Iraq: Forget winning. Forget losing. Let's beat the spread.

The Blog | Sen. Harry Reid: The Clock is Ticking, Mr. President | The Huffington Post

From Sen. Harry Reid's Blog:

Frankly, I don't believe that more troops is the answer for Iraq. It's a civil war and America should not be policing a Sunni-Shia conflict. In addition, we don't have the additional forces to put in there. We obviously want to support what commanders in the field say they need, but apparently even the Joint Chiefs do not support increased combat forces for Baghdad.

There's an even simpler reason, Harry. It's wrong. Going in was wrong, the people who planned the war were wrong, the administrators sent there are wrong, the ideas were wrong, the priorities were wrong, the money went to the wrong people; everything about this war was and is comprehensively wrong.

And now, after Cheney gets bitch-slapped by the Saudis, we are supposed to be their proxy army in a religious civil war between Islamist factions? We don't OWN a dog in this hunt, Senator. Not even our Islamic citizens do; as with all religious wars, it has almost nothing at all to do with the religions in question - and looked at it that way, we have neither laudable nor illegitimate reasons for trying to pick a winner.

Senator, I remind you that you represent a state of Casinos, and in the parlance of the casinos, it's not whether you win or lose; it's whether you beat the spread.

The House of Saud has lots of money, let them train and equip their own cannon fodder. Hell, let them hire mercenaries from Blackwater at the going rate.

I see no reason why we should be expending lives and treasure to protect Saudi interests. If Americans must die in this war, at least they should die very far in the black, with robust survivor insurance and pre-paid disability coverage.

We do need to increase recruitment of Regular Forces people so that the Guard and Reserves can go home, to replace casualties and to replace those who leave as soon as stop-loss measures expire. We need money to deal with the long term health care costs of the wounded and and their post-traumatic stress. And we clearly need to have a new generation of general officers, which means there must be larger classes of cadets, at least for the next few years.

Meanwhile, Sir, I suggest that research into more practical crops for bio-fuel generation than corn (ones that will grow as well or better in cornfields) and a much higher priority for both bio-fuel production and nuclear energy. We need a realistic way of dealing with nuclear waste. That's not Yucca Mountain - we need fuel reprocessing, ideally on-site.

We also need to look into sustainable crops for paper and fiber. That would be hemp, and hemp could further reduce our dependency on petrochemicals for fiber. It takes less fuel to harvest and process for paper. It makes better jeans than imported third=world cotton and you can't smoke it, unless you like migraine headaches, so lets get rid of that dumb law. Hemp is a not bad crop for stabilizing a clear-cut, so the timber companies might not scream as much as one might think, especially as the waste foliage and residue from fiber extraction could be feedstock for bio-fuel production. Oh, and giving the Mexican textile industry a huge boost wouldn't hurt our border issues any much.

Here's another suggestion for you; the deregulation of ethanol production for individuals. So long as they are using a properly designed, factory-inspected automated distillation apparatus, they may produce as much as they like for private use or sale.

At one stroke, you've made it possible for many small businesses to turn their waste streams into fuel for their business operations, for households to generate an additional revenue stream in poor areas and all without a single tax dollar being spent. Of course, a fuel still would not make drinkable ethanol from organic kitchen and yard waste with the occasional dog turd thrown into the mix. At best, one could hope for "relatively non-toxic."

But, yes, it is predictable that this will result in a proliferation of private distillation for consumption. Whether this is a problem depends mostly on how we chose to react to that reality. If nothing else, ethanol stills are a lot less toxic than meth labs, and sketchy folk can make money brewing 'shine, maybe they won't blow themselves up or poison their kids with toxic methamphetamine fumes. At the very least, alcohol is somewhat less personally destructive. Certainly it would be possible to create an infrastructure for reliable testing and grading of potable alcohols, and that gives you the ability to place a tax upon it, if you care to. If a tax stamp on a bottle of shine means "assured to be non-lethal," I think that's likely a tax paid for a useful service.

We need to start thinking seriously about simple and incremental means to soften the blow of a fuel crunch in case of a general middle east conflict and we need to free ourselves from being caught up in that dynamic. Driving down the world price of crude oil will definitely suck a lot of energy out of various terrorist campaigns and some very unfriendly regimes. Every barrel conserved or replaced is tiny victory in preventing widespread warfare over dwindling oil supplies as well as a significant boost to our economy and every individual bottom line.

Being addicted to mid-east oil makes it impossible for us to be an honest broker. Furthermore, it's a low cost way of developing a technology that could dissipate the looming Chinese energy crunch, forestalling a nasty resource crisis, and one that cannot be seen by the Chinese as "meddling," which almost any other approach could be. I'd much rather sell them a solution than be on the wrong side of their problem, and I feel I'm on firm Yankee ground when I say that.

Democrats - and indeed, Republicans and every stripe Independents need to start thinking outside of the box. We cannot afford to prop up current energy conglomerates to keep them doing what they are doing. We have already lost six critical years due to the Cheney "energy plan," and clearly sustainability was not part any part of that. It's time to throw wide the doors,and redirect the tax breaks and grants to sustainable energy. Let the market sort things out. After years of windfall profits, they have the resource to do very well by themselves if they choose to do well by us. They DO need to be reminded who is in charge of this nation, every bit as much as every other special interest who has been on the Iraqi Gravy Train to Hell.

Them what caused the mess outta be on the front lines of cleaning up the mess - or paying for it. But it would be wrong to think that the Iraqi clusterfuck was the result of malice. Had it been just that, we would not be in such an intractable mess. No, we have been ill-used and ill-advised by a generation of Neocon idealists, people who wanted to change the world for the better, in the very worst way. And lo, they were half-way successful. They did change the world, and they did it in the worst way.

But the fault was not in their lack of compassion, or of foresight; it certainly was not for a lack of sheer brainpower. It was due to the though that you could actually set off vast changes in how we do everything and predict a particular outcome.

Nope. You can initiate vast changes and influence a positive outcome by spotting and amplifying positive trends while damping negative ones. OR, you can aim toward a particular future with some reliability by focusing very narrowly and influencing change toward that particular end while accepting random fluctuations. You cannot do both at once on a massive scale and get anything you particularly want.

When things go to badly wrong, when the friction and stress levels in a particular area get too bad, you get rising levels of violence and even open warfare. Warfare is a symptom of large, systemic problems, so starting a war as a matter of foreign policy is akin to curing a cold with a syringe full of live rubella. Yes, you can then cure the rubella and when you have done so, if the patient survives, likely the cold will have passed as well. But they weren't cured of one disease; they simply survived two.

Their planning did not account for people who did not use their economic and social models as a basis for their own thoughts. It did not account for people who did not think in classical western terms, or with the biases built into English or the assumptions about the cultural roles of religion Americans take in with the mass-market formula we are given in place of that nasty pornographic breast milk. There was no place in their plans for chaos, for randomness, for sheer human perversity - and that is what you are dealing with in nearly pure form in the theatre of war.

Overwhelming firepower will overcome a large amount of chaos - but only by means of paradoxical destroying the remaining traces of order. And armies just plain suck at creating conditions suited for orderly civilian life; people who understand that don't do well in armies. Hell, that's one of the most persuasive reason we HAVE a large army; expensive as it is, it's both more useful and far cheaper than the prisons it would need to be replaced with.

The problem was not so much that the Bushes hadn't done sufficient planning; oh no. The problem is that they had far too many plans, far too many ideas, far too many people who were sure they knew how to get the job done! Not one of them would stray from their ideological purity to accept the plans or the input of the people who grew up there, knew the culture and had an idea of what would work and what was doomed to failure.

So we have the Neocon pattern of Faith-Based Failure, the folly of creating chaos and then trying to mold that chaotic mess as if it were wet sand at the beach. It's an apt analogy, for even if it had worked, it could only have worked to that extent; a superficial appearance of a vast and intricate order at the mercy of the first wave, rainstorm or passing spaniel.

But we are left with a big pile of chaos, and we must make the best of it. The best thing to do with chaos is to treat it like a big old murky pond filled with old tires, catfish and crawdads. You bait a line, throw it in and let your mind wander to your granny and her famous gumbo.

The worst possible mistake would be to attempt to plan a new energy infrastructure. That could take decades and we certainly do not have twenty or thirty years to piss away on this. The best way is to encourage as many potential solutions as possible so that competition and experience can narrow things down. Arguments over which fuel-stocks congress should support are dumb, just as arguments over whether we should emphasise wind, solar, nuclear or geothermal research and development. In all cases, the answer should be "yes." I'd say the idea would be to think in terms of tax breaks or subsidies contingent on units of energy delivered, with an eye toward making start-ups possible, and real dollars dependant on engineering and production efficiencies.

In other words, make it possible for as many people to try as many different approaches to this problem as possible. Start an energy rush!

This is not cause for panic or despair. Yes, it is the end of an era; we must change the way we do things because we are well past the point of diminishing returns. We certainly must take global warming seriously, and I think it prudent to prepare as well as we can for potential worst cases, not because I think the worst case predictions are that likely to come true, but because we will be prepared for the shocks, disasters and dislocations that we cannot possibly have anticipated.

I absolutely do not think there's any need to consider it as the likely end of civilization. It does mean a change in how we go about obtaining our needs and our comforts, it certainly implies rethinking how we upholster our caves - but a huge amount of the necessary thinking and prototyping has been done, is well understood and is already creeping into use. Some judicious tweaking of building codes could turn that into a wholesale rush.

The great advantage of a combination of passive conservation and diffuse technologies such as ethanol and bio-diesel produced in useful quantities close to or even by the end user is that aside from the obvious advantages, it's another layer of disaster-proofing that requires no central co-ordination or management.

It means that if mass energy distribution is disrupted by some disaster, there is in place a nearby capacity to brew up needed fuel, and a great deal of fuel in individual hands. The sheer advantage, for instance, of a higher percentage of people having a full tank of fuel in a time of evacuation is obvious - as is the advantage of having a large and distributed excess capacity for fuel generation from whatever biomass is at hand.

In national security terms, it means that nobody can hold us hostage - cutting off petrochemical supplies would be an inconvenience, not a disaster.

In cultural terms, it should mean a gradual drift toward sustainable living at or above the level of comfort we have become accustomed to and with the degree of mobility a free people require. I do not see this as an either-or, I see it as a range of choices; there are urban dwellers that wouldn't bother with cars if they had viable alternatives and could rent a car any time they felt the need. Enough people do this now that it's clearly both practical and cost-effective. More urban rapid transit would make this more possible.

But there is no way that people can be forced to change their whole way of life overnight as many radical greens would like. The only way a society changes is because it's to the advantage of individuals to change where they go, what they do and how they go about doing it; what they choose to buy and what they consider valuable to them. From that perspective, there is no single magical solution. There are many millions of tiny improvements that can add up to a magical result, if we go about things intelligently. It's possible, even easy to generate huge multiples of effect by tossing regulatory and incentive snowballs downhill - so long as you don't try to predefine who's yard the huge snowball lands in. Toss enough snowballs, and the "right" people will have more than enough to keep them fat, rich and busy for the next hundred years.

As I said, we need an energy rush. This will inevitably lead to a glut, because all of the parallel efforts to reduce energy dependence. So then you are left with all the things you could do if there were cheap enough energy to throw around... and the really smart folks are thinking about that opportunity already.

A lot of our problems could solve each other if we simply introduced them to one another. You put your hog farm together with a co2 emitting power plant and bio-reactor producing oil rich algae from hog waste and co2-rich stack gas. Suddenly your two waste streams are raw material for a whole new industrial process with nearly zero additional footprint and the operation costs covered by now-absent disposal overhead.

Instead of emissions and waste, you have a new raw product which can be used in the power plant, and the compressed, energy rich residue that can be animal feed. That smells green to me - as in greenbacks.

We have to step away from a culture that spends far too much time and effort trying to keep people from doing things we think they shouldn't outta do and start thinking about how to get folks actively exercising their perversity bumps for profit. The people who are generating the solutions, who are doing the non-linear thinking, the very people who support the progressive politics that swept you into the Majority Leader's suite are the very people the other guys have been pandering to, with their obsessions about social conformity and their willingness to create a living hell on earth for others in the name of forestalling hell for themselves.

Now, I learned in Sunday School that human sacrifice was a bad thing. Is that still taught in Sunday School, Senator? I think it's an important question to ask of your particularly Christian colleagues to your right.

Penis size, estrogen levels linked to Authoritarian Family Values

World Net Daily never fails to entertain. This excerpt provided by Right-Wing Watch, who were content to show what sort of bizarre and alleged thinking leads to ultraconservative christian posturing. Amusing as it is to point out the particular panic button the author is trying to push, I will point out that context makes this paragraph seem to be almost reasonable.

The real absurdities, as I point out below, are the unreasonable assumptions that are assumed by implication.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That's why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today's rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because "I can't remember a time when I wasn't homosexual." No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can't remember a time when excess estrogen wasn't influencing them.

The fun thing here is that the premise is reversible. A diet rich in testosterone, taurine and other hormone analogues that enhance aggressive alpha-male posturing are just as anomalous as a diet rich in estrogen-enhancers. (Aside from the observation that generations of Samurai argue that the effect high soy-protein consumption cannot be all that profound.)

If the above argument is to be taken seriously, it must therefore be seen as a potential cure for behavior that can be linked to Testosterone Poisoning, a terrible affliction that can lead to absurd public posturing and an irrational obsession with penis size.

Taking the above argument seriously as evidence of doctrinal soundness is also quite entertaining. Note the argument from authority. "Homosexuality is always deviant." Alas, neither the Bible NOR the DSM-IV are reliable supports for this argument, homosexuality has been eliminated from the DSM as a disorder or deviance, although a recognition of clinical homophobia may well be on it's way toward inclusion. In regard to the Bible, serious study of the bible in the original texts and in relation to what we know about the relevant cultures they were speaking to, we find little evidence that there was any widespread concern about homosexuality outside of the context of Levitical ritual purity laws.

In order for the Bible to support this argument, we must accept that the Sin of Sodom was unbridled homosexual lust, instead of willful violation of cultural norms regarding the rights of guests, while also supporting that the Centurion and his Companion, who he loved enough to petition Christ for a miracle had a completely platonic relationship.

In historical context it would be surprising - almost astonishing, actually - had the relationship not been sexual. This behavior was something that did very much get up the noses of the religious Jews of the day; an added cause of friction and resentment between the cultures that Jesus could not have been ignorant of.

Odd that He said nothing. He was not noted for his ability to remain silent in the face of clear, systemic immorality, even when the consequences were potentially dangerous for him. Most spiritual leaders would have refrained from flogging the money changers and dove-sellers from the Temple. Indeed, most spiritual leaders would have wanted their own piece of the action.

But, having said that, I have to say that diet does profoundly effect human behavior, maturation rates, intelligence and health. It's not insane or indeed even particularly radical to be concerned about the individual changes in sexual development that a diet rich in soy might bring about.

What is bizarre is what is assumed - that our current diet is not affecting our socio-sexual development equally strongly; that high per-capita beef consumption has nothing to do with some of the more obviously failed cultural imperatives - such as the idea that pre-emtive aggression would solve the problem of terrorism.

By way of contrast, Gandhi's diet consisted largely of rice. We know that starch-laden diets tend to suppress aggressive tendencies and going to the extreme of a macrobiotic diet seriously impairs critical thinking, which is why diet is such an important issue to most cult leaders; it's possible to select the mindset you wish by restricting and/or mandating certain food items.

It is matter of undisputed fact that consuming large amounts of soy as an infant will have effects both immediate and long term. This is also true of diets generally high in protein (height), carbohydrate (width) and male hormones (aggressive behavior, possibly ADHD, binary thought processes associated with fight/flight hunter-killer reasoning.)

Thing is, whether these changes are good or bad are a matter of context, and the judgment as to what things you and your children should eat is generally based on what sorts of behaviors and thought processes any particular advocate or disadvocate finds distasteful.

The essential message here is "High levels of testosterone in boys is good. High levels of estrogen in anyone are bad." I'm not at all sure that's a defensible assumption.

For myself, I rely on my gut for decisions of this sort and my gut has eclectic, even catholic tastes.

Give a Clue this Christmas!

My Latest Autism Designs and what they mean.

People who are neurotypical tend to think in boxes. One problem with being on the Autistic Spectrum is that you tend to not think in boxes. As far as I can tell, our thought process is highly relational. We tend to not even SEE the boxes and we don't think in a binary way at all.

A great number of problems come from the inability to understand that different people can have starkly different ways of understanding the world around them.

We tend to assume that people who came up with a functional solution for a problem came to it in the same way; indeed, by way of the same initial perceptions. Autistics and Aspies are as guilty of this as anyone; indeed, it's been studied within the AS population. The reason it's not been studied within the NT population is simple; in the case of NT's, the assumption that another person has a thought process that works like yours does is statistically likely to be correct.

So, when an autistic person makes this unwarranted assumption, it's called "mind blindness" and the autistic is gently handed a clue in the form of "social stories." When an NT does it, it's in the form of an organization called "Cure Autism Now."

If "autistic thought" were not valuable, there would not be such a roster of famous thinkers, such as Einstein and Newton now thought to have been probably autistic to some degree. By the same token, it should be a profound clue that there are courses to teach neurotypicals to "think outside of the box," and almost all higher education is aimed at rooting out simplistic, either-or thinking and to over-ride fear and submission responses when you have to communicate about or defend your work.

The ability to think and function outside of the box is an asset of significant value; recognising that is especially important if you are planning to "do something for autistics." Their ability to function in 'in an appropriate way' is limited, but that does not imply their ability to function, given an appropriate context is as limited as it appears. The trick is to find that context; and in that context they will not have so much difficulty "being appropriate."

There's no area where this insight is more critical than in regards to the parents of autistics themselves.

Make no mistake; autism can be a crippling condition, and it's made worse by being a condition where you absolutely must depend upon others to accommodate your needs and accept limitations that those without the condition cannot easily see or understand. But even the most obviously disabled "autist" is as severely affected by presumptions of how their disability affects them and even more by refusal of others to accept our word for the accommodations we need.

This following paragraph is emblematic of the crippling parental fears that the 800-lb gorilla of the pro-cure movement exploits for funding and validation:

You are never prepared for a child with autism. You will gradually come to believe it, but never fully accept it, get used to it, or get over it. You put away the hopes and dreams you had for that child - the high school graduation, the June wedding. Small victories are cause for celebration - a word mastered, a dry bed, a hug given freely. - FAQs about Autism: Cure Autism Now

Those of us who object to such fear, panic and the pervasive bigotry that exists with in the pro-cure movement - as well as it's seemingly obvious ethical deficits are pretty soundly attacked, with all kinds of terrible motives assigned us. (Theory of Mind, eh?)

A great deal of the work on the support groups that accept AS persons as contributors - something of a rarity - is to get non-AS people to accept that our "inability to cultivate friendships" is not a crippling condition to us. Once we have our one or two friends - friends as geeky and weird as us, generally speaking, we are done. My personal limit is two, and what NT's call "friendships," I now interpret as "Acquaintances." Yes, of course that has profound effects in terms of my ability to sustain a social network, and that has cost me many opportunities; indeed even jobs. I try and work things so that one of my two has the social skills I lack and the willingness to use them on my behalf.


Unfortunately, there is a lot of very bad advice out there and some very bizarre ideas as to what will be helpful to people such as I, who are on the spectrum and who are nonetheless potentially articulate and intelligent beings. Mostly this revolves around the idea that a bad job of conforming to the expectations of others is superior to a good job of being me. Here's Lennie Schafer on the topic of "fake autistics" like me.

(What about "high functioning autism" and how does that fit in? Simply put, it doesn't fit in anywhere. High functioning autism is not clinically defined and is not in the DSM-IV, and for good reason. High functioning autism is an oxymoron. If one meets the criteria for a diagnosis of autism, by definition one cannot be high-functioning. It would be as silly as the term sharp-eyed blindness.) (1)

So why would a handful of people, amongst a few others, who apparently are for the most part Aspergers, if anything, want to identify themselves autistic? Perhaps because autism is a profound disability and Aspergers is a disorder that is mostly not. Autism thus carries more moral weight than Aspergers and therefore has more moral clout for self-esteem building political and social agendas. "We autistics don't want to be cured" carries much more punch than "We Aspergers don't want to be cured", especially given the reality that there is no movement anywhere that seeks to "cure" those with Aspergers into being anything else.(2)

Aspergers-labeled alone, they would be ignored by the press and would be denied the juicy sense of empowerment that would come with a high-profile "oppressed minority" movement article like the one in the liberal New York Times. (3) (4)

The New York Times reporter failed to do a journalist's most basic homework. She failed to check the credentials of those doing the complaining, despite my urging. Anyone can call themselves autistic and write cranky letters to the editor. So how does someone determine if a person is truly autistic,or is an autism imposter with Aspergers? Ask to see their diagnosis. If someone claims to have autism for purposes of making some political statement, ask them to prove it. In any of the correspondence I have had with the autism "imposters", not one has ever supplied such documentation. (5) Of course, it is highly unlikely to ever see it. The irony here is that if someone has enough language skills to effectively complain about the treatment of autistics, then they themselves cannot be autistic.(6) Apparently more than one big city newspaper has failed to see through this deception, so eager are they to get an unusual victim story into print. Can we afford to allow the interests of our autistic children and everyone else "on the spectrum" to be pushed out of the public eye and displaced by a handful of imposters crying a contrived victimhood? Who speaks for autism? Not this bunch.

Note that he, and those like him don't like being quoted, even under "fair use" constraints.

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Of course, if I committed so many foolish rhetorical errors in public, I'd prefer not to be used as a hideous example either.

1. Argument from Authority. Of course, the process of determining what goes into the DSM-IV is pure and objective science .
2. Aspergers is, in fact an autistic spectrum disorder and has quite a range of effects. As a step-parent of a diagnosed Aspie, I'm very aware of the fact that there are very significant issues involved. They are not so inconvenient to US, as parents. They are going to affect HIM quite significantly unless we find some adaptive strategies that work for him.
3. As opposed to the entirely legitimate empowerment that comes from suffering the hideous, horrendous burden that is Autism.
4. Of course, it's a liberal thing to be concerned about the civil rights of children being abused and neglected for the sake of the convenience and social comfort of their conservative parents. This is the root host for "Autism, A Debilitating Disease, not a Culture," a page that links to both Free Republic and Free Dominion, while telling Canadians they a vaccilating, unpatriotic fools for not joining the "Coalition of the Willing." Snark aside, the fact that this site, is associated with Authoritarian Right Wingers explains a lot about the entire, very authoritarian "curebie" movement.
5. For myself, I want to see Lennie's MENSA results, his HIV status and full financials proving he's not unduly profiting from his activism before I deign to speak with him. I suspect he's unworthy of my attention, but if he proves otherwise, I will of course listen.
   
6. Factually untrue.

Unpuzzled is my most militant anti-curebie design, with the slogan, "help find a clue."

I know, it's rude and confrontational, but I've found that sometimes you need to swat people with a clue-by-four in order to startle them enough so they actually listen.

Those "seeking a cure" tend to ignore everything from those of us who ARE on the spectrum because it doesn't fit into to their mindsets, just as they reject "inappropriate" responses to communications from their autie and aspie children.

This is especially true of issues about communication style, reasonable accommodation and most importantly, the concept that a difference need not be AS disabling as it seems from an "NT" perspective. And, speaking as someone who's gone round and round on this at various times and under various circumstances, those who most boldly wave the "puzzle ribbon" seem at times to be making a point of their puzzlement, and their inability to understand to be the issue of auties and aspies.

See point above about how many friends and relationships an autie or aspie needs in an emotional sense. We do not absolutely require a relationship with the biological parental units. It's a nice thing to have, but we cannot and some quantity of will not be as easily coerced by family emotional ties as neurotypicals can be. This is not just because we have a "faulty" connection between emotions and reasoning. Our reasoning is not emotional, and our emotional responses seem to be quite different - across the board. Put two aspies in the same room and they will communicate quite well indeed - but their body language, topic choices and intuitive negotiations of "status" will be starkly different - and one of the greatest differences is the relative lack of huge tooth-bearing grins with full eye-contact.

To an aspie, to most sensible primates and all cats I've ever met, bare teeth and a full-on gaze is, at the very least, a statement of territorial or situational dominance, inviting a ritual contest of wills to determine who will be in charge and who will submit. Your typical aspie doesn't wish to play that game, having no need or real desire to join your pack, so if you do see them bare their teeth - it's probably in the context of a genuine, non-ritualized warning that Bad Things Will Suddenly Occur If You Do Not Go Away NOW.

What part of "Agggh! [flap flap flap] [throw object] LEAVE ME ALONE" is unclear to you people?

The "Unsmily" design honors the "aspie smile," a neutral expression that essentially means "hailing frequencies open." That look of slightly blank attention is a sign that an aspie or autistic is willing to let you talk at them for a while. Indeed, oft-times we are listening so hard that we are not thinking about what we will say next.

No pointless social noises please! Talk about something that is both objectively important and something within the realm of my interest and ability to have an opinion on. Make a full statement, then shut up and let me talk at YOU for a while. Then it's your turn.

Appalling, isn't it?

Well, that is the way aspies and auties communicate best - asynchronously. The full give and take of an NT conversation is difficult for us, and those of us that can manage it are doing it because we realize that style of communication is important to our NT friends all out of proportion to anything actually communicated. Mostly we grunt and make what experience has taught us to be socially appropriate noises at the expected times.

We are quite unlikely to put up with attempts to get us to conform to your expectations of what people like you should be. We are not 'like you,' and while we do very clearly appreciate that you have social advantages we do not, and we all understand that any parent would wish their child to have every possible advantage - we also know that many of those "advantages" come with a price. Some of those prices are ones we cannot pay - and for many of us, compromising who we are or being less than honest about what we know to be true is a price we will not pay - no matter how politically incorrect it may be to point out that the emperor has no clue.

Now we know who the terrorists are.

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) (S.3880) defines as "terrorism" causing any business classified as an "animal enterprise" (e.g., factory farms, fur farms, vivisection labs, rodeos, zoos and circuses) to suffer a profit loss and is punishable by a long prison sentence -- even if the company's financial decline is caused by peaceful protests, boycotts, media campaigns or leafleting. Defining non-viol ent activist tactics that cause exploitive corporations to lose profit but don't physically hurt anyone as "terrorism" is both a deceptive misapplication of a serious termand a completely unacceptable violation of our Constitutionally-granted First Amendment rights to freedom of speech. Industry groups pushed the AETA through Congress quickly and with little public scrutiny. The AETA was unanimously passed in the Senate on September 29th and on November 13th it was passed in the House with only 5 Representatives voting. President Bush signed the AETA into law on November 27th. Read the full text of the bill here.

Clearly, the lame duck congress is trying to cause as much mischief and pay off debts to various industry supporters as possible before being turfed.

It also clearly illustrates who is really running this country and what sorts of people terrify them. Al-Queda it ain't. It's you, it's me, it's anyone who might be concerned about our food supply, the labor practices within the food chain, the standards and practices of the busnesses running that food chain, the ethics involved, related to people, animals and consumers...

In other words, you are the terrorist. As am I. Osama Bin Ladin - not so much.

This bill does nothing whatsoever to combat terrorism; instead it sweepingly defines any number of actions that are commonly considered to be first-amendment protected speech as terrorist acts. Expect it to be enforced selectively and convenienently.

If you were wondering if the "war on terror" might just be a cynical contrivance to get you to surrender your rights without protest, you need wonder a lot less. At the very least, this bill is a cynical attempt to use the war on terror to suppress your rights for the benefit of corporate agrabiz giants.

My favorite Social Transgressive.

As long-time readers may know, ana voog is one of my favorite online people, and she's pregnant. Like most starving artists, she's short on margin for unexpected expenses. So am I, or I'd simply send her some money via her website. I'm sure that a lot of her lj and Myspace friends are in the same place on this and I'm sure there's a bunch of us that have stuff we make or do, so I was thinking, maybe an auction? I've got this astonishing bit of art that I did when I heard the good news.

I'm thinking I could put up some signed prints. Who's in?

PSA : Code Amber Stick

The Amber stick (tm) is the next generation of Child Id software. It is
fully contained on a USB Flash drive so there is no software to download
and install.

The software on the USB drive is password protected and the data is
completely encrypted to ensure your privacy. If the USB device is lost
the data is unreadable without the password which you set when you
first use the software (the password can be changed at anytime).

Simply plug the USB drive into your computer (all computers made in
the last 10 years have at least one USB port) and the software automatically
starts and prompts for the password. Enter your data and up to three
photographs of each child, pet or person you want to protect and done.
The Amber stick will hold information on up to 100 individuals.

If a child or person goes missing you simply hand the USB device to
the police officer and give them the password to the software. Almost
all police cars now have an onboard laptop computer which is connected
to the police station over a wireless network so the critical information
is available to the entire department within minutes. No more searching
for a photograph to scan or the need for the officer to take critical
descriptive information by hand.

Missing persons and Missing pets flyers can be printed at the click of
the mouse as well.

For more information on the Amber stick (tm), and to order through Code
Amber, please visit http://codeamber.org/idkits.html?nl

All sales help to fund the daily operation of Code Amber.

Volume discounts are available. Please contact us for details at
admin@codeamber.org .

The Populist Libertarian

Adam Ash cites Populism's Revival -- by James Lardner/ San Francisco Chronicle[PDF] and Lardner has many interesting things to say, which, I might add, nicely verify my own gut-check on this issue.

If cheap imports (or, for that matter, low-wage immigrants) could explain a long, sharp increase in inequality, France, the Netherlands and much of Europe would be going through the same experience; they're not. If skill was the crucial factor, the long-term winners would be the top 20 or 30 percent of Americans. Instead, they've been the top 5, 2, or 1 percent -- the 1 percent who now pocket almost a fifth of all personal income, roughly twice what their share was during the 1960s and '70s.

The data suggests a story of power rather than skill -- rule-making power. The trail of evidence leads into the arcane world of economic policy; and if you look back over the past few decades, ignoring the catchy labels ("deregulation," "personal responsibility" and the rest), you'll find a pattern of government action -- on taxes, trade and the minimum wage, among other things -- favoring corporate insiders and financial manipulators over the rest of us.

You'll also find inaction -- a wholesale abandonment of the tradition of public investment that, in earlier periods of our history, from the Louisiana Purchase to the G.I. Bill and the Higher Education Act of 1965, earned the United States the right to honestly call itself a land of opportunity.

I'm a Libertarian, but not a Libertarian that considers a "corporate individual" the same as a person. Nor am I a Libertarian of the "devil take the hindmost" variety, which seems at times to be the majority of all Libertarians. I feel "the government who governs least governs best" as Jefferson put it, but there's an irreducible minium, and that minimum should neither advantage nor disadvantage any citizen or group of citizens more than any other, if for no other reason than the simplest and most obvious. Every time the government gets involved in deciding who "should" benefit, they invariably screw it up. This is because such value judgments are made by underpaid, overworked civil servants based on obsolete data and studies that were commissioned by interest groups.

I'm also very aware that whatever form of government I think ought to exist, the one that will exist will either constitutionally serve the will of the majority - or something much, much uglier will occur, in order to maintain and preserve the status quo. And I'm quite well aware that few people indeed would comfortably thrive within a Randian universe. On the other hand, true Randians seem well-equipped to manage well enough in most any tolerable system.

But the return to Populism this is not seemingly the result of an ongoing political debate among the members of the electorate; this is much more a dawning realization that there has been theft and chicanery at the highest levels. It is a wholesale disgust with corruption over a span of years that leaves neither party - or indeed any person associated with Washington in general - wholly free of taint. Add to this the outrage of the heartlands, who thought that in sending a wave of republican freshmen into congress in `94, they would be changing things for the better.

Instead, they were presented with the results of corruption and indifference to the needs and fates of ordinary folks that passes all understanding.

So a return to populist politics is both inevitable and refreshing - even though it is a fickle wind from a dangerous quarter. That is why I join with my liberal and progressive friends and allies in pointing out that whatever size and shape government is, it's critical that it be an ethical and Constitutional government in these Americas (and yes, I mean all of them) that is concerned with the well-being and prosperity of The People - as a whole.

Yes, folks, the Internet is global. These sea-changes are no longer confined to our shores, nor do our borders keep the tides from rising. Or do you think Vinchente Fox's populism has been without effect here?

But more to the point, social changes happen when they become possible and practical. When they are both possible, practical and widely desired, those who object tend to be swept rudely aside.

A government that is concerned with the welfare and well-being of all citizens need not be expressed as some form of kleoptocratic socialism. Aside from being wrong, such centralized arbiters of "fairness" end up with results not all that different than the ones we find ourselves in now.

But I'd like to see a government that was actually useful to me on a personal level, one that I could use to leverage my intelligence, promote my talents, enhance my knowledge and which would in turn draw upon the skills, knowledge and abilities of all citizens. I'm not speaking of a vast revolutionary change - I'm speaking of a simple shift in the practical means of getting things done. And here I am typing to you, using something very much like that.

Part of that would involve a more direct conversation with citizens. This last election has been an education to the practical power of our voices in that regard; an electronic roar of outrage that could all too easily translate into more direct and violent expression were it stifled or ignored. So while the mainstream media tries to discount and, when at all possible, completely ignore this paradigm shift, it's increasingly at the expense of their own relevance.

Now, if that seems like a liberal screed, forgive me, but as Steven Colbert observed, "Reality has a well-known Liberal bias." Or more to the point, far too many of us - and I include many of my more curmudgeonly libertarian fellows in this - are far too attached to their ideas of how things should be and how people should act to have a very good grasp of how things actually are, and what people are actually likely to do. Anyone pointing that out gets called filthy names, like "liberal."

No philosophy of culture, of morality, of governance or economics that is based on such voluntary delusions can long persist, though it's outward trappings may well persist as a fig-leaf to a stark and ugly contradiction.

Free markets: If it were a free market for goods, services and labor, there would be nowhere near such a concentration of wealth and power as exists now. Come to think of it, why don't you ask one of your entrepreneurial fellows how "free" a market it is when you try to start up a new business. Aside from minding your own business, you pretty much have to hire someone else to do the paperwork that will permit you (conditionally, subject to review) to do business.

And there's few of those forms that actually do a damn bit of good for you, your employees, your customers or your environment.

But there is one thing that should be obvious - it's a lot easier for a large business to absorb compliance costs than a small one. Furthermore, they can throw money around in ways that a mom and pop business cannot.

Net result - Mom and Pop go out of business and end up wearing blue smocks at Wal-Mart.

As for their employees... Wal-Mart probably doesn't need them.

But all of these things could and should be changed, can be easily addressed with technology we have now and moreover, improved a great deal in terms of addressing intent.

First, we need a truly fair and free market for labor. One way of doing that is to ensure that there is a built-in social safety net so that people can afford to say "take this job and shove it."

It also eliminates a great deal of need for legislation intended to protect people from being unjustly fired. And not just legislation - litigation!

Tort reform restricting awards largely to actual damages would be the next step. I'd think an additional reform would be a possibility that a judge or jury could direct that the standard for criminal negligence had been met, in which case criminal sanctions would apply to those found negligent in a civil trial.

Universal access to health care that is user paid, but is not conditional upon an employer or current health. Simply creating that system - which is no more than secure database and wide area network - would save taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. Note that I'm not suggesting anything socialistic - what I'm talking about is much more a system of leveraging bets.

Insurance companies continue to do what they do, but the government sets up a standard and regulates a market, an exchange for, say, blocks of health consumers and coverage packages. It will not be determine what you have to do in exchange for a lower rate, say, or rationing coverage, or dictating whether you smoke or not, for example. You may pay more, you may pay less, but the system will be set up so that you will be able to have coverage - and currently, it's quite possible to be in a situation where nobody will take the money you could pay.

Now, this approach life easier for everyone, I might add, and that is what a government exists for, to make living together easier, help share the load of collective responsibilities, to promote neighborliness and maintain 'the commons,' the infrastructures that make life and commerce possible.

Here's where I depart from the most doctrinaire sorts of Libertarians, who believe every road should be a toll-road and all property private. In that universe, we'd all be nickled and dimed to death just trying to cross the street to buy a sandwich - with competing forms of variably-accepted currency, no less!

I'm an anarchist in terms of personal issues and freedoms, where personal choices affect only those involved. I don't consider "being offended" to be much of a reason for taking away even a smidgen of Liberty. If you insist upon walking about naked with your genitalia painted in day-glow colors, I imagine the social consequences are consequence enough. Mocking laughter certainly has a chilling effect on me!

Um, Bill? It's not that we can't have a conversation with you..

You usefully point out that you can't carry on conversations with computer geeks. Indeed there has been speculation about whether the ability to focus so valuable for technology jobs correlates with Asperger's Syndrome, a light form of autism. Nice job, making fun of people who aren't the social butterfly that you are.

Who's she talking at? Why, none other than our amazingly idiotic Bill O'Rielly, who has said this - and in public, no less!

I don’t own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod… If this is your primary focus in life - the machines… it’s going to have a staggeringly negative effect, all of this, for America… did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them? …I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They’re not playing the video games. They’re killing real people over there.

-Bill O'Reilly

I wonder if he's capable of realizing the true irony of a radio host and frequent TV personality talking about how hard it is to talk to "these computer geeks." Yeah. Geeks like Marconi, Edison and Bell.

Of course, I find it hard to talk to someone so stupid as to speak in such a way as to suggest that it would be better for us geeks to be "killing real people" instead of playing video games.

So, Bill, the reality is this; the geeks that make it possible for you to bloviate on the air likely can't be bothered to have a conversation with you, but aren't quite aspie enough to just tell you that.

Of course, if you do find this posted somewhere at Fox, don't bother checking the printout for fingerprints. There won't be any. And the video surveillance will clearly show it was Albert Einstein who tacked up the note.

Why I am thankful for ana voog

i'm glad i got to see the earth when it was plentiful.
i'm both happy and sad that i got to experience living in america in the most gluttunous time in history.
when one could take a full bubble bath every 5 minutes if you wanted to, full of fresh clean water each time.

i have luxuriated in water, drank from the faucet when it was actually tasting ok to do so, i swam in pools of crystal clear springs in south dakota,
i washed my dishes and clothes in as much water as i wanted. hot or cold.
i have lived the life of a king on 5,000 a year.

Thank Goddess for friends who say the things we should have, better than we could have, if only we had rememberet that it's the time to do that.

I'd comment more, but everything I need to say, I've said there in the comments.

But make sure and linger a bit to learn more about ana voog.

Evolve - A graphictruth from someone else for a change...

Evolve
Originally uploaded by progresswear.

And it's a damn pretty picture, too.

In case you'd forgotten, the President is a lying' bastard.

Bush admits it right to their faces because he's been rankly lying about anything and everything ever since he ran for president and never, not once, paid a penalty for it. Think about it carefully--for anyone else a public admission of lying would be absolutely devastating on a professional and personal level.

Sorry, dear, I lied about sleeping with that perky admin half your age. No big, right? Yeah, boss, I said I delivered all those parts when I actually drank beer for two hours. So?

But for George Bush implacable rules of life just vanish, so he doesn't care, admit it right out loud on the record, why not? This horrifying national psychosis--words chosen with great attention--was very carefully and deliberately enabled by The Washington Post as they scrubbed their stories to hide the lying.

(more}

Now, it's a Bad Thing to lie to the American People and to Congress. Particularly to members of Congress who's campaigns were damaged with all the "stay the course" rhetoric and public defense of Rummy right up to the "Heave Ho" moment.

But, hey, such trivial considerations of consequence are beneath our "decider." I can't complain about the outcome, of course. I merely point out that trusting a known and famous liar ain't the path of prudence, as many Republicans found to their cost this past election.

And meanwhile, the WaPo is trying to revise history - unaware of the Google Cache and The Memory Hole, apparently. These days, revising web history is merely an amusing spectacle of futility, rather like a cat covering up on linoleum.

Feith-Based Politics and the Comedy that is Carville

I hate to be vulgar, but really, how far inside the beltway do you have to be before you fly up your own ass and disappear into a strange parallel universe?

Two of the more powerful second-string "Beltway Boys" have managed to prove that the only difference between Republican fuckups and Democratic ones is who's become most insulated from the consequences of their ideological isolationism.

Slate reports:

Douglas Feith: What has the Pentagon's third man done wrong? Everything.

Why is Feith involved with all these foul-ups? How could one man be so consistently in error? Nearly every critique of the Pentagon's plan for Iraq's occupation blames the blinkers imposed by ideology. For example, The New Yorker reported last fall that Feith intentionally excluded experts with experience in postwar nation-building, out of fear that their pessimistic, worst-case scenarios would leak and damage the case for war. In the Atlantic earlier this year, James Fallows told a similar story: The Pentagon did not participate in CIA war games about the occupation, because "it could be seen as an 'antiwar' undertaking" that "weakened the case for launching a 'war of choice.' " The State Department's Future of Iraq Project, an effort that accurately predicted some contingencies that the Pentagon overlooked, was dismissed by Feith and company out of hand.

And while the Pentagon's assumptions of an ecstatic, sweets-and-flowers-bearing populace that would welcome the occupiers as liberators may have been understandable in February 2003, Feith continued to let ideology rule his decisions long after the "major combat operations" ended. Last September, Knight Ridder reported that Paul Bremer's request for more than 220 employees for the occupation had yet to be approved. Guess who was to blame? "It is taking forever because Feith only wants true believers to get through the gate," a senior administration official said.

Well, we all know how well that worked out. Read the whole story, it's damning. By the by, though the story says nothing, it's difficult to read it without thinking that anyone above Feith should have noticed a difference between promise and payoff - somewhere around, oh, say, 2004. Why? Well, almost everyone outside of the beltway who wasn't sucking up to someone inside the beltway had some questions about performance, even some damn hawkish hawks. There were whole bunches of news items - like the looting, like the destruction of Iraqi Interior Ministry files - that were cause for alarm, that were indications of bad preparation.

The worst, of course, was the blatant failure to secure Iraqi munitions dumps, a failure that has cost thousands of lives, both civilian and military. That was a decision that caused me to wonder aloud to myself if someone in charge was smoking crack, as it seemed to me the exact opposite of any prudent decision based in sound military training.

Now, it seems likely that it was a decision made under the delusion that the Neocon Vision would prove true, there would be no insurgency, and democracy would flourish as predicted, so long as "nay-saying defeatists" were kept away.

But such delusional thought-processes are far from being unique to the Right Wing.

Fatcat politics links to the New York Daily News

Clinton tells Carville to sit down and shut up.

Ain't it rich... The mighty Carville (mighty wrong a lot) got shot down in flames for his remark about replacing Howard Dean at the DNC. I love it... He underestimated the importance of Dean's 50 state strategy along with a bunch of weeping wingnuts (Santorum at the top of the list) and had him a little hissy fit because he didn't get to be the guru that had it all figured out.

The beltway spinmeisters are all mad because they got bypassed in the groundswell of voters ire against the Republicans. They are still in denial of the netroots and the 'base' that Dean built in just two short years. They eagerly took credit for the tsunami when it was actually Dean who provided the earthquake that triggered it.

Hil's no dump Dean fan. Her camp sez Carville on his own in coup bid

The Clintonistas don't want an undeserved backlash from the activist wing of the party that overwhelmingly supports Dean, especially because some anti-Clinton Democrats have blamed Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) for the attack by Carville, a longtime Clinton insider. Those forces claimed Carville's motive was to topple Dean in favor of a chairman more favorable to Sen. Clinton's bid for President.

Carville's remarks last week came as House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) bungled the race for Democratic majority leader. Party operatives acknowledged the Carville and Pelosi sideshows were detracting from their election victories.

>

I have to be honest, I've always liked James Carveille - in the same way I've always had a soft spot for Magneto and The Joker. He has class, he has style, he's gloriously, unapologetically, flamboyantly villainous - and convinced that his Cause Is Just, of course, at least when colloquy is called for. But essentially, he just likes beating the crap out of the other side, and I think we saw him at his personal public best playing the Snake in Crossfire episodes with Tucker Carlson as the Mongoose.

I kind of wish John Stewart hadn't ruined that gig. It was a lot of fun and it kept both of them out of trouble for days at a time. Furthermore, some of us have an appreciation for the pure art of rhetoric. But I suppose that John did have a point; the people did deserve better.

The Beltway Boys - all of the Insiders - are more concerned about appearances than about real issues of real consequence. It's easier to spin issues if the issues themselves are framed as simple, black and white concepts that have a "republican" approach and a "democratic" approach.

In fact, there are a few approaches that will work and a very great many that will not, and if your major considerations are maintaining power while appearing to attempt to do something - only to be Thwarted by Evil Plotters On The Other Side - the odds of finding a program that will work is nil.

But this is politics in Washington, and it's worked with great success for a very long time - so well, in fact, that a lot of people involved forgot that it was a political tactic and came to embrace it as a reliable expression of reality.

And when people like that came into total control of the party and the nation - people who chose to believe in religious, economic and social fairy tales as being preferable to inconvenient realities; that's when the stark comedy of errors commenced.

It's fashionable to suggest that Democrats would have been no better. I tend to disagree. Democrats have different fairy tales, and while they certainly would have done no better implementing theirs if they were able to be so consistently deluded, working from the same ideological page - pardon me, I'm snickering too loudly.

The thing republicans see as the greatest weakness of Democrats in particular and people left of themselves in general is their lack of "team spirit," their inability or unwillingness to defer personal gratification for the "greater good," as defined by some schmuck with more clout in the party.

Nope, left of center folks tend also to be less willing to worship at the altar of Authority, and "Because I said so," is met with raspberries and overripe fruit. This is why Carville got shut down, frankly.

He may well be an authority - but he's an authority on old fashioned, bare knuckles dirty politics that depends on a small cadre of True Believers to do the bidding of their cynical and utterly amoral leadership.

The netroots - well, look around. Pick a blogroll, pretty much any blogroll that doesn't include Free Republic and you will find thinking people making very uncomfortably astute policy observations. Howard Dean is an example of a man who realizes that the netroots is a completely new phenomenon, one that demands a new era of leadership, one that's unafraid of meeting reality head on.

In many ways, Iraq and Vietnam are very comparable. Both wars of choice; both wars of ideological "necessity." Both wars required a great deal of contrivance and a huge amount of information control to sustain. Both collapsed when reality failed to support any conceivable version of "victory."

But it took decades for that point to arrive with Vietnam, with total casualties in the millions. With Iraq - there were far too many information leaks to plug. In fact, I think it likely that in the last year or so, information management has been fairly much all the White House and Pentagon has been doing, leaving them few resources to to actually achieve much of any meaning.

I blogged you so!

"The profile of corruption in the exit polls was bigger than I'd expected," Rove tells TIME. "Abramoff, lobbying, Foley and Haggard [the disgraced evangelical leader] added to the general distaste that people have for all things Washington, and it just reached critical mass."

Compare and contrast

I forgive the folks of Elko and thousands of other deeply conservative towns across the nation for being in a state of shock and denial, for they cannot imagine how anyone who lives by their own virtues could screw up so badly. It is literally inconceivable; it should be a matter of practical impossibility due to bone-deep, value driven integrity that is the soul of small-town conservatism

Well, I'm sad to say this, but folks like George Bush and a thousand others took advantage of your preconceptions of how things ought to be. They said all the right words in public, and you figured that since you have integrity, they did too.

Sorry about that. I feel your pain. You see, I grew up in an area like that, where people had to rely upon one another, expected to be able to, and could. The closet volunteer fire department was a solid 15 miles away, the closet hospital was 45 minutes on dry roads in a fast car - and they were never dry. If you heard three shots in rapid succession, you grabbed a rifle and a first aid kid and ran toward the sound, because there was a broken leg or worse.

And when you grow up in such a place, it's really crushing to find out that people from the big city don't share those essential values. Well, not the rich ones, anyhow.

I'm going to be charging 15% more per post now. Just thought I'd let you know.

It's Lame Duck Season: Fiengold appeals to Huffpo readers for extra shells.

Sen. Fiengold warns:

There are a lot of bad bills that the Republicans may try to ram through, but here's the worst of the worst - a bill to legalize the President's warrantless wiretapping program. The White House is desperate to enact this bill, which allows the government to spy on American citizens, on American soil, without a warrant.

Other measures on the White House wish list that are likely to surface during the lame duck session include a number of unfunded tax cuts and questionable trade measures. Democrats have nothing to gain by allowing these measures to pass in the next few weeks, and everything to lose. Everything should wait until the new Congress, when Democrats will have a lot more say about how bills are put together and what gets passed.

I do wish he'd run in 2008, but you have to admit, it's a hell of a trade-off. There aren't so many working Senators that you can shrug off the loss as insignificant.

One thing I'd like to point out is that the wiretapping bill is retroactive; a pardon for the president on one of the most prosecutable impeachable offenses, and the only one that's completely indisputable.

So, aside from the fact that the law is itself impermissible - a fifth-amendment violation - it is also an attempt to forestall resolution of the Constitutional Crisis created by this Republican Congress and George Bush.

Squd Rosenburg Has a Request.

Help Leelo's Local Friends

Leelo's Store Sticker (Rectangular)

Leelo's special ed department/occupational therapy department (i.e., special needs motor work) has no money to buy the kind of equipment they'd like; the kind that would really make a difference not only for autistic kids like Leelo but for all the kids in our city who rely on school district--i.e., public--support for their sensory and occupational therapy needs. Specifically the department would like to buy a scooter ramp as it will perform about fifty different functions in one compact space.

I said that I'd help. I said that if I invoked the power of the blogosphere, and got enough people to skip a latte or two (or five), there would be no way we couldn't raise enough money to get those kids their ramp.

So, feel like doing some good during this upcoming holiday season? I am trying to raise $757.90, which includes the ramp's purchase price and shipping. If we can raise the money by 12/20/06, it will be a lovely holiday gift for the special ed department. In fact you can even print out this page and tell your friends that you made a donation in their name instead of getting them a cluttery, tangible gift. A skipped latte's $2.50 is more than welcome.

Straight donations are great, of course, but I am also selling handmade Leelo coloring books at $20 each. The books feature the bold lines and simple rhymes that Leelo and his friends enjoy, plus scenes that will make any parent--but especially parents of autistic children--chuckle (or sigh) in recognition. All proceeds will go towards the ramp.

If you want a coloring book, go to the donation page, and click on the "contribute" button. You'll be redirected to PayPal. Put "coloring book" in your PayPal subject line, and don't forget to include your shipping address.

You can also help by ordering Leelo shirts and gear. A $10 donation is part of their purchase price. You can get Leelo gear at GoodStorm (t-shirts only) or CafePress (t-shirts, stickers, mugs).

I will add a further $10 donation from my own pocket if you send a picture featuring your Leelo gear to me at aba_help AT yahoo D0T com.

Here is the scooter ramp's description:

"This ramp incorporates a climbing feature with the addition of bilateral hand rails in addition to the rope attachment for hand-over-hand climbing. The ramp can be adjusted to 2 different inclines. Both ends of the ramp are beveled where the ramp meets the base and floor to give a smooth ride. Assembly consists of 4 wooden pieces held together with wing knobs. No tools ever needed. Easily disassembled and compactly stored."

Again, our deadline is 12/20/06. Leelo and his friends say Thank You! And please feel free to spread the word.

Memo to Pelosi: Fix Consitutional Crisis BEFORE '08

After Downing Street reminds us there are still a lot of issues unresolved.

The Perfect Storm of Citizen Revulsion
...even with the House and Senate in Democratic hands, we need to remember that the immense power of the presidency is still in the hands of Bushistas like Richard Cheney and Karl Rove and George W. Bush and Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley and Alberto Gonzales.

Dude, I Tapped Your Mother

They have refashioned the Constitution to make Bush immune from obeying laws he doesn't like; they have invented theories that permit him to round up anyone, American citizen or not, and throw them into a military clink without access to lawyers; they have so bent the definition of "torture" as to make it unrecognizable (it now means that the government can do anything to you short of killing you or doing great injury to your internal organs); the president claims to be able to "pre-emptively" attack any foreign country and power regardless of whether they are an imminent threat to the U.S.; the security forces can now enter your home, search your house, peek into your private email and computer files, without you ever being informed and without you even knowing; the government can now violate the privacy of attorney/client privilege by listening in on all such conversations; the government can declare martial law whenever it so chooses; and on and on.

Let us not forget that the Executive branch still possesses these immense police-state powers, they've used them before against American citizens, and they have made it plain that they are quite prepared to keep using them. Among the issues that must be dealt with by the new Democratic-contolled Congress is to find a way to bring us back to judicial sanity and respect for the rights guaranteed to American citizens under our Constitution.

ADS points out the President still has these powers as the problem. I wish to point out that is not the worst possible case; the worst case would be something I consider fairly likely unless We Do Something Now: Democrats and Republicans together decide that they really kinda like the idea of the Presidency retaining those powers.

There's only one thing that frightens me more than George Bush holding the powers of the Unitary Executive, and that would be a more intelligent and better advised person in the oval office, of either party.

The idea of Al Gore, Hillary Clinton - or frankly, ANYONE, even me, having such power is terrifying. In a sense, the raw stupidity of George Bush and the ideological splits within his administration have been a blessing in disguise. Hes managed to sabotage and expose a 30 year plan to turn the United States into an Empire, with the vast majority of it's citizens made irrelevant to the political process.

An ironic round of applause is due for George and Karl.

But we have an edifice of power to dismantle, lest anyone better qualified to rule scale the heights. That would be pretty much anyone, of any party.

We all need to demand the process go forward. Investigation will officially reveal what is generally already known - and if that investigation does NOT verify and expand upon what is already public knowledge, we will know that the corruption spreads more widely than previously thought.

Remaining members of Congress - and particularly those members who seek re-election in 2008 - had better re-acquaint themselves with their oaths of office and their primary duties.

In service to the Constitution.

Impeach George Bush

I need to send my copy of the Memorial in, and since I'm thinking about it, I figured I'd think aloud and squeeze a post out of it.

I'm having difficulty with the pdf files linked at Impeach for Peace; they do not seem to be willing to be downloaded. It looks like I will have to use the html versions of the generic forms. Simply copy and paste them into any good word processor.

For extra credit, after filling out the form, saving it in the usual format and printing your primary copies, save it as a PDF file after filling in the blanks, then export it to a pdf-aware graphics program, such as Photoshop and save it as a high-resolution, tabloid sized (11"x17") document. In small print, add the following at the bottom: "this is an enlarged facsimile of my official memorial, dated (fill in the blank.)" This gives your representative something big enough to wave around on C-Span.

There are many services that will print this out for you, if you are not conveniently local to a Staples or Quick-Print shop of some sort. Zazzle will do a nice job.

Select a MATTE output - otherwise, it will catch reflections from TV lighting and be unreadable.

If you prefer - you can also save the large, scaled pdf along with a photo of yourself holding your original memorial to a CD. Label it nicely and include it with the signed document. You may also wish to include a personal statement as to why you think it important to initiate impeachment.

Here are the thoughts I have in the matter; and as you might expect, the thrust of the argument goes to ethics and duties. In essence, this call to impeach the president is a call to Congress to examine it's own conscience and return to it's constitutional and ethical duties of oversight and constraint.

Until the issues raised in charges cited in this memorial are investigated by the House and adjuged by the Senate, it is impossible for Government to act with credibility or be accorded due respect for the inherent worth of it's deliberations.

These proceedings will of necessity involve a searching examination of the role of Congress in these matters; a period of self-examination that is long overdue, regardless of the final outcome. It is worth remembering that the call to impeach the president is not a call to convict; that is a matter of fact and of law to be resolved by due and established process.

We must realize that if those who govern are seen to be above the law and immune to question, no Citizen can be expected to respect the laws Congress passes, the President enforces or the Courts uphold. If matters this grave are treated as purely political, how will the we, the citizens see other laws regarding matters that affect their lives and purses?

This is an extraordinary moment in the history of the United States, as pivotal as the Civil War and as fraught with peril as the times of our founders. Either the values they established will be upheld, or this nation will change into something rather more ordinary, and much the worse.

The facts in the matter center around the President's assertion of the power of the "Unitary Executive" and a further assertion that in war, his powers are of necessity greater than during peace. But the further implication of this concept is that he may determine when to go to war, and indeed, define "war" to extend to conditions of international lawlessness that are consistent and expected challenges for any nation.

This has the effect of subverting the Constitutionally-mandated checks and balances upon Presidential Power, as well as depriving the Executive Branch of the benefit of due deliberation and a legitimate mandate.

The charges against this President go far beyond the technical, they are matters that go to the very heart of our Constitutional Republic. They cannot be treated as issues to be dismissed in a "new spirit of bipartisanship;" they trancend the partisan. If they are so treated it will be seen as assent to this most unwholesome direction, exposing Congress in turn to disrepute and increased scorn from an impatient and angry Citizenry who is already suspicious that their govenrment is devoid of any principle save self-preservation and personal advancement.

tag: Impeach George Bush, Jefferson's Memorial, Impeach for Peace, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Congressional Oversight, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Democrats, Republicans, George W. Bush, Constitutional Republic, congressional leadership, Duty, Honor, bipartisanship.

The New Spirit of Bipartisanship

Bipartisanship Magnet > Kiss My Donkey | CafePress


The New Spirit of Bipartisanship:

KISS MY DONKEY!



I got your buttons, I got your cards, I got your snappy dark shirts, I have an absolute KILLER bumper-sticker - and they all are to make the same point, and that is this. Whether or NOT Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid wish to continue with "business as usual," business will NOT be as usual until certain messes are cleaned up.

A Constitutional Crisis trumps any amount of ambition for the first hundred hours. We want investigations, and we want those investigations to go where they go. Pelosi has to understand that if the evidence points to impeachable offenses, it's not the duty of the house to decide yae or nay to that. That is the duty of the Senate. First, they are first and foremost responsible to their constitutional oaths and offices. And second, this issue must be resolved, and resolved quickly.

I should add that until these issues are resolved, the Presidency itself is damaged.

There are a great many things George Bush has done that must be investigated, repudiated and repaired within the next two years, before inertia becomes tradition.

No future president should be permitted the latitude this president has been, we clearly need to solidly re-establish constitutional checks and balances. We also clearly need a constitutional amendment that puts individual privacy beyond dispute.

Congress must take back the powers stolen from it, and that means reviewing much of the legislation passed by the previous, rubber-stamp congress. It should be made clear that the president must respect and honor the will of Congress, or if he cannot, he must use his veto. His usage of signing statements can be, if need be, addressed by legislation and litigation.

But right now, we have a sitting president that has defied the constitution and international law in order to defend and indeed expand the use of torture. The only "bipartisanship" I'm able to stomach on this matter is a loud, bipartisan repudiation of the use of torture and a very serious investigation of the practices undertaken by this president.

Otherwise, one might reasonably think that the Democrats are as interested in seizing that power as the Republicans are, concentrating it in the Executive and using it to rule a new American Empire. I doubt very much that's a vision many of my right-wing colleagues would welcome and I'm certain that my fellow libertarians are solidly oppose d to that, whatever else we may disagree on. If it appears that Congress is unwilling to face the matter with courage and integrity, we in the net-roots will; by all means available to us.

Our reach becomes greater every day, our coalitions and alliances become more sophisticated, and for the most part they usually bypass the traditional fonts of power completely. You see, we don't need "access" to make our points. Nor do we need any great political machine, or boiler rooms filled with indoctrinated drones. We have RSS feeds and blogroll alliances for that, just to name a few little issues.

The growth of the netroots, of blogging and of the pervasive power of the Internet has been very unwelcome in the halls of power and certainly viewed with distrust and disdain by the Mainstream Media. We are not "managable." There are too many of us, with far too little individual power, wealth or access to be easily coerced.

Understand that my discomfort with the power wielded by Tom Delay against the interest of the American people is not allayed by that same power being in the hands of Nancy Pelosi. Congress needs to understand that in very large part, this result was due to an aroused, aware and extremely angry American people. We are by now pretty much immunised to political posturings, positionings, re-triangulations and symbolic gestures.

I want my representatives representing MY interests. They are not a wing of White House operations, and should not aspire to taking that power by taking the White House.

Right now, Democrats had better be concentrating on cutting Bush's balls off, to be blunt. He may be a lame duck, but he's not nearly lame enough for my taste. Well, actually, I'm all for a bipartisan effort in pruning back executive power. But I surely do not insist on it. I just think that it should be less difficult than Pelosi imagines to achieve that sort of bipartisanship, given the number of Republicans up for re-election in 2008.

As for the Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, the senior senator from this great state of Nevada: A lot of us are not at ALL pleased with your efforts during this election. We are not pleased that Ensign is still the Junior Senator. We think you put politics above good policy, at the very least.

I'm thinking maybe you are too fond of the good old boy sort of politics, a little too comfortable inside the beltway, maybe a little bit out of touch with the fact that you are, in fact, our delegate and employee. I think those of us outside the realm of power politics have a better idea of the essentials than those tripping on the heady fumes of influence.

You have two years to either clean up this mess, or become inextricably identified with it. That is not a great deal of time, so you had best get busy. You have all the influence and power you need to do it, and a republican minority that would like very much to remain part OF a large and influential minority.

Having you as Majority Leader is only a source of prestige to our state if you are actually leading the Majority toward a re-establishment of proper, ethical, honorable and constitutional governance. If you are not - well, you may as well be Tom Delay.

This is a moment in political history as pivotal as was 9/11. Do not follow the example of George Bush and squander it to gain political objectives at the expence of this Constitutional Republic. The citizenry is beind you totally - but sir, we are behind you with fixed bayonets. Do not think that there is nearly the latitude for you that George Bush had. We are weary, impatient and cranky.

tag: Bipartisanship, Liberal, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Democratic Majority, Impeachment, Impeach George Bush, Torture, Guantanamo, Illegal Wiretapping, Iraq.