Together in peace.
In the late Senator Teddy’s case, with the solace of readily available government-paid end of life aid and assistance.
Edward Kennedy was a Senator who understood and extolled the service part of the phrase public service and who worked to make conspicuous and to never forgo the concept, responsibility and utilization of benevolence in government.
If directly calling for openly flouting and opposing the Constitution is not anti-American, what is?
From the U.S. Constitution, Article VI (emphasis added):
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
One can stare at that as many times as one likes and parse it ’til the cows come home and it still nowhere says “except Oklahoma.”
Republican mayoral candidate Anna Falling said Tuesday that putting a Christian creationism display in the Tulsa Zoo is No. 1 in importance among city issues that include violent crime, budget woes and bumpy streets.
[snip]
Falling, who has founded several Christian nonprofits and is a former city councilor, also said the next mayor needs to appoint people to city boards, authorities and commissions who will “honor God.”
[snip]
When asked whether she meant she would recruit Christians to serve the city, Falling said she was talking about “people committed to their churches,” and when asked whether she meant Christian churches, she said, “churches, yes.” Source
Fanaticism is a dish best not served at all.
Still far from practicing what we preach.
…”For the DoD to instruct its employees that lawful protest activities should be treated as ‘low-level terrorism’ is deeply disturbing in and of itself. It is an even more egregious insult to constitutional values, however, when viewed in the context of a long-term pattern of domestic security initiatives that have attempted to equate lawful dissent with terrorism.” Source
With friends like these…
Among the countries congratulating Mr Ahmadinejad on his victory were Iraq, Afghanistan, Venezuela and North Korea. Source
More:
As European capitals appear to weigh their reaction to the Iranian poll against their desire to engage Tehran in constructive talks, most of Iran’s neighboring states have opted for simply congratulating the winner.’nuff said.Afghan President Hamid Karzai was the first head of state to do so as he called Ahmadinejad on June 14. Karzai’s office said he congratulated the Iranian people “for making a decision about their destiny” and hoped Afghanistan’s ties with Iran would continue to strengthen during Ahmadinejad’s second four-year term in office.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani followed shortly after with a telegram to Ahmadinejad expressing confidence that their two countries “friendly and neighborly relations” will improve in the coming years.
Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, told Ahmadinejad the victory was “an acknowledgment of your outstanding services.”
[snip]
Arab League Secretary-General Amr Musa also congratulated Ahmadinejad….Source
Other side of the coin: Unlike major capitals of the EU, Canada voices sharply stated outrage.
What this horrible, terrible, no good, very bad ruling circumscribing the very notion of the concept of the individual boils down to is this: Human beings (and that proprietary data which makes you you) are not just subject to the laws of the state, they are commodities owned by the state and ipso facto subject to the use of any or all tools in the state’s arsenal — regardless of the initial purpose behind the acquisition and application of such tools — merely for the sake of expedience.
A judge in Niagra County, New York, ruled Thursday that DNA evidence, obtained only after police applied a Taser to a suspect who refused to provide evidence against himself, may be used by the prosecution because the electric shock was not administered with malice.A bit more here.Judge Sara Sheldon Sperrazza, with this 17-page decision, becomes “the first judge in western civilization to say you can use a Taser to enforce a court order,” defense attorney Patrick Balkin said, according to The Niagara Gazette. Source
The sheer leap from argumentation condoning the incapacitation of an assailant to condoning incapacitation of recalcitrance is beyond breathtaking.
…yet remain too widely unlearned or willfully ignored.
Officials use torture when they have already dehumanized their victims —- a witch is not a normal person, a “terrorist” is a beast —- when a government puts revenge before other goals, and when a sense of helplessness rules.
Promoting fear of the unknown enemy who must be exposed through torture gives officials a great sense of their own importance; and, because they can waterboard a suspect like Abu Zubaydah 83 times, they do have considerable power —- to inflict pain, not to obtain useful information. In the process, the torturers dehumanize themselves.
Leaving all moral qualms aside, are we to learn nothing from the experience of keen observers who have understood torture’s uselessness over the centuries? Source
Why and how is there still any public deliberation deeming any approving torture as a tool of the state even marginally credible?
And for those armchair Torquemadas who would still smugly or vengefully (and absent any record of proof, particularly of any sole or unique and testable, replicable value) tout that “torture worked” — well, slavery worked. Quite efficaciously for many centuries too, but the weight of its innate and central immorality, bigotry and wretched, corruptive maleficence properly cast it into obliteration as accepted practice.
As for Mr. Cheney, ye old scribe turns once more to Churchill:
The dangers and consequences of validating leadership, fomenting policy or upending and twisting universal, civilized illegalities into mandated practice under the banner of fanaticism are historically self-evident.
Update May 21: After listening to both speeches today, some quick thoughts.
Cheney: PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) is real, and giving a wide banner labeled ‘credibility’ to an obvious untreated long-term PTSD sufferer to spout rabid, repetitive and one-dimensional points, many spun out of the flimsiest of data(if indeed any at all) does not serve to bolster nor advance any cogent argument. Indoctrination by fear is no less offesnive and repugnant than is indoctrination by force.
Obama: Quicker and more sure-footed progress is always made when standing on solid ground than when balancing on a high wire. The latter position is where he chose to perch too frequently. Splitting the difference on inalienable human rights affords no rights at all, merely a facade of same. Compromise on basic tenets of justice gives succor and viability to the unjustified.
Can we take it as gospel that MBA has been revealed as standing for Monumentally Bogus Accounting and use that proposition as the new, more realistic baseline for debate, regulation and so on?
Just askin’.
Common sense advice regarding Wall Street from those whose progenitors built the original wall for which the street is named.
Money talks, and it is past time for the Treasury to be shouting.
Make it. so. Passing the committee is now the first obastacle passed. Still too many more to go, but this is vitally required legislation (even in a watered down version) to set the playing field for consumers on more level ground.
In a blow to financial firms, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday signed off on legislation that seeks to ban abusive credit-card practices.While consumer groups and key Democrats lauded the committee’s move, the 12-to-11 vote in favor of the controversial bill was very narrow. Thus, the committee’s chairman, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.), said he would work with lawmakers–both Democratic and Republican–to modify the bill and broaden support before the bill hits the Senate floor.
[snip]
The bill seeks to prohibit card issuers from unfairly raising interest rates. It would prohibit applying rate increases retroactively to existing balances and it seeks to boost consumer disclosures. Additionally, it seeks to limit certain over-the-limit fees and interest charges and creates new requirements for card issuers looking to extend credit to youngsters under the age of 21. The amended bill would also make it easier for gift-card recipients to use the cards.
[snip]
Still, one key Democrat joined Republicans to vote against the credit-card proposal. Sen. Tim Johnson (D., S.D.), said in a statement that the legislation “goes too far in prohibiting lenders from adjusting prices to account for increased risk.”…
[snip]
“The American Bankers Association is very disappointed by the action today of the Senate Banking Committee,” the bank group said in a statement after the committee vote. “We have deep concerns that the legislation passed by the committee will harm consumers and the economy at the very time our country can least afford it.”
At the same time, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act, or CARD Act, is strongly backed by consumer groups such as the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union. Source
Gee, what might prompt a Congressperson from South Dakota to vote nay regarding reining in bank and credit cards, pray tell? (That’s a rhetorical question — see the link.)
When your words, actions, habits, location, etc. — when the sum total of social data which makes you you – is given to the control (and whims) of others (or simply taken from your control as a matter of course), you are no longer in any substantive sense free.
Welcome to the future, where everything about you is saved. A future where your actions are recorded, your movements are tracked, and your conversations are no longer ephemeral. A future brought to you not by some 1984-like dystopia, but by the natural tendencies of computers to produce data.
Data is the pollution of the information age. It’s a natural by-product of every computer-mediated interaction. It stays around forever, unless it’s disposed of. It is valuable when reused, but it must be done carefully. Otherwise, its after-effects are toxic.
And just as 100 years ago people ignored pollution in our rush to build the Industrial Age, today we’re ignoring data in our rush to build the Information Age.
[snip]
…Being constantly scrutinised undermines our social norms; furthermore, it’s creepy. Privacy isn’t just about having something to hide; it’s a basic right that has enormous value to democracy, liberty, and our humanity. Source (alternate link)
It’s a price most dear. It’s slavery by default in a digital dimension. It’s a creeping cancer on the concepts of personal space and individuality. It’s a super-highway to (to coin a term) slaveillance.
For the record, working to return the scales to nominal calibration.
After a three-year global study, the International Commission of Jurists said many states used the public’s fear of terrorism to introduce measures.
These included detention without trial, illegal disappearance and torture.
It also said that the UK and the US have “actively undermined” international law by their actions.
It concluded that many measures introduced to fight terrorism were illegal and counter-productive.
It called for justice systems to be strengthened and warned that temporary measures should not become permanent.
The Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is a non-governmental organisation which promotes the observance of the rule of law and the legal protection of human rights.
The panel of eminent lawyers and judges concluded that the framework of international law that existed before the 9/11 attacks on the US was robust and effective.
But now, it said, it was being actively undermined by many states and liberal democracies like the US and the UK.
[snip]
The panel reviewed counter-terrorism measures in over 40 countries, and heard from government officials, victims of terror attacks, and from people detained on suspicion of terrorism.
It found that many states have used the fear of terrorism to introduce measures which are illegal such as torture, detention without trial, and enforced disappearance.
Some of the world’s top international law experts served on the ICJ panel…. Source
Link to the full report (.pdf file) is included at the source link.
It’s ba-a-a-ack.
Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever “grand bargain” they want President Obama to embrace in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea….These players are promoting a tricky way to whack Social Security benefits, but to do it behind closed doors so the public cannot see what’s happening or figure out which politicians to blame.…
[snip]
The Social Security fight could become a defining test for “new politics” in the Obama era. Will Americans at large step up and make themselves heard, not to attack Obama but to protect his presidency from the political forces aligned with Wall Street interests? This fight can be won if people everywhere raise a mighty din–hands off our Social Security money!–and do it now, before the deal gains momentum. Popular outrage can overwhelm the insiders and put members of Congress on notice: a vote to gut Social Security will kill your career. By organizing and agitating, people blocked Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security. Imagine if he had succeeded–their retirement money would have disappeared in the collapsing stock market.
[snip]
…Social Security is not broke–not even close. It can sustain its obligations for roughly forty years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, even if nothing is changed. Even reports by the system’s conservative trustees say it has no problem until 2041 (that report is signed by former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the guy who bailed out the bankers). During the coming decade, however, the system will need to start drawing on its reserve surpluses to pay for benefits as boomers retire in greater numbers.
[snip]
Follow the bouncing ball: Washington first cuts taxes on the well-to-do, then offsets the revenue loss by raising taxes on the working class and tells folks it is saving their money for future retirement. But Washington spends the money on other stuff, so when workers need it for their retirement, they are told, Sorry, we can’t afford it.
[snip]
The assault sounds outrageous and bound to fail, but the conservative interests may have Obama in a neat trap. Their fog of scary propaganda makes it easier to distort the president’s position and blame him for any fiscal disorders driven by the current financial collapse. He will be urged to “do the right thing” for the country and make the hard choices, regardless of petty political grievances (words and phrases he has used himself). Obama’s fate may depend on informing the public–now, not later–so that people are inoculated against these artful lies. Source
The anonymity of the crowd: A quaint concept.
If it is not invasive and not an unauthorized taking and use for profit of proprietary information (your face, fercorn’s sake), then there is no valid reason to hide the damn cameras, is there?
Watch an advertisement on a video screen in a mall, health club or grocery store and there’s a slim - but growing - chance the ad is watching you too.Small cameras can now be embedded in the screen or hidden around it, tracking who looks at the screen and for how long. The makers of the tracking systems say the software can determine the viewer’s gender, approximate age range and, in some cases, ethnicity - and can change the ads accordingly.
That could mean razor ads for men, cosmetics ads for women and video-game ads for teens. Source
Not to mention that claims that the data is “not stored” doesn’t preclude that the data can and may be stored, tracked and/or sold.
Hints of a thin silver lining to an otherwise very, very dark cloud.
(Consider this at present a rough draft – some noodling on the topic – subject to revision, expansion and alteration as time and energy permit.) Updated, expanded and links added Feb. 6 5:30 a.m., again at 11 p.m., Feb. 7 3:15 p.m., 11:30 p.m.
What are the congressional Republicans afraid of?
Under the previous administration was passed a bill which virtually no one read or fully understood (and that administration deliberately and purposely worked to keep it vague, toothless and unfocused), passed in a legislative Chicken Little rush, with no strings attached to speak of. The funds in that bill were often doled out hodge-podge or in reaction to whatever the headline of the day might have been, and to this day their use remains hazy and untrackable. Lack of transparency, lack of accountability, lack of even a plan more detailed than ’shovel it out’ are what transpired.
That money is gone, via management haphazard, for purposes often indeterminate and for use and implementation shrouded and inconsistent with purported policy. That money is one, yet the miasma of the economy deepens and spreads. That money is gone, but the need for economic stimulus remains demonstrable and on a Topsy-like growth curve.
Now comes along a bill, by design not piecemeal (the core of its construction in the works via research and debate literally since the day after the election), with budgeting calculated by use and spending to be audited. Now comes along a bill not just designed to bail out, but to work on patching the holes and provide the labor to do so.
This bill is, of course, neither perfect nor a panacea. Like any spending bill ever submitted for a vote in Congress in living memory, it contains items which may be questionable, insertions jammed in by the ego of individual congresspeople and narrowly-defined spending geared to specific interests or constituencies. If a perfect bill is a goal, one would have to dither and wait until some time well after the Sun has burnt itself out.
The bulk of congressional Republicans (their own party self-diagnosed as bereft of ideas) now prance and yelp that, because the bill they supported under the Bush administration, and which was so ham-handedly and spottily handled under the Bus administration, did not clean up the situation, therefore a new bill of specific, rather than generic, funding, to be handled under a new administration openly promising more mature, sober, professional and specific targeting, oversight and maintenance will likewise have minimal effect.
It’s like saying that because pissing (while keeping the eyes tight shut) towards one part of a burning building didn’t put out the fire, it is therefore useless and senseless to bring in the fire hoses. Trickle-down firefighting is a loser’s game and an arsonist’s dream. Put another way, assault the table with an axe and you lose the privilege of having a seat at the table.
What are the congressional Republicans saying to the new president? They are paraphrasing their hero and, in a nutshell, demanding “Mr. Obama, tear down this country.”
For any party, majority or minority, fear is a constrictive blindfold to the evidence of the vagaries of actual happenstance. Whether by inertia borne of association with the last administration and its widespread policy of power through fear, or by dint of fear of the necessity of directly dealing with territory unknown in modern times, the stench of fear is prevalent.
What are they afraid of involving the real world consequences of massive accelerated stimulus from the only entity with pockets deep enough to provide it?
They are afraid that it just might work.
Let’s review some of the more silly arguments about the stimulus bill, starting with the notion that “only” 75 percent of the money can be spent in the next two years, and the rest is therefore “wasted.”
As any economist will tell you, the economy tends to be forward-looking and emotional. So if businesses and households can see immediate benefits from a program while knowing that a bit more stimulus is on the way, they are likely to feel more confident that the recovery will be sustained. That confidence, in turn, will make them more likely to take the risk of buying big-ticket items now and investing in stocks or future ventures.
Moreover, much of the money that can’t be spent right away is for capital improvements such as building and maintaining schools, roads, bridges and sewer systems, or replacing equipment — stuff we’d have to do eventually. So another way to think of this kind of spending is that we’ve simply moved it up to a time, to a point when doing it has important economic benefits and when the price will be less.
Equally specious is the oft-heard complaint that even some of the immediate spending is not stimulative.
“This is not a stimulus plan, it’s a spending plan,” Nebraska’s freshman senator, Mike Johanns (R), said Wednesday in a maiden floor speech full of budget-balancing orthodoxy that would have made Herbert Hoover proud. The stimulus bill, he declared, “won’t create the promised jobs. It won’t activate our economy.”
Johanns was too busy yesterday to explain this radical departure from standard theory and practice. Where does the senator think the $800 billion will go? Down a rabbit hole? Even if the entire sum were to be stolen by federal employees and spent entirely on fast cars, fancy homes, gambling junkets and fancy clothes, it would still be an $800 billion increase in the demand for goods and services — a pretty good working definition for economic stimulus. The only question is whether spending it on other things would create more long-term value, which it almost certainly would.
[snip]
Actually, what’s striking is that supposedly intelligent people are horrified at the thought that, during a deep recession, government might try to help the economy by buying up-to-date equipment for the people who protect us from epidemics and infectious diseases, by hiring people to repair environmental damage on federal lands and by contracting with private companies to make federal buildings more energy-efficient.
What really irks so many Republicans, of course, is that all the stimulus money isn’t being used to cut individual and business taxes, their cure-all for economic ailments, even though all the credible evidence is that tax cuts are only about half as stimulative as direct government spending. [ed. note: see relevant chart here]
[snip]
Spending is stimulus, no matter what it’s for and who does it. The best spending is that which creates jobs and economic activity now, has big payoffs later and disappears from future budgets. Source
Look, no one bill – not the House bull, not the Senate bill, not any bill which is the final product of a conference committee – is going to be a cure-all, fix all instrument. But staunching the bleeding is an absolute primary requirement when laboring to stabilize the patient.
The Sisyphean schema, indeed.
I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years. Source
And what are among the items the economic troglodytes want to slash? How’s about programs well outside the lifestyle sphere of Wall Street honchos, but well within that of the newly jobless.
Latest Cuts To The Stim Package: Head Start, Child Nutrition, Food Stamps Public Transit Source
Per the above link, increases in defense spending? Yet more into the rathole which the Department of Defense has already prompted to confess totally and completely “lost” at the least $1 trillion (and who knows how much more since)? And that admission was before the massive additional budget totals and supplementary war funding showered on them by the previous administration. Such figures (which logically must be larger after the previous regime) would have been than enough to fund the largest stimulus plan under consideration, with a more than tidy sum left over. Or, alternatively, to more than wipe out a yearly deficit.
The urgency of now:
While economists remain divided on the role of government generally, an overwhelming number from both parties are saying that a government stimulus package — even a flawed one — is urgently needed to help prevent a steeper slide in the economy.
Many economists say the precise size and shape of the package developing in Congress matter less than the timing, and that any delay is damaging.
“Most of the things in the package, the big dollar amounts, are things that are pretty quick stimulus and need to be done,” said Alice Rivlin, who was former president Bill Clinton’s budget director and who criticized aspects of the proposed stimulus in congressional testimony two weeks ago. “Is it a perfect package? Of course not. But we’re past that. Let’s just do it.” Source
They were full of many things (among them hope, pride, joy, etc.), but apparently not too much of other, um, things.
Roll the credits; bring up the house lights. The most painfully composed, most maladroitly constructed B-movie yet seen is over.
Good riddance to bad rub-Bush.
Adieu to the panicked, the inept, the feckless and the scurrilous of the last woebegone administration, to those cohorts of it dedicated to employing and exploiting the flag as a shield and as a shroud, to the profligacy of the nefarious.
Looking back at the last great sea change in governance during the direst of economic times, from the March 8, 1933 issue of The Nation come sentiments all too contemporarily relevant:
…It was a Grand Old Party—for them—while it lasted. Makers and beneficiaries of our politico-economic system, these are the men whose failure is now written large in the towering empty edifices that scrape the New York sky, in the hundreds of thousands of “For sale” and “To let” signs which adorn our cities, in the closed banks, in the foreclosed farms, in the whole picture of devastation which has come under their rule.
Have these captains and kings departed—not to return? The epoch of their wanton and repulsive leadership is ending. Their incompetence and their betrayal are manifest. But much of the evil they have done lives after them. The coming years will see the struggle to purge America, to reassert the promise of American life, to validate, in consonance with the changed times and conditions, the high aspirations of the founders of the nation. Mr. Roosevelt has the opportunity to be the leader of this renaissance, but he will have to forge as his instrument a wholly different Democratic Party from that which so long has been indistinguishable from the Republican. Source
It is the end.
It is the Last Day of Madness.
For those conversant with Isaac Asimov’s Foundation triology, it has been akin to witnessing the regime of The Mule.
We bid sayonara to the sociopaths and the megalomaniacs, to a government dominated and controlled by the small, shriveled souls of thugs not seeking justice but bent on revenge.
It is the final stanza of the modern March of Folly. Removed from the helm and the levers of power are those, and their enablers, who would willfully and deliberately subvert and pummel the Constitution (and consequently, America) onto life support, even then all but reaching to yank the plug.
The Era of Crassness is waning away as we opt for the return of diplomacy as a viable, robust and preternaturally favored tool.
Good-bye to functioning from the gut and shooting from the hip. Hello to operating from the head — and the heart.
It is the passing of a time dedicated to tearing down the structures of government of, by and for the people, and the re-emergence of a time cognizant of the necessity of rationally and efficaciously building them up.
It is the return of the reality-based community.
It is the end.
It is the beginning.
N.B.: Some links overlaid on existing text after initial posting.
To all the Republicans (and too those non-Republicans) bloviating about how tax cuts are the magic cure-all for now entrenched fiscal gagging:
Been there. Done that. Got the tattered T-shirt.
GLOSSARY
IIO = Illegal Invasion and Occupation
Congress CX = 110th Congress
SNABU = Situation Negative, All Bushed Up
And So It Goes is a reincarnation and continuation of the late Vox Digitatus blog (2004 - 2006).
re: the phrase And So It Goes — A tip o' the ol' topper to Kurt Vonnegut, Lloyd Dobyns and Linda Ellerbee.
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