Yes, there's something terribly wrong and it's much deeper than easy access to guns

at least once a day, i read something that gets my blood boiling and i often think, gee, maybe i ought to post that on the blog... yeah, right... i don't seem to be getting very far on that one...

well, today, when i read the latest horribly superficial and denial-ridden analysis of the latest in the never-ending parade of mass-slaughter incidents in my country, i simply couldn't let it go unchallenged... and, yep, you guessed it, almost the entire focus was on easy access to guns...

summing up steven rosenfeld via alternet...

...access to guns exacerbates violence...

well, yes, i don't think there's any doubt about that but where, ferchrissake, is the discussion of where all that damn violence is coming from...? but, ya know, that's not all such hard a question to answer... all it takes is opening your eyes and looking around... 

in the u.s., violence permeates the very air we breathe... it's in the movies, in sports, on television, seeded all through popular music, is the theme for countless widely played video games, on and on... the look, the feel, the attitude of barely suppressed violence struts around our streets with shaved heads, tattoos, piercings, male and female, in the malls, in the bars, and, yes, even on the playground... and i don't need to go into all the details of where and how violence manifests itself because it's visible everywhere...

i go to the gym several times a week as i'm sure some of you do too... general gym protocol seems to require loud rock music playing in the background... i'm not anti rock music to be sure but i'm appalled at how much of it involves anger, yelling, screaming, and implied if not outright violence... in-your-face aggression is more often than not the norm...

then there's the utter militarization of our society... fighting in endless wars, local police departments equipped like special operations hit squads, "support our troops" stickers, themes, and celebrations everywhere, assassinations by drone, u.s. military support to some of the most repressive and violent regimes on the planet...

i won't even mention income inequality better suited to a failed state, mass incarceration, stratospheric student debt, structural unemployment, and starving retirees...

in short, anyone who thinks that gun controls will fix anything is sadly mistaken and is only confusing the symptom with the cause... we have a very, very sick society, my friends, and, if denial about anything needs to be faced, it is that...

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Alternet: The relentless drive of corporations to maximize profit above everything else, including safety, fair working conditions, clean air and water, healthy communities, and common decency

tara lohan writing in alternet...

The corporate model we have today hasn't always been around and it doesn't need to remain the dominant way we do business. There is no reason we should be swabbing the decks of a sinking ship -- alternatives already exist and they are flourishing.

"What's underway is an ownership revolution. It's about broadening economic power from the few to the many and about changing the mindset from social indifference to social benefit," Kelly [Marjorie Kelly, a fellow at the Tellus Institute and author of the new book Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution] writes. "We're schooled to fear this shift, to think there are only two choices for the design of an economy: capitalism and communism, private ownership and state ownership. But the alternatives being grown today defy those dusty 19th-century categories. They represent a new option of private ownership for the common good. This economic revolution is different from a political one. It's not about tearing down but about building up. It's about reconstructing the foundation of ownership on which the economy rests."

[...]

[A] healthy, living economy needs biodiversity. We can find this if we begin to look around -- across the U.S. and the world -- where there are businesses designed not for maximum profit, but with a mission-driven social and economic architecture. One of these models is the "social enterprise."

The Social Enterprise Alliance defines these organizations as "businesses whose primary purpose is the common good. They use the methods and disciplines of business and the power of the marketplace to advance their social, environmental and human justice agendas." And one of the defining characteristics is that "The common good is its primary purpose, literally 'baked into' the organization's DNA, and trumping all others." [emphasis added]

[...]

The idea of social enterprises is catching on in the business world in the U.S. with the emergence of Benefit Corporations, also known as B Corps, which are designed, "to create a new sector of the economy which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems." B Corps are all for-profit companies that have legal structures mandating that the company is designed to work not for maximum shareholder gain, but for the good of society and the environment.

in the 80s there was a move among corporations toward participative governance, employee empowerment, consensus decision-making and addressing the needs of stakeholders with all the same seriousness reserved for owners and shareholders... this understandably made our super-rich elites nervous as they perceived it as an assault on their power and their perceived "right" to vacuum up unlimited quantities of cash from enterprises in which they had invested their capital... i was particularly supportive of this movement as it aligned very well with my own values and principles...

in my work with large corporations in that era, i devoted vast amounts of skill and energy to making front-line workers, the ones who are the heart and soul of any organization, the beneficiaries of the fruits of empowerment - shared decision-making, increased authority and responsibility and a commensurate share of the rewards... it took a while to sink in to my thick skull that the senior managers had no intention of letting such "socialist" notions take hold but that didn't prevent them from giving lip service all the same...

the terminology of that era is still evident in the introductory pages of every corporate annual report but it's as phony as a three-dollar bill... even so, i continue to teach and train those principles in every venue in which i have an entree - consulting jobs, teaching an mba class, and in every conversation i have with anyone willing to listen to me pounding the pulpit...

of one thing i am sure... unless and until a stake is driven through the heart of the utterly false concept of social darwinism and we make a conscious and collective decision to support the common good and accept that we are all in this boat together, we will never reach the kind of organization changes tara lohan writes about...

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Chomsky: "There is a sector that’s doing fantastically well, mainly in financial capital. For the general public it’s a different story."

alternet posts excerpts from a conversation between alternet's joshua holland and noam chomsky... well worth reading/listening to...

Noam Chomsky on America's Declining Empire, Occupy and the Arab Spring

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There's something happening here - a democratic awakening

cornel west talking with amy goodman on democracy now via alternet...

We’re talking about a democratic awakening. We’re talking about raising political consciousness, so it spills over; all parts of the country so people can begin to see what’s going on through a different set of lens. And then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be, because in the end we’re really talking about what Martin King would call a revolution; a transfer of power from oligarchs to every day people of all colors, and that is a step-by-step process. It’s a democratic process, it’s a non-violent process, but it is a revolution, because these oligarchs have been transferring wealth from poor and working people at a very intense rate in the last 30 years, and getting away with it, and then still smiling in our faces and telling us it’s our fault. That’s a lie, and this beautiful group is a testimony to that being a lie. When you get the makings of a U.S. autumn responding to the Arab Spring, and is growing and growing—-I hope it spills over to San Francisco and Chicago and Miami and Phoenix, Arizona, with our brown brothers and sisters, hits our poor white brothers and sisters in Appalachia—-so. it begins to coalesce. And I tell you, it is sublime to see all the different colors, all the different genders, all the different sexual orientations and different cultures, all together here in Liberty Plaza; there’s no doubt about it.

west goes on to offer his thoughts about obama's incredible discounting of the members of the congressional black caucus...

And you heard broth Barack’s speech to the Black Caucus the other day. March with me, condescending, insulting—-

[...]

Disrespecting, stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. I tell my brother; he got to understand the genius about Marley. He called his group the Wailers, not the whiners. The Wailers were persons who cry for help but against the context of catastrophe. When Wall Street cried out for help, they got billions of dollars. Working people, poor people are crying for help. Whining is a cry of self pity, of a sentimental disposition. That’s not what’s happening in poor America. That’s not what’s happening in working class America and that’s, certainly, not what’s happening in black America. It’s high unemployment rates, two out of five black kids in poverty, that’s not whining, that’s not complaining, that’s legitimate critiques and legitimate grievances out of a genuine grief. So that I ask the president to apologize. He needs to ask for forgiveness. You don’t talk to people that way; I don’t care what color they are when they’re suffering, not at all, you see. But, most importantly, here, people are straightening their backs up.

it's time for a deja vu moment...

buffalo springfield...

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

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The Dems and the Progressives are tearing each other apart by criticizing Obama...?

joshua holland expostulates extensively in an alternet post about how obama really isn't doing so bad and how liberals, progressives and democrats really do - and certainly SHOULD - support him... he conveniently ignores the fact that obama has done nothing less than perpetuate and, even worse, deepen the worst abuses of the bush years while selling what was left of his soul (a possession i'm afraid was already heavily mortgaged before he even took office) to wall street...

holland...

[T]here is a real danger that refusing to acknowledge the administration’s accomplishments has the potential to sour activist zeal in the run-up to the election. But so far, that doesn't appear to be the case. While Obama saw a decline in liberal support during the debt ceiling negotiations, he still remains quite popular with the base. As of late July, Obama enjoyed a higher approval rating among Democrats at this point in his presidency than any president since FDR – higher than Clinton, Kennedy or Truman. Recent polls show that 72 percent of self-identified liberals (and 77 percent of Democrats) approve of the job Obama has done – a number one would be surprised to discover after reading liberal blogs and listening to progressive talk-radio.

i'm afraid i was ticked off enough after reading it to fire back... (and, btw, i don't know what fucking "base" he's talking about... if i'm not part of that "base," i don't know who is...)

here's the comment i posted in response...

We're not tearing each other apart, Joshua. We're being torn apart by those who are intent on vacuuming up every last trace of money and power and putting it in their Scrooge McDuck money bins.

The whole notion that we should even bother "sticking together" in a completely fraudulent two-party system is absurd. Calling myself a Democrat is meaningless when there is absolutely no daylight between Repubs and Dems. Democrat vs. Republican in 2011 is a distinction without a difference and it has been for a long time. That we're just waking up to that fact is strictly a function of how thoroughly we've been propagandized.

Now that the 18-month run-up to our endless, American Idol-esque reality show is in full swing, are we supposed to, once again, tremble in fear at the evil, extremist R's and instead cozy up to "our" guy Barack who presides over such policies as extrajudicial assassination, mass murder by remote-controlled, video-game inspired technology, and the biggest transfer of wealth and power to the already super-rich the world has ever seen?

You tell me, Mr. Holland, exactly where the hope of our country and the rest of the world lies. While it sure as hell ain't Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann, it sure ain't Barack Obama either. What a choice we have. We can shit or go blind.

I think I'll go to McDonalds. I'm lovin' it.

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Why should our super-rich elites keep sucking us dry and refusing to pay their fair share...?

robert parry writing in consortium news via alternet...

The Solution to Our Budget Problems Is So Obvious: We Need to Raise Taxes on the Rich, ASAP

The answer to many of our country’s domestic problems is obvious -- the rich need to pay their fair share.

[...]

[I]t would seem both fair and logical for the U.S. government to restore the marginal income tax rates on the wealthiest taxpayers at least to levels that existed prior to Ronald Reagan’s presidency. That way the rich could pay back the country for all it has done for them.

fair and logical are not terms that mean the same to our overlords that they do to you and me... fair and logical to them means that they want it all, no if's, and's or but's...

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"Good" democracies vs. "bad" democracies - the dirty secret of the US call for "orderly transition" in Egypt

pepe escobar writing in the asia times via alternet...

For bipartisan Washington, there are "good" democracies (those that keep serving US strategic interests) and "bad" democracies which vote "wrong" (such as in Gaza, or in a future Egypt, against US interests).

This is the dirty secret of the "orderly transition" in Egypt - which implies Washington only meekly condemning the bloody Mubarakism wave of repression of protesters and international media. That's considered OK - as long as the military dictatorship remains in place and the glacial status quo is maintained. Moreover, sacrosanct Israel came out swinging praising Mubarak; this also means Tel Aviv will do everything to "veto" Mohamed ElBaradei as an opposition leader.

[...]

In a sane world - and if Obama had the will - the White House would back people power unconditionally. One can imagine, in terms of improving the US's image, what a roaring success that would be.

i'm always interested in reading perspectives like this one from the well-respected mr. escobar... i'm a keen observer of world goings-on and, while certainly not an expert, i think i do a pretty good job of putting the pieces together... watching the developments over the past 2+ weeks in egypt and putting them together with what i have personally experienced and already know, it seems pretty clear to me what manipulative crap mubarak has been up to and how weaselly, equivocating and self-serving the u.s. response has been... nonetheless, it's good to have my perspective validated...

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Emotional kids when daddy comes home

despite being a vietnam veteran, despite having worked in the war zone of afghanistan off and on for the past 18 months, and despite typing this as i'm working here in post-war kosovo, i am very far from a flag-waving, mindless supporter of our "troops"...

i think our militarized society has gone way overboard in practically canonizing those who do our country's dirty work, work done at the behest of those with the money and power to take them away from their families to suffer psychological trauma, possibly grave injury, disability and even death...

however, we should never, ever forget that those who serve in our military, even though they are often pawns in a larger game, are nonetheless fellow human beings who love their families as much or maybe even more than the rest of us do...

and, yes, i get this treatment from my grandsons when i arrive back home after a long time away...



thanks to alternet...

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Summers, Paulson, Rubin, Geithner, Bernanke, Liddy, and Blankfein are schizoid

chris hedges, writing on truthdig via alternet...

Our elites are imploding. Their fraud and corruption are slowly being exposed as the disparity between their words and our reality becomes wider and more apparent. The rage that is bubbling up across the country will have to be countered by the elite with less subtle forms of control. But unless we grasp the "societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms" we will be cursed with a more ruthless form of corporate power, one that does away with artifice and the seduction of a consumer society and instead wields power through naked repression.

[...]

"The idea that virility consists in the maximum degree of endurance long ago became a screen-image for masochism that, as psychology has demonstrated, aligns itself all too easily with sadism." [Theodor Adorno, "Education After Auschwitz"]

Sadism is as much a part of popular culture as it is of corporate culture. It dominates pornography, runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs and is at the core of the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice. And it has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our lack of compassion for the homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed and the sick.

[...]

The corporate state holds up as our ideal what Adorno called "the manipulative character." The manipulative character has superb organizational skills and the inability to have authentic human experiences. He or she is an emotional cripple and driven by an overvalued realism. The manipulative character is a systems manager. He or she exclusively trained to sustain the corporate structure, which is why our elites are wasting mind-blowing amounts of our money on corporations like Goldman Sachs and AIG. "He makes a cult of action, activity, of so-called efficiency as such which reappears in the advertising image of the active person," Adorno wrote of this personality type. These manipulative characters, people like Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, AIG's Edward Liddy and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, along with most of our ruling class, have used corporate money and power to determine the narrow parameters of the debate in our classrooms, on the airwaves and in the halls of Congress while they looted the country.

"It is especially difficult to fight against it," warned Adorno, "because those manipulative people, who actually are incapable of true experience, for that very reason manifest an unresponsiveness that associates them with certain mentally ill or psychotic characters, namely schizoids."

interesting... i've had a lifelong aversion to corporate types of the sort that adorno describes, for most of the same reasons he outlines... i've found most of them to be the sort of people that i simply wouldn't consider having as friends...

in addition, i've noticed that there's an entire sub-category of such individuals i would characterize as " 'manipulative character' wannabes"... these are the people who set out to be the summers, paulson, rubin, geithner types but couldn't quite cut it... you can seem them walking the corridors of organizations everywhere, semi-brain dead, but still pledging fealty to the system that rejected them...

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What is likely to happen under the Geithner plan and what should be considered instead

informed insight and a set of reasonable (although undoubtedly bald-faced heresy to the banksters and super-rich elites) proposals...

james galbraith in washington monthly via alternet...

The most likely scenario, should the Geithner plan go through, is a combination of looting, fraud, and a renewed speculation in volatile commodity markets such as oil. Ultimately the losses fall on the public anyway, since deposits are largely insured. There is no chance that the banks will simply resume normal long-term lending. To whom would they lend? For what? Against what collateral? And if banks are recapitalized without changing their management, why should we expect them to change the behavior that caused the insolvency in the first place?

The oddest thing about the Geithner program is its failure to act as though the financial crisis is a true crisis -- an integrated, long-term economic threat -- rather than merely a couple of related but temporary problems, one in banking and the other in jobs. In banking, the dominant metaphor is of plumbing: there is a blockage to be cleared. Take a plunger to the toxic assets, it is said, and credit conditions will return to normal. This, then, will make the recession essentially normal, validating the stimulus package. Solve these two problems, and the crisis will end. That's the thinking.

But the plumbing metaphor is misleading. Credit is not a flow. It is not something that can be forced downstream by clearing a pipe. Credit is a contract. It requires a borrower as well as a lender, a customer as well as a bank. And the borrower must meet two conditions. One is creditworthiness, meaning a secure income and, usually, a house with equity in it. Asset prices therefore matter. With a chronic oversupply of houses, prices fall, collateral disappears, and even if borrowers are willing they can't qualify for loans. The other requirement is a willingness to borrow, motivated by what Keynes called the "animal spirits" of entrepreneurial enthusiasm. In a slump, such optimism is scarce. Even if people have collateral, they want the security of cash. And it is precisely because they want cash that they will not deplete their reserves by plunking down a payment on a new car.

The credit flow metaphor implies that people came flocking to the new-car showrooms last November and were turned away because there were no loans to be had. This is not true -- what happened was that people stopped coming in. And they stopped coming in because, suddenly, they felt poor.

Strapped and afraid, people want to be in cash. This is what economists call the liquidity trap. And it gets worse: in these conditions, the normal estimates for multipliers -- the bang for the buck -- may be too high. Government spending on goods and services always increases total spending directly; a dollar of public spending is a dollar of GDP. But if the workers simply save their extra income, or use it to pay debt, that's the end of the line: there is no further effect. For tax cuts (especially for the middle class and up), the new funds are mostly saved or used to pay down debt. Debt reduction may help lay a foundation for better times later on, but it doesn't help now. With smaller multipliers, the public spending package would need to be even larger, in order to fill in all the holes in total demand. Thus financial crisis makes the real crisis worse, and the failure of the bank plan practically assures that the stimulus also will be too small.

In short, if we are in a true collapse of finance, our models will not serve.

[...]

That being so, what must now be done? The first thing we need, in the wake of the recovery bill, is more recovery bills. The next efforts should be larger, reflecting the true scale of the emergency. There should be open-ended support for state and local governments, public utilities, transit authorities, public hospitals, schools, and universities for the duration, and generous support for public capital investment in the short and long term. To the extent possible, all the resources being released from the private residential and commercial construction industries should be absorbed into public building projects. There should be comprehensive foreclosure relief, through a moratorium followed by restructuring or by conversion-to-rental, except in cases of speculative investment and borrower fraud.

[...]

Second, we should offset the violent drop in the wealth of the elderly population as a whole. ... For an increasing number of the elderly, Social Security and Medicare wealth are all they have.

That means that the entitlement reformers have it backward: instead of cutting Social Security benefits, we should increase them, especially for those at the bottom of the benefit scale. Indeed, in this crisis, precisely because it is universal and efficient, Social Security is an economic recovery ace in the hole. Increasing benefits is a simple, direct, progressive, and highly efficient way to prevent poverty and sustain purchasing power for this vulnerable population. I would also argue for lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare to (say) fifty-five, to permit workers to retire earlier and to free firms from the burden of managing health plans for older workers.

[...]

Third, we will soon need a jobs program to put the unemployed to work quickly. Infrastructure spending can help, but major building projects can take years to gear up, and they can, for the most part, provide jobs only for those who have the requisite skills. So the federal government should sponsor projects that employ people to do what they do best, including art, letters, drama, dance, music, scientific research, teaching, conservation, and the nonprofit sector, including community organizing -- why not?

Finally, a payroll tax holiday would help restore the purchasing power of working families, as well as make it easier for employers to keep them on the payroll. This is a particularly potent suggestion, because it is large and immediate. And if growth resumes rapidly, it can also be scaled back. There is no error in doing too much that cannot easily be repaired, by doing a bit less.

oh, and about those banksters and super-rich elites...

As these measures take effect, the government must take control of insolvent banks, however large, and get on with the business of reorganizing, re-regulating, decapitating, and recapitalizing them. Depositors should be insured fully to prevent runs, and private risk capital (common and preferred equity and subordinated debt) should take the first loss. Effective compensation limits should be enforced -- it is a good thing that they will encourage those at the top to retire.

good riddance, i say...

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Naomi Wolf weighs in on Sarah Palin, "FrankenBarbie"

i think naomi wolf is a truth-teller, one of the few people who, when i hear her speak or read what she has written, i respond to it immediately and intuitively as truth... in this article that first appeared in the huffington post and then in today's alternet, she takes a somewhat different view of sarah palin than i did with my "deck chair on the titanic" snark below... sadly, i don't disagree with her...

it's a somewhat lengthy article but well worth the time spent reading it... here's a teaser...

I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.

not many people out there are capable of grasping the big picture, much less articulating it... naomi wolf is one of them...

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A Call To Action

This message needs to be spread.


Almost everyone has heard, or read about, some of the traitorous and treasonous things Hanoi Johnny did while he was a SOB POW in Hanoi. Articles by Phillip Butler, and others that were POWs at the same time as McCain are troubling, to say the least.

This is the latest, dug up by AlterNet.


Republicans Allege McCain Covered Up His Collaboration with the North Vietnamese While a POW

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet. Posted September 21, 2008.

Allegations resurface that McCain made propaganda statements and tried to keep Viet Cong records about him classified.

A 1992 video featuring a Republican senator, Republican congressman and top Capitol Hill staffers who worked on Vietnam prisoner of war and missing in action issues say John McCain collaborated with North Vietnamese while a POW, and then covered up that involvement to the detriment of POW/MIA families seeking access to classified Pentagon records about their own family members.

The video raises probing questions about the 2008 Republican presidential nominee's war record, especially after McCain made his captivity a major part of his qualifications for the presidency at the Republican National Convention. In 2004, the GOP focused on Democratic nominee John Kerry's war record to criticize his candidacy.

To date, the video has been posted on a handful of blogs but has been ignored by the mainstream media. While it features Republican stalwarts on POW/MIA issues, it also suggests that McCain's war records at the Pentagon and in North Vietnam would reveal potentially very controversial details about the GOP's presidential candidate.

Watch the video.



It is imperative that we all spread this message to as many as possible. Post it on your Blog or Website, send a link of this post, or the following URL link to everyone in your address book, and tell everyone you talk to about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFM1xqqTX_g

We need to demand to see these records, or have him explain why we shouldn't see them. By spreading this message far and wide, it will apply pressure on the MSM to get to the bottom of this. The only thing the MSM hates as much as losing advertising revenue, is the public perception that the bloggers have 'scooped' them on a story.

Do it now!

Cross-posted at the Blog of Revelation.

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De facto suspension of the Constitution - Bush pronounces a detainee "an unlawful enemy combatant" and the person loses all human rights

robert parry posting on consortium news via alternet...

Under the Bush-Yoo theories, all Bush has to do is pronounce a detainee "an unlawful enemy combatant" -- whether a U.S. citizen or not, whether there is any credible evidence or not -- and the person loses all human rights.

As radical -- and as shocking -- as these theories may seem to many Americans, Bush is within one vote on the U.S. Supreme Court of having his vision enshrined as

If one more vacancy occurs among the five "non-imperial" justices -- and the replacement is in line with Roberts-Scalia-Thomas-and-Alito -- the U.S. Constitution could be effectively altered to eliminate key individual liberties -- from habeas corpus and other fair-trial rights to bans on "cruel and unusual" punishment to protections against self-incrimination and "unreasonable searches and seizures."

Though civics books tell us that the Constitution can only be amended by two-thirds votes of the House and Senate and approval by three-quarters of the states, the reality is that five ideologues on the U.S. Supreme Court can alter the nation's founding document by simply voting as a bloc.

And since the "war on terror" is unlike other wars -- in that the enemy is vaguely defined, the duration could be forever and the war's location can be anywhere -- the Bush-Yoo logic suggests that the de facto suspension of the American constitutional Republic is not just a short-term emergency measure.

Instead, the shift from a Republic, with legal protections of individual rights, to an Empire, led by an Executive who can operate without any constraints, would be permanent. As long as the President says some danger lurks out there, he or she could assert "plenary" -- or total -- powers as commander in chief.

[...]

Though Bush may not get another chance to further shape the Supreme Court with the appointment of another Roberts or Alito, his successor likely will. For some Americans angered by Bush's assault on the Constitution, John McCain's past support for Bush's judicial appointments may represent one of the strongest reasons to vote against him.

The future of the American Republic may be at stake.

"may" be at stake is a serious understatement... the future of the american republic HAS BEEN AT STAKE for a number of years now and WILL CONTINUE TO BE AT STAKE even after the inauguration of a (presumably) democratic president on 20 january 2009, if the current mechanisms of unfettered executive power are not both ROLLED BACK and FORMALLY REPUDIATED prior to that time... i don't want those mechanisms in the hands of ANY president... not mccain, not hillary, not obama...

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Dick Cheney - need I say more?

as y'all know, i'm not into pushing books, movies, or products... occasionally, when something has made a particular impact on me, i'll post something here... today is one of those days...

alternet enters the mad, mad world of book publishing...

A wickedly funny faux-children's biography recounts Young Dick Cheney’s youthful lust for guns, oil, and the girl of his dreams.

He was born among the big skies and cow pies of the Great American West. And yet from these humble beginnings, he would grow to become the most famous, most powerful Dick ever to inhabit the Vice Presidency. In this often shocking, frequently touching, clearly unauthorized biography, faux journalists Bruce Kluger and David Slavin (National Public Radio) reveal the inspiring and sometimes even true story of Richard B. Cheney—frontiersman, freedom fighter, fatty. Meticulously reported (including a footnote!) and lushly illustrated by renegade artist Tim Foley, this unprecedented, spell-checked triumph of painstaking conjecture brings to life the Dick nobody knows: a secretive yet sensitive boy from Wyoming with a shoot-from-the-hip, shoot-in-the-face style all his own. From his mischievous boyhood friendships, to his high-octane high school romance with the one girl who knew what made Dick tick, Young Dick Cheney: Great American is destined to be cherished by patriots and Democrats alike—a book that will captivate readers everywhere for months to come.

ok... just to keep things completely off-balance, here's lewis black's take on dick cheney... (if this doesn't have you rolling on the floor, i'm afraid there's no hope for you...)

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Neglected cities? Damaged cities? Who else but George Bush...

something i didn't realize, partially as a result of not watching any of the presidential candidate debates, but also because i am not focused at all on urban issues, is that those issues, to date, have not been addressed in any of the debates... the drum major institute in cooperation with the nation magazine, i found out thanks to alternet, has done a video survey of ten big-city mayors in an attempt to address that gap... here's salt lake city's rocky anderson, as posted on mayor.tv...



there's a full article about the project in the 14 december edition of the nyt...

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"There's just the lag time, which is so dangerous, when people still think it's a democracy, even while the martial law steps have begun"

don hazen at alternet interviews naomi wolf...

If the president can say, Well, "Don is an enemy combatant," there is nothing you can do. It's like "Tag, you're it!" To that extent we can not be innocent. And then someone is in jail for three years without being able to see their families or have easy access to a phone.

If they can do that, the pendulum can't swing, because after the first arrest, it generally goes in one direction, and according to the blueprint, the time has come for those first arrests. We're having this conversation now, before these arrests. But if tomorrow you read in the New York Times or the Washington Post that New York Times editor Bill Keller has been arrested, the staff will all be scared, others will get scared. And people don't understand that that's how democracy closes down. And when that happens first, it's the tipping point at which we think it's still a democracy.

... [P]eople need to believe and realize that that kind of negotiation is pretty much over. And there's just the lag time, which is so dangerous, when people still think it's a democracy, even while the martial law steps have begun. And that's where we are at, unless we get it.

Because you know, Congress keeps saying, "Hello, we're Congress." You have to answer us when we ask for information. The president's like, "Sorry, I'm ignoring you!" It starts becoming thinking like an abused woman, like: "Surely he's going to do it right this time, surely he's not going to do it again." And he does.

there is literally nothing we can do as american citizens that is more important than waking up to this possibility, and i will keep plaintively bleating about it until i see that the danger has passed, that i am snatched away from my keyboard for inciting "dissent", or that i fall, face-first, on that same keyboard in the final stages of senile dementia... the very LAST thing i want to do is to sit here and type the dreaded words, "i told you so..."

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Why does Alternet feel such a big need to shut down 9/11 discussion?

personally, i don't get it... it seems to me that there are way too many questions still surrounding 9/11, so why are there some people so heavily invested in discounting some questions but not others...? i think it's a shame to find a supposedly liberal, progressive, dedicated-to-free speech outlet like alternet stooping to questioning someone's right to ask intelligent questions and to demand comprehensive, truthful answers... however, i have noticed it's been a pattern with alternet, both with joshua holland in this article as well as with matt taibbi's screeds (here and here)...

[H]er comments on that day's show represented the worst of the left's conspiratorial tendencies; Rosie ran with the great intellectual fallacy that supports the 9/11 "Truth" movement: Anything not adequately explained by the official investigations into 9/11 are de facto evidence of an inside job...

that was bad enough, but then he has the nerve to define the debate for us...

What might have led to a challenging debate about the close ties between the Bush administration and terrorist financiers, or about the United States' unshakable relationship with the Saudi Royal family or the nature of our energy policy or the toll of American militarism emerged instead as an easily-refuted argument based, at the end of the day, on a talk-show host's knowledge about the melting point of steel.

don't define my debate for me, please... until i see a comprehensive, analytical, forensic report onthe twin towers, WTC-7 and the pentagon, i am going to continue to have some serious questions... what totally astounds me is why we haven't seen one...

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"The chorus of liars is gone"

the title of robert dreyfuss' alternet post is...

No One's Drinking Bush's Kool-Aid on Iran

It was, President Bush must have been thinking, a heck of a lot easier five years ago. Back in 2002, the president had a smoothly running lie factory humming along in the Pentagon, producing reams of fake intelligence about Iraq, led by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith and his Office of Special Plans. Back then, he had a tightly knit cabal of neoconservatives, led by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, based in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, to carry out a coordinated effort to distribute the lies to the media. And he had a chorus of yes-men in the Republican-controlled Congress ready to echo the party line.

In 2007, Bush stands nearly alone, and he never looked lonelier than during a bumbling, awkward news conference on the Iraq-Iran tangle Wednesday.

[...]

Those prone to believe, along with the president, that Iran is fomenting the violence in Iraq have already drunk deep of the neocon Kool-Aid. The rest of us can only shake our heads in wonder that the president thinks he can get away with this.

i wouldn't go so far as to say he's standing alone or that no one's drinking his kool-aid... not when you've got michael gordon in the nyt to shill for you...

Deadliest Bomb in Iraq Is Made by Iran, U.S. Says

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