The Lady Bids Us Farewell

She appealed to the better part of the human spirit, and when she spoke of justice for all people, she meant all people.


Coretta Scott King will be remembered for her dignity, strength and sense of purpose in the face of overwhelming adversity and grief.

May she rest in peace.

outta commission

Headaches and template problems deterred me from posting anything of note last week. Various repair/maintenance jobs at my parents' house will likely keep me from posting much in the coming days. Check back toward the end of the week.

See ya when I'm done.

Covering Up Katrina

Those charged with defending our once-relevant Constitution -- whether Bill Frist & Tom Delay or Sleepy Joe Lieberman and Olympia Snow -- created the Culture of Lawlessness (it ain't just corruption, my dear marks) which allows today's Executive Dictator to lie to the American people without consequence. Shockingly, the notion that Congress is every bit as guilty as the think tank criminals who designed our post-Constitutional United States is still a rare one.

from USA Today:

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, accused the White House of "a near total lack of cooperation." Some officials from the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services, he said, are refusing to be questioned by congressional investigators or provide requested documents.

During closed-door questioning of former Federal Emergency Management Agency head Michael Brown, Lieberman said FEMA attorneys advised Brown not to reveal "whether he spoke to the president or the vice president, or comment on the substance of conversations" with high-level White House officials.

During the hearing Tuesday, committee members discussed an e-mail sent to the White House on Aug. 29, the morning Hurricane Katrina struck, warning of "severe flooding/and/or levee breaching" that "could leave the New Orleans metro area submerged for weeks or months."

The e-mail included an Aug. 27 report from FEMA that suggested that the estimates of damage from a 2004 report on a preparedness exercise known as "Hurricane Pam," projecting up to 60,000 deaths and 233,986 collapsed buildings, might turn out to be smaller than the damage from Katrina. Katrina's death toll, now about 1,100 in Louisiana, was significantly lower than projected under the Hurricane Pam exercise, but other projections turned out to be tragically on target.

Lieberman said the e-mail message raises the question of "what happened to that report and why was the president left so uninformed that he said four days later, 'I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.' "

Lieberman: Why won't our King cooperate?

Well, without consequence to the offenders, anyway. The rest of the population, those of us who still subscribe to the quaint virtues of law despite the rubber-stamping renegades in the halls of Congress -- bleed a little more with each injustice. But, as the NeoCon Revolution demonstrates daily, we can always make more blood.

The United States legal system, whether it redeems us or condemns us, is now exclusively for The Little People and only The Little People.

Oh, sure, the Great American Elite will sponsor the occasional show trial to convince us All Is Well, and we will eat it up like strawberries and shortcake. In time, though, citizens will awaken to reality that we have all be enslaved by rulers who are safely beyond the reach of the law. The only questions, really, are: (1.) what form The Resistance will take, and; (2.) what will transpire between now and then.

In the interim, I leave you with this, from Karenna's Blog:

Meanwhile, 3200 people are missing and the news says nary a word. It would be like if all the people in the World Trade Center did not come home from work one day and simply vaporized and the media didn't say a word. It would be like all the people in the Twin Towers were reported missing and Bush was hanging out at a deli a few blocks away complimenting the pastrami. Guiliani was on TV blaming the Italians and the Medical Examiner was pointing at the rubble, saying, "Maybe we should look there," and the media was silent.

The Coming Nuclear Holocaust(s)

Former Reagan administration official, Wall Street Journal editor and old-school conservative gadfly Paul Craig Roberts says the Bush Administration is laying the groundwork to nuke Iran and North Korea.

Mired in interminable conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration is moving toward initiating two more wars, one with Iran and one with North Korea. With no US troops available, the Bush administration is revamping US war doctrine to allow for "preventative nuclear attack." In short, the Bush administration is planning to make the US the first country in history to initiate war with nuclear weapons. The Pentagon document, "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations," calls for the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear adversaries in order "to ensure success of US and multinational operations."

In the case of Iran and North Korea, the Bush administration is using diplomacy not for diplomatic purposes of reaching agreements, but in order to set the two countries up for nuclear attack. In the case of Iran, the Bush administration's plan is now obvious. The Bush administration is leveling false charges against Iran, just as it did against Iraq, of conspiring to make nuclear weapons. These charges are known to be false by the Bush administration and by the entire world.

Read the rest of this article at ANTIWAR.COM

This morning's news of Jacques Chirac announcing France was prepared to use nukes against countries sponsoring terrorism can only feed the delusions of the Bush Cult.

Midnight Cometh.

Fuck you, Larry. Now apologize.

The madness of King George W. was on display since well before he fatally plunged the knife into our dying republic. Where was Larry Wilkerson then?

Wittingly or unwittingly, he was taking sides against the American people, that's where.

The we were used angle that former Bush loyalists fall back on is itself maddening. They were used because they stepped up to this criminal administration and said "At your service. Use me."


Choice quotes from Colin Powell's former right hand man.

"My wife would probably shoot me if I headed to the ballot box with a Republican vote again. This is not a Republican administration, not in my view. This is a radical administration."


On the 100+ deaths of enemy detainess: "Murder is torture. It's not torture lite."


"This is really a very inept administration. As a teacher who's studied every administration since 1945, I think this is probably the worst ineptitude in governance, decision-making and leadership I've seen in 50-plus years. You've got to go back and think about that. That includes the Bay of Pigs, that includes -- oh my God, Vietnam. That includes Iran-contra, Watergate."


On chickenhawks Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz: "None of these guys ever heard a bullet go by their ears in combat."


"Here we are with a failure in Iraq, a massive failure. Not only an intelligence failure, but it looks like it's gonna be a real failure on the ground. How do you suddenly transform that? Well, you suddenly become a Jacobin yourself, you're suddenly for this messianic spread of freedom and democracy around the world. You're suddenly an advocate of all things that John F. Kennedy was an advocate of: 'We will bear any burden, pay any price.' You've discarded John Quincy Adams, who said we're the friends of liberty everywhere, the custodians only of our own. And you've suddenly said, 'I'm the custodian of the whole world's liberty, and by God if you don't realize it I'm going to bring it to you -- and if I have to bring it to you at the point of a gun, that's the way I'm going to bring it to you!' ")


On Powell's proposed alternatives to invading Iraq: "Those alternatives did not entail the use of force, or they did not entail the use of force immediately. And when he was made aware of the decision otherwise, he became the good soldier that he was. I know how he operates and he would have decided, 'Okay, I lost, and now I'll carry out the decision as best I can' -- and make it seem like it was his decision."


"He walked into my office, and he said to me, musing and looking out across the greenery there toward National Airport -- I wrote it down on my calendar, that's the reason I know what he said -- 'I wonder what will happen if we put half a million troops on the ground, and scour Iraq from one corner to the other, and find no weapons of mass destruction?' And he left that rhetorical question hanging in the air as he went back into his office."


"Combine the detainee abuse issue with the ineptitude of post-invasion planning for Iraq, wrap both in this blanket of secretive decision-making . . . and you get the overall reason for my speaking out."


"My wife said to me: 'You have two choices, my man. You can think more about him or you can think more about your country. I suggest you do the latter.' "

Some were true believers. Others were careerists. The distinction is meaningless.

The fact remains, Larry Wilkerson helped sell this illegal, immoral, indefensible war to the American public and the world.

Larry Wilkerson had blind faith in the cabal of Presidents Cheney & Bush and it didn't matter - not one bit - that there were millions of us screaming at the tops of our lungs that blind faith wasn't enough to justify slaughtering and maiming thousands of human beings.

Larry Wilkerson wasn't serving his country. He was working in tandem with Beltway war mongers, apocalypse-lovin' theofascists and PNAC aristocrats who don't give a flying fuck how much blood is spilled so long as our habitual plundering of other nations' natural resources continues unabated.

Larry Wilkerson said "YES!" to smashing our star-spangled knobby boot on the throats of the Iraqi people for the aggrandizement of murderous necrophiliacs and looters moonlighting as heads of state.

Larry Wilkerson spent a lifetime trying to make America secure. The cold, unforgiving reality is this: Because of Larry Wilkerson and people like him, America is now the number one manufacturer of foreign terrorists. The colonel and his former bosses have assured a plague of bloody mayhem for decades to come.

From one vet to another, thanks for nothing, Larry. May your shame be everlasting.

Et tu, Terry Gross?

The revolution will be broadcast twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year, just as it has been for the last two decades.

As Joe Bageant writes, the counter-revolution is a whole 'nother story.



GOODBYE TERRY GROSS....WE NIVER KNEW YE
—on liberal media denial

By Joe Bageant

Having come to understand that mainstream media are in the business of selling fried chicken and cars, giving Wall Street head, and stealing bandwidth from the public’s airwaves, none of us expect them to question anything afoot in the empire. We quite understand they cannot be wasting profitable air time on a nation whose collective memory is 30 seconds long. So we watch them pull their punches and wait for the commercials, which are their whole point anyway. If, god forbid, you are the pointy headed type interested in details, turn on NPR. And if you consider yourself hipper than the couch taters out here in Budland, go onto the net and visit Salon. Or if you are so worldly and hip you are a downright commie, then subscribe to Mother Jones. That’s the way it used to be.

But now we are seeing what were once considered the more intelligent and in some cases more principled media such as NPR, Salon and Mother Jones distance themselves from meaningful controversy—pulling the few wimpy punches they have. (Bullshit controversy, however, is still in fashion.)

We are talking about Mark Crispin Miller’s new book, Fooled Again - How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal the Next One, Too (Unless We Stop Them). Miller has become a known and respected progressive figure, one of the few in-your-face bespectacled lefty author types with any credibility. But when it comes to promoting Fooled, the guy can’t even get arrested. No interviews, nothing. In fact, these days even his cash bounces—Miller can’t even buy a spot on National Public Radio for his book. Now you may be saying to yourself: “Public Radio doesn’t sell advertising.” Which would make you one of those delusional souls who believe that shameless brand hawking by the oil companies and the financial establishment on NPR is not advertising. I mean, after all, ADM and Wal-Mart? NPR has sales people out chasing these sponsors. They sell these damned announcements. The only difference between NPR’s “paid sponsorships” and the puke jock shows’ commercial radio ads is that the NPR folks don’t have a real rate card. Which is either stupid or brilliant, I’m not sure.

Anyway, when it comes to NPR and PBS, and especially Philadelphia’s WHYY, Miller can’t buy a date. As in the past, he attempted to sponsor spots on behalf of his newest book. And WHYY accepted the sponsorship. But then aaaaaaaaagh! There came the sweaty excuse ridden attempts to back out on their end. Various excuses included that the book was too old (it was out two months) and that it was a paid political ad, (it supports no candidate.) Ultimately NPR and PBS have pretty much told Miller to go to hell.

It is safe to say that WHYY and the rest of the public media gang is purely are simply scared to death of uttering the book’s title on the airwaves. They know that the neocons will jump up all over their asses claiming liberal bias. Maybe even launch one of their infamous letter writing campaigns. The Republican game plan of unrelenting bullshit, that steady grinding away day in day out … it works. They have managed to wear down those media they don’t already control from the top, make them either doubt themselves or make them damned afraid of repercussions. We can well imagine what the GOP assault on public radio and television has created around places like WHYY. Hell, if they can get Bill Moyers they can get anybody. Right?

WHYY would not accept Miller’s sponsorship on behalf of Fooled on the grounds that it was a paid political message. By golly, it was a matter of principle! That’s what it was! We won’t take just anybody’s money. Yeah, right. If you’ve ever suffered through a pledge drive you know that the brass at NPR would put Terry Gross and Nina Totenberg out on the street as workin’ girls if they thought could it would bring in another couple of hundred. But honestly speaking, the facts are as WHYY claims. The station does not accept political ads. It only accepts paid advertisements for commercial products. Which is exactly what the sponsorship of Miller’s book is.

Then there is that charge of it being old news. Hell, maybe the evolving corruption of our voting system is old news in a nation with said 30-second memory. Maybe the subversion of our government by an organized syndicate is not worthy of more than a few days media attention. Maybe that’s why the book is not getting reviewed. But besides treading lightly around the neocon pit bulls, there is also that nagging issue of denial. To admit that two national elections were rigged shakes us to the bone.

Right now, between the Bush junta’s bloody cry for an inquisition or at least universal surveillance and torture, and the Christian right’s demented hallucinations of Kofi Anan as the anti-Christ (Honest to god, just look in the Left Behind books) we live in that bizarro world that often precedes fascism—that bizarro world in which every topic imaginable is politicized, and even not to speak represents taking a political stand.

Along with the passive denial of NPR, there is the active denial. We find characters like Salon’s Farhad Manjoo who’ve lit into Fooled Again with a suspicious vengeance. In a way it is to be expected. Manjoo has practically made a career of writing in liberal venues that there is no odor of polecats in Ohio, Florida and elsewhere. Sometimes I think Salon keeps that boy around so the goppers can’t cry bias. Hell, his first act was jumping Greg Palast for his groundbreaking exposure of the Republican election fraud in that first crooked election.

At any rate, here’s a guy, Miller, with all the establishment credentials that NPR just eats up when they interview Heritage Foundation “experts.” In fact, Mark Crispin Miller does a helluva job documenting his facts. Certainly as good as any of the aging Heritage Foundation gasbags NPR is so fond of for analysis. As in: Well Scott, actually this is not the first president to be caught pissing off the White House Portico and throwing empty liquor bottles at the passing public…In 1832 president Andrew Jackson..." But for now Mark Crispin Miller can go sit in the corner with the other non grata folks like Howard Zinn and Gore Vidal. As one radio host put it, “Miller is too angry. It doesn’t make for good radio.”

Some listeners feel that NPR “does the best it can in this best of all possible worlds. Sometimes they’re still pretty damn good.” True enough. But in these times, being “sometimes good” is not good enough—not when the goddam republic is burning down. They too need to carry water buckets with the rest of us and quit imitating corporate media. But then, NPR and PBS are themselves big corporate media. They are big, they are a corporation and they are media. So much so that they run soppy feel good material worthy of the Rush Limbaugh or The Paul Harvey Show. Material like “This I Believe” series. Tell you what I believe. I believe two national elections were rigged in this country. Millions of others believe the same. Tens of millions in fact. But most are in denial of what they deeply suspect and do not want to see verified.

Our national denial comes easily when everything converges to support it. First we had John Kerry’s quick concession of the election, lest a fellow Skull ‘n Boner accuse him of sour grapes. And looking about, none of our neighbors or colleagues seems worried about it. We are above all a mimicking species. Then there is the traditional press, from whom we’ve heard scarcely a chirp. Rather counter-intuitively, denial is especially easy for news reporters who can always fall back on “the facts” and the need for absolute proof. Proof being that someone is criminally charged with the very election fraud everyone is afraid to acknowledge because it is the death knell for any precious notions we’ve ever entertained about our system—the one system among all the troubled and grievously offensive governments on this planet, we have been told all our lives, that “works.” Acknowledging that it no longer works would mean fixing it, and fixing it calls for more strength and political will than Americans have ever shown. In fact, to be honest, when in your lifetime did ordinary Americans ever rise up together to stamp down or even point out corruption? I dare say never. It has always been the duty of the press or a few spectacularly brave individuals to call attention to such things. And on rare occasions the press has done just that. But this is not one of those occasions. Not for CBS, PBS or NPR. Especially not for NPR. Given that the Republicans have them by the nose hairs, it is easier, not to mention far safer, for everyone to deny that criminals operate within our political system and have established what amounts to a corporate/political underworld. We can smell it at every turn, and have seen its very reflection in those exit poll results.

Big corporate sponsors do nothing that does not yield a return on investment, nothing that doesn’t buy some desired result. Thus, denial and distraction are what those sponsorships from Hewlitt Packard and Monsanto really buys. At the same time the denial is all but spotlighted with the fluff and slop that replaces real coverage and demonstrates cooperation to the administration and sponsors. Stuff like “This I Believe.” Or that overt sop, Marketplace, where happy jock stockbroker types Kai Ryssdal, and that hyperactive airhead in Texas (I forget his name) play pocket pool with each other over the day’s market numbers, happily promoting the liberal capitalist notion that the second law of thermodynamics is false and that growth and consumption can be infinite in a world of diminishing resources.

NPR's own ombudsman admits that NPR, like the Fox and all the rest, skews towards conservative spokesmen. In fact, NPR so resembles the mainstream ditch these days that at least two of its major correspondents slipped comfortably enough right over into Fox News and were openly congratulated for it by fellow NPR broadcasters.

PBS increasingly depends on the teat of corporate underwriters. Consequently, we can expect to be force fed even more of the three tenors, the Lawrence Welk trio of the white middle class boomer generation. Meanwhile, as NPR whines under the table for scraps from the big dogs’ plates, the Heritage Foundation spends $30 million a year priming the info pumps of Fox and the other big guys.

All of which still leaves those crooked elections lingering as the backdrop to, or perhaps harbinger of, the 2008 elections, despite the lack of reporting on it. Reporters may perhaps be bound by a duty to refrain from assumptions. But I sure as hell ain’t. And I’m assuming that if the Bush junta got away with it the first time, they will keep right on doing it until somebody breaks their goddamned legs. People like Katherine Harris, Karl Rove and Republican Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell haven’t climbed to the top of the GOP dung heap because of their morals and restraint. They are big time Republicans precisely because they are willing to steal chickens and lie to the sheriff.

At some deep national level we all know, George W. Bush has no right to be farting into the oval room desk chair. Even the few genuinely moderate Republicans not driven into hiding by the Brownshirts look sheepish when you bring up Florida and Ohio. Yet Americans go on pretending that everything is OK. The people pretend along with the media that George W. Bush belongs in that chair. Pretend that his is the face of a man capable of deep and serious thought, that the smirk is not really a smirk and that he really gives a rat’s ass about those coffins at Dover or those black people in New Orleans. They pretend that it was not farcical when he told the nation this week that despite the city being soaked in petro-toxins and defined mainly by bulldozed piles of rotting timbers, clothing and sewerage, overturned cars and botulism filled refrigerators, “New Orleans is still a great place to bring the family and have fun.” They pretend that strange nationwide spider web of bitter GOP operatives could not possibly have worked together in Ohio and Florida and heaven only knows where else. Everything is OK.

As Helen Caldicott recently put it: “What’s to become of us? Ask any experienced mental health practitioner what happens to a person who constructs and tries to maintain a life based on denial of fundamental reality. It can be done for a while, in spite of occasional outbursts of behavioral oddities (remember Dr. Strangelove’s disobedient arm that was always popping up in an embarrassing Nazi salute). But how long can such a pretense be maintained, even when the pretender is surrounded by the best handlers money can buy?”

Apparently Helen, a damned long time. At least eight years.

By the way, if you wanna give WHYY hell personally, the phone number is (215) 351-1200. Email is talkback@whyy.org.

Joe Bageant is a writer and magazine editor living in Winchester, Virginia. His forthcoming book, Drink, Pray, Fight, Fuck: Dispatches from America's Class Wars, is due out this year, to be published by Random House. Visit his blog at: www.joebageant.com. He may be contacted at: joebageant@joebageant.com. Copyright © 2006 by Joe Bageant.

Mercy & Marijuana in New Mexico

In an unforeseen move, Gov. Bill Richardson on Wednesday night said he will include a medical-marijuana bill on his agenda this legislative session.

The governor’s decision surprised drug-law-reform advocates, who had been disheartened by Richardson’s statement earlier this week that there wouldn’t be enough time in an already packed 30-day session to take on the measure.

House Speaker Ben Luján , DNambé , said before the session started that he had asked Richardson not to include medical marijuana on his call, saying there wasn’t enough time.

But on Wednesday night, Richardson said in a news release, “After speaking with many seriously ill New Mexicans, I have decided to include this bill on my call. This issue is too important, and there are too many New Mexicans suffering to delay this issue any further.”

“We’re so thrilled and so grateful,” said Reena Szczepanski, director of the state chapter of The Drug Policy Alliance, a national advocacy group that has been pushing the proposed bill.

“We’re proud to have a governor who will stand up for compassion. We know it was a hard decision,” she said.

Five minutes before reading this article, I was on the phone making an appointment with my physician and attempting to refill my prescription for butorphanol tartrate, one of the only narcotics that helps relieve my headaches. (I'm damn lucky to have a compassionate, capable doctor willing to treat me for pain. They're almost impossible to find.)

High grade herb is a preferable alternative to generic Stadol (no unpleasant side effects besides dry mouth), but in addition to being illegal, it's also completely unaffordable. If state law permitted me to grow my own, cost wouldn't be a problem. But that won't be happening anytime soon in Texas. Compassion is damn short supply here.


It's probably been ten years since an acquaintance gave me a single dose of stropharia cubensis mushrooms to treat a stubborn headache that had tortured me for a couple of weeks. The speed with which it subsided was remarkable, as was the fact that my relief lasted for several weeks afterward. In case you were thinking of doing something similar the next time you feel like fucking dying, be aware the side effects can be extremely problematic: Self-discovery and laughing a lot. And we can't have that.

the ghost of Ken Saro-Wiwa

For some reason, Nigerian militants are upset about multi-nationals looting their oil:

"We have decided not to limit our attacks to Shell oil as our ultimate aim is to prevent Nigeria from exporting oil," the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said in an email statement to Reuters.

"We will attack all oil companies including Chevron facilities."

"Pipelines, loading points, export tankers, tank farms, refined petroleum depots, landing strips and residences of employees of these companies can expect to be attacked. We know where they live, shop and where the children go to school."

Americans have absolutely no idea how the people and land of Nigeria have been held captive and ruthlessly exploited by companies like Chevron and Shell; multi-national oil conglomerates we charge with doing the dirty work necessary to deliver all that we have come to expect.

Ken Saro-Wiwa knew from experience. A Nigerian writer of Ogoni ethnicity, Saro-Wiwa led a successful nonviolent campaign to bring Shell Oil’s horrific ecological record in Nigeria to national and international attention. For his service to humanity, he was executed on November 10, 1993, by the Nigerian government, a military dictatorship which served as the long, bloody arm of the oil conglomerates.

Not much has changed since then.

Ken Saro-Wiwa's story isn't widely known in the United States. It wounds us, shames us for our brutal indifference to the suffering we cause without so much as a thought. And it begs us to do more, to be more. What happened to Ken Saro-Wiwa - and what is happening still in Nigeria - shatters the narrative concocted by the Great American Elite. It scares the living piss out of 'em, and with good reason: Powerful stories change who we are. Truth transform us.

Before he was hanged, Ken Saro-Wiwa had this to say:

I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is on trial here, and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learned here may prove useful to it, for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war the company has waged in the delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.

On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and all those who assist them. I am not one of those who shy away from protesting injustice and oppression, arguing that they are expected of a military regime. The military do not act alone. They are supported by a gaggle of politicians, lawyers, judges, academics and businessmen, all of them hiding under the claim that they are only doing their duty, men and women too afraid to wash their pants of their urine.

We all stand on trial, my lord, for by our actions we have denigrated our country and jeopardised the future of our children. As we subscribe to the subnormal and accept double standards, as we lie and cheat openly, as we protect injustice and oppression, we empty our classrooms, degrade our hospitals, and make ourselves the slaves of those who subscribe to higher standards, who pursue the truth, and honour justice, freedom and hard work.

Ken Saro-Wiwa

A few weeks earlier, in a letter penned from a military hospital, Saro-Wiwa wrote:

Whether I live or die is immaterial. It is enough to know that there are people who commit time, money and energy to fight this one evil among so many others predominating worldwide. If they do not succeed today, they will succeed tomorrow. We must keep on striving to make the world a better place for all of mankind - each one contributing his bit, in his or her own way.

I salute you all.

Sin & Redemption: Al Gore

Oh, how the sting of betrayal remains.

Many of us saw what was coming when Al Gore turned his back on the nation in 2000. Capturing the presidency, literally, as George W. Bush did, there was never any doubt that his would be the most oppressive, wrong-headed, corrupt administration America had ever seen.

Al Gore is no less responsible for it today than he was then. Did he not see the danger? After eight years of the GOP's obsessive GET CLINTON thuggery, failing to understand the Fascist forces at work would have reflected astounding naivete. Or did he see it and walk away in hopes of preserving his political career?

Does it matter?

In short, no. The Democratic Party, rather than learning from BushCoup2000, remains Republican Lite. There simply isn't enough blood, class warfare or sheer misery for elected Democrats to stand up against right-wing extremism. Insulated from the real life consequences of their complicity, they are not us. They are The Elite -- too rich, too connected, and far too well-behaved to take a stand against the dark forces of post-Constitutionalism.

"I call upon Democratic and Republican members of Congress today to uphold your oath of office and defend the Constitution. Stop going along to get along. Start acting like the independent and co-equal branch of government you're supposed to be." ~Al Gore

That's funny, because that's exactly what I was thinking about five years ago when the Congressional Black Caucus was being ignored. And every day since then.

Gore could have slinked off the public stage and shrugged off his role in the formal dismantling of The Republic, which is pretty much what everyone expected him to do. Instead, he railed against the egregious policies of the ruinous Bush Administration in one speech after another, assailing the media aristocracy, corporate domination and the Culture of Corruption long before the term was coined. He did so - and continues to do so - unapologetically against a caterwaul of Fascist indignation characterizing him as deranged, a transparent tactic lifted right out of the Handbook of Totalitarianism.

And so it is that, as resentful as I am toward Gore, I still feel a twinge of gratitude for his willingness to confront the blood-thirsty beast he helped unleash on us back in 2000.

Is it too little, too late? Probably, but I can't bring myself to care.

Home of the Brave

By Neddie Jingo! has a dream:

At any rate, the disgraceful defilement of Washington, DC in the 45 years since (no, be honest: 46) was brought to mind in a single moment yesterday afternoon. The battle-hardening of the square-mile area surrounding the White House, begun in the hysteria over Libyan terrorist cells during the Reagan Regnum, and reinforced and made permanent in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing of the middle Clinton years, has made the Ellipse a dreary maze of Jersey barriers, ugly temporary fences and chain enclosures that mark off arbitrary Sterile Zones into which the hapless tourist wanders erroneously at his peril. A non-English-speaking visitor stands an excellent chance of being shot dead for wandering into one of these ambiguously marked Zones and not understanding the police's bullhorned cease-and-desist order. A more enslaved symbol of the Land of the Free, and a more pusillanimous emblem of the Home of the Brave, is simply impossible to imagine.

Yesterday I heard a sane, measured, adult voice speaking, encouraging me to stand tall and refuse to be afraid, refuse to be cowed, refuse to be swayed by the rhetoric of fear, a voice that intoned,

It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it’s up to us to do the very same thing.

I walked past that White House just a few minutes after I heard those words, saw the layers of temporary fencing and Jersey barriers and steel-chain bollards and black-clad stormtroopers wielding god-knows-what kind of weaponry around the Presidential Perimeter, and was struck as never before by one laser-sharp insight:

The Fear starts -- and ends -- here.

more...

Local Ingenuity

Stricken with a mysterious neurological ailment which has attacked my ability to blog anything of note, and because I have no herb with which to combat said ailment, let us now turn to the Denton Record-Chronicle's Police Blotter:

Suspects at a business in the 1500 block of South Loop 288 ate a bag of Lays potato chips, drank a 20-ounce Dr Pepper and used a pregnancy test, according to a police report. The combined value of the items the suspects consumed was less than $15, according to the report.

Dear California:

Please stop sending this accomodationist hag back to Washington. Just because Connecticut habitually re-elects the same bootlicker does not mean California benefits from doing the same.


Feinstein Warns Against Alito Filibuster

America expects better of your fine state. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Media Shills For Alito

This subversion of democracy is brought to you by the American corporate news media - working working hard to keep the world a fun, profitable playground for its millionaire reporters:

Some say "Some say..."

Summary: Despite the fact that Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s wife's emotional response did not come during the Democrats' questioning, but during Sen. Lindsey Graham's characterization of the Democrats' questioning, numerous media outlets pounced on the incident to raise the question of whether Democrats on the committee "took this a step too far."

I saw Gloria Borger on CBS News yesterday, and it was some of the most shameless propaganda I've seen in days.

BORGER: Well, I think what happened is that yesterday the Democrats started hearing from all of their constituency groups, which were really up for a fight, saying that they hadn't pushed hard enough on abortion, that they hadn't pushed hard enough on Judge Alito's character, and so today you saw the Democrats really ratcheting up their questioning. It's a very fine line, very difficult, but some say they went over the line.

Well, Gloria, some say your relentless propaganda on behalf of the Republican Party is a microcosm of the rotting, fetid industry which rewards you so generously for telling the public what to think.

the unsexy scandal

Posted from a comment I left at m-pyre:

Great commentary, marjorie.

American workers have been completely abandoned by the political establishment and broader culture, no doubt a consequence of our troubling metamorphosis from citizens to consumers.

With liberalism safely in the rearview, society openly exalts whomever most efficiently exploits the more desperate among us. No wonder we break up our toxic envy and misguided hero worship with sentimental pap designed to the smallest byte to sell cars and toilet paper and every other goddamn thing under the sun.

From People's Weekly World:

Jordan Barab, a former special assistant at OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and health and safety expert for AFSCME and the AFL-CIO, said the federal government is doing little to protect workers. He also noted 90 percent of coal mining industry campaign contributions in recent years went to Bush and the GOP. “The fact is Bush has not requested budgets for OSHA or MSHA that even keep up with the rate of inflation and mandatory pay increases over the past several years while penalties for OSHA or MSHA violations remain laughably low,” Barab writes on his website, Confined Space. “The highest penalty of the…citations received last year by Sago was $878. But that was the exception. Most of the others were $250 or $60. At that rate, it’s hardly a good business decision to even bother fixing anything. And the administration has shut down any new worker protection standards in OSHA and MSHA,” Barab wrote.

That mine pulled in $15.7 million - profit - for the International Coal Group (ICG) through the third quarter of 2005.

Talk about criminal.

Joe Bageant: Revenge of the Mutt People

But, first, a note.

Things that may never happen:

1. resumption of work on my goddamn novel
2. obtaining "a legit job in the straight world"
3. self-actualization without hallucinogens

Why none of that matters now: Because I'll always have the infinite pleasure of opening my email to find one of Joe Bageant's beautifully crafted, deeply disturbing essays just waiting to be published on my piddly-ass blog. Enjoy.


Revenge of the Mutt People
By Joe Bageant

"There are some things so disgusting that only a white man would be willing to do them." —Walter Wildshoe, Coeur d’Alene Indian

Many years ago I worked at an industrial hog farm owned by the Coeur d’Alene Indian tribe in northern Idaho. The place stank of the dead and rotting brood sows we chopped out of farrowing crates—bred to death in the drive for pork production. And it stank of the massive ponds that held millions of gallons of hog feces and rotting baby pigs, and every square inch was poisoned by the pesticides used to kill insects that hogs attract and the antibiotics fed to hogs from hundred pound sacks. The Coeur d’Alene Indians refused to suffer those kinds of conditions; they wouldn’t even manage the place. They contracted it out. As my friend Walter Wildshoe said: "Only a white man would work there."

The hog farm, however, offered one company benefit. The white manager gave employees any young pigs that developed large tumors—those with tumors smaller than golf calls went to market with the rest of the hogs—or were born with deformities such as heads scrunched sideways with both eyes on the same side, or a leg that stuck out of the top of their body instead of the bottom. We employees would butcher and eat them. Among hog farm employees, all of whom were tough descendants of the Scots Irish mutt people, free pork of any kind was prized, deformed with tumors or otherwise. You never saw a Swede eat the stuff.

So I took these pigs home and, using a huge old butcher’s knife, slashed their throats in the woods, right in front of my two kids—ages two and four at the time—without flinching even as the pigs screamed almost like humans and thrashed around, splashing thick dark glops of blood everywhere. It bothered me not one bit, just like it never bothered my daddy or granddaddy. Nor did it seem to bother my children as they watched, just like it didn’t bother me as a child when my uncle handed me sacks of barn kittens to drown in the crick. And Walter would shake his head and say, "Only a white man would wrestle a hog with a butcher knife. An Indian would shoot the motherfucker with a gun."

My point here is that we rural and small town mutt people by an early age seem to have a special capacity for cruelty, compared say, to damned near every other imaginable group of Americans. For instance, as a child did you ever put a firecracker up a toad’s ass and light it? George Bush and I have that in common. Anyway, as all non-whites the world round understand, white people can be mean. Especially if they feel threatened—and they feel threatened about everything these days. But when you provide certain species of white mutt people with the right incentives, such as free pork or approval from god and government, you get things like lynchings, Fallujah, the Birmingham bombers and Abu Grahib.

Even as this is being written we may safely assume some of my tribe of mutt people are stifling the screams of captives in America’s secret "black site" prisons across the planet. Or on a more mundane scale of cruelty (according to CBS footage) kicking hundreds of chickens to death every day at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant in Wardensville WV, just up the road from where I am writing this. Or consider the image of Matthew Shepard’s body twisted on that Wyoming fence… All these are our handiwork. We the mutt faced sons and daughters of the republic. Born to kick your chicken breast meat to death for you in the darkest, most dismal corners of our great land, born to kill and be killed in stockcar races, drunken domestic rows, and of course in the desert dusty back streets at the edges of the empire. Middle class urban liberals may never claim us as brothers, muchless willing servants, but as they say in prison, we are your meat. We do your bidding. Your refusal to admit that we do your dirty work for you, not to mention the international smackdowns and muggings for the republic—from which you benefit more materially than we ever will—makes it no less true.

Literally from birth, we get plenty of conditioning to kill those gooks and sand monkeys and whoever else needs killing at any particular moment in history according to our leadership. Like most cracker kids in my generation, from the time I could walk I played games in which I pretended to (practiced for) killing—Japs, Indians, Germans, Koreans, Africans Zulus (as seen in the movies Zulu and Uhuru!) variously playing the role of U.S. cavalry, Vikings ala Kirk Douglas, World War II GIs, colonial soldiers, and of course Confederate soldiers… As little white crackletts we played with plastic army men that we tortured by flame, firecracker, burning rivulets of gasoline, kerosene or lighter fluid. And if atomic bombing was called for, M-80s and ashcans. We went to sleep dreaming of the screams of the evil brutes we had smitten that day, all those slant eyed and swasticated enemies of democracy and our way of life. Later as post-cracklets in high school we rode around in cars looking to fight anyone who was different, the "other," be they black, brown, or simply from another school or county. As young men we brawled at dances, parties or simply while staring at one another bored and drunk. We bashed each over women, less-than weight bags of dope, money owed and alleged insult to honor, wife, mother or model of car—Ford versus Chevy. In other words, all of white trash culture’s noblest causes. With the "fighting tradition" of Scots Irish behind us, we smashed upon each other ceaselessly in trailer court and tavern, night and day in rain and summer heat until finally, we reach our mid-fifties and lose our enthusiasm (not to mention stamina) for that most venerated of borderer sports.

Said meanness is polished to a high gloss murderous piety most useful to the military establishment. Thus, by the time were are of military age (which is about 12) we are capable of doing a Lynndie England on any type of human being unfamiliar to us from our culturally ignorant viewpoint—doing it to the "other." Sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, most of us, given the nod, can torture the other as mindlessly as a cat plays with a mouse. That we can do it so readily and without remorse is one of the darkest secrets underlying the "heroes" mythology the culture machine is so fervently ginning up about the ongoing series of wars now just unfolding. And when one of us is killed by a rooftop sniper in Baghdad we weep and sweat in our fear, band closer together as Border brothers in the ancient oath of ultimate fealty and courage. And we meant it and we do it.

About half of the Americans killed in Iraq come from communities like Winchester, Virginia or Romney, West Virginia or Fisher, Illinois or Kilgore, Texas or… . About forty-five percent of the American dead in Iraq come from communities of less than 40,000, even though these towns make up only twenty-five percent of our population. These so-called volunteers are part of this nation's de facto draft—economic conscription—the carrot being politically preferable to the whip. The carrot does not have to be very big out here where delivering frozen food wholesale to restaurants out of your own car entirely on commission is considered a good self-employment opportunity. I’m serious. One of my sons did it for a couple of months. Once you grasp the implications of such an environment regarding the so-called American Dream, the U.S. Army at thirteen hundred bucks a month, a signing bonus and free room and board begin to look pretty good. Even a nice long ass kicking tour of the tropics killing brown guys becomes attractive. Especially compared to competing with other little brown guys at home, humping "big-roll sod" across ever-expanding MacMansionland. In the process, we mutt people learn worldly lessons that the post graduate set raving about the jobless economy cannot know. For instance we know firsthand that there is no way to beat little brown sod balling guys willing to sleep in their cars and live on canned beans and store brand soda. Better to go "volunteer" for the army.

Along with the military come those big bucks for college later, up to $65,000, which according to current wisdom is more than enough to buy your way out of the beans and soda pop car camp at the edge of the new Toll Brothers development. Maybe some poor kids do go to college on their military benefits. But personally speaking, I can count the number on one hand I know who ever did. Most of them were black. The rest seem to go to the local truck driving school (rip-offs designed to collect government money) or the ITI "vocational career training," again designed to hoover up federal dough. Let's be honest here: graduating from the average American cracker high school here in the suburban heartland is not exactly the path to Harvard Yard. Your best educational option is probably the one you are looking at on the matchbook cover.

Now that education has been reduced to just another industry, a series of stratified job training mills, ranging from the truck driving schools to the state universities, our nation is no longer capable of creating a truly educated citizenry. Education is not supposed to be an industry. Its proper use is not to serve industries, either by cranking out feckless little mid-management robots or through industry purchased research chasing after a better hard-on drug. Its proper use is to enable citizens to live responsible lives that create and enhance their democratic culture. This cannot be merely by generating and accumulating mountains of information, facts without cultural, artistic, philosophical and human context or priority.

"No one should be forced to dive into an ocean of debt to learn how the world works, much less escape minimum wage hell. It should be enough just to want to know. Then too, look at our educational institutions. Academia, at least from this outsider's perspective, is an almost impenetrable veneer of elitist flatulence and toxic competition. Jesus, no wonder this country is in such sorry shape."
— Arvin Hill, Texas philosopher

How in the hell did knowledge become so commoditized in America? Dumb question. After all, what do we expect from a nation of pickle vendors who will charge you for the air you breathe, and then make you beg for your change? At first blush, higher education and the working class Scots Irish mutt people seem to be oil and water. Maybe so. But the majority of them also have a snowball’s chance in Florida of getting a higher education. Especially when it comes to the institutions of learning that constitute our elite springboard into careers in law and politics, business and science. The Yales and the Harvards and Princetons… For example, according to the Wall Street Journal Asians constitute about 2% of the population but make up over 20% of Harvard graduates. About one third of Harvard graduates identify themselves as Jewish. Together Jews and Asians make up about half of Harvard graduates. Subtract these, plus the 15% minority quota and that leaves maybe 40% of openings for the 75 or 80 % of white Americans who are not Jewish, Asian, Latino or black or whatever... Now throw in the skew of northeastern WASPS at elite universities and we are left with maybe 20% of openings for 60% of white Americans. It presents a sorry damned picture of liberal East Coast WASPS and Jews and minorities getting all the prime educational gravy.

The neocon leadership is right when they tell working white Americans the system has been stacked against them by an unseen hand, though they never mention that their own kids are among the silver spooners rowing around in the Ivy League gravy boat. I know I’ll get clobbered by Jewish and black critics for pointing this out. But liberal refusal to see white people as also being diverse, and seeing that some of them indeed need their own sort of affirmative action is exactly the kind of thing that helped the neocons lead these working white people by the nose.

Education is everything. You know it and I know it. And what the white working classes don’t know because lack of education has hurt you and me and them. So why in the hell don’t we help this group of people into college and into the institutions that are elite springboards to careers in law and politics? Why not have affirmative action for Appalachian kids from the Ohio Basin or from the Deep South or anyplace else where tens of millions of kids grow up in houses containing not a single book, except possibly the Bible. Why don’t we do these things? Part of the reason is that this stubborn proud people does not whine beg or threaten its way to access to education, employment or anything else. And part of it is because we unquestioningly accept a system that calls greed and self-interest drive, thus letting the prosperous professional and business classes pretend there is no disparity around them for which they might just be partially responsible, even as they pay the maid and the gardener who lack health insurance a pittance…or see that their mechanic’s bill treads, "repare of fuul injection, $105." And because liberals have driven secularism into the ground and broken it off, and need to actually adhere to some religious values — real ones — even if we don’t feel particularly inclined toward religion. (Psst! Everybody else in America DOES fell inclined toward it.)

So we will either see that Americans, religious or not, get educated equally so they won’t be suckered by political and religious hucksters. If not, then we must accept that uneducated people interpret politics in an uninformed and emotional manner, and accept the consequences. America can no longer withstand the political naiveté of this ignored white class. Middle class American liberals cannot have it both ways. It has come down to the simplest and most profound element of democracy: Fairness. Someday middle class American liberals will have to cop to fraternity and justice and the fact that we are our brother’s keeper, whether we like it or not. They’re going to have to sit down and actually speak to these people they consider ugly, overweight, ill educated and in poor taste. At some point down the road all the Montessori schools and ivy league degrees in the world are not going to save your children and grandchildren from what our intellectual peasantry, whether born of neglect or purposefully maintained, is capable of supporting politically. We’ve all seen the gritty black and white newsreels from the 1930s.

A member of this peasantry, I quit school at age sixteen in the eleventh grade to join the U.S. Navy. I hated school, hated the social class differences in a small town that make life so miserable during adolescence, when one’s community and social status is being nailed down permanently for anyone planning on staying here. As a former young white cracklet I can say with all confidence that when you live with a rusty coal stove in the middle of the living room for heat, your old man smells of gasoline and motor oil no matter how much he bathes and your mom suffers from strange, unpredictable behavior due to untreated depression, you do not much feel like inviting the doctor’s daughter home. Or anyone’s daughter for that matter. Doctor’s son = College, career, golf, nice car and a bimbo. Redneck laborer’s son = Well, if you stay out of trouble, there’s always room for one more broad shouldered chinless pinhead stamping out bright yellow plastic mop buckets on the injection molds at Rubbermaid. Thus, at sixteen and choosing options, I decided that launching fighter jets from the deck of an aircraft carrier to kill gooks and the notion of pussy and booze on some exotic foreign shore looked damned good. When I think about what happened to my boyhood friends who stayed home and put in 30 years at Rubbermaid, my choice doesn’t sound that bad even today. They all became redneck ultra-conservatives, mostly out of some sort of fear and bitterness that I can never seem to put my finger on. But I knew these people in a younger and more hopeful time. I know they were capable of—not to mention deserved—more than they got out of life. Maybe their bitterness stems from that.

Meanwhile, their kids do the same as they did. Go uneducated. Sometimes I walk the street on which I grew up. And when I look around I see the same kinds of kids as ever. They are all fatter, but they are the same cigarette-smoking, know-nothing white punks that I was, the tough sons and daughters of the unwashed. In my old neighborhood where over one quarter of adults do not have a high school diploma, there are lots of yellow ribbons in the windows, Marine Corps and Army parent’s icons on the porches and scrubby lawns, evidence enough that you do not need an education to contribute something of value the far-flung perimeter of our expanding empire of blood and commerce. Pure meanness is highly valued in Caesar’s legions. Lots of Americans don't seem to mind having a pack of young American pit bulls savage some flyblown desert nation, or running loose in the White House for that matter, as long as they are our pit bulls protecting Wall Street and the 401-Ks of the upper middle class.

The problem is this: pit bulls always escalate the fight and keep at it until the last dog is dead, leaving the gentler breeds to clean up the blood spilled. We mutt people, the pit bulls, have always been your own, whether you claim us or not. And until you accept that you are your brother’s keeper, and help deliver us from ignorance, you will continue to have on your hands some of every drop of blood spilled… from the sands of Iraq to the streets of East L.A. All the socially responsible stock portfolios, little hybrid cars and post modernist deconstruction in the world will not wash it off.

Joe Bageant is a writer and magazine editor living in Winchester, Virginia. His forthcoming book, Drink, Pray, Fight, Fuck: Dispatches from America’s Class Wars, is due out next year, to be published by Random House. Visit his blog at: http://www.joebageant.com. He may be contacted at joebageant@joebageant.com. Copyright © 2006 by Joe Bageant.

Our King's Better Than Their King

King Of Zembla asks:

How Do You Know When You've Moved
Just a Little Too Far to the Right?


Don't read the answer with a mouthful of Stoli's like I just did.

Minutemen? KLANSMEN

I received an email from Peace Action Denton on Thursday asking if anyone was interested in counter-protesting "The Minutemen" - an odious group of white supremacists and the unwitting members such groups exploit - who were sponsoring a national day of protest at day labor centers across the United States.

Thanks to the tireless and absurdly undervalued work of Jay Taber, David Neiwert and a handful of like-minded researchers, I was already familiar with The Minutemen. Left unchallenged, The Minutemen will make 2006 the Year of the Vigilante, a welcome prospect for an increasingly desperate, lawless Republican Party in dire need of a hyper-polarizing issue to further divide America.

I needn't remind anyone here how successful the Far Right is today thanks to the neocon media Wurlitzer. Countering it will be an uphill struggle, much more difficult than is generally assumed.

I emailed Jay to ask for advice as to how best respond to The Minutemen event:

First off, we don't debate or repeat the talking points of Minutemen any more than we do their Nazi comrades, Holocaust deniers, or Confederacy apologists. What we do is attack their values and lies. Same for any media engaged in whitewashing these hatemongers. That said, some of these guys are misguided, but not evil. They can be culled through reasonable voices of moral authority sometimes. So we work with churches. We also document these guys, do background on them, and disseminate our information.

[more...]

So on this cool, bright Saturday morning shortly after dawn, sleepy and with an aching back from this week's info harvest, I pulled into Denton Square to meet up with comrades at Jupiter House.

Peace Action Denton folks weren't expecting much of a Minutemen turnout, if any, but it doesn't take much of a turnout to garner media attention after issuing a confrontational press release. If only one person showed, it would be one too many.

I was told the local organizer was a woman with a history of rather bizarre public behavior exhibited on Fry Street and purportedly extreme enough to alienate some conservatives who might otherwise by sympathetic to wilding on some Mexicans for a little scapegoat action. I was doubtful, as it takes takes an awful lot of crazy to alienate today's right wingers from an oppressive, anti-social cause of any kind.

A couple of Peace Action Denton guys left to scout the protest area and reported a sizeable counter-protest contingent, three or four Minutemen, several cops and a strong media presence.

Off, we went.

LULAC, Denton County Democrats, Gay & Lesbian Association of Denton and Peace Action Denton converged to let the media know and sleepy Saturday morning drivers The Minutemen wouldn't be steamrolling over a passive citizenry in these parts. It's a rare thing, unfortunately, for all three groups to be on the same page. The need for social justice organizations to cooperate with each other has never been greater, nor have the opportunities for such coordination ever been easier. We have to do better in this regard, or there can be no effective resistance to fascism. It's as simple as that.

My prior estimate of a half-dozen Minutemen was about right. They were outnumbered ten to one, and it seemed to rattle the Minutemen. It was pretty obvious they hadn't expected any real opposition.

The Minutemen had signs. Such a simple thing. The media was keenly aware of the ratio of fair-minded Americans to white supremacists, but the shortage of visuals on our side doesn't give media much to shoot for compelling stills or video. Unfortunately, many of the motorists passing by likely thought a lot of counter-protesters were Minutemen.




Police presence was reasonable for the size of the protest and the cops were all very professional and courteous. Pictures were taken all all the way around and nobody got bent out of shape.



Aside from the Denton County Democrats banner and a great LULAC T-shirt people were flying, mine was the only other sign.


Granted, people showed up and that's a very encouraging start. But in the age of the mighty spectacle, it's not nearly enough. Counter-protesters seemed surprisingly oblivious to the visual aspect of the event. Our visual impact sucked, and, in my usual diplomatic fashion, I shamed everyone for not bringing signs. Several people said they were signless because of the short notice, and I encouraged them to make anti-Minutemen signs when they got home because 2006 was going to be a long year and we needed to be prepared next time around. People were under the impression it was a one-off deal for The Minutemen, and I did what I could to counter that impression.

The crowd deterred the Minutemen from harassing the immigrants who showed up Saturday morning to wait for jobs. This is important because, as the rightwing rhetoric heats up to full steam a-hate in the neocon media, the day labor sites across America will become ground zero for ugly episodes of vigilante crime.

Click here the Fort Worth Star Telegram article by Bill Teeter.

Arvin Hill of Peace Action Denton calls the Minutemen’s assertions “over the top.”

“They characterize immigration as an invasion coordinated by the Mexican government and elements of our own government,” Hill said.

Hill also said the Minutemen have been found to have ties to white supremacists.

Okay, so it wasn't the most pithy quote, but Bill Teeter was the first reporter to interview me and it kind of took me by surprise even though it shouldn't have. Practice, practice, practice. But at least "white supremacists" appeared in the article.

While it's true some Mexican laborers who would have showed up on Saturday morning no doubt avoided the scene, many did not and flatly refused to yield to the Minutemen's bullying - a difficult action made easier when people on the ground ready to oppose racial thuggery.

As for broadcast media, anchor FOX 4's coverage absolutely sucked. To represent the counterprotesters for an audiovisual clip, they picked an uninformed camera monkey whose overall presentation is best described as Wake & Bake. As one would expect, the FOX producer didn't show a visual of my sign (which got a great deal of attention from press & public alike). But, of course, IT'S FOX News even if it is a local affilliate. Predictably, lingering shots of Minutemen signs were everywhere on that broadcast.

NBC-5 covered the story and showed the Minutemen signs, as well, but they were CONSIDERABLY more balanced than Channel 4. They aired several counterprotesters chanting "FIGHT RACIST POWER" (nice work!) and the piece closed with a generous shot of yours truly and the visual message we had hoped to convey:

Token Resistance

Skookum laments:

The local hosts of the national human rights conference at which I recently presented, just today posted their post-conference report, including a notice of a follow-up meeting scheduled for January 10, one month to the day after the conference. I'd been watching their website since then to see if they had put up links to the websites of the presenters, researchers, and other national experts they invited to inform them, but that never happened. It still hasn't.

Nor did the hosts respond or link to the researchers' report I prepared and sent them for dissemination to their conference sponsors, so they could begin organizing on an informed basis. I mean, after being told on December 10 that the vigilante organizations were already mobilizing (with GOP support)--that very week--to make the anti-immigrant campaign the number one issue across the country in 2006, the progressive coalition decided to take a month off.

And people wonder how liberals lost our government to fascists.

It's becoming pretty damn clear, isn't it.

We're all coasting on the blood and sweat of our forebearers, a rather mixed lot, often outnumbered, who understood the nature of struggle, risk and personal sacrifice. With rare exception, today's ideological would-be defenders of The Republic tend to be self-indulgent candy asses preoccupied with appearance and utterly terrified of being perceived as hippie-lovin', Symbionese Liberation Army supporters.

This is going to be one epic slog through history.

Crocodile Tears

It's all too easy to grieve for the dead miners, their families and friends. But in typical American fashion, concern about those same miners - when they were alive - wasn't so forthcoming.

The mine's federal health and safety violations had nearly doubled over the last year, rising from 68 citations in 2004 to 181 in 2005. Nearly half of the 2005 totals were deemed "significant and substantial," the government's term for serious mine safety problems. The deficiencies included problems with the firm's ventilation and roof support plans.

At least 46 federal violations had been cited since October. And records from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration indicated that at least a dozen roof collapses occurred in the last six months.

In addition, Terry Farley, a West Virginia mine safety official, confirmed that the Sago Mine was also cited by state regulators for 208 violations in 2005, up from 74 the year before.

Mine safety experts said that the sudden rise in safety problems should have alarmed ICG when it was preparing to buy the mine.

"That's a significant number for a mine that size," said Kenneth P. Katen, a former deputy assistant Labor secretary for the mine agency under the Reagan administration. "If you have a sudden increase of violations, that's something that should have drawn the new owners' attention."

It's a safe assumption that many of the same people expressing grief and sympathy today would have been the first ones to fly into an apopolectic rage had those miners gone on strike to protest safety issues at the Sago Mine.

Mining has always been among the most dangerous jobs in the world and, yes, accidents happen. But those accidents cannot be attributed to fate or luck or The Big Man In The Sky. Accidents happen because safety costs money, a point not lost on state & federal regulators who maintain a cozy relationship with the companies and industries they are charged with monitoring.

With organized Labor on the wane and government at all levels firmly committed to enriching the corporate sector at the expense of public safety, the American public has no right to feign shock and grief when the next avoidable tragedy occurs.

__________________________________________

Now seems an appropriate time to revisit
16 Tons of Corporate Hubris (May 16, 2005).

All Fired Up

Rhode Island became yesterday the 11th state to legalize medical marijuana and the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that patients who use the drug can still be prosecuted under federal law.

The House overrode a veto by Gov. Don Carcieri, 59-13, allowing people with such illnesses as cancer and AIDS to grow up to 12 marijuana plants or buy 2.5 ounces of marijuana to relieve their symptoms. Those who do are required to register with the state and get an identification card.

Federal law prohibits any use of marijuana, but Maine, Vermont, Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington allow it to be grown and used for medicinal purposes.

What I like about how this went down is that Rhode Island legislators overrode a veto and did what was right instead of taking the usual chickenshit avenue of a ballot initiative.

However, there is the thorny matter of registration. Personally, I would think twice about registering with the state and getting an ID card if only because that list will end up in the hands of egg-faced DEA thugs whose idea of a good time is to point guns at sick people and, hopefully, get them imprisoned.

As for choosing between growing twelve plants or buying 2.5 ounces of herb, Rhode Islanders should definitely go with the plants.

What about September 10th?

The only thing September 11th changed was the astounding ease with which the Executive Branch could commit crimes against United States citizens.

From Slate:

Today's generation of telecom leaders is similarly involved in the current controversy over spying by the NSA. The New York Times reported in December that since 9/11, leading telecommunications companies "have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists." Citing current and former government and corporate officials, the Times reported that the companies have granted the NSA access to their all-important switches, the hubs through which colossal volumes of voice calls and data transmissions move every second. A former telecom executive told us that efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source, who asked not to be identified so as not to out his former company, reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a "data-mining" operation, which might eventually cull "millions" of individual calls and e-mails.

Thanks to Bernhard at Moon Of Alabama for the tip.

Meet Russell Tice

Democracy Now's Amy Goodman interviews former NSA Agent and whistleblower Russell Tice.

[snip]

...I'm involved with some certain aspects of the intelligence community, which are very closely held, and I believe I have seen some things that are illegal. Ultimately it's Congress's responsibility to conduct oversight in these things. I don't see it happening.

[snip]

Well, as far as an intelligence officer, especially a SIGINT officer at N.S.A., we're taught from very early on in our careers that you just do not do this. This is probably the number one commandment of the SIGINT Ten Commandments as a SIGINT officer. You will not spy on Americans. It is drilled into our head over and over and over again in security briefings, at least twice a year, where you ultimately have to sign a paper that says you have gotten the briefing. Everyone at N.S.A. who’s a SIGINT officer knows that you do not do this. Ultimately, so do the leaders of N.S.A., and apparently the leaders of N.S.A. have decided that they were just going to go against the tenets of something that’s a gospel to a SIGINT officer.

[snip]

Well, I think this investigating [the Justice Department's pursuit of whoever leaked the story of Bush's spy program] is an attempt to make sure that no intelligence officer ever considers doing this. What was done to me was basically an attempt to tell other intelligence officers, ‘Hey, if you do something like this, if you do something to tick us off, we're going to take your job from you, we're gonna do some unpleasant things to you.’

So, right now, the atmosphere at N.S.A. and D.I.A., for that matter, is fear. The security services basically rule over the employees with fear, and people are afraid to come forward. People know if they come forward even in the legal means, like coming to Congress with a concern, your career is over. And that's just the best scenario. There’s all sorts of other unfortunate things like, perhaps, if someone gets thrown in jail for either a witch-hunt or something trumping up charges or, you know, this guy who is basically reporting a crime.

Much more at Democracy Now.

Belated Sentiment

John Cornyn: Ralph Reed's Little Bitch

AP: E-mails show link between Cornyn, lobbyist under investigation

". . .Former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed claimed in a 2001 e-mail to a lobbyist that he choreographed John Cornyn's efforts as Texas attorney general to shut down an East Texas Indian tribe's casino. . . .

. . . .In the Nov. 30, 2001, e-mail, Reed told Abramoff that 50 pastors led by Ed Young, of Second Baptist Church in Houston, would meet with Cornyn to urge him to shut down the Alabama-Coushatta tribe's casino near Livingston, Texas. He said Young would back up the request in writing.

"We have also choreographed Cornyn's response. The AG will state that the law is clear, talk about how much he wants to avoid repetition of El Paso and pledge to take swift action to enforce the law," Reed wrote. "He will also personally hand Ed Young a letter that commits him to take action in Livingston."

Cornyn, now a Republican U.S. senator, had filed a lawsuit in 1999 to shut down a casino operated by the Tigua tribe in El Paso, saying it violated the state's limited gambling laws. In 2002, federal courts shuttered the Tiguas' casino and Cornyn used that ruling to shut down the Alabama-Coushuttas' casino.

Cornyn, who has not been accused of any wrongdoing, has denied knowing Abramoff. He also has said he was unaware of Reed's work with Abramoff. He said he did not remember receiving a letter from Young or Reed, or providing a letter to Young, although he acknowledged meeting with the minister.

"Their efforts were irrelevant to what I was doing," said Cornyn, who was elected to the Senate in 2002. "It's kind of eye-opening to me that apparently people make money claiming credit for something I decided to do under the law."

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee, led by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., blocked out references to Cornyn in the e-mails it released last week. But, in previous Reed e-mails released by the committee, Cornyn's name was not removed. . . "

WSWS: Abramroff Affair

". . . Abramoff and Scanlon used Ralph Reed as their contact with Christian right groups and also contacted John Cornyn, then the Texas attorney general, now a US Senator, seeking legal action to block the Jena casino. Reed organized a group of 50 pastors to meet with Cornyn. He subsequently told Abramoff in an e-mail, “We have also choreographed Cornyn’s response. The AG will state that the law is clear... and pledge to take swift action to enforce the law.” The ministers were reportedly unaware that their moral outrage at gambling was being used to aid one gambling interest against another. . ."

Waco Tribune

". . .Reed e-mailed Abramoff that he “choreographed” a response by then attorney general (now U.S. Sen.) John Cornyn to shut down the Tiguas' operations in Texas. Cornyn vigorously denies Reed had anything to do with it. Whatever the case, Reed got his reimbursement for assisting Abramoff. That's called playing with house money. . . ."

just one of the guys

Bush displays an injury to his forehead he says was sustained while clearing brush at his "ranch." He was at Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston awarding Purple Hearts and visiting wounded troops.


"I eventually won. The Cedar gave me a little scratch."
actual quote

Narcissistic Personality Disorder:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

(3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

(4) requires excessive admiration

(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

But, then, you knew that already.