Rearranging Deck Chairs

This is the America we live in now. America 2.0, if you will. Secret prisons where "Enemies of America" get locked up. Evidently we're reaching back to the practices of the British Empire to get our way in the world. Hell, the sun didn't set on the British Empire for two hundred years, so they must have been doing something worth studying. The Royal Navy used ships as floating prisons, and it seems, now, we do too. As the guy in the video says, if you can't bring them to the prison, bring the prison to them. And in international waters, to boot, so no laws to worry about.

Go Navy!



Which is why it should surprise no one that Obama is choosing to avoid Muslims. America is corroding into a decrepit and sinister police state (see: "FISA Bill", "House of Representatives" "2008") while huge swaths of our body politic see that transformation as a comforting elevation in their personal security - they don't break any laws, so what do they have to worry about?

When the puppet masters decide to demonize the brown people for electoral gain, they tap the lizard brain fear-response of these crispy white people living in blissful racial isolation by pointing to the dark-skinned scary people who talk funny or speak furrin' in them-there coastal cities and over there in furrin' countries-n-shit. Someone like Obama, dark-skinned and all - with a funny-sounding name, to boot - probably thinks that appearing in any way whatsoever within hailing distance of a mosque or someone wearing a headscarf will be the kind of image the PR-spin-meisters at FOX Noise will run with ad nauseum, possibly causing him to lose some votes. Of course, anyone who would believe anything they see or hear on FOX wouldn't vote for Obama anyway, but that's beside the point because you can't present yourself as an agent of change if you actually aren't.

John Cole is pissed about it over at Balloon Juice. And frankly, it pisses me off, too. He's flat wrong. Middle name "Hussein" or not, Barack Obama needs to change policy on this one no matter how much hay the other side might make out of some insinuating juxtoposition of images, or it's just one more example of a Democrat asking a portion of his constituency to quietly bide their time for just a little bit longer while they do Real Work that we, the common people, couldn't possibly understand (see: "FISA Bill", "House of Representatives" "2008"). I won't defend the Obama campaign on this one.

Because, well, can he really be THAT afraid of a pinhead like Bill Orally? I really enjoyed this takedown of Mr. Loofah:

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

This one is for reader R.L.



UPDATE:
ok, so the streaming link I had here before, once I listened to it in a quiet place, I realized that I had been had. I don't know who that was, but it wasn't Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. (BTW - it was IMEEM.com - don't go there because they spelled the name Israel Kamakawiwo Ole to appear almost correct but different enough in a legally deniable way. Assholes.). His soft & husky voice cannot be faked, and whoever was singing that song had a wa-a-a-a-a-ay too clear voice and articulation. The song was lovely, sure, but it wasn't intergalactic like the real thing.

So here is the corrected link (from youtube this time), with apologies to all who clicked and were underwhelmed:

Strength versus Capitulation

I haven't posted in a while - starting a new show can really soak up all your free time - but I have to post the following, moved as I am to the act of contributing money not once but twice today.

Contribution Number One:
I threw a few bucks to the Obama campaign here - because of this:



Barack Obama is remaking American politics, truly, deeply and (hopefully) for all time. He isn't taking public money for the general election, because he can quickly raise piles of money in small amounts from a huge swath of the American public - which is why he can make the map look like this:



Contribution Number Two:
I threw a few bucks to the ACTBlue campaign here - because of this (from Glenn Greenwald):

It's bad enough watching the likes of Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emanuel and a disturbingly disoriented Nancy Pelosi eviscerate the Fourth Amendment, exempt their largest corporate contributors from the rule of law, and endorse the most radical aspects of the Bush lawbreaking regime. But it's downright pathetic to see them try to depict their behavior as some sort of bipartisan "compromise" whereby they won meaningful concessions:

"When they saw that we were unified in sending that bill rather than falling for their scare tactics, I think it sent them a message," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). "So our leverage was increased because of our Democratic unity in both cases.

Not even the media establishment and the GOP can refrain from mocking this pretense they're trying to peddle. What's amazing is that they're actually as devoid of dignity as they are integrity.

As I noted yesterday, the GOP couldn't even wait for the ink to dry on this "compromise" before publicly -- and accurately -- boasting that they not only got everything they want, but got even more than they dreamed they would get. To The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau, GOP House Whip Roy Blunt derided the telecom amnesty provision as nothing more than a "formality" which would inevitably lead to the immediate and automatic dismissal of all lawsuits against the telecoms, while Sen. Kit Bond taunted the Democrats for giving away even more than they had to in order to get a deal: "I think the White House got a better deal than they even had hoped to get."

Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi's lap dog, has worked hard these last few weeks to try and pass this bill. I called my representative's office in Washington, Charlie Rangel, last night and urged him to vote against this bill. Happily, he did. To check and see how your representative voted, go to this link.

It pisses me off that it has passed today, 293-129. Thanks, Nancy "Off-The-Table" Pelosi. And Steny, too. Who both voted for it. Despite their spin to the contrary, this is not a compromise, it is a capitulation that gives the president everything he wants. I just don't understand why the Dems have been so eager to bend over and take this one up the ass from a record-settingly unpopular president. Every few months or so, they'd keep putting this bill out there and we (until today) kept defeating it. This time, they got it through with a convoluted set of procedural rules. Again, thanks, Nancy "New-Sheriff-In-Town" Pelosi.

Their eagerness, I suppose, on the one hand comes from the same impulse that has kept them from impeaching George and Barbara's idiot son despite his manifest crimes against the Constitution and common human decency. Somehow, that urge also makes them want to give him whatever he wants in a Quisling-Renfield sort of way. I call it Democratic Battered Wife Syndrome, their fear of an out-of-control Rethugli-bot Party makes them collaborators in their own degradation. That, and I'm sure not a few of them are complicit in the crimes of the telecoms and they hope that this immunity will either put off the retribution for their wrong-doing until they can get out of office or thwart it altogether. Either way, they need to be out of work, up to and including Pelosi and Hoyer.

THE 4th AMENDMENT:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.




I got the picture from Bob Cesca:

Congratulations, Mr. Obama