September 10, 2010 archive

Sep 10 2010

Obama’s victory for torturers

Original article, Obama’s victory for torturers, by Bill Van Auken via World Socialist Web Site:

A federal appeals court’s dismissal Wednesday of a lawsuit on behalf of victims of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program represents a victory for the Obama administration’s defense of torture and dictatorial executive powers.

There are those who can’t wrap their minds around why the Obama Administration has become a pariah amongst some on the left, or why the Democrats are being dragged down with the President. The fact that the Obama administration would, for all intents and purposes, support torture is one of a myriad of reasons. The failure of the Administration, and by proxy the Democrats in Congress who have done little or nothing to hold the torturers accountable, is disturbing and disgusting. It shows that the Democrats in Washington are, for the most part, mad with power: For them, just as it is with many (if not most) Republicans, the ends justify the means.

Sep 10 2010

My Political Bucket List

(Cross-posted from The Free Speech Zone)

1) Win an election solely on the platform that I will beat the fuck out of any politician that votes against funding for 9/11 related victims, returning troops, and sick children, with a Baseball bat while dressed as one of The Warriors.

2) Legalize Marijuana (Duh!)

3) Perform a “Statler and Waldorf” routine during the State of the Union with Bernie Sanders (after legalizing marijuana).

Sep 10 2010

Meanness in America:

After reading an extremely interesting essay by another poster on firefly-dreaming.com, I got the idea for another Thursday Open Thoughts column.   Since I’ve recently had problems with not only comments, but long posts disappearing as well, I decided to take the suggestions of yet another poster on firefly-dreaning to heart and write it on a blank e-mail first, which I’m presently doing.  

The essay in question, which was called “Main Street and Fox Avenue”, told about the nasty, vicious and ignorant rightwing people who were clearly Republicans, who wanted to “cleanse” America to make it the way it supposedly was when Ronald Reagan took office, and burn all the books, including and especially Korans, that they could.   It sounded like a rough, raucous and nasty-spirited crowd, not to mention clearly uneducated, who “seemed” to be infected with some sort of a virus”, and he decided to run from them when one of them offered him an American flag jacket to try on in order to “prove his patriotism and Americanism”.    These people certainly were aggressive and seemed to be the type of people who, with the viciousness of blind, brainless beasts, could/would fall upon anything or anybody that crossed their path, and often won’t hesitate to resort to the nastiest, most mean-spirited baiting, or even physically assaulting their victim(s).   Whether it be fellow Conservative Republicans or even fellow liberal/Democrats who differs with the Republican or Democratic orthodoxy, a left-winger,  anybody of color,  or any ordinary person who they’d been friendly with just the day before, or  they’d joked with or even conversed with moments or even hours earlier, nobody, whoever s/he may be, who inadvertently crosses their path is safe.  

Sep 10 2010

Never forget.

Sep 10 2010

Information in the Age of Noise

Almost three years ago Obama announced his support for FTA-Peru, after 4,000,000 Peruvian workers and farmers had gone out on general strike against it, and my previous indifference to that amiable wind-bag turned into hostility.

FTA-Peru was already a smoking-gun about the “real” Obama, but it wasn’t obvious enough for most of the so-called “progressive blogosphere,” as beautifully represented by DailyKos, MyDD, and many other high-traffic sites which quickly turned into cheerleaders for their inane and unprincipled TV Messiah.

Of course Obama could have turned himself around at any time between then and now, before he ran all the way off the far-right edge of the world with his repulsive Catfood Commission to cut Social Security  benefits, and cuts in the food stamps program at a time when 41,000,000 Americans depend on it, and all his broken promises about FISA and $300 billion in new tax-cuts for corporations and all the rest of it.

So why didn’t the progressive blogosphere unmask that repulsive con-man before he walked into the Oval Office?

All of us had access to a thousand times as much information as ever before. How many people in Peoria could read the New York Times and the Guardian and news reports from Peru and government reports on all conceivable subjects in 1952?

But in 1952 our two major parties nominated Eisenhower and Stevenson, both of them candidates whose experience and character make Obama look like less than zero.

Who was Obama in 2002?

Not much more than an undistinguished state senator from Illinois who won a student election at the Harvard Law Review once upon a time.

He had been crushed in a Democratic Congressional primary by Bobby Rush in 2000, when nobody noticed anything like charisma anywhere near him, but that was before Penny Pritzker hired Axelrod and Plouffe and their extremely expensive talents turned nothing into the illusion of…

Barack Obama!

That TV caricature was created by the unlimited wealth of Penny Pritzker, financial chairwoman of Obama’s campaign and former chairwoman of Superior Bank, who had to pay a $460 million fine to keep herself out of jail, but still couldn’t find another $10 million to reimburse the investors that she and her partners had diddled out of their life savings!

Sep 10 2010

Drowning in Noise

Go ahead.  Stand up in a crowded theater and yell fire.  I would be willing to bet nobody would notice, care, even look for it.  Tonight’s topic is subliminals in ads.  Most people have to really look.  Still others think it’s all nonsense.  I am confined mostly to the Discovery channel, RFD is excellent for the horse training and anything on the paranormal or Jessie Ventura’s very basics on “the Illuminati”/”conspiracy theory”.

The best way to make the internet irrelevant as a political force for “change” is to divide it up into billions of categorized small and thus meaningless audiences.  Actually it’s far worse than that, it’s proven, scientifically tested and accepted.  All one has to do is repeat the propaganda enough times as needed to create the Matrix.  Yup, like the movie series.

Sep 10 2010

A & E for 9/11 Truth Webcast

This is todays webcast with Sen. Mike Gravel, and with Richard Gage from Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth Present: Explosive Evidence at World Trade Center on 9/11 Press Conference and Mock Debate, that FreeSociety posted his essay about here yesterday.

To stream this and listen to it you are supposed to register – and I’d strongly suggest you do that if you’re going to watch this – mainly to help A&E for 9/11 Truth build their email lists, by clicking through on the image above (they want names and email addresses):

I’ve already registered and extracted the embed code, however this webcast uses Windows Media Player, and it may not work embedded here for all browsers or all operating systems, but I thought I’d post it here for easy access. I hope it works for you – if you see a blank white area instead of a player below, or if it does not play, there is probably nothing I can do to make it work for you, and you’ll have to click the image above and register to watch it.

While the webcast is playing you might have some blank new windows open occasionally, as the speakers display some slides – if so there is probably nothing I can do to stop that from happening. I think I have that problem fixed.

btw, embedding this here may be copyright violation – so if I’m asked to remove this post I will do so

Sep 10 2010

The Election Needs You, Broken Heart and All

“OK, so your heart’s broken,” as the old song goes. So’s mine. But we have to get over it–now–and start taking action for the November election.

Granted, we’re far from where we thought we’d be when Barack Obama was elected and people danced in the streets. Change was on its way, spearheaded by Obama’s soaring words and by the millions of ordinary Americans who got involved as never before to help carry him to victory.  We thought we’d finally created the opening for a historic transformation.  

Now, too many of us watch morosely from the sidelines, feeling disappointed, spurned,  and betrayed, wondering if anything we can do will matter. We’re angered by the gap between Obama’s lofty campaign rhetoric and his reality of half-steps and compromises, and by his failure to fight passionately for his policies. We’re angered that we dared to hope for more. We’re angered at scorched-earth Republican obstructionism, a Supreme Court inviting corporations to buy our democracy at will, and a public all too receptive to blatant lies. In response, we decide not to let our hearts get broken again by taking the risk of working for change, at least not in the electoral arena. We feel this way even though most of us have done little since Obama took office to create the kind of sustained grassroots movements that could have actually pressed him and a resistant Senate to take stronger stands.

So how do we act in the upcoming election despite dashed hopes?  How do we do this in a way that builds for the future?

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