December 2008 archive

I lost my liberal creds somewhere. I looked under the couch, in the glovebox, all my coat pockets, and they are just gone, man.

They must be somewhere by the “you’re an anti-semite” and “religious bigot for not liking star religions” keys.

So now I have to make a whole new set from scratch dudes, and its a total bummer.

So the very first thing I have to do, is make Barack Obama arrest Bush and Cheney.

Then I have to declare martial law in Indiana, where all those “terrified of the black guy” people in M_A’s video yesterday live.  Cuz they got guns, and they loves them some Palin and Jezuz and they ain’t gonna let no “N-word” arrest the righful Pres’nit of these God-lubbin U-natted States without a fight.

I am all over it.

What Will Monday’s Announcements

Mean For The U.S. And The World?  

Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security



By Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, December 1, 2008; Page A01

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department’s role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

At war level: India raises security status amid grief

Fallout from Mumbai attacks jeopardises south Asian peace process

Randeep Ramesh in Mumbai and Jason Burke in Islamabad

guardian.co.uk, Monday December 1 2008 00.01 GMT

The Indian government raised the country’s security to a “war level” yesterday saying it had certain proof of a Pakistani link to the Mumbai attacks.

The dramatic move prompted Pakistan to say it would end military operations against Islamist militants on the Afghan border, which are critical to the “war on terror”, for an “unwanted conflict” with Delhi.

With bodies being pulled from the Taj Mahal hotel, where gunmen had made their last stand after a rampage that left more than 170 dead, Sri Prakash Jaiswal, India’s minister of state for home affairs, said the country’s “intelligence will be increased to a war level, we are asking the state governments to increase security to a war level”. The Press Trust of India, India’s official news agency also reported that the government was considering suspending the four-year-old peace process with its neighbour.

USA

A wealth of ideas for Obama’s stimulus program

The next president has yet to offer details of his plan. Its size and scope, and how he’ll address housing and the auto industry, are up for debate.

By Michael A. Hiltzik

December 1, 2008

In three news conferences last week, President-elect Barack Obama began to outline an economic stimulus and recovery program involving public works, tax breaks and new federal funding for energy research.

The planned initiatives provided a spark of optimism amid the nation’s worsening financial outlook, but elements crucial for a sustained recovery are yet missing and many important details remain to be filled in, economists say. These include Obama’s approach to mortgage relief and the structure of a bailout of the automobile industry.

Some of the gaps may be deliberate, as insiders debate the size and scope of the package. Liberal economists in particular argue that to be effective, the program will have to be massive.

Speech Speech Speech

Overpowered By Funk – The Clash

So.  Seneca has exposed me for the horrible nag I am.  I hate to push him down with something this slight, but it will be Robyn and mishima if not me.

I kind of laugh at his concern because ‘centrist’ is a label I’ve always worn proudly, Armando and I used to joke about it.  Even ‘purist’ fails to wound me because I know the policies I advocate are hardly substantive, they are political and oriented toward electoral victory.

My shallowness is astounding.  My platform but 2 primary planks.

My prescription for Democratic Officeholders and Politicians is that they stand for fucking something, anything.  The reason people don’t vote for you is that you are cowards, weaklings, and liars.  They are right not to trust you.

On the other hand Republicans are shameless bullies and bigots, common thieves,  torturers, murderers, and war criminals.

My second plank is the Village, the blow dried air headed vacuous vacant Versailles access addict asskissing idiots who think they tell us what to think.

And that’s the power new media has.  To avert your eyeballs for an instant.

The TV business is uglier than most things.  It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.  There’s also a negative side.

As little effort as that takes, it has it’s effects.  They are terribly sensitive to negative popular opinion.  They can hardly stand to be confronted with facts in public debate.

• Brian Williams by Greenwald
• Brian Williams by Spencer Ackerman

You can smell the fear in the morning like coffee.  They hate us for a reason, and they should.  If we have excess energy we should expose them to others as the fools they are.  Show them our scorn and derision in concrete ways.

The reaction shows they are vulnerable, the business model is not working for them any more than it did for the Music Biz.  Even now giving live performances is more lucrative than airtime and who is advertiser supported after all?

And why are we doing it if revenue is down anyway?  Madison Avenue leads directly from Detroit down to Family Ford with the six cute kids a shilling, five new models, four finance programs, three months no payments, two SUVs.

And from NBC to Channel 3.

We know what you are.  We’re just negotiating the price.

In 1973, when the CIA got wind of the revelations that would expose its decades-long program into mind control experiments, then-CIA Director Richard Helms, and Sidney Gottlieb, head of the Agency’s Technical Services Division, got together to destroy all the files they could find on MKULTRA and related programs. These programs consisted of experiments on human subjects on isolation, sensory deprivation, induction of hallucinations and psychosis through drugs, electroshock, hypnosis, physical debility (through hunger, mainly), and other horrifying procedures. Some of you may be familiar with one such sponsored program, if you’ve read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.

Helms, who bragged about his destruction of the evidence to Congress, and Gottlieb were never held accountable for their destruction of evidence. (No surprise to those of us fighting to get the incoming Obama administration to hold Bush Administration officials accountable for their crimes on torture and lying the country into war.) Later, when through the efforts of heroic journalists — some of them ex-intelligence officers, like John Marks — some of the programs were exposed, but it was believed much of the CIA’s crimes in this instance would never be known.Vermont State Hospital Implicated in CIA Mind Control Experiments