Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

This morning, there is incredible news: A volcano has erupted in Los Angeles!

People are marching in the street outside Congress and the White House, demanding strong action to deal with the devastation resulting from the volcano. Republicans, however, are saying that there should not be any big government solution to the crisis, and that residents should not cut and run from Los Angeles.

Democratic leaders, hoping to woo swing voters, reject the demands for immediate evacuation from Los Angeles. They’re calling for an evacuation of Los Angeles by the end of 2007, but only if the situation there stabilizes first.

The more time passes on in politics, the more I want to vomit. All I see is corruption by all parties and it never seems to get better. So, I have an idea on how to get the kind of government we want.

Keep the three party system, but no longer give republicans and democrats and guaranteed spot on any ballot. Maybe if they actually had to work to get a spot on the ballot, they’d shape up and quit looking out only for themselves.

Here’s a riddle for New Jersey Democrats: What happens when you allow an incumbent politician to go unchallenged?

Don’t worry. There’s no trick to this riddle. The answer is all too obvious: The politician loses all sense of responsibility to the people.

Rob Andrews proves the point. He’s the Democratic incumbent in the House of Representatives for New Jersey’s first congressional district. At the close of this autumn’s session of Congress, Rob Andrews served his constituents very ill indeed.

Rob Andrews abandoned the mainstream of the Democratic Party and voted for the Military Commissions Act. The Military Commissions Act does the following:

Robyn Blumner is a columnist for my hometown newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, and she always has something interesting to say. But in yesterday’s column, she shook me to the bones with her essay on the end of “The Great American Experiment in Liberty.”

E Pluribus Unum be damned. Here’s America’s new motto: If we can’t pronounce your name, we don’t care what happens to you. Now let us get back to our Happy Meals.

How was your lunch?

Most people don’t know about this, but the tiniest wasps carry within them the potential to destroy humankind. It’s a fact of science that some wasps have the ability to inject their prey not just with painful venom, but also with bits of rogue DNA that merge with the genetic code of the prey in order to make it a more useful host for the wasp’s young. These wasps will lay their eggs on a caterpillar that they have paralyzed, and over time, the wasp’s DNA infiltrates the caterpillar’s DNA, causing it to be a more healthy snack when the young wasp larvae hatch and are ready to eat.

I’m not making this up. It’s true.

Now just think of what could happen with a slight change in wasp behavior. It is well known that wasps can already cause some fully grown adult human beings to go into shock. With just a little bit of adaptation, a wasp could easily paralyze a human being… and insert its DNA.

Only one step more, and you have a planet filled with genetically-modified human beings who live as slaves and snacks to the wasps. Ordinary humans would have to hide out on distant islands, hoping that the wasps would not be blown there on a strong wind… or that the human-wasp hybrids would not build boats to reach them.

Only one or two mutations, and all humanity will be in the gravest of peril - and you might never find out until you get that first sting!

Sheldon Richman, writing in the Baltimore Chronicle, has the guts to come out and say what nobody else dares: There Is No War:

What we call terrorism is not war, but criminal action. It becomes war only if we make it so.
America is not under siege. There is no threat to its integrity as a society. No barbarians stand at the gates ready to overrun and subjugate us. What we call terrorism is not war, but criminal action. It becomes war only if we make it so. But war exacts a terrible cost on the country that prosecutes it. If you need proof, see the Military Commissions Act of 2006.”

If there is no war, there is no excuse.

There is no excuse.

“We almost got killed back there!”
“No, honey. it was just a close call.”

This may change tomorrow, but right now Twister is my favorite bad movie. It’s full of doozies like this, either messed up by the writing or messed up by the delivery: “He’s not in it for the science. He’s in it for the money!”

What’s your favorite bad movie, and why?

The Mail and Guardian writes, “Word of the still inconclusive findings comes as Washington leads efforts in New York for a United Nations resolution punishing North Korea.”

The Observer writes, “There are still doubts whether the test was real. Japan said yesterday it had yet to detect any radiation consistent with a nuclear blast. South Korea and China said that it could take weeks before a definitive judgement could be made.”

The United Nations resolution that unconfirmed ambassador John Bolton rushed through calls the nuclear explosion “a clear threat to international security”.

So, riddle me this:

If a nuclear bomb is exploded and no one can tell whether it really took place, how is that a clear threat to international security?

I was alarmed this afternoon as I read from the initial Associated Press report of the major earthquake today in Hawaii that there had been landslides, power failures, a highway blocked by debris, and a report from Governor Lingle that “boulders fell on highways, rock walls collapsed and television had been knocked off stands.”

I applaud Governor Lingle for being on the ball when it comes to the television set falling crisis. A lot of people might scoff, and say that a television set falling off its stand is not a problem on par with a landslide or a power outage, but clearly, these people don’t understand the vital role that television plays in our culture today.

Just think - what if an entire week went by without Hawaiians being able to watch their television sets? They would have no idea what happened on Battlestar Galactica, or Lost, or which models lost out in the latest round of Project Runway.

In short, American culture would begin to fall apart, a decay in Hawaii that would surely infect the rest of the nation, leading to spontaneous, unpredictable outbursts of local originality, and with them, a de-emphasis on federalism and a resurgence on states’ rights! The South would soon reinstitute slavery and lynchings, and no one could say for sure if Vermont would share its maple sugar fairly. Would America’s Dairyland announce reductions in production in order to send cheddar prices through the roof?

The latest news indicates that FEMA is sending a fleet of cargo freighters filled with flat screen plasma television sets to Hawaii. Let’s just hope that they arrive in time… before it’s a new Civil War begins!

I have always understood and felt that history plays a big part in our culture. That supposedly, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. However, when history itself has become video games, movies, and now TV commercials, our culture and our future will never learn when it is no longer taken seriously.

 

For those of you that have not seen Rosa Parks and Katrina victims selling Chevy Silverados for GM, please take a look at the following links.

 

This first one is a 24-30 sec promo on the GM website. Look in the lower left had corner for “Our Country, Our Truck” http://www.chevrolet.com/silverado/

 

This link is from Auto Blog and posts two commercial videos, one before editing and one as it was aired Saturday night 10/14 during one of the NFL football games. (I actually saw the entire thing Sat. and was guppy mouthed at the end of it) http://www.autoblog.com/2006/09/26/our-country-our-truck-vids-debuted-no-nukes/

 

Some/most Americans were appalled when politicians used 9/11 footage for campaign material and now it is anything goes. Nothing will shock or torment the new generation of leaders for this country, and am afraid of what the outcome will be.

Tim Holden is a Democrat who sits in Congress and isn’t worth much at all. Occasionally, he votes the right way on a piece of legislation, but more often, he votes like a stinking right wing Republican, and when Tim Holden goes the wrong way, he causes a lot of damage. His regressive right wing legislative score is higher than his progressive record.

The latest and greatest example: Democrat Tim Holden abandoned the mainstream of the Democratic Party to join forces with George W. Bush and vote in favor of the Military Commissions Act.

Don’t know about the Military Commissions Act? Well, let me inform you: This new law, signed into effect by President Bush just yesterday, revokes habeas corpus, ends enforcement of the Geneva Conventions, gives amnesty to George W. Bush for any war crimes he has committed, sets up kangaroo courts to replace our system of justice, and gives the President the power to throw anyone into prison without crimnal charges and without any explanation to anyone.

How could Tim Holden do it? How could he do such a horrible thing? How could he betray us in such a dramatic fashion?

The answer is depressingly simple: Tim Holden doesn’t have anyone opposing him for re-election in 2006, so he can afford to be as dirty and nasty as he wants to be. There was no Democratic primary challenge to Tim Holden in 2006, and Matthew Wertz, the Republican opponent to Tim Holden, withdrew from the race. So, there was no one to hold Tim Holden accountable.

Democrats of Pennsylvania’s 17th congressional district, in Dauphin County, Lebanon County, Schuylkill County, Berks County and Perry County, please do NOT support Tim Holden for re-election in 2008. Tim Holden has betrayed the Democratic Party over and over again. Don’t take it lying down. Find someone, a real Democrat with solid progressive values, to challenge Tim Holden in 2008, and restore the good name of Pennsyvlania’s Democrats.

Weed causes forgetfulness… Yep, an entire generation forgot they smoked the stuff!

It may seem a little extreme to say that I’m embarrassed to be a member of the baby boomer generation. After all, we’re the biggest and most successful generation since that small bunch of ex-Englishfolk baled on the Not-So-Great British tax structure and declared that this was the future home of hippies and millionaires. But alas, I must admit it - I can’t stand shoulder to shoulder with my gen-mates and hold my head up next to a bunch of people who smoked enough marijuana to stone the current population of India, whilst they start pounding their sagging middle-aged chests and spouting off about how kids today shouldn’t even think of experimenting with drugs.

Let’s get this announcement straight: Who the hell are they kidding? What a bunch of dime-store hyocritical bastards. “Just say No????” - like any one of us ever even considered that option when we were riding that six story waterslide called puberty into our early twenties. We grabbed for all the gusto we could handle, and occasionally reaped the fruits of overindulgence, which more than likely resulted in waking up on some lawn wondering why the comfy, green bed came complete with the occasional dandelion.

I might be willing to tolerate the Partnership for a Drug Free America if they were as anxious to stop the people popping unnecessary - but legally prescribed - drugs as they are to put an end to the only thing the first twenty-five years of human life are good for - Pushing the envelope to the fullest while one is still young and resilient. I might also be more tolerant of the drug war if we actually napalmed the hell out of poppy and coca fields that were doing the supplying. But we don’t - we pay their governments to stop their farmer from doing the only thing that makes them money - and SURPRISE, it doesn’t work.

Take the ‘kids in the basement’ commercial. There they are, safe at home, engaged in nothing more notorious than playing video games, when one of the throng implores his friend to ‘break out some of that weed.” Our friend cracks open his wooden stash box only to find a note that says “We need to talk - Mom”. Let’s assume that the conversation isn’t going to be about Mom having pinched little Marvin’s stash so she could get high. This is about her child’s descent into the writhing hell of - mary-ju-wanna. Yipe. Call the Cops or The National Guard or maybe even President Bush, who, it has been reported, was into the nose candy, back in the day. Jeez, ma, the kids could be drinking and driving…

But, hey, let’s run screaming to make commercials against smoking dope.

If mere rhetoric isn’t enough, try the following simple list of annual causes of death in the United States�

Tobacco 435,000
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity 400,000
Alcohol 85,000 / 101,653
Microbial Agents 75,000
Toxic Agents 55,000
Motor Vehicle Crashes 43,000 / 26,347
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs 32,000
Suicide 30,622
Incidents Involving Firearms 29,000
Homicide 20,3084
Sexual Behaviors 20,000
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect 17,000
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin 7,600
Marijuana 0

Yep. That’s right. Despite the valiant efforts of tokers from Baja to Bangor, NOBODY in the western hemisphere has gotten stoned to death since long before Shirley Jackson wrote “The Lottery” in 1948.

For the record, I am not a dope smoker - I did it when I was younger and it made me paranoid, an experience I don’t especially like, so I stopped. But that doesn’t mean that I am somehow now required to disavow the fact that often I had a very good time while high. Truth is, I am embarassed when anyone around my age starts blathering on about the ‘dangers’ of drugs�. After all, 100% of the people who tell you they did drugs (and you shouldn’t), managed to survive long enough to become hypocrites.

Some people just can’t win for losing, can they? When I saw this on Yahoo News I was about to go to sleep, so I figured that if it wasn’t mentioned when I woke up I’d post it.

So here it is:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061021/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_detainees

U.S. jailed man once tortured by Taliban

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, Associated Press WriterSat Oct 21, 8:11 AM ET

Abdul Rahim insists he’s an apolitical student who fled a strict father. But he’s fallen into a black hole in the war on terror in which first the Taliban and then the United States imprisoned him as an enemy of the state.

Arrested by the Taliban in Afghanistan in January 2000, Rahim says al-Qaida leaders burned him with cigarettes, smashed his right hand, deprived him of sleep, nearly drowned him and hanged him from the ceiling until he “confessed” to spying for the United States.

U.S. forces took the young Kurd from Syria into custody in January 2002 after the Taliban fled his prison. Accusing him of being an al-Qaida terrorist, U.S. interrogators deprived him of sleep, threatened him with police dogs and kept him in stress positions for hours, he says. He’s been held ever since as an enemy combatant.

Rahim’s story is one of several emerging from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay as defense lawyers make bids to free their clients while the Bush administration tries to use a new law to lock them out of federal courts.

After the Supreme Court overturned President Bush’s plans for commissions to try detainees, Bush obtained a new law from Congress barring federal courts from hearing appeals for release by any alien “properly detained as an enemy combatant.” The Justice Department told district and appellate judges this week they no longer have jurisdiction to hear dozens of such pending cases.

A court fight over that is certain.

Calling the move to strip jurisdiction “a direct attack on our constitutional structure,” Federal Public Defender Steven T. Wax in Portland, Ore., said, “We will litigate that as hard as we can in whatever forum we can find, because they are wrong.”

Other detainees whose lawyers filed new evidence in U.S. District Court motions this month include:

Adel Hassan Hamad, a Sudanese charity worker arrested at 1:30 a.m. July 18, 2002, in his Peshawar, Pakistan, apartment. Co-workers swear he was a hospital administrator with no connection to terrorists. A dissenting U.S. Army major on the panel that reviewed the unclassified and secret evidence against him called it “unconscionable” to detain him because some employees of the same charity may have supported terrorist ideals.

Nazar “Chaman” Gul, a 29-year-old Afghani who thought he was working as an armed fuel depot guard for the Karzi government installed by U.S. forces. The man who hired him swears that was the case, but he is accused of being a member of a terrorist group. The lawyers say he has been mistaken for a commander of that terror group, named Chaman Gul, also held at Guantanamo.

All three are represented by Wax and his assistants. Wax’s staff traveled to Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates to gather dozens of sworn statements from co-workers, relatives, fellow inmates and people who knew these detainees but haven’t spoken to them in years. These newly filed accounts substantiate details of the detainees’ denials that they were terrorists.

“These clients are not enemy combatants,” Wax said in an interview. The new law “does not apply to people who are not enemy combatants,” he said.

Wax said it would be unconstitutional to apply the jurisdiction-stripping bill retroactively to existing cases. And he said the Supreme Court has ruled before that it has the final say over its jurisdiction in these so-called habeas corpus petitions for release from custody. Following President Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus for prisoners of war, the high court in 1866 set a man free after finding he was not a prisoner of war, Wax noted.

The government feels differently about Wax’s clients.

“Multiple reviews have been conducted since each detained enemy fighter was captured, including for these three individuals,” said a Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey D. Gordon. “There is a significant amount of evidence, both unclassified and classified, which supports continued detention of these detainees and others at Guantanamo.”

Now 28, Rahim, buttressed by testimony from friends and relatives, says he wound up in Afghanistan in a bid to escape his father, a strict teacher of Islamic education who objected to his borrowing money outside the family for a college trip. With his father holding his passport, he tried futilely to get from his home in the United Arab Emirates to Europe or Canada.

Finally a friendly diplomat got him deported to Afghanistan where he and others say he hoped to be declared a refugee and moved to Europe by international aid agencies. He says the Taliban conscripted him and sent him against his will to the Al Farouq terrorist training camp. When he tried to leave 18 days later, they imprisoned him, he says.

In spring 2000, Abu Dhabi television broadcast a video of a tearful, fidgeting Rahim saying a U.S. agent recruited him to find Osama bin Laden. “I deserve to die … but if the Taliban let me live, I want to spend the next 22 years fighting for jihad,” he said.

On Jan. 17, 2002, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft said U.S. forces found five videotapes in the ruined Afghan home of bin Laden aide Mohammed Atef — one of the men Rahim says directed his torture. Ashcroft said the tapes show young men delivering “martyrdom messages from suicide terrorists” and identified one as “Abd Rahim.”

Rahim’s attorney Stephen Sady said any Taliban tapes of Rahim “were the product of torture” and no different from false confessions Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., made to stay alive in a North Vietnamese prison.

“After two years the Americans came and saved me from the prison,” Rahim told U.S. officers. “I told them about the videotape the Taliban made of me … it created confusion to the point that the Americans believed I was working with al-Qaida.”

He added: “Nothing changed in my life. I was taken from prison to prison.”

Welcome to the United States of Fear, ruled by King Shrub II.

This morning, I had the unsettling experience of trying to choose the coffee caraffe from a group of three opaque caraffes, in a room where only a dim light was on. I poured the coffee in the mug, and couldn’t tell from its color whether I had hot coffee or hot water. Then, I took a drink, and I couldn’t tell whether I was drinking coffee either. Then, in the dark, I took a misstep and spilled the coffee onto the carpeted floor.

There was no stain. If coffee leaves no stain, can it truly be considered coffee?

What is the boundary between weak coffee and hot dirty water?

I know it’s hopelessly out of my age and gender group, but I just don’t care. I loved watching the CBC’s production of Anne of Green Gables last night. That’s Anne with an “e.” How comforting to know that in these trying times, with a little bit of pluck and a fair number of freckles we can find that bosom friend. I found it to be the perfect childish retreat for a world that is increasingly intolerant of innocence.

Are there any other closet Anne of Green Gables fans out there? Or am I alone in my admiration of the corny and sweet?

Hillary Clinton has gone insane. She wants to run for President in 2008, so what has she done? Hillary Clinton has declared that she thinks torture is a good idea.

No kidding. Senator Hillary Clinton said of torture last week, “there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing that.”

No, Senator Clinton. No, there doesn’t. There doesn’t have to be any lawful authority for pursuing torture. What there has to be is a return to the America in which the Bill of Rights means something more than “yadda, yadda, yadda”. The Bill of Rights forbids, absolutely, cruel and unusual punishment. Do you not support the Bill of Rights anymore, Senator Clinton?

I’m a New Yorker, Senator Clinton, but you’re not getting my vote. Not for United States Senate, and sure as hell not for President of the United States.

Ya think “unlawful enemy combatant” would look good in needlepoint?

I stand before you this day to declare that I, your obedient servant, may be in violation of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Specifically, it is within the provisions of the bill that allow for President Bush, via his minions, to deem me an “unlawful enemy combatant” for any poem, commentary or statement I have ever made, impugning his or his administration’s frighteningly ineffective and actively dangerous efforts to end global terrorism.

We’re half way around the world, bombing people who have done nothing to us. The administration seeks to influence policies and elections in other countries, and threatens intervention if they do not toe our political line. Isn’t that what we fought against during the cold war? Didn’t we stand against the Communists to keep them from venturing into other countries? I am not a conspiracy-theory left wing nut job, but I am way past offended that this administration sees their job as remaking the United States of America in the image of the late UNlamented Soviet Union. Democracy at gunpoint… if that isn’t an oxymoron, then President Bush can pronounce ‘nuclear’.

I cannot and will not be silenced by toadies like Donald Rumsfeld, who has never risked his overweight, coronary-ready ass for his country but presumes to tell ‘the faithful’ that he knows what will make us victorious in war. What he ‘knows’ is how to profit from corporate involvement in war, and how to make a few bucks for his friends in the bargain.

I shan’t be deterred by the religious right, put off by the neocondescending disinformation machine, or undermined by the unfair, unbalanced, untrue and unprincipled Fox News Network.

I will not be haunted the Coultergeist, shadowed by the government, governed by the incompetent or overruled by the supposed rulers of what was, until the MCA of ‘ought-six, a country both democratic and free.

Calling this law wrong is the understatement of the century. I am, as all Americans should be, ashamed for my nation and for the Great American Experiment, whose demise this law may very well portend.

With that, a final word… I have a house that’s paid for, a really cool motorcycle and a new love of my life…… if I disappear, I sure as hell didn’t run away.

Later.

The much used Republican talking point ‘Cut and Run’ shows once again the ignorance and lack of education of our president and his sicophantic followers.

The term derives from a common practice used in the great days of sail. A vessel might be anchored, discharging cargo or awaiting orders. If a large gale or an attack from enemies were launched against the anchored boat, it would usually take about 1 hour to raise the anchor and get under way. In that time, the vessel might be caught in the storm and driven ashore, or come under attack from which they would be unable to defend themselves.

In such situations, the order would be given to ‘Cut the cable and run for open sea’ which would enable those on board to save the vessel from disaster and to adequatley to defend themselves.

At the present condition of the ship of state, the only way to prevent a complete and total disaster with not only loss of goods but completely wrecking on a foreign shore, is to cut the cable between this country and its failed foreign policies and run for the safety of diplomatic reasonoing where we will be in a better position to defend the country and save the ship.

With the international climate and an unwelcoming shore in the middle east, to cut and run is the only possible solution. Any ships Captain failing to act to save his vessel, would become personally responsible for its loss. And in the case of a Naval captain, would be court marshalled and drummed out of service.

John Paul Jones, Farragut, Nelson and many other Captains, cut and run and saved the ship. Commander bush refuses to.

Let us hope that when the ship founders, he will have the courage to go down with it.

[original] Ok, I have been writing this document for a while now, and I just decided to see what some other people have to say about it. Just comment on it. I do not claim creation for everything in there, much of my thoughts were inspired by say for example, what i was listening to at the time, to inspire me to write about it. It is also not my only journal I keep, just a fun thing I put together. All the stories are entirely mine however, and are at most based on other small texts. If you actually take the time to read my thoughts, and comment I would be very happy.

Yeah, whatever, no comments, no nothing, just those lame stars, so I removed my post. It seems like only left wing liberalistic Americans with nothing better to do then bash their president ( I am not a bush supporter, I just think that if you really care, you would do something more then bitch about what a bad president he is) post on this website, but i mean, what was I expecting anyways, And no comments either, I would think that if anyone actually did take the time to read 17 pages of that (not like most people here bother to learn another language too) you would at least be gracious enough to leave a small note or opinion.

A rating means nothing at all without an idea to back it up.