Monday, April 25, 2005

The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002

Via Atrios over the weekend, I found this interesting article in The Washington Post. Apparently, among the many strange effects of the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002—commonly called the "partial birth abortion" law— you can now declare your miscarriages as child dependents on your Federal taxes in the year you had them. According to the Post, the Bush Administrati have recently starting publicizing the lesser-known effects of the law.

I wonder why they took so much time to get around to it. Here's the concluding two paragraphs:
HHS officials distributed news of its decision to advocacy groups before the media briefing.

The most significant impact of the 2002 law, Grimes said, was a record-keeping change. Previously, a miscarriage before viability was classified as a spontaneous abortion. Under the new provision, it is recorded as a live birth followed by a neonatal death, and parents can claim the child as a tax deduction for that year, he said.


Hmmm. I don't remember my tax software asking me if my family had any miscarriages last year.

Why would the Administrati think it's a good idea to remind cash-strapped families to make sure they declare their miscarriages as live children for tax purposes? There are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of "spontaneous abortions"— oops, sorry... live births followed by neonatal death— every year in America. That's a lot of tax deductions we're talking about here.

I'm just wondering about the fiscal impact of this record-keeping change.

Okay, I'm also marveling at the wicked genius of how the Administrati is using the partial-birth abortion ban to roll back reproductive health care rights. Does anyone else but me remember how this law was sold to us as just a ban on late-term abortions? I know, I know.

Welcome to Gilead, ladies. Don't say we didn't try to warn you.

Friday, April 22, 2005

More Wireless Network Foo

Sean reaches out and pushes the big red button on my forehead— the one which makes the sign light up that says, "Don't push this button again." Or something.

It's like this. Some wiggler named Brendan Koerner, who is a contributing editor at Wired and a fellow at something called the New America Foundation (gurk!), has written an article for Legal Affairs Magazine called License To Wardrive. It's about the ongoing argument among legal scholars— and other dangerous elements in our society who need to be watched at all times— about issues revolving around wireless network security. The technology we are talking about is one of the main things I do with my time in my day job, so I have an informed opinion about this stuff. And I've posted about it here before.

Mr. Koerner gets up my nose right from the start. He sets up camp in my sinuses and dares me to come after him with a flamethrower and a crate full of concussion grenades. Let's see if I can maintain an orderly disposition, shall we?

Here's where he sends me straight to the munitions locker:
If you've ever booted up your laptop, scanned the area for unsecured wireless networks, and hopped onto the Internet on someone else's dime, you're a thief.

No. No. No. You are not. You are simply NOT.

I do this all the time. Lots of people do this all the time. It's perfectly legal. You are taking advantage of a complimentary service. When you go into the supermarket and you eat one of the free samples of whatever, are you stealing? No. They're giving something away for free to anyone who wants it. Why they're doing that is their business.

Koerner continues:
Swiping a little connectivity may be a relatively benign crime, and the victim likely won't know he's being victimized. Yet given that cable modem or DSL service contracts usually forbid subscribers from sharing bandwidth with strangers, it's technically illegal. That's the case whether the owner of the wireless network made the conscious decision to open his connection to all comers, or whether he doesn't realize that any passerby with a wireless card can leech off his bandwidth.

Ah yes— there's that word: victimized. This is the first signal that he's about to become outright dangerous. Follow along with me as I explain.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I deliberately operate an open, unsecured wireless network in my home. I just checked the Acceptable Use Policy from my ISP, just to be sure, and yup— there is nothing in there that forbids me from doing this. Specifically, there is nothing that requires me to take any steps to prevent other individuals from accessing the Internet over my DSL line.

However, even if I were contractually obligated to secure access to my DSL service, the argument is just silly. The first question Koerner should be asking is whether such a contract is even enforceable. If he can get over that hurdle, then he gets to face the more difficult one: establishing that you're a thief because I'm violating my contract and letting you use the Internet from my house without first getting to know you as a friend.

He continues:
But that clear prohibition against stealing a connection can get fuzzy. What if you're only checking to see whether a network is open for all comers, and then you pass that information along to a friend? Or what if you publish the network's location on a website, so that anyone who swings by can log on, perhaps for illicit purposes?

At this point, he goes off to review a recently published book on the ethics of wardriving, which is what the activity he's talking about is called. When he's done with summarizing, he starts criticizing thusly:

This is where Ryan delves into a lengthy, somewhat drab argument for the legality of wardriving. Not that he isn't convincing: He dredges up several cases, as well as an FBI memorandum, that pretty clearly show that doing no more than noting a wireless network's location won't lead to anyone's conviction.

Yet there's something frustratingly academic about Ryan's rhetorical gymnastics in support of wardriving's legality. As he admits, "the premise that wardriving is legal relies on a narrowly construed and somewhat arcane distinction between viewing or recording the existence of open networks and accessing those networks." Yes, wardriving may be legal as a result of legal hairsplitting, but who cares? As Ryan acknowledges, wardrivers know that they're abetting the covert use of Wi-Fi connections by unauthorized people. So should wardrivers be considered accessories to computer trespass?

Notice how both Koerner and Ryan (the author of the book he's reviewing) have adopted as uncontested fact the premise that accessing an unsecured W-Fi network is a crime. Ryan, it turns out, isn't going too far out on the ledge, but Koerner jumps off into thin air.

Let's get out into the open what Koerner is really concerned about. He's not concerned about wardrivers who just want to know where they can get Internet access without paying for it themselves. Neither does he seem terribly troubled by the collection of people who are interested in measuring the market for companies that specialize in the service of helping naïve users secure their residential networks against unauthorized use. His big panic, like that of so many others, is the small group of people with malicious intent.

Have a look in the AU policy from my ISP that I linked above. It says:
Any prohibited or illegal activity that affects Sonic.net, Inc., its agents, equipment or customers is punishable to the full extent of the law, and Sonic.net Inc. will hold you responsible for any damage caused by your actions, whether intentional or unintentional. You are strictly prohibited from using your account other than as outlined in this Acceptable Use Policy and will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law if you do so illegally (see Enforcement section).

Let's imagine for a moment that a Fiend uses my open Wi-Fi network to do something illegal that causes damage (use your imagination). This clause in the contract says they can sue my ass to recover from any damages they suffer because of something prohibited or illegal that I did. Operating an unsecured Wi-Fi network with access to the Internet is NOT illegal or prohibited. We don't even have a legal precedent that says I'm being negligent by operating an unsecured network. So, when the Fiend uses my network to commit a fiendish act, guess what— it's the Fiend who is responsible for it, not me.

This is as it should be. Unfortunately, Koerner finds this deeply unsatisfying. Why? Because he wants the authorization to use the Internet to be something that is always explicitly granted to specific individuals, and never something given away on a first-come first-served basis to anyone who wanders by a wireless access point. Money must change hands— and, one suspects, it must leave a paper trail in the process.

The motivation for wanting to do this is simple: he wants to be able to identify fiends and punish them when they commit fiendish acts, and unsecured Wi-Fi networks (particularly those that use a function called a Network Address Translator, i.e. almost all of them) make it harder for the cops to tell who is using any particular Internet access point (though, how much harder is an interesting question that almost nobody understands— and I have a very well-educated guess that it's not very much harder at all).

The solution, in this simple-minded world, is to make every ISP customer responsible for securing access to the Internet through their equipment. But that doesn't reduce the ability of fiends to commit fiendish acts. All it does is make it easier to frame an innocent ISP customer for a crime that would otherwise go completely without prosecution. It creates an enormous burden of risk for the small retail Internet service customer without doing anything to promote the aggregate welfare of the Internet user community as a whole. It puts Joe Sixpack user directly into an arms race with technologically sophisticated network crackers, with the risk of criminal prosecution (for cyber-terrorism, maybe!) as a possible penalty for losing.

It doesn't help the cops or ISP's know who is the real user of the equipment from which a malicious operation is mounted. It only allows them to point the finger of blame at the owner of the equipment immediately downstream from their demarcation point.

Koerner, for a brief moment, breezes right past all this with a misguided swipe at equipment manufacturers:
Ryan does a better job in calling for Wi-Fi equipment providers to assume some of the responsibility for the woeful state of wireless Internet security. He makes the salient point that these companies have done a poor job of educating consumers about how to secure their networks, and may be exposed to civil action as a result. It is hard to believe that the Linksys and Netgears of the world can't better streamline their security processes, or even turn on encryption schemes by default.

Let's see... my ISP thinks it's my responsibility to educate myself about current law and regulations, so that I don't intentionally or unintentionally do anything illegal or prohibited. That's all good. What I don't get is how it's not my fault I don't know enough about how to control access to the Internet through my equipment— it's the fault of the people who made my Wi-Fi gear? Sigh. That's exactly backwards from his earlier premise.

The Wi-Fi equipment my employers sell comes out of its box unconfigured for an unsecured network. There's a very good reason for that. It's intentionally designed to be easy to just plug into the power and connect an ethernet cable to it from your cable/DSL modem. My employers were the first to the consumer market with a Wi-Fi access point, and the other manufacturers have copied the design— because it's a good design.

The setup assistant that comes with the device defaults to WPA security. It expects to communicate with the device over the wireless link. How do you have the unit come out of the box with a secure network and still be accessible by an average user from the setup assistant? This problem is more difficult than Koerner thinks. It's extremely difficult actually.

The obvious thing to do is to prevent the device from forwarding packets until it's been configured by the setup assistant, right? Wrong. If you do that, people buy the equipment, plug it in, and it doesn't work. Then, without even reading the instructions or opening the envelope with the disc containing the setup assistant, they pack the unit back into the box, take it to the store and demand a refund. Really, they do. There is just too much money to be lost by not making the unit fully functional right out of the box.

I really doubt that LinkSys and Netgear can do enough to keep average consumers from inadvertently setting up unsecured home Wi-Fi networks without being forced. The only way this "problem" will get addressed realistically, is to make the operation of unauthenticated Wi-Fi access to the Internet a crime and make it illegal to make, sell or possess the equipment for it. And by "realistically" of course I mean: surrealistically. That's where guys like Koerner are going— whether they know it or not. And that's why I say they're dangerous.

Look. My point is very simple. Before we start arresting people for operating unsecured Wi-Fi access to the Internet, we should ask whose interests are really served by that kind of policing system. Do not assume it's in the interest of public safety just because the Department of Homeland Security says it is— they have zero credibility on that issue. The real players who stand to benefit from this are incumbent network service providers, i.e. telephone and cable television companies. Anything that makes you have to pay them a monthly fee, instead of just borrowing some service from a friend of yours who has already paid for it, just fuels their network effect— which is the very thing that gives them an unfair advantage in the market by maintaining an artificially high barrier to entry for their competitors.

By playing the "security" card, guys like Koerner are playing right into the hands of the incumbent network service providers, who already enjoy egregiously high monopoly rent privileges in the market. At the same time, they're doing absolutely nothing but sheer wankery in the area of public safety— which seems to be the new American pastime, now that major league baseball is nothing more than a drug cult.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Chris Nolan offers up an interesting take on the Open Source movement:

It's this sense of the dangers that come from sacrificing control that lie behind computer geeks' talk about open source systems. Some of the embrace of open-source is idealistic, a belief in collaboration and co-operation. But some of it is also cynical in its appreciation of the ways in which power can corrupt. Open source fights power with transparency, which – socially and in a host of other ways -- restrains individual power. Friedman likes open source because it sounds nice and appears to grant ultimate freedom; besides everyone in Silicon Valley thinks it's cool. But it's better to like open source – which the Constitution in Exile folks would probably regard as an abridgement of property rights – as a policing system.
Earlier in that same piece, Chris appears to be sounding the alarm about the Constitution in Exile crowd:
On Sunday, we got a look at this conversation from another angle when Jeffrey Rosen's "The Unregulated Offensive," appeared in The New York Times Magazine. It's a wonderful – and scary – look at a group of dedicated conservative legal scholars who are working to overturn the theories and supports that justify the existence of almost every U.S. regulatory agency out there, from the Federal Communications Commission to the Environmental Protection Agency. This Libertarian-inspired movement isn't a trivial one; in fact it's cutting-edge legal theory. And it shouldn't be dismissed. It's strength – conscious or not – comes from an increasing common belief on both sides of the political spectrum that government cripples individual's rights. It can't be a coincidence that this belief is rising up at the same time that on-line activity – the ability, say, to IM someone in Beijing – is increasing individual's power to control their economic destiny. I know a little bit about this last part first-hand. You're reading the results.



Paging the ghost of Mark Hanna and JP Morgan. Please begin the final phase of the reestablishment of the age of the Robber Barons.

Don't be vexed America..continue Consuming...

Friday, April 15, 2005

So Come To The Conventicle, Bring Along A Pentacle...

Via the moonbats at AMERICAblog, comes a report from The Grey Skanky Ho about the latest gathering of cultists to snag a celebrity appearance by the leadership of the U.S. Senate.
WASHINGTON, April 14 - As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Oh. My. Gawd. Y'all, are we ever in hicksville. Read the whole article.

Many of our moonbat friends are overreacting to this nonsense, if you ask me. The Senate is not yet a theocracy. Theocracies are actually run by theocrats. These guys are merely low-rent streetwalkers, working the neighborhood where we have zoned off all the dope fiends and whorehoppers— to keep all the high-risk debtors in a confined space where we can watch them all at once. For these guys to become a theocracy, they're going to have to develop a theology first— and they've got a long row to hoe before they crack that nut.

That doesn't mean they aren't dangerous as hell. But let's be honest here, boys and girls. This isn't an uprising of activism to defend against political attacks by liberals and Democrats against the interests of religious Christian people. These people Senator Frist is hopping into bed with are straight-up armageddon cultists and their only objectives are the expansion of their anti-Christian cult and its idolatry before God, as well as preparation for an imaginary apocalypse foretold to them by occult divination.

People. Please try to keep your eye on the bouncing Elder Sign here. Our problem is not with Christians. Our problem is with the alien shit-fiends pretending to be Christians while they work tirelessly for the return of the Old Ones and the destruction of humanity.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

This is very much freaking me out. Brother Wolcott articulated the sense of real dread I've been getting by reading the financial media for the past few weeks. Another little piece of the "dreads" is an observation made by Bruce Bartlett (via Delong) and others that the Treasury Department is suffering from a vast brain drain of talent, due to in large part the evisceration of the Department by the West Wing in their facist determination to filter all policy decisions through the Dominionist policy-O-Matic. Economic policy is made to maximize the political benefit for GOP without regard to the policy experts at Treasury. Yes, I know this isn't exactly "news", but it looks on it's face like the market indicators are escalating to Code Alert Megalon, and the lack of a first rate policy team at Treasury will make any financial crisis exponentially worse.

That is going to come in really handy if there is a rapid dollar devaluation or some other rapidly escalating fiscal situation. Nothing will instill confidence in the markets more than knowing that Karl Rove is making sure James Dobson is happy before he issues a policy decision to Treasury.

Wait, I forgot. Heterosexual marriage is being threatened by the Imperial Battle Fleets of the Radical Homesexual Lobby. Whew! For a moment there I lost faith in the eternal benevolence of the free market. I know the market will never, ever, EVER, hurt me. It's only the carriers of the "gay" that can threaten my family, not an impending financial meltdown compounded by the dismantling of an essential leadership team in the Governments most important fiscal policy arm.

Outstanding work Red State...AGAIN!





.

Monday, April 11, 2005

The Unitarian Jihad

Apologies if you have already seen this. SFO local boy Jon Carroll brings news of the Unitarian Jihad. I am <reaction type='amused' adverb='vastly'/>.

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary.


Be sure to check out The First Reformed Unitarian Name Generator where you can get your very own codename.

Behold!
My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Joyous Orbital Laser of Serene Tranquility. What's yours?

Update: I would like to have it noted for the record that Brother Carroll's concluding sentence is a real keeper. I hereby introduce a motion that we append the following item to our designated list of approved slogans:
There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.

Update, The Younger: The wingnuts at Wizbang! have sounded the alarm. You gotta check out the comments. For example:

I'm not sure whether to laugh or bang my head against the keyboard.
Posted by: SilverBubble at April 10, 2005 08:48 PM

It would appear that the aim of the Unitarian Jihad to spread an absence-of-panic is running into some implementation difficulties.

Friday, April 08, 2005

Jeanne at Body and Soul points to an interesting piece in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal regarding how we expect our POW's treated, and how we treat someone elses. Here is the key graf:

[T]he archives also make clear that some of the practices employed by the U.S. today resemble those that U.S. military commissions condemned when Americans were on the receiving end. The U.S. considered as war crimes such tactics as solitary confinement, sleep and sensory deprivation, manipulation of meal schedules, forcing men to answer questions while naked or restrained in painful "stress positions," and failing to register prisoners with the International Red Cross. Today, all have been approved or practiced at Guantanamo and other U.S. facilities.The records, many of them from tribunals held at Yokohama, Japan, between 1946 and 1949, show that many defendants, like Mr. Kikuchi, received long sentences for lesser infractions, in keeping with the U.S.'s aggressive approach to prosecutions. Some of the justifications now offered both by low-level American soldiers and top officials echo those raised, with little success, by Japanese defendants called to account before American courts.

[...]

U.S. tribunals dismissed defense arguments that Japanese practices were necessary for disciplinary or interrogation reasons, that American prisoners were treated no worse than Japanese soldiers, that Japan hadn't ratified the Geneva Conventions and wasn't therefore bound by them and that, in any event, many American prisoners had forfeited POW status by bombing cities or committing acts of sabotage.

This really serves to demonstrate how utterly hypocrtical the sophistry of the rationale the Administration and it's halleluia chorus at Fox and the rest of the right wing media have been bleating to defend their reprehensible treatment of prisoners and detainees. We are treating prisoners in ways we hung people at Nurbemberg for.

I particularly like this example:

In the annals of law, the case of Masatomo Kikuchi is all but forgotten.The former Japanese prison guard was tried by the Allies after World War II for war crimes. In 1947, a U.S. military commission, citing the Geneva Conventions and customary international law, convicted him of compelling prisoners of war to practice saluting and other military exercises for as long as 30 minutes when they were tired. His sentence: 12 years of hard labor.

I think we need to have Brit Hume and the rest of the Short Bus Crew at Fox making little ones out of bigs one just for their 24/7 Agitprop. And Bill O'Reilly should be on permanent Latrine duty...

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Jesus' General does it again

Oh-My-Freekin'-God!

Gen. J.C. Christian has undone me again. I sit here laughing my ass off in front of the various Sararimen. Thanks a lot General.

Everyone, run -- do not walk -- run to Jesus' General right now and read his latest offering on the Culture of Life Celebration he is planning for the Administration.

Tell you what, here's the money shot

Rep. Tom Delay* will award a Choose Life T-Shirt to the first 100 people who bring him a judge's ear to add to his necklace. Sen. Cornyn will greet each returning contestant with a hug and the words, "The bastard deserved it." Pokey the Box Turtle will ensure that Sen. Cornwyn doesn't lose interest and wander off.

*Rep. DeLay might have a scheduling conflict. He may be feverishly conducting an abstinence education class for the boys of the Aryan Brotherhood in Cellblock B. If that's the case, we'll get Randall Terry to award the shirts.


Doc Mojo says show this boy some love...

mojo sends

Sunday, April 03, 2005

Publius Has Good Take on "Outrage Industry"

Publius, the recently returned purveyor of Legal Fiction has a pretty good post up about the "Outrage Industry," and how it is being used to sell worthless political trinkets to the rubes at the county fair.



The “outrage industry” ... distracts the evangelical right from realizing that the GOP doesn’t really give a shit about pursuing its agenda. There are two schools of thought on the relationship of social conservatives to the GOP. The first is the “Danforth view” that Mullah bin Dobson has hijacked our ruling political party. The second is the Chait/Thomas Frank view that the GOP is playing these people for suckas. Nationally, I fall into the Chait/Frank camp, though on the state level, the mullahs have seized control and would impose a form of soft Sharia if they could (forced school prayer; criminalization of gay sex; criminalization of abortion; establishment of state-funded religion; ban on birth control; etc.).

I think Chait summed it up perfectly last Friday (and he seems to borrow from Frank). The Republican powers-that-be have no real interest in passing the laws the evangelical right care most deeply about because the business/corporate/economic agenda is their real priority. For example, Bush has no interest in the FMA (certainly not to the extent of something like Iraq or Social Security reform). Abortion and school prayer bans remain legal despite over a decade of Congressional rule, a GOP White House for 17 of the last 25 years, a Republican-dominated judiciary, and seven Republican-appointed Justices. As if he were ashamed, Bush often addresses evangelical issues using code language (e.g., Dred Scott) and doesn’t come right out and say what the evangelicals want him to say (think about his waffling on Roe during the debates).


Personally, I believe this to be a good starting point for slicing off the wingnut vote of the GOP. Sure these guys say the the things they want to hear, but they have no intention whatsoever of doing anything about it. I say we start calling for the wingnuts to start their own party. Get of the GOP, get real about seizing political power in this country. C'mon, convince me you aren't just the weak-kneed waterheads we all took you for. Represent for your peoples, start your own political party separate from the Republicans, then sound off like you have a pair...

Of course they won't because at the end of the day, the Christian Right is just as feckless, stoopid and spineless as we believe them to be.

In the words of Doc Holliday, "You're no daisy..."

Saturday, April 02, 2005

mojwire for 04.02 -- PART I

Mojowire for 04.02; vol. 3, no. 9

MUSIC: Intro/Hendrix, Star Spangled Banner
s9/ Prodigy, We Have Explosive
Exeunt/WildChild, Renegade Master


intro with Hendrix star spangled banner

J. Good Morning, and welcome to The Mojowire, Vol. 3, No. 9... I'm Mojo ...

S. And I'm Sean, it's Saturday, April 02, 2005, Day 1,447 of the Neocon Captivity, and here's the news for the week gone-by...

J. Brought to you by Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988. Now headlines, from Mojohaus:

S. First this morning, we note the passing of Terri Schiavo, and examine how this horrific carnival of death fetishists has effected our national psyche and how this is translating into even more theo-Stalinist danger for the Republic.

J. Next, the President is finding things tough out on the road as he and his merry pranksters roam the countryside trying to spin tales of fear and degradation in an increasingly vain attempt scare people into letting them kill Social Security, and now they have resorted to impersonating law
enforcement, stay tuned for this one.

S. Then our special correspondent from low earth orbit, Dr. Strychnine, brings us perilous tidings of a dangerous time. Do we still really live in a Democratic Republic? Dangerous times indeed. What happens when the masses finally get the idea that they've been lied to and abused on that kind of scale?

J. The National Defense Strategy was released to the public last week, or at least the comic book version of it. A short screed on the necessity of the United States to keep acting like that one unruly party guest that who gets too drunk, won't quiet down, picks fights with the other guests and insists
on brawling with the cops when they inevitably show up. Rummy, fat, drunk and stoopid is no way to go through life, son.

S. Finally this morning, we geek on 2008, assuming we have full, fair and honest elections. Who is ploughing the Earth for the GOP's alien love gardners now and which cheese eating surrender monkies from the Democratic Party have the ability to rumble? We'll break it all down for you...

J. ... So stand by to stand by while we get ready to pull the pin on this thing ...

WAR ON FAMILIES
J.
For those who were hoping that the hideous spectacle of the Terri Schiavo tragedy was finally passing, we have some bad news. It would appear that the Schiavo freek show has been but mere prologue for a religious conservative political machine that might be hearing the footsteps of a disatisfied population with a midterm election just barely 20 scant months away.

So the push is on to start rallying the troops now and get a legislative agenda rammed through Congress that would make Pontius Pilate weep. To start, The Center for American Progress’ most recent “outrage of the week” has the Schindlers, Terri Schiavo’s parents, in the depth of their grief and spirtual need, selling their supporters’ names and addresses through a conservative direct mailing house. So all those red-staters moved to send the Schindlers a couple bucks over the past years, watching them cry the blues on FOXNews, will now start to receive junk mail and unsolicited phone pitches from reactionary Stalinist nut jobs all over the United States.

Hey, doesn’t the U.S.A. Patriot Act make it a federal crime to make money by even being with otherwise innocuous groups who later in turn funnel that money to more questionable groups and people? But that’s a story for another time...

Fortuantely, it looks like the Stalinists in the administration have finally pushed the courts patience to the breaking point, and Judge Stanley Birch, an old school Constitutional Constructionist appointed by George the Elder, down to the 11th circuit, the day before Ms. Schiavo passed away, delivered a long overdue whoopin’ to Maximum Leader and his cadre of bloodless ghouls and religious inquisitors careening through Congress.

Look, it’s very simple... Separation of powers, got it? Not together; separate; one here, one there; like Brad and Jen.

Let’s go to the replay...
“The separation of powers implicit in our constitutional design was created “to assure, as nearly as possible, that each branch of government would confine itself to its assigned responsibility.” But when the fervor of political passions moves the Executive and the Legislative branches to act in ways inimical to basic constitutional principles, it is the duty of the judiciary to intervene. ...Pub[lic]. L[aw]. 109-3 is an unconstitutional infringement on core tenets underlying our constitutional system. Had Congress or the Florida legislature, in their legislative capacities, been able to constitutionally amend applicable law, we would have been constrained to apply that law...By opting to pass Pub[lic]. L[aw]. 109-3 instead, however, Congress chose to overstep constitutional boundaries into the province of the judiciary. Such an Act cannot be countenanced.”


This breath of law brought to the Schiavo tragedy resulted in almost unanimous howls of anger from the right, with scumbags like House Majority thug Tom Delay (who by the way, pulled the plug on his own father, many years ago, when his survival became inconvenient) swearing that firey biblickal vengenence would be wrecked upon the evil doers by the wrathful Old Testament hand of the pre-atomic space god Jehovah One with pillars of fire, lakes of blood, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Though for sheer dadaism, you have to go with radically anti-woman terrorist Randall Terry, who really bent the fabric of spacetime with a performance art stream of consciousness to the assembled gaggle of ghouls and reporters outside the hostel shortly after Schiavo’s death was announced. “An autopsy can show what parts of the brain were damaged, but it can’t show what technology might soon exist, that is now on the table, that could have helped her.”

Unfortunately, the radio receiver in the communications shack down in the Mojowire International Headquarters Bunker burst into flame upon transmitting those words, and the rest of the rant went, thankfully, unheeded.

You see, R.T.’s respect for the frontiers of medical science seems a bit disingenuous to us here, given that on his own personal website, he equates stem cell research with child pornography and in August of 2001 had this to say about the necessities of medical research on the PBS News Hour: “Mr. Bush, you have a duty before god: These human embryos are made in the image of God. You must be their protector not their betrayer.”

S. And even as the last terrible hours of Terri Schiavo’s life passsed and the circus began folding up its tents, watering the animals and printing the handbills for the next town down the road, Maximum Leader’s personal clerics were still bent on scaring people away from reproductive health care by attempting to seize medical records of women. You might remember last year, when then-Grand Inquisitor John Ashcroft attempted the subpoena of medical records of women who had visited Planned Parenthood, under the thin veneer of upholding a new law prohibiting so-called late-term abortions.

His attempts at this kind of foolishness were batted out of every court at every level he attempted, much to his discomfiture. However, this has not stopped his spiritual thugs in the several states from attempting the same kind of intimidation and harrassment. State prosecutors in Kansas and Indiana (who no doubt are thinking about an upcoming election season), are now going after the records.

The Kansas State Attorney General, along with notorious anti-woman terorist Phil Kline, are trying to get their hands on records that include "sexual history, birth control practices, prior medical and personal history, notes from the physical examinations, and a number of other things that the clinics contend are protected by the patient-physician privilege," according to a news aggregation report from the Center for American Progress.

This follows a case in Wisconsin, where K-mart pharmacist Neil Nossen refused to fill a prescription for birth control pills, and then refused to even transfer the prescription to another pharmacy, calling the medication “intrinsically evil.” The University of Wisconsin student then sued the pharmacist and won $20,000 and a chance to see a judge break off a foot in Nossen’s ass, by recommending him for a two year license suspension and a requirement to alert future employers of his weird religious fetish, saying that he plainly violated state medical ethics and laws regarding patient safety.

Instead of getting on the side of patients, the Wisconsin state legislature wasted no time in drafting legislation that would allow pharmacists to insert themselves into the decision making process between a doctor and patient, by being able to countermand a physician’s prescription on the basis of personal bigtory.

It would seem that these examples, along with the whole push back on 1,000 years of scientific advancement in the cause of unthinking, unscriptural and spiritually bereft faux-Christian theology, we have been seeing recently, are part of an urgent undertaking on the part of a right wing facist political machine that seems to be acting like they need to do whatever they are planning right now, because they might not get another chance if the midterm elections don’t go their way.

They at least can read polls as well as the next group of people, even if they believe that the math used to construct the results was all satanically inspired fakery, and those surveys are telling them that even out in the vast cheese-dog and beer quaffing heartland, Joe Sixpack, a registered Republican and gun owning SUV driving NASCAR fan is starting to show some discomfort with the biblickaly inspired law making that is going on in his name. From the bankruptcy bill, to Congress insinuating itself directly into the most intimate moments of his neighbors and family, the whole tone of the current body politics has taken on a hue he neither voted for nor is comfortable with.

It was one thing when they could all make some sort of common cause against the evil hairy communist liberals, out to take their guns, ship their mothers off to forced welfare work camps and recruit their children into the homosexual cannibalistic atheism movement. But now they are in charge, and all those nagging doubts they had about how much they really wanted these guys in in the driver’s seat are coming back to haunt them.

Remember, wireheads, what it was like: “You gotta believe me, these people are freeks, who will roll back the Enlightenment and have you all living like medieval serfs,” and they always pushed back, “ohh... you with the hysterical liberal hyperbole; they’re not that bad, we can control them.”

Bollocks! Thanks again red state. Nice job Dr. Frankenchurch, your creature is now rampaging through the village tipping over apple carts and frightening the children. And your response? “Don’t look at me man, I just made the thing, I’m not responsible for it once it leaves the factory.” Well guess what, jack-hole, we are holding you responsible. Seriously, when we are all shipped off to the religious reeducation camps, we are going to come looking for you.

BAMBOOZLEPALOOZA
J.
So word on the street is that the the administration is thinking of cancelling the remaining concert dates in their travelling carnival of Social Security mendacity. But not without first performing some of their greatest hits, like having Republican party operatives pose as Secret Service agents to roust the ideologically impure and blasphemers from the midst of the true believers.

And it’s important that they might want to do so, given that their current set of talking points are being batted out of the park by even the minimally literate in the heartland, who are beginning to get every bit as incredulous as us uppity leftists out here on the coast. It is difficult to know what W and his chimps were expecting. At some point, people are going to learn that there is no “Red Queen” to find in Three Card Monte, and that all you are doing is giving some cheap grifter all your hard earned greenbacks.

But I see we are getting a tad ahead of ourselves.

It would appear that the Social Security reform effort, currently on life support, may be about to get the plug pulled, if Maximum Leader and Ringmaster Rove can’t pull something out of their methane ports by Labor Day, the semi-official kickoff of the midterm election campaign season. To that end, W and his travelling road show have been making the rounds of city halls, Rotary Clubs and college campuses trying to scare the bejesus out of people in order to make them believe that unless they sign on to Maximum Leader’s non-proposal proposals, they will all be eating cat food in their dotage.

This has been termed the “Bamboozlepalooza” tour by one of our ranking
Blogistani Imams, Comrade Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo. He has devoted a goodly amount of his life to reporting on this issue in the past several months, so you might want to steer over there at some point and groove on his takes.

One the main features of these media side shows, has been the recurrent theme of only star-belly sneetches being allowed to come inside the tent to hear the preacher. Anyone who might be anything less than 101 percent loyal to the President with their every waking thought is being summarily escorted off the premises, apparently now by people who are skirting dangerously close to committing the serious felony of impersonating Secret Service agents.

We have this report from Denver last week of three people who managed to get into the event, and were then approached by a man who sported the uniform of the day of a Secret Service agent, including the earpiece and pythagorean precision haircut, who ID himself, or was ID by another event staffer as an agent. Apparently these three people, who were not being disruptive, carrying signs, wearing slogans, or even saying anything, arrived in a car that had a “no blood for oil” bumper sticker, which obviously tagged them as subversive American-hating liberals bent on the destruction of our God-fearing country’s way of life.

It was not until later that the real Secret Service, which, frankly, has to be getting really tired of this kind of nonsense by now, informed the victims of our little parable here, that the person involved was not any kind of Secret Service agent, and that they had no knowledge of these events.

This raises a disquieting possibility. Not only are Republican Party operatives getting their Tom Clancy on by getting into their Secret Service gear and rousting citizens at public events, but it would also seem that while the taxpayers are footing the bill for the President’s national tour to promote the destruction of Social Security, that many of those same taxpayers are specifically not welcome at the party.

And in case you are wondering, that is also prohibited by law. When the taxpayer picks up the tab, the taxpayer gets to come to the shindig, the end.

It’s not like this is an isolated incident, either. There was a situation about a month ago, when it was learned that the Fargo stop on Bamboozelpalooza was also being pretty exclusive. A “blacklist” of more than 40 local people was leaked to the press, including the names of local elected Democratic Representatives and activists, basically on the premise that they were not supportive of the President’s policies ... or is it non-policies, or his non-bidding against himself, it gets hard to follow his metaphors after a while.

The White House blamed this incident on an “overeager volunteer.” But now Scotty McClellan has quit trying to make up even bad excuses for the exclusions, instead now simply justifying them by saying things like “Well, there are plenty of opportunities for these people to be heard outside the hall.”

Hey, numbnuts, “those people” for whom you claim to have a mandate to rule, just wanted to hear the President and his gang speak on an important issue. You guys think you have some sort of imprimatur from the people to exercise authority, then why not act like it at least. Or are you really such a gang of weak-kneed waterheads that even the potential appearance of public criticism from the very voters you claim have nothing but undying love for Maximum Leader, is utterly intolerable and simply will not be admitted.

S. But the best part of the affair came from the faithful who were admitted to see the show and then -- like the bad horror movie it was -- laughed and catcalled at inappropriate moments (or appropriate moments, depending on your point of view) and many came away wondering how they could have ever put these low grade morons in power.

Apparently, one of the biggest laughs of the night belonged to Treasury Department Spokesman Rob Nichols, according to Talking Points Memo. Apparently, this guy delivered the line “there will be no transition costs in implementing the Bush architecture for Social Security” with a perfectly straight face and without breaking character. James Lipton would be proud. And now, the questionnaire made famous by Bernard Pivault...

Nichols apparently followed his hit “no costs” -- warning, don’t drink any liquid during this next part, but have some alcoholic libation close to hand for afterwards -- with his double platinum chart topper “10-year projection of $750 billion is not new costs, but simply like prepaying the mortgage.” It was ridiculous enough that Nichols had to finally retreat by saying that the financing issue was separate from the cost issue.

The line was taken ... poorly... according to witnesses on hand for the scene. Accoding to one Talking Points Memo reader who was on hand, “When the crowd reacted loudly, he repeated the claim saying ‘ this is precisely factual, [no transition costs]’. That just provoked laughter.”

At one point, the audience had become so incredulous, that Sally Canfield, a senior staffer for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, had to try to throw Nichols a life line by spewing out a series of numbers and claiming that each year the costs would be delayed by $690 billion until she was brought to a screeching halt by someone shouting “Liar” in the crowd.

But this is the line that is being repeated throughout the various levels of government, from Secretary of the Treasury John Snow all the way down the line, such as when Snow told a group of people in Bozeman, Montana that he believed personal retirement accounts funded by taking money out of Social Security would be cost-free for the existing Social Security system and would not effect the current benefits of retirees or near-retirees.

So with weak and pathetic rhetoric like this failing to sell even to the rubes and suckers who usually eat this stuff up like starving dung beetles at the fertilizer factory, is it no wonder that the advance people are wokring over time to scrub these events of the undesirable elements who would only ask uncomfortable questions and point out what everyone seems to instinctively know anyway, that Maximum Leader has no clothes.

As of this weekend, Maximum Leader is about half-way through his Rainbow Tour of America to sell this lemon of a policy idea to the American people, and the only thing he has managed to do so far is pretty much convince most people that he doesn’t have the first clue of how to fix a crisis that he invented out of whole cloth in the first place. Tell you what W, here is one for free from the Mojowire: You want to address the coming Social Security trust fund’s ability to keep the checks flowing to the elderly, stop spending money like a drunken sailor on his first shore leave in a foreign country you boob!

We do not have a Social Security problem, we have a problem with a structural deficit in the general fund that we can’t afford and which is only getting worse, since the President believes he has an unlimited America Card, recognized at fine establihshments all around the globe.

cue JAMES music
And now the music is telling me that we have an incoming transmission from the redoubtable Dr. S9…

J. That’s right. It is time once again for our regular contributor Dr. Strychnine, reporting from his super-secret, ultra-dope, mega-cool, extra-jiggy, Mojohaus spy satellite of love high in geosynchronous orbit above Baghdad by the Bay…take it away S9…

mojwire for 04.02 -- PART I

Mojowire for 04.02; vol. 3, no. 9

MUSIC: Intro/Hendrix, Star Spangled Banner
s9/ Prodigy, We Have Explosive
Exeunt/WildChild, Renegade Master


intro with Hendrix star spangled banner

J. Good Morning, and welcome to The Mojowire, Vol. 3, No. 9... I'm Mojo ...

S. And I'm Sean, it's Saturday, April 02, 2005, Day 1,447 of the Neocon Captivity, and here's the news for the week gone-by...

J. Brought to you by Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988. Now headlines, from Mojohaus:

S. First this morning, we note the passing of Terri Schiavo, and examine how this horrific carnival of death fetishists has effected our national psyche and how this is translating into even more theo-Stalinist danger for the Republic.

J. Next, the President is finding things tough out on the road as he and his merry pranksters roam the countryside trying to spin tales of fear and degradation in an increasingly vain attempt scare people into letting them kill Social Security, and now they have resorted to impersonating law
enforcement, stay tuned for this one.

S. Then our special correspondent from low earth orbit, Dr. Strychnine, brings us perilous tidings of a dangerous time. Do we still really live in a Democratic Republic? Dangerous times indeed. What happens when the masses finally get the idea that they've been lied to and abused on that kind of scale?

J. The National Defense Strategy was released to the public last week, or at least the comic book version of it. A short screed on the necessity of the United States to keep acting like that one unruly party guest that who gets too drunk, won't quiet down, picks fights with the other guests and insists
on brawling with the cops when they inevitably show up. Rummy, fat, drunk and stoopid is no way to go through life, son.

S. Finally this morning, we geek on 2008, assuming we have full, fair and honest elections. Who is ploughing the Earth for the GOP's alien love gardners now and which cheese eating surrender monkies from the Democratic Party have the ability to rumble? We'll break it all down for you...

J. ... So stand by to stand by while we get ready to pull the pin on this thing ...

WAR ON FAMILIES
J.
For those who were hoping that the hideous spectacle of the Terri Schiavo tragedy was finally passing, we have some bad news. It would appear that the Schiavo freek show has been but mere prologue for a religious conservative political machine that might be hearing the footsteps of a disatisfied population with a midterm election just barely 20 scant months away.

So the push is on to start rallying the troops now and get a legislative agenda rammed through Congress that would make Pontius Pilate weep. To start, The Center for American Progress’ most recent “outrage of the week” has the Schindlers, Terri Schiavo’s parents, in the depth of their grief and spirtual need, selling their supporters’ names and addresses through a conservative direct mailing house. So all those red-staters moved to send the Schindlers a couple bucks over the past years, watching them cry the blues on FOXNews, will now start to receive junk mail and unsolicited phone pitches from reactionary Stalinist nut jobs all over the United States.

Hey, doesn’t the U.S.A. Patriot Act make it a federal crime to make money by even being with otherwise innocuous groups who later in turn funnel that money to more questionable groups and people? But that’s a story for another time...

Fortuantely, it looks like the Stalinists in the administration have finally pushed the courts patience to the breaking point, and Judge Stanley Birch, an old school Constitutional Constructionist appointed by George the Elder, down to the 11th circuit, the day before Ms. Schiavo passed away, delivered a long overdue whoopin’ to Maximum Leader and his cadre of bloodless ghouls and religious inquisitors careening through Congress.

Look, it’s very simple... Separation of powers, got it? Not together; separate; one here, one there; like Brad and Jen.

Let’s go to the replay...
“The separation of powers implicit in our constitutional design was created “to assure, as nearly as possible, that each branch of government would confine itself to its assigned responsibility.” But when the fervor of political passions moves the Executive and the Legislative branches to act in ways inimical to basic constitutional principles, it is the duty of the judiciary to intervene. ...Pub[lic]. L[aw]. 109-3 is an unconstitutional infringement on core tenets underlying our constitutional system. Had Congress or the Florida legislature, in their legislative capacities, been able to constitutionally amend applicable law, we would have been constrained to apply that law...By opting to pass Pub[lic]. L[aw]. 109-3 instead, however, Congress chose to overstep constitutional boundaries into the province of the judiciary. Such an Act cannot be countenanced.”


This breath of law brought to the Schiavo tragedy resulted in almost unanimous howls of anger from the right, with scumbags like House Majority thug Tom Delay (who by the way, pulled the plug on his own father, many years ago, when his survival became inconvenient) swearing that firey biblickal vengenence would be wrecked upon the evil doers by the wrathful Old Testament hand of the pre-atomic space god Jehovah One with pillars of fire, lakes of blood, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Though for sheer dadaism, you have to go with radically anti-woman terrorist Randall Terry, who really bent the fabric of spacetime with a performance art stream of consciousness to the assembled gaggle of ghouls and reporters outside the hostel shortly after Schiavo’s death was announced. “An autopsy can show what parts of the brain were damaged, but it can’t show what technology might soon exist, that is now on the table, that could have helped her.”

Unfortunately, the radio receiver in the communications shack down in the Mojowire International Headquarters Bunker burst into flame upon transmitting those words, and the rest of the rant went, thankfully, unheeded.

You see, R.T.’s respect for the frontiers of medical science seems a bit disingenuous to us here, given that on his own personal website, he equates stem cell research with child pornography and in August of 2001 had this to say about the necessities of medical research on the PBS News Hour: “Mr. Bush, you have a duty before god: These human embryos are made in the image of God. You must be their protector not their betrayer.”

S. And even as the last terrible hours of Terri Schiavo’s life passsed and the circus began folding up its tents, watering the animals and printing the handbills for the next town down the road, Maximum Leader’s personal clerics were still bent on scaring people away from reproductive health care by attempting to seize medical records of women. You might remember last year, when then-Grand Inquisitor John Ashcroft attempted the subpoena of medical records of women who had visited Planned Parenthood, under the thin veneer of upholding a new law prohibiting so-called late-term abortions.

His attempts at this kind of foolishness were batted out of every court at every level he attempted, much to his discomfiture. However, this has not stopped his spiritual thugs in the several states from attempting the same kind of intimidation and harrassment. State prosecutors in Kansas and Indiana (who no doubt are thinking about an upcoming election season), are now going after the records.

The Kansas State Attorney General, along with notorious anti-woman terorist Phil Kline, are trying to get their hands on records that include "sexual history, birth control practices, prior medical and personal history, notes from the physical examinations, and a number of other things that the clinics contend are protected by the patient-physician privilege," according to a news aggregation report from the Center for American Progress.

This follows a case in Wisconsin, where K-mart pharmacist Neil Nossen refused to fill a prescription for birth control pills, and then refused to even transfer the prescription to another pharmacy, calling the medication “intrinsically evil.” The University of Wisconsin student then sued the pharmacist and won $20,000 and a chance to see a judge break off a foot in Nossen’s ass, by recommending him for a two year license suspension and a requirement to alert future employers of his weird religious fetish, saying that he plainly violated state medical ethics and laws regarding patient safety.

Instead of getting on the side of patients, the Wisconsin state legislature wasted no time in drafting legislation that would allow pharmacists to insert themselves into the decision making process between a doctor and patient, by being able to countermand a physician’s prescription on the basis of personal bigtory.

It would seem that these examples, along with the whole push back on 1,000 years of scientific advancement in the cause of unthinking, unscriptural and spiritually bereft faux-Christian theology, we have been seeing recently, are part of an urgent undertaking on the part of a right wing facist political machine that seems to be acting like they need to do whatever they are planning right now, because they might not get another chance if the midterm elections don’t go their way.

They at least can read polls as well as the next group of people, even if they believe that the math used to construct the results was all satanically inspired fakery, and those surveys are telling them that even out in the vast cheese-dog and beer quaffing heartland, Joe Sixpack, a registered Republican and gun owning SUV driving NASCAR fan is starting to show some discomfort with the biblickaly inspired law making that is going on in his name. From the bankruptcy bill, to Congress insinuating itself directly into the most intimate moments of his neighbors and family, the whole tone of the current body politics has taken on a hue he neither voted for nor is comfortable with.

It was one thing when they could all make some sort of common cause against the evil hairy communist liberals, out to take their guns, ship their mothers off to forced welfare work camps and recruit their children into the homosexual cannibalistic atheism movement. But now they are in charge, and all those nagging doubts they had about how much they really wanted these guys in in the driver’s seat are coming back to haunt them.

Remember, wireheads, what it was like: “You gotta believe me, these people are freeks, who will roll back the Enlightenment and have you all living like medieval serfs,” and they always pushed back, “ohh... you with the hysterical liberal hyperbole; they’re not that bad, we can control them.”

Bollocks! Thanks again red state. Nice job Dr. Frankenchurch, your creature is now rampaging through the village tipping over apple carts and frightening the children. And your response? “Don’t look at me man, I just made the thing, I’m not responsible for it once it leaves the factory.” Well guess what, jack-hole, we are holding you responsible. Seriously, when we are all shipped off to the religious reeducation camps, we are going to come looking for you.

BAMBOOZLEPALOOZA
J.
So word on the street is that the the administration is thinking of cancelling the remaining concert dates in their travelling carnival of Social Security mendacity. But not without first performing some of their greatest hits, like having Republican party operatives pose as Secret Service agents to roust the ideologically impure and blasphemers from the midst of the true believers.

And it’s important that they might want to do so, given that their current set of talking points are being batted out of the park by even the minimally literate in the heartland, who are beginning to get every bit as incredulous as us uppity leftists out here on the coast. It is difficult to know what W and his chimps were expecting. At some point, people are going to learn that there is no “Red Queen” to find in Three Card Monte, and that all you are doing is giving some cheap grifter all your hard earned greenbacks.

But I see we are getting a tad ahead of ourselves.

It would appear that the Social Security reform effort, currently on life support, may be about to get the plug pulled, if Maximum Leader and Ringmaster Rove can’t pull something out of their methane ports by Labor Day, the semi-official kickoff of the midterm election campaign season. To that end, W and his travelling road show have been making the rounds of city halls, Rotary Clubs and college campuses trying to scare the bejesus out of people in order to make them believe that unless they sign on to Maximum Leader’s non-proposal proposals, they will all be eating cat food in their dotage.

This has been termed the “Bamboozlepalooza” tour by one of our ranking
Blogistani Imams, Comrade Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo. He has devoted a goodly amount of his life to reporting on this issue in the past several months, so you might want to steer over there at some point and groove on his takes.

One the main features of these media side shows, has been the recurrent theme of only star-belly sneetches being allowed to come inside the tent to hear the preacher. Anyone who might be anything less than 101 percent loyal to the President with their every waking thought is being summarily escorted off the premises, apparently now by people who are skirting dangerously close to committing the serious felony of impersonating Secret Service agents.

We have this report from Denver last week of three people who managed to get into the event, and were then approached by a man who sported the uniform of the day of a Secret Service agent, including the earpiece and pythagorean precision haircut, who ID himself, or was ID by another event staffer as an agent. Apparently these three people, who were not being disruptive, carrying signs, wearing slogans, or even saying anything, arrived in a car that had a “no blood for oil” bumper sticker, which obviously tagged them as subversive American-hating liberals bent on the destruction of our God-fearing country’s way of life.

It was not until later that the real Secret Service, which, frankly, has to be getting really tired of this kind of nonsense by now, informed the victims of our little parable here, that the person involved was not any kind of Secret Service agent, and that they had no knowledge of these events.

This raises a disquieting possibility. Not only are Republican Party operatives getting their Tom Clancy on by getting into their Secret Service gear and rousting citizens at public events, but it would also seem that while the taxpayers are footing the bill for the President’s national tour to promote the destruction of Social Security, that many of those same taxpayers are specifically not welcome at the party.

And in case you are wondering, that is also prohibited by law. When the taxpayer picks up the tab, the taxpayer gets to come to the shindig, the end.

It’s not like this is an isolated incident, either. There was a situation about a month ago, when it was learned that the Fargo stop on Bamboozelpalooza was also being pretty exclusive. A “blacklist” of more than 40 local people was leaked to the press, including the names of local elected Democratic Representatives and activists, basically on the premise that they were not supportive of the President’s policies ... or is it non-policies, or his non-bidding against himself, it gets hard to follow his metaphors after a while.

The White House blamed this incident on an “overeager volunteer.” But now Scotty McClellan has quit trying to make up even bad excuses for the exclusions, instead now simply justifying them by saying things like “Well, there are plenty of opportunities for these people to be heard outside the hall.”

Hey, numbnuts, “those people” for whom you claim to have a mandate to rule, just wanted to hear the President and his gang speak on an important issue. You guys think you have some sort of imprimatur from the people to exercise authority, then why not act like it at least. Or are you really such a gang of weak-kneed waterheads that even the potential appearance of public criticism from the very voters you claim have nothing but undying love for Maximum Leader, is utterly intolerable and simply will not be admitted.

S. But the best part of the affair came from the faithful who were admitted to see the show and then -- like the bad horror movie it was -- laughed and catcalled at inappropriate moments (or appropriate moments, depending on your point of view) and many came away wondering how they could have ever put these low grade morons in power.

Apparently, one of the biggest laughs of the night belonged to Treasury Department Spokesman Rob Nichols, according to Talking Points Memo. Apparently, this guy delivered the line “there will be no transition costs in implementing the Bush architecture for Social Security” with a perfectly straight face and without breaking character. James Lipton would be proud. And now, the questionnaire made famous by Bernard Pivault...

Nichols apparently followed his hit “no costs” -- warning, don’t drink any liquid during this next part, but have some alcoholic libation close to hand for afterwards -- with his double platinum chart topper “10-year projection of $750 billion is not new costs, but simply like prepaying the mortgage.” It was ridiculous enough that Nichols had to finally retreat by saying that the financing issue was separate from the cost issue.

The line was taken ... poorly... according to witnesses on hand for the scene. Accoding to one Talking Points Memo reader who was on hand, “When the crowd reacted loudly, he repeated the claim saying ‘ this is precisely factual, [no transition costs]’. That just provoked laughter.”

At one point, the audience had become so incredulous, that Sally Canfield, a senior staffer for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, had to try to throw Nichols a life line by spewing out a series of numbers and claiming that each year the costs would be delayed by $690 billion until she was brought to a screeching halt by someone shouting “Liar” in the crowd.

But this is the line that is being repeated throughout the various levels of government, from Secretary of the Treasury John Snow all the way down the line, such as when Snow told a group of people in Bozeman, Montana that he believed personal retirement accounts funded by taking money out of Social Security would be cost-free for the existing Social Security system and would not effect the current benefits of retirees or near-retirees.

So with weak and pathetic rhetoric like this failing to sell even to the rubes and suckers who usually eat this stuff up like starving dung beetles at the fertilizer factory, is it no wonder that the advance people are wokring over time to scrub these events of the undesirable elements who would only ask uncomfortable questions and point out what everyone seems to instinctively know anyway, that Maximum Leader has no clothes.

As of this weekend, Maximum Leader is about half-way through his Rainbow Tour of America to sell this lemon of a policy idea to the American people, and the only thing he has managed to do so far is pretty much convince most people that he doesn’t have the first clue of how to fix a crisis that he invented out of whole cloth in the first place. Tell you what W, here is one for free from the Mojowire: You want to address the coming Social Security trust fund’s ability to keep the checks flowing to the elderly, stop spending money like a drunken sailor on his first shore leave in a foreign country you boob!

We do not have a Social Security problem, we have a problem with a structural deficit in the general fund that we can’t afford and which is only getting worse, since the President believes he has an unlimited America Card, recognized at fine establihshments all around the globe.

cue JAMES music
And now the music is telling me that we have an incoming transmission from the redoubtable Dr. S9…

J. That’s right. It is time once again for our regular contributor Dr. Strychnine, reporting from his super-secret, ultra-dope, mega-cool, extra-jiggy, Mojohaus spy satellite of love high in geosynchronous orbit above Baghdad by the Bay…take it away S9…

Mojwire for 04.02 -- PART II

PERILOUS TIDINGS
S9.
Greetings fellow literate primates of the Sol System, and a hearty shout out to all the other sapient minds-- both natural and artificial-- within the reach of my voice. Here on S9 Station, it's been a slow week. We reported our income to the U.S. Infernal Revenue Service. One of our friends has suffered a ventricular fibrillation, and has still not regained consciousness after a week. We briefly considered selling our orbital insertion rights to some poor, hapless real-estate flipper-- leveraged up to his eyeballs and convinced that the difference between Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 bankruptcies will never be an issue he needs to know about-- and after the asset bubble pops, buying the Satellite of Love back from him for less than he paid us to borrow it for a few months. But then we decided we like our neighbors too much to take a short position in the value of real property in our neighborhood.

So, we had plenty of time to review the bidding on the "black box voting" problem in the United States of America. You all remember the black box voting problem, right? That's the one where we kept whining at you about how the machines used in a staggering number of districts around the country to count the votes are ridiculously vulnerable to automated tampering, allowing the outcomes of nationwide elections for the highest political offices to be decided by a tiny cabal of criminals without there being any hope of even catching them in the act, much less proving it even happened afterward.

On Thursday this week, the Akron Beacon Journal in Ohio ran a story about a group of statisticians called 'US Count Votes' who analyzed the data behind the exit polls in the 2004 Presidential election in Ohio. They came up with a sensational statement to summarize their results: there's a one-in-959,000 chance that exit polls could have been as wrong as they turned out to be. As Mojo no doubt remembers so clearly, the exit polls in Ohio were showing Kerry with a three point lead, but when the final count was certified, the winner was Bush by 2.5 percent. This discrepancy in exit polling is unprecedented. If a result like this had happened in Soviet Russia, nobody would have trusted the official results-- not even in Russia, much less in the West.

Naturally, the usual suspects cried foul-- and, up here in geosynch orbit, you could even hear our howls of protest in the cold vacuum of space. We were convinced that the paperless, auditless, proprietary software voting systems used in Ohio were horribly insecure and that the Ohio Secretary of State was a lying, untrustable, contemptible hack who would not fail to find at least ninety-three different ways to cheat the election and get away with it. Nerfing the Kerry vote in the Diebold vote tabulation software was only the easiest of countless different methods of fudging the results.

The official party line on the exit poll discrepancies is provided by the firms that conducted the polls, Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. They say the discrepancies are the result of Bush voters in Kerry strongholds being "too shy" to answer exit polls at the rate Kerry voters did. It turns out that you don't have to work very hard to shoot down the official story with a bit of high school algebra. See, the problem is that the discrepancies are *larger* in the Bush strongholds than elsewhere in the state-- which is the opposite of what the official story says to expect.

The statisticians at US Count Votes say the official story is "implausible," and that the "possibility that the vote count was not accurately recorded needs further investigation." Which is the polite academic pinhead way of saying, "The election was stolen. Your votes weren't counted. We told you fscking people this would happen."

The report also goes on to conclude, "All voting equipment technologies except paper ballots were associated with large unexplained exit poll discrepancies all favoring the same party, (which) certainly warrants further inquiry."

The response from Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to the report? He sent a spokesman to say, "What are you going to do except laugh at it? We're not particularly interested in [the report's findings]. We wish them luck, but hope they find something more interesting to do."

The spokesman went on to say, "These (Bush) voters have been much maligned by outside political forces who didn't like the way they voted. The weather's turning nice. There are more interesting things to do than beat a dead horse."

Hear that, Democrats? The Republicans think you had your accountability moment last year, when you had a chance to do something about the vulnerability to election fraud posed by the black box voting system rolling out across the country into election precincts near you. But you blew it, and now it's too late.

If you're a Democrat, and you live in a heavily Republican district-- like every loyal wirehead inside the signal footprint of this radio station-- you gotta know now that your vote doesn't count. There's no reason to vote if there can be no assurance that the counting will be accurate. And there isn't. The Republicans have proven to the world that they can nerf the Democratic vote and shout down with laughter any attempt to call it fraud.

I never thought it would get so bad that I would find myself making a call this bleak, but friends-- it is time to start boycotting elections in America. If neither Democrats nor Republicans can take seriously such stark and obvious evidence of fraud and corruption as these glaring discrepancies in the exit polls, then voting in sham elections will only encourage further fraud and corruption.

Remember, if you cast a ballot without any confidence that your vote is counted correctly, then you give these authoritarian proto-fascists the false cover of appearing to operate with the consent of a democracy. I know it's hard to give up on the idea that America has free and fair elections, but there really isn't any alternative anymore. The Republicans aren't really trying to hide what they are doing.

"What are you going to do except laugh?" Remember that. "What are you going to do except laugh?"

Boycotting elections is a very, *very* serious step-- and it's more than just refusing to vote. To do it effectively, you have to join a movement that agitates for like-minded people to join the boycott and take a principled stand against fraud and corruption in the election process. And when the movement achieves a critical momentum, it has to be ready to demand
substantial reforms while accepting no compromise to the essential requirement that transparency and integrity be restored
to the election system.

Get involved. Read up on the black box voting problem. Get serious about democracy, for crying out loud. Do you need to have a Tianenman Square event before you start to get it? Because trust me, kids-- you do *not* want to see what this place will become if it pisses away its democracy. Some of us will not stay sitting down forever.

We have limits. Do *not* push us when we're fscked.

“FATALLY CONTRARY OR INCONSISTENT...”
J.
“Fatally contrary or inconsistent” seems to be a phrase more and more people in authority are using these days when describing Maximum Leader’s war on who the hell ever and the New American Mercantile Empire’s push for expanding Asian markets. I mean, first it was impediments to improving the military kangaroo courts masquerading as due process for people tortured into confessing crimes they never committed, then it was a Presidential commission’s impressisions of our national intelligence appareatus’ many screw ups, cover ups and omissions in the run up to our current Mesopotamian
adventure, as well as our apparent inability to accurately assess real threats from places like Iran or North Korea.

This seems to be a recurring theme these days in the quest to protect the American people from the terror of Al Qaeda piloted flying saucers and radical Communist sharks with lasers strapped to the foreheads...

But we will let people read those documents for themselves. For our part, the national intelligence commission’s work was a fat load of bunk designed specifically to deflect blame for the war from Maximum Leader’s mendacity and place it squarely where they think it belongs -- on Bill Clinton. The commission specifically notes that they were prohibited from examining the issue of whether the White House misused intelligence to sell the war to the American people or applied political pressure to the intelligence services to spin up politically correct assessments of the Iraqi threat.

So given all that, it is with no small amount of trepidation that we examine the release of the National Defense Strategy -- hey, Mike, is there some echo or reverb we can get when I say that... for real, that needs a little extra something there...

National Defense Strategy!

This document released recently purports to be the essential planning priniciples of how we are going to defeat the swarthy Mussel-man and his spineless and kniving French allies. At 25 pages or so, including a table of contents, two cover pages and executive summary, it really is little more than a basic manifesto for American international hegemony as opposed to a serious planning document. But nonetheless, there are some great bits.

This first one is the bit that got us into this opus in the first place, coming courtesy of Law Professor and part time legal ethics philosopher Jack Balkin at Balkinzation.com , who brought us the money shot: “Our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes and terrorism."

There, you got that, according to the organizing principles of American self-defense in the early 21st Century, those who try to hold the United States to some level of accountability through internationally recongized protocols and procedures are moral equivalents to terrorists. They are the tools of the weak, apparently. You know, that quote right there pretty much tells you all you need to know about this thing.

This is a perfect description of the current geopolitical groupthink that infects our foreign policy at present. Everyone who believes the U.S. is not acting correctly is with the terrorists and is a declared enemy of freedom and liberty and apple pie and mom and American SUVs and pick up trucks and Toby Keith. And you better watch out for TK, I hear any day now he is thinking about joining up, and then the bad guys will really be in for it. Any day now... that’s okay, we’ll wait... any time now TK...

But back to the (echo please Mike) National Defense Strategy... Sorry, dude, I love that...

Some of our other favorite rhetorical low-lights from this screed include this line, immediately proceeding the crack back against international law: “Our leading position in world affairs will continue to breed unease, a degree of resentment and resistance.” Really? Ya think? And just why is that Mr. Wizard? Could it have anything to do with the United States’ current disregard for the rule of law, normative international consensus and shameless hypocrisy? Could any of that be a potential causes of resentment and resistance?

But more than that, there is a tacit acknowledgement in that statement that the rest of the world hates us, will work against us, and instead of looking at our behavior to see what we might want to consider doing differently to smooth out relations, we are just going to take it from them and ascribe them to be enemies, all.

S. There is a flip side to all of this, though. It would appear through a thorough reading of the document that we have not learned one of the hardest lessons of the Cold War, and that is that fighting by proxy and arming psychopaths who will say whatever we want them to say as long we keep the lawyers, guns and money coming is not a particularly healthy form of international relations, especially given the fact that we are now engaged in not one, but two simultaneous asymetric wars of attrition in Asia, primarily fueled by Cold War blowback.

This all serves two larger overall Strategic Objectives of the report, which can be labelled thus: first, ecuring strategic access and retaining global freedom of action and second strengthening strategic alliances and partnerships. So forget the earlier rhetoric that would seem to make these two goals all but impossible, let’s just start with the first objective: “we will promote the security, prosperity and freedom of action of the United States and its partners by securiting access to key regions...”

“Prosperity?” When did prosperity become a national security issue? Yeah, I know, on 4 Nov. 2000, when W’s friends managed to steal a national election.

Okay, moving on with our lives, we come to objective number two, which states specifically: “we will expand the community of nations that share principles and interests with us.” Well, that’s bad on just so many different levels... remember what we were just saying about blowback? Right now this is a country who’s principles include torturing confessions out of people, or slaughtering civilians who have the temerity to want the U.S. to stop shooting up their country like crazed samurai hillbillies out of a Quentin Tarentino movie.

And this is being anticipated in the strategy given that one of the last thing document calls for is a reworking of international agreements that essentially coerce all other nation states into accepting U.S. military presense whenever the hell we feel like it, and specifically calling for legal arrangements to shield U.S. forces from any international rule of law, such as the International Criminal Courts. Let me repeat that for you, prohibiting international accountability for our actions oveseas is now an officialy policy goal of the adminstration.

Ours is a country who’s interests seem to be tied to securing as much oil-rich land as possible, while ignoring not only neighboring massacres and genocide, i.e. Darfur in the Sudan, but also giving the old wink and nod to places like Uzbekistan, where their idea of due process and rule of law is boiling people to death as regular police interrogation procedure.

And this is apparently all good, because our (echo please) National Defense Strategy also specifically calls for getting proxies to fight for us around the world in the war on terror, as we seek to take the fight to the enemy. Because as we all know, non-state terror organizations are bound by geography, so fighting them on the streets of Kabul or in the mountains of Turkmenistan will prevent them from attacking the United States... are these people drinking the bong water? What the hell is wrong with them?!

Look, this is not hating the United States, it is about asking some legitimate questions of the people who are currently trying to plan for its long term strategic place in the world. Unfortunately, their world view seems more influenced by “Dirk Pitt” adventure novels and Soldier of Fortune magazine, than by any real-world intellectual analysis of our place in the international order.

The last thing we would want to suggest is that Al Qaeda is not for real. Look, 9/11 happened and there are people out there who are undoubtedly plotting the next big American body count. Our problem is that we are not seeing effective strategies being promulgated here. This is a rehashing of tired, old Cold War concepts, dressed up in talk about smaller, lighter, more deployable forces. Those forces capabilities won’t mean anything if our doctrine sucks, which it really does at this point.

We know this sounds like a lot of wingeing from the sidelines on this one, but given that a Presidential commission has recently come out and described the horrible series of failures and incompetence that lead to the 9/11 attacks, we are seeing with almost prescient clarity a time when the next attack comes and the next commission looks back on this worthless strategy document and wonders aloud to the public, “what the hell were they thinking? Fat, drunk and stoopid is no way to go through life.”

That is a day we, at least, would sincerely like to avoid.

THE ORACLE SPEAKS, 2008
J.
I just want to apologize in advance wireheads for the political speculation we are about to engage in. I know you are still working through your election 2004 hangover, and the acidic taste of the election night bile still rises up into mouth every night as you contemplate four more years of this dangerous administration and their various cranks exercising power in an increasingly perilous world.

But we really need to start thinking about the 2008 election. And yes, we understand that this is all predicated on the notion that we will have a real, open fair and honest election in 2008. Or that we will have any election at all in 2008, so at least indulge us that far. We have nice, fat, open seat in the oval office. And make no mistake, the 2008 campaign is going make the 2004 campaign look like Lincoln Douglas debate in terms of vicious slander and cruel, naked contempt for the intelligence of the electorate.

The Schavio debacle was really the opening salvo in the 08 campaign. Uncle Jeb, and yes, we are really going to have a candidate named after a character from the Andy Griffith Show, made the first play for the Jesus-facists and theo-Stalinists. Jeb already had some street cred with this crowd, but if 2004 is any guide, the open seat will summon the eerie blue skin, inbread zombie hillbilly from their dank caves out in the GOP hinterland who will slice off bits and pieces of that vote depending on which particular flavor of Jesus-facism they represent.

Bill Frist, a transplant surgeon before he sold his soul to Karl Rove, and another sure contender in the sad tragedy that will be the 2808 Republican primary, attempted to ingratiate himself with these people by pretending not to be doctor, just a politician who plays one on TV. He diagnosed the extent of Terry Schiavos brain damage by watching a video made by her parents of Terry demonstrating a variety of autonomic nervous system responses.

Props to Billy-Bob Frist, I thought your performance on ABC news a few months back where you refused to acknowledge the fallacy of HIV transmission through tears and sweat was the most craven act by a doctor for political gain I had ever seen. Thanks for raising the bar, Dr. Feelgood.

So we have Bill Frist and Jeb Bush, who else can we expect to join the festivities? Don't count out John McCain. If his health permits, he will make another try at it. He pissed in the cornflakes of the Jesus-facists in 2000, but he has been the biggest supporter of the Presidents War on Terror and the Iraq invasion.

His refusal to defend the Administrations grotesque stance on torture might undermine that however. But a ressurected and reconstituted Jackalope McCain could present a formidable campaign if he had a prayer of making it out of the primaries. He has always been a tough campaigner, and he has good grip on how the media works. But does he have the requisite brain damage and utter lack of a moral compass to go mano a mano with Frist or Jeb? Perhaps not, but time will tell.

Karl Rove will never allow John McCain to become President, if has to photoshop up the goat sex pictures himself. McCain almost derailed W's campaign in 2000, and that Darth Rove does not forgive. Ever. As far as other contenders, be assured of one thing. No pro choice republican will ever make it out of the primary. The Jesus-facists will make sure of it. They will vote for McCain before they allow Rudy Giuliani or Pataki or any other Pro-choice Republican get the nomination.

The GOP nominee will be the one that manages to buttsmooch the Jesus-facists and assure the corporate oligarchs that the gang rape of the Federal treasury will continue at the same time. If we were to handicap the race so far, Provider Mojo bets 200 Quatloos on Jeb. Provider Sean bets 250 Quatloos on a relative outsider with Jesus-facist cred like Lindsey Graham.

S. On the Dem side, don't get your hopes up yet. The suspected candidates so far represent the usual menagerie of Dem contenders. John Kerry will most likely try again, John Edwards might as well. The real drama on this side will be Hilary Clinton. Many of the elite handicappers on the chat shows and the political columns regard Hilary as a disastrous choice for the Dems, and a sure failure in a General election. That remains to be seen.

Certainly, Hilary is a DLC Center Left Dem like her husband in policy terms. And no one will confuse her carefully managed public persona with the natural ease Bubba had with a camera and a crowd. But we at the Mojowire say: Do not underestimate this person. Think about it. She has one of the most important skills a modern pol needs, she can raise money.

And that she does, by the boatload. She will have a national fundraising op by the 2008 campaign that will rival the one W had in 2004. She is tough. Tough like you only could get after the eight years of no rules political street fighting during the Ken Starr GOP investigations and the national bloodsport that was Monicagate. The Clintons are tough, and are at their best when they have their backs against the wall. The people who run their campaigns are smart, tough and mean; the kind of mean that comes from having Bob Barr, Trent Lott and Haley Barbour spend every waking ounce of energy on making your life a living hell. And we define mean using the Karl Rove standard. She is disciplined, she stays on message consistently, just like the President does. She has massive cred with liberal constituencies that could survive a break to the middle in the General election.

Don't get us wrong, she has a many serious issues. She has serious credibility issues with the general electorate, the Right hates her with a passion, and will have no trouble raising money to stop her. She is not a natural campaigner, and just think of the Kerry campaign when you want to know how much of a problem that is. But despite these issues, and more besides, do not count her out. And no geeks, try to relax, Barack Obama is too new and young to make a run for the Presidency yet. He's going to be President one day, but not in 2008. Let him get a term or two in the Senate first and distinguish himself there, then we'll get him to run for President.

The rest of the field seems to revolve around Dem Governors and Senators. Even Bayh, Senator from Indiana, who has already started raising money and putting together organization in Iowa and New Hampshire; Mark Warner, Governor of Virginia, Scweitze from Montana, a Progressive Dem Governor from a Red State. Dean has said he won't run now that he is DNC chair. Which is actually really good news. As much as we thought he would be a great President, the Doctor is currently needed more in his present post as message-czar and fundraiser in chief. The Dem primary hopefully will not yield us another candidate we have to cringe to support, though Don't hold your breath. Provider Sean bets 400 Quatloos that Hilary takes the nomination.

The most crucial question in this sort of speculation really is: what will the biggest issues be in the campaign. Without a doubt, the state of the Iraq occupation and insurgency will be the defining question. If we are still in Iraq engaged in quelling an insurgency, than that will be the essential question. We would assume though, that W will flee Iraq if for nothing else to allow Jeb to declare victory there.

But there are still some significant and dark domestic economic clouds on the horizon, as well. With Goldman Sachs, the world's leading energy futures broker, predicting $104 a barrel for oil this year, job creation and wage stagnation still a major concern, and the frightening visage of the Jesus-facists getting their run in Congress, this could actually manage to swing the so-called "vital center" back to the left. A lot of these people are looking at Iraq, they are wondering why they're jobs are getting shipped overseas and why they're paying $3 a gallon for gas, while watching the spectacle of a Congress convening in the middle of the night to get its Pharisee-on and attempt to destroy the rule of law, even actaully debating the return of debtors prisons, and many of them are thinking, "sure, I'm kind of conservative, and I voted Republican, but I sure as hell didn't vote for this nonsense." Too bad, Red-Stater, yes you did. Good news is you will be given a chance very soon to rectify your mistake. And remember, admission is the first step to healing.

So there you have it, our initial speculation on the 2008 cycle. We will update you on the state of this race as it continues to shape up. Let's hope it shapes up without tragic spectacles like the Schivio case. Considering the desperate greed and hatred of the GOP, don't count on it.

J. It's 587 days until the midterm election and our patriotic thought for the week is: free, fair elections means the terrorists win, or as John Ashcroft used to say... “Provider Ashcroft places 500 quatloos on 'theocratic trainwreck!'”

S. And that’s all for this week, tune in again soon for another exciting installment, until, of course, we are declared enemies of the state.

And remember, you can now email the Mojowire at Mojohaus@hotmail.com, that’s M-O-J-O-H-A-U-S@hotmail.com. Email, us hippies!

J. And now you can check out the Mojowire online at Mojowire.Blogspot.com; you can read the entire archive along with our general ramblings...

This has been the Mojowire, brought to you by Mojohaus...Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988, and produced by our super funky fly producer Mike Payne and the Darkling Eclectica, here on KUCI, 88.9...