January 2008 archive

We often talk about a possible future of gestapo-like tactics coming to our shores if things don’t change – and quickly. I share those fears and feel the mounting fascism that fuels them.

But today I’m thinking about places in the US where this fear has already come true. I hope everyone is aware of places like T. Don Hutto: America’s Family Prison in Texas and the increasing number of privatized prisons being used to house thousands of detained immigrants.

And then, there’s the fact that, according to Children’s Defense Fund, black boys have a one in three lifetime risk of going to jail, and Latino boys a one in six lifetime risk of the same fate. Of course, for many of these young ones, getting to jail would be better than becoming a victim of the violence they live with every day on the streets. As Bob Herbert pointed out last year, 34 children were killed on the streets of Chicago in less than a year.

Via Raw Story

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States used waterboarding in terrorism interrogations but no longer does, a former U.S. spy chief said in the Bush administration’s clearest confirmation of the technique’s use.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to acknowledge the CIA’s use of the simulated drowning technique, which human rights groups call an illegal form of torture.

snip

Asked by the magazine if debate over U.S. counterterrorism techniques was hampering its effort in a “war of ideas,” Negroponte said, “We’ve taken steps to address the issue of interrogations, for instance, and waterboarding has not been used in years.”

In Pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name. For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen.

Aleve is also called Naproxen.

Amoxil is also called Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.

The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra.

After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin.

Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.

Pfizer Corp announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer.

It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one.

Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of ‘cocktails’, ‘highballs’ and just a good old-fashioned ‘stiff drink’ . Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of: MOUNT & DO.

Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer’s research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.  

Subtitles: Does This Imperialism Make Me Look Fat?

I Liked The Old One Better.

SOTU THIS, Chimpy!

Breaking: The State Of The Union Sucks large undesirable things that make you go Euwwww when you think about them.

I have always loved the myth of America…it is a GREAT myth. Even though it was not fashionable in my radical chic set back in the proverbial day…I even liked John Wayne, despite his Imperialist running dog tendencies….still do.

It wasn’t fashionable because he was/is a symbol of American Imperialism, even though his real name was Marion. One thing Conservatroids and us Hippies could agree on back then was that John Wayne symbolized America. To them it was a good thing, he was Strength and Manliness and simply ooozing confident unbeatable Jingoistic Manifest Destiny from every pore as he rode into the sunset after gunning down the bad guys and kissing the girl. To us the Cowboy, War Hero, Propaganda Tool simply ooozed the essence of America as an unthinking bully as he rode into the sunset after destroying some Native American or Vietnamese village. Ah, The Culture Wars! Now much and rightly derided, in some ways, by the New Post Boomer Post Partisan Generations.

The Duke was a symbol of them the Conservative, an icon of the Other Side. He was, to them….what America meant. But as much as I wanted to not like him, I did.

One thing you could ALWAYS say about the Duke….he played by the rules.

I watched waaaay too much armageddon-themed documentary television this weekend….and im skeert, so we’re going to a scary, scary place this morning……my mind!!!  😉

(im not really scared…just a little unnerved)

All of the following quotes are from ‘1984’, by George Orwell…They’re otherwise unrelated to each other, and follow no particular discernible logical path…sorry ’bout that!!

If ‘1984’ were indeed (as some suggest) an allegory for the Barmen Declaration opposing the nazi policy of state-controlled churches, then this would probably be the first quote you’d reference.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?…The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

But thinking people can see the universal truth in ‘orthodoxy is unconsciousness’.  And it frustrates us.  

“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.”

“Until the become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

The second sentence there…the ‘catch-22’ (another great book, btw)…worried me.  

If it hadn’t been for theevolutionarysieve’s intervention…reminding me….to quote Live, which is what I do best…that it’s all just ‘light and rainbows, smashed to smithereens’, I may have made a healthy and ill-advised investment in tin foil and ammunition  😉  

This is an Open Thread:Time keeps flowing like a river To the sea

Tuesday’s Headlines: Bush Speech Focuses on War and Taxes: Lawmakers Fault FEMA on Trailers: Kidneys ‘removed from poor Indians at gunpoint’: ‘They killed our people, so now we will do likewise.: Murdered Mexican singer’s group to tour: Berlusconi invokes Mussolini in threat to march on Rome

Pakistani Taliban grows bolder, taking fight to doorstep of frontier city

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Islamic militants known as the Pakistani Taliban have extended their reach across all seven of Pakistan’s frontier tribal regions and have infiltrated Peshawar, the provincial capital, heightening U.S. concerns that an insurrection may be broadening in the nuclear-armed nation.

Fighting over the weekend spilled into previously peaceful parts of the tribal belt that borders Afghanistan and intensified in South Waziristan, Bajour and Mohmand. In Bannu, southwest of Peshawar, gunmen fleeing police took dozens of schoolchildren hostage for several hours Monday before tribal elders brokered a deal offering them safe passage, state-run television reported.

I am all for running everywhere, and the 50 state strategy.

But neither we nor the Republicans are running everywhere (at least not yet!) In this series, I will look at where we are not running (I am not going to look at where Republicans are not running, as I have no desire to help Republicans, however modestly)

This diary is partly inspired by the great work done by BENAWU.

crossposted to dailyKos

I am all for running everywhere, and the 50 state strategy.

But neither we nor the Republicans are running everywhere (at least not yet!) In this series, I will look at where we are not running (I am not going to look at where Republicans are not running, as I have no desire to help Republicans, however modestly)

This diary is partly inspired by the great work done by BENAWU.

crossposted to dailyKos and SwingStateProject