my folks are scared of brown folks

the following post is a little personal, based on opinions of people who are extremely close to me. mom, dad, if you still are reading this blog despite me asking you not to anymore, i'm sorry. i can't listen to this shit anymore, and i'm calling you guys out.

my parents and i bullshit politics all the time. they understand most of my madness over everything that's going on, but we fundamentally disagree on two issues: social security, and illegal immigration. being the good affluent and educated yet blue collar couple than they are, they have fairly predictable opinions on these two issues:

1) don't touch social security - this is great for our social democracy, and the fact that i want to semi-privatize it is abhorrent.
2) illegal immigrants are taking all of our jobs and should be rounded up and sent back to mexico.

normally i just brush arguments on these aside, because i don't want to hear alarmist rhetoric about the north american union, mecha, and the great conspiracy to end american sovereignty and give it back to brown people. people who espouse this nonsense doesn't listen when i tell them that rounding up and shipping 12 million people back to their home of origin is a logistical nightmare, costing us money we don't have.

today i got a healthy dose of this politics at the nexus of their two important issues, courtesy of a chain email sent to me by my mom, the details of which can be seen here. it claims, among other things, that "The United States Senate voted to extend Social Security Benefits to Illegal Aliens beginning in 2008." they also claim other dubious shit, including a fudged statistic that illegal immigrants supposedly comprise 30% of our federal prison population. incidentally, snopes clarifies the whole thing here, revealing it to be, as i told my mother, "heavily exaggerated sensationalist garbage." i only called it that because i don't want to say "you're full of shit" to my own mother.

i can't say this enough: stop blaming these people for trying to make a better life for themselves. a significant portion of our family ancestry is irish-catholic, having arrived during the potato famine. according to the library of congress, "Between 1820 and 1860, the Irish constituted over one third of all immigrants to the United States. In the 1840s, they comprised nearly half of all immigrants to this nation." they faced a lot of the same xenophobia and anger from the natives that the hispanic illegals are facing today, and if you think that they all arrived here legally, i'd be willing to bet that you're wrong.

i'm not saying they're not criminals (they are, by definition), and i'm not saying what they're doing isn't hurting america's infrastruture, but sorry, it's too late. they're here now. most of them are honest, hard-working people. in the event of amnesty, paying them legal wages will allow them to pay into our social services. the criminals among them who slip through the cracks will be easier to track when we actually do document them.

just stop blaming them for the problem, because they are but one effect of the many root causes that are currently plaguing our country. blame the greedy businessmen who wanted cheap under-the-table labor. blame the complacent citizenry who bitch and moan about this supposed 'reconquista' but then seemed a little more ok with it when they want a better deal on their landscaping. start supporting serious penalties for people who support this labor, and practice what you fucking preach.

stop crying about not everyone speaking english around here - you'd have a much more plausible case for that if you didn't live TWENTY MILES FROM MEXICO, in a region that was FORCIBLY TAKEN FROM MEXICO 150 years ago. i speak enough spanish to get by, and they speak enough english. i honestly couldn't care if i have to say "un big mac" instead of "a big mac", especially when i'm buying it on a street with a name like "camino del norte" in a suburb of san diego, california. speaking a bit of spanish around here only seems apropos. the same goes for texas, arizona, and new mexico.

and i'm sorry, but blaming them for all of our problems is just a little racist.

there, i said it.

McCain is confused

This is not really news, but if you venture to the op-ed page of the LA Times, you'll find what i deem to be a compelling argument for bitch-slapping anybody that'd vote for that bungler.

:D :D :D

a cheap night at home in 2008

five gallons of gas: $20
a pack of american spirits: $6
a six-pack of fat tire: $10
a gallon of milk: $5
twelve chocolate chip cookies: $5

knowing it's only going to get more expensive? priceless.

yeah, that won't piss them off at all

the 2008 presidential side-contest for 'craziest religious hate speech' is now strongly in favor of the mccain camp. from an abc news blog:

Despite his call for the U.S. to win the "hearts and minds of the Islamic world," Sen. John McCain recruited the support of an evangelical minister who describes Islam as "anti-Christ" and Mohammed as "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil."

...

At a campaign appearance in Cincinnati, McCain introduced [evil racist cunt, Pastor Rod] Parsley as "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide."

so here's the breakdown:
wright hates whitey, hagee hates the jews, and this asshole hates the muslims.

look out, buddhists, because you're next. ralph nader's minister is all over your 'global pacifist conspiracy.'

---
HILARIOUS SIDE NOTE: while trying to discuss w/joeverkill the inherent bloodthirstiness of varying religious traditions, i googled the search term "old testament murder baal". the googz replied, "did you mean old testament murderball?"

i didn't, but that sounds like the best sunday school game EVER.

hey mister, can you spare some loose change?

quick question - who said this?

After September 11, 2001, there was a great deal of speculation that the terrorists or their associates had traded in the option market on advanced knowledge of the impending attacks. This paper generates systematic information about option market activity that can be used to assess the option trading that precedes any event of interest. Examination of the option trading leading up to September 11 reveals that there was an unusually high level of put buying. This finding is consistent with informed investors having traded options in advance of the attacks.

alex jones? those dipshit filmmaker geeks?

nope. allen m. poteshman, associate professor of finance at the university of illinois.

this is according to a study that he has published, which i intend to read in full. i encourage anyone with more extensive knowledge of the stock market to read it in full and comment as well.

dirty liberals try to clean up

san francisco is going to start charging regional industries for their pollution, according to the bbc.

they're being charged 4.4 cents for every ton of carbon dioxide they dump into the atmosphere, and is expected to generate $1.1m next year for "programmes to measure and control local greenhouse gas emissions."

naturally, the capitalists are going to say it hurts business.

tough shit.

know what else hurts business? maintaining obsolete industries and methods of production out of sheer simplicity or cheapness. this is a kick in the ass in the right direction that gets everyone interested in clean energy development, including the polluters themselves.

however, here's the big question: let's say this sort of pollution penalty spreads across the developed world, and we all clean up in the next 20 years or so. does this mean that all the polluters pack up and move to zimbabwe, vietnam, or other less-industrialized countries? will there be rogue states who refuse to play the "save the planet" game in the interest of immediate returns?

how can the battle against climate change ever be taken truly global?

any thoughts?

oh hai, i hav ur jrnlstc ntgrty

Right Here.

I beat HuffPo to this story by five days.

Which story, you ask?

What the fuck does it matter? I'm a golden god.

big oil defends right to be greedy, malevolent cocksuckers

WASHINGTON - On a day oil prices leaped to unheard-of highs, senators lined up Big Oil's biggest executives and pummeled them with complaints that they're pretending to be "hapless victims" while raking in record profits.

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Profits have been huge "in absolute terms," conceded J. Stephen Simon, executive vice president of Exxon Mobil Corp., but they "must be viewed in the context of the massive scale of our industry." And high earnings "in the current up cycle" are needed for investments in the long term, including when profits will be down.

---

Simon was asked what his total compensation was at Exxon, a company that made $40.6 billion last year. Simon replied it was $12.5 million.

---

You have "just a litany of complaints that you're all just hapless victims of a system," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told the executives. "Yet you rack up record profits ... quarter after quarter after quarter."

minotauromachy, i know you just railed on us for our lack of journalistic integrity, but i'm pissed, and so is the fucking associated press.

these guys are pieces of shit, and they better be careful lest a labor movement have them tarred and feathered.

link.

numbers lie, part 2: a report from the epicenter

since this gas crisis started, i've been monitoring the price change from a gas station sign that i pass on the way to work. here it is on google street view, with gas just above $3 whenever that picture was taken (likely last year). three weeks ago, it was somewhere around $3.80/gal for regular. yesterday on my way home, it had jumped from $3.97 to $4.03. oil jumped another few bucks today, so i could see it pass $4.05 as early as 5:30ish today when i see it on my drive home.



the fine folks at digg pointed me to this piece from the times of london, in which the author argues that based on important economic indicators, america is not in a recession, and if it makes it another couple months, it won't really ever be. while this article is dated april 7 and therefore fairly obsolete, i still think it is worth mentioning. firstly, we're at the point of no return where he assumes that we're ok as long as the numbers jive; secondly, i think he's flat-out wrong.

mr. kaletzky presents three arguments for why a recession is not happening.

1) "...figures [he has cited] are still consistent with a mid-cycle slowdown similar to the ones that the American economy experienced in 1995-96 and 1986-87." these include unemployment numbers, gdp figures, and other numbers argued by people who are looking for the conventional definition of a recession.
2) "powerful expansionary forces are about to come into play in the US economy in the months ahead...every American household will receive tax rebate cheques of between $600 (£300) and $2,000. As a result, personal disposable income will grow at an annualised rate of well over 10 per cent in the third quarter of this year."
3) "...there is a world of difference between a dislocation confined to one or two parts of the economy - say, housing and mortgage lending - and a generalised economic decline in which the weakness of demand in a few sectors creates a self-sustaining downward spiral of falling employment and incomes..."

mr. kaletzky, let me express my opinion on this in a way you can understand:
BOLLOCKS.

this assessment heavily underestimates the problem of the housing crisis, and completely sweeps a couple of major factors of this recession under the rug. first, how do you expect gas prices over $4 not to affect a way of life in an area that is particularly dependent upon the automobile, both in terms of culture and infrastructure? secondly, he has been conned by this stimulus package, hook, line, and sinker. the stimulus package is a false "expansionary force," meant to alter numbers so that well-educated fools like kaletzky don't start proclaiming recession. make no mistake: the confluence of factors in this crisis will do significant damage to the american economy, most notably in the southwest.

kaletzky's article is ivory tower speculation of the highest order, and i suspect he would sing a different tune if he spent a week or two living in southern california. while i hate to pull a hillary clinton by dismissing 'expert' opinion in favor of blue-collar pathos, i'd like to present a couple of socal slice-of-shitty-life stories to counter this concept that we are not in a 'recession':

cnn tells the sad tale of barbara harvey, a 67-year-old mother of three from santa barbara who is now homeless after being laid off, and then foreclosed. while she no longer has house payments, "she still cannot afford an apartment, and so every night she pulls into a gated parking lot to sleep in her car, along with other women who find themselves in a similar predicament."

isolated incident? not really.

There are 12 parking lots across Santa Barbara that have been set up to accommodate the growing middle-class homelessness. These lots are believed to be part of the first program of its kind in the United States, according to organizers.

additionally, bbc reported a couple of months ago on the establishment of a 'hooverville' - a depression-era shantytown for the dispossessed - in the los angeles area. surely, after another couple of months, this has only grown:



am i looking too microscopically at this? should i not care about these homeless people, ignore how much i'm paying at the pump, and forget that bread and milk cost twice as much as they used to? i sincerely doubt it. shame on you, mr. kaletzky, for doing exactly that.

---

UPDATE: $4.05? nope. $4.13. god help us.

Notes from the Right-Wing: Lou Pearlman

I'm Joeverkill, and these are some notes from the Right-Wing.

In news today, Lou Pearlman, the creator of the Backstreet Boys and N*SYNC, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding investors and banks out of roughly $300 million. From the USA Today:

U.S. District Judge G. Kendall Sharp gave Pearlman the chance to cut his prison time by offering a one-month reprieve for every $1 million in cash he helps a bankruptcy trustee recover for his victims.Theoretically, Pearlman could cancel his entire 300-month sentence by repaying the $300 million debt.

Ahem. So... how is this different than paying the guy one million dollars per month to chill out in white collar prison?

I wish I had that kind of deal. Damn, I'd do ten months in jail and be set for life. Hey... I guess all I have to do is defraud hundreds of people out of their life savings and lie illegally to a lot of banks! Sweet!

On the other hand, the guy did give us the Backstreet Boys. I guess society owes him a great debt.

Right-Wing Rant: Population Control

I'm Joeverkill, and this is a Right-Wing Rant. And this one's about the issue I feel is the most important to the survival of the human race in this millennium.

We are living in a time of surmounting crises. Energy, food, and metal shortages. Near-deadly levels of global warming and pollution. Rising poverty and crime. Growing economic inequality. These problems are all caused by a number of factors, but they share one major common source: they all borne from levels of resource consumption that are too high to be sustained.

The greenies will tell you that we need to live cleaner. Every person needs to consume less for the planet to survive. And maybe that's a good point. Finding more efficient ways of running our lives and our economy is a laudable and important goal. Some may claim that technological advances are the answer. Certainly, technological advancement toward a more efficient society is a laudable goal. But how soon can we expect these advancements to come? They are not guaranteed.

But resource consumption per capita is only one half of the equation here, and it's completely appalling to me that no one in the Western world is attempting to address the other half -- the number of people consuming these resources.

Any credible environmental scientist will tell you that we have passed the point at which many natural resources are renewable. At the present commercial fishery rate, for example, we will strip the sea beyond the point of recovery some time in the next one hundred years. Global warming will continue to increase unless carbon emissions are massively decreased.

At the present rate of resource consumption, the world is already beyond carrying capacity. The world is already overpopulated. And the problem is worse than it seems. Even at a scant 1% population growth rate, a nation's population will double in about 70 years. Double the population and double the resource consumption. You double the environmental impact and carbon footprint. If it seems like the U.S.'s energy problems are bad now, just wait until there are 600 million people living here. It's not far off.

Contrary to what many people believe, overpopulation is primarily a problem of developed countries. These countries consume the greatest amount of resources per capita, and therefore any efforts to curb resource consumption should primarily target developed and developing nations. These countries need to aim for negative population growth.

My plan (though I'm aware no one's asking me) would be to convene with other developed and developing nations and to reach an accord by which population control would be made a high priority. This plan would involve the following admittedly somewhat drastic measures:

Internally
- Subsidize birth control in any and all forms. Including abortions.
- Implement harsh tax penalties for those who have more than two children.
- Implement more stringent immigration restrictions.
- "Baby licenses." You need a license to drive a car, you need a license to own a gun (in some states), so why shouldn't you be required to have a license in order to reproduce? A human being is the most deadly thing on the planet. It is the single greatest resource consumer. Not everyone should be allowed to create one.

Externally
- Employ strict embargoes on any and all nations refusing to abide by the proposed population control pact.
- Refuse to provide any sort of aid or assistance to any and all nations refusing to abide by the proposed population control pact.

That's my plan, not that anyone's asking me.

Population control, in my opinion, is absolutely the most pressing issue for the survival of the human species. We need to do something, and we need to do it soon.

I'm Joeverkill, and this has been a Right-Wing Rant.

Documentarian Errol Morris follows trail of infamous Abu Ghraib photo

I just finished reading a brilliant piece of investigative journalism by noted documentarian and friend of Werner Herzog - Errol Morris. Morris made the pioneering 70s documentary on pet cemeteries - 'Gates of Heaven' after being encouraged by Herzog to make a film. Herzog challenged the young filmmaker to make a movie and promised to eat his own shoe if he succeeded and when Errol completed 'Gates', Herzog kept his promise, resulting in this film - Werner Herzog eats his shoe. Yes, Herzog is a man of his word and you can take Errol Morris very seriously as well, not just by dint of his connection to the Godlike Teutonic genius but because of his brilliant work. He has also just released a movie called - Standard Operating Procedure detailing the story of abuse and cover up at Abu Ghraib. The movie website is a work of art in itself with interviews and the biographies of soldiers and interrogators closest to the scandal.

Back to the piece on hand. Morris recounts being troubled by this photo of Sabrina Harman at Abu Ghraib. At the beginning of his investigations he was confounded by his editor's refusal to condemn and thus dismiss her as just an example of callousness and evil. This forced him to conduct a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the taking of the photograph and the results of his inquiries have far more chilling implications and raise questions about our clean cut sentiment of disapprobation that we have so far felt towards her. He dulls the blacks into greys and adds details to the whites, turning the picture back against us and forcing us to extend our blame beyond the scare crow figure that is Ms Harman and focus it at the real culprits.

In a curious phenomenon, he describes, how our horror at Sabrina's insensitive pose prevented us from asking more important questions, like - who the real killers of al-Jamadi (yes that was his name, he was a man, with a name, not just a victim of American arrogance or a symbol of the scandal)were, why she took the pictures at all, what lapses in procedure allowed this man to die, what was the nature of the interrogation that killed him, who was responsible for him when he was arrested and on and on.

How about the game of 'pass the body' that the various agencies played in the immediate aftermath of al-Jamadi's death? Or the fact that al-Jamadi, because of his status as a captured intelligence asset was designated by the same acronym - O.G.A. - Other Government Agencies as the operatives from secret government agencies like the F.B.I., C.I.D., C.I.A., D.I.A., and Task Force 121 were known in military parlance.How about this for a joke - "Indeed, when al-Jamadi was finally entered into the prison log book on November 5, 2003 (since he was a “ghost” detainee without an identification number), he was simply identified as “Bernie.” (as in Weekend at Bernie's) After he died, the prison guards had to carry on an elaborate charade including hooking him up to ivs to fool other prisoners into thinking that he was suffering a medical emergency when they transported him out of Ghraib.

Why could they not enter al-Jamadi's name into the system? What was the possibility that this guy, who might have at most been an insurgent fighter, carried in his head national secrets such as the minority of real terrorists in Guantanamo bay do? If we even buy the argument that special provisions of secrecy are required to control information flow from guys who were captured in Afghanistan over 6 years ago(I don't, dated intelligence is the most useless commodity in the world - the only reason to muzzle those guys is to stop them from telling the world about the conditions they face), how do they apply to Iraqi fighters in this war? Why could they not be treated using the same tactics used in regular warfare? Why the pervasive need for secrecy?

Since his name was not entered into the system when he was captured, he did not exist, just like the people who interrogated him. In fact, if not for those photos, al-Jamadi and Abu Ghraib would not exist. As it turns out, Sabrina Harman wanted to take those pictures to expose the true nature of the prison. Her smile was a reflexive reaction to being in front of the camera. She, along with the guy who took the picture, entered the morgue and examined the corpse and even removed bandages to determine the true cause of death. She was later charged with tampering evidence - evidence that was already carefully doctored(bandages, ice packs) to turn a homicide into death by heart attack.

The rest of the article is devoted to facial analysis to determine whether Ms Harman was enjoying herself in the picture being taken. An expert in the matter shows how one can conclude that she was actually just putting on a fake smile. Whether you believe it or not is up to you. I for one am not completely convinced that her smile is entirely forced. However the idea being conveyed is that soldiers in a war zone become so hardened to death and degeneration that they are not able to convey the same external signs of horror as a civilian might have in their place. This is not to say that they do not feel human emotions inside. In Sabrina's case, her inability to display a normative reaction or affect resulted in her being condemned unfairly and to us seeing some link between her and the violence committed against al-Jamadi, which in turn let others off the hook.

What are the lessons we learn from Morris' exercise? Firstly that evil is not revealed in a face, it more likely reveals its aspect in procedure, in military terminology, in bureaucratic facades of normality. The pictures of smiling soldiers posing with corpses most likely helped expose the moral corruption at the heart of the prison but it also gave it an exaggerated and false face that the higher ups diligently used to stop the blame from ascending up the ranks. The true culprits completely dodged the blame as a result, partly, of our indignation and emotional outbursts of anger.

In order to perfect our moral discernment we need to practise our intellectual faculties as well as our emotional ones. We need to familiarise ourselves with the procedural aspects of the military, government and the press in order to recognise and direct our moral indignation. You as readers need to read the entire article I cited to understand the full dimensions of the horror I speak of. If you aim to critique a sound byte and thumbnail culture then you have to stop using those very same methods and adopt a rigorous technical approach to defeat it. It is a slog in the mud, not a shouting match with slogans and epithets.

Errol Morris sets a profound example for the right sort of journalism and we would all do well to follow his example. He followed his lead to its rightful conclusion and questioned his impulses to condemn the subject of his article. Even harmless journalistic sloppiness has moral dimensions to it. A slip shod statement only contributes to the confusing morass of information or rather disinformation that characterises the Internet and TV pundit shows.

Being blog writers does not excuse us from the responsibility to sound reportage. If anything our job is far easier and allows us at the click of a button to do better research. All that remains to do is to put a little effort into fully developing our thoughts and ideas and expressing them in a ordered fashion. I hereby call for more thought out articles and for more sophisticated arguments. A simplistic statement of anger or disgust at a public figure or policy, apart from being representative of a juvenile mind, also pollutes the general body of discourse. Why add to the nonsense verbiage and never ending flame threads of the Internet?

I urge posters to take a little extra time and put in effort to bring something extra to the table. Anyone can get their news from one of the media hubs that everyone else reads. All of us feel an undifferentiated anger at the prevailing state of affairs and simply being naggingly reminded of it with a patchwork of links and defensive posturing does little to articulate our rage. That should be the goal of our endeavors - to understand ourselves better by examining our relation to the affairs of the world. That is what Morris tried to do in this article. If this article doesn't receive wider attention, a Pulitzer and worse doesn't lead to follow up action, I will eat my shoe!

Ain't It Just Like a Woman...

...to bitch when she don't get her way?

Yeah. I said it.

a reason to support mccain (besides a death wish)

i lived in edinburgh, scotland for the first half of 2005. living in the united kingdom has plenty of great things to offer, but i'll always remember lots of rain, acerbic wit, and the bbc. rest assured, i watched a lot of the beeb while i was out there (despite dodging the licence fee like every good uni student).

one of the most entertaining things i ever saw on bbc was what is known as "prime minister's questions." long story short, every wednesday the prime minister would show up before the entire assembled parliament, and they would grill the hell out of him on national television. if you're anything like me, the first thought that comes to your mind is "jesus christ. bush wouldn't last ten minutes."

it brought a smile to my face to see this on slate:

"I will ask Congress," said the presumptive Republican nominee, "to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the prime minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons."

this article was provided by loudmouth atheist fundamentalist christopher hitchens. feel free to read his commentary on mccain's idea if you like, but i personally find the man to be a jackass and stay away from his nonsense.

the great inflation swindle

if recent intertube rumorz are to be believed, the rate of the dollar's inflation and decline of american purchasing power is far greater than official statistics proclaim. then again, if you have to buy your own gas, food, and other essentials, you know this already.

upon the release of march's consumer data, various news organizations started to get a little curious about the way our government measures inflation. from reuters:

Overall, the consumer price index rose by a smaller-than-expected 0.2 percent in April. So-called core prices, which strip out food and energy costs [italics added for emphasis], were up just 0.1 percent, half the increase that analysts had forecast.

so to soften the data up to make it look pretty on paper (in the data business we call it "massaging"), the consumer price index doesn't accurately measure THE SHIT THAT'S GETTING REALLY EXPENSIVE REALLY QUICKLY? the houston chronicle says, quite simply: "It makes you wonder if the government is performing a statistical sleight of hand."

and people wonder why nobody trusts anything the government says. this article from michael pento of the huffington post breaks it down a little further, going into concepts such as gdp as it affects the cpi and other things that my two semesters of slept-through college economics classes haven't prepared me to fully comprehend or comment upon. however, i do understand this: "...the report claimed that consumer's energy costs were unchanged while the actual price of crude oil rose about 12.5% and gas prices rose 11% during the same period in question..."

yeah. so all these numbers are a little fudged?
ok, they're apparently a lot fudged.

harper's recently published a short history of how inflation data has been increasingly fudged since the nixon administration, with disastrous effects on our national perceptions of what's actually happening in the economy. the article requires a subscription, but a good chunk of it can be obtained here. here's a little graphic they use to explain the problem:



the red line is inflation as it is measured by contemporary standards. the blue line is inflation according to pre-1983 standards. the black morass in the middle is apparently the gaping mouth of a monster that is coming to eat us.

i want my mommy.

UPDATE: marketwatch has now joined the chicken little party. i'm in good company.

shitty.

teddy kennedy has a malignant brain tumor. at a time like this, it only seems symbolic that one of the great symbols of the old left is dying.

offensive joke removed due to concerns over our publication standards and eternal souls. -the management

Red Scare -Bush Style

Like a passage from Orwell’s 1984 came to life, it has been revealed that under the supervision of Bush administration officials, the government has started compiling a list of Americans who are considered subversive or potentially risky to the security of the state. The criterion for determining selections for this list is top secret which means that the jingoistic citizens in charge get to pick their targets without oversight.

A recent online publication of an article from Radar Magazine gives deep insight to how the current administration has been compiling, through domestic surveillance and spying programs -*cough* Patriot Act *cough*, a (secret)list of citizens who may be deemed ‘dangerous’ in the event of a large scale terrorist attack.

Awesome, the elected officials we entrust with national security have ostensibly scared themselves retarded and are putting together a super secret (probably under double-probation) list of domestic citizens due to their perceived “un-American” activities. James Comey, John Ashcroft's second-in-command at the department of Justice until 2005, was the sole obstacle to the “red scare-esque” programs being enacted by Bush’s loyal crony and friend to the American people, ex attorney general Alberto Gonzalez. According to the Radar Magazine article - “Much of his testimony centered on an operation so clandestine he wasn't allowed to name it or even describe what it did.”

The most disgusting part about this whole ordeal is not the fact that a list of supposedly turncoat citizens is being compiled –trust me half of the contributors on this blog are on it (hey Rupey!) and similar programs have been in place from the days of J Edgar Hoover. It’s the manner in which the Bush administration tried to ensure that the program passed legal muster back in 2004 that’s truly shocking.

First, John Ashcroft (attorney general at this time) discussed the program and its facets with Comey (readers might remember that this was the same program that included the warrantless wiretaps provision) and ultimately decided that it was unconstitutional. Just before the act’s certification deadline - “Ashcroft fell ill with pancreatitis, making Comey acting attorney general, and Comey opted not to certify the program.”

This pissed the cowboy we call president the fuck off. Imagine if you will - rejection of an act that would allow complete surveillance over the entire population is something that would make power slaves like this administration foam at the mouth. And what’s worse was being thwarted a man (Comey) appointed by his administration. Sound the cavalry. Knowing that Ashcroft was in intensive care due to his ailment, the Bush administration went project mayhem on this shit, “sending Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then–White House counsel Alberto Gonzales on a mission to Ashcroft's sickroom to persuade the heavily doped attorney general to override his deputy.” Comey, hearing of the sneak attack, rushed to the hospital to warn Ashcroft.

But Ashcroft, despite being in a sedated state, played the card of constitutionality; he looked at the officials that had been sent to forcibly persuade him and pointed directly at Comey saying “there is the attorney general.” -And Comey's perception of the act’s illegality stayed constant and he refused to sign it.

Although the republican party may prove itself to suck seemingly all the time, I’m relieved there was a member of the occupying faction that chose to view a program not as an act of preserving freedom, but as an act of pure unadulterated stupidity.

Impending Doom in Technicolor

and



Now, this seems far-fetched to me, but the story on the youtubes is that these two videos were captured a half hour and ten minutes before the Sichuan Quake.

For the record, I'm not sold on this as being real or factual.

However, if it turns out to be legit, fuck yes.

hello internets!

we're on google.

i'll be buying icanhasfreedoms.com in the next couple days.

it's time to take this motherfucker to the next level.

yes, we're real people

this summer, rupert murder, magnoliafan and i will be moving into an apartment closer to the big city, under the auspices of dodging car culture as soon as possible. this poster from threadless will adorn our living room:



sweet.

obama's white half gains endorsement

WASHINGTON - Sen. Robert C. Byrd, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and a one-time opponent of civil rights legislation, endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination on Monday.

Obama is vying to be the nation's first black president.

oh fuck. the first black president? are they serious?

thanks, associated press. i would have never known that fact otherwise. this is why you guys are the journalists and i'm the blogger.

link.

o'reilly, olbermann star in elaborate puppet show; obama to cut the strings

remember once upon a time, when we were teetering down the precipice into proto-fascism, and bill o'reilly was actually a powerful force in media? bad times, right?

believe it or not, mr. o'reilly is still making tv news, and has been embroiled in a feud with bizarro'reilly (keith olbermann) for just about five years now. slate's jack shafer seems to think this has its place in media history, as it "evokes some of the nastiest pissing matches in journalistic history." since day one, this feud (and arguably the modus operandi of their respective networks) has been filled with all of the ire behind that primitive blue-state-vs.-red-state construct, turning each anchor into a representative of their simplified pseudo-ideologies.

as the general sentiment of the country has turned against the bushites, so has viewership shifted from red to blue. as of september of last year, more american people turn to the former sportscenter anchor than the former inside edition anchor for their news.

just like any other fight, what does a sycophantic little pussy do when he gets outgunned? he gets the big boys involved, of course. according to the washington post, this skirmish is now going all the way to the top, pitting msnbc's owner general electric against fox's owner news corp. o'reilly fired the first corporate shot, criticizing ge for their business endeavors in iran that lasted until 2005:

GE has long had a corporate presence in Iran, which U.S. officials say is providing weapons and training for Shiite militias in the Iraq conflict. Under growing criticism from the public and its own shareholders, GE announced in 2005 that it would accept no new business in Iran and would wind down existing contracts, which mostly involved sales of oil, gas and energy and health-care equipment. The remaining work, valued at less than $50 million, amounts to less than .01 percent of GE's income, and the company says the final four contracts will expire within weeks.

honestly, i couldn't give a fuck about ge's morality in and of itself. watching those two corporations preach morality at each other is like watching pol pot and stalin argue over who killed less people.

this finger-pointing fiesta, however, is a telling sign of a far greater problem in our country than bullshit journalistic feuds. television news is beholden to corporate interests. the big six (news corp, disney, ge, time warner, viacom, and cbs) own most every televised news outlet, and many of the radio ones. if you don't think this is a problem, just check out this snl tv funhouse cartoon spoofing media consolidation. this cartoon apparently struck a nerve at the parent corporation, and was supposedly never aired again after its original broadcast.

so what do we do now? how do we fight back against this centralization of mass media, ensuring that our less-literate fellow citizens get the information they need? thankfully, one presidential candidate has enough historical wherewithal to understand the sherman antitrust act. his name: jesus h. obama*.

preach it, brother:

"I will assure that we will have an antitrust division that is serious about pursuing cases," the Illinois senator told an audience of mostly senior citizens in Oregon.

"There are going to be areas, in the media for example where we're seeing more and more consolidation, that I think (it) is legitimate to ask...is the consumer being served?"

god damn. i can smell the hope.

---

*note: the h is for hussein.

Nerderobics

You can now get exercise from your Wii.

I love the Wii, but if you're a fat fuck, it's probably because you don't get out of the house. get some sunlight on those pale flabs. go to the beach or the park or something. anything.

Is this the seventh seal being broken?

Unsubstantiated Evidence from God

From a church blog in Oregon...

We have this message, allegedly faxed from the Hillary Clinton campaign to some church in Oregon:

Dear Pastor:

Kentucky and Oregon now hold the keys to our Christian nation's future. Next Tuesday a decision will be made as to which of two candidates is most suited to become the next president of the United States.

One of these candidates, in spite of alleged faults, is a believer in Jesus. The other, in spite of assertions to the contrary is not.

Faith in Christ, and in His atoning blood, is the only hope for salvation.

Sure, hope may be preached, and change may be promised, but without Christ it is a false hope, and a deadly change.

Yes, Christianity may be worn as a politically-correct uniform. Yes, the media may defend, and glorify their chosen one, and attempt to bully his opponent into capitulating. But, as they did in West Virginia, let Christians in the Appalachians, and the Cascades, stand up and say: Enough!

Let Kentucky be the levee that holds the floodwaters of the anticrist.

Let Oregon be the firewall that breaks the brushfire of apostasy, ere it devours our nation.

Onward Christian soldiers!
With Sincerity,
From Concerned Christians

Wow.

It's 11 pm on a Sunday. I'm too exhausted to voice my opinion on this. I'm just going to leave it for now, with the disclaimer that I cannot verify the validity of this supposed fax, and then let you guys comment.

I'll get back later.

Clinton/GOP Smear Campaign Working So Far?

In the most recent Gallup Polls, Barack Obama has opened up a significant lead among registered Democrats. Senator Obama now leads 51/42 against Senator Clinton in the race for the nomination.

However, the good news ends there as Obama trails in general election results when matched against presumptive GOP nominee, John McCain. McCain pulls 47% of the vote to Barack's 44.

Hilariously, Hillary Clinton is running ahead of McCain head-to-head, which must be a bitter pill for the former First Lady to swallow. After hitting her stride by marketing herself as the more electable candidate on the basis of her hardworking whiteness, Clinton now faces the fact that she is losing the nomination to a man who - if these numbers are to be believed and if the election were held today - would lose the Presidency she would win.

While we have an entire summer, fall, and part of winter between now and the elections, it bears noting that the recent smears of Obama have done visible and discernible damage to his image, especially among uneducated whites, who are being told that Obama symbolizes some sort of unfairly advantaged group of African-Americans in this country, getting over at the expense of whitey.

This is as ridiculous as it is untrue, but the fact remains that it emerged as a successful narrative from the Clinton camp's playbook from Ohio and Texas through the NC and IN primaries. While the Senator from New York has thankfully called off the dogs, the GOP has shown no qualms with taking the muddy baton of fear-mongering rhetoric and running with it.

While one cannot put too much faith in one set of poll numbers, especially when the results are so close, the fact remains Barack Obama has taken a hit in the past eight weeks, and he must now spend the next six months fighting accusations of elitism, pacifism, a lack of patriotism and ties to terrorism.

I posit the idea the the GOP has already committed a cardinal sin - instead of attempting to convince the American people that there are multiple reasons to vote for John McCain, they have opted instead to simply tear down their opponent. This tactic is risky in that if at any point it stops working, it leaves them woefully vulnerable to defection en masse.

For the next six months, a man's name and family will be dragged through the muck. The true measure of this country's remaining character, intelligence and integrity will be shown in our response to such a sustained derogatory attack predicated not upon policy or a history of success, but upon the destruction of one man in the court of public opinion.

Does John McCain Understand That Cameras Record Things?

No. Srsly.

John McCain on NRA before he was running for president. (can't figure out how to embed video)

John McCain speaking to NRA now that he's running for President:



He really thinks talking to Hamas is a stupid idea now that he's running for President.

In 2006, though, before he was running for President, he had a different POV:



I have this theory that the 2008 race to the White House is going to destroy John McCain's political career.

Dems to Show Muscle, Unite Congress, Overrule Veto and Protect the Rich

Just because nobody is talking about this farm bill shiznit doesn't mean it doesn't still matter.

I'm horribly deficient in my knowledge on this issue, and would welcome anyone with more information to come forward and enlighten me. However, from the picture painted by this single page, it appears this mostly-ignored political happening is the worst kind of under-the-table, behind-closed-doors bullshit we've all sadly come to expect from politicians in the modern era.

From the Boston Herald:

As with so many bills, this one is loaded with earmarks. Here are two: A tax break for owners of thoroughbred horses, and a special program for “geographically disadvantaged farmers” in Alaska and Hawaii. (Hmmm . . . Are we going to subsidize carrots and pineapples through the back door?)

In Congress, one hand washes the other. There’s a $10 billion increase in food stamp authorizations and big increases for conservation programs (which account for most of the $298 billion authorized). That gets the urban members and much of the environmental lobby on board.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had some kind of hope that things could in fact be better someday in the near future? Maybe that hope could come in the form of a candidate running on a platform of change who spoke to the American people as though they weren't mostly retarded.

That could be cool. I'm just saying.

Other GOP Seats in Danger

It's like a who's who of fuck you.

From WashPost:

The special-election victory by Democrat Travis Childers last week sent a signal to all political junkies that the House playing field may be far wider than most assumed even a few weeks ago. Childers's win in a northern Mississippi district that President Bush carried with 62 percent of the vote in 2004 came less than two weeks after a Democrat won a Louisiana special election in a district where Bush had taken 59 percent in his reelection bid.

With the winds of change blowing directly into Republicans' faces, here is a look at a handful of GOP-controlled seats that could feel the effects. Bush's 2004 vote percentage is in parentheses.

You'll have to actually read the article to get all the info, but for those of you who don't have time to read the whole thing, here's my favorite part from page 2:

FIVE DAYS: Sen. John McCain plans to release his medical records and allow reporters to ask follow-up questions of his doctors about his health. McCain's age has been and will continue to be an underlying current of discussion in the campaign; a clean bill of health over the past eight years would go a long way toward pushing it to the back burner.

16 DAYS: Montana and South Dakota will cast the final votes of the Democratic primary season -- officially ending one of the most compelling races in modern political history.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Oops

John McCain is a disingenuous shit who will say anything to get elected.

Yeah I said it.

What of it?

it came from myspace: economic stimulus edition

good thing a picture is worth a thousand words, because i'm fucking speechless.