Author's posts
Dec 07 2008
Truth and Shaming Commission
When looking around for something on Truth Commissions I found that for the most part they were called Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. Like I said in the essay I posted on that, I was still gagging on the “R” word. I still gag on it today.
You’ll find Josh Marshall of TPM fame listed at the bottom of the Wiki entry on TRCs as having proposed one for BushCo. He also has an interesting TPMtv interview with Burt Neuborne of the Brennan Center for Justice, NYU. Burt calls for a “shaming” commission. Basically he says let’s out the torturers and those who ordered the torturing so that the whole world will know them for who and what they are. This is the part of a Truth Commission that is the heart of what I would like to see.
You can see Burt make his case at the 4:30 mark in this TPM clip: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.c…
It sounds good to me. Personally, I’m not far enough along to go for the Reconciliation part even though I know that Mandela did it and Ghandi would do it. I do believe firmly in the Truth part. I’d like to see at least the top three tiers exposed to the public in all their lies and crimes against humanity. They need to stand naked before the Truth for all the world to see.
I resign myself to the reality that they’ll never see jail time even though they deserve it more than 95% of those incarcerated now. A good world-wide shunning and shaming will be sufficient. We can’t let the history of what happened these last eight years be lost, hidden or manipulated. The cost of letting this slide even a little will mean that our descendants will see this and worse happen in their lives. It has to stop somewhere. The conditions are right to do it now.
The Republicans will be a problem. The complicit Establishment Democrats will be an even worse problem. We need to not just keep their feet to the fire, we need to turn it up until they can’t ignore it anymore. We’ve got the Executive branch back. It’s time to steamroll the Legislative denizens.
Truth Now!
Nov 17 2008
Saxby “Sugar” Shameless
[posted late last night on the blog with the half-hour shelf-life]
[apparently Saxby tales are coming out of the woodwork in a steady stream]
Hopefully this tale will help undecided or unmotivated Georgia voters to get out and vote in the run-off election between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin. Just to be up front here, I sent Jim Martin a donation on Nov 5. After the roving that Saxby did to a true American hero, Max Cleland, I had to do something.
Here’s the story of a United States Senator using the power and influence of his office to persuade the families of dead and severely burned victims to not seek restitution. He abused his Senate subcomittee position to tarnish a whistleblower in the case. He may have colluded with the company owner to make this all go away quietly. He is in the process of tainting the jury pool should any trial for actual damages occur.
Chambliss Refusing to Speak in Imperial Sugar Case
Fourteen dead. Scores injured. An “accident” that was bound to happen. Greed and arrogance prevailed. Lives were lost and ruined. Now it’s time for the boys in power to make it all go away. Hush it up and after a while no one will remember. Just a speck of dust blown away. No problem. Call the senator and have him fix it. Move on. Appeal the OSHA fines. Delay and postpone. Business as usual.
Nov 09 2008
Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
[ed note: I’m still gagging on the R-word but here goes]
From Wiki:
A truth commission or truth and reconciliation commission is a commission tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government, in the hope of resolving conflict left over from the past. They are, under various names, occasionally set up by states emerging from periods of internal unrest, civil war, or dictatorship. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established by President Nelson Mandela after apartheid, is generally considered a model of Truth Commissions, rarely if ever achieved in other parts. As government reports, they can provide proof against historical revisionism of state terrorism and other crimes and human rights abuses. Truth commissions are sometimes criticised for allowing crimes to go unpunished, and creating impunity for serious human rights abusers.
The bolds are from the Wiki entry, the italics are mine.
I’m not sure where to begin on this. My revenge fantasies leading up to the election were starting to get out of hand. I felt like Photoshopping middle-of-the-forehead entry wounds with trails of blood down the faces of our war criminals – traitors to not just the Constitution but to all that’s decent in humanity. And then pasting the posters on public walls. I may get rendered just for sharing this thought dream. They still have ten weeks to go. Fuck it.
My big problem with revenge is people like Ghandi and Mandela and MLK, Jr. They all took the personal beatings, torture and imprisonments in stride. They all brought about tremendous positive change for all of humanity. They are powerful role models for doing what is right morally. If I ask myself what would they do then I have to confront my very reasonable desire for some exotic revenge for the members of the Bush regime and all their enablers. It would please me no end to have each of them waterboarded, humiliated, debased and thrown into Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and the Black Prison in Afghanistan for very long amounts of time. But that would just make me like them. I refuse to be one of their kind.
Oct 21 2008
What if McCain wins?
Just wondering. It’s a remote possibility at this point but it’s still a possibility. Given the concerted effort to suppress the vote in so many districts and states, it becomes more possible. That YPM scam of registering some voters as Republicans and un-enrolling others has been going on for quite a while now. And in quite a few states. Add in a healthy vote count due to hacked voting machines. Set up a lot of police roadblocks on Nov 4th in minority areas, a la FL 2000. It still seems totally impossible for McCain to win. But what if?
He’s showing signs of Alzheimer’s (6 out of 10 so far). Melanoma once is bad, twice is very bad. Three times, it’s a miracle to survive. Four times??? So we get President Palin, the very first PILF. And her husband Todd of teh AIP. Heh. Actually, the two of them might make us yearn for the good old Bush/Cheney years. Think about it.
What would this country look like in 2012?
What would the world look like in 2012?
Just askin’.
Vote early. 😉
Satya.
Oct 03 2008
I’m so doggone chirped out! I betcha I’m a-gonna puke! Uhl-ASS-kuh!!
One heart beat away. One seventy-two year old, multiple melanoma’d, Alzheimer’s befuddled heart beat away. It doesn’t get any crazier than this.
The neocons actually have their own version of reality where a person so colossally unqualified can be president. They’ve just had eight years of a stand-up cardboard cutout of a president so they assume that we’ll just buy into another four years of their inbred belief system. This is un-fucking-believable.
I was going to put together some thoughtful essay on my first sixty years on this planet. In less than two hours I’ll complete the Chinese calendar full cycle of twelve signs and five elements. It’s a big deal in Asia. After tonight I’m thanking God for the transience of this life. I’ve lost two people very close to me over the last three weeks. Lucky them. They both went peacefully – while America is still more or less (mostly less) free. There are things far worse than death and we’re just some hacked voting machines away from experiencing them.
As tonight’s performance settles in there’s one feeling just surging up in me. Just who the fuck do these people think they are insulting my intelligence with this ticket of a semi-senile old fart with no moral center and a valley-girl airhead? Talk radio Uhmerica will be falling all over themselves tomorrow saying how great she was. A very significant percentage of the population will gladly, no- make that eagerly, buy into that bullshit. What happened to this country? I can understand the inbreeding that takes place in some remote areas of the hillier landscape being a partial rationale but 40%+ ???
People have to be willfully ignorant to buy into such insanity. What I saw and heard tonight was a US senator and a high school beauty queen on the same stage applying for the number two spot in the executive branch.
At my age I admit to having gotten in under the legal wire on the stuff Owsley made – and therefore I was grandfathered in. But every time I checked out for a few hours I always came back to the same old reality. Is it possible that 40% of the population – almost all of whom seem highly unlikely to have shared the experience – has ingested some substance which the rest of us have somehow managed to avoid so far?
The worst part is that the oligarchy, or the powers that be, or whatever you want to call the masters, must be laughing their asses off at us for eating this shit. As I said in a comment yesterday, we have two choices from here on out: we either grab our ankles or stand up. I’m too old to be grabbing my ankles for anyone.
Satya.
Sep 22 2008
Bush Finally Unites Americans – in Outrage!
The top of the volcano is starting to come off. Here’s some a’a and pahoehoe (actually, it’s more of a pyroclastic flow):
Naomi Klein
CNN
Boston Sunday Globe
NYT on Foreign Banks bellying up
Agence France-Presse
Wall-to-wall on HuffPo
I got this in my mailbox from democrats.com – a call for Bush/Cheney/Paulson to resign:
http://www.democrats.com/resign
You may want to take about one minute or so to go add your name to the petition. Send it along to friends and family to sign up, too.
Educate yourself tonight or first thing tomorrow. Take the time to read the bill. It’s incumbent on you as a citizen to be self-informed. This proposed bill is a total give-away with no accountability whatever for any decisions made. No oversight. No redress. Pure Bush/Cheney. This is the Patriot Act stampede all over again – and we know where that got us.
I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m on the phone first thing tomorrow to my CC Bill Delahunt and Sen Teddy and Sen Diebolded. I want blood – and I’m a peaceful man. I intend to raise my voice in anger. No more Mr. Nice Guy polite BS. I’ve been through that with Delahunt on impeachment to no avail. Gloves are off now.
No bum’s rush to judgement on this one. It took the assholes eight years to screw things up this badly. They can wait eight weeks to get a better thought-out fix. We’re about to get the hosing of all human history if this goes through as is.
For our sake and for the sake of the coming generations, we need to stop the madness NOW! This is one bridge to oblivion too far. It’s time to stop the billionaire welfare. We need to start taking care of our own.
It’s time to hit the streets, people. The conservatives – the real ones – will be right there with us. Bush has finally united all of us in a way that he could never have foreseen. There comes a point in time when you have to say Enough! You can lie down and let them walk over you or you can stand up and start to act like a free people with basic rights and simple human dignity.
We need a Shock and Awe campaign by the taxpayers and for the taxpayers. Get on the phones Monday: federal and state politicians; newspapers; local TV stations; radio stations; pound out those LTEs to every paper you can name. We need a nation-wide firestorm of public outrage in time for the 6:00 news shows.
Get on it. Stay on it. Don’t stop. Let it all out. Hold no outrage back. Raise your voices. Let them feel the anger and outrage. Make it visceral. Scare them. Make them feel fear. Make them tremble. Let them know we’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.
Tomorrow, September 22, is the Equinox. It’s a powerful day for change. Make it happen!
Sep 03 2008
The Remedial Education Of Sarah Palin
Palin Meets With AIPAC Even Obama had his session. It must be e pre-req for the American Executive Branch. Don’t know about you guys but I really disliked pre-reqs and GERs. If Sarah nods her head and genuflects at the proper moments she will get vetted by AIPAC and be acceptable to the PTB. Does this strike anyone but me as un-American?
Maybe Palin thought the AIP was the American-Israel Party – not the Alaska Independence Party. AIP, AIPAC. all these acronyms; it gets so confusing. I guess there’s more to life than getting your barrel properly sighted.
It will be interesting to see how this newly hatched duck begins to fervently adopt memes that would be beyond her ken in Alaska politics.
On the Who Knews front, Rick Davis announced yesterday that this campaign will not be decided on the issues. It will be decided on vague perceptions of personalities. If the tabloids get involved I expect a constant barrage of calls for DNA tests to prove that the most recent daughter is actually her granddaughter. This would tie in nicely with Chinatown and Brie’s storyline on Desperate Housewives.
This stuff hurts my eyes to see. Might be early-onset glaucoma. Maybe some preventive herbal remedy would help…
Aug 05 2008
Here Comes the Sun
Looks like we may have a paradigm shift underway. This might be the greatest discovery since making fire.
Google: MIT professor Daniel Nocera and light up! The links are starting to multiply.
August 4, 2008 (Computerworld) Researchers at MIT say they have made an energy storage breakthrough that could transform solar power from an alternative energy source to a mainstream source. The university is calling the solar project a major advancement in energy research.
Sunlight has the greatest potential of any power source to solve the world’s energy problems, Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and a researcher on the project, said in a statement. In one hour, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for one year.
…snip…
“This is a major discovery with enormous implications for the future prosperity of humankind,” Barber said in a statement. “The importance of their discovery cannot be overstated since it opens up the door for developing new technologies for energy production, thus reducing our dependence for fossil fuels and addressing the global climate change problem.”
…snip…
Taking a page from photosynthesis in plant life, Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera’s lab, came up with a process (see video) to use the energy from the sun to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases, according to a report from MIT. Later, when it’s needed, the gases can be combined inside a fuel cell. That reconnection creates carbon-free electricity that can be used to power an office building, a home or even an electric car – whether the sun is shining or not.
Nocera noted that the process uses natural materials, is inexpensive to conduct and is easy to set up. “That’s why I know this is going to work. It’s so easy to implement,” he said.
“This is the nirvana of what we’ve been talking about for years,” said Nocera. “Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now, we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited and soon.”
It gets way better, too…
Jul 25 2008
Sponsors Matter – 24 July 2008
Take two. Second night. Why do I feel like smashing a pale pumpkin? Drop it off a high-rise and YouTube it. The last thing to go through his mind would be his asshole. But wait! Given the seemingly permanent rectal-cranial inversion wouldn’t that…? I’d like to see that German victory phallic column shoved up next to his head.
I bet Laura Ingraham could deep throat it. Misspell/mispell on her book title. Should be “Power to the Poople”. Watching this is like the closing scene in Clockwork Orange where the main character is getting desensitized to porn. Tied down, toothpick propped eyelids, electro-shock feedback. Fuck the Arctic Ice Cap. I have some Hudson Bay shorefront I can sell you at a steal. Polar bear free, too. You’re all Arctic foxes in the dead of winter. Don’t forget to smile.
8:10
Nissan Altima nissanusa.com
We wecansolveit.org ~OO~
Aqua Globes buyaquaglobes.com 800 875 3459 (portable enema, Bill?)
Advair advaircopd.com (Hey! I use that! The new low dose is a $50 co-pay. The old dosage is $20. I’m paying a lot more for a lot less. Can anyone explain how that works?)
Alexis Glick and Terry Keenan. Looks like BillO has some new phone-sex ‘bos on Fox Biz. Cute, BillO takes out MSNBCs trash on GE and Disney doing Iran biz. Immelt and Eisner are evil. Woo-hoo! And their companies and networks suck! GE and Disney stock are down. Coincidence?
8:20
Terminix terminix.com Now there’s a handy service we can use.
Merfeces-Benz mbusa.com
Viagra viagra.com Happy 10th anniversary! See ad in Golf Magazine! patent7yrs2go
Erickson Retirement erickson.com 800 883 1905
Cabot Cheese shopcabot.com Jeez! Always wanted to open up a wine and cheese shop – Cheeses H!
Megyn Kelly. I’m starting to see a pattern here. Blonde. Lots of make-up. Youngish. Porn! Blurred out boobs! Hustler cover. Wonder if it was Bill’s personal copy or if he got Fox to buy it for him. Random Fox – Sticky Fingers was a great album, wasn’t it?
Wild horseshit…
Jul 24 2008
Sponsors Matter – 23 July 2008
I guess this is Episode I or Volume I or whatever. I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m well past outrage. That tank ran empty a ways back. I had hopes for Obama and the Constitution but I guess I’m just stuck with an over-fondness for basic human rights. Meanwhile, the propaganda machine goes on spewing its excrement everywhere and it’s gotten so that you just can’t avoid it anymore. Bottomline, like we used to say back in the day, there is some shit I will not eat!
I volunteered in an earlier response to an FP essay today to record O’Reilly tonight and compile a list of his sponsors with contact info. The idea is that we can share that input to output our feelings to the Uhmerican and otherwise corporations that pay Fox News Corpse and its deviant trolls to display their ignorance and arrogance whilst spewing their excremental effluence. (Run that one by BillO for translation.)
So, apologies for missing the first set of commercials (I’ll be taping the 11:00 re-run and will UPDATE if someone out there can pass along the secret of how to do that.) The commercials went like this:
8:12 EDT
DirectTV directtv.com
ExxonMobil exxonmobil.com
BMW bmwusa.com
Capital One capitalone.com
Keep reading and writing and calling, please:
Jul 18 2008
Is Something Happening Here?
I’ve only caught some news snippets lately but I noticed what might be a pattern emerging.
The big immigrant round-up in Postville, IA was an exercise in mass processing of a large round-up of illegal immigrants. They were taken to a cattle auction fairground and batch processed through a rigged system that put them each in prison for five months prior to their deportation. There are some good diaries around on the subject. I’ll add some links if I have time, otherwise a google should do it.
My discipline is computer science and I have had a lot of management experience in a large organization (IBM after they bought Lotus out; I was and am a Loti, ex). This whole operation struck me as a trial run for a process that would be repeated and refined over time. The victims in this case were the evil brown people – the illegal immigrants. They’ve been getting demonized for years now so the collective working class sympathy for them is pretty low. After all, they’re taking American jobs. That those are jobs that Uhmericans won’t do doesn’t matter. They are part of the economic problem and therefore – no widespread outrage.
The second mass operation was the combined federal, state and local mass round-up of sex offenders. No big deal, they deserved it right? No one wants to defend that crowd. That makes it very easy to do a trial run on them, too. The feds made this happen by doling out huge sums of cash for lots of OT pay for state and local authorities. Everyone likes more cash in their pockets. One of the big benefits was building longer term relationships among the three governmental law enforcement levels. This was even touted in some of the press coverage. What a wonderful thing to see such cooperation on a multi-state, multi-locality effort.
So first the illegal immigrants and then the sex offenders. Nice, safely demonizable practice groups is what I see. The first run at Postville hit a single location and gave valuable feedback on how to process human beings through a carefully jury-rigged (npi) legal chute. (Check out the huge busing capacity in the first link up top.) It was just like cattle to the slaughter except the outcome was temporary imprisonment at just below the maximum sentence. Of course the immigrants will now be available as free prison labor for those five months.
The second run is more insidious. I’ve seen small rumblings here and there about the feds identifying state and local law enforcement types who would be willing to go so far as to shoot at Uhmerican citizens. I’ll have to research that a bit more. Maybe someone can link to any relevant bits in the comments. The pervert posse set up what can be a continuing and growing bond, well lubricated by federal funds, to develop a vertical enforcement structure that could, if it fell into evil hands, be used to round up any stray thinkers. Not that anyone would actually be so evil as to conceive of such a thing.
Separately, these two events seem unrelated. Add a huge dash of illegal, warrantless wiretapping and let it simmer for a bit. Smells like soup to me. What would be the next ingredient? Across Russia and Europe it would always be the Jews, gypsys and gays. I suppose Muslims could be next. I doubt they’d go after the drug gangs. They’re better armed and funded.
Oops, missed an earlier one in 2006 under Gonzo. They’ve been practicing longer than I thought. Bonus – illegal immigrant sex offenders!
OK. I give up. Here it is: Operation Falcon! Federal And Local Cops Organized Nationally. I guess I’m just slow tonight. That’s the official government web site touting its huge benefits.
I suppose the next move is outsourcing the wet work to Blackwater and Dyncorp. The last eight years will never be taught in American History classes. At least not the way they actually happened. File the American Dream under Nice-Try, No-Cigar.
Jun 05 2008
Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government
“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.
Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government
Here’s the text if you can’t make the leap:
Freedom of the Press
A press that is free to investigate and criticize the government is absolutely essential in a nation that practices self-government and is therefore dependent on an educated and enlightened citizenry. On the other hand, newspapers too often take advantage of their freedom and publish lies and scurrilous gossip that could only deceive and mislead the people. Jefferson himself suffered greatly under the latter kind of press during his presidency. But he was a great believer in the ultimate triumph of truth in the free marketplace of ideas, and looked to that for his final vindication.
Jump…