Joe Klein to America: Go back to sleep

Here they come. The Serious People, like Time’s Joe Klein, are stepping into the NSA fray to tell us all to calm down, cool our jets and go back to sleep. You should trust the government, especially this administration, to do the right thing, he argues. This little kerfuffle is not as bad as the wackos on the left and right make it out to be so stop your grousing and let our leaders keep on spying and prying to prevent a problem that is less common than getting stabbed by a unicorn.

One thing that our Founding Father’s knew from first-hand experience that we seem to have forgotten is that too much power concentrated in the hands of too few can lead even well-intentioned leaders into dark waters. Our three branches of government, each intended as a check and balance to the other, was a brilliant solution that worked pretty well for a couple hundred years. But then came 9/11 and the scales tipped drastically toward the executive. Scared, foolish authoritarians like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld took advantage of the situation to secure vast new powers for the executive branch that could be shrouded in secrecy. Unfortunately for all of us, Obama was sucked into the Fantasyland rationales for keeping the surveillance state going and even expanded it.

The key word here is “trust.” Klein and others who see themselves as the voices of reason insist that we trust the government to do the right thing. I would argue that this is directly opposed to the beliefs of the Founding Fathers and the pillars on which this democracy was formed. We have the system of government that we have precisely because the founders knew that concentrating power in the hands of a few inevitably leads to problems. For a time in the twentieth century we had an active news media that tried to keep the government honest, but that hasn’t been the case for at least thirty years. What we have now are the few whistleblowers courageous enough to risk their lives to step forward with the truth about what our leaders are doing in our names.

Democracy only works if citizens have a healthy skepticism of the motives of those in power and, like a safety valve, have some mechanism for challenging our elected leaders on their decisions and policies. Those who argue that Americans should calm down and put their trust in the government harbor a serious misunderstanding about the relationship between citizens of a democracy and their elected officials. We don’t just have a right to question our leaders, we have a duty to keep them honest. The horrific reality today is that those people who are fulfilling their roles as citizens of a democracy, the whistleblowers, are labeled enemies of the state and thrown into prisons.

But don’t worry your pretty little heads advises Klein. Everything’s under control. Night, night.

Why we can’t take national elections for granted any more

In the June 7 The Atlantic, writer Conor Friedersdorf’s article All the Infrastructure a Tyrant Would Need, Courtesy of Bush and Obama goes into depth on a subject I wrote about recently; future presidents.

The secret surveillance policies set up by Bush and expanded on by Obama, with the approval of Congress, are ripe for abuse. The Obama administration could very well be filled with honest, scrupulous men and women (although everything is so secret we have no of knowing that), but what about the next administration? If you consider the yahoos and nutjobs who regularly get elected to Congress, this is a legitimate concern.

Many of us as citizens want to think that in America, despite it’s frequent failings, the government has our best interests at heart. That it would never use its immense power for evil. And maybe that’s true for Obama, but what about the next president? As Friedersdorf makes clear, the secret policies that have been put into place give future presidents far more power to invade the personal lives of Americans than any previous Commander-in-Chief ever had.

Although terrorist attacks on American soil are extremely rare, we have allowed our government to set up a surveillance system that makes 1984 look like tin cans with strings. Think about the implications the next time you walk into a voting booth.

The President asks us to trust him, yet everyday there are new reasons not to

After the revelations came to light of the NSA’s massive domestic surveillance program, the President and other’s in his administration and in Congress are in full damage control mode, claiming that they are not reading the emails of Americans, everything they’re doing is legal, blah, blah, blah.

My question is, why should we believe you, Mr. President? Everything this administration does is implicitly followed by the phrase, “Trust us. We know what’s right.” Why should we trust you? In 2007 you said this:

“That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do no more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.”

Were you lying then? What made you do a complete about face? You once called for transparency, but this is the least transparent administration in American history. And on top of everything else, you want to prosecute whistleblowers, the very people who are shedding the smallest amounts of light on the activities you say are completely legal and appropriate.

You’ve lost the trust of millions Americans, and rightly so. Your actions are clearly unconstitutional and immoral.

The surveillance state: Did Obama drink the Kool Aid or was he even invited to the party?

There are some days when I just can’t stop myself from indulging in a conspiracy theory. The theory is a simple one: Barack Obama is merely a cardboard cut-out, a face of the presidency who’s great at giving speeches and mingling with the common folk, but isn’t actually in charge of anything. He doesn’t make the important decisions; someone, or some group of people, make those. He is Madison Avenue’s concept of a President.

It’s either that or Obama is one of the shrewdest, most calculating, most manipulative individuals to ever hold public office.

I can come up with no alternatives after reading the story that broke yesterday about the NSA conducting widespread domestic surveillance on millions of Americans. And when I say “widespread,” I’m talking about capturing the call histories of every single Verizon customer in America, and very likely, customers of other communications companies as well.

Is that the sound of the Founding Fathers turning over in their graves?

The White House is defending the practice with the, “We’re keeping you safe from terrorists” canard, but this response is patently ridiculous. First of all, let’s put the threat in some perspective. The odds of being a terrorist’s victim on a flight: 1 in 10,408,947. Odds of being killed by lightning: 1 in 500,000. It reminds me of the old joke about the guy walking around the city streets carrying a large rifle. “What’s that?” he’s asked. “It’s an elephant gun,” he responds. The first man says, “That’s insane, there aren’t any elephants around here.” The rifleman replies, “Right. It’s working.”

 This type of untargeted, massive domestic surveillance is absolutely, unequivocally unconstitutional. Perhaps Obama really didn’t understand this point. Oh wait, he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. What convoluted rationale does he tell himself to justify a program that ignores the basic lynchpin of our system of justice: innocent until proven guilty? Or, is he simply kept out of the loop?

There are groups out there, specifically the Electronic Frontier Foundation, that are actively working to bring this lawlessness to a stop, but it gets even more difficult when you have an overly compliant Congress that continuously puts its stamp of approval on these illegal actions.

As many others have said before me, the loss of liberty doesn’t happen with a clap of thunder, but in tiny, incremental, barely perceptible steps over years. I say “barely perceptible” because there are those few canaries out there that try to warn us, yet they are often ignored until it’s too late. While we slept, the government took it upon itself to spy on you and everyone you know. That’s not tinfoil hat stuff anymore. It’s the world in which we live.

Intercepted memo: Midterm marching orders for Republicans

MEMO

From: Frank Luntz, Luntz Global, LLC

To: Republican candidates for office, 2014 midterm election

Re: Campaign talking points

Dear ,

As you are well aware, midterm elections are fast approaching. As a candidate for elected office, you will be giving many speeches, interviews, panel discussions, etc. and it necessary for you to be well prepared for these public interactions.

To help with your preparations, we are offering a handy guide to appropriate and inappropriate response strategies to today’s most controversial topics. The liberal press is always ready to pounce on conservative candidates who may express their valid beliefs in less than articulate ways. So keep this guide handy and stay on message. United we stand, divided we fall.

Best of luck with your campaign.

Topic: Abortion

Strategy: Avoidance. Change the subject.

Examples:

“I’m here today to talk about (national defense, Flag Day, puppies, etc.) not abortion.”

“My views on this subject are well known. Is that pork I smell?”

“Accordions? I love accordions. Next question.”

Topic: Women’s rights

Strategy: Empathize. Change the subject.

Examples:

“Some of my best friends are women. That’s a lovely dress. Very flattering.”

“My mother was a woman. Don’t tell me I don’t know anything about women. My god, it’s a UFO.”

“I truly value the contributions women make to society. My wife is the boss. I let her make all the important decisions in our family. Now, let’s talk baseball.”

Topic: Global Warming

Strategy: Question science. Change the subject.

Examples:

“The minute we put science ahead of common sense, we lose our humanity in a gas ball of data and lifeless facts. Go with your gut, and my gut tells me it’s lunch time.”

“Oooh, let’s bow down and worship the scientists. They’re little wizards who know so much more than we mere mortals. Ooooh. Give me a break. Are they smarter than God? Let us pray.”

“The scientific community is in utter chaos regarding global warming. In fact, I read yesterday there was a running gun battle between pro- and anti-global warming factions at the University of Zurich, and that reminds me of a story about my father…”

Topic: President Obama

Strategy: Nothing is off limits. Be creative.

Examples:

“I have seen photos that prove Barack Obama clubbed baby seals with a prosthetic limb stolen from a decorated Iraq war veteran.”

“No one has yet proved that Obama is not an Al Qaeda agent trained in Afghanistan who has had extensive plastic surgery and vocal chord replacement.”

“There are documents that prove conclusively that Obama is the point man for a secret society that sacrifices white babies on the altar to Elathan, a Celtic lord of darkness.”

You can put lipstick on a pig, but…

It seems that every day there is an article about what Republicans should be doing to strengthen their damaged brand. How can they better reach minority and young voters? What can they do to appeal to women? How do they overcome the perception of being the party of angry white men?

There’s no question the GOP has lurched farther to the right in recent years under the influence of the Tea Party. This is not Richard Nixon’s Republican party. If the Republican leadership could keep their elected officials from opening their mouths and speaking in public, this might actually help bring about the desired results. Could be a bit unpractical.

What’s wrong with the Republican Party is that it’s the Republican Party. Asking how to strengthen the party’s brand is a lot like asking how you can make a rabid dog seem more like a kitten. In other words, it really can’t be done, because the Republican Party’s basic ideological foundation is flawed, unappealing and out of step with the direction the world is moving.

Just yesterday, a panel of cavemen at FOX News were tearing at their animal skins over the fact that more women than ever are family bread winners. What voting demographic, exactly, would find this position compelling? Young working women? Professional woman? How about angry white men? Check. You name the demographic and tell me what Republicans have to offer this group of people. Minorities? The poor? The unemployed or underemployed? Women? Union members? Anyone making less than $1 million a year? Republicans want them all to just shut up and go away.

There’s not enough pretty wrapping paper on the planet to make ignorance, bigotry, and sexism look appealing.

Is a conservative’s call to dissolve the federal government treason? And, Dude, where were you during the Bush years?

A radio host named Adam Kokesh is calling for mass marches on 50 state capitals on July 4 to demand “an orderly dissolution of the federal government.” According to an article at Media Matters, he was originally promoting a march on Washington, D.C. and encouraging participants to carry weapons, but has now changed tactics. Oh, and he’s putting a time limit on compliance. If said dissolution hasn’t taken place by July 4, 2014, well, who knows what could happen.

There’s an occasionally interesting back and forth in the comments section of the Kokesh article about what constitutes treason. One thing that comes out loud and clear is the idea promoted by conservative contributors that the Obama administration is ignoring the Constitution and is therefore acting illegally, making open rebellion justified. This is a fait accompli in right wing media circles. While FOX News is not openly promoting armed rebellion (I don’t think), their talking heads spend program after program, week after week, attacking Obama and his policies with a fierceness that borders on pathology, and as a result, fanning the emotional fires of those who might actually strap on a rifle and take to the streets.

Here’s my question. Where were the “dissolve the federal government” patriots when it became clear that George Bush lied us into a war that cost nearly 5,000 American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and trillions of our tax dollars? Where were the “dissolve the federal government” patriots when the Bush administration ignored the Constitution to create the Patriot Act and the Office of Homeland Security? Where were the “dissolve the federal government” patriots when Bush approved torture, indefinite detention and Guantanamo? Where were the “dissolve the federal government” patriots when the Bush crowd threw habeas corpus out the window?

These self-proclaimed patriots aren’t interested in saving America. The goal is to remake America in their conservative image, to create the dumbed-down, church approved, gun-toting, patriarchal utopia they have wet dreams over when they’re not attacking that uppity black guy in Washington.

We shall see what comes of the Kokesh rebellion. Is it treason? Here’s Article 3, section 3 of the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

You be the judge.

Michele, we will miss you

I couldn’t let Michele Bachmann’s announcement that she isn’t running for Congress again go by without comment. I’ve written many times over the years about Minnesota’s favorite loon; her dispatches from Planet Tea Party have been comedy gold. In fact, go to today’s issue of Mother Jones for a compendium of her most cherished misstatements, muddled messages and made up shit.

I will miss Bachmann. Unlike many of her fellow conservatives, she never tried to cover up her extremism with a veneer of socially acceptable behavior. She never once turned to any of her advisers and asked, “Does that make me sound insane?” She never made any excuses for living in an alternate reality. She was, and remains, crazy and proud of it. I respect that. She will be hard to replace.

We will miss you, Michele. Godspeed.

Of mermaids and manipulation

I watched the Animal Planet show Mermaids: The Body Found last night. I didn’t have any background on it and assumed it was a documentary for the first few minutes (yes, despite the title), however it didn’t take long to realize that this wasn’t an actual documentary, but a pretty well-done faux documentary peppered here and there with genuine scientific facts.

It originally aired on Animal Planet in 2012 and was then re-aired by the Discovery Channel. According to press reports, on both occasions it caused a huge stir on social media sites with pro and con mermaid camps battling it out. What has piqued my interest is not the subject matter as much as the concept of the piece itself. It was originally shown not on the Comedy Channel or Sci Fi, but on Animal Planet, which generally airs content based in fact. I don’t know how much effort either Animal Planet or Discovery put into letting people know that this was a work of fiction, but there is none in the piece itself, and it was not enough to keep thousands of viewers from assuming it was genuine.

The technical quality of Mermaids: The Body Found was actually quite good. The biggest giveaway for me was that the “scientists” were all attractive and articulate, which is, of course, totally unrealistic. But it’s made me contemplate the potential misuse of this technology. Think Wag the Dog. Perhaps we’ve already been victims of it, but with sophisticated CGI and more realistic actors, this type of faux documentary could be a very powerful propaganda tool. Mermaids fooled a lot of people, as have a lot of CGI UFO vids.

As CGI technology becomes more and more seamless with real action, it is going to be tougher to identify fraudulent video from the real thing. Hopefully the ability to detect CGI in videos will keep up. For now, my advice is this: Stay skeptical, my friend.

Tonight's Presidential press conference...

Tonight President Obama is scheduled address the nation and discuss Guantanamo, six years after he promised to close the prison, and lay out his rationale for drone strikes. Should be entertaining.

I would like one courageous reporter…oh, I forgot, we don’t have those anymore, okay, one very drunk reporter, to ask the President this question: Is there any rationale of any kind that we would accept from a foreign government for dropping bombs on American soil? 

Obama administration applying Soviet style tactics to silence the press

American politics has entered a truly surreal phase. For once, liberals and conservatives are united in their anger over the DOJ’s surveillance of the Associated Press and investigation of FOX News reporter James Rosen, and rightly so. In addition, as Glenn Greenwald points out in his latest New York Times editorial, “The administration of Barack Obama has prosecuted more accused leakers under "espionage" statutes than all prior administrations combined -- in fact, double the number of all prior such prosecutions.”

The same Obama who talked about greater transparency in government during his first campaign for President is now employing Soviet style suppression tactics to make sure the only news that’s reported is government approved. This goes way beyond fighting terrorism. It is a blatant program to intimidate critics and punish those reporters who dare challenge the administration’s policies.

To reiterate a point I’ve made before, it was the post 9/11 Bush administration that opened the Pandora’s Box of executive prerogative in the name of fighting terrorism that has led to the abuses we are seeing today in Washington. Instead of repudiating and rescinding Bush’s blatant overreach of Presidential power, Obama has embraced it, expanded on it and taken it to new levels of secrecy and persecution.

We can’t call ourselves a democracy under these circumstances. If we don’t allow our press to speak truth to power, we are no better than any other totalitarian regime.

Unless Obama makes some drastic changes to the laws governing the surveillance and treatment of reporters and whistleblowers, we will continue slipping into a very dark and surreal episode in American history where the truth is the enemy and freedom a distant memory. 

For Republicans, destroying Obama trumps everything

Republicans have spent almost a year now trying to turn the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi into Obama’s Waterloo. We now know that the supposedly incendiary emails relating to the event were doctored by Republicans in an attempt to embarrass the President. In the end, the only entity left embarrassed was ABC News, the one mainstream organization to eagerly represent the tainted emails as fact.

Although the administration is mired in an authentic scandal at the IRS, Benghazi is only the latest in a long line of mudslinging by Republicans in congress and the conservative media to try and destroy Barack Obama. The hatred of Obama on the right has reached a pathological stage. Facts don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. The prime directive is to bring the uppity negro to his knees at all costs.

The never-ending attacks on Obama are not really about the man himself. They are about what he represents. The election of Barack Obama marks the beginning of the end for the elite white patriarchy in America, and the remaining members of that small but powerful club are not going to go quietly into that good night.

Even though Obama’s policies and proposals are for the most part remarkably moderate, he stands for everything the elite worldwide fear; people of color rising to positions of power, the poor having a say in government, hope for the oppressed, accountability for the one percent. Obama is the vanguard of the future, and he is despised for that. Benghazi is a blatant and failed example of the unfettered hostility among the puppeteers to the emerging new world, but you can be sure there will be more attempts to bring the President down.

What’s most frightening is that the Right’s hatred of Obama is stronger than their love of this country. Real solutions to real problems are not on the agenda of Boehner and the Tea Party radicals in congress. Their true allegiance is to their corporate masters and the one-percenters; the people who bought them their seats in congress.

As Benghazi reveals, the Republicans and America’s elites are becoming more and more desperate to destroy Obama and all that he represents, and there’s nothing more dangerous then a wounded animal in the last throes of life.

Can Obama go from bullied to Bulworth?

So four years and five months into his presidency, Obama is reported to have told aides he’s tempted to “Go Bulworth,” an allusion to a 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a politician who decides to stop playing political games and be brutally honest. Whether this will actually happen seems unlikely, but the sentiment reflects the President’s frustration with a recalcitrant Congress.

The question that I have is what the hell took so long for Obama's pot to boil? Obama is not a dumb man, and yet it seems to have taken the Prez nearly five years to figure out that Republicans do not care about what’s good for America, but are only concerned with symbolically lynching the black man in the Oval Office.

I still don’t understand why Obama has chosen to take the path he has so far. Why has he been willing to give up so much to a band of yahoos in Congress who made it crystal clear years ago they were not going to support anything he proposed. Was it stubbornness? Lack of backbone? Bad advice from his cabinet members? It’s a mystery to me and many others.

If he really does have the courage to “Go Bulworth,” I will be the first to congratulate him on finally waking up and seeing the light. If he continues down the road he has been on for the past four years, he will end up having little to show for having spent two terms in the White House.

Minnesota's Moment

I’m very proud to live in Minnesota right now. Governor Dayton deserves praise for standing behind the marriage equality effort and signing it into law. Ours is an interesting state politically. At one point, we sent one of America’s most progressive senators to Washington, Paul Wellstone, and then turned around and elected one of the most conservative representatives in Michele Bachmann. Our politics, like our weather, is defined by extremes.

John Lennon was human. Imagine that.

Something called Listverse posted an article yesterday by Edward Benjamin titled, Top Ten Unpleasant Facts About John Lennon.

The list of John’s sins is dark, and includes, “wife beater,” “pathological liar,” “hypocrite” and other equally nasty attributes. Benjamin’s disdain for the late Beatle drips out of his prose like acid from a wounded Alien.

This type of article, the “So-and-so-was-not-the-great-person-you-think-he-was,” is truly the product of an unpleasant, unfulfilled writer. Whether the author is trashing Gandhi or Elvis or Martin Luther King, it’s a petty and childish form of gotcha that says much more about the author than the person about whom he is writing.

After all the categorizing and contempt, this hit piece boils down to the simplest of points: John Lennon was a flawed human being. Okay. Is it time for cocktails yet? The startling revelation that Lennon had many faults — was in fact like every other human being on our planet — is not news, and no one should get paid money to make such a mundane and pointless announcement.

Benjamin offers numerous examples of Lennon’s bad behavior throughout his life, and I don’t doubt that many of them are true. However, let’s take a moment to think about what your life would be like if you were instantaneously thrust into the public eye and regarded with almost god-like reverence by millions of people around the world. Everywhere you turn there are drugs to be had, beautiful women to sleep with, and sycophants granting your every wish. If you are honest, you know that your personal and private flaws would be magnified a million times and you might not look like the stellar individual you wish to think of yourself as in the eyes of your inevitable critics. And who would Benjamin put on the list of “healthy, well-adjusted superstars?” Michael Jackson? Elvis? Whitney Houston? Judy Garland? Kurt Cobain? Lennon is only one among many for whom stardom was a curse rather than a blessing.

I don’t even know to what audience Benjamin’s piece is directed. Lennon was a “Rock Star,” a phrase synonymous with drugs, sex and generally bad behavior. As far as I remember, Lennon never ran for Pope. Is there some subset of Lennon fans out there who think he was a flawless deity sent from Mt. Olympus? His fans don’t care that he used drugs or lied about his past. They care about the legacy of his music.

Then there is number five on Benjamin’s list: Talentless. “He wrote a handful of inspired songs,” the author concedes, but basically he was a hack as a musician. Average guitar player, poor lyricist, and in another section, Benjamin excoriates Lennon for being influenced by other musicians like Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison. Can you imagine that?

The absurdity of this assertion is mindboggling and I’m not even a huge Lennon fan. The man’s cannon of work speaks for itself. He was among the most influential musician/songwriters of the past 50 years, and to dispute that is to take a flat-earth position about modern music. Again, I would like a list of R&R stars past and present who were not influenced by others. I have no idea who would be on that list.

So to sum up, John Lennon was a flawed individual whose music was only sometimes brilliant. Careful Benjamin, with insights like that you could someday hit the big time, win a Pulitzer, and then, after you’re dead, some hack will write about what a horrible human being you were.

Today’s best news headline

Traveler from Saudi Arabia Arrested at Detroit Metro with Pressure Cooker

So here we have either the world’s stupidest terrorist or the world's most clueless international traveler.

If you are a terrorist, why would you bring a pressure cooker into a country where you can easily buy one, especially if you’re traveling from the Mideast going to the United States? 

“And why are you bringing a pressure cooker from Saudi Arabia?”

“Uh, I really, really like steamed vegetables. No? American pressure cookers are so cheap and badly made. Everyone knows this…. I’m going to start a falafel stand.”

“Come with me, Sir.”

"Oh, sure, and now I suppose you're going grill me about the sticks of dynamite strapped to my vest. It's because I'm Saudi Arabian, right?"

Donald Trump seeks crowdsource funding for biopic of his life

New York City — Billionaire entrepreneur, presidential candidate and TV personality Donald Trump is asking for the public’s help in financing a biographical film about himself. He is seeking $20 million in crowdsourced funds for a film that is tentatively titled, “The Donald.”

            Trump was  asked why a man as wealthy as he is would need to solicit money for a movie project.

            “I don’t actually need the money, but I wanted to give the public a chance to be a part of this monumental event. You see, the film isn’t just about me, although most of it is, but it’s also about America and the opportunities this great country provides for success. This is a theme that I think millions of citizens believe in and would want to be a part of. Plus, I want Scorsese to direct it and he don’t come cheap.”

            There has been a backlash from many independent filmmakers and others who think Trump is simply trying to get a film made on the cheap. George Bishop, president of the Independent Filmmakers of America said, “It’s absolutely the ultimate in narcissism for Trump to believe that average Americans are so in love with him that they would help pay to have a movie about him made. The guy is unbelievable.”

            Trump shrugged off the criticism. “No matter what you do in life, there are going to be whiners and complainers. This is going to be a film of historical importance and every donors name will be run in the credits. I don’t know why anyone would not want to be a part of this.”

            While a spokesperson for Trump declined to say how much money had been raised so far, a person close to the project said that after four days, they had taken in $27.00.

What the hell are Republicans so angry about?

A recent poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickenson University asked various audiences if they felt that armed revolt in the near future might be necessary to protect our liberties. According to the results, a surprising number of Americans, nearly 30 percent, said yes. When it came to Republicans, however, the number jumped to 44 percent. Almost half of the Republicans asked think we might need to don camouflage, load up the 12-gauge and take to the streets of Des Moines. Wha…?

Here’s my question. What the hell are Republicans so angry about? Yeah, they lost the last two presidential elections, but the previous eight years were all about them. Republicans own the House of Representatives and have stopped or stalled a good deal of Obama’s initiatives, including background checks. State governments around the country are working vigorously to turn back the clock to pre-Roe v. Wade America, and school boards across the South are rewriting school textbooks to include conservative fables in place of facts. Nearly 80 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians.

My guess is that a major source of strong negative feelings among conservatives is the palpable hatred of that socialist, Kenyan, America-hating Barack Obama. It doesn’t matter that the man is a very, very moderate Democrat, that he’s left in place many of Bush’s national security measures, that he’s gone so far as to accept Social Security cuts in his budget proposal, that he’s bombing suspected terrorists with drones across the Mideast, he’s a black man with a funny name sitting in the Oval Office.

Add to this the hysterical right-wing media machine attacking the President 24/7 and I guess you have a rebellion in the making. Not to worry. The revolution will never materialize. Go back and look at video of the Republican National Convention and scan the crowd. You’ll find a sea of overweight, silver haired white people who spend their evenings watching Dancing With the Stars, not reading revolutionary tracts and breaking down assault rifles.

Republicans may be angry, but it is a misdirected, personal anger that will not translate to an organized uprising. Somewhere deep down in the dark recesses of their psyche I think they realize they are losing the battle with progress, and while maddening, they understand that defeat is inevitable and armed resistance futile.

TZIF (Thank Zeus it’s Friday)

It’s May 3 and I’m sitting at my desk watching snowflakes swirl around the parking lot outside my window. Yesterday, some locations just south of the Twin Cities got 16 inches of snow. Global warming or the new Ice Age or both? It really doesn’t matter. It’s depressing either way.

Yesterday Clive Crook, a columnist for Bloomberg View, wrote a piece on economist Paul Krugman, essentially saying, “Hey Paul, love your work, but if you would just tone down the snarky and condescending attitude, more people might listen to you.”  The basic premise of Crook’s argument is highly dubious. People who dislike Krugman do so because they have fundamental disagreements with his economic philosophy, the snarky attitude is only icing on their ire cake. And why does Krugman occasionally snipe at his detractors?

Let’s say you have a friend who believes the earth is flat. You want to help your friend understand that all the evidence we have indicates the world is round. However, your friend says all of his ancestors believed the earth was flat and when he looks to the horizon it is flat. You show him all of the photos and maps and scientific studies that demonstrate the earth is round, but your friend still refuses to believe you. What happens? You become frustrated. Very frustrated. All of the economic evidence we have indicates that austerity is not the approach to take at this point in time. In his articles and blog, Krugman has been pointing this out in every way conceivable, yet European leaders and our own political elites refuse to alter their views. So he gets frustrated. Even if Krugman’s solutions are wrong, the fact that the world’s leaders continue to cling to austerity in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is not working will make a person frustrated to the point of…well, snarkiness.

The good news: The economy added 165,000 workers in April and unemployment dropped from 7.6 percent to 7.5 percent. The bad news: We are in the slowest job market recovery since WWII.

Drones: Terrorism U.S. Style

Long overdue Congressional hearings are underway examining the Administration’s use of drones in the Middle East. An article in The Verge highlights testimony from a Yemini journalist whose village was bombed only six days earlier in order to take out a single man suspected of having ties to al Qaeda. The strike succeeded in killing the suspected terrorist as well as six other people. Imagine that. You drop a bomb into a populated area and there is collateral damage.

An interesting point brought out in the article is that the Obama Administration claims that it uses drones only in cases where it is “unfeasible” to capture a suspect, but the Yemini witness says there was no reason why the alleged terrorist could not have been arrested by local authorities. I imagine this isn’t the first such case.

What is clear from the hearing so far is that part of the intended purpose of drone bombings is to strike fear in the hearts of would be terrorists. “You want to be a terrorist? Okay, but you’re putting your entire village in danger,” goes the thinking. The reality, however, is that it is magnifying the hatred of America among Muslims and it is being used as a recruiting tool by groups like al Qaeda. We seem to be under the delusion that terrorism actually works except when it is used against us.

All you have to do is look at what we are experiencing right here in the U.S. in the days since the Boston Marathon bombings. Dial up FOX News or Limbaugh or Hannity and you’ll get an earful of anti-Muslim hysteria. What we fail to understand is that their conservative counterparts in Yemen and Pakistan and Afghanistan are doing the exact same thing to stir up anti-American sentiments.

Drone bombings are wrong on many levels, but perhaps the worst consequence of their use is that they are helping plant the seeds of hatred among young Muslims who are growing up watching innocent people being torn apart by American bombs. 

When children run the nursery

Former Representative Gabrielle Giffords wrote an editorial for the New York Times expressing her disappointment in the Senate vote shortly after the attempt to expand background checks failed on Capital Hill. Their bile agitated, the usual right-wing suspects assaulted the survivor of gun violence from all angles, spewing personal attacks that questioned not merely her judgment, but her sanity. Of all the repulsive verbiage hurled at Giffords by the chorus of cowards, one word from Kevin D. Williamson’s tirade in the National Review Online stood out to me: Childish. Childish?

No sir, being childish is wanting to play cowboys and Indians beyond the age of 8 or 9.

Being childish is believing that more guns in the hands of more people will make America a safer place.

Being childish is throwing a temper tantrum and holding your breath every time someone utters the phrase “reasonable gun control.”

Being childish means you see the world in black and white, good and bad. Adults understand there are subtleties, shades of grey and trade-offs.

Being childish is to misunderstand the difference between justice and vengeance. Adults understand the distinction.

Being childish is being Ted Nugent.

Go home, Homer. You're drunk. No, wait....

An innocent life is an innocent life

I grieve for the victims of the tragic Boston bombings yesterday, but at the same time, it is incredibly hypocritical of Obama to talk about finding and bringing to justice the perpetrators as we continue to drop bombs from drones that kill innocent men, women and children. Where is the justice for them?

Our illegal and immoral drone program

Evidence continues to grow that America’s semi-secret drone program is far more complex and far more deadly than anyone in the Obama Administration has let on. The program has been justified over the years as one that only targets senior al-Qeada members, but evidence is mounting that a) targets are far more diverse, and include a variety of low-level Afghan and Pakistani militants, and b) the number of civilians killed is far higher than the Administration or CIA has admitted in public statements.

We are executing “suspected” terrorists who have not been tried and convicted of any crime, and murdering innocent civilians. This is outrageous and criminal.  We are doing it because there is no one on the planet big enough to tell us to stop.

Why is Obama condoning a program that murders innocent civilians? How is it that an individual as intelligent as Obama could be convinced this is a good idea? What if a drug lord from Mexico was hiding in Arizona? Would we tolerate the Mexican government sending over a drone to bomb his hiding place in a Phoenix suburb?

Our drone program is illegal and immoral and the Administration has been lying to us about it. It may have started under Bush, but Obama continues to defend and expand it. He should be shutting it down.  

Why aren't you angry?

Here's a rather graphic representation of the growth in income inequality in the USA since the 1960s; plotted on a chart where the income growth of the bottom 90 percent is represented by an inch-high bar; the growth of the top 10 percent needs a 163 foot-tall bar; while the top 0.01% need a 4.9 mile-high bar to represent their real wealth growth in the same period.

If you still aren’t convinced that the elite in America have rigged the game in their favor over the past several decades, here’s a startling graphic that should change your mind in a hurry.

Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing makes this observation:

“The top 1 percent enjoyed 81 percent of all the increased income since 2009. Just over half of the gains went to the top one-tenth of 1 percent, and 39 percent of the gains went to the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. Ponder that last fact for a moment -- the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent, those making at least $7.97 million in 2011, enjoyed 39 percent of all the income gains in America. In a nation of 158.4 million households, just 15,837 of them received 39 cents out of every dollar of increased income.”

Aided and abetted by Washington, a thimbleful of Americans are hauling in truckloads of cash while the rest of us stress over paying the rent each month. And we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing this is only a Republican failing. There are plenty of Democrats who are willing to play along. Who do you think finances their campaigns?

Why does this not anger us to action?

Good Friday

Arbitration: A lose/lose for consumers

One of my favorite Texans (and that’s a very small group) Jim Hightower writes a long, devastating critique of the arbitration clauses that are now a mandatory part of so many contracts we sign on a regular basis. Hidden deep in the fine print when we apply for a credit card, purchase an item or sign up for a service, very few of us even know these clauses exist until there is a problem, and then it’s too late.

Arbitration has been sold to us by companies and pro-business organizations as a fairer, faster and less cumbersome alternative to litigation, but in reality these clauses are a “Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free” card for corporations who, surprise, almost always come out on top. Hightower provides background on the slow and insidious way that corporate America rigged the system and left consumers virtually helpless when it comes to getting justice. 

Current Affairs Quiz

It’s time to play, “Guess the real headline.” They say truth is stranger than fiction, but who are “they” and why don’t they identify themselves? Anyway, one of the headlines below is the real deal, ripped from today’s news. The others will probably be real headlines in a day or two. For successfully identifying the authentic headline, a toothless hermit living in a Bavarian cave will light a candle in your honor.

1. North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un Says He Will Start WWIII If Adam Sandler Does Not Receive An Honorary Academy Award
2. Tea Party Boycotting FOX News for Being Too Liberal
3. Rick Perry Appoints Himself President of Texas
4. NRA Claims Guns Don’t Kill People, Bullets Do
5. Chicago Cubs Preseason Pick to Win It All
6. Ford Is Bringing Back the Edsel

(If you picked number 2, you spend too much time internetting)

Batty Bachmann Behaving Badly

Minnesota’s favorite loon, Congressperson Michele Bachmann, is facing a congressional ethics probe. The article in today's Daily Beast offers a laundry list of accusations being leveled against Bachmann from people who worked on her recent presidential campaign.

Shit happens when you live in an alternate universe. Confusing right-wing propaganda and slurs with facts, the Tea Party Darling is a living legend when it comes to jaw-dropping misstatements and hallucinatory pronouncements. If you have heard only a fraction of the ludicrous, fact-challenged utterances from Bachmann over the years, you know that she is a proud member of the unreality-based world. So it should come as little surprise that she would ignore the rules and regulations of a reality that she does not acknowledge.

One can only hope she is ultimately saved from herself and admitted to an institution that is equipped to deal with people who are untethered from the existence in which most of us find ourselves. Congress, unfortunately, is filled with far too many enablers.

Who are the adults in the room?

One of the interesting tendencies of many on the far right is to portray themselves as the adults (read “patriarchs”) in the room, while liberals and progressives are the noisy children with their heads stuck forever in the clouds. Limbaugh, Hannity, O’Reilly et. al and countless Republican politicians have all used this metaphor at one time or another as a way of framing themselves as (to use Krugman’s words) Serious People.

The problem is, when you look at the evidence, a thing Serious People don’t have the time or inclination to do, you find that the metaphor doesn’t really pan out. Surprise, surprise. No. In fact, when it comes to childlike behavior, well, you know where I’m going with this. Ask yourself who more often displays these traits, the Loony Left or our friends on the far right edge of the scale.

• The schoolyard bully: Derides you if you don’t agree with him. If you prove him wrong, he becomes irrationally angry and hurls threats and insults. Likes to intimidate people. Believes violence is an acceptable way to settle disputes.
• The kid who claims he’s going to hold his breath until he gets what he wants: Doesn’t listen to reason, he only wants what he wants when he wants it. Won’t accept any alternative to what he feels he deserves. Sees himself as the center of the universe and his desires as more important than anyone else’s.
• The kid who laughs loudest when someone trips and hurts themselves: He lacks empathy and has a child’s sense of humor, which is broad slapstick that usually involves somebody getting hurt or embarrassed. Doesn’t have the intellectual capacity to appreciate subtlety or satire.
• Teacher’s pet: Slavishly worships authority. Will do or say whatever it takes to ingratiate himself with the person in charge. Has no moral compass, and will side with authority figures almost without question.
• The snotty rich kid: Feels those who are not rich are beneath him and deserve what they get. Refuses to believe that there are real-world obstacles that keep people poor and powerless. Only rarely says it out loud, but believes the majority of people are lazy and unmotivated and that he deserves what he as acquired because he is more gifted than most.

Here we go again. This time it's Syria.

On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a totally unnecessary war that cost thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and trillions of dollars, we have a cadre of armchair generals in the Capital (both Republicans and Democrats) calling for America to intervene militarily in Syria based on second-hand reports of rebels using chemical weapons. Some are already calling for boots on the ground.

Jesus H. Christ. Where do these morons come from? Why are they in positions of power? Why do we keep sending soulless, callous, clueless dolts to Washington to vote on matters of life and death? No country that continues voting for people like Michele Bachmann, Lindsey Graham, and yes, even Dianne Feinstein, can stand the test of time.

Our elected officials seem determined to keep us in a state of never-ending war, constantly sending young men and women off to a jungle or a desert to die or be maimed for life to satisfy the blood lust of a fading empire and war profiteers who are already rolling in piles of gold.

I make a modest, but serious, proposal. Any elected official in congress who votes for war or any military action involving violence must either a) have served in the military or b) have an immediate family member serving in the military. They are so anxious to send off faceless, nameless Americans to die in foreign countries, maybe, just maybe, they might be a bit more reflective and cautious if they were involving someone they loved in the bloodshed.

It will never happen, but maybe someone has a better way to stop the war madness that plagues America’s elites. 

Ten Years After

On the tenth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, this is Donald Rumsfeld's Twitter post for today:

"10 yrs ago began the long, difficult work of liberating 25 mil Iraqis. All who played a role in history deserve our respect & appreciation."

Thanks Donald. Here's what you deserve:

Beyond Atheism

They say as you grow older you tend to become more religious. This makes some sense as one draws closer and closer to life’s exit door. I’m just the opposite. Organized religion looks more and more childish to me as time passes and I wonder how anyone with any education can really believe such contradictory and unsubstantiated nonsense as that found in the Bible, Koran, etc. Religions are basically collections of stories, many of which have been passed down from the dawn of human consciousness. These stories are attempts to explain the unexplainable and ease the terror of those living in a world that on the surface makes very little sense.

 The questions are profound. Why do we die? Is death final? Why do good people fail and bad people prosper? Why must we suffer so much? Does life have any meaning? We still have no answers to these questions, but we do have stories, and if you believe they are true, they provide structure to the universe. God created us. Yes we die, but after our physical bodies fail, our spirits go somewhere else that is wonderful. In that spiritual world, good people are rewarded and bad people are punished. Life does have meaning if you follow God’s rules.

Comforting stories, but stories nonetheless filled with magic and contradictions. For instance, we are told in the Bible that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, the seeds of the human race. They had two sons. Think about that. Make sense? It’s an origin story and there are hundreds more like it from different cultures and parts of the world. Stories of a great flood predate the Bible. Noah and the ark? Forget about it. So does rejecting organized religion make me an atheist? Not really.

I think science is slowly leading us to the realization that there are other realities that exist beyond, or perhaps alongside, the one which we experience. Just think about the past 100 years and the new worlds we have discovered from black holes to DNA to subatomic particles to the recent confirmation of the Higgs Boson, the so-called God Particle. We’ve unlocked all of these previously mysterious worlds in a mere century of scientific research. Think what the next century will bring.

What animates living things? Some call it a soul or spirit, but I call it energy. We exist in an animated form for 70 or 80 years and then we die, our physical bodies wear out, entropy, and our energy leaves our corporal being. The promising part of this scenario is that science tells us that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but only take another form, so the energy that animates us when we are alive is not destroyed when we die, but merely takes another form. It’s possible that our energy simply dissipates into the universe, but it is also possible it exists in another reality. Based on the trajectory of scientific discoveries, I think we will someday come to the realization that our reality is only one of many that exist in time and space.

Ironically, science is taking me beyond atheism. I don’t make any claims to know what exists beyond our own reality—no streets paved with gold or 72 virgins at my beck and call, and I think at this point it is unknowable, but I am growing convinced that our energy, that thing which animates us, exists beyond our physical death in some state. It doesn’t seem implausible to me anymore, but then, that exit sign is closer today than it was yesterday.

Crystal Ballz

I got an email today from something called Gold Psychics offering me a free opportunity to ask a psychic a question. I wrote back saying, “The answer is 32. What is the question?” Haven’t gotten a response yet.

Drones Over Peoria?

In the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration began asserting the need for a stronger executive branch (dusting off their “unitary executive” theory) under the guise of the threat of terrorism. A president needed to act quickly and decisively to protect the country from another devastating terrorist attack, they argued, and, according to Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld, that meant giving the president new powers to capture and kill real and potential threats to the U.S. So over the remaining years of his Administration, Bush, with the help of the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act, assumed, more power to act unilaterally, resulting in Guantanamo Bay and black sites worldwide.

Of course, Bush’s second term ended in 2008 and a new President was elected. Unfortunately, the powers that Bush’s team coopted in the heat of a terrorist attack were quickly adopted by the new President, Barack Obama. And what would you expect? If you were the CEO of a company and your board of directors gave you sweeping new powers, would you, as the new CEO, rescind those powers? Probably not. One thing rulers are loathe to do is give up powers that they have. So fast forward to today, and you have the announcement that the Obama Administration believes it can use lethal force against American citizens on American soil under certain circumstances. This means if the President feels you are a threat, he can use drones to wipe you out. In Peoria or Denver or New Orleans. No arrest. No trial. No due process. Just “boom,” you’re dead.

Now Barack Obama seems like a sensible guy, and I’m sure others in his administration are just as sane and mentally stable as he is. They have all convinced themselves, and are trying to convince us, that of course no one is going to have to order the bombing of a house in Peoria. We’re sensible, rational people. You can trust us.

Uh, no we can’t. And that is why we have a Constitution. The Constitution is supposed to be our (the people’s) safeguard against the accumulation of too much power in the hands of too few leaders. That was the point of creating three branches of government as opposed to simply appointing a President (or king) to rule as he or she saw fit. Thanks to Bush and his posse of neocons, we now have an executive branch that thinks it has the power to be judge, jury and executioner under certain circumstances. And they get to determine the circumstances.

While Obama may be reasonable, what about the next President or the next? What if we elected a shoot-first-ask-questions-later cowboy like Rick Perry? Do you want him deciding who’s a threat to America and who isn’t? During the Occupy movement’s brief kerfuffle, the FBI categorized them as a terrorist group. The potential for abuse here is massive.

Defenders of the drone decision like to use hypothetical situations as evidence that the President needs this power. What about a guy strapped with explosives walking into a football stadium? That kind of thing. We are a nation of laws. The police already have the power and authority to stop a madman from hurting others, either by arresting him or, if the threat is imminent, shooting him. If there are people plotting terrorist attacks, they should be arrested and tried. Let the justice system determine their guilt and punishment, not a small cadre of government employees in a White House office.

The drone decision is frightening in its implications and we should all be letting Washington know that it is an unacceptable abuse of executive power.

Eight former Drug Enforcement Administration chiefs want the federal government to immediately sue states that legalize marijuana to nullify the legislation