required investigation and determination of fact. The good police work that wingers, usually so concerned with law and order, dismiss when they wish to lash out without concern for justice, consequence or even useful outcomes.

But I would observe that any rational counter-terror strategy has to involve drying up the potential supply of recruits while making training those recruits a more difficult and personally dangerous job. It would also have to involve confronting the sources of funding and arms on some level, probably on a number of levels both covert and overt. Most importantly, it should seem to those trying to bring terror to bear that it was a vastly unlucky and dangerous enterprise that seemed to gain little notice or positive attention.

It's not a flashy approach. It's not glamorous. But it's a well-proven approach that, coupled with a reasonable and rational foreign policy will bear fruit far more quickly than this disastrous course.

And this brings us back to Lincoln's wise and prescient words, for what he describes as a grave risk is exactly what has happened, to an end far worse than Lincoln might reasonably have foreseen.

Executives are, by their nature, competitive and combative folks. They are indeed the stuff of Kings, and that very trait, the one that makes a good King, executive or President effective is also what needs to be restrained; the scope of their actions must be circumscribed and subject to review if only to save them from their own ambition.

While it's easy and valid to blame Bush and his coterie of incompetent visionaries, as they are the sine qua non of "misrule," this mess is truly the fault of a Congress so distracted by it's finagling and fundraising that it could not be bothered to read the bills the President advocated. Nor was this the sole failing of Republicans; a great many Democrats - and I include in this Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman and Sen. Biden - failed as badly as their Republican colleagues and with far less political excuse. They essentially handed George Bush powers that Lincoln clearly felt were above HIS pay grade, that would test his ethics - and we have reaped the whirlwind.

It was in such fashion that the Roman Senate became irrelevant and a line of Caesars began to grind the known world beneath the hobnails of it's Legions. And that is a history lesson the rest of the world remembers all too well - from Seville to Istanbul.

Whether or not we choose to reign in the Presidency and return to Constitutional governance, the world as a whole will act to place us in checkmate. It will be vastly better for us, as responsible Citizens, to take on that unpleasant task ourselves. Moreover, it's our duty.

Impeaching the President would be a great start to alerting the world that the great Silent Majority is awake and aware.

tag: George W. Bush, Impeach the President, Unitary Executive, Congress, Silent Majority, Lincoln Quotation, Talking Points Memo