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03-28-09 - Thousands At Funeral For Fallen Oakland Police Officers (sfgate video) "Some 19,000 law-enforcement officers from coast to coast gathered for a final send-off for four slain Oakland police officers who died in separate incidents hours apart on Saturday in East Oakland" -- Something seems very distorted and out of balance about the opulence and ostentation of this unfortunate event. I'm sure some of the officers attending were actually doing it on their day off; I suspect the majority were not. Oakland apparently gave all their police officers and complete office staffs time off so they could attend the memorial to show solidarity. If the entire gathering were not being paid for by taxpayers all over the country, would the police make such a show of their fallen comrades' memorial? How much crime was not prevented because 19,000 police officers were absent from their usual beats in their nearby and distant hometowns? -- How many of our 4,200+ --not four--fallen Iraq soldiers have received such a sendoff? Most police are a genuine credit to their community and it is indeed unfortunate when a police officer falls in the line of duty. It is also indeed unfortunate when so many hundreds of people receive unnecessary and undeserved death penaltys from the guns and tasers in some police officers' trigger-happy hands. How many of those murdered victims receive a big sendoff attended by thousands of police officers at taxpayer expense?
- Almahata Sitta 15 (Asteroid Fragments) (apod)
03-27-09 - Military-Industrial Complex - The Great Contractors' Ripoff of Everyone:
- Shoddy wiring 'everywhere' on Iraq bases, Army inspector says (cnn) "Of the nearly 30,000 buildings the Army's 'Task Force Safe' has examined so far, Childs said more than half 'failed miserably.' And 8,527 had such serious problems that inspectors gave them a 'flash' warning, meaning repairs had to be completed in four hours or the facility evacuated. He said the majority of those buildings were wired by contractor KBR, based in Houston, Texas" formerly a part of Dick Cheney's Halliburton.
- Restore the Rule of Law and Accountability!
- John Nichols: Shouldn't Congress Hold the Pentagon to Account? (thenation)
- A Dash of Sanity:
- The Phony War on Drugs: New York eases harsh 1970s drug laws (reuters) "The existing laws -- known as the Rockefeller drug laws for Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller who in 1973 said they were needed to fight a heroin epidemic -- were considered among the nation's stiffest because they required prison terms for offenders and gave judges no discretion in sentencing."
- Convictions Reversed in Pennsylvania (nytimes) "Pennsylvania's highest court on Thursday overturned hundreds of juvenile convictions issued by a corrupt judge who took millions of dollars in kickbacks from youth detention centers." -- Now I'd like to know what compensatory damages the State of Pennsylvania plans to pay the thousands of wrongfully convicted youths these vermin judges unlawfully sentenced.
- Global Broiling:
- Lights worldwide to go dark this Saturday night for Earth Hour (msncb) "From landmarks to homes, idea is to send message about global warming" by reducing electricity usage to minimum from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. in your time zone.
- The Seagull Nebula (apod)
03-26-09 - Our 'Liberal Media':
- Barack's Gang:
- Obama Has Little Respect for Democratic Progressives (rollcall) -- In fact he thinks so little of this core group of Democrats that he has met with every other caucus on The Hill except the Progressive Caucus, which happens also to be the largest. He assumes they will vote for him regardless, so don't need any special attention or consideration. Indeed, it's apparently ok to insult them in this manner. -- I truly hope enough Progressives organize in such a way as to make him sweat a little over this insult. If Progressives are going to have no influence on his policies, I suggest they vote with their feet and find another party and candidate to stand with. Let the remaining right-of-center Democratic Party go its own inevitable way, playing footsies with RW extremists and the ultra-rich handlers who control both parties -- which Obama seems determined to do regardless.
- Military-Industrial Complex:
- New Neo-Con Group Lurking in Shadows (ips - wonkroom) "some see FPI as a likely successor to Kristol’s and Kagan’s previous organisation, the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which they launched in 1997 and which became best known for leading the public campaign to oust former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein both before and after the Sep. 11 attacks."
- The Great RW Religious Nutjob Shakedown:
- Oklahoma Legislature Investigates Richard Dawkins' Free Speech (huffingtonpost) "Well, it's official: Oklahoma's state legislature is investigating the University of Oklahoma for hosting a speech by [atheist] evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins."
- The Great Health Insurance Shakedown:
- Insurance Industry: The Parasite That Feeds on US Public Health System (commondreams) "Medicare is efficient (only 3.6% of Medicare's budget goes to administrative costs, compared to 31% for health care delivered through private insurance plans), its clients like it, and doctors and hospitals accept it."
- Howard Dean To Announce Major New Campaign On Health Care Reform (theplumline) -- Wants to preserve a public option in any health plan.
- The Great Economic Shakedown:
- Administration proposes financial system overhaul, will impose tougher rules on big players (yahoo)
- Krugman: Obama, Geithner Need to Do More to Boost Economy (abcnews) ""For people who felt that Obama was going to bring change, a real difference, it somehow feels quite a lot as if we've got the same old gang still making the policy decisions, despite how discredited they are in the eyes of the public..."
- Geithner update: Grab yer ankles and say ‘Uncle Sam’ (onlinejournal) "Here’s what everyone needs to know: The US government (you) will provide up to 94 percent of the financing (low interest, of course) for dodgy mortgage-backed assets that no one in their right mind would ever buy, so that wealthy and politically-connected banksters can scrub up to $1 trillion of red ink from their balance sheets. Ugh!"
- Geithner- the same yesterday, today and tomorrow: Geithner Endorses Naked Credit Default Swaps (firedoglake) -- He certainly is the embodiment of change we can believe in.
- Administration seeks expanded oversight of financial system (nytimes)
- California unemployment to hit 12% next spring (americablog)
- Stars Young and Old (apod)
03-25-09 - Prosecute or Perish:
- Why the survival of our Constitutional Democracy may hinge on factually justified criminal prosecutions of the Bush/Cheney cabal (bradblog) ""It will remain one of democracy's best jokes that it provided its deadly enemies with the means by which it was destroyed." - Joseph Goebbels" -- "existing treaties, which the president is obligated to enforce, mandate the commencement of 'an investigation of Bush's torture practices' . . . Unless the rule of law is restored and applied to the Bush/Cheney cabal, the next time around our constitutional democracy could be lost, forever. The survival of the republic mandates nothing less than criminal investigations and prosecutions not only of war crimes and financial crimes but 'crimes against democracy,' an apt phrase that should be applied to voter suppression, illegal manipulation of election results and the attempted misuse of the Justice Department to gain partisan advantage."
- Prison-Industrial Complex:
- Hellhole: Solitary Confinement as Torture (newyorker) "The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Is this torture?"
- Military-Industrial Complex:
- Another Broken Promise: Combat Brigades Will Stay in Iraq Beyond June 2010, Just Under a New Name (commondreams/ips) "That report suggests that Obama was well aware that giving the Petraeus and Odierno a free hand to determine the composition of a 'transition force' of 35,000 to 50,000 troops meant that most combat brigades would remain in Iraq rather than being withdrawn, as he ostensibly promised the U.S. public on Feb. 27." -- Just can't help wondering whether Obama's hold-over Secretary of War and generals WANT Obama booted out of office in 2012, so are doing everything they can to be sure the public is completely disgusted with him over his Bush-Lite neocon policies and broken promises about getting out of Iraq. Such a big mistake to keep any Bush loyalists around after his inauguration. He certainly has taken a page out of the Bill Clinton playbook: tell them anything they want to hear, then do what you want -- and don't piss off the big guys.
- A Dash of Sanity:
- More than two million acres of some of the nation's most important wilderness has finally received protection (congressmatters)
- The Great Economic Shakedown:
- The Geithner Plan’s Unpleasant Consequences (firedoglake) "The end effect will likely be little different than what happened in Japan, with the exceptions that the US may see significant inflation, and that as net importer rather than a net exporter, the US probably can't keep this up for 20 years. Which means that at some point in the future it will either have to default on the debts, inflate them away or have a financial collapse."
- Geithner's Bank Plan: Only a Partial Solution (time) "All told, the three plans address about $420 billion in toxic loans and assets that the government hopes to get off the balance sheets of banks. Will that be enough to nurse our nation's biggest banks and financial markets back to health? It's not clear. The plan leaves out tens of billions of dollars in bonds that were never AAA-rated and were hard to sell even in good times. The plan triggered a strongly positive stock-market reaction on Monday, when the Dow Jones industrials soared nearly 500 points. On Tuesday the market slipped 1.5%, as doubts about a speedy bank recovery began to take shape."
- Israeli Crimes - Israeli Apartheid in Palestine:
- Ex-Communicated: Enclosure Landscapes in Palestine (alternatefocus video) -- Good documentary. Stark images of domination. Easy to understand the problem. Israelis have become it's Nazi abusers. As Israel's financial and military benefactor, the U.S. shares culpability for Israeli crimes against Palestinians. It is certainly time to boycott all Israeli goods and divest from investments in all Israeli companies.
- Israel Accused of Indiscriminate Phosphorus Use in Gaza (guardian/uk) "Human Rights Watch report claims Israel committed war crimes in its use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells"
- Lendman: Incriminating Evidence of Israeli War Crimes in Gaza (sjlendman) "Throughout its history, Israel has willfully and repeatedly committed crimes of war and against humanity, always with impunity. Yet under customary legal standards and norms (including Geneva, Hague, the UN Charter, S.C. and G.A. resolutions), it's lawless, a serial abuser, a threat to the region and humanity, mostly as an oppressive occupier. Attacking Gaza is the latest episode in its six-decade reign of terror satisfying the definition of genocide against defenseless Palestinian civilians. This article covers more evidence from some disturbing but unsurprising newly published information."
- Barack's Bush-Lite Gang:
- Obama Channeling Bush on State Secrets Claim (washingtonpost) "Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House."
- Orcus of the Outer Solar System (apod)
03-24-09 - Bush Crimes Ad Nauseum:
- A Dash of Sanity:
- EPA Delays Hundreds of Mountaintop Mining Permits (nytimes)
- Massachusetts Looks to Legalize Pot: Eyeing Millions in Tax Revenue (chattabox)
- Steal That Election -- It's So Easy:
- Were the election officials who allegedly manipulated votes on e-voting machines in Clay County, KY, Republican or Democratic? And does it actually make any difference? (bradblog)
- The Great Economic Shakedown:
- What's the Difference?
- Greenwald: A major difference between conservatives and progressives (salon)
- Some Useful Ideas for Our Broken Country:
- Eliminate the filibuster: FDR could not have gotten the New Deal through Congress if the filibuster had existed at that time; Obama's initial pretty decent stimulus package was diluted to ineffectiveness by the threat of GOP filibuster. Eliminate the secret hold of a bill by any single senator. While we're at it, we should strip corporations of the rights of personhood. Then abolish the Federal Reserve, the most elite private bankers' bonanza. Oh, by the way, we could restore the full force of the Constitution and the Rule of Law to our country, holding Bush regime violators fully legally accountable -- and hold present and future government officials to the same standard. Create a fair and transparent election system nationwide. Campaign reform that eliminates corporate money. Break up the communications mega-corporations. -- I realize this list could become pages long. More on that later. . . Need to wake up now.
- Unaccountable Corporatocracy:
- Oil plagues Sound 20 years after Exxon Valdez (msnbc - democracynow) -- Gov. Theocratia Palin has been conveniently shielded up to this point from seeing any of the continuing damage.
- China Flexes - S. Africa Caves:
- South Africa bars Dalai Lama from peace conference so China will not be offended and punish their trade relations (americablog - yahoo/ap)
- South African peace conference postponed after they ban the Dalai Lama (americablog)
- Mars Express: Return to Cydonia (apod)
03-23-09 - Restore the Rule of Law! --- Israeli and US War Crimes in Gaza:
- The Great Economic Shakedown - Cash for Trash:
- Geithner details ‘toxic asset' purchase plan (miamiherald - democracynow - guardian/uk - oxdown) "Has the Obama Administration really sunk to this? What possible excuses do they have?" -- Wall Street bought it up (500 points on the Dow) - Krugman hates it, saying it won't work (reuters). - Again, any profits will be privatized, but any losses over 15% will be socialized, that is, charged yet again to the taxpayer and his children and their children. - As of a recent comment, Roubini regards SPX 500 to 600 as the probable bottom, then more and more probably a lot of relative sideways motion for several years (the L-shaped economic decline). Some institutional investors took heart at his remarks and at the fact that Citibank had a profitable quarter, and now think the upside/downside risk favors taking some long-term positions. This rally has been going on for the couple weeks since then. When everyone is in who will get in, it will be over.
- Update 03-24-09: Stiglitz rips the Geithner plan - calls it "robbery" (americablog) "The U.S. government plan to rid banks of toxic assets will rob American taxpayers by exposing them to too much risk and is unlikely to work as long as the economy remains weak. . . ."
- Thom Hartmann: The Real Criminals are Neither Lynndie England nor the AIG Traders (commondreams) -- "But the real criminals of the AIG mess - and the entire financial meltdown that was set up between 1999 and 2006 and crashed starting in 2007 - were Grover Norquist, Phil and Wendy Graham, Tom Delay, and, sadly, Bill Clinton."
- The Seahorse of the Large Magellanic Cloud (apod)
03-22-09 - Military-Industrial Complex:
- Venezuela's Chavez calls Obama "ignoramus" (reuters) Chavez: "'He goes and accuses me of exporting terrorism: the least I can say is that he's a poor ignoramus; he should read and study a little to understand reality,' said Chavez . . . ." In fact, Obama appears to be listening more to his exploitation-minded neocon and laissez faire capitalist advisers and pals than to the people who elected him -- and he's getting the wrong story from them. He's driving away supporters, and that will hurt him during the next two elections, because the Republican election theft machinery will not have been remotely diminished by then. It will be warmed up, well oiled, and ready to take back maximum seats, maybe even his own. Obama is BushLite in too many areas of governance -- that means this country is in very deep shit. Dennis Kucinich once told Neel Kashkari he wanted to know who Kashkari was really working for. That's what we should be demanding to know of Obama now.
- Those Murdering Tasers and the Murdering Hands Holding Them:
- Boy, 15, Dies After Police Tasering (mlive) -- How long must these murders go on? How many must be murdered 'in the name of the law' before these instruments of torture are taken away from police departments?
- TASER International, Inc. Reports Sequential Revenue Growth in 2008 Q4 (globenewswire)
- Update 03-24-09: Amnesty International: Death Shows Taser's Risks (commondreams/ap)
- The Great Economic Shakedown - Is Obama Dense or Is He Part of It?
- A Frank Rich Must-Read: Has a ‘Katrina Moment’ Arrived? (nytimes) "President Obama may not realize it yet, but his Katrina moment has arrived. . . . But rhetoric won’t tamp down the anger out there, and neither will calculated displays of presidential 'outrage.' We must have governance to match the message. To get ahead of the anger, Obama must do what he has repeatedly promised but not always done: make everything about his economic policies transparent and hold every player accountable. His administration must start actually answering the questions that officials like Geithner and Summers routinely duck."
- Matt Taibbi: The Big Takeover (rollingstone) "The global economic crisis isn't about money - it's about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution"
- The US Government: Of, By and For... Goldman Sachs? (alaskafreepress)
- Damaged Packaging -- Damaged Goods -- Discredited Witness / Evidence:
- Last night I watched paleoconservative Alex Jones's 'The Obama Deception' and was astonished at the deceitful way Jones interweaves bits of reality with outrageous lies, deceptive intimations and contextual misinterpretations. The viewing left me with two questions: Which elements of his films may actually represent truth? AND Is Alex Jones actually a PsyOps operative whose major occupational responsibility is to deliver the truth, but all entangled in so much deception that no one but a non-thinking, non-critical paranoid could possibly take it seriously? -- What I describe in this entry is a tried and true propaganda technique that we see over and over, day in and day out. Only the most upright trial lawyer could possibly function without the ability to obfuscate or wrongly 'discredit' an opposing witness. -- The truth leaks out through various means and is even deliberately placed into the public domain, but Psy-Operatives then enter the scene and stir into that truth some insignificant or enormous misinformation that in one way or another puts off a rational person. Rather than try to ferret out what is real and what is not, the fact-challenged but interested inquirer may be inclined to toss out the whole mixture as untrustworthy--the baby with the bathwater--although certain targeted concepts that complement core beliefs and values may have already been absorbed. I see the insertion of what I consider deliberate small mistakes or misrepresentations repeatedly on The History Channel, your go-to channel to augment your generalized fear or for encouragement to resolve conflict by armed confrontation rather than rational negotiation. -- Dan Rather's report on Dubya's incomplete, 'Champaign' Texas Air National Guard career is another case in point. Dan Rather reported the truth, but because he relied on document photocopies, not originals, and could not absolutely authenticate their chain of possession--therefore the authenticity--of certain incriminating documents (even though the then-retired secretary reported to have typed the memos declared that they generally expressed the prevailing attitude at the time in her office about young Bush). In Rather's case, it appears that he was deliberately set up and his GOP attackers were ready and waiting for the 'sic 'em' command, which indeed came within a couple hours after the report aired and continued relentlessly for days--never, never over the content of the report, but only over the authenticity of the photocopies--the 'damaged packaging'--used in the report. CBS was now uncomfortable, and Dan Rather was also now 'damaged packaging'. A highly partisan kangaroo court was set up by CBS to officially and summarily sentence Rather to journalistic obscurity, and in so doing, once again ingratiate itself with Republicans. No other high-profile investigative reporter dared challenge Bush again. -- The 9/11 false flag attacks upon the U.S. (follow the links), probably engineered, or at least extensively collaborated in by elements of the Bush regime, U.S. intelligence agencies and military, is another favorite target for a big dose of misinformation and misdirection mixed into the mountain of damning evidence of our own government's indispensable participation in the attack that blasted this country into the Bush dictatorship and a burgeoning police state. -- Finally, looking at 'damaged packaging' in still another way, consider the the right wing's knee-jerk reaction of viciously smearing its critics. If they can repeat the smear loudly and often enough through the ready assistance of their ever-blaring partisan noise machine, what's left is 'damaged packaging'. Mission accomplished.
- The Very Large Array of Radio Telescopes (VLA) (apod) -- While flying from California over the desert west of Socorro, New Mexico one clear day, I happened to notice a white spot on the ground below. Then a mile or so away, another, and another. A week earlier I had watched 'Contact' and had just learned about the existence of this unusual radio telescope observatory. I scanned the desert below and realized that the entire array of 27 dishes was evenly spread out in three directions along its 13-mile arms. I was impressed--and grateful to have learned about it so fortuitously only a week earlier. Otherwise, I might never have realized what I had just seen. The pilot, by the way, said nothing whatsoever as we flew overhead. -- Reminded me of a similar trip when the mute pilot flew us very near the Grand Canyon, and only ground-watching mavens and map trackers may have noticed it.
