The Mighty Billmon Speaks

You listen!

Via Greg Sargent at Talking Point Memo, I see the McCain campaign (a.k.a. the kinder, gentler lynch mob) is ramping up the volume on its guilt-by-association campaign linking Obama to retired Weatherman Bill Ayers -- and dispensing with its false flag operation in the process.

From McCain spokesperson Brian Rogers:

"The fact that Barack Obama chose to launch his political career at the home of an unrepentant terrorist raises more questions about Senator Obama's judgment than any TV ad ever could . . ." etc. etc.

More of that "civil," "respectful" campaign McCain promised -- respecful as in, "we will respectfully tear that uppity you-know-what's face clean off his head."

But, unlike most of McRove's spitball volleys (like his vapid Obama-is-a-celebrity ads) this one actually interests me, because I'm curious to see if a slur so hopelessly retro still has some juice left in it.
[...]

Don't miss the rest of it.

(Via the indispensible Cursor.Org.)

Paging Gov. Eagleton to the History Repeats Ward, Stat!

Obama picks Biden as running mate. The GOP already had the commercials waiting...

Please join us here at the Mojowire in welcoming our new geriatric overlord Sen Palpatine McCain.

Thanks for nothing Obama...

mojo sends

Yellow Alert: Election approaching..

So the Dem Convention is rolling up on us, and it occured to me we haven't really gotten into the politics or the policy issues very much. I would like to kick off a series of posts on the election by linking to this article by David Leonhardt of the New York Times on Obama's economic policy and idelogical point of view. The article is not only insightful on Obama's economic perspective, but provides background on the economic policies and outcomes of the last 30 years. This jumped out at me:

Sunstein, now on the faculty at Harvard, has a name for this approach: “I like to think of him as a ‘University of Chicago’ Democrat.”
It’s a useful label. Today’s Democratic consensus has moved the party to the left, and on issues like inequality and climate change, Obama appears willing to be even more aggressive than many fellow Democrats. From this standpoint, he’s a true liberal. Yet he also says he believes that there are significant parts of Reaganism worth preserving. So his policies often involve setting up a government program to address a market failure but then trying to harness the power of the market within that program. This, at times, makes him look like a conservative Democrat.

The University of Chicago, as you might know, is ground zero of the supply size market economics that has dominated American economic policies for the last 30 years. It's where Milton Friedman made his lair, and his devotion to the idea of the primacy of markets defines the outlook of this economic perspective. The way Obama seems to be integrating that point of view with his other more liberal views is quite fascinating. Give the article a read.

Another Brick In The Wall

Via Cab Drollery, we learn about prisoner number 650 at the infamous Salt Pit.

"We now know the screams came from a woman who has been held in Bagram for some years. And she is Prisoner No. 650," Ridley disclosed at a recent Press conference in Pakistan.

And I strongly suspect that Prisoner No. 650 is none other than Dr Aafia Siddiqui. It is quite possible that her captors decided to end her isolation after the Pakistani Press and activists like Yvonne Ridley began increasingly talking about the Prisoner No. 650 and how she was tortured and abused physically, mentally and sexually for the past four years.

Pure speculation by Yvonne Ridley and Aijaz Zaka Syed? Perhaps. Anti-American rhetoric by a disgruntled Arab? It's certainly possible. Ten years ago I would have dismissed this report out of hand. After all, surely no civilized government would behave in such a fashion, and, if it did, surely our free press would have gone through walls to uncover the behavior.

That was ten years ago. Now, I'm not so sure.

Vote RoboBushCheney in 2008! Thank God for them! They SHINEY!

The Only Surprise...

... is that it took the GOP shitbird machine this long to do this

mojo sends

Debates, Bitches!

Paris Hilton has redeemed herself somewhat in my eyes with this:

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Greg Sargent over at Comrade Joshua's bunker makes a good point about the pathetic nature of the GOP mockery machine this time around that allows Paris Hilton of all people to tee off on the Jackelope McCain.

mojo sends

Who needs Knights when you have lawyers?

This is just beyond priceless

Knights Templar heirs in legal battle with the Pope
The heirs of the Knights Templar have launched a legal battle in Spain to force the Pope to restore the reputation of the disgraced order which was accused of heresy and dissolved seven centuries ago. Read the rest.

Maybe descendents of Roman Legionaires can sue descendents of Visigoths and Vandals for damages and psychological stress for invading the Empire and sacking Rome. The possibilities are endless...

Okay Holy Blood, Holy Grail geeks, get your conspiracy hats on and get cracking..

Look Who's Back On The Spike...

Via Atrios... it's Billmon. That would be The Mighty Billmon to us benighted wankers on the hinterlands of Blogotopia...

Don't worry, Billmon. You'll be able to quit again after the campaign is over. Maybe it'll take for good next time.

I'm surprised it took this long...

The McCain campaign finally began going where we all knew the GOP would eventually go with a black candidate..Look out Red State, it's time to hide the white womens..:

It's only marginally about celebrity. This is about young white girls and black men. Let racism ring...!

A**holes...

Can You Hear Me Now?!

So now they have started shooting.

"Gunfire erupted Sunday during the children's performance at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, which authorities said Jim D. Adkisson intentionally targeted because of its congregation's liberal policies. A four-page letter found in Adkisson's SUV indicated he picked the church because, the police chief said, 'he hated the liberal movement.'"

Of course the source of those beliefs should come as no surprise:

"Still seized three books from Adkisson's home, including "The O'Reilly Factor," by television commentator Bill O'Reilly; "Liberalism is a Mental Disorder," by radio personality Michael Savage; and "Let Freedom Ring," by political pundit Sean Hannity."

Frankly, I'm not sure which cranks me more, the blatant encouragement behind the attack or the pious bleatings of the Right Blogistan to "end the politicizing of personal tragedies..."

I really think this my favorite part though from RealClearPolitics:

"In other words, the Adkisson case provides a case study in the secular demonology of the left. We're seeing the politics of hatred in action. It's marked by demands for vengeance and modes of discourse seeking to protect the perceived purity of the liberal sensibility. It is irreligious and opportunistic. It is the repudiation of decency."

A guy guns down a bunch of kids in a church because he "hates the liberal movement," and our anger over this is actually the problem.

The moral bankruptcy and toxic politically-degenerate nature of blaming the victims of what was nothing more less than a public lynching, is really a new low. Of course a lot of the usual suspects... the Moonbatteries, Emperor Mishas, Michelle Malkins, have not even mentioned this, not even in the misbegotten attempt at raising the spectre of "gun control = death" hackery so common in the wake of such tragedies.

Perhaps it is because they are not-so-secretly pleased that Unitarians are pacifists for the most part and would not think of bringing instruments of violence into church that they make easier targets...

You know... I am trying real hard keep a leash on my own nascent pacifism... but this kind of shit is only going to become more common place I am afraid and that is going to lead to an open shooting conflict. These people are bound and determine to turn America into Northern Ireland c. 1975 or Israel c. anytime in the last 50 years.

I am just going to stop now, before I write something that gets me in trouble...

mojo sends

History Repeats As Farce

Consider this from the CarpetBagger Report:

[...]
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s chief economic adviser, told Slate, “[McCain] has certainly I’m sure said things in town halls that don’t jibe perfectly with his written plan. But that doesn’t mean it’s official.”

Got that? If we want to better understand John McCain’s economic policies, we should overlook what John McCain says about his economic policies. McCain’s “official” positions don’t come from McCain.
[...]

Good to know that we have so mainstreamed this nonsense that nobody even blinks when it happens.

Think about this for a second, people... we have presumptive GOP nominee for President openly lying in campaign speeches, and when he's called on it by the evil liberal press, the official response from the campaign is that the candidate doesn't speak for himself when he's making personal appearances in public.

This should be an astounding development. It's a milestone in the deterioration of our politics.

We have become so inured to the sad state of affairs of having a President so divorced from reality that his public appearances are a surreal farce that we don't even blink when his party expressly claims that their chosen successor is a suitable candidate because he's good at lying to the public.

Does The CIA Need To Update Its Operations Manual?

I hear the unmistakable sound of rats fucking.

Get Your War On!

Oh Canada, which is where this story gets the proper headline, as opposed to here in the United States, where the extensibility of the feature enhancements make for streamlining the core competencies of news organizations more extensive and competently, featureful...

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress should explicitly declare a state of armed conflict with al Qaeda to make clear the United States can detain suspected members as long as the war on terrorism lasts, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Monday.

Mukasey urged Congress to make the declaration in a package of legislative proposals to establish a legal process for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo, in response to a Supreme Court ruling last month that detainees had a constitutional right to challenge their detention.

"Any legislation should acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us," Mukasey said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

"Congress should reaffirm that for the duration of the conflict the United States may detain as enemy combatants those who have engaged in hostilities or purposefully supported al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations," he said.

Mukasey was not asking for a formal declaration of war, which would trigger certain emergency powers under the Constitution and international law, a Justice Department spokesman said. U.S. President George W. Bush has on numerous occasions said the United States was "at war" against terrorists and cited that as a basis for his powers.

[...]

Mukasey may not have *explicitly* asked for it, but that's no reason to think the Congress won't deliver it anyway.

Q1: How many people here can recite the collective and exhaustive list of all those "certain emergency powers" such a formal declaration would legally provide to the executive branch?

Q2: How many of those powers have yet to be exercised by this President despite not having been legally afforded to him?

water policy wonkage

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert is a brilliant book about the history of water policy in the West, particularly California. Micheal O'Hare at The Reality Based Community points out however, that the state of water issues in Ca has changed since 1986 when the book was published, and that water policy geeks would be well advised to get a little current on how things work now. If you are interested in these issues, it's a succinct update on what has changed in water and ag policy since then. Check it out.

Stupid Or Evil? You Decide!

Over at the Lake, Dr. Murphy serves up a round of medical horror that makes me clutch my head like a stunned monkey.

For at least two years, the Nashville PD have been recklessly endangering citizens by using emergency medical personnel to forcibly inject Versed -- a powerful prescription medication with side effects including agitation and confusion -- into agitated, confused people. This potentially lethal stupidity is what we can expect when people who go to work with guns on their belt decide to play "doctor".

Or, as I would say, "...when credible reports of official state-sanctioned drug torture are ignored by policy-makers and the perpetrators are not held accountable for their crimes."

I want to scream at the top of my lungs that I told you this would happen, but the truth is I didn't specifically imagine this particular variant of the horror. But look, the situation is this: we let a bunch of assholes in the state security apparatus get away with using medical procedures to apply punishment for refusing to respect their authoritay, so now we're going to see more of it.

Think about that the next time you voluntarily let somebody knock you out before you go into a surgery.

Listen To The Chair Leg Of Truth!

It does not lie!

Those Courageous Democrats!

Remind me again why I should feel hopeful that Democrats are interested in restoring the rule of law.

I have firm confirmation that Nancy Pelosi is urging the Judiciary committee NOT to go forward with contempt against Rove.

Congressman John Conyers and the Judiciary staff are battling for it but this has become an infight among dems.

Time to burn up the phone lines.

Click though and raise hell.

What Then, Larry? What Then?

Kagro X at DailyKos explains the problem.

The executive branch shall construe the requirements on the Inspectors General in section 301(b) as advisory in nature, so that the provisions are consistent with the President's constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and to supervise the unitary executive branch.

"What then?" she says.

I'll tell you what happens then... everyone in Congress who supported the new FISA bill, including the Democrats among them, cheers as the White House turns the line-eaters loose on everybody in their enemies list, and they feed everything caught in the net straight to Charlie Black— who uses it to ratfuck anybody who doesn't put their back into getting McCain elected this November.

Then, on the odd chance that counting the votes somehow results in an Obama victory (don't count on it yet, homies), then and only then will it suddenly become a Constitutional Crisis that the government has trash-canned the 4th Amendment. I'm not sure I foresee how the crisis gets resolved, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it all just blows over without anything getting fixed. Democrats will definitely love them line-eaters.

I'm really getting tired of explaining this shit to people.

No Subject, Really...

It occurs to me that, if the GOP wants to attack Obama on his most perceived strength, i.e. his rhetorical ability, then the appropriate response is to go after McCain likewise, i.e. to attack him on his most perceived strength, i.e. basically to call out McCain as a coward and a fraud. (He is, you know. He is.)

Will Democrats do this? Somehow, I very much doubt it.

Modern Problems.

Atrios explains why the "do you want a liberal Democrat in the White House to have these powers?" question may not produce the desired effect when you pose it to wingnut freakbots...

Regret

As I've written before, Democrats will regret embracing the expansion of executive power because a President Obama will find his administration undone by an "abuse of power" scandal. All of those powers which were necessary to prevent the instant destruction of the country will instantly become impeachable offenses. If you can't imagine how such a pivot can take place then you haven't been paying attention.

So, yes— it appears we may have tactical considerations beyond the mere ethical concerns about Obama caving on the telecom immunity provision in the forthcoming foreign intelligence surveillance law. It seems nearly certain now that we will soon have a President, who voted while he was a Senator to give the White House power to order private enterprises to violate the law with immunity from prosecution, and the only open question before us at this point is whether we want to have a media and political environment that allows him to be impeached for doing it.

Hmmm. Modern problems. They arise in unexpected ways. I'm sure I will be saying "Who Could Have Possibly Predicted This?" in a couple years.

A Republic, if you can keep it.

What exactly is Lindsey Graham suggesting here?:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) vowed Thursday to do everything in his power to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision on Guantanamo Bay detainees, saying that, “if necessary,” he would push for a constitutional amendment to modify the decision.

Is he actually saying what I think he is saying? That he wants to amend Article II, Section 9 of the constitution:

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Because if he is, could somebody please explain to him that the Great Writ is not some liberal hippie legal plot to aid the overthrow of the Republic? This little diatribe actually shocked me. A lawyer, an AMERICAN laywer, actually wants to amend the freakin Constituion and hamstring Habeas? Look Lindsey, it's not the courts fault your law degree is a worthless scrap, particularly in light of the fact you were the author of the Military Commissions act that was so efficently defenstrated by Justice Kennedy. Please stop sniffing around my Constitution. You and your batshit insane legal playmates are the last people on earth I want writing amendments to the Constitution.

Seriously, what is next with these people? After wiping their ass with the Geneva Conventions and the Bill of Rights, now they want a piece of one of the keystones handed down from before the Revolution, meant to preserve liberty and serve as a bulwark against false imprisonment and tyranny? You don't agree with the Courts decision, fine. Feel free to pout and kick your dog. But, you and your facist justice friend, Nino "who's an originalist?" Scalia can stay the Frak away from my Constitution thanks.

And in the annals of hysterical stupidity, this really takes the cake:

This decision will come at a cost,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. “The Supreme Court just moved us closer to the day when U.S. Marine rifle teams will have to have lawyers read Miranda rights to terrorists captured on the battlefield.”

What a shock this comes from Duncan Hunter. No Duncan, it does no such thing. It only moves us closer to the day when we restore the rule of law and justice to this country. I'm not surprised you cannot tell the difference.

I like this one too:

The American people are going to wake up tomorrow and be shocked to hear that a member of Al Qaeda has the same constitutional rights as an American citizen,” said Graham. “[Even] the Nazis never had that right.”

If the President and his minions had used Nuremberg as a model for constructing a legal process for the Gitmo detainees, that would have passed muster. It's not quite the same, but it at least acknowledged that the defendents have rights, and they are entitled to a fair trial, which even the Friggin Nazi's received. As bad as Al Queda is, they cannot possibly hold a candle to the Nazi's?? For Christ's Sakes, they murdered over 10 millions people in industrialized death camps. What the hell is he talking about??

And for the record, if the American people are suprised that, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, that rights are "inalienable", and that they are universal,"endowed by their Creator", then the American people are shockingly ignorant and should grow the fuck up and learn what those words really mean. They do not mean, in any possible way, that military and civilian leaders can arbitrarily suspend or deprive people of their libery without due process, or strip them of their basic humanity and dignity EVER. This isn't rocket science people. It's only rocket science to the semi-closeted nutjobs in the VP's office and their ideological friends like Lindsey Graham who cannot grasp these ideas.

When can I wake up from this nightmare??

And Mr. Franklin? I can only say we are deeply sorry that we allowed these people to fuckup the Republic you tried to pass on to us. We're trying to do better. Thanks.

HR 4279: Well Below Average Law Writing

Okay... it's been a while since we've pulled the breach plug out of the ol' mojowire canon. And I don't think we would be doing it without a good gorrham reason!

HR 4279, the Ministry of Truth Authorization Act of 2008 Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008 is a hideous piece of legislative sophistry that essentially makes that burned copy of the latest Coldplay album you got from your friend a federal felony.

Yeah, but who's got time to run down all these kids with their crazy music and book sharing? Well, the DoJ will when this is enacted, by creating a whole new division at Justice with it's own senior level appointee position, as well as greasing the wheels of local law enforcement to be on the look out for Captain Jack Sparrow and the Pirates of the Cyberbbean.

Moreover, there are provisions for civil and criminal forfeiture that allow the U.S. Customs officials to search your iPod/laptop, etc... at any place in the United States just because and then take them if they find anything that is covered by copyright protections and --and this is the kicker, if I read this right-- anything that can be used to circumvent copyright.

Dr. Strychnine brought this to our attention on his Live Journal site, and he has been hollering about this for years, as have the rest of us here. Now it's happening. This bill has passed the house, and is going to the Senate.

Now would be a good time to start banging the phones and emails on your various states' Senators to voice your displeasure...

mojo sends

I'll be chucking out my copy of Ringworld...

via SadlyNo, I read about this adhoc group of "advisors"

Now a fixture at Department of Homeland Security science and technology conferences, SIGMA is a loosely affiliated group of science fiction writers who are offering pro bono advice to anyone in government who want their thoughts on how to protect the nation.

Don't raise your hopes, its not Ken McCloud or Neil Gaiman. It these frakking jokers:

Among the group’s approximately 24 members is Larry Niven, the bestselling and award-winning author of such books as “Ringworld” and “Lucifer’s Hammer,” which he co-wrote with SIGMA member Jerry Pournelle.

Pournelle, according to covert operatives of the Mojowire, is renowned for cranking at Science Fiction conventions about Government involvement in Space Exploration, or some such libertarian nonsense. Apparently, he's the more liberal of the famed Pournelle/Niven pairing. This is the part that made my cranium explode:

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.
“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.
“Do you know how politically incorrect you are?” Pournelle asked.
“I know it may not be possible to use this solution, but it does work,” Niven replied

hahahahaha. Oh Larry, you are so cuuutte when you are politically incorrect. Oh wait, you're not being politically incorrect, you're being an ignorant racist FrakFace. Um, Larry, maybe you should consider the following facts:

Hospitals are not losing money because of "illegal immigrants". They are losing money because the business model of Health Care is broken and needs to be fixed. A key aspect of that. which you are vaguely and inaccurately alluding to is the burden the uninsured place on the dwindling number of Hospital Emergency rooms, where the law and all standards of human decency require they treat and stabilize everyone who shows up. A relatively small percentage of these are illegal immigrants. Most of them are legal immigrants or citizens who do not have health coverage, and show up with acute health problems that cost astronomicly more to treat in the ER than they would at the Doctors office. Maybe you should get your facts straight Mr. Ringworld, before you pop off to a government agency with your too maverick for the room ideas.

By the way Larry, terrorizing sick people to get them to avoid the ER will result in otherwise preventable serious illness and death. Some of whom are children, since they comprise a sizeable number of the people illegal immigrants and uninusured citizens bring to the ER. Little else other than sick kids or debilitating illness brings people to the ER who don't have insurance. It's too expensive. And Larry, someone walking around with untreated influenza or tuberculosis could turn in a bigger national security threat than any of the others your overheated imagination can conjure up. Think 1918 Larry. And crack a book other than one of your own sometime about the history of pandemics.

And just for the record, Editor Biz works in a Southeast Los Angeles Hospital at ground zero of the Latino community which shelters many of these terrifying illegal immigrants. You know why our ER is full all the time? Hmmm...? It's not the dreaded illegal immigrant. It's because a huge Public hospital located in Central Los Angeles closed down, and we're the closest ER for people in this part of town. Relatively few of them are here illegally. They are the working poor of Los Angeles, mostly uninsured, many of whom are African American. Is their legal status good enough for you Larry? The huge pool of urban working poor will still be here to inconvience your trips to the ER to be treated, even if the Larry Nivens of the world hermitically seal the United States off from the rest of the world.

It kills me to find out that Larry Niven is just as big an ignorant crank as Pournelle. Even Orson Scott Card is sounding rational next to these dufes.

Oh, before I forget, let's chat about this genius idea:

David Brin, keeping on the topic of empowering citizens with mobile phone technology, delivered a self-described “rant” on the lack of funds being spent to support citizen reservists to back up the military, homeland security officials and first responders in times of crisis. “It is impossible for you to succeed without us!” he shouted at the assembled officials, while banging his fist on the table and at one point jumping off his chair to wave a mobile phone in their faces.

Citizen Reservists?? uh oh...

Pournelle said that once mobile phone technology and the devices tacked on them to take pictures and record video become more ubiquitous, then ordinary citizens will be empowered to take security into their own hands — a prediction some have said already has come to pass.

you mean, like a Lynch Mob? What *exactly* will waving cell phones and taking picture do for the security of the Fatherland? Let me tell you, people sending DHS pictures of the neighbors dog peeing on their lawn, and pictures of people of color walking in suburban neighborhoods, spooking terrified white people. Can you tell the difference between a second generation Middle Eastern Amerian citizen, and a covert Al Queda operative. I'll give you a clue, you will never see the Al Queda operative at the mall.

Cell phones would not have prevented 9/11 , nor would have "citizen reservists" stalking American streets looking for Al Queda devil robots. Coordination among the agencies charged with foreign and domestic intelligence, accompanied with a radical culture change that would enable better cooperation. Oh, not to mention that Senior leaders like the President and the National Security Advisor should maybe pay closer attention when CIA briefers give them memo's with titles like" Al Queda likely to attack U.S.," or things to that effect. Without that, we can put a cell phone in everyone's hand, and it won't really change the odds.

Oh, and Larry, Ringworld Throne sucked.

Fat Tony Speaks...

Is Antonin Scalia the most dishonest person in America? [c.f. Fat Tony Scalia Pimps Book, Sensitive Side on NPR]

If not, then he's certainly in the running.

Fat Tony has been granting select interviews with tame reporters to pimp his new book on courtroom persuasion. The first thing that really strikes the listener is his almost apologetic approach to the Constitution, as if he knows he's completely full of shit. My initial reaction was: "what a tool..."

To illustrate... in the interview, he says:

"My Constitution is not living, it is dead," Scalia says.

As an "originalist" and a "textualist," to Scalia the Constitution means what the framers intended back at the founding of the republic.

"Whatever they understood then is, in my view, the meaning ... and it's not up to me to say it really shouldn't mean that any more, it should mean something different. Once you get into that boat, you have no criterion," he says.

Forget the horrible fornication of actual history he engages in there for a moment, if you can, and focus rather on this:

"[It is] entirely clear from our Nation’s historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.”

So quoth The Tool in McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky

This is directly at odds with what the primary framer of the First Amendment intended. We know it specifically because James Madison commented frequently upon it; not merely relying on Jefferson's "wall of separation" letter to the Anabaptists. Madison writes:

“Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history”

“The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.”

“And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together”

“The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state”

“Religion flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government”

In another example of Fat Tony's questionable judicial honesty: In 2000, he wrote a majority opinion regarding federal port fees in Charleston, South Carolina. The organizing principle of his take was that those kind of administrative functions had no business being done by the Feds. It was tantamount to federal interference with a state activity and of course the federal government couldn’t do that.

In less than 90 days, his ideology swung around 180 degrees and he ruled that the Federal Government had every right to stop a state from recounting votes and overturning a Republican victory in a state election, and that the state had no business interfering in such a critical federal function. And he did it quoting the same phrase of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution both times...

So, yeah, his commitment to his ideology and his honesty is somewhat questionable.

Moreover, I am extra-unimpressed with his assertions that he is really sensitive and he personally suffers from criticism. This from the guy who routinely adds little digs and insulting quips about his fellow justices' reasoning and even their fitness as jurists in his opinions.

Memo to Fat Tony: Hey Jackass, if you don't want people to react to you like that, then don't provoke them in your writing. You are a legal bully, and we all know Mojo's patience for bullies. So spare me your "but I'm really just a sensitive troll..." routine. You are a swaggering thug, and swaggering thugs get run, here.

Look, let's just get to the essence of my take... Justice Scalia, you are a tool, a liar and a hypocrite and -- left or right -- you are the worst thing to happen to American jurisprudence in my lifetime.

I look forward to seeing your half-bright screeds being relegated to the scrapheap of dead letter legal history.

mojo sends

The March of War

[c.f. here and here]

It would appear that there is a dead-ender gang in the Pentagon and in the basement crypt of the White House that is continuing to push for military confrontation with Iran.

I hear you now: "'military confrontation?' what kind of tosser magazines are you readin'... just call it war!" But that's just the thing, though. These people don't really want war, they want War™ not actually war but an incredible simulation...

Okay, enough of the dispassionate sarcasm. But in the last few weeks, it would seem like the anti-Iran rhetoric has been ratcheting up; reports of secret Iranian death squads planting bombs in Iraq, Joint Chiefs openly talking about how they are going to bomb Tehran back to the stone age, Bob Gates still out pimping the "Iran is hell bent on getting nuclear weapons" rap, although it seems like fewer and fewer people are buying...

Now a merchant vessel "under contract" to the U.S. Navy are getting involved in confrontations in the Persian Gulf. I have always had my questions about the "chaos build-out" theory popular with s9. To my mind, incompetence is still a better explanation for the way things turned out.

Yet, that does not make what s9 says untrue. In this context it would not surprise me that the Bush Administration would be willing to start some shit with Iran and dare the next President and Congress to have to deal with it. They are just realizing their idiotic comic plans for world domination will take longer than the standard 48 minute Tee-Vee drama format, more like a 112 minute made for Tee-Vee movie of the week...

My government sucks like sucking right now.

mojo sends

Religion of Peace, My Ass!

Watch it! Learn it! Live it!



When the Angry Sky Fairy says "smite" the only thing I wanna hear outta y'all is "how many?"

mojo sends

Just Burn It Down, Baby!

Tanta over at Calculated Risk writes about an IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENT in the unfolding housing and credit market crisis:

I have no evidence that lenders are out torching homes instead of foreclosing on them, but then again I bet I could get an unnamed source to opine that it's possibly a dangerous trend...

I can arrange that.

Hell, I'll go farther, and assert categorically, without a shred of evidence, and pseudonymously to boot, that it's happening now, it's a huge problem, and it's only going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

It doesn't have to be true. That's the beauty of it. It's truthy in a good way. Spread the word.

I truly despise the fact I was not too terribly shocked to read this article about the propaganda campaign employed by the White House and the Pentagon.

My first impression, beyond the usual sense of horror and anger I usually experience when I read one of these Bush Administration classics, is simply this; I am consistently amazed at the disparity between what can only be characterized as an innovative, sophisticated, propaganda scheme cooked up by this Administration and the Pentagon, and the utter incompetence bordering on stupidity that goes into planning all that other minor stuff, like the war in Iraq and dealing with the threat posed by Al Queda.

Just go ahead and read the article if you haven't and tell me you aren't struck by how slick that campaign was and is, and how botched up the actual military mission is. Let's look at an example:

Again and again, records show, the administration has enlisted analysts as a rapid reaction force to rebut what it viewed as critical news coverage, some of it by the networks’ own Pentagon correspondents. For example, when news articles revealed that troops in Iraq were dying because of inadequate body armor, a senior Pentagon official wrote to his colleagues: “I think our analysts — properly armed — can push back in that arena.”

[emphasis mine]

And they did push back, very skillfully and effectively. But, did they respond to the body armor and vehicle armor issue with that same level of skill and competence?

No.

Instead, they concentrated on the political element, the pushback in the media. Body armor and vehicle armor issues persisted for years to come. That's swell guys. Thank goodness you managed the all important media war and allowed the tangential shooting war to dissolve into chaos and cause all that death. Too bad about the dead people. We'll have to make sure anyone upset about that is Swiftboated or has their right to vote stripped from them in some electoral scheme.

I think these people actually might have made me despise them more. Good Effort Bush Team! Way to keep it up right to the very end!

Pierce speaks, you listen...

Charles Pierce puts his finger on an aspect of the torture debacle that managed to truly astound me:

via Altercation:

I was away from the Intertubes for several days and, therefore, I am just now catching up to the whole "Bittergate" controversy. (I actually heard a TV drone say that.) I also am just now catching up with the fact that the president of the United States is proud to have hosted meetings in which specific techniques of torture were discussed in the presidential mansion. Forgive me if I am not yet up to speed on the two stories, but having a candidate for the presidency say something that virually anyone who's spent any time in the region in question knows to be true -- which, I will admit, leaves out almost all of the people covering national politics these days -- seems to me rather less of a story than the fact that a giggling unemployable spent time pretending to be Henry VIII down the hall from a gathering of bloodsoaked, pathetic wannabe tough guys. (I mean, lord save us, but is there a more obvious dweeb than Douglas Feith?) I have no illusions about the dirty deeds that were plotted and executed in the Executive manse down through the years, but this thing? Smarmy little bureaucrats exchanging their favorite episodes of 24, the way the late Chris Farley used to host "The Chris Farley Show" ("You remember when Jack shot the guy in the kneecap? That was awesome.")? CIA guys brought in to "demonstrate" the subleties of each method? This wasn't national security. This was porn, plain and simple. Everyone of these criminal bastards should have been wearing a raincoat.

To be specific, he is referring to this Vanity Fair article which discusses how torture advocates at Gitmo and in Washington used A FREAKING TELEVISION SHOW as a direct guide to their policies on torturing detainees. How is this possible?

Put aside the gut wrenching idea that this country, after the War Crimes of the Nazi's and the Japanese, the use of horrific techniques to break our soldiers in captivity in North Korea and Vietnam, and this nations post war commitment to the establishment of binding agreements on all nations on the rights of detainees, that we would even consider the torture of human beings as policy. Let's just try to come to grips with the sophomoric, almost insouciant manner these immense moral questions are dealt with. So will video games be next? Will our nations next major conflict be guided by the Presidents strategic experience that he gained from Super Mario Bros? What the f*$k is this crap?

I understand that television shapes our views and world outlook more that we might want to admit. But this way beyond that. At first the faux tough guy crap of David Addington and the draft dodgers like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove making fun of Colin Powell when he expressed his objections to the torture policy seems like more of the Frat Boy posturing which has come to define this Administration. But this whole enterprise goes beyond that. Pierce is right, this is pornography. I mean that in the sense that this was not an effort to simply gain information. This was revenge. Revenge against Al Queda and anyone remotely Arabic, Islamic, or even from that part of Asia. It's sadism pure and simple.

There is not enough raincoats in the world to prevent the splatter on the rest of us.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Cavalry has arrived!

Fafblog is back!

You know, for a while I was getting worried, what with the Democratic party circular firing squad and annihilation of our financial system unfolding before our eyes. But now, I know that Giblets, the Medium Lobster, and Fafnir will make it ALL better.

"The triumphant cry of revolution will call out through the streets: Vive Fáfnir! Vive Gibléts!" says Giblets. "Radical Fafbloggists will demand a new era of Fafno-Gibletsian rule over the cosmos, and none will be able to stand in their way!"

P.S. Fafblog gives us a link to a fine update on the latest from a Mojowire favorite Jack Chick. Enjoy...

The rite of Spring: Social Security and the End Times.

As the debacle that is our deregulated financial system continues to unfold, the Social security commisioners released their annual "the sky is falling" report. The report is not receiving the love it used to get. It's difficult to argue to Americans that their social security would be better off in the hands of the people who so skillfully fnorked up the markets with their "innovations" and superior expertise.

Paul Krugman takes this occasion to repost his explanation of the Social Security issue.

The Krugmaninator:

Social Security is a government program supported by a dedicated tax, like highway maintenance. Now you can say that assigning a particular tax to a particular program is merely a fiction, but in fact such assignments have both legal and political force. If Ronald Reagan had said, back in the 1980s, “Let’s increase a regressive tax that falls mainly on the working class, while cutting taxes that fall mainly on much richer people,” he would have faced a political firestorm. But because the increase in the regressive payroll tax was recommended by the Greenspan Commission to support Social Security, it was politically in a different box - you might even call it a lockbox - from Reagan’s tax cuts.
The purpose of that tax increase was to maintain the dedicated tax system into the future, by having Social Security’s assigned tax take in more money than the system paid out while the baby boomers were still working, then use the trust fund built up by those surpluses to pay future bills. Viewed in its own terms, that strategy was highly successful.
The date at which the trust fund will run out, according to Social Security Administration projections, has receded steadily into the future: 10 years ago it was 2029, now it’s 2042. As Kevin Drum, Brad DeLong, and others have pointed out, the SSA estimates are very conservative, and quite moderate projections of economic growth push the exhaustion date into the indefinite future.
But the privatizers won’t take yes for an answer when it comes to the sustainability of Social Security. Their answer to the pretty good numbers is to say that the trust fund is meaningless, because it’s invested in U.S. government bonds. They aren’t really saying that government bonds are worthless; their point is that the whole notion of a separate budget for Social Security is a fiction. And if that’s true, the idea that one part of the government can have a positive trust fund while the government as a whole is in debt does become strange.
But there are two problems with their position.
The lesser problem is that if you say that there is no link between the payroll tax and future Social Security benefits - which is what denying the reality of the trust fund amounts to - then Greenspan and company pulled a fast one back in the 1980s: they sold a regressive tax switch, raising taxes on workers while cutting them on the wealthy, on false pretenses. More broadly, we’re breaking a major promise if we now, after 20 years of high payroll taxes to pay for Social Security’s future, declare that it was all a little joke on the public.
The bigger problem for those who want to see a crisis in Social Security’s future is this: if Social Security is just part of the federal budget, with no budget or trust fund of its own, then, well, it’s just part of the federal budget: there can’t be a Social Security crisis. All you can have is a general budget crisis. Rising Social Security benefit payments might be one reason for that crisis, but it’s hard to make the case that it will be central.
But those who insist that we face a Social Security crisis want to have it both ways. Having invoked the concept of a unified budget to reject the existence of a trust fund, they refuse to accept the implications of that unified budget going forward. Instead, having changed the rules to make the trust fund meaningless, they want to change the rules back around 15 years from now: today, when the payroll tax takes in more revenue than SS benefits, they say that’s meaningless, but when - in 2018 or later - benefits start to exceed the payroll tax, why, that’s a crisis. Huh?
I don’t know why this contradiction is so hard to understand, except to echo Upton Sinclair: it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary (or, in the current situation, his membership in the political club) depends on his not understanding it. But let me try this one more time, by asking the following: What happens in 2018 or whenever, when benefits payments exceed payroll tax revenues?
The answer, very clearly, is nothing.
The Social Security system won’t be in trouble: it will, in fact, still have a growing trust fund, because of the interest that the trust earns on its accumulated surplus. The only way Social Security gets in trouble is if Congress votes not to honor U.S. government bonds held by Social Security. That’s not going to happen. So legally, mechanically, 2018 has no meaning.
Now it’s true that rising benefit costs will be a drag on the federal budget. So will rising Medicare costs. So will the ongoing drain from tax cuts. So will whatever wars we get into. I can’t find a story under which Social Security payments, as opposed to other things, become a crucial budgetary problem in 2018.
What we really have is a looming crisis in the General Fund. Social Security, with its own dedicated tax, has been run responsibly; the rest of the government has not. So why are we talking about a Social Security crisis?

Blog Against Torture Day? It's Always Blog Against Torture Day Here...

On my Live Journal one of my flisters, TK, made the following observation about torture here on Blog Against Torture day:

"The sad thing is, were there to have been such a day ten years ago, the assumption wouldn't be we were preaching against the US, but rather China, or North Korea, or Iraq."

You know, that's an interesting observation... just a few years ago when rumors of such things were starting to percolate into the national consciousness, my best friend dr_strych9, was one of the first people I remember to take this seriously.

It was part of the reason we started all this in the first place. It's always blog against torture day here on the mojowire...

That notwithstanding, myself, Hebisner, and a couple of our other friends did not believe this was happening. Common sense and common knowledge all argued against it... The U.S. was a signatory to a zillion international anti-torture conventions, it's generally accepted that torture produces questionable intel, it ran counter to nearly everything we were brought up to believe about the organizing principles of our nation...

Torture? The United States? No, that was just crazy conspiracy talk, just a degree of separation or so off of Area 51 and Masonic One World Government zeitgeist.

As each revelation has come out, from Bagram Airbase to Abu Ghraib to CIA Black Sites, etc... it's been a disorienting experience, like I went to bed America and woke up in the Bizzaro world "mirror-mirror" version... I keep expecting to see Leonard Nimoy in a gold lamay sash and a cheesy Lee-Paste-On goatee beard to appear and ask me for my agonizer...sorry, obscure Star Trek reference...

But perhaps the saddest thing has been to see our national reaction to this. Instead of righteous outrage verging on revolution to even the idea we had become this kind of nation, there was a kind of apathetic acceptance... Torture? Hey, as long as they keep the terrorists from interfering with "Dancing with the Stars..." then sure, what the hell... hey what's the latest Britney news!?

Oh sure, a few anti-social malcontents and the dirty fucking hippies were complaining, but you know how they go on... they're always complaining about something...

And this lackadaisical attitude seemed to be contagious in that it infected the legislative branch that seemed to be obsessed with doing anything other than exercising their Constitutional duty of executive oversight.

So... quo vadis? Where next? Frankly, I don't know. But what's happened in the last eight years can't just be undone. We can't just walk away from this. If I had "The Answer" I promise I would post if for everyone, but I don't.

But I think people speaking out is good first step...

mojo sends

Edu policy wonkage: Please wear your protective gear!

Andrew Rotterdam over at Eduwonk weigned in on a education policy debate at the freakonomics blog, which he posted on his website. It's worth reprinting here:

Different schools have different effects on similar students. That is the primary finding from social science research, and a fact around which education policy should be organized. Put more plainly: schools matter. They can be a powerful force to address the gap, and demographics are not destiny for students.

That does not mean that schools can eliminate all social inequality, or that policymakers shouldn’t take common sense steps like expanding access to healthcare and prenatal care in low-income communities. But it does mean that many schools can do much better with poor and minority students, and that holding schools accountable for student learning is neither punitive nor unfair.

Unfortunately, there is a small industry in the education community built around tacitly giving schools soothing reassurance that they really can’t do much better with poor and minority kids than they are today. They can. And rather than attacking the gaps poor students bring with them when they first arrive at school, we actually exacerbate gaps by giving the least to the very students who need the most. Rhetorically, people say that schools matter, but our public policies do not yet systemically reflect it.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Research, such as that by William Sanders and Eric Hanushek, shows that teacher effectiveness is the most important in-school factor affecting student learning. Good teachers can actually close or eliminate the gaps in achievement on standardized tests that separate white and minority students. Conversely, when at-risk students have a couple of lousy teachers in a row, it almost irreparably harms them. Consequently, policymakers should be unyielding in their efforts to ensure that there are effective teachers in every classroom.

Unfortunately, a recent report from Education Week shows that, overall, we are doing anything but. Parents should support these efforts, most of all because good teachers teach; they don’t resort to drilling kids, rote memorization, or other strategies that suck the joy out of learning.

It is not just about training, pay, and accountability for teachers, but also about creating schools where high performers want to be — and are — supported in their work. As former California Board of Education president and Netflix founder Reed Hastings points out: today we have as much a shortage of places where good teachers want to work as we do a shortage of good teachers.

That’s why this is not just a teacher problem, it’s a systemic one. But if we organize the public education system around the idea that teachers and schools matter to student outcomes — instead of implicitly around the idea that they don’t — we’ll see results and gap closing.

[emphasis mine]

A few thoughts to round this out.

First, he makes a critical distinction that is almsot never emphasized enough, that improving schools in low income areas can have a large positive impact, despite the terrible carnage from all of the usual socio-economic ills. It cannot fix them, and it should not be a subsititute for policies to address them. But it can help, and it's worth doing.

Second, the point Reed Hastings makes about teacher working conditions is critical. One of the biggest issues low performance schools have is teacher recruitment and retention. Many people believe the solution to this is higher pay. That's not a bad idea, but I don't think it really is the main issue. The main issue is, those schools suck to work at. Teachers do their time there to work at easier places, where they often take an initial pay cut, and likely won't be able to live close to where they work.

The research on education is often confusing to those of us without graduate degrees in statistics and the social sciences, so evaluting competing methodologies is problematic. Conclusions and remedies are often all across the spectrum. But one thing keeps popping up again and again; teachers. The qualilty of the teacher seems to be a critical factor in poor and good outcomes in most of the research where the subject is relevant. This leads to several questions, foremost among them is, how do we define good teachers? When we do define that, how do we recruit, train, deploy and retain them? Bitching about teacher unions and testing regimens are, to my mind, tangential to these critical questions.

His Rudeness Gets It Right...

You wanna know about the Obama speech in Philly, today?

Here's all you need...

Props to the Rude One...

mojo sends

Helicoper Ben to the rescue!

Outsourced to Mr.Roubini here. Allow me to highlight a point of interest:

This is the most radical change and expansions of Fed powers and functions since the Great Depression: essentially the Fed now can lend unlimited amounts to non bank highly leveraged institutions that it does not regulate. The Fed is treating this run on the shadow financial system as a liquidity run but the Fed has no idea of whether such institutions are insolvent. As JPMorgan paid only about $200 million for Bear Stearns – and only after the Fed promised a $30 billlion loan – this was a clear case where this non bank financial institution was insolvent.[emphasis mine]

We should also remember to consider this Fed Action in light of Mr. Bernanke's area of academic interest; The Great Depression. In particular, the Fed Chair has accepted Friedman and Schwartz's argument that the Fed failed to stem the Depression in the begining by tightening the money supply instead of trying to make it more liquid. To wit:

Ben Bernanke, the now current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, later acknowledged that Friedman was right to blame the Federal Reserve for the Great Depression, saying on Nov. 8, 2002:
"Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again." [8]

Bernanke also, (according to Wikipedia, your mileage on this information may vary), did some original research that would tend to support at least part of Friedman and Scwartz's argument:

More recent research, by economists such as Peter Temin, Ben Bernanke and Barry Eichengreen, has focused on the constraints policy makers were under at the time of the Depression. In this view, the constraints of the inter-war gold standard magnified the initial economic shock and was a significant obstacle to any actions that would ameliorate the growing Depression. According to them, the initial destabilizing shock may have originated with the Wall Street Crash of 1929 in the U.S., but it was the gold standard system that transmitted the problem to the rest of the world.[11]
According to their conclusions, during a time of crisis, policy makers may have wanted to loosen monetary and fiscal policy, but such action would threaten the countries’ ability to maintain its obligation to exchange gold at its contractual rate. Therefore, governments had their hands tied as the economies collapsed, unless they abandoned their currency’s link to gold. As the Depression worsened, many countries started to abandon the gold standard, and those that abandoned it earlier suffered less from deflation and tended to recover more quickly.[12]

Its logical to assume that Bernanke is going to interpret his mandate in light of these two points of view, which tend to reinforce a singular point, monetary liquidity is key. Now, we don't have an inflexible currency standard, and we have more levers to pull and buttons to push to inject liquidity. But that does not address the potential solvency issues. As Roubini points out, The Fed is now stepping into an area that is not regulated in any serious way. There is no way to know whether the solvency issues underneath will essentially cause these efforts at injecting liquidity to be futile.

And why are not having a discussion about serious regulation of these markets? It may be fair to argue that bailing out Bear or possibly Lehman Bros might be in the interest of the country as a whole, but that does not in any way negate the obvious fact that it was the unregulated parts of the economy that are most at fault here. It was lending outside that of traditional regulated banking that was the primary outlet for these bad loans, funds that are not required to disclose to the SEC that cooked up these tranch schemes and shipped them all over the world as risk free investments. And now we're on the hook for these A*&holes?

The game here is to hide behind the liquidity issues I pointed out earlier and pretend that the lack of transparency and lack of oversight had nothing to do with it. They clearly do, as they did in the thirties as well. We need to ask why we are assuming the risk, as we are when the Fed essentially guaranteed Morgan's risk to the tune of 30 Billion of our dollars, (Or China's dollars we are on the hook for). It's not too much to ask to require that if we are going to be the guarantor of these markets and institutions, that we can impose some reasonable guidelines over how these markets do business, and that they adhere to some legal framework other than, "I got mine, Frak YOU!".

And maybe our canidates for President could actually talk about these issues. Not to distract from the oh so important topics of belligerent pastors and cranky old New York Congresswomen, . Just sayin.....

This Blog's Economics Commentary Outsourced...

...to Brad DeLong for the duration of the crisis:

There are two ways to read last night's sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorganChase for $2 a share:

1) There were no other bidders. Bear Stearns only other option was to file for bankruptcy this morning. And Bear Stearns's executive were convinced that that was not an option--that not playing along meant that everybody everywhere would look with glee on the filing of every criminal fraud charge against them anyone could think of.

2) Even with the Federal Reserve offering a put on the worst $30 billion of Bear Stearns assets, there is so much garbage in the closet that $2 a share is a fair price.

The market this morning believes in (2). I tend to believe in (1)--especially as JPMorgan is said to have set aside up to $6 billion to deal with litigation when Bear Stearns's shareholders and others claim they got a raw deal...

...and...

Through the Looking Glass: You've probably heard that the Fed is dealing with unusual conditions in the financial markets, but you may not be entirely sure what that means. Well, for your amusement, here's a picture...

We're glad the Satellite Of Love is on a nice fixed-rate mortgage with plenty of equity left for prices to normalize and leave us still in orbit. Sure hope the rest of you have kept up with your bilge pump maintenance schedules...

Ms. Ferraro, Your Airlock is Waiting...

Cycle this crazy bitch into hard vacuum, pleeze!

For those who haven't been following the Greek Tragedy that is the Clinton campaign's recent spate political tourette's syndrome, yet another proxy has gotten off leash barking and spitting at some hapless local homer reporter who now gets to make his career with a one-off Gotcha moment; to wit:

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Moron!

I am not sure what is worse, her original comment or her self-righteous bloviations attempting to alternately spin the comment, while still trying to say what she meant: Barack Obama is only popular because he's black.

Here, have a taste of her flailing on Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer:

"I was celebrating the fact ... the black community came out with ... pride in [Obama's] candidacy. You would think he would say 'thank you' for doing that, instead, I'm charged with being a racist."

For a true sense of desperation, watch the video clip of her frantically trying to run the clock out on Sawyer in the interview. (Thanks to the WaPo for posting this.)

So really, the phrase "if Obama was a white man he wouldn't be in this position" is a celebration of his campaign? That's like "celebrating" President's Day with a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in a book depository...

Then in a follow-up interview to further defend herself, she apparently just let go of what tenuous grip on reality she had:

"Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let's address reality and the problems we're facing in this world, you're accused of being racist, so you have to shut up," Ferraro said. "Racism works in two different directions. I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Excuse me, Ms. Ferraro, but what policy issue were you trying to elaborate upon or address when you said: "if Obama was a white man he wouldn't be in this position" Just askin'...

As expected, Keith Olbermann has come out on the correct side of this, during his interview with Howard Fineman. Although Fineman, I think, makes an astute point:

"HOWARD FINEMAN: [...]As you saw, they sent Maggie Williams out with a statement to defend Geraldine Ferraro who's defending herself. So this is the fight the Clintons want, the way they want to fight it."

Fineman may actually be on to something; the truly ugly underbelly of the Clinton campaign. If I'm John McCain right now, I would be praying very hard that Obama is the candidate, because I don't think he wants a piece of the Clinton Mafia.

And frankly, I think that may be the message she is trying to send to Democrats: "Obama is too nice, too civilized to rumble in the fall with the GOP. We, however, have the fighting instincts of cornered wolverines on crank, and rejoice at the sight of blood..."

But doing it by trotting out the corpse of Geraldine Ferraro to do a song and dance number, and then attempt to claw her way out of the net again is not just pandering to the lowest instincts of the electorate, but it's actively damaging the party.

And really, if Ferraro's best push back is the "I know you are, but what am I" rubric of political debate, then the Clinton's need to bench her and get someone who's capable of running with the varsity without embarrassing themselves every time they open their pie hole.

There has been talk the last few days that there might be some talk of an Obama/Clinton -- Clinton/Obama ticket. There are those (myself included) who think this would be a potent combination.

Such an accommodation would have to happen soon, though. If this is allowed to go much longer, the two campaigns will have damaged each other publicly too much for an alliance to be credible in the eyes of Democrats, much less the the rest of the electorate at large.

And I am getting less enthused about the Clinton campaign by the day, especially if they are going to turn to petty racists, and has-been bag-chicks to carry their water for them, all the while waving bloody shirts about the Obama campaign's missteps and gaffes.

mojo sends

They Can't Get No Satisfaction

Gavin M at Sadly, No! knocks it out of the park. Make sure you read far enough in that you get to the sentence that begins...

You folks of the right-wing hue need to know about Devo.

I'll bet you can hear me howling with laughter from all the way out here in outer Redneckistan, where I'm traveling on business.

Update: found in the comments on that thread. I have no choice now but to add the "they did what" tag to this post.

Dear Hillary Clinton Campaign:

Shut the fuck up!

This is the kind of thing that is making it easier and easier to choose sides in the Democratic campaign:

"CANTON, Miss. - Hillary Clinton's campaign furthered its efforts to portray her as a political victim Thursday when a top aide likened Barack Obama and his vow to take a new aggressive tone to Kenneth Starr, the Whitewater special counsel whose wide-ranging investigation of Bill Clinton's administration led to his impeachment. [...]
In a conference call with reporters, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said that instead of discussing national security and the economy, Obama has chosen to attack Clinton.

"I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president," Wolfson said."

This was actually in response to Obama's pushback against sleazy Clinton attacks trying to tie Tony Rezko's illegal influence peddling in Illinois to the Obama campaign.

And she's going to compare Obama to Ken Starr for suggesting that she make her personal history as transparent as he has with his own past?

If the Clinton campaign believes they can generate some Dem sympathy with some weak-ass push back in drumming up memories of Republican smear campaigns, then they need to find a new dealer, because that dope their smoking is not doing them any favors.

This is a grotesque miscalculation on their part. Memo to Clintonistas: We disliked Ken Starr because he was a political tool of the radical right in their attempt to cheapen our republic's institutions.

To compare Barack Obama to Ken Starr is to make light of the danger posed by a power mad and vaguely insane GOP leadeship, and make it the equivalent of just another meaningless campaign ploy.

It diminishes the actual damage the Ken Starr investigation did to the country and to the rule of law. Thanks Hillary. You have officially signaled that the Ken Starr investigation was really nothing to worry about when you conflate it with simple political posturing during a political camnpaign.

The Clinton people have pissed me off for the last freekin' time and I am now officially tired of holding my nose to vote for them.

I hope Obama buries these people.

mojo sends

Better Know Your Bible -- v1

In looking up references for the preceding bit, I ran across some truly mind-bending screed. Really ... Drieux, this may even be a bit much for you:

"Procured abortion –a heinous form of cold-blooded murder, a crime scripturally warranting the death penalty that also subjects primary offenders and accomplices to automatic excommunication in the Catholic Church– is less of an offense against God than homosexual conduct. Abortion takes the life of an innocent person. A homosexual act –an abuse of the sexual faculty– denies potential life to a possible innocent person. An aborted person has the opportunity to obtain eternal life. A non-conceived person never has that opportunity."

So I've decided that we could all use some churchin' up, and have the Bible explained to us, so that we might more fully come to know the mind of the Angry Sky Fairy...

Come on, Wirehaters, we know you're lurking out there, muttering curses under your breath, neck veins bulging, as bile rises in your throat while you fantasize about what you'll do to us when Gilead goes public... so help us out with a few bible verses here...

In this first installment, let's tackle Deuteronomy 22: 21-22 in that:

20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel,


21 then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die, because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house; so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

Essentially, here, we're stoning a girl to death for pre-marital sex. Now it says that the menfolk of town have to do this... is that all the men folk? Or can we farm this function out to the male police officers, or something, because that's an awful lot of men in most towns to be stoning one girl to death... I'm just sayin'.

What if she did not "play the whore in her father's house" but took it to a Motel-6. What if it was the back seat of her father's Oldsmobile? What if it were the backseat of her own car? Do we still have to stone her, or are there other deaths for those occasions, like being fed to wolves like Ernest Borgnine in The Vikings?

And what are these "tokens" of virginity? Is it some kind of ID card? A badge? A letter from her doctor?

For the record, the guy who accuses her; if it turns out he's lyin' he gets a fine of a 100 shekels.

mojo sends

There Really Are No Atheists in Foxholes...

... because we keep throwing them out of the service when we find them... [c.f. Soldier's Promotion Hosed for Religious Belief]

You know, it's not like America doesn't have enough problems/enemies without a small cadre of bloviating gasbags trying to make us turn on each other. This is really the basest kind of stoopidity...

According to the U.S. Census and surveys like the American Religious Identification Survey that nearly 15 percent of Americans, that's almost 30 million people, have no religious affiliation. While about a million are identified as "atheist" the others are agnostic, humanist, secular or simply say "No Religion."

How crazy is it that we are tossing 30 million Americans under the bus when it comes to serving our country because they can't profess a belief in God? And the reason for withholding the promotion of this one individual stretches the credulity of the Army to the absolute breaking point: "According to the lawsuit, Hall was counseled by his platoon sergeant after being informed that his promotion was blocked. He says the sergeant explained that Hall would be 'unable to put aside his personal convictions and pray with his troops' and would have trouble bonding with them if promoted to a leadership position."

Would someone please point out to me where in FM 6-22: "Army Leadership" or FM 22-51: "Leader's Manual for Combat Stress Control" or FM 1-05: "Religious Support" it says that the ability to lead your troops in prayer is necessary for unit cohesion and mission efficiency?

Because I can nearly guarantee that when bullets are flying and all hell's broken loose and you are looking to your leaders in the field to get you through alive, you want to see active, swift, calm, decisive leadership ... As for me, if I were in a hot zone and the world is all turned to sound and fury, and I look to my platoon or squad leader, the last thing I want when it's go-time is to see is that person doubled over in a prayer position rubbing their rosary beads...

mojo sends

Ding Dong the Witch Got Canned...

Huzzah to the unbreakable Spocko! No more will the public airwaves be fouled by the ignorant, violent, spittle-flecked rantings of Melanie Morgan, who found her bony ass out on the street this morning without a job.

Apparently, Citadel Communications which owns KSFO got tired of having major, national sponsors bail on them for not wanting their goods and services associated with the Fourth Freekin' Reich...

So Spocko gets a trophy head for the wall... Outstanding work! And we're gonna line up all her little fascisti friends right next to her...

mojo sends

phoenix wright, ace attorney, on telecom immunity...

Objection!

And the answer is?? Dull Surprise!

It's been a few weeks since I have heard about some sort of knuckledheaded debacle from the Bush Administration. Oh wait..

The Gaza Bombshell
After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
by David Rose April 2008

So, let me see if I have this straight. The White House decides that it wants elections and a legislative body in the Palestinian terrotories. It forces Abbas to hold those elections, even though the Israeli's and Abbas tell them that they aren't ready and Hamas will win a majority if they go ahead. They hold the elections. Hamas wins over 50%. Go ahead and revel in the stupidity here:

Dahlan says he warned his friends in the Bush administration that Fatah still wasn’t ready for elections in January. Decades of self-preservationist rule by Arafat had turned the party into a symbol of corruption and inefficiency—a perception Hamas found it easy to exploit. Splits within Fatah weakened its position further: in many places, a single Hamas candidate ran against several from Fatah.
Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”
The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council.
Few inside the U.S. administration had predicted the result, and there was no contingency plan to deal with it. “I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters. “I don’t know anyone who wasn’t caught off guard by Hamas’s strong showing.”
“Everyone blamed everyone else,” says an official with the Department of Defense. “We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this?’

Well Condi, other than the Israeli's and Palestinians, who wasn't cauught off guard? Um..everyone who isn't a Fnorktard, which apparently is no one at State or the White House who are supposed to know. And I love the DOD reaction, "who the fuck recommended this?". Well fella's, thats a tough call. There are so many ignorant dumbshits running around the White House, how could you possibly narrow it down? They were probably just relieved it wasn't their fault for once.

The rest of the article is equally bizarre. And just soak in the Hypocrisy of NeoCons like David Wurmser and John Bolten, who gleefully helped push us into Iraq and a monumental debacle, and now have the gall to snipe at Condi Rice and Abrams when they committ a policy screwup, ableit a big one. And now the U.S. will have to talk to and work with Hamas anyway, even after spending the last few years coming up with one demented scheme after another to avoid just that.

You've got to hand it to the bush people, they NEVER disappoint.

Once Again, The Most Trustworthy Name In News...

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

Commencez le Festival!

Turkish Army Begins Ground Assault on PKK in Iraq

"Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Turkish soldiers crossed into northern Iraq in their first major incursion in 11 years, stepping up an assault against Kurdish militants after two months of air strikes.

The troops moved in late yesterday, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Ankara without saying how many soldiers were involved. Istanbul-based NTV television said that 10,000 Turkish soldiers pushed 10 kilometers (6 miles) into Iraq. CNN-Turk later said the attack involved 3,000 troops."

Res Ipsa Loquitor

mojo sends

Ladies and Gentlemen...

You will notice that the Captain has turned on the Fasten Seat Belts sign at this time and that the cabin has started to depressurize... please place the oxygen mask hanging in front of you over your head and assume the futile crash position at this time... it won't save you, but it will hurt less if you don't look...

At this time, the pilots have asked if there is anyone on board who knows how to land a burning plane... failing that, is there a priest on board?

mojo sends

That Accountability Moment

Atrios notices an enduring mystery:

The story of this decade is the complete and utter failure by elites in government and media to do their jobs properly. What's so depressing about all of this is that there has been little accountability anywhere (see Kristol, Bill, New York Times for example) for the catastrophe they unleashed on the people of Iraq. For a group of people enamored with their own self-importance, they seem to have little concern for the consequences of what they do.
[Emphasis mine.]

Let's see if I can help Atrios out by using his "Short Answers To Easy Questions" format.

Q: Why have the elites in government and media not been held accountable for the catastrophe they unleashed on the people of Iraq?

A: Actually, they have been.

Our elites in government and media have been well rewarded to compensate for all their hard work achieving the difficult goal of engineering the worst strategic diplomatic failure in American history. Without them, it couldn't have been possible. Let's give them all a big round of applause (and a golden parachute, and our continued adoration) while they engineer ever more critical systemic deterioration. You can't build anything new around here unless you tear down the old stuff first. Out of catastrophe comes great change, and all that, don't you know.

Sorry about your whole generation that was butchered and damned. Posterity will be encouraged to hold parades for them.

Cripes On A Unicycle

"Yeah, it can get a little chapped sometimes, but just put some lotion on it."
—The Very Secret Diaries Of Legolas Greenleaf

Now comes this fresh horror.

Friday, February 08, 2008
NAR: The Punch Bowl is Back!

WASHINGTON, Feb 08, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The National Association of Realtors congratulated the U.S. Congress for quickly passing a national economic stimulus package and thanked President George W. Bush for his leadership [blah fnorking blah-dee-blah blah blah]

Increasing FHA loan limits will help an additional 138,000 Americans achieve the dream of homeownership and will allow nearly 200,000 homeowners to refinance and potentially keep their home, according to NAR research.

I'm posting the text of this only so that when we go back and do the numbers at the end of 2008 and see that NAR's estimates for GSE refis and purchases were off by about an order of magnitude, we don't have to worry about the link to the original PR having disappeared from the toobz.

[...]

Tanta has written extensively about this abominable fornication of GSE fiscal policy. If you had any hope that the U.S. government would help, rather than hinder, the Federal Reserve's efforts to soften the landing of the tailspinning U.S. economy, then it's time to pitch that out the window now. Say your prayers and transmit your supplications to whatever patron deities of panic, crisis and asteriod impacts your religious tradition has, because it's going to be a rough landing.

Okay... Now I'm Starting To Be Concerned...

Bruce Schneier is watching the news unfold that a fifth undersea telecom cable in the Middle East has been cut. Reports are going around that Iran is completely offline. I can't confirm or deny that, but traceroutes to Iranian IPv4 addresses aren't getting past the default-free zone for me. That doesn't mean Iran is offline— the Islamic Republic runs a national firewall, and it might block incoming traceroutes.

"WTF is going on?" Indeed.

Why I voted for Barack Obama

So I just voted for Barack Obama in the Democratic Primary.

I was genuinely conflicted about this choice. There are many things I like about Hillary Clinton, but primarily the depth of her knowledge about government and her clear mastery of the issues speaks to my inner policy wonk. Listen to her talk about NCLB, or HealthCare, or the desperate need to address the physical infrastructure of this country and you come away impressed by this candidate. Particularly in light of the current occupant of the white house who seems to consider his ignorance and lack of curiosity on these issues to be some point in his favor.

I'm also royally cranked by most of the talking heads and op/ed columinists of this country who cannot seem to generate any sort of even mild outrage in this coup d'etat' going on in Washington as the Bush Administration demonstrates it's contempt for the rule of law, it's boldfaced lying about everything and anything, and it's contempt for human dignity in it's embrace of torture, yet Hillary Clinton tearing up on the campaign trail sends them into a state of fury they have to devote endless hours of chatter and miles of newshole space too. I wish I were exaggerating here, but you really cannot overstate the degree these people are whacked into insanity about her, and their casual disregard for the criminal behavior of the President and his cronies. I was ready to vote for her just to spite these FrakHeads.

Yet, I remember the Clinton years well, and how I found myself constantly in a state of accepting the lesser possible outcome. How it seemd our party and our President had to bow to political neccesity, be on the defensive, couching our views and ideas in a way that obscured what we really believe in so as not to upset the bipartisan apple cart. All the while, the Tom Delays and Rush Limbaugh could push the debate further to the right with any sexist, racist, homophobic and just batshit insane diatribe, and that was okay, they were believers, not mere politicians. And perhaps in that enviroment, that was appropriate. But it left a bitter taste in my mouth that never went away.

That bitter taste reached truly poisonous levels in 2000, and drove me away from voting for Al Gore. A smart, capable and decent human being who was maligned and lied about, not just by his deviant political opponents, but by the "objective" reporters who covered him. No lie was too bizarre too pass along as truth, whether it was distorting his support for the development of the internet as a Senator, or the nasty quip about getting wardrobe advice from Naomi Klein that was tossed off by Dick Morris, that no reporter can find a single real source for yet cannot stop repeating. Yet the Al Gore who bravely stood up to condemn the War in Iraq and fight for Climate Change when our media elites were calling him a pudgy sore loser was not present in that campaign. A similair chain of events happened in 2004 with the terrible lies of the SwiftBoaters and Kerry's inability to make his campaign about what he and we in this party truly believe.

And Hillary Clinton, I think, despite her obvious competence and smarts, is closer to the 2000 Al Gore than the Al Gore of today. She will take the middle road, the practical road, that of the manager and the careful politician. And don't get me wrong, I respect and value that skill in a President and a legislator, it's how things get done. But my fear is that we won't just compromise on tactics, but on principle. That this path of moderation is really a path of fear. A fear of being called the hippie, the LIBERAL, the latte drinking elitist that Fox News hosts titter about on Sunday Mornings. And I simply cannot live with that anymore.

I'm not completely subsumed in the Obamamania. His Social Security take bugs the hell out of me, and his healthcare rhetoric is equally annoying. But ultimately, arguments about policy details are not really the issue. Will this guy stand up for what we beleive? I'm willing to take the gamble he will. Because we need to do more than squeak out a victory. We need to blow the doors off. We need to change the whole game. Thats how you get the big changes. The New deal. The Great Society. Voting rights act. Social Security. Medicare. All from great change elections that offered a narrow window of opportunity for big change. And I think this is the best chance this generation is going to get before the curtain really comes down. We need to roll back the unitary executive and the facist state that it has created. We need to end the war in Iraq and end now the notion of an American Empire. We need to change our economic values to something that is more than just, "I got mine, frak off and die hippie". And we won't get near enough of that with Hillary. WE might get some or all of that with Obama.

So I had to vote for him. Even if doesn't win the nomination. Because I had to say I took this chance when it came my way.

Mommy, What's A Superdelegate?

A superdelegate is one that isn't required to vote at the convention for the candidate who won the primary/caucus in their state. They're unpledged. They can vote for whoever they damned want at the convention, and nobody can say boo about. They can declare how they're going to vote at any time, and change their minds without notice up until the very last moment when the ballots are cast at the convention.

Who are these people? Here's the list* for this year's Democratic National Convention, in case you care. (Click through to see the whole list. The page I linked just has the ones that have currently endorsed a candidate still in the race.)

There will be 796 of them. That's just under 20% of the total number of delegates that will decide the nominee. I bring this up in light of Matt Stoller's report that the Clinton people think the race may go to the convention.

Picture it now. The pledged delegates go for Obama in a landslide, but the superdelegates tip the balance over to Clinton. At the moment, Clinton is leading the superdelegate race with about half of them declared. That could change. Is there a real chance this could "go to the convention" like the Clinton people think? Um, yes. Yes, there is.

* Note: the list isn't final until the end of the month.