Big Dumb Guy

2012-02-09T14:02:00.006-05:00

Last week I mocked the very notion that Iran could successfully attack America and still openly do. Seriously? If, 11 years later our ~~Fatherland~~ >ahem!< Homeland Security is so porous as to allow an Iranian operative into the nation, our tax dollars have been wasted.

Around that time or maybe even before it, the UKs Guardian ran this article that I only stumbled upon a few days ago, which reads in part:

The head of US intelligence has warned that there is an increasing likelihood that Iran could carry out attacks in America or against US and allied targets around the world...

...Presenting his annual "worldwide threat assessment" to Congress, Clapper said an alleged plot to blow up the Saudi ambassador in Washington last year, which the US blamed on the Iran's Revolutionary Guard, "shows that some Iranian officials – probably including the supreme leader Ali Khamenei – have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime."

Clapper added: "Iran's willingness to sponsor future attacks in the US or against our interests abroad probably will be shaped by Tehran's evaluation of the costs it bears for the plot against the ambassador as well as Iranian leaders' perceptions of US threats against the regime."

All of which I heard before when the illegitimate Bush presidency was stalling for time before invaded Iraq. It ain't easy getting your army from point A(merica) to point B(rown people)!
So it's looking official, a matter of when, not if, we invade Iran, at least to me. I say it will be after the election, but Israel may push the pace on this one, and, as our Most Christian Government does everything it is told to by the Israelis, we Americans are preparing ourselves dutifully for action.

Not to be outdone, the serious people in Washington DC who run that looney bin have recently decided, just in time for our new war, that it would be a Very Good Idea to change some rules:

The Pentagon on Thursday will propose rule changes that will allow more women to formally serve in jobs closer to the front lines.

Women will still be barred from serving in infantry combat units, defense officials say, but the changes will formally open up new positions at the combat battalion level that, until now, have been off limits.

The new jobs opening up for female service members will be combat support positions, including communications, intelligence and logistical positions, defense officials add. Typically, these jobs have been made available at the combat brigade level, but not at the lower battalion level, which was deemed too close to combat situation.

It is worth reminding people that Iran, unlike Iraq, actually has biological weapons and will doubtless use them in military situations. Just saying.

on why Russia and China vetoed a UN security resolution over Syria

2012-02-04T14:04:00.002-05:00

Russia and China were never going to let pass a security resolution regarding Syria because of America's militarism, combined with their view that the Western European nations (read as: NATO) is merely a lap dog for the United States. Russia and China have had bad blood between them for decades (if not centuries) yet both nations seem to have put all that past them as they seek to be a sort of international counter balance to perceived US aggression, especially now that it is quite clear that the drum beat for war is reaching Iraqian proportions when it comes to Iran here in the States. Syria, having been mentioned as a possible foe if war broke out between the US and Iran, is, therefor, an important piece of the strategic puzzle to be neutralized by NATO or American forces.

While I, and I'm sure, many folks around the globe are bitterly disappointed (the Syrian people truly do need some form of aid), one can't be surprised that Russia and China are naturally wary of yet another Western power military exercise in their spheres of influence and will do all they can to prevent it.

I'm not concerned about the poor...

2012-02-04T13:51:00.000-05:00

Iran is the root of all evil - Salon.com

2012-02-04T00:00:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post‘s David Ignatius yesterday reported that Leon Pantta believes there is “a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June,” while the Face of American Meritocracy, NBC News‘ Luke Russert, today said that ”NBC can report Sec of Defense Panetta says there’s a greater than 50% chance Israel will attack Iran in the coming months.” If that does happen, many Americans will undoubtedly be entirely supportive because they know (at least the ones who read American newspapers and listen to their government officials) that Iran is the Evil-est since Saddam’s Iraq:

Wall Street Journal, today:

Washington Post, Wednesday:

Wired, Wednesday:

Is there anything those Persian Monsters aren’t guilty of? The worst part of all this may be the fact that National Security officials don’t even have enough respect for the American public and media to create a new propaganda script; like some budget-strapped studio executives eager to push a worthless sequel to the market, they instead just lazily haul out the last script that was used with only the most cosmetic changes:

Weekly Standard, Septemeber 2003:

Jeffrey Goldberg & Eli Lake, The Atlantic, June, 2010:

Eli Lake, New York Sun, March, 2008:

Laurie Mylroie & ABC News‘ Brian Ross, November, 2001:

Fortunately, though, those responsible for the last tawdry script have been stripped of all influence, while the American media learned its lesson from the role they played in the Iraq debacle and will be much more skeptical of these claims this time around. Actually, neither of those things is true — see here and here and here — which is exactly why government officials know they do not need even to bother with producing anything new.

UPDATE: Yousef Munayyer reminds me of this other important plot similarlity between the wildly successful original and the sequel:

CBS News, August 18, 2002:

The Guardian, today:

Aren’t war advocates going to have to find at least a few superficial plot changes to maintain dramatic interest?

2012-02-03T02:03:00.001-05:00

I feel magnanimous.

Romney Isn’t Concerned - NYTimes.com

2012-02-02T22:29:00.000-05:00

By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: February 2, 2012 If you’re an American down on your luck, Mitt Romney has a message for you: He doesn’t feel your pain. Earlier this week, Mr. Romney told a startled CNN interviewer, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”

Faced with criticism, the candidate has claimed that he didn’t mean what he seemed to mean, and that his words were taken out of context. But he quite clearly did mean what he said. And the more context you give to his statement, the worse it gets.

First of all, just a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”

This claim, like much of what Mr. Romney says, was completely false: U.S. poverty programs have nothing like as much bureaucracy and overhead as, say, private health insurance companies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries. But the dishonesty of his initial claim aside, how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?

Also, given this whopper about how safety-net programs actually work, how credible was Mr. Romney’s assertion, after expressing his lack of concern about the poor, that if the safety net needs a repair, “I’ll fix it”?

Now, the truth is that the safety net does need repair. It provides a lot of help to the poor, but not enough. Medicaid, for example, provides essential health care to millions of unlucky citizens, children especially, but many people still fall through the cracks: among Americans with annual incomes under $25,000, more than a quarter — 28.7 percent — don’t have any kind of health insurance. And, no, they can’t make up for that lack of coverage by going to emergency rooms.

Similarly, food aid programs help a lot, but one in six Americans living below the poverty line suffers from “low food security.” This is officially defined as involving situations in which “food intake was reduced at times during the year because [households] had insufficient money or other resources for food” — in other words, hunger.

So we do need to strengthen our safety net. Mr. Romney, however, wants to make the safety net weaker instead.

Specifically, the candidate has endorsed Representative Paul Ryan’s plan for drastic cuts in federal spending — with almost two-thirds of the proposed spending cuts coming at the expense of low-income Americans. To the extent that Mr. Romney has differentiated his position from the Ryan plan, it is in the direction of even harsher cuts for the poor; his Medicaid proposal appears to involve a 40 percent reduction in financing compared with current law.

So Mr. Romney’s position seems to be that we need not worry about the poor thanks to programs that he insists, falsely, don’t actually help the needy, and which he intends, in any case, to destroy.

Still, I believe Mr. Romney when he says he isn’t concerned about the poor. What I don’t believe is his assertion that he’s equally unconcerned about the rich, who are “doing fine.” After all, if that’s what he really feels, why does he propose showering them with money?

And we’re talking about a lot of money. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Romney’s tax plan would actually raise taxes on many lower-income Americans, while sharply cutting taxes at the top end. More than 80 percent of the tax cuts would go to people making more than $200,000 a year, almost half to those making more than $1 million a year, with the average member of the million-plus club getting a $145,000 tax break.

And these big tax breaks would create a big budget hole, increasing the deficit by $180 billion a year — and making those draconian cuts in safety-net programs necessary.

Which brings us back to Mr. Romney’s lack of concern. You can say this for the former Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital executive: He is opening up new frontiers in American politics. Even conservative politicians used to find it necessary to pretend that they cared about the poor. Remember “compassionate conservatism”? Mr. Romney has, however, done away with that pretense.

At this rate, we may soon have politicians who admit what has been obvious all along: that they don’t care about the middle class either, that they aren’t concerned about the lives of ordinary Americans, and never were.

2012-02-02T13:31:00.001-05:00

Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad.

-- James Madison

2012-02-02T13:28:00.001-05:00

“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

—	James Madison, “Political Observations” (1795-04-20)

How the GOP Is Resegregating the South | The Nation

2012-02-02T11:13:00.000-05:00

...

Mansfield’s district is emblematic of how the redistricting process has changed the political complexion of North Carolina, as Republicans attempt to turn this racially integrated swing state into a GOP bastion, with white Republicans in the majority and black Democrats in the minority for the next decade. “We’re having the same conversations we had forty years ago in the South, that black people can only represent black people and white people can only represent white people,” says Mansfield. “I’d hope that in 2012 we’d have grown better than that.” Before this year, for example, there were no Senate districts with a BVAP of 50 percent or higher. Now there are nine. A lawsuit filed by the NAACP and other advocacy groups calls the redistricting maps “an intentional and cynical use of race that exceeds what is required to ensure fairness to previously disenfranchised racial minority voters.”

And it’s not just happening in North Carolina. In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans—to protect and expand their gains in 2010—have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats. “What’s uniform across the South is that Republicans are using race as a central basis in drawing districts for partisan advantage,” says Anita Earls, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “The bigger picture is to ultimately make the Democratic Party in the South be represented only by people of color.” The GOP’s long-term goal is to enshrine a system of racially polarized voting that will make it harder for Democrats to win races on local, state, federal and presidential levels. Four years after the election of Barack Obama, which offered the promise of a new day of postracial politics in states like North Carolina, Republicans are once again employing a Southern Strategy that would make Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater proud.

The consequences of redistricting in North Carolina—one of the most important swing states in the country—could determine who controls Congress and the presidency in 2012. Democrats hold seven of the state’s thirteen Congressional seats, but after redistricting they could control only three—the largest shift for Republicans at the Congressional level in any state this year. Though Obama won eight of the thirteen districts, under the new maps his vote would be contained in only three heavily Democratic districts—all of which would have voted 68 percent or higher for the president in 2008—while the rest of the districts would have favored John McCain by 55 percent or more. “GOP candidates could win just over half of the statewide vote for Congress and end up with 62 percent to 77 percent of the seats,” found John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation.

The same holds true at the state level, where only 10 percent of state legislative races can be considered a tossup. “If these maps hold, Republicans have a solid majority plus a cushion in the North Carolina House and Senate,” says J. Michael Bitzer, a professor of political science at Catawba College. “They don’t even need to win the swing districts.” North Carolina is now a political paradox: a presidential swing state with few swing districts. Republicans have turned what Bitzer calls an “aberration”—the Tea Party wave of 2010—“into the norm.”

Republicans accomplished this remarkable feat by drawing half the state’s black population of 2.2 million people, who vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, into a fifth of all legislative and Congressional districts. As a result, black voters are twice as likely as white voters to see their communities divided. “The new North Carolina legislative lines take the cake for the most grotesquely drawn districts I’ve ever seen,” says Jeff Wice, a Democratic redistricting lawyer in Washington...

The Assange Case Means That We Are All Suspects Now | Truthout

2012-02-02T10:15:00.000-05:00

...

The consequences, if he loses, lie not in Sweden, but in the shadows cast by America's descent into totalitarianism.

In Sweden, he is at risk of being "temporarily surrendered" to the US where his life has been threatened and where he is accused of "aiding the enemy" with Bradley Manning, the young soldier accused of leaking evidence of US war crimes to WikiLeaks.

The connections between Manning and Assange have been concocted by a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, which allowed no defense counsel or witnesses, and by a system of plea bargaining that ensures a 90 percent conviction. It is reminiscent of a Soviet show trial.

The determination of the Obama administration to crush Assange and the unfettered journalism represented by WikiLeaks is revealed in secret Australian government documents released under freedom of information, which describe the US pursuit of WikiLeaks as "an unprecedented investigation." It is unprecedented because it subverts the First Amendment of the US constitution that explicitly protects truth-tellers. In 2008, Barack Obama said, "Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal." Obama has since prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers as all previous US presidents.

With American courts demanding to see the worldwide accounts of Twitter, Google and Yahoo, the threat to Assange, an Australian, extends to any Internet user anywhere. Washington's enemy is not "terrorism," but the principle of free speech and voices of conscience within its militarist state and those journalists brave enough to tell their stories...

The post-American world demands a new approach from the U.S. - The Washington Post

2012-02-02T08:51:00.000-05:00

By Fareed Zakaria, Published: February 1

Dear Mitt Romney,

Congratulations on Florida. Now that you are again the front-runner, and your campaign focus is returning to President Obama, I’d like to call attention to a line you have used repeatedly: “This is a president who fundamentally believes that this next century is the post-American century.” I leave it to the president to describe what he believes, but as the author of the book “The Post-American World,” let me make sure you know what exactly you are attacking.

“This is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else,” I note at the very outset. I am optimistic about America, convinced that it can prosper in this new world and remain the most powerful country on the planet. But I argue that the age of American unipolarity — which began with the collapse of the Soviet Union — has ended. For a quarter-century after the collapse of communism, the United States dominated the world with no real political or economic competitors. Its ideas and its model — the Washington consensus — became received wisdom everywhere.

Today we are in a different era. In 1990, China represented 2 percent of global gross domestic product. It has quadrupled, to 8 percent, and is rising. By most estimates, China’s economy will become the world’s largest between 2016 and 2018.

This is not simply an economic story. China’s military capacity and reach are expanding. Since 2008 Chinese naval fleets have escorted more than 4,300 ships through the Gulf of Aden. Beijing’s defense spending is likely to surpass America’s by 2025. For its foreign policy activism, look on any continent: A gleaming new African Union headquarters was unveiled in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, last week. The $200 million-plus complex was financed by China and inaugurated by a high-ranking Politburo member, who arrived with a check for $94 million.

It is not just China that is rising. Emerging powers on every continent have achieved political stability and economic growth and are becoming active on the global stage. Twenty years ago Turkey was a fragile democracy, dominated by its army, that had a weak economy constantly in need of Western bailouts. Today, Turkey has a trillion-dollar economy that grew 6.6 percent last year. Since April 2009, Turkey has created 3.4 million jobs — more than the European Union, Russia and South Africa put together. That might explain Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s confidence and his country’s energetic foreign policy.

Look in this hemisphere: In 1990, Brazil was emerging from decades of dictatorship and was wracked by inflation rates that reached 3,000 percent. Its president was impeached in 1992. Today, the country is a stable democracy, steadily growing with foreign-exchange reserves of $350 billion. Its foreign policy has become extremely active. President Dilma Rousseff is in Cuba this week, “marking Brazil’s highest-profile bid to transform its growing economic might into diplomatic leadership in Latin America,” the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. Brazil’s state development bank is financing a $680 million rehabilitation of Cuba’s port at Mariel.

For three decades, India was unable to get any Western country to accept its status as a nuclear power. But as its economy boomed and Asia became the new cockpit of global affairs, the mood shifted. Over the past five years the United States, France, Britain and others have made a massive exception for New Delhi’s nuclear program and have assiduously courted India as a new ally. I could go on.

This is a new world, very different from the America-centric one we got used to over the last generation. Obama has succeeded in preserving and even enhancing U.S. influence in this world precisely because he has recognized these new forces at work. He has traveled to the emerging nations and spoken admiringly of their rise. He replaced the old Western club and made the Group of 20 the central decision-making forum for global economic affairs. By emphasizing multilateral organizations, alliance structures and international legitimacy, he got results. It was Chinese and Russian cooperation that produced tougher sanctions against Iran. It was the Arab League’s formal request last year that made Western intervention in Libya uncontroversial.

By and large, you have ridiculed this approach to foreign policy, arguing that you would instead expand the military, act unilaterally and talk unapologetically. That might appeal to Republican primary voters, but chest-thumping triumphalism won’t help you secure America’s interests or ideals in a world populated by powerful new players.

2012-02-01T17:23:00.001-05:00

“People who dismiss the unemployed and dependent as ‘parasites’ fail to understand economics and parasitism. A successful parasite is one that is not recognized by its host, one that can make its host work for it without appearing as a burden. Such is the ruling class in a capitalist society.”

—	Jason Read

The Maddow Blog - Vitter boasts about Komen move

2012-02-01T16:55:00.000-05:00

What can make the politics of Komen for the Cure's Planned Parenthood decision look worse? Have a scandal-plagued, right-wing senator take credit for the decision.

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) ... lauded Komen's action, saying: "This is a welcome, long-overdue decision that will make Komen more effective in the fight against breast cancer, which is why I wrote a letter to Komen's founder and CEO last May urging her to take this step." [...]

Vitter had sent a letter to Komen founder and CEO Nancy Brinker urging her to end Komen's association with Planned Parenthood and give the grant money directly to mammogram providers.

Vitter is perhaps best known for running as a "family values" conservative who was later caught hiring prostitutes.

The senator's boasts notwithstanding, Komen's decision has caused quite an uproar. Planned Parenthood's supporters have responded by contributing $400,000 to the health organization in just one day. (By some estimates, that figure is even higher.) That doesn't make up for the loss of $700,000 in grants, but after one day, it's close.

Even one of Komen's own affiliates is outraged.

The Connecticut affiliate of Susan G. Komen for the Cure said in a statement on Wednesday that it "shares" people's frustration over the decision and that it will continue funding Planned Parenthood of New England.

"The decision regarding the funding of Planned Parenthood was made by Susan G. Komen for the Cure National Headquarters," the group posted on its Facebook wall. "Susan G. Komen for the Cure Connecticut enjoys a great partnership with Planned Parenthood, and is currently funding Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. We understand, and share, in the frustration around this situation."

On Capitol Hill, Vitter is obviously pleased, but champions of women's health are not. "I have been a big booster of the Susan G. Komen organization," Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said on the House floor, "but not anymore."

How Romney Would Slash the Safety Net | Tim Dickinson | Rolling Stone

2012-02-01T16:38:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney is furiously backpedaling on his declaration that he's "not concerned about the very poor."

In the fullest context, Romney was claiming that the very poor have it alright in America because they can rely on the "ample safety net" of federal programs like Medicaid, adding that if that safety needs repair, "I'll fix it."

But Romney has already announced his fix for Medicaid – the health insurance program for the poor and disabled – and it is about as cruel as his gaffe-tastic one-liner suggests.

Currently Medicaid is a hybrid program, with the federal government splitting actual medical costs with the states.

Romney has endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan's proposal to "block-grant" the federal contribution to Medicaid – and turn the program over to the states. The idea, Romney insists, is to give states more "flexibility" to innovate and control costs.

But that's bunk. As the CBO's analysis of the plan makes plain, the idea is to slash future federal contributions to the health care of the very poor. In short, Romney wants to balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable members of our society.

How so? First, the block grants don't grow at the rate of health care inflation (which far outpaces inflation in the broader economy). Second, the grants don't adjust to account for an aging population that will become more and more expensive to treat. Currently, Medicaid costs are expected to grow at nearly 7 percent a year. The Ryan plan would cap the growth of the federal block grant at roughly 3 percent. Romney, in an astonishing assault on the poor, has said he'd put the cap as low as one percent.

Under the slightly-less-cruel Ryan plan, the federal contribution would be cut by one-third by 2021 – sticking states with $150 billion in unfunded healthcare obligations.

As CBO puts it, "federal payments for Medicaid under the proposal would be substantially smaller." Even assuming that flexibility creates some cost savings, CBO writes, states would not have enough money to maintain Medicaid as it currently exists. They're likely be forced to "decrease payments to Medicaid providers, reduce eligibility for Medicaid, provide less extensive coverage to beneficiaries, or pay more themselves."

When Romney says the very poor are "not my focus," that's a lie. He's focused on squeezing them for every penny he can.

Romney: ‘I’m not concerned about the very poor’ | The Raw Story

2012-02-01T13:27:00.000-05:00

Florida GOP presidential primary winner Mitt Romney displayed his apathy towards America’s impoverished on CNN Tuesday morning.

“I’m in this race because I care about America,” he said. “I’m not concerned about the very poor, we have a safety net there, if we need to repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who are struggling, and I’ll continue to take that message across the country.”

Host Soledad O’Brien was surprised by Romney’s comments.

“You just said said, ‘I’m not concerned about the very poor because they have a safety net,’” O’Brien said. “But I think there are a lot of very poor Americans who are struggling who would say, ‘That sounds odd.’ Can you explain that?”

“Finish the sentence Soledad,” Romney replied. “I said I’m not concerned about the very poor that have a safety net, but if it has holes in it, I will repair them.”

“The challenge right now — we will hear from the Democrat party the plight of the poor. And there’s no question it’s not good being poor. And we have a safety net to help those that are very poor, but my campaign is focused is on middle-income Americans.”

Despite many having access to welfare programs that keep millions of Americans out of poverty, 2010 figures from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities show there are many more who still go without assistance.

Romney’s claim that he is focusing on middle class Americans also is highly questionable. His tax plan favors the very rich like himself, as well as his proposal to cut spending for programs that benefit middle to poor families and individuals.

Romney embraced Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)’s plan that would turn Medicare into a coupon program.

This jerkoff is getting millions through his super PAC (thanks again SCOTUS for destroying our democracy you assholes!) from all the big American corporations which means that this is their guy. He talks their talk and walks their walk and a Romney presidency will be just as damaging as the illegal Bush presidency that devastated the national economy.

Panetta: Decision to Kill Americans Suspected of Terrorism Is Obama's | Mother Jones

2012-01-31T13:19:00.000-05:00

In an interview with CBS 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta revealed more about the secret process the Obama administration uses to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism without trial. According to Panetta, the president himself approves the decision based on recommendations from top national security officials.

"[The] President of the United States, obviously reviews these cases, reviews the legal justification and in the end says, go or no go," Panetta said.

"So it’s the requirement of the administration under the current legal understanding is that the president has to make that declaration, not you?" Pelley asked. Panetta replied, "That is correct."

The process by which national security officials determine whether or not American citizens suspected of terrorism can be killed remains opaque. The administration has leaked information about certain targets, but it has never released the legal justification for doing so, nor has it explained the system by which members of the National Security Council reportedly decide to put an American citizen on a so-called "kill list." In October, Reuters' Mark Hosenball wrote that the president doesn't necessarily explicitly approve strikes—instead, the attacks go forward unless the president objects.

Panetta's explanation of why he believes killing an American citizen without due process is legal wasn't exactly comforting. Here's the exchange:

PANETTA: Without getting into the specifics of the operation, if someone is a citizen of the United States, and is a terrorist, who wants to attack our people and kill Americans, in my book that person is a terrorist. And the reality is that under our laws, that person is a terrorist. And we’re required under a process of law, to be able to justify, that despite the fact that person may be a citizen, he is first and foremost a terrorist who threatens our people, and for that reason, we can establish a legal basis on which we oughta go after that individual, just as we go after bin Laden, just as we go after other terrorists. Why? Because their goal is to kill our people, and for that reason we have to defend ourselves.

PELLEY: They’re not entitled to due process of law under the Constitution of the United States? They lose their citizenship if this administration decides they’re a terrorist?

PANETTA: If this person wanted to suddenly raise questions about whether or not they’re a terrorist, and the were to return to the United States of course they would be entitled to due process. that’s something we provide any US citizen. And for that matter frankly any terrorist who is arrested, we provide due process to that individual as well. But if a terrorist is out there on the battlefield, and the terrorist is threatening this country, that person is an enemy combatant, and when an enemy combatant holds a gun at your head, you fire back.

Panetta's explanation isn't much more complex than "when we say someone is a terrorist, then we can kill them, because they're a terrorist." The entire point of due process, however, is to determine whether or not someone is actually guilty. The defense secretary's metaphor—that you can fire back when someone "holds a gun to your head"—might justify killing an American citizen who is fighting on an actual battlefield, like Afghanistan. But it suggests violence as an appropriate response to an imminent threat, rather than the actual circumstances under which say, radical cleric and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki appears to have been killed.

President Obama just signed a bill that, if not for its many administrative loopholes, would "mandate" military detention for non-citizen terror suspects apprehended on American soil, so it's not accurate for Panetta to state that "any" suspected terrorist apprehended by the US receives due process. The vast majority of the nearly two hundred detainees at Gitmo have never been charged with anything, let alone tried and convicted. Osama bin Laden was the admitted leader of a group engaged in an armed conflict against US troops in Afghanistan; concrete evidence that al-Awlaki was more than a font for extremist propaganda has never been aired.

There's also an Orwellian element to Panetta's argument that anyone on the US kill list should simply turn themselves in and get a fair trial. As Glenn Greenwald reminds us, we only know that al-Awlaki was on the "kill list" because his name was leaked to the press. Any other Americans who might be on the list have no way of knowing they've been targeted absent leaks from administration officials or the sound they hear right before they're annihilated by a Hellfire missile. (Even calling friends, family, or a lawyer to turn yourself in could be the act that gets you killed.) If such an individual did know he was on the list, how exactly is he supposed to believe he'd have "due process" after giving himself up, given that he's already been sentenced to death by the administration? Is a fair trial even possible under those circumstances?

Killing American citizens without due process was an idea introduced by the Bush people and and finally passed by the Obama people. If the Constitution doesn't apply to all American citizens equally, it applies to none of us. When we give the President the powers of an Emperor or King, we are betraying the very foundation upon which America was built. Republicans and Democrats have shown their true colors: both sides don't know shit about the Constitution and both sides are bad for America.

Falling behind

2012-01-31T12:58:00.001-05:00

America is slipping further and further behind the modernized world. Why? Because rather than update or fix our infrastructure, defense contractors, war speculators and oil men are would rather focus their greed on money making misadventures globally than the health and welfare of their nation.

Charlotte restricts free speech | SocialistWorker.org

2012-01-31T11:55:00.000-05:00

...Charlotte's bid to restrict free speech rights follows similar ordinances adopted in Chicago in preparation for the NATO and G8 joint summit meeting in May. Like the measures approved in Chicago, the law passed in Charlotte seeks to stifle dissent through a combination of bureaucratic red tape and broadened power for police officers. Also like Chicago, the measure was passed under the administration of a Democratic mayor with overwhelming support by a City Council dominated by Democrats (there is only one Republican on the council).

The key part of the legislation, which takes the form of an amendment to city code, is a provision empowering the city manager--an appointed, not elected, official--to declare an event "of international or national significance" to be an "extraordinary event." The city manager may then specify and limit the times and locations in which demonstrations can occur. The law further empowers the city to establish permit deadlines for protesters wishing to stage marches and demonstrations.

The bill has no sunset clause, meaning that it will stay on the books permanently...

The Twilight Zone movie if politicians were in the cast

2012-01-31T11:27:00.000-05:00

Welfare Drug Testing Bill Withdrawn After Amended To Include Testing Lawmakers

2012-01-28T13:51:00.000-05:00

A Republican member of the Indiana General Assembly withdrew his bill to create a pilot program for drug testing welfare applicants Friday after one of his Democratic colleagues amended the measure to require drug testing for lawmakers.

"There was an amendment offered today that required drug testing for legislators as well and it passed, which led me to have to then withdraw the bill," said Rep. Jud McMillin (R-Brookville), sponsor of the original welfare drug testing bill.

The Supreme Court ruled drug testing for political candidates unconstitutional in 1997, striking down a Georgia law. McMillin said he withdrew his bill so he could reintroduce it on Monday with a lawmaker drug testing provision that would pass constitutional muster.

"I've only withdrawn it temporarily," he told HuffPost, stressing he carefully crafted his original bill so that it could survive a legal challenge. Last year a federal judge, citing the Constitution's ban on unreasonable search and seizure, struck down a Florida law that required blanket drug testing of everyone who applied for welfare.

McMillin's bill would overcome constitutional problems, he said, by setting up a tiered screening scheme in which people can opt-out of random testing. Those who decline random tests would only be screened if they arouse "reasonable suspicion," either by their demeanor, by being convicted of a crime, or by missing appointments required by the welfare office.

In the past year Republican lawmakers have pursued welfare drug testing in more than 30 states and in Congress, and some bills have even targeted people who claim unemployment insurance and food stamps, despite scanty evidence the poor and jobless are disproportionately on drugs. Democrats in several states have countered with bills to require drug testing elected officials. Indiana state Rep. Ryan Dvorak (D-South Bend) introduced just such an amendment on Friday.

"After it passed, Rep. McMillin got pretty upset and pulled his bill," Dvorak said. "If anything, I think it points out some of the hypocrisy. ... If we're going to impose standards on drug testing, then it should apply to everybody who receives government money."

Dvorak said McMillin was mistaken to think testing the legislature would be unconstitutional, since the stricken Georgia law targeted candidates and not people already holding office.

McMillan, for his part, said he's coming back with a new bill on Monday, lawmaker testing included. He said he has no problem submitting to a test himself.

"I would think legislators that are here who are responsible for the people who voted them in, they should be more than happy to consent," he said. "Give me the cup right now and I will be happy to take the test."

Ha! Guess now we know what the GOP has been smoking! Thrice damned hypocrites!

On Iran

2012-01-28T11:14:00.004-05:00

As I watch Iraq Redux play out in public as “we can’t afford to let Iran have nuclear weapons” to grease the pump of the public up for yet another costly war (that may turn global this time), I can’t help but wonder, “What the hell do I care if Iran has a nuclear weapon?”

Their weapons are no threat to Americans whatsoever and I defy anyone to prove they are.
Go on, I’ll wait for you hawks to craft some improbable scenario where I, as an American, have to worry about a backwards middle east country having nukes. Israel has bloody nukes. Pakistan has nukes. Not afraid. Maybe if I lived on the west coast? Even then, I find it highly unlikely that the Iranian navy is going to sail into American waters to take out Seattle unmolested.

In fact, the only reason the Iranians would want nukes would be as a determent to Israel nuking them first. Think the above mentioned Pakistan and their arch rival India. Same thing.

Yet the religious whackos in our country combined with corporate business interests looking to profit on Iranian natural resources are bound and determined to sell us this war. For them, this would be a gloriously godly, profitable venture. After all, with no superpowers left to oppose us, who can resist the American will once we’ve begun to throw our weight around?

Judge Orders Arizona Candidate Struck From Ballot - NYTimes.com

2012-01-27T11:03:00.000-05:00

Lawyers for Alejandrina Cabrera, a candidate for the City Council in the border community of San Luis, Ariz., said Thursday that they might appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court a lower-court ruling that Ms. Cabrera be removed from the ballot because she did not speak English proficiently.

Judge John Nelson of the Yuma County Superior Court ruled late Wednesday night that Ms. Cabrera be struck from the ballot because she did not know enough English to do the job. In removing Ms. Cabrera, Judge Nelson agreed with the recommendation of a linguist who had conducted tests of Ms. Cabrera and found her English skills lacking.

The linguist, William G. Eggington, a professor at Brigham Young University in Utah, testified before the court on Wednesday. He said that based on interviews and tests he conducted with Mrs. Cabrera, she had “basic survival level” English that fell well below that needed to participate in city business.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed, although the judge acknowledged that there’s no precedent for him to follow,” John S. Garcia, one of the lawyers for Ms. Cabrera, said Thursday.

Mr. Garcia said he planned to meet Thursday night with Ms. Cabrera to determine her willingness to continue the legal battle.

I'm curious what you readers think. Should an American citizen be denied the right to run for office because they don't speak English well?

2012-01-27T01:01:00.000-05:00

If Romney develops a stage persona that the media can sell to the rubes down South that make up the base of the Republican party, like the one he used tonight but a little more fine tuned, it may very well come down to which side gets the most of their people to vote.

Romney is a dangerous man and, worse, a True Believer, but up until now his being a Mormon has kept him from cinching up the nomination. Get fundamentalist Christians to overcome that prejudice and a very fired up, fanatical group of right wing extremists are going to be voting in record numbers, their hatred of Obama is that strong. A hatred created from no basis in fact or reality and believed as t'were God's own writ. I just don't get it.

Anyway, Romney would use the indefinite detention on liberal groups and his government would root us out. He has to because I think he will order the military to invade Iran.

Or not.

I don't like him and I know the powers that be in White America would love to see Romney in the White House because he is, as we know by his dealings, their man when it comes to unfettered capitalism.

2012-01-26T14:11:00.003-05:00

I am an independent progressive voter and think both parties are corrupt, self-serving and bad for America. That said, I'm an American and I was always taught to respect the President of the United States. To speak even more plainly, I still do not believe George W. Bush was ever lawfully elected POTUS. He is a criminal and he allowed 9/11 to happen because he was careless in his duties. But, if he had asked me to the White House it would have been, "Yes, Mr. President." or "Mr. President you honor me." or some such. Why? Because he was the guy my country settled on leading them. Their consent made him President and thus, like it or not, agree or not, he was my President too. You don't call yourself a good America when you make this affront to the office. You don't make a conservative super star of the dame who made our nation look weak and foolish in the eyes of the world and those who hate us. If this had been George Bush and that had been Sheila Jackson Lee you righties would have had seizures while calling for her head on a platter.

2012-01-25T23:30:00.000-05:00

So, I already knew Jan Brewer was a dumb cunt but seeing her stick her finger in the face of the President of the United States get my blood to boiling.

I guess I was raised different but you do not disrespect the President in that way. Who the hell does that bitch think she is?!?

But this is a perfect illustration of why I loathe Republicans far more than the Democrats. They aren't respectful, it's their way or no way and they are bad Americans egging on a dangerous base to acts of violence against Democrats simply because they don't think the same way they do.

If I was Obama I'd have backhanded that presumptuous woman! "I'm the President bitch, respect the office!"

Don't wurry nun 'merica, I'll never be President : )

East Haven, Conn., Police Officers Accused of Mistreating Latinos - NYTimes.com

2012-01-25T14:03:00.000-05:00

They were known as Miller’s Boys, police officers who worked the 4-to-midnight shift, patrolling the largely working-class town of East Haven, Conn., including the small but growing Hispanic community that has spread out in recent years from New Haven. The officers were more than well known in that community; according to residents and federal authorities, they were feared. They stopped and detained people, particularly immigrants, without reason, federal prosecutors said, sometimes slapping, hitting or kicking them when they were handcuffed, and once smashing a man’s head into a wall. They followed and arrested residents, including a local priest, who tried to document their behavior.

They rooted through stores looking for damning security videotapes of how they had treated some of their targets, described by one of them on a police radio as having “drifted to this country on rafts made of chicken wings.”

And after it became known that the Justice Department was investigating the department, according to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, a picture of a rat appeared on a police union bulletin board, and in the locker room, an ominous note: “You know what we do with snitches?”

On Tuesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Sgt. John Miller and three of his officers — David Cari, Dennis Spaulding and Jason Zullo — on charges of conspiracy, false arrest, excessive force and obstruction of justice over what the indictment described as years of mistreatment of individuals, especially Hispanics, and efforts to cover it up.

Following on the heels of a scathing Justice Department report in December that found the East Haven police had engaged in widespread “biased policing, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and the use of excessive force,” the indictment portrayed a harrowing picture of arbitrary justice for Hispanic residents...

You envious, little people...

2012-01-25T13:52:00.000-05:00

Race baiting, then and now

2012-01-25T13:29:00.000-05:00

GOP voters prepare to select a candidate

2012-01-25T13:19:00.000-05:00

U.S. Commandos Free 2 Hostages From Somali Pirates - NYTimes.com

2012-01-25T13:07:00.000-05:00

Under a cloak of darkness, the Seals parachuted in, stormed the hide-out, killed nine gunmen and then whisked the aid workers into waiting helicopters, Pentagon officials said. The Seals were from the same elite Navy commando unit — Seal Team Six — that secretly entered Pakistan to kill Osama Bin Laden in May, senior American officials said, though the rescue mission in Somalia was carried out by a different assault team within the unit.

President Obama was closely tracking the raid on Tuesday night, which was Wednesday morning in Somalia, and as he stepped into the House chamber to deliver his State of the Union address, he looked right at Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta standing in the crowd and said: “Leon, good job tonight, good job.”

Our president is badass!

5 Republican Lies About Income Inequality | | AlterNet

2012-01-25T12:42:00.000-05:00

By David Morris Recent comments by Mitt Romney, the probable Republican nominee for President all but guarantee the inequality issue will remain front and center this election year.

When asked whether people who question the current distribution of wealth and power are motivated by “jealousy or fairness” Romney insisted, “I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare.” And in this election year he advised that if we do discuss inequality we do so “in quiet rooms” not in public debates.

A public debate, of course, is inevitable. And welcome. To help that debate along I’ll address the five major statements that comprise the Republican argument on inequality.

1. Income is not all that unequal.

Actually it is. Since 1980 the top 1 percent has increased its share of the national income by an astounding $1.1 trillion. Today 300,000 very rich Americans enjoy almost as much income as 150 million.

Since 1980, the income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has increased a meager $303 or 1 percent. The top 1 percent’s income has more than doubled, increasing by about $500,000. And the really, really rich, the top 10th of 1 percent, made out, dare I say, like bandits, quadrupling their income to $22 million.

Meanwhile a full-time worker’s wage was 11 percent lower in 2004 than in 1973, adjusting for inflation even though their productivity increased by 78 percent. Productivity gains swelled corporate profits, which reached an all time high in 2010. And that in turn fueled an unprecedented inequality within the workplace itself. In 2010, according to the Institute for Policy Studies, the average CEO in large companies earned 325 times more than the average worker.

2. Inequality doesn’t matter because in America ambition and hard work can make a pauper a millionaire.

This is folklore. A worker’s initial position in the income distribution is highly predictive of how much he or she earns later in the career. And as the Brookings Institution reports “there is growing evidence of less intergenerational economic mobility in the United States than in many other rich industrialized countries.”

The bitter fact is that it is harder for a poor person in America to become rich than in virtually any other industrialized country.

3. Income inequality is not a result of tax policy.

Nonsense. A painstaking analysis by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Stefanie Stantcheva found “a strong correlation between the reductions in top tax rates and the increases in top 1% pre-tax income shares from 1975–79 to 2004–08”. For example, the U.S. slashed the top income tax rate by 35 percent and witnessed a large ten percent increase in its top 1% pre-tax income share. “By contrast, France or Germany saw very little change in their top tax rates and their top 1% income shares during the same period.”

4. Taxing the rich will slow economic growth.

An examination of 18 OECD countries found “little empirical support for the claim that reducing the progressivity of the tax code has spurred economic growth, business formation or job growth.”

Indeed, Piketty, Saez and Stantcheva’s rigorous analysis came to the opposite conclusion. Our economy may be growing more slowly because we are taxing the rich too little, not too much. Economists Peter Diamond and Saezestimated the optimal top tax rate, that is the tax rate that would maximize revenue without slowing economic growth, could be as high as 83 percent.

Redistributing income stimulates economies in part because when 1% make more they save whereas when the 99% make more they spend. As a result, according to Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s, a dollar in tax cuts on capital gains adds .38 cents of economic growth while a dollar in unemployment benefits gives the economy a boost of $1.63 and a dollar of food stamps adds $1.73.

5. Taxing the rich would not raise much money.

Of course it would. If only the richest 400 families, whose average income in 2008 was an astounding $270 million actually paid the statutory rate of 39 percent (revived as of next January 1st) an additional $500 billion would be raised over 10 years, putting a substantial dent in the projected deficit.

In 2010 hedge fund manager John Paulson made $5 billion. That year, according to Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, Paulson paid no income taxes. Am I envious Mr. Romney? You bet I am. But I’m also angry at the stark injustice of it all. And terrified of the power such wealth can wield in a country that allows billionaires to spend unlimited sums influencing legislation and elections.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center found that two-thirds of Americans now believe the conflict between rich and poor is our greatest source of tension. I agree. It is a conflict that deserves to be aired fully and in public.

David Morris is co-founder and vice president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minn., and director of its New Rules project.

Gabby Giffords and an Ominous Development in Missouri | Mother Jones

2012-01-25T10:55:00.000-05:00

There was overwhelming bipartisan agreement on Tuesday night that Gabrielle Giffords' arrival for President Obama's State of the Union address was the most compelling moment of the evening. Watch the footage and there's simply no arguing with that—the Arizona congresswoman looked terrific. Her incredible comeback from a near-fatal shooting one year ago seems all the more remarkable each time she appears in public. (Not that she doesn't face challenges ahead; a video she released over the weekend, in which she announced that she's stepping down from her congressional seat to focus on her further recovery, is equally moving.) Her story is as potent a mix of painful and inspirational as there is, and you'd hope that it could stand as something of an antidote to the poisonous politics of the era.

Which is why some news out of Missouri on Tuesday was particularly stomach-churning: Just hours before Giffords made her way into the nation's Capitol, an unknown provocateur was stalking the halls of the Missouri Capitol, tagging the doors of lawmakers—most of them Democratic women—with images of rifle crosshairs. From the Columbia Daily Tribune:

Orange stickers with an image of rifle crosshairs were found Tuesday on the office doors of several Democratic state senators, prompting an investigation by Missouri Capitol Police, Senate Administrator Jim Howerton said. The stickers were on the doors of all four Democratic women in the Senate — Jolie Justus and Kiki Curls, both of Kansas City, and Maria Chapelle-Nadal and Robin Wright-Jones, both of St. Louis, Justus said. One similar sticker was found on the nameplate outside the door of state Rep. Scott Dieckhaus, R-Washington.

“If anyone thinks this was a prank, it is not a prank,” Justus said after discussing the discovery of the stickers on the Senate floor. “You don’t joke about someone’s personal safety.” A sticker also was found on the door of Sen. Victor Callahan, D-Kansas City and the Democrats’ floor leader.

Columbia-based reporter Sherman Fabes posted photos of the stickers that showed up at the lawmakers' offices:

Sen. Chapelle-Nadal herself weighed in on Twitter (her tweets are "protected" but one was posted by St. Louis Activist Hub) and didn't mince words, emphasizing her disapproval with "#DisgracefulCowards."

It's an apt moment to recall that Giffords once criticized Sarah Palin for using a map that literally put political enemies in the crosshairs. "We need to realize that the rhetoric…for example, we’re on Sarah Palin's 'targeted' list, but the thing is, the way she has it depicted, we're in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district," Giffords said in an interview with MSNBC in spring 2010. "When people do that, they’ve gotta realize that there are consequences to that action."

We all know what followed.

Palin and other conservatives strongly rejected the notion that their imagery and rhetoric had anything to do with the bloodbath in Arizona a year ago. And no one can know what was truly in the deranged mind of Jared Loughner. But common sense says that when enough targeted political vitriol mixes with enough guns, bad things will eventually happen.

The death of democracy in America. What is money?

2012-01-24T15:20:00.000-05:00

6 Facts About Mitt Romney’s Taxes/ Lack Thereof

2012-01-24T12:44:00.002-05:00

1. Romney paid a lower tax rate than many middle-class Americans, at 13.9 percent.

2. Romney makes more in a day than the average American makes in a year, and becomes a 1 percenter every week.

3. Romney likely paid $0 in payroll taxes.

4. Romney has accounts in countries notorious for tax dodging, like Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Cayman Islands.

5. Romney and Gingrich’s tax plans would slash Romney’s taxes in half.

6. Romney needs four lawyers, including the former IRS commissioner to defend his tax plan.

Santorum To Rape Victims: 'Make The Best Out Of A Bad Situation' | ThinkProgress

2012-01-24T12:17:00.000-05:00

“Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.”

—	GOP presidential candidate and all around frothy mixture Rick Santorum explaining why you women should quit your damn whining and just have the baby forced into your womb by God through the vessel of your rapist.

FACTS: The State Of The Union | ThinkProgress

2012-01-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

Tonight, President Barack Obama will deliver his third State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. The Republican response will be given by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Before you watch the speeches, get the facts:

• Since the last SOTU, the economy has created 1.9 million private sector jobs. [Source]

• The top 1 percent take home 24 percent of the nation’s income, up from about 9 percent in 1976. [Source]

• Private sector job creation under Obama in 2011 was larger than seven out of the eight years Bush was president. [Source]

• The top 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of our country’s wealth while the bottom 80 percent owns only 7 percent. [Source]

• Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 2.5 million young adults gained health insurance. [Source]

• For every one job opening, there are four people looking for work. [Source]

• Last year, China spent 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure. The U.S. spent 2.5 percent. [Source]

• 2.65 million seniors saved an average of $569 on prescriptions last year thanks to the Affordable Care Act. [Source]

• “In 2011, the United States killed Al Qaeda’s most effective propagandist, Anwar al-Awlaki; its operating chief, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman; and of course its founder, chief executive and spiritual leader, Osama bin Laden.” [Source]

• Union membership is at a 70-year low. [Source]

• Unemployment benefits have lifted 3.2 million people out of poverty. [Source]

• The United States used to have the world’s largest percentage of college graduates. We’re now #14. [Source]

• One quarter of all contributions to federal campaigns come from 0.01 percent of Americans. [Source]

• 47.8 percent of households that receive food stamps are working, because having a job is not enough to keep them out of poverty. [Source]

• In the last three years, 30 major corporations spent more on lobbying than they paid in taxes. [Source]

• 50 percent of U.S. workers make less than $26,364 per year. [Source]

• More than one in 70 homes faced foreclosure last year. [Source]

• Since 1985, the federal tax rate for the 400 wealthiest Americans dropped from 29 percent to 18 percent. [Source]

Arkansas Democrat's cat killed, painted with "liberal" - Yahoo! News

2012-01-23T20:27:00.000-05:00

A cat belonging to an Arkansas Democratic campaign manager was found dead on Sunday night with the word "Liberal" spray-painted across its side, the campaign manager said.

The cat was a pet of Jake Burris, who manages Democrat Ken Aden's bid for Arkansas' 3rd Congressional District. Aden is running against incumbent Republican Representative Steve Womack.

Burris was returning to his Russellville, Arkansas home with his four children when he found the cat on his doorstep, the Aden campaign said in a press release on Monday.

The mixed-breed Siamese cat had one side of its head bashed in to "the point the cat's eyeball was barely hanging from its socket," the release said.

Aden told Reuters that the event was "horrible, to say the least."

"Thankfully, there are not that many people who want to do something like this," Aden said. "The majority of people in this district are hard-working folks, but you get the occasional crazy individual out there."

The Russellville Police Department is investigating the incident as an animal cruelty case, according to a police official. Russellville is 80 miles west of Little Rock.

Aden and Burris said they did not believe Womack or his re-election campaign were involved in the incident.

Arkansas' 3rd District is heavily conservative Republican and has been held by a Republican since the 1966 election. Womack first won the congressional seat in 2010 with 72 percent of the vote.

The Womack campaign denounced the violence on Monday.

"The thought of brutalizing any animal for the sake of making a political statement is beyond any standard of decency and the person or people responsible for this act should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law," said Beau Walker, Womack's chief of staff.

The only way it'll happen?

2012-01-23T20:21:00.000-05:00

If You Thought SOPA Was Bad, Just Wait Until You Meet ACTA - Forbes

2012-01-23T19:37:00.000-05:00

When sites like Wikipedia and Reddit banded together for a major blackout January 18th, the impact was felt all the way to Washington D.C. The blackout had lawmakers running from the controversial anti-piracy legislation, SOPA and PIPA, which critics said threatened freedom of speech online.

Unfortunately for free-speech advocates, censorship is still a serious threat.

Few people have heard of ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, but the provisions in the agreement are just as pernicious as anything we saw in SOPA. Worse, the agreement spans virtually all of the countries in the developed world, including all of the EU, the United States, Switzerland and Japan.

Many of these countries have already signed or ratified it, and the cogs are still turning. The treaty has been secretly negotiated behind the scenes, with unelected bureaucrats working closely with entertainment industry lobbyists to craft the provisions in the treaty. The Bush administration started the process, but the Obama administration has aggressively pursued it....

Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown deserve major props for campaign finance truce - The Plum Line - The Washington Post

2012-01-23T16:31:00.000-05:00

This morning, Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown announced that they had hammered out an agreement to put up a dam against the flood of outside cash that's expected to gush into their Senate race. Even if the dam ends up springing a few leaks, they deserve credit for trying. Good for them.

The deal wasn’t easy to hammer out, because campaigns don’t have any power to restrict third-party-group spending. But the arrangement deals with this problem in an artful way:

Under the terms of the deal, each campaign would agree to donate half the cost of any third-party ad to charity if that ad either supports their candidacy or attacks their opponent by name.

Warren first floated the idea of an enforceable truce; Brown laid out the terms of the deal last week; Warren responded this morning that she wanted a few final changes, such as tightening up a few loopholes that third party groups might exploit; Brown quickly agreed.

Obviously it would seem borderline impossible to get a group like the Rove-founded Crossroads GPS to refrain from running ads in the state. The group has already invested hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars in multiple spots that were not only dishonest, but actually contradicted each other in a comically hapless way. The beauty of this arrangement is that if Crossroads runs more ads in the state, Brown’s campaign will, in theory at least, be penalized for it.

The Crossroads empire, as it happens, already appears to be signaling that it may not honor the deal:

The president of American Crossroads, Steven Law, quickly criticized the deal, saying it fails to cover union phone banks, direct mail, and get-out-the-vote drives, “all union core specialties.”

This seems like a pretty weak objection; what’s to stop national conservative and Tea Party groups, which also do this kind of organizing regularly, from mobilizing on Brown’s behalf? Nothing. Indeed, Brown’s special election victory in 2010 was fueled by this type of politicking. It seems Crossroads may be laying the groundwork for breaking the agreement.

By contrast, the League of Conservation Voters, a liberal third party group that had been spending heavily on Warren's behalf, quickly issued a statement supporting the arrangement.

I asked Public Campaign Action Fund’s David Donnelly for comment on the deal. He emailed: “It’s good for them, it’s good for voters, and it’s a good model for every competitive race in the country.”

Agreed. And in political terms, we’re in uncharted waters: Could this possibly succeed in muzzling the Crossroads operation? If not, how will the politics of it play? Will other campaigns emulate this approach? It’s another reason the Massachusetts Senate race will — and should be — one of the most closely watched Senate races in the country.

Supreme Court says search warrants needed when police use GPS devices to track suspects - The Washington Post

2012-01-23T12:18:00.000-05:00

Supreme Court says search warrants needed when police use GPS devices to track suspects - The Washington Post Hooray! The Supreme Court gets one right!

BBC News - Trust in government has 'suffered a severe breakdown'

2012-01-23T08:53:00.000-05:00

Governments have been blamed for the financial and political chaos of 2011.

In 17 of 25 countries surveyed governments are now trusted to do what is right by less than half those questioned.

Overall trust in government fell by nine percentage points to 43%.

Trust in business also fell, from 56% to 53%.

Although businesses saw less severe declines in trust, countries at the heart of the eurozone saw sharper decreases.

Businesses in Spain, France and Germany saw trust decline by 21, 20 and 18 percentage points respectively.

China was the only country to see a significant rise in trust in businesses, up from 61% to 71%.

Trusting 'me'

Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman, said: "Business is now better placed than governments to lead the way out of the trust crisis".

"But the balance must change so that business is seen both as a force for good and an engine for profit."

Alongside these steep declines in trust in institutions such as governments or businesses, the survey highlights a dramatic switch in those whom people say they now trust.

A "person like me" is now one of the top three credible sources, said those surveyed, only trailing academics and technical experts.

Social networking, microblogging and content-sharing sites saw the most dramatic percentage rises as trusted sources of information, jumping by 88%, 86% and 75%.

Despite these gains, traditional media and online search engines are still the most trusted sources of information for general news and information, says the survey.

Edelman's 2012 trust Barometer was released in the run-up to this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, where it will be presented in more detail.

Edelman's online survey sampled 25,000 respondents among the general population, with an over-sample of 5,600 "informed" people from the upper end of society - college-educated, with household income in the top quarter - across 25 countries.

I, too, am appalled at Newt's hypocrisy

2012-01-22T20:42:00.000-05:00

Almost...

2012-01-22T20:37:00.000-05:00

Romney's Mormon problem and the GOPs Gingrich problem

2012-01-22T12:21:00.004-05:00

For all those political pundits out there all amazed at a Gingrich thumping of Romney, all I can say is you don't know Christian fundamentalists very well, if at all. A Mormon can no more win the GOP nomination than a gay person because fundamentalists simply loathe them, judging them both as abominations before their god. From back when I was a boy unto this day, it is taught in every Church of God, Assembly of God, Baptist church or any other fundamentalist house worth it's weight in body-of-Christ crackers that Mormonism is a cult and that it's adherents aren't legitimate Christians but people deceived by Satan to follow a wrong path that leads straight to hell. Seriously. That is the basis of their decision making. They would rather see a womanizer who professes the right brand of religion as president then some devil worshiping cultist.

That said, it is important to point out that while most conservatives don't like womanizing sex addicts like Newt, they are willing to overlook these faults because 1) he says he asked their god for forgiveness and god, like an obedient toady, must comply as per the scripture, ergo Newt is forgiven. 2) he is perceived as the only one who can out-debate Obama or beat him, which is why Santorum isn't gaining any traction with his frothy, lubed Christian self. 3) fundamentalist Christians aren't as upset about cheating on women because a) most of them do it themselves and b) they're just women so who cares?

What all of this means is that because the GOP has gone too far right and to Christianized, they are handing the presidency back to Obama because the independents and moderates out there aren't going to vote for the candidates that are being supported by the religious zealots for all the wrong reasons. Without a viable, mainstream moderate the GOP may not win the presidency for awhile.

And I'm quite alright with that.

Five myths about Barack Obama - The Washington Post

2012-01-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

Five myths about Barack Obama - The Washington Post

Appalling?

2012-01-21T21:06:00.000-05:00

Flight Of The Conchords: Sugar Lumps (HBO)

2012-01-21T12:23:00.000-05:00

Might this entice you? Nut loaf!

Blacks Face Bias in Bankruptcy, Study Suggests - NYTimes.com

2012-01-21T11:59:00.000-05:00

Blacks are about twice as likely as whites to wind up in the more onerous and costly form of consumer bankruptcy as they try to dig out from their debts, a new study has found. The disparity persisted even when the researchers adjusted for income, homeownership, assets and education. The evidence suggested that lawyers were disproportionately steering blacks into a process that was not as good for them financially, in part because of biases, whether conscious or unconscious... Racism is alive and thriving in the US, from the virulent hatred of the president to this. Read the full story at the link.

2012-01-21T00:07:00.001-05:00

A free ride?

2012-01-20T13:14:00.000-05:00

Campaign slogans 2012

2012-01-20T13:03:00.000-05:00

We must stop this corporate takeover of American democracy | Bernie Sanders | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

2012-01-20T12:41:00.000-05:00

by Bernie Sanders

The corporate barbarians are through the gate of American democracy. Not satisfied with their all-pervasive influence on our culture, economy and legislative processes, they want more. They want it all.

Two years ago, the United States supreme court betrayed our Constitution and those who fought to ensure that its protections are enjoyed equally by all persons regardless of religion, race or gender by engaging in an unabashed power-grab on behalf of corporate America. In its now infamous decision in the Citizens United case, five justices declared that corporations must be treated as if they are actual people under the Constitution when it comes to spending money to influence our elections, allowing them for the first time to draw on the corporate checkbook – in any amount and at any time – to run ads explicitly for or against specific candidates.

What's next … a corporate right to vote?

Don't laugh. Just this month, the Republican National Committee filed an amicus brief in a US appeals court contending that the natural extension of the Citizens United rationale is that the century-old ban on corporate contributions directly to candidates and political parties is similarly unconstitutional. They want corporations to be able to sponsor candidates and parties directly while claiming with a straight face this would not result in any sort of corruption. And while, this month, they take no issue with corporations being subject to the existing contribution limits, anyone paying attention knows that eliminating such caps will be corporate America's next prize in its brazen ambition for absolute control over our elections.

The US Constitution has served us very well, but when the supreme court says, for purposes of the first amendment, that corporations are people, that writing checks from the company's bank account is constitutionally-protected speech and that attempts by the federal government and states to impose reasonable restrictions on campaign ads are unconstitutional, our democracy is in grave danger.

I am a proud sponsor of a number of bills that would respond to Citizens United and begin to get a handle on the problem. But something more needs to be done – something more fundamental and indisputable, something that cannot be turned on its head by a rightwing supreme court.

That is why I have introduced a resolution in the Senate (introduced by Representative Ted Deutch in the House) calling for an amendment to the US Constitution that says simply and straightforwardly what everyone – except five members of the United States supreme court – understands: corporations are not people with constitutional rights equal to flesh-and-blood human beings. Corporations are subject to regulation by the people. Corporations may not make campaign contributions – the law of the land for the last century – or dump unlimited sums of money into our elections. And Congress and states have broad power to regulate all election spending.

I did not introduce this lightly. In fact, I have never sought to amend the Constitution before. The US Constitution is an extraordinary document that, in my view, should not be amended often. In light of the supreme court's Citizens United decision, however, I see no alternative. The ruling has radically changed the nature of our democracy. It has further tilted the balance of power toward the rich and the powerful at a time when the wealthiest people in this country have never had it so good.

At a time when corporations have more than $2tn in cash in their bank accounts, make record-breaking profits and swarm Washington with their lobbyists 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for the highest court in the land to suggest that there is just not enough corporate "speech" in our system defies the bounds of reason and sanity. The ruling already has led to plans, for example, by industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch to steer more than $200m – potentially much more – to conservative groups ahead of election day 2012. Karl Rove has similar designs.

Does anybody really believe that that is what American democracy is supposed to be about?

I believe that the Citizens United decision will go down as one of the worst in our country's history – and one that demands an amendment to our Constitution in order to restore sovereign power to the people, as our nation's founders intended.

If we do not reverse it and the culture of corporate dominance over our elections that it has exacerbated, there will be no end to the impact that corporate interests have on our campaigns and our democracy.

etta james I'd Rather Go Blind

2012-01-20T12:19:00.000-05:00

Comet's Death Dive Into Sun Seen in Detail for 1st Time - Yahoo! News

2012-01-20T12:03:00.000-05:00

A comet has been spotted disintegrating in the atmosphere of the sun for the first time.

Such sun-diving comets are common but none have been seen surviving entry into the sun's atmosphere until now. They could help reveal what comets are made of and also uncover hidden properties of the sun's atmosphere, researchers said today (Jan. 19) as they announced the discovery.

A group of comets known as the Kreutz family regularly flies perilously close to the sun.

In the past 15 years, more than 1,400 of these dirty snowballs have been detected, likely originating from a giant parent comet 20 to 100 kilometers wide (12 to 62 miles) that broke apart as recently as 2,500 years ago. However, until now, none of the telescopes trained on the sun was sensitive enough to follow any of these comets to their demise in the sun's atmosphere.

New school can’t be Cougars because middle-aged women might be offended | Prep Rally - Yahoo! Sports

2012-01-20T11:55:00.000-05:00

As reported by Salt Lake City Fox affiliate KTSU, Draper (Utah) Corner Canyon High announced its new mascot and school colors on Wednesday, with Canyons School District officials proclaiming that the school's teams will be called the Chargers, using a blue and white color scheme.

That's all fine and good except for the fact that the school's future student body -- which was given the opportunity to select its own future mascot -- had chosen to be the Cougars. With some 23 percent of the student vote, the Cougar choice was far preferred to other options, which included the Chargers, Diamondbacks, Falcons, Raptors, Broncos, Bears and Cavaliers.

The reason why the future student body gravitated toward Cougars is pretty clear: Area collegiate power BYU uses the Cougar as its mascot and enjoys an enormous fan base of area residents and those who follow the Mormon faith (BYU is a Mormon institution).

Still, the Canyons School Board refused to accept the Cougar as a mascot out of fear that it might offend older women. In the current edition of the Webster Dictionary, the second definition for cougar sights a slang terminology that refers to "a middle-aged woman seeking a romantic relationship with a younger man."

To say that the board's reaction to having a school play as the Cougars was a bit over the top is certainly an understatement, particularly when one considers the fact that BYU and a host of other high schools in Utah use the Cougar as their mascot. By pulling the right to pick their own mascot away, the school board turned what appeared to be a nice nod toward student self determination into a first overbearing act of a new administration that doesn't even exist yet. Appoint Dean Wormer as principal and the student rebellion will be ready to go by the first day of school.

More significantly, why would the board even offer "Cougars" as a potential mascot choice if it wasn't prepared to accept it? That lack of logic is positively baffling. Surely everyone could have saved themselves a lot of face if they simply had not allowed prospective students to choose to be the Cougars in the first place.

Of course, there's still plenty of time for the Canyons School Board to re-consider and give the students back their Cougars. Corner Canyon isn't scheduled to open until fall 2013, so the initial announcement of school colors and mascot was seen as a way to get positive attention for a project that remains on schedule.

Needless to say, it doesn't seem to have quite worked out that way.

This could be the worst case of political correctness yet. Time to get that stick removed from your ass America!

President Obama sings Al Green: Let's stay together in 2012 ;-)

2012-01-20T11:47:00.000-05:00

In nearly 44 years of life, I've never heard a president sing anything before, not even a line. I may not always agree with this president's policies but I think he's one groovy mofo! Much love Barack! Sorry, Mr. President!

Mom arrested for allegedly letting child, 10, get a tattoo | ajc.com

2012-01-20T11:32:00.000-05:00

A Cobb County mother was charged with misdemeanor child cruelty after she allegedly let her 10-year-old son get a tattoo in memory of his deceased brother, Channel 2 Action News reported. Chuntera Napier, of Acworth, told Channel 2 that her 12-year-old son, Malik, was struck and killed by a motorist in Macon about two years ago, and her other son, Gaquan, wanted a tattoo like hers to remember his older brother by.

“My son came to me and said, ‘Mama, I want to get a tattoo with Malik on it, rest in peace,'” Napier said. “It made me feel good to know to know that he wanted his brother on him.”

She said she did not know it is illegal in Georgia to tattoo anyone under the age of 18.

“What do I say to a child who wants to remember his brother? It’s not like he’s asking me if can I get him a Sponge Bob,” she said. “He’s asking me for something that’s in remembrance of his brother. Well, how do I tell a child no?”

Napier took her son to a tattoo artist in Smyrna. When the child went to school, someone noticed the tattoo and called authorities.

The mother was arrested Tuesday and spent that day and Wednesday morning in jail. In addition to the child cruelty count, she was charged with being a party to a crime. She has since been released to await a March court hearing....

2012-01-19T23:10:00.000-05:00

You know, I'm pretty sick and tired of politicians whining that they are receiving media scrutiny and then calling this scrutiny "attacks".

Shut the fuck up! Whining ass babies! Want some cheese with that whine? What the hell did you think was going to happen when you decided to run for the highest office in the land???

I know as rich, white people you feel a sense of entitlement, that because you are rich and white you view yourselves as the lords of America, lords that should be treated as royalty and thus never asked the tough, probing questions about your personal lives as it's none of the peasants business but we went to war with the British Empire to free ourselves from the likes of you.

Too bad my fellow countrymen don't know their history and are willing to put up with you twats instead of sending you to the guillotine where you belong!

2012-01-18T15:17:00.003-05:00

“Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery.”

--Thomas Jefferson.

2012-01-18T15:07:00.001-05:00

I need to ask my Congressperson if they think my ripping DVDs or CDs that I check out from the library or buying newly released DVDs for $2 at the local pawn shop is any worse or as bad as downloading something online. It's the same goddamn thing, just with less traveling involved. This to me is why SOPA is retarded as a governor from Texas.

Best comment I have heard lately on attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities | The Best Defense

2012-01-18T13:35:00.000-05:00

Planning on attacking Iran? "Better pack a lunch," advises my friend retired Lt. Col. Terry Daly, who knows a lot about war. His point was that air strikes alone against Iranian nuclear facilities wouldn't do much. If you are going to attack Iran, you need to hit its ability to retaliate and that means that pretty soon you have a big fat war on your hands.

I can't believe we are discussing this. I am hearing lots of depressing talk that there is a good chance that Israel will attack Iran sometime this year, and that we will get sucked into the ensuing mess. In some ways, there already is kind of shadow war underway with Iran-the Stuxnet, the drone intrusions, the recent explosions and assassinations, the sanctions.

But for all that, I just can't see Obama getting us involved in another Middle Eastern war. The American people certainly have no appetite for it. I think he almost certainly would lose re-election if a war broke out, because his base would fall apart and the left would go into opposition.

At any rate, an article by my CNAS colleague Colin Kahl that went up last night on the website of Foreign Affairs argues well that the "containment vs. attack" mindset is a false dilemma. In fact, he says, even if you attacked Iran, you'd still have to contain it afterwards. So a series of air strikes are not a substitute for containment, but a prelude to it.

For God So Loved the 1 Percent ... - NYTimes.com

2012-01-18T13:27:00.000-05:00

By KEVIN M. KRUSE

Princeton, N.J.

IN recent weeks Mitt Romney has become the poster child for unchecked capitalism, a role he seems to embrace with relish. Concerns about economic equality, he told Matt Lauer of NBC, were really about class warfare.

“When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent,” he said, “you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”

Mr. Romney was on to something, though perhaps not what he intended.

The concept of “one nation under God” has a noble lineage, originating in Abraham Lincoln’s hope at Gettysburg that “this nation, under God, shall not perish from the earth.” After Lincoln, however, the phrase disappeared from political discourse for decades. But it re-emerged in the mid-20th century, under a much different guise: corporate leaders and conservative clergymen deployed it to discredit Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.

During the Great Depression, the prestige of big business sank along with stock prices. Corporate leaders worked frantically to restore their public image and simultaneously roll back the “creeping socialism” of the welfare state. Notably, the American Liberty League, financed by corporations like DuPont and General Motors, made an aggressive case for capitalism. Most, however, dismissed its efforts as self-interested propaganda. (A Democratic Party official joked that the organization should have been called “the American Cellophane League” because “first, it’s a DuPont product and, second, you can see right through it.”)

Realizing that they needed to rely on others, these businessmen took a new tack: using generous financing to enlist sympathetic clergymen as their champions. After all, according to one tycoon, polls showed that, “of all the groups in America, ministers had more to do with molding public opinion” than any other.

The Rev. James W. Fifield, pastor of the elite First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, led the way in championing a new union of faith and free enterprise. “The blessings of capitalism come from God,” he wrote. “A system that provides so much for the common good and happiness must flourish under the favor of the Almighty.”

Christianity, in Mr. Fifield’s interpretation, closely resembled capitalism, as both were systems in which individuals rose or fell on their own. The welfare state, meanwhile, violated most of the Ten Commandments. It made a “false idol” of the federal government, encouraged Americans to covet their neighbors’ possessions, stole from the wealthy and, ultimately, bore false witness by promising what it could never deliver.

Throughout the 1930s and ’40s, Mr. Fifield and his allies advanced a new blend of conservative religion, economics and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.” Mr. Fifield distilled his ideology into a simple but powerful phrase — “freedom under God.” With ample support from corporate patrons and business lobbies like the United States Chamber of Commerce, his gospel of godly capitalism soon spread across the country through personal lectures, weekly radio broadcasts and a monthly magazine.

In 1951, the campaign culminated in a huge Fourth of July celebration of the theme. Former President Herbert C. Hoover and Gen. Douglas MacArthur headlined an organizing committee of conservative all-stars, including celebrities like Walt Disney and Ronald Reagan, but largely comprising business titans like Conrad Hilton, J. C. Penney, Harvey Firestone Jr. and J. Howard Pew.

In an extensive public relations campaign, they encouraged communities to commemorate Independence Day with “freedom under God” ceremonies, using full-page newspaper ads trumpeting the connection between faith and free enterprise. They also held a nationwide sermon contest on the theme, with clergymen competing for cash. Countless local events were promoted by a national “Freedom Under God” radio program, produced with the help of the filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, hosted by Jimmy Stewart and broadcast on CBS.

Ultimately, these organizers believed that they had made a lasting impression. “The very words ‘freedom under God’ have added to the vocabulary of freedom a new term,” they boasted. Soon the entire nation would think of itself as “under God.” Indeed, in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower presided over the first presidential prayer breakfast on a “government under God” theme and worked to promote public religiosity in a variety of ways. In 1954, as this “under-God consciousness” swept the nation, Congress formally added the phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance.

In the end, Mr. Romney is correct to claim that complaints about economic inequality are inconsistent with the concept of “one nation under God.” But that’s only because the “1 percent” of an earlier era intended it that way.

A few voices in the country's head driving us towards the cliff

2012-01-18T11:13:00.002-05:00

So, as everybody and their monkey knows, today is a day to protest SOPA on the internet. This may or may not accomplish anything. In my opinion, the bill will pass as is because the entertainment industry has paid way too much in bribes to the members of Congress for it not to pass. No, it doesn't matter to these jackals that this is a serious abridgement of freedom; what matters is that money exchanged hands because that is all anyone cares about in America any more: money. Especially in DC where the millionaires club that is our Congress holds its hands out to the highest bidder with the blessings of the Supreme Court (after Citizen's United).

Unfortunately, not much has changed under President Obama. The man swept into office with promises of draining the cesspool of Washington politics never addressed the problem once in office. And that's exactly the problem. Obama, who has been for all intents and purposes a Republican in the office of president, has simply allowed a continuation of the disastrous 8 years forced upon this nation by the illegitimate Bush junta by the aforementioned Supreme Court.

Yes, the Supreme Court has done a lot to undermine this nation over the last decade or so and have done so under the auspices of law. But whose law?

Certainly not the people's law, or the Constitution, which proclaims we are a Republic where all views have equal voice and all minorities (groups or races) have equal say. No, that law was slain when the Reagan/Nixon people took the White House in 1980. For those folks, who couldn't force their views or beliefs upon the population by any other means, the Republic was an obstacle, an inconvenience, a problem. No! they cried. This is a democracy! Majority rules!

You can easily see where that has led us today. Combine that with the fact that every subsequent voting cycle the rabid right wing Christian fundamentalist has become more and more extreme in their views and you can easily see why we are in the mess we are today. In fact, it was Reagan who ended the law requiring media outlets to give equal time to opposing political views leaving us stranded in a desert of right wing dogma blasted into our craniums 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Those same voices are driving us towards the cliffs and there is no way to stop them. This is where America should be looking to liberals but there aren't any true liberals anymore. Democrats today are exactly like Reagan Republicans and that is by design. When the voices that dominate the media repeat the same message of how you should govern by conservative or moderate means over and over and over again, your brain picks up on that. When the right leaning media watches your every move like vultures waiting for your carcass and demands morality, you adapt your actions to meet the needs of the situation. When any view not matching the views of the right makes you a liberal communist tree hugging hippie socialist who hates America, you learn to keep your mouth shut. And that is exactly what happened.

Now the nation is adrift from bad leadership on both sides of the aisle. In a mere 12 years, these leaders have caused more harm and damage both to the Constitution or the dream that is America than any Soviet, Nazi or Red Coat. Today we are without liberty or freedom, without representation in Congress because we aren't wealthy enough to be heard, without any privacy in our own homes as the Dept. of Fatherland -- oops!-- Homeland Security snoops our every online activity with no just cause, no warrant, no due process and no legal justification whatsoever other than the criminal George Bush allowed 9/11 to happen because either he's dumber than a bag of hammers or he was in on the fix.

Now, as America tries to right the ship, we see what the powers that be in Washington and around the country are prepared to do to the protesters as they unleash their gang members, the cops, on them with all violence authorized and sanctioned by the state that doesn't give 2 squirts of piss about anyone's personal liberty except the rich.

And it is the rich who wrote SOPA.

Right turn Clyde

2012-01-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

Homeland Security Hired Contractor to Monitor Websites

2012-01-17T21:30:00.000-05:00

Newly released government documents have revealed the Department of Homeland Security hired the military contractor General Dynamics to monitor postings of U.S. citizens on dozens of websites. Sites monitored included Facebook and Twitter, as well as several news sites including the New York Times, Wired and The Huffington Post. General Dynamics was asked to collect reports that dealt with government agencies including the CIA, FEMA and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the documents show the Department of Homeland Security was "monitoring political dissent online."

U.S. court upholds telecom immunity for surveillance | Reuters

2012-01-17T18:03:00.000-05:00

Besides the government itself, defendants included AT&T, Sprint Nextel and Verizon Communications Inc.

In 2008, Congress granted telecoms immunity for cooperating with the government's intelligence-gathering activities. A district judge in San Francisco upheld the law as constitutional, and dismissed the claims against the companies.

In a ruling on Thursday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit agreed.

2012-01-17T14:56:00.001-05:00

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

—	Frederick Douglass

Fact Checking the Fox News-WSJ debate in South Carolina - The Washington Post

2012-01-17T13:21:00.000-05:00

Fact Checking the Fox News-WSJ debate in South Carolina - The Washington Post

Government could strip citizenship from Americans under Enemy Expatriation Act — RT

2012-01-17T12:51:00.000-05:00

When Barack Obama inked the National Defense Authorization Act on New Year’s Eve, the president insisted that he wouldn’t use the terrifying legislation against American citizens. Another new law, however, could easily change all of that.

If the Enemy Expatriation Act passes in its current form, the legislation will let the government strike away citizenship for anyone engaged in hostilities, or supporting hostilities, against the United States. The law itself is rather brief, but in just a few words it warrants the US government to strip nationality status from anyone they identify as a threat.

What’s more, the government can decide to do so without bringing the suspected troublemaker before a court of law.

Under the legislation, “hostilities” are defined as “any conflict subject to the laws of war” and does not explicitly state that charges against suspects go to court.

When Obama signed NDAA on December 31, the president said that his administration “will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens.” Added the president, “Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a Nation.” But by breaking off ties between citizens — American-born or otherwise — the harsh realities of NDAA can be forced on anyone in the US if Washington decides that it is in the country’s best interest.

The National Defense Authorization Act drew widespread opposition despite a lack of media cover due to the capabilities in bestows in the administration. Under NDAA, the government can indefinitely imprison anyone deemed dangerous by Washington and hold them without trial. After criticism led to massive online campaigns and protests, President Obama addressed the issue and said specifically that his administration would not understand the law as such. Instead, said Obama, “My administration will interpret section 1021 in a manner that ensures that any detention it authorizes complies with the Constitution, the laws of war, and all other applicable law.”

Some are now saying that Obama’s attempt at discrediting the NDAA by insisting that he would not use it against American citizens came only as a precursor to the latest Act. By adding his signing statement to the NDAA, the president insured that legislation such as the Enemy Expatriation Act would surface to strike any limitations that would have kept Americans free from military detainment. “I hope I’m wrong, but it sounds to me like this is a loophole for indefinitely detaining Americans,” Stephen . Foster, Jr. writes on the AddictionInfo.org website. “Once again, you just have to be accused of supporting hostilities which could be defined any way the government sees fit. Then the government can strip your citizenship and apply the indefinite detention section of the NDAA without the benefit of a trial.”

The bill, currently being passed through Congress, is sponsored by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Charles Dent (R-PA).

The best government money can buy

2012-01-17T12:45:00.000-05:00

Our smart Prez

2012-01-17T12:16:00.000-05:00

Despite all your rage, you are still just a rat in a cage

2012-01-16T19:44:00.000-05:00

10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free - The Washington Post

2012-01-14T12:32:00.000-05:00

Read this and weep 'merica!

Wis. man arrested for playing too much cowbell - Yahoo! News

2012-01-14T12:14:00.000-05:00

OSHKOSH, Wis. (AP) — Demonstrators calling for the recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker learned there really is such a thing as too much cowbell.

Oshkosh police arrested a 26-year-old Appleton man on Thursday after he kept playing a cowbell and shaking it in an officer's face when he and other protesters were told to be quiet.

The Oshkosh Northwestern reports (http://oshko.sh/zKwPVV ) that when the officer tried to take the cowbell, the man pushed the officer. A 25-year-old Appleton woman then hit the officer in the back with her picket sign while the man was being handcuffed.

Both were taken to the Winnebago County Jail. Police will recommend that the man be charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and the woman be charged with disorderly conduct and battery to an officer.

Election 2012: How rich are these guys? - Yahoo! Finance

2012-01-14T11:25:00.000-05:00

Mitt Romney

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Total net worth: $85 million to $264 million

With no regular day job, Romney still earns a tidy income in the form of dividends and interest from his investments, and records filed with the Federal Election Commission show that the former Massachusetts governor commands between $20,000 and $68,000 on the speaking circuit. Much of Romney's wealth is tied up in a blind trust, but some assets remain under his control -- including a few quirky items. For example, the FEC lists between $250,000 and $500,000 in horses, an asset the campaign says belongs to the candidate's wife. He owns another $250,000 to $500,000 in gold.

Romney has degrees from both Harvard Law and Harvard Business School, and had successful careers at the consulting shop Bain & Company and private equity firm Bain Capital before joining the Salt Lake City Olympics effort in 1999. [See also: President Obama Seeks to Consolidate Government Agencies]

Jon Huntsman

Richard Ellis/Getty Images
Total net worth: $16 million to $72 million

The 51-year-old former governor spent much of his career in the public sector, but he also found time to work at the family business: Huntsman Corporation. The candidate's father is one of the richest self-made men in the world, having given away more than $1 billion to fund universities and a cancer research center, among other causes. Most of the younger Huntsman's assets are tied in some way to the family. He lists a family holding company worth between $5 million and $25 million as an asset. The Utah native lists a few more conventional assets as well -- including investment funds from Vanguard and Fidelity. Newt Gingrich

Allison Joyce/Getty Images
Total net worth: $7 million to $31 million

The former house speaker is worth at least $7 million, putting him right in the middle of the 2012 pack. The bulk of his assets come in the form of a promissory note from the Gingrich Group, LLC to Gingrich Productions, Inc., which are part of the tangled web of businesses the speaker maintains. Most of the Georgia native's income comes from Gingrich Productions, a Washington-based multimedia company that paid out $2.4 million in disbursements to Gingrich. Additionally, Gingrich lists between $565,000 and $1,150,000 in liabilities, including a now-closed line of credit at Tiffany and Co. [See also: The Unemployment Trend Matters More Than the Numbers]

Barack Obama

Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images
Total net worth: $2.8 million to $11.8 million*

While some of his Republican challengers are downright wealthy, President Obama isn't all that far behind. Obama earns a $400,000 salary as the nation's chief executive, and the Center for Responsive Politics estimates his net worth to be somewhere between $2.8 million and $11.8 million. Where did the former senator and law professor get that kind of cash? Book sales, mostly. In 2010, the Obama family reported an adjusted gross income of $1,728,096, down from about $5.5 million in 2009, according to the first couple's tax returns. His paycheck was much higher in 2009 because his books -- "Dreams from My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope" were registering strong sales. The tax returns also show the family donated about 14% of their income to charity in 2010. Ron Paul

Richard Ellis/Getty Images
Total net worth: $2.4 million to $5.4 million

While nowhere near the poor house, Ron Paul has more modest assets than some of his deep-pocketed rivals. The Texas congressman also has a personal loan out from the First National Bank of Lake Jackson that totals $250,000 to $500,000 with a 5-year term. Paul lists a Washington-area condo worth $100,000 to $250,000 as an asset, and has an investment portfolio stuffed full of mining stocks. For example, the sound-money advocate holds $100,000 to $250,000 in Barrick Gold Corporation and $500,000 to $1,000,000 in Goldcorp Inc., two publicly traded mining companies. In all, the congressman is invested in more than 20 separate companies that have the words "mining," "mines," "gold" or "silver" in their name.

Rick Santorum

Alex Wong/Getty Images
Total net worth: $1 million to $3 million

One of the poorest 2012 candidates, Rick Santorum is still a millionaire. Much of the former Pennsylvania senator's money is tied up in rental real estate properties, as well as education and savings plans for his children. Santorum also has some debt to his name -- including two mortgages for rental properties totaling between $350,000 and $750,000. Those properties, located in State College, Pa., are worth between $500,000 and $1.25 million, according to the FEC filing. From relatively modest means, Santorum served as a congressman and senator, but has since found more lucrative compensation in the private sector. Santorum earned $1.3 million in income from January 2010 until August of last year from a variety of jobs, including a gig at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington and as a contributor on Fox News. Rick Perry

Rainier Ehrhardt/Getty Images
Total net worth: $1 million to $2.5 million

Rick Perry is not exactly poor. But it's all relative. His assets place him at the back of the pack of 2012 candidates. The governor -- who's still on the job -- collects both a salary and pension from the state of Texas. The salary is $132,995 a year, and he brings in a monthly annuity of $7,698. In August, Perry revoked his blind trust, giving a look into his portfolio. The candidate is invested in a wide range of companies, including PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Chevron, Cisco and Microsoft.

*Source: Center for Responsive Politics Money is the root to all evil. Therefore these men are evil. We are electing evil presidents who have no idea what it means to struggle or not pay a utility bill so your family can eat or worry about having enough gas money to get to work for the week, etc. In our grand plutocracy, the powers that be throw out these a-holes and say pick between these idiots! It isn't really a choice at all. This is why America is collapsing so quickly around us.

U.S. Warns Top Iran Leader Not to Shut Strait of Hormuz - NYTimes.com

2012-01-13T16:39:00.000-05:00

...The officials declined to describe the unusual contact between the two governments, and whether there had been an Iranian reply. Senior Obama administration officials have said publicly that Iran would cross a “red line” if it made good on recent threats to close the strait, a strategically crucial waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, where 16 million barrels of oil — about a fifth of the world’s daily oil trade — flow through every day.

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this past weekend that the United States would “take action and reopen the strait,” which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and potentially airstrikes. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told troops in Texas on Thursday that the United States would not tolerate Iran’s closing of the strait.

The secret communications channel was chosen to underscore privately to Iran the depth of American concern about rising tensions over the strait, where American naval officials say their biggest fear is that an overzealous Revolutionary Guards naval captain could do something provocative on his own, setting off a larger crisis.

“If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it’s the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf,” Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, said in Washington this week...

GOP: Corporate donation ban unconstitutional - POLITICO.com

2012-01-13T16:04:00.000-05:00

By JOSH GERSTEIN |

1/10/12 3:34 PM EST

The century-old ban on corporate donations to federal political campaigns should be junked as unconstitutional, the Republican National Committee argued in a legal brief filed Tuesday that could lead to new attacks on the GOP as beholden to corporate money.

The GOP brief filed with a federal appeals court contends that the ban which became law back in 1908 violates the First Amendment in light of recent Supreme Court rulings, including the 2010 Citizens United decision which allowed unlimited donations to independent-expenditure groups.

Republican National Committee Chief Counsel John R. Phillippe, Jr., and RNC lawyer Gary Lawkowski contend that the only legitimate rationale for the corporate donation ban now is to prevent an end-run around individual donation limits and that's not an adequate basis to uphold the ban.

"The complete ban both is over-inclusive to this aim and artificially disadvantages political party and candidate committees. It is over-inclusive because it bans all corporate donations without regard to the ability of corporate donors to attribute their donations to individuals. It artificially disadvantages political party and candidate committees by forcing them to rely on aggregating small-dollar donations from individuals while allowing other political actors, such as independent-expenditure-only political action committees, to receive unlimited corporate donations," the GOP lawyers wrote.

The brief (which POLITICO has posted here) does not argue against all donation limits for corporations, but as a practical matter a ruling against the current ban would likely lead to such a result.

Whatever its constitutional merits, the Republican argument could be a political liability for the party as Democrats are likely to portray it as further evidence that the GOP is beholden to corporate America. On the other hand, the near-complete breakdown of campaign finance limits during the current presidential race gives something of a boost to those contending that the few remaining restraints are pointless.

Oddly enough, the RNC is coming to the defense of a pair of Virginia businessmen accused of making illegal corporate contributions to Hillary Clinton's Senate and presidential campaigns, William Danielczyk and Eugene Biagi. The pair are accused of using corporate funds to reimburse about $186,000 in donations made by various individuals. The Republican Party arguments were submitted as an amicus brief supporting the accused businessmen.

U.S. District Judge James Cacheris ruled last May that the corporate donation ban is unconstitutional. However, his initial opinion failed to take account of a 2003 Supreme Court ruling upholding the ban on donations by most nonprofit corporations. Cacheris later issued another opinion reaching the same result, namely that the ban is unconstitutional.

The Justice Department is appealing Cacheris's decision, which undercut the prosecution of Danielczyk and Biagi. The case could become a vehicle for the Supreme Court could to overturn the corporate donation ban.

Brooklyn man claims police forced medical procedures on him in contraband search - NYPOST.com

2012-01-13T14:44:00.000-05:00

A Brooklyn man claims in a lawsuit he was accosted by cops who accused him of swallowing “contraband” and hauled him to a hospital in a failed bid to prove it — only to be later billed for the medical procedures done against his will.

Schedrick Campbell, 54, said he had gone out to buy dog food in March and was walking back to his Crown Heights home when three plainclothes officers accosted him.

They grabbed his throat and yelled at him to “spit it out,” Campbell said in a Brooklyn federal court lawsuit, but police didn’t find anything.

Cops then hauled him to Interfaith Medical Center, where, he claims, he was handcuffed to a bed for two days while hospital staff, at the direction of police, conducted X-rays and CAT scans in a futile bid to find the alleged contraband.

“It should be noted that no foreign body was ever found,” the court papers state.

One officer threw out Campbell’s prostate medication and warned him that using the bathroom before some of the hospital’s procedures could lead to him being prosecuted “for tampering with evidence,” Campbell alleges.

The charges were dropped — but Interfaith added insult to injury by slapping him with a $9,530 bill.

The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment.

Some days I think that you'd have more freedoms living in Russia than here. Cops should never have this much power over citizens.

False Flag - By Mark Perry | Foreign Policy

2012-01-13T14:15:00.000-05:00

Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation.

What could be worse than having your dead body peed on?

2012-01-12T14:43:00.000-05:00

What internest sites is the Dept. of Homeland Security monitoring? Here's a list!

2012-01-11T19:18:00.000-05:00

0001.pdf (application/pdf Object) This is a link to a government pdf that shows what web sites the Department of Fatherland --er, Homeland, Security is watching. Guess what? You are all being monitored! Hooray! So remember, my fellow 'mericans, watch what you say and who you like cuz you may now be indefinitely detained by the US Army if declared an enemy of the state for your left leaning ideologies. I say this because, you will note, there are no right wing sites on the watch list. People say Prez Obama is a Democrat and I laugh so much it hurts or sends beer through my nose.

Think you're free? Try this!

2012-01-11T19:05:00.000-05:00

Caught On Cell Phone! LA Cop Punches Special Needs Woman In The Face On ...

2012-01-11T18:39:00.000-05:00

Study: Americans believe conflict between rich, poor is growing - The Washington Post

2012-01-11T18:00:00.000-05:00

The nonprofit think tank in Washington released a study Wednesday that found a growing number of Americans say there are “strong” or “very strong” conflicts between the rich and poor — a number that has grown 19 percent since July 2009. This growing class friction is a greater potential source of tension in the country now than traditional divides over immigration, race and age.

“It is kind of amazing,” said Richard Morin, a senior editor at Pew who authored the study. “This is people not only sensing conflict but people sensing an intensity of these conflicts — that’s what makes it striking and politically important.”

This pronounced attitude shift occurred throughout the income spectrum — to the very poor to wealthy — as well as among those with diverse political views. But younger adults, Democrats and African Americans were more likely than others to sense the class tension, according to the study, a national survey of 2,048 adults.

Morin wrote that this marked attitude change in a short period of time probably reflects the message of the Occupy Wall Street movement but also a growing public awareness of the shifts in wealth distribution in America. In recent years the top one percent of earners have seen their fortunes rise while lower incomes have stagnated, and the top one percent now controls more than a third of the wealth.

“I think you see very, very rich people and there is a jealousy there by the people on the other end, the poor side. . . . It’s worse than it’s ever been,” said Ira Ellis, 64, a retired professional photographer from Las Vegas who participated in the study. In his community, he sees everything from mega-high rollers to rising ranks of homeless because of the state’s high foreclosure rates.

The class divide is expected to be a major theme in the 2012 presidential campaign, with President Obama preaching a return to middle-class values in a speech last month and conservative Republicans fretting about the possibility that class warfare will be topic A in the general election.

Morin wrote that while Americans are more aware of this significant shift in class in America, it does not necessarily signal an “increase in grievances toward the wealthy.” As many as 43 percent believe that the rich become so because of their own hard work, ambition or education, the study showed, compared with 46 percent who believe that the wealthy become rich through connections or birth.

And these attitudes seem to be shared regardless of income level. Nearly two-thirds of adults with household income less than $20,000 a year believe there are serious conflicts between the rich and poor, as do 67 percent of those earning $75,000 a year or more, Morin wrote.

Utah Cop Killed Because of Personal Medical Marijuana Grow

2012-01-11T01:24:00.000-05:00

At 8:40 p.m. on Wednesday, January 3, 2012, members of the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force in Ogden, Utah conducted a “knock and enter” warrant on the home of 37 year-old army veteran Matthew David Stewart. According to reports, they knocked and no one answered. When they forcefully entered his home in paramilitary style gear, with guns drawn, they encountered gunfire. When it was all said and done, one member of the task force was fatally injured, five members were wounded, Stewart was injured and faces likely charges of aggravated murder (which carries the death penalty) and multiple counts of attempted aggravated murder.

According to DEA Special Agent in Charge Frank Smith, the victims and other agents involved in this operation are heroes, and they were “protecting the public.” I tend to agree with Agent Smith, members of the task force are heroes, but in this instance, they certainly were not protecting the public.

The only public reports about why Stewart was raided indicate that Stewart had a personal, indoor marijuana grow for medical reasons. It’s been reported that Stewart suffers from PTSD and grew a small amount of marijuana to self-medicate. In addition, it has been speculated that the reason why Stewart failed to answer the knock is because he was asleep at the time. He worked the midnight shift and would typically be asleep at the time the raid was conducted.

So, it seems an army veteran who suffers from PTSD was suddenly awoken to armor-clad armed men in his home and he allegedly opened fire. The army vet now likely faces the death penalty. One officer is dead. Five wounded. Countless lives have been ruined.

I’d like Agent Smith to explain to Stewart exactly why he was a threat to the public. There has been no allegation that Steward sold marijuana, or gave it away to kids, or that he was a danger to anyone before the paramilitary-style raid on his house. In fact, his neighbors were shocked to learn that there was any drug activity in the area, dispelling the notion that Stewart was an immediate threat to anyone. Without making a fuss and without causing problems in his neighborhood, Stewart simply grew marijuana for personal medical reasons.

I’d also like Agent Smith to explain to Officer Francom’s family why Stewart’s personal medical grow warranted the over-the-top means of enforcement that has been linked to so many needless deaths and injuries.

Finally, I’d like Agent Smith to explain to everyone why — as he stated to Fox 13 News — this situation isn’t a legalization issue? Clearly, the officers involved were just doing their job. They were enforcing enacted laws that their superiors wanted enforced. However, if marijuana were legal, this and numerous other prohibition-related deaths, including the death of another Utah man at the hands of this very same task force, would never have happened.

So long as marijuana remains a law enforcement issue as opposed to a public health issue, we’ll keep seeing tragic stories like these. Officers and civilians shot, and often times killed, over a naturally occurring plant that is safer than alcohol. It’s sad and it’s sickening, and it’s about time that we finally rethink our nation’s devastating marijuana prohibition.

John Brown monument is out of public view, but never out of public controversy | McClatchy

2012-01-09T13:44:00.000-05:00

By JIM CARNEY | Akron Beacon Journal

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/09/135200/john-brown-monument-is-out-of.html#storylink=cpy

AKRON, Ohio - A monument to one of Akron's most important sons, and forever a controversial figure in American history, stands behind a locked fence and up a steep hill overlooking an Akron Zoo parking lot.

AKRON, Ohio - Vandalism has taken a toll. A bronze eagle has been missing from the top for decades.

The 101-year-old memorial to abolitionist John Brown remains as contentious today as the man himself, labeled throughout history as both a hero and a terrorist.

Even though an Akron study committee recommended in 2003 that the memorial be relocated, it still remains inaccessible to the public.

And recently, the monument has piqued the interest of two men who have opposing views - men who saw previous news stories on John Brown's Akron history and felt compelled to express their strong feelings.

Clyde McDonnell, 79, has a personal history with the monument and wants it accessible to the public. He remembers walking past many times on his way to Crouse School from his home.

Grady Barrett Jr., 80, originally from Texas, believes Brown may have been on the right side of the slavery issue, but still was an evil, murderous man and thinks it is best to keep the monument hidden.

Erected in 1910 by Akron's German-American Alliance for the 50th anniversary of Brown's hanging, the memorial was restored and enlarged to include a sandstone wall and plaque in 1938 by the Negro 25-year Club.

The inscription says: "He died to set his brothers free. His soul goes marching on."

The hillside where it stands was the area where Brown herded sheep for Col. Simon Perkins, son of Akron's founding father. A partial set of broken steps leads down the hillside to the zoo parking lot.

When the city transferred 10 acres of Perkins Park land to the zoo in 2000, the monument went with it and was fenced from public access.

The sandstone pillar that came from the original Summit County courthouse had been defaced by vandals over the decades. It was cleaned in 2000 and opened to the public for tours over Memorial Day in 2009 for the 150th anniversary of Brown's execution.

A brochure prepared for the anniversary summed up the controversy.

"John Brown - Was he a martyr, a madman, a patriot or a traitor? A brutal zealot, or a man of great courage and noble vision? He was convicted of murder, conspiracy and treason, yet these crimes are regarded by some as the tipping point for a country teetering towards the brink of civil war. Historians argue endlessly over what John Brown did and what he was. To the people of Akron, one thing is certain: he was, for a time, one of us."

Brown seethed with anger over American slavery.

He led a murderous attack in 1856 on pro-slave people in Kansas in which five people were killed, leaving behind the scar known as "Bleeding Kansas."

Three years later, Brown led an assault on a federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Va., now part of West Virginia, that he hoped would lead to a slave rebellion.

He was arrested, tried and then executed Dec. 2, 1859.

The Civil War broke out less than 18 months later.

McDonnell lived in Akron three times, including four years as a child.

"One day, on one of my visits to the monument, I came to the realization that John Brown had become my hero," he said.

Now a retired printer, he lives in Ridgway, Pa., and began blogging about Brown two years ago.

"All through my life I have been looking up everything about John Brown," he said. "If nothing else, we owe it to the younger generation to expose them to the story of John Brown."

Barrett, a retired self-employed sales representative now living in Cuyahoga Falls, grew up in Texas. He said he knew little of Brown until the monument was opened for tours in 2009.

He began researching Brown and said he was shocked by what he read.

"He was a bad man," Barrett said.

He understands why Brown is an important figure historically and acknowledges that Brown was correct about slavery.

"He might have been crazy," he said. "He was wrong in wanting to kill people to further his cause."

McDonnell said the monument would become a tourist attraction if the public could only see it.

"I know some people consider him a terrorist," he said. "They considered Thomas Paine a terrorist."

Barrett said he thinks many people have gone too far in glorifying Brown.

"My conservative bloodstream says leave it where it is," he said. "Don't promote this guy anymore."

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/01/09/135200/john-brown-monument-is-out-of.html#storylink=cp

Tim Tebow’s 316 yards: Fans keep the faith after Broncos win - Under God - The Washington Post

2012-01-09T12:47:00.000-05:00

The Denver Broncos’ playoff win over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday night was unlikely enough, but Tim Tebow’s passing yardage — the Christian quarterback threw 316 yards — sent commentators over the edge. The Associated Press reported that he also averaged 31.6 yards per completion. The religious connotations to John 3:16, a famous Bible verse, were too much for many to chalk up to chance.

For the true believers, it was no coincidence.

You know Jesus talked about people who made a public display of their faith and said they were full of it. Besides, everyone knows Jesus is a Lions fan that hates everything about Denver. Oh, Tim Tebow, it isn't that you believe, it's that you are at a 10, we need you at about a 5 or 6. Besides, Jesus has kids starving in Africa to tend to, not helping you score TDs. Dumbass.

Deja vu all over again

2012-01-09T12:38:00.002-05:00

My bleary eyed, fresh from the bed, coffee craving self woke to these startling headlines:

1) The Iranian high court has sentenced an American accused of spying to death http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-court-sentences-american-to-death/2012/01/09/gIQA3T8GlP_story.html

and 2) apparently the Iranians are producing nuclear material in a bunker. http://news.yahoo.com/iran-nuke-bunker-confirmed-115201184.html

With all the talk of the "next president" invading Iran, one wonders if the current president will decide to wait, especially after Iran's threat to choke off oil in the Strait of Hormuz. I'm sure Israel is a go for military action.

And while Iran may indeed have allies in Moscow and Beijing, one can only imagine that the leadership in Washington is fairly certain they can handle this.

Personally, provoking China and Russia seems like a bad idea, but then, I don't have the launch codes.

headstones

2012-01-07T14:09:00.000-05:00

Stupid politics

2012-01-07T13:59:00.000-05:00

I'm done caring about the presidential election because no matter who wins, we'll still be stuck with a Republican styled president.

4 more years of this shit? No thank you!

But as 'mericans were stuck now ain't we? The bad guys have had 30 years to change and militarize the system and they offer up these nitwits vying for your votes.

And those nitwits, ladies and gentlemen, are the very best presidential candidates their system has to offer us.

No Carl Sagan's in this bunch nor Nelson Mandela's. Nope, just a bunch of white (or half white in the President's case) religious, xenophobic, fear and war mogering, Constitution trampling zealots who are dumber than a bag of hammers and that's insulting the hammers.

Hot damn it's high times to be an 'merican! The world may be laughing at us but that's okay-- in fairness, we are pretty fucking funny.

Queens of the Stone Age - Walkin' on the Sidewalks

2012-01-05T20:34:00.000-05:00

Prong - Freezer Burn

2012-01-05T20:25:00.000-05:00

Sepultura-Territory (HQ)

2012-01-05T20:15:00.000-05:00

Celtic Frost - Circle of the Tyrants

2012-01-05T20:12:00.000-05:00

Voivod The Unknown Knows

2012-01-05T20:04:00.000-05:00

Suicidal Tendencies - You Can't Bring Me Down

2012-01-05T20:00:00.000-05:00

Suicidal Tendencies - War Inside My Head

2012-01-05T19:53:00.000-05:00

2012-01-05T16:47:00.000-05:00

Time to go mingle with the poor and retarded and listen to one guy moo. Good times. What are you doin' 'merica?

Santorum Mocks Obama For Extending Health Care Coverage To 'Everybody' | ThinkProgress

2012-01-05T16:46:00.000-05:00

And now a word from Rick "Goddammit! my name doesn't mean fecal matter and lube juice!" Santorum or Rick "But seriously, fuck you guys cuz I get free gov'ment health care that your taxes pay for anyway!" Santorum (I get them confused sometimes), GOP presidential candidate and all around reason why I believe that some people who claim to know Jesus don't really know dick. Too bad these slick bastards can dupe the masses.