Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

For a bit of perspective on the revelations from former NSA employee Russell Tice, which corroborate reports from a former AT&T employee about the scope of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance of the American people, let’s compare it to Watergate.

The NSA spying program makes Watergate look like small potatoes. Watergate was a politcally-motivated break-in to just one office in just one building for just a few files. The National Security Agency warrantless wiretapping program, authorized retroactively through the FISA Amendments Act, on the other hand, is a break-in to every home and every office in every building in America. The NSA spying against Americans didn’t just gather a few files - it’s gathered every single file, every single telephone call, every fax, every text message, every bit of information about everywhere we go on the Internet.

The NSA seizure of our private records is not just bigger in scope than Watergate, it’s also much more free of oversight. The Democratic-led Congress in the 1970s responded to Watergate with investigations and hearings that forced Richard Nixon to resign. The Democratic-led Congress in this decade has responded to the NSA program to spy on Americans’ private lives by helping George W. Bush to cover it up, with retroactive immunity granted through the FISA Amendments Act.

Barack Obama voted for the FISA Amendments Act as a senator, and now President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder say that they want to keep the program to spy on our electronic communications without any search warrant, without real congressional oversight, and without any external controls. It’s essentially a resurrection of Total Information Awareness, and yes, Barack Obama supports it.

That’s enough to shake that Obama change loose from your pockets, isn’t it?

So why haven’t you heard more about this? Well, it’s because the story has been forgotten. Why? Well, journalists who have been targeted by the National Security Agency’s spies have become strangely silent about the program. Also, the story about Russell Tice came out last Wednesday, the day after the Obama Inauguration, when almost precisely nobody was paying attention.

This forgotten story is something you need to pay attention to, however, if you care about the future of American freedom. That’s what Chester A. Arthur says in the following video. Why Chester Arthur? Chester Arthur is America’s most forgotten President - who better to warn about the perils of our nation’s short-term memory?

Is David Paterson’s choice of Kirsten Gillibrand to succeed Hillary Clinton in the U.S Senate a choice for inaction? Given Gillibrand’s enthusiasm for right wing legislation, we can only hope so.

You might think that, with strong Democratic control over Congress and a new Democratic President, Representative Gillibrand would have been enthusiastic to craft legislation in the 111th Congress. So far, however, Gillibrand has not introduced a single bill - not even one to rename a post office somewhere in her district.

Did Paterson want a do-nothing senator representing New York?

It’s become fashionable for big businesses to deride us little itty bitties, but here’s something to keep in mind in terms of business patterns: The big fall big. While the small keep on keeping on.

Irregular Times was here before Circuit City, and now we’re here after Circuit City. That’s a clue to where the true tech staying power lies.

Why attend an Inauguration demonstration? This pro-Constitution demonstration is a good pick, because as much as Barack Obama has inspired the trust of the American people, we know that the power brokers are waiting for him, with tools of persuasion that are difficult to resist.

Attend this demonstration on the route of the Inaugural Parade to send Obama a message: The American people want their full constitutional rights restored.

Please, President Obama - follow your Oath of Office. Uphold the Constitution.

January 20, 2009, corner of 9th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington D.C. - Noontime - Be there.

Want to know what’s wrong with proposition 8? Ask Simon the Political Tiger.

It’s a matter of the Constitution, see. The Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law to all people. That means that the law has to give everyone equal status, without discrimination. That includes same-sex couples. If heteros get to marry, then homosexual couples need to be given that same right.

No state has the right, through its legislature or through an electoral proposition, to overrule the Constitution’s equal protection clause. Prop 8 tries to do just that - and that’s what makes it an insult not just to same-sex couples, but to all Americans who believe in the freedoms and rights that the Constitution guarantees.

“We have attempted diplomacy without effect. We have attempted economic sanctions to no effect. Regrettably, my colleagues and I have concluded the President needs the authorization to use force to protect our country from this sort of eventuality.” - Evan Bayh, October 8, 2002.

The statement above was given by Evan Bayh on the floor of the Senate as a justification for rushing into war against Iraq. In this statement, Senator Bayh states that diplomatic and economic efforts to eliminate Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had not worked, and so, war was absolutely necessary.

Those with a little memory will remember that, actually, Evan Bayh was quite wrong. Back in 2002, when Evan Bayh gave his speech, Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction to eliminate.

Why didn’t Iraq have any weapons of mass destruction any more? Because diplomacy and economic sanctions had worked. Diplomatic reality was, in fact, the direct opposite of what Evan Bayh thought it was.

This incident exposed Evan Bayh as a shockingly unprepared diplomatic thinker. But, now many Democratic Party insiders are pushing to get Evan Bayh chosen to be the Vice President of the United States. Traditionally, one of the few important roles of a Vice President is international diplomacy.

Evan Bayh just isn’t qualified to be Vice President. As his ignorant claims surrounding the invasion of Iraq prove, Evan Bayh lacks the diplomatic skills necessary in a good Vice President.

Earlier this year Barack Obama accused John McCain of have a “sudden 2008 urge to drill for offshore oil”. Barack Obama’s campaign called offshore drilling “a distracting idea which won’t reduce gas prices but will boost oil company profits.”

So, why is it that, as of August 1, 2008, Barack Obama is supporting John McCain’s “distracting idea” to boost oil company profits without benefitting the American people? Why is it that Barack Obama has joined George W. Bush’s crew to push for offshore drilling?

Wasn’t Barack Obama supposed to bring an end to the politics of greed and the power of lobbyists? Why is Obama now doing their bidding?

Why is Obama siding with the Republicans against progressive Democrats, in favor of offshore drilling?

Source: New Energy for America (http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/newenergy) - August 2, 2008

Obama cites faith as key to change, says today’s headline for the Boston Globe (Actually, it’s an Associated Press article - the newspapers don’t bother writing their own stories much any more).

Is it true? Is Obama right? Is faith the key to change?

Well, gosh, but that’s sure how it looks with the FISA Amendments Act.

Barack Obama says that the FISA Amendments Act isn’t a cover up of Bush’s criminal spying against millions of Americans without any criminal suspicion, any search warrant, or any notification of any court as required by law and the Constitution. Yet, the FISA Amendments Act gives retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies that helped George W. Bush break the law, preventing information about the illegal program against the American people from entering the public record. Gosh, that sure looks like a cover up. Oh, but Barack Obama says it isn’t, so have faith, and don’t think about it any more.

Barack Obama says that the recent Inspectors General report into illegal hiring practices is a “strong example” of how there might still be some accountability for Bush’s crimes, in spite of the FISA Amendments Act blockage of the normal forms of investigation. Yet, the Inspectors General report that Obama cites resulted in no accountability whatsoever for anyone responsible for the crimes it describes. Gosh, that doesn’t look anything at all like a “strong example” of accountability. Oh, but Barack Obama says it’s true, so have faith, and just don’t think about it any more.

Barack Obama says that the FISA Amendments Act will stop George W. Bush’s massive programs of physical searches of Americans’ homes and eavesdropping on Americans’ electronic communications. Golly, if you take the time to read the FISA Amendments Act, though, it allows the President to continue those programs, without any actual restraint. Oh, but Barack Obama says that all the spying is going to stop, so have faith, and don’t worry your little head about it any more.

Barack Obama says that the FISA Amendments Act restores the exclusive jurisdiction of the FISA court to control George W. Bush’s big spying programs against Americans. Gee whillikers, though, the FISA Amendments Act that I’ve read actually gives the Attorney General of the United States the exclusive power to both operate the spy programs against Americans and to be the watchdog of those same spy operations. The FISA Amendments Act that I’ve read actually cuts the FISA court OUT of the process. Oh, but Barack Obama says it isn’t so. He says it’ll be okay. He says you don’t have to worry. He says yes you can send him a big donation. So, have faith.

See, with the power of faith, there can be change! The change in this case, is that the FISA Amendments Act and its attack on the Constitution gets passed, but who needs to be picky?

Change is change, right? Who cares about the details?

Yes we can! Baaa! Change we can believe in! Baaa! Hope! Baaa!

I just quit MoveOn. It isn’t because I disagree with their politics. It’s because they have compromised their politics.

Just yesterday, I got an email from MoveOn expressing their opposition to H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act. That’s the right stand, because the FISA Amendments Act is a terribly abusive law that violates the Constitution and breaks trust with the American people. It allows massive, unrestrained spying programs by the government against American citizens, without any search warrant or any form of probable cause required.

The people who voted for the FISA Amendments Act won’t tell you this. They’ll tell you that the powers granted under the bill are just fine, and there’s nothing to worry about. But, have you actually read the legislation? Don’t believe what they tell you until you’ve read the bill yourself.

It’s bad enough that 105 Democrats in Congress turned coat and joined forces with George W. Bush to pass the FISA Amendments Act. What’s worse is that Barack Obama has announced he will join them. Barack Obama is betraying the supporters who helped him win the Democratic nomination.

What about MoveOn? They’re pretending nothing has happened. They’re moving ahead with fundraisers for Barack Obama.

That’s not the kind of politics that MoveOn is supposed to stand for. That’s why, until they repudiate Barack Obama or convince Barack Obama to change his position, I have quit MoveOn.

I encourage you to do the same. Here’s the short message I sent to Moveon explaining why I’ve quit.

“Barack Obama just endorsed the FISA Amendments Act. MoveOn says it’s against that law, as it should. It’s a betrayal of the Constitution and an abuse of our trust. Barack Obama should lose the endorsement of MoveOn because of this betrayal. When MoveOn repudiates Barack Obama, I will rejoin MoveOn. Until then, I will not be with you - and no bake sales for Obama.”

In the aftermath of the long-delayed Supreme Court decision to reassert the right of all people held prisoner by the United States government to have the ancient protection of habeas corpus, there has been a lot of hand-wringing among right wing pundits about whether the USA is strong enough to handle this level of freedom. Can we deal with a society where people are not thrown into prison at the whim of political elites, they ask, with anxious wrinkles crossing their foreheads.

The short answer is: Of course we can handle it, if we, the citizens of the USA, can avoid the temptation to buck and run. The structures of American democracy are not so limp and wimpy as right wingers seem to think.

Beyond that short answer, it’s important to understand what these right wing pundits are really concerned about. They purport to be worried about the nature of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other secret torture prisons run by George W. Bush. More honestly, these right wingers are concerned by the very idea of justice, applied equally and fairly. They worry their meek little hearts about whether a fair system of justice will protect them from the people they fear.

They ask, Should the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay be allowed to have access to lawyers? However, their question really amounts to this: Should we restrict prisoners’ access to lawyers, period?

The essence of the law under the United States Constitution, which applies everywhere that the United States government has authority, is that all people, no matter what they are accused of, should have equal protection under the law. That means that if we restrict some prisoners’ access to lawyers, we are declaring that our system has the right to restrict access to lawyers for any class of prisoners, if they should happen to offend us. If we make that choice, we are choosing to upend the Constitution, and to make our legal system unbalanced and unjust.

For that reason, no, the prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay should not have their access to lawyers restricted. If we believe that justice works, we have no reason to be afraid. If we are afraid that justice does not work when applied without prejudice, we need to learn to control our fears. This is no time for right wing sissies to come along with their hands shaking, muttering that America can’t be safe unless we throw away our Constitution and the system of justice that it has established.

Get some backbone. Support justice, especially for the people you think are guilty of terrible things. If they really are guilty, a fair system of justice will find them guilty.

Just when you thought that Barack Obama had every single constituency wrapped up comes one more important endorsement: Caterpillars for Obama.

Why not? Caterpillars, with their penchant for metamorphosis, epitomize change we can believe in. John McCain, on the other hand, doesn’t even seem to believe in the butterfly stage. He’s stuck just being an old worm.

I’ll leave it to you evaluate the importance of this buggy endorsement.

Northeastern University has revealed that a team of its researchers used people’s cell phones to track their movements without their knowledge and without their permission. 100,000 people were spied upon by the Northeastern University team. That’s illegal for academic researchers to do in the United States, so Northeastern University chose to spy on people outside of the USA, in some foreign country that they refuse to name.

The Associated Press is reporting the story, but only part of the story. “That type of nonconsensual tracking would be illegal in the United States, according to Rob Kenny, a spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission,” the AP writes.

What the AP quotes Rob Kenny as saying is not exactly true. Academics, and other private citizens like you and I cannot legally use cell phone networks to spy on people’s private movements and communications, but the government can.

Thanks to the Patriot Act and the Protect America Act, the American federal government has the power to do the same thing here in the United States that the researchers from Northeastern University did outside of the USA.

The White House can take the information your cell phone beams back to its network, and use that to see where you go and what you do, not just who you talk to with your cell phone. They don’t need a search warrant to do it. They don’t need your permission. They don’t even need to tell you they’re spying on you. No judge approves the spying. No one can stop it.

This kind of spying is a tool of political power.

With this power, the President can track political activists.

The President can eavesdrop on congressional aides.

George W. Bush has the power to spy on Barack Obama’s campaign.

The tricky part is that you can never be sure that you’re being spied on when you’re carrying your cell phone… and you can never be sure that you aren’t being spied on either.

Never being sure if someone from the government is watching where you go, or listening to what you say, you can never be sure that you’re alone.

That kind of environment stifles free speech, free association, and even free thinking.

On this, the day when Barack Obama finally clinches the Democratic nomination, there are two different ways to look at what lies ahead. One way is to say that all the work is finally over. People who follow that way will let the summer begin, and not even think about lifting a finger to support Barack Obama until September.

That’s a tempting way, because it’s an easy way. There’s a problem with it, though: Do you think that John McCain and the Republicans will take that approach?

Don’t you bet on it. The trouble is that, with the long Democratic primary, the Democratic National Committee has almost no money left. The Republican National Committee, on the other hand, has a lot of money - about 40 million dollars on hand.

With that money, within the week, the RNC is going to start sending out vicious attack ads against Barack Obama. They’re going to try to make Obama into mud before he even has the chance to start his general election campaign.

Are you going to let that happen? No? Okay. Then there’s the second way: That way is to get to work NOW, to help the Barack Obama for President campaign hit the ground running, prepared to deal with the nasty Republican attacks to come.

To take this second proactive approach, I suggest two steps:

1. Go to Barack Obama’s official campaign web site and sign up as a volunteer. You don’t need to give money, but giving your time is essential.

2. Get a bumper sticker for your car, a button for your jacket and a lawn sign for your yard. These all spread the message that ordinary people, folks who live in your neighborhood, support Barack Obama. That kind of statement is much more effective than an impersonal television commercial, no matter how slick it is. This campaign is going to have to be a grassroots one, and showing campaign gear is a great way to demonstrate a grassroots Obama presence in your community.

Here are some sources we’ve got for Obama campaign gear:

- Obama 2008 t-shirts made in the USA made over at Skreened

- Campaign Lawn Signs and Banners for Obama

- Obama bumper stickers over at My President and New White House

- Barack Obama campaign buttons and magnets over at Irregular News

Each of these different sources has unique Barack Obama campaign gear so that you can stand out with a pro-Obama message that’s just right for you - to keep. This stuff will have greater historical meaning as the years pass, and you’ll be able to take these things out to prove to your children and grandchildren that you were there, helping to elect Barack Obama as President of the United States.

This week, CafePress sent us a cap as a free sample, to get us excited about selling clothes using a technology they call InfiniStitch. It’s a way to get an image made on a computer automatically stitched as a badge on a piece of clothing.

That sounds really great, but there’s a problem, as seen on the sample cap filmed in the movie below: The stitching doesn’t actually look very good, and the words in the stitching are almost impossible to read.

That’s small stuff compared to the problem I found on the tag: The cap is made in China by a company called Alternative Apparel. The name Alternative Apparel sounds great, but there’s more to a business than just a name.

Alternative Apparel makes a lot of promises when it comes to the ethical treatment of workers in its Chinese factories, and it says that it inspects factories a few times a year in order to see if things are on the up-and-up. However, Alternative Apparel doesn’t really know what’s going on in those factories in China except on those special inspection days.

What’s going on in Chinese factories has been exposed: Forced prisoner labor, worker abuse, and even child slave labor. The New York Times recently reported that “Big corporations have stepped up inspections of factories that produce goods for them. But suppliers have become adept at evading such scrutiny by providing fake wage and work schedule data that suggest they abide by labor laws.” They report the use of Chinese child slave labor as “quite typical”.

Alternative Apparel surely knows about these problems, and the insufficiency of inspections in revealing the problem. Yet, they choose to do business in China anyway.

Why? That’s easy. They do it for the money.

Alternative Apparel chose to have the clothes it sells made in China in order to save money, so that they could make big profits. They knew that China has low labor costs because it has low standards of worker protection.

Alternative Apparel chose to outsource its manufacturing to China in order to avoid American laws that guarantee fair treatment of workers and environmental protections.

Do you want to support that choice? It’s your freedom to do so, but if you buy from companies like Alternative Apparel, please don’t act shocked when you hear about children being forced to work as slaves in China. You helped make it happen, after all, with every cheap thing you bought that was made in China.

There is a true alternative in apparel. You can buy a shirt from Skreened, which prints here in the USA, only on shirts that are made in America, by American Apparel.

American Apparel is the real thing. They follow American labor and environmental laws. Alternative Apparel doesn’t. They went for the ethical loophole. They’re just posers.

Do you want to wear clothes made by posers?

Oh, dear Zoroaster wake me up! The ABC News presidential democratic debate, likely one of the last opportunities for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to earn the support of voters, should have been a lively event.

Instead, the first 45 minutes was spent on superficial nonsense like 1960s Weatherman bombings, who’s bitter, Bosnia, and disowned preachers, with followup questions.

Then, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous went hunting for inconsequential distinctions such as who, between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, thinks that Iran should not have nuclear weapons the most.

Help me! I want to care. I want to be motivated. I want to be active and a good citizen, but I have been struck by the ABC News hypno-mind-mister laser beam, which has caused me to hear the words coming out of Clinton’s and Obama’s mouths as if they are spoken in Czech.

Is there an antidote?

It’s been about 24 hours since we installed the new version of the Wordpress blogging software on our main Irregular Times page, and at first, everything was working great. Right now, however, I’ve got steam coming out of my ears trying to work with the software.

There are out-of-memory errors popping up everywhere, making administration of the site, and sometimes even just viewing it, a difficult task. It just took us 30 minutes to get up a simple article, as the new WordPress 2.5 software kept stripping out tags, reassigning categories, giving the name of the wrong author, and even making the title of the article blank.

WordPress 2.5 looks to be full of errors that dramatically cripple the operation of a previously healthy blog.

Avoid this update, bloggers, until WordPress comes out with a fix.

Network Solutions is a company of wimps.

A web site, fitnathemovie.com, was registered through Network Solutions, but Network Solutions blocked access to the web site before there could even be a real web site uploaded onto the net. Why? Network Solutions apparently has a group of employees who are in the position of guessing what a web site might say in the future, and then recommending censorship of the site if they suspect that this future content might cause “unrest”.

The idea is that because fitnathemovie.com had the potential, in the future, to publish anti-Islam material, it would be best just to not allow anybody anywhere in the world to see the site, out of fear that Muslims somewhere, sometime, might get offended, and then might be unrestful.

According to the Washington Post, “a company spokeswoman said Sunday evening that Network Solutions decided to pull the plug on it due to the potential unrest that could follow if Wilders followed through on his pledge to post his film on the site.”

COULD lead to POTENTIAL unrest? Oh, what a low standard for running and hiding under the table! What a sad decline there has been in Silicon Valley culture, now that Internet companies are wetting their pants in fear over the possibility that people speaking their minds on the Internet might lead to unrest.

They’re worries about potential unrest? Since when is the Internet for resting? Last I checked, AfternoonNap.com is not the most popular web site around.

What’s next? Is Network Solutions going to start refusing to host anti-Christian web sites? Refuse to allow anti-Buddhist domain names to be registered? Block WhoIs information for anti-Hindu sites?

Oh, look! At Metro, there’s an article that claims that Jesus Christ has indeed risen again… with his head reincarnated as a dog’s anus. Come on, Network Solutions! Aren’t you going to censor that? Aren’t you going to smack that down?

Why stop at religion, Network Solutions? Why not ban web sites critical of John McCain? Political arguments can lead to unrest, right? Well, if potential unrest is now the criterion for censorship by Network Solutions, then all political web sites must go!

The action of Network Solutions reminds me of nothing so much as the action of the government of China to refuse access to the web sites that have content it doesn’t approve of.

I hereby call upon Network Solutions to change the title of W. Roy Dunbar, its CEO, to General Secretary.

Censor THIS, Network Solutions.

I don’t know if I support the ideas that the people behind fitnathemovie.com were planning on publishing. But then, I can’t know that, given that those ideas were never allowed to get online.

How clean is John McCain? For that matter, how clean is the news media? Bloomberg news, which as a telecommunications company is mixed right up in the very telecom lobbying business it purports to report objectively upon, has quoted “a senior adviser to John McCain” as saying that John McCain is not inappropriately influenced by the large number of lobbyists that he associates with. This “senior adviser to John McCain”, Charles Black, is quoted as saying that “John McCain does no favors for, nor gives no special treatment to, any lobbyists — even if they are a friend of his.”

The thing is, Charles Black isn’t exactly a neutral, objective source in the matter. Charles Black is a top official in the John McCain for President campaign, but what’s more, Charles Black is a lobbyist himself.

Charles Black is the chairman of BKSH & Associates Worldwide, a powerful lobbying company. Here’s what BKSH itself has to say about its lobbying work “BKSH’s capabilities encompass a broad range of economic, social, domestic and international issues. Our professionals have managed “front-page” issues and have worked quietly on behind-the-scenes projects. Our mission can be as targeted as securing the inclusion or deletion of specific language in congressional legislation, or as broad as strengthening the bilateral relationship between a foreign country and the United States.”

Charles Black runs a lobbying firm with the goal of “securing the inclusion or deletion of specific language in congressional legislation”. So, what is he doing serving as a top adviser of the presidential campaign of John McCain, a member of the U.S. Senate? Why is John McCain forming close political alliances with lobbyists who have openly declared their intention to help their corporate clients manipulate congressional legislation?

Furthermore, why does Bloomberg News cite Charles Black, a lobbyist who is professionally dedicated to influencing legislation in Congress through contact with politicians like John McCain, as a credible source to reassure Americans that John McCain does no special favors for lobbyists?

To use lobbyist Charles Black as a source on this story, Bloomberg reporter Edwin Chen makes himself appear either incompetent and naive or as corrupted by the influence of media business lobbyists as John McCain.

The national government of Iraq, as well as the regional government of Iraqi Kurdistan have demanded that Turkey end its invasion of Iraq and withdraw its soldiers from Iraqi territory. The US military, on the other hand, continues to share information with the Turkish military in order to assist in the invasion.

It’s a clear test of Iraqi sovereignty: Do the Iraqi central government and its provincial governments have control over Iraq’s borders and military security? No.

There is no Iraqi sovereignty. There is no genuine Iraqi government. Iraq continues to be a possession of the United States military.

The following is from a conversation I had with a white woman, maybe fiftyish.

We need to have a Methodist for President.

First of all it’s not true that Methodists are going to all vote for Clinton. The ones that are voting for Obama have their own reasons.

The country is really messed up after so many years of Bush, so we need someone really pious in the White House. It’s going to take someone really religious, like a Methodist, to straighten everything out.

Did I really have this conversation? No, of course not.

If the statement is true, then it’s a stupid thing said by one person. Is there a trend of such stupid things being said, on the record? Are such things being said by the Clinton campaign? If so, then that’s a worthwhile basis for conversation. If not, then it’s just about as informative as me saying that I had a conversation with a person who said that we should not vote for Bill Richardson because Hispanics should be working at gas stations.

The real moral values of the Republican Party are demonstrated in brutal, sadistic form in the last federal budget proposed by George W. Bush.

The federal budget President Bush proposes for 2009 begins a program of cutting 196 billion dollars from Medicare health care benefits for the elderly and extremely impoverished Americans.

Why would the Republicans do such a cruel thing? Well, part of that money taken away from Medicare will go to pay for policies that make rich Americans even richer.

But, some of the money the Republicans will save by cutting Medicare benefits for senior citizens will go to pay for something even more inhumane. The Republicans propose using some of the money taken away from Medicare to pay for a new generation of nuclear bombs.

What do we need new nuclear weapons for? Terrorists cannot be defeated with nuclear missiles. Nuclear weapons are designed to kill civilians by destroying entire cities, vaporizing them, melting them, burning them into nothing more than radioactive cinder and ash.

These are the moral values of the Republican party: Less medicine for the sick, and more nuclear weapons to kill people by the millions.

This isn’t about getting tough, or being fiscally conservative. It’s inhumane. It’s just plain insane.

The Republican Party agenda, led now by George W. Bush, and to be continued by John McCain, leads on a path of fear and destruction.

America can do better. We must do better.

Do you doubt how serious a threat to American freedom it is that Congress is about to pass the FISA Amendments Act, unamended, and allow the President of the United States to spy against Americans’ emails, telephone calls and Internet use without any requirement to justify the spying, and without any congressional oversight? Don’t just listen to the warnings of us liberals over here at Irregular Times. Listen to the financial conservatives over on Wall Street.

Here’s what Rex Nutting, the Washington Bureau Chief of Marketwatch, has to say about the consequences of the passage of this law:

“If Al Qaeda is fighting us because they hate our freedoms, as President Bush often says, then they’re winning the war.

Pretty soon, we won’t have any more freedoms for them to hate.

Scratch the Fourth Amendment off the list of freedoms that we thought we had.”

Marketwatch is not some progressive publication like The Nation. It’s “a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company”.

When Wall Street fiscal conservatives ring the bell of alarm about the imminent loss of American freedom, it’s time for even optimistic skeptics to listen, and move to action.

The Senate is due to vote on the FISA Amendments Act any time now. Get out of your chair and tell your senators to vote NO.

The number of the congressional switchboard is (202) 224-3121.

The still red branches
make autumn planted dogwoods
February’s hope.

Many in the corporate world are having a knee jerk reaction to support the Republican proposal to, through the extension of the Protect America Act in the FISA Amendments Act, give telecommunications companies legal immunity from the assistance they have given to the government in conducting massive electronic spying operations against American citizens while those operations were against the law. Their automatic impulse is to support the Republican Party. In this case, however, to do so is directly in contradiction to their economic interests.

Corporations do have a responsibility to the government - to follow the law. Corporations also have responsibilities to their customers, to honor their privacy agreements. If corporations show that their legal agreements with customers no longer have any weight, what basis is there for trust in the marketplace any longer?

It is absolutely to claim that America can only be secure from terrorism when the government is allowed to conduct massive electronic spying operations against American citizens AND businesses without any judicial review or congressional oversight. In fact, America cannot be secure from terrorism when power over communications is so centralized that free and open communication within and between corporations and citizens is limited by self-censorship. A nation of citizens afraid to talk to each other openly is a nation where no one, including the government can know what is going on.

The FISA Amendments Act legislation goes far beyond reasonable reform. It is a threat to the independence of business from government and to the liberty of the individual citizen.

No one can conduct business when they aren’t assured of private communications. If people in business believe that government spies may be eavesdropping upon any of their electronic conversations, innovation, cooperation and sales will grind down until they are excruciatingly slow. Without the ability to secure proprietary information, all the competitive advantages built up over the last 15 years through the development of electronic communication would come to naught.

The FISA Amendments Act would indeed give legal immunity to corporations like AT&T, Google and Yahoo, for cooperating with the federal government in spying against Americans’ private communications. However, that legal immunity is no protection. In fact, such immunity would strip corporations of any legal justification for refusing to cooperate with government electronic spying programs.

If the FISA Amendments Act, no company could guarantee its customers privacy. That would have a chilling effect on all business, not just individual communication.

The American economy cannot function without freedom of speech, the right to free assembly, and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure. That’s why American business ought to come together with civil libertarians and demand that the FISA Amendments Act be voted down by the United States Senate.

In dissecting what went wrong for Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, some attention needs to be given to the issue of time. Exit polls show that Clinton’s greatest segment of support came from people who had made up their minds over one month ago.

That means that it’s likely that something happened in the last month that made undecided voters choose to not vote for Clinton. What was it that happened? It’s hard to say for sure. It might have been Barack Obama’s come-from-behind victory in the Iowa caucuses.

On the other hand, it might have been the attacks that went back and forth between the Clinton and Obama campaigns over the last couple of weeks. The same exit polls show that while 70 percent of voting South Carolina Democrats thought that Clinton’s attacks against Obama were unfair, only 57 percent of voting South Carolina Democrats thought that Obama’s attacks against Clinton were unfair.

Whatever the reality of which attacks were accurate and fair, it seems that Clinton came out of the squabbles looking the worse.

June 8 was established as an international holiday in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro: World Ocean Day. Unfortunately, the United Nations has, since 1992, failed to observe World Ocean Day.

World Ocean Day matters as a holiday of solemn observance especially now because the Earth’s marine ecosystems are falling apart as a result of a combination of pollution, coastal development, climate change, and overfishing. Think of the devastation of the once-great herds of bison on the American plains, or the destrution of rain forests in Brazil, and you’ll get an idea of the extent of ecological devastation that is occurring right now in the oceans. The plight of marine life would be difficult to overstate. It’s a full-fledged ecological crisis around the world, and the only reason you aren’t seeing it is that you don’t live underwater.

What can you do? Convincing people to recognize the problem, and start thinking about solutions, is an important step. First, you can encourage the United Nations to start officially observing World Ocean Day once more. Sign Oceana’s petition to the United Nations asking for official observance of World Ocean Day to begin once more. Don’t stop there, though. You can send an email directly to the Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea at the United Nations with a similar message, at DOALOS@UN.org.

Secondly, you don’t have to wait for official recognition from the United Nations. On June 8th, you can observe World Ocean Day yourself. Go to the Ocean Project’s page of resources on World Ocean Day for ideas.

Don’t think that you can’t do anything for the ocean if you live inland. Even in places like North Dakota, all streams eventually flow to the sea. Agricultural runoff and industrial pollution far upstream still has a big impact on ocean life. Many things that we buy, including but in addition to seafood, include elements that are harvested from ocean.

World Ocean Day can be a day for all people to consider how their lives interact with ocean life, and to take action to make that relationship a more healthy one.

What in the world will poor Mike Bloomberg do now? He was all ready to buy the 2008 presidential race with his billions of dollars, on the premise that only a billionaire could fairly represent the American people. The idea, set up for him with the Unity08 public relations machine, was that there just wasn’t any room for a vigorous contest for the Democratic and Republican party nominations. As Unity08 used to whine, Iowa and New Hampshire get to determine who the presidential candidates are, and we all just have to sit back and take whatever they give us… so it would be far better to take a candidate instead that would be picked for us by the Unity08 cadre of PR hacks and lobbyists.

With the Democratic Primary in New Hampshire, it became clear that the Democratic nomination would not be decided by Iowa and New Hampshire. Now, with the Michigan primary giving a victory to Mitt Romney, Bloomberg and his Unity08 toadies can’t claim that Iowa and New Hampshire have a stranglehold on the Republican Party either.

For both political parties, it seems that the nomination process won’t be decided until Super Tuesday, February 5, and quite likely not even then. So, Michael Bloomberg sits on the sidelines, waiting, finding that the American people are not clamoring for him after all.

Don’t be sad, Mr. Bloomberg. You can always go buy yourself an island, or something.

Every now and then, I’m tempted to call up the local cable TV provider and arrange to get them to come out to my house and hook me up. This month, I’ve been tempted by the Masterpiece Theatre month of new Jane Austen movies - plus the 90s versions of the BBC’s Emma and Pride and Prejudice.

Before I get the chance to call, however, I see something that reminds me of the huge amount of trash surrounding the few gems of cable television. Today, I got that sort of reminder as I was walking through the airport and saw, that with us in the middle of the presidential nomination process, and all the other important stories going on, CNN is reporting that…

…Britney Spears has just left the courthouse… wearing sunglasses… and tracked by helicopters as her vehicle goes down the highway… because it’s news that she’s in a car of some sort, apparently.

Of course, it’s not fair to accuse cable television, solely. On CNN’s web site, Britney Spears is listed as the number one “hot topic”.

Cable television seems designed to give the American public exactly what it craves. If news about Britney Spears leaving a courthouse in a car is the breaking coverage that America craves, I’d rather stay tuned out.

If I want Jane Austen, I can read one of her books.

The two words have become, in the last week, buzzwords. They’ve becoming annoying, as many candidates start trying to insert them into every sentence they can, without knowing anything more than that doing so is what their campaign consultants tell them to do.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking, however, that these words mean nothing. In the election of 2008, hope and change have profound meaning.

The meaning of hope is best understood when it’s remembered that hope is not just some vapid, foggy notion of good things happening in the future. Hope is the opposite of fear.

Hope requires courage. An authentic message of hope is a signal to all who are brave enough to unbow their heads and heed it that there is no more need for cowering. Hope is the understanding that there is no need to “balance” freedom with security, because freedom is our security.

Hope is the idea that we have the power to turn our backs on fear and walk away from it.

Change means that things don’t always have to be the way that they have been. Change is the answer to those who say that we have to make choice between our ideals and our actions. Change is the argument against those who say that America just isn’t ready to do what’s right.

Change is the idea that prove ourselves ready to do what’s right by doing it, not by hoping that the time will be right some time later.

This week, there have been a lot of presidential candidates using the words “hope” and “change”, thinking that just by using those words, they will catch enough of the persuasive power of Barack Obama to have a chance of winning the New Hampshire primary.

Here’s where I get a hokey: I believe that there’s a difference between them and Barack Obama. I believe that Barack Obama understands what the concepts of hope and change mean, and understands why they are important, in a way that the other presidential candidates, with the possible exception of John Edwards, do not understand.

It’s more than just a little exasperating the way that many Americans are only now paying attention to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, only considering his candidacy when it became popular to do so. However, we here at Irregular Times have been following Barack Obama for years now.

I won’t speak for the other writers here, but here’s what I have concluded about Barack Obama: I think that he understands the historical moment in a way that the other candidates do not. I also think that, often, Barack Obama loses sight of that understanding. Sometimes, it’s quite clear that Barack Obama becomes distracted by the political moment, and forgets the significance of the historical moment. It’s then that he loses track, and betrays the promise of hope and change. Look around here at Irregular Times, and you’ll find my strong objections at the times when he has lost track in the past.

However, I am willing to cast my vote for Barack Obama. It’s not because I think that he’s a hero. It’s not that I think he will change things for us, or give us hope.

In fact, if Barack Obama could change things for us, or give us hope, I think he’d be the wrong choice. Democracy is not something that anyone can do for us.

Rather, I am willing to cast my vote for Barack Obama because I believe that he’s seen and comprehended an authentic vision of hope and change for America. Because of that, I believe that he’ll be more likely to listen to the side of America that is willing to say that we can do better, and that we no longer need to be afraid.

Barack Obama may, like many successful politicians, become arrogant. It then becomes our duty to speak loudly against his arrogance. In fact, even as Barack Obama surges toward the Democratic nomination, it is our duty to remind voters of Obama’s shortcomings, as well as his assets.

In doing so, if he is willing to listen, we will help Barack Obama gain political strength, by keeping him close to the course of his motivating vision.

If I’m wrong, and Obama is not willing to listen, then he isn’t worthy of the presidency, and our criticism will have the merit of preventing his corrupted influence on the government.

I’ve said that I am willing to cast a vote for Barack Obama, but I am not committed to doing so. In America, we should not so much elect presidents as hold them on a leash.

That goes for Barack Obama as much as anyone else.

Ron Paul has personal religious beliefs that lead him to the theological conclusion that human rights begin in complete form from the moment that an egg is fertilized - even before the fertilized egg implants itself in the womb. The idea of a fertilized egg floating around in a fallopian tube being a full person is odd enough, but Ron Paul has odder ideas too, and seeks to spread those ideas using the power of government.

For example, Ron Paul has on multiple occasions introduced legislation to forbid any federal program from spending any money on family planning programs. The reason? Ron Paul seems to have something against contraception. If a married couple has limited resources and can’t afford to provide for additional children, or if a single person doesn’t want to make a child without a stable family situation, contraception is a responsible choice. However, though the government will lose quite a large amount of money providing services to assist families in raising children, Ron Paul is opposed to helping families make the relatively unexpensive choice of when to start pregnancy and have children.

Abortion is not the issue. The legislation that has been introduced by Ron Paul forbids all family planning services, not just family planning services related to abortion.

Whatever Ron Paul has against families using contraception on his own personal basis, it is uncompassionate, socially unwise, and economically unsound for him to work to restrict American families’ efforts to make responsible choices about when to expand their families.

(Source: Library of Congress)

Right wingers like to talk about traditions, assuming that what has been traditional must support what they want to do. Sadly, they have forgotten the American tradition of preserving liberty in spite of all threats. After our nation was attacked for one morning of one day, the right wing couldn’t move fast enough to wreck America’s freedoms in the name of security, starting with the Patriot Act and moving quickly on from there until the Bill of Rights was full of holes wide enough for any tyrant to glide through with ease.

One of America’s true patriots, Sam Adams, had harsh words for that kind of cowardice: “The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards.”

Sam Adams didn’t say that the liberties of our country, based on our Constitution, are worth defending unless we get scared, or unless a hazard seems particularly troublesome. He said that the liberties of our country are worth defending against all hazards.

What part of all hazards does the right wing not understand? It’s progressives who truly honor the American tradition of liberty. Right wingers disrespect the tradition with their trembling Homeland Security.

The United States imports 13 percent of its food, but the Food and Drug Administration does not even inspect one percent of that imported food in order to ensure that it is safe for consumption. The Republican response to this problem: Inspect even less food. Republican-appointed FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach has proposed cutting the number of FDA field labs in half.

(Source: Sierra Magazine, November-December 2007)

Progressives aim high, even as they realize that their ideals may never be realized. We don’t believe that one day’s failures justify an abandonment of our efforts to succeed in creating a better society. We agree with the words of Aldo Leopold, who urged the consistent striving for improvement even in the face of corruption and defeat. Leopold wrote, “We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive.”

In these times, when the right wing forces of violence, exploitation and authoritarianism are destroying so much of the progressive foundation of the United States of America, it is tempting to conclude that all is lost, that we have been defeated, and there is no more use in trying to resist. The truth is that we will never achieve perfection, but, as Aldo Leopold reminds us, we can move toward a society that is more perfect.

We can progress. To be a progressive is not to engage in an all-or-nothing struggle for utopia. True progressives do not give up when they meet powerful opposition. Being a progressive is about working, as much as we can, to make things better. We know that reliable progress comes from persistence.

(Source: Round River, Aldo Leopold)

I have decided to come unhinged. Over the last few years, as things have gotten worse and worse, I have become increasingly serious, and dedicated to getting the word out.

I’ve watched as more and more Americans just tune out. The more outrageous the abuses of our government get, the less they pay attention. The more blatant Bush’s crimes have become, they less they care. The more bizarre the distortion of our democracy becomes, the more they pretend that nothing has changed.

I’d say that it seems that Americans are in training for living under totalitarian rule… except that tonight, I’m too tired to say that.

My sense of normalcy has been shredded by the way that most Americans shrug off what it has meant to be an American, and accept a monstrous replacement. The new normal is insane, and so tonight, I am insane.

I feel that my efforts to communicate warnings to other Americans have been about as effective as the voice of a microscopic organism. So, in this video, I speak in my true voice for these irregular times: The voice of Herman, the Activist Protozoan, who clamors in vain in the effort to convince multicellular organism to take action. That’s about as effectual as I’ve been, in my little bitty marginal pool of slime.

Through the Military Commissions Act, right wing Democrats and Republicans in Congress have helped George W. Bush revoke the writ of habeas corpus, which requires governments to provide specific information about the reason that prisoners are being held. Habeas corpus is an essential tool in the prevention of arbitrary imprisonment.

What would America’s founding fathers think of the Military Commission Act’s removal of this protection? Alexander Hamilton certainly wouldn’t have approved of it. In the Federalist Papers, Hamilton wrote that “arbitrary imprisonments have been in all ages the favourite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.”

Hint to Young Republicans: Tyranny is a bad thing.

George W. Bush and his Republican followers love to talk about the value of good hard work. They hate people just sitting around unemployed, they say. Their message to Americans having hard times is: Get a job!

It’s an odd thing, then, that Republicans actually oppose programs that help people get work. In the federal budget the Republicans have proposed for 2008, the funding for vocational and technical education programs is cut in half.

Those programs help give students the skills that will make them valuable to employers, keeping the economy strong. The programs encourage and enable people to get a job, just like Republicans say everybody ought to.

Republicans may talk about the value of hard work, but they don’t back up their talk with action. They show the low regard they have for working people in the funding cuts they hurl at the pro-work programs in the federal budget.

I could have a big, long wish list for the Democrats in Congress, and fill up a screen here with it, no problem. However, if I had to prioritize my concerns about the inaction of Congress, I could quickly list them as follows:

1. I want my freedom back
2. I want the environmental crisis to be confronted with without further delay
3. I want an end to war

It’s with that focus that I created this video, All I Want From Congress is My Freedom Back. It’s part of my ongoing experimentation with Anime Studio 5, as I slowly work out the glitches of the software, and explore what it’s able and not able to do.

Discovery with this project: With a distorted voice, the lip synching feature doesn’t work well at all. You’ll see that clearly, if you watch the video. I screened out the music for purposes of lip synching, so I know that’s not the problem.

Ordinarily, I’m not super fond of Senator Joseph Biden. Biden tends to bluster, and to tilt toward the right. However, I could help but applaud when I heard Joe Biden say the following words at last night’s Democratic presidential debate in Dartmouth, New Hampshire:

“Rudy Giuliani doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about. He’s the most uninformed person in American foreign policy now running for President.”

Blast, Biden! Blast!

Monster storms have nothing on scantily clad women.

I’m trapped in the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport because we’re under a tornado warning. Apparently, someone has seen a tornado moving very close by, and we have just been ordered away from all windows and doors. The airport emergency plan has been activated

Nonetheless, across the hall from me, at the Northshore News stand, a man has just bought an issue of Maxim magazine, which this month features a woman named Erica Durance wearing an outfit made out of black, translucent material.

T&A beats a twister. Smackdown.

A wave rising up
establishes its descent
even as it swells.

I’m putting this short video up tonight so that people can hear for themselves how Tucker Carlson bragged about slamming a gay man’s head against the wall. It includes the audio of Tucker Carlson speaking.

This morning, my six year-old son walked up to me with a clever kind of smile and asked, “Dad, have you had your coffee yet, and if you did, did it taste different this time?”

In my writing about the upcoming Raw Spirit Festival, which will be attended by Dennis Kucinich and at which Elizabeth is giving a keynote speech, I’ve come across some strange and shady characters, hucksters who go even further than selling snake oil. Some, like Jasmuheen, make money by convincing people that they don’t need to eat food in order to get nutrition.

One thing that Jasmuheen has in common with a lot of the speakers at Raw Spirit Festival is that she doesn’t use her real name. She insists upon being called Jasmuheen, even though her real name is Ellen Greve. I suppose that having someone named Ellen tell you that you can live on sunlight and prana energy is deemed less credible than if someone named Jasmuheen says the same thing.

An unusual number of people involved in Raw Spirit Festival are using aliases instead of their real names. Count the founder of the festival as among these. She calls herself Happy Oasis.

One of the name changers of Raw Spirit is Jameth Sheridan, who writes on his Health Force web site in an attempt to explain why he changed his name. He says he wanted to change his last name so that he could share a family name with his wife without forcing her into the patrilineal system of taking the last name he was born with. But why choose the name Sheridan? That’s not at all clear. “After much consideration, the name that felt the most right was Sheridan. This name has personal meaning for both of us,” says Jameth, ambiguously.

What about Jameth? Well, that’s almost his given name. Jameth was born with the name James, and “did call himself “James” briefly; a fine name indeed, but it did not fit for him. Thus, the name “Jameth” was born.”

I’m confused by this half-explanation. Why would the name Jameth fit this man better than the name James? Is it just that Jameth wanted to seem a bit more exotic?

What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but if we renamed roses “celestial sky love blossoms”, most of us couldn’t bring ourselves to talk about it without feeling silly.

Why have so many people involved in Raw Spirit Festival chosen to change their names or use pseudonyms for the sake of the business related to Raw Spirit? There isn’t anything necessarily sinister about a pseudonym. Ann Landers was not the real name of the advice columnist. Still, I’m left wondering what brings so many people with cooked names to a Raw Spirit conference. I’m assuming that Elizabeth Kucinich will be speaking under her legal name, and not as Redwood Aura.

This morning, I read the news of the death of a rare ocelot, and was determined to find out more. Searching for imformation, I came across an ocelot-dedicated page at a site called Change.org.

Change.org is an activist site that is based on the idea of social networking, but around serious causes instead of forms of entertainment like music and television. The idea is that people interested in an issue come together on a page at Change.org and suggest to each other things that can be done to help on the issue. Politicians and nonprofit organizations can be referred to from each issues page, encouraging members to become active, not just curious or informed.

That’s a great idea, and on some issues, it seems to be working. When it comes to the ocelot, however, interest does not seem to have translated into action. There are four members of the Save The Ocelot group on Change.org. Yet, not one of those members has taken action through the Change.org site, or made a donation, or suggested an interested politician, or added a photograph or video, or even started a discussion. The members just seem to have joined the group, and left it at that.

It’s interesting to me that this inaction would happen on a social network dedicated to change through action. The inaction on the ocelot reveals a social barrier to action: People seem more willing to take action on a subject when other people are taking action already. Of course, if everyone waits for someone else to do something on the subject, then nobody ever will.

Activism needs icebreakers, people willing to be the first ones to take action, while others stand back and look at eachother sheepishly.

I encourage Irregular Times readers to become those activist icebreakers. Of course, it would be just perpetuating the problem of social hesitancy in activism if I just asked other people to become icebreakers without doing it myself.

So, this morning, I’m going to be the icebreaker of icebreakers. I’m going to go on over to Change.org and join up, and become a member of the Save The Ocelot group and not leave it at that. I’m going to start something over there.

Maybe someone else will pick up on that action and join along. Maybe I’ll just be the equivalent of the only person dancing at a party.

There are bigger stakes than just getting a groove on, though. The extinction of a species is a serious enough issue for me to give it a shot.

When it comes to freedom, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul seems to think that it all comes down to one thing: Money. He believes that property rights are the foundation of all rights. In other words, Ron Paul believes that, if a person doesn’t own anything, they don’t have any rights.

For this reason, Ron Paul proposes giving special tax breaks to wealthy estates. Paul writes,

“If you truly own your property, you have the right to dispose of it any way you wish. You can sell it, give it away, or direct who will receive it when you die. This control is the essence of property rights. If you can’t control what happens to your property, you don’t really own it. That’s why the estate tax is so destructive”

The problem with Ron Paul’s defense of tax breaks for wealthy estates is that there is no such thing as a legal right for people to spend money however they wish. The Constitution does not contain the phrase “property rights”, and does not establish the concept of general property rights in any language at all. People do not have the right to dispose of their money in any way that they wish. They cannot buy nuclear weapons, for example. They also do not have the right to dispose of hazardous materials they own by just dumping them in the nearest river. In the United States, people may have property, but they also have a responsibility to other people.

That’s why we have government, and it’s why the government has the constitutionally-established right to gather taxes in order to sustain itself. Government is the collective creation of all citizens, through democratic participation and through the contribution of money. Government mitigates between individual desires and the needs of society as a whole, protecting individuals from each other.

Ron Paul’s proposal to abolish estate taxes encourages selfish irresponsibility. Money is not, after all, just property. Money is an embodiment of what people can expect from their government, and from each other. People may own what they buy with money, but society as a whole is what makes money valuable.

What Ron Paul forgets when he defends abolishing estate taxes is that the taxes are not paid by the people who die and leave their estates to their inheritors. Estate taxes are paid by the inheritors. Wealthy people have the right to accumulate massive estates, and to direct certain people to inherit those estates, but once the inheritance takes place, they’re dead, and they don’t get to direct their money as if they’re alive. The dead do lose control of their property. That’s a natural part of death, and there’s nothing Ron Paul and his libertarian supporters can do to stop that.

Inheritance is a form of income, just like wages in compensation for work, and it ought to be treated in the same way. It is unjust to make people who work for their money pay income taxes on that money, while giving people who inherit their money a special loophole that allows them to keep all of their income.

Estate taxes are necessary because the accumulation of the power of property is destructive to society as a whole. If people like Paris Hilton, who gain substantial property just through their luck of being the children of extremely wealthy families, do not have to pay their share to support the government, then non-wealthy citizens have to give a larger share of their own property to keep the government functioning.

(Source: Sierra Times, June 14, 2006)

There’s just one qualification, unless you count being a Washington D.C. corporate lobbyist or Hollywood actor a qualification, that Fred Thompson has for becoming President of the United States. There’s the one and a half terms in office he spent as a senator.

What kind of senator was Fred Thompson? I decided to find out by taking a look at the height of his Senate career, five years after entering the Senate, and four years before he decided to quit serving the public and go back to being a corporate lobbyist and an actor on television. This is the time when Senator Fred Thompson ought to look the best. It’s the time when we ought to see Fred Thompson at work on the political issues that are at the core of his career.

So, I went back and took a look at the issues that Fred Thompson actually had listed on his web site back in his web site. These are the issues that Senator Thompson thought were the most important at the time:

Kosovo
Independent Counsel Reauthorization
Tennessee Valley Authority
Campaign Finance Investigation
Social Security
Federalism Enforcement Act
Tennessee Preservation
Regulatory Reform
Term Limits
Biennial Budget
Fort Campbell
Vacancies Reform Act
Campaign Finance Reform
Year 2000 Computer Problem
Govt. Waste, Fraud & Abuse
Oak Ridge
Tennessee Tourism & Travel
Satellite & Missile Technology
Computer Security
Great Smoky Mountains

The biggest impression is that most of these aren’t really the issues that were at the heart of what America had to deal with back in the 1990s, and they’re certainly not at the core of what America is dealing with today. These are mostly second tier issues without much of a vision to unite them.

The war in Kosovo was an important issue at the time. No arguments against that. But it was a war, for goodness sakes. What kind of senator wouldn’t have an issue statement on that?

Campaign finance reform, I will grant, is also an important issue, as is government fraud, waste and abuse. These are perennial problems, however, that require maintenance. They don’t reflect any great underlying vision or leadership.

But the rest of the issues? Middling, unremarkable, mush. A huge number of the issues that Fred Thompson identified are really just pork barrel for his political supporters in Tennessee. For goodness sakes, it seems that Senator Thompson even fell for the whole Y2K hoax.

Attention to these sorts of issues is necessary for the functioning of the government, but Fred Thompson’s focus on them does not reflect a mind that is capable of leadership at the Presidential level.

From his work in the Senate, as reflected in the issues that he actually worked on, Fred Thompson seems like the sort of person who functions best not working in top leadership, but at two or three levels down, in mid-management. Fred Thompson is the kind of guy you want attending committee meetings, hashing out the nitty gritty details, plodding along at the daily grind.

Fred Thompson is just not presidential material. Maybe, if a Republican were to win the White House, he could be Secretary of Transportation, or something like that. Maybe.

Fred Thompson’s record in the Senate was just plain unremarkable. That suggests the following motto for the Fred Thompson for President campaign: Fred Thompson - Ho Hum 2008.

If you believe in supernatural omens, look to Nepal for disaster. A statue in the village of Dolakha has got moisture on it.

Nepalese Hindus believe that when the idol of Bhimeshwor has moisture on it, very bad things happen. They believe that the statue is sweating. According to Shanta Krishna Shrestha, who manages the temple that houses the statue, a sweaty Bhimeshwor statue “denotes something like major political change or a natural calamity”.

How convenient for Shanta Krishna Shrestha, whose employment depends on panicky people making donations to the temple, that the statue is sweating. She has some of the same divine fortune that Ram Bomjon had when he performed his tricky little miracle (no one allowed to inspect the amazing fasting boy or see him after dark, please!).

So, how can we test the claim that the sweaty statue of Dolakha is an omen of major political or natural disaster to occur in Nepal? Well, we could wait and see if any major political or natural disaster takes place soon, but what would that prove? It could just be a coincidence. After all, political and natural disasters take place all the time.

Well, at least if a natural or political disaster does not take place, that proves that the sweaty statue omen cult is a fraud, right? Not absolutely. You see, those who believe in the power of moisture on the statue to foretell a dark future also believe that if a ritual known as the Kshyama Puja is performed, then the foretold disaster can be diverted.

It just so happens that the Kshyama Puja has been performed, with the results sent for the Prime Minister of Nepal to inspect. So, if no great political change or natural catastrophe takes place, believers can say that it is because the god has been appeased.

The system belief in the sweat omen of Bhimeshwor is carefully designed to evade every attempt of proof or disproof. That in itself is cause for suspicion.

A side note about Bhimeshwor: It seems that Bhimeshwor, also known as Bhimsen, is linked to Bhima, the strongman of the Pandava brothers, who is one of the main characters of the Mahabharata, of which the Baghavad-Gita is a part. A statue of Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas, is present in the sweaty temple of Dolakha as well.

I was just looking at an article on the web site of the New York Daily News just a couple minutes ago, when a popup advertisement for Orbitz got in the way of my reading. After a second or two, the Orbitz ad retreated behind other windows, waiting for me to find it and read it again later.

Two hits for the price of one. How clever.

As I was deleting the Orbitz popup ad off my screen, I realized that for quite some time now, I’d stopped thinking of Orbitz as a company through which I can get special deals on travel. I had honestly forgotten that Orbitz had anything to do with travel.

All I think of these days when it comes to Orbitz is its annoying popup advertisements, the ones that interfere with where I really want to go online. Consider the brand implications of that: Orbitz has become a brand of popup ads. Orbitz has become a brand of pestering and interference.

In short, the Orbitz brand has become aligned with frustration and delay. Note to Orbitz marketing team: For a travel company, that might not be a good idea.

Right wingers, loathe to accept the idea that people will need to exercise self-restraint in order to continue to thrive on Planet Earth, are lashing out at the science of climate change much as many people once rejected the idea that the Earth is round. At the 60 Minutes site on Yahoo, one such person comments,

“There is no global warming and sea levels are not rising. This is coming from the communist Left, which is incompetent at science and hates technology. Yes that’s what has always been behind 60 Minutes. They won’t let you hear the other side. Do not worry. Global warming is not proven by localized events.”

The fact is that global warming is already causing sufficient increases in sea level to cause localized events around the world. Coastal communities in the south of England, for example are already being forced to make decisions about which areas will receive sea wall protection, and which areas will be allowed to flood. Michael Byrnes at Reuters writes that local adaptation to rising sea levels is “already happening in the south of England, where local councils and governments could not afford to protect all areas from sea water erosion as land continued to sink.”

There is a massive amount of evidence of the reality of global warming. There is no evidence, however, of international Communist plot involving 60 Minutes to trick people into accepting the idea of global warming.

Some people ask what the liberal vision for America is. I have a simple image for them to consider: Replacing weapons of mass destruction with wild animals.

That’s what’s happening in Colorado, at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wildlife Refuge. Where there once was a factory at which the United States government manufactured chemical weapons, a small herd of bison has been released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. There, they will help to restore the land to something close to its former productivity.

We don’t need weapons of mass destruction. We do need our land to be rich and productive. The liberal way is to restore America’s lands and provide refuge for free and wild creatures instead of crafting poisons to kill in new, gruesome ways.

It isn’t just America’s prairies that can benefit from this healing approach favored by liberals. All America, city and countryside alike, is in need of rejuvenation. Let’s turn toward a program of renewal in 2008, and vote in a liberal candidate for President.

For what seems like years, NPR has been broadcasting a series of commentaries entitled This I Believe. It’s supposed to be an opportunity for people to write about, and then read on air, what they believe.

The trouble with This I Believe is that the people who contribute commentaries for the series affect a writerly indirectness that manages to sound contrived and vague at the same time.

This morning, for example, the This I Believe segment was about the writer’s widowed mother, who learned to pump gas, and her friend, who sat waiting for her dead husband to drive the car for a few minutes before driving herself, and the writer herself, who proudly declares that she knows how to pump gas because she didn’t get married until after she turned 40 - as if women who get married in their 20s don’t pump their own gas.

The point was… uh… I have no idea what the point was. I don’t know what the writer really believes, and I don’t think that the writer does either. The whole thing was memoirish, skirting towards suggestions of issues, and then racing away from them just as fast.

This I Believe feels like a self-absorbed pose. It might as well be entitled This I Like To Think About Myself.

I’m going to start my own series, I think, entitled, This Makes Me Want To Turn Off NPR

I wish I could say that I heard the news this morning with disbelief. Sadly, it’s become all too believable.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives have come up with a plan to end the war a year and a half from now.

Look, this plan is better than not ending the war at all, but why have it end a year and a half from now? I mean, if the Iraq War needs to be ended because it isn’t working now, what good will it do to have the war go on for another year and a half? What possible good could be accomplished from that?

Nothing good for the soldiers trapped over there. Nothing good for Iraq.

Something very good for the Democrats. See, the deadline to have American soldiers out of Iraq would be September 2008. Think hard now. What else is happening in the autumn of 2008?

That’s right: The elections. It’s not just the presidential election time. It’s also time for congressional elections.

So, the last American soldiers would leave Iraq just in time for Democrats to get credit for ending the war, but not with enough time for the Democrats to be blamed if things go to hell in a handbasket as a result.

This plan is an example of political maneuvering of the worst kind.

I want the war to end, just like most Americans do. I do not want the war to be stretched out a year and a half more by the Democrats for the sake of political gain.

Nancy Pelosi ought to be ashamed of herself.

A few days ago, trying to explain how Unity08 could have a big, expensive poll conducted even though such an expenditure was never reported to the IRS, Unity08’s Chief Operating Officer Anya T. Harris told Irregular Times that the poll was paid for by some of Unity08’s “grassroots advocacy partners”.

Oh, really? Who exactly are these grassroots advocacy partners? Anya T. Harris didn’t say. Why wouldn’t she name them?

Furthermore, why won’t Unity08 tell anyone who these mysterious organizations it has partnered with are? Not a single place on its web site does Unity08 tell its members about these grassroots advocacy partners, or even about any advocacy partners.

The mention by Anya T. Harris of these grassroots advocacy partners a few days ago here on Irregular Times is the first mention of them on the record anywhere.

Why didn’t Unity08 tell its members that Unity08 is working with these organizations?

Also, just what kind of grassroots organization can afford to pay for an expensive national poll? Are these organizations really grassroots, or is that just what Anya T. Harris is saying.

For all we know, the grassroots advocacy partners of Unity08 might be extremist right wing groups like Focus on the Family, or corporate advocacy group like the American Enterprise Institute.

Unity08 member says he wants politicians to “be a role model, not a puppet for big Business and special Interest Groups”. Yet, here Unity08 is, working hand in glove with unnamed special interest groups. That’s what a grassroots advocacy partner really is, after all.

Name names, Unity08. Who paid for that survey? Which organizations is Unity08 working with as grassroots advocacy partners?

Unity 08 is an organization that promises to overcome the nasty tone of partisan bickering in Washington D.C. by holding online elections to annoint a presidential candidate and vice-presidential candidate. Today, Unity 08 proved itself incapable of both overcoming the nasty tone of political bickering and of maintaining the most basic standards of online security.

Without realizing that its online chat was already visible to the public, Unity 08 staff members started insulting a grassroots member of Unity 08, calling that member a “jackass”, a “menace”, and a “M______ F_______”. Hint to the innocent: Unity 08 staff was calling that grassroots activist a mother fucker.

That grassroots member of Unity 08 was mighty offended that the staff of Unity 08 was insulting him in this way, and thought that other Unity 08 members would want to know the extreme disrespect that Unity 08 staff has for the grassroots activists it claims to speak for. So, that member of Unity 08 posted the transcript of the insults from the Unity 08 staff on the group’s discussion board. How did the Unity 08 staff respond? They deleted the transcript, on the web site, and on the discussion board too.

Then, Unity 08 staff member Shane Kinkennon tried to convince everyone that when he referred to the grassroots Unity 08 activist as a “jackass”, what he really meant to say is that the activist was “appreciated.” That’s what political insiders like the people who control Unity 08 call “spin”.

Why did the Unity 08 staff attack this grassroots member of their own organization? Because that member dared to ask questions about what appears to be some very unusual financial shenanigans going on over at Unity 08.

Insulting grassroots activists. Censoring political expression. Deleting embarassing information to cover up misbehavior. Running sloppy, botched online political operations. Crass political spin.

Why would anyone trust Unity 08 with a presidential election?

Someone happened by the Irregular Times web site tonight and left a message about something called Project Hamad. The project, in short, exists in order to bring attention to the plight of a man named Adel Hamad, a prisoner in the America gulag at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The federal government says that Adel Hamad is a terrorist.

I say that Adel Hamad is innocent.

How can I say that Adel Hamad is innocent? Well, how can the federal government of the United States of America declare that Adel Hamad is a terrorist?

The simple truth that Americans have forgotten is that I have solid legal standing to say that Adel Hamad is innocent, and the U.S. federal government has no legal standing to say that Adel Hamad is guilty of terrorism.

The simple truth that Americans have forgotten is that our legal system is based upon the presumption of innocence. The Supreme Court has ruled consistently, in the past, that it is a fundamental aspect of America law that a person accused of a crime is considered innocent until that person is proven to be guilty.

The federal government has not proven that Adel Hamad is guilty. The government has not brought any evidence against Adel Hamad before the public. The government has not put Adel Hamad on trial. The government has not even charged Adel Hamad with a crime. The government has not given anyone any reason to believe that Adel Hamad is guilty of anything.

So, I say that Adel Hamad is innnocent. I say that the government of the United States of America is imprisoning an innocent man. I will continue to say this, until I am proven wrong, until Adel Hamad is proven guilty. And so, I am joining Project Hamad.

Feel squeamish about that? Why? Because the name of the organization is Project Hamad? Because you think that makes the group sound like it’s some kind of terrorist front organization? Well, maybe it is, but then again, maybe Amway is a terrorist front organization. We can speculate on and on about who might be secretly coordinating with terrorist groups. The people at the Department of Homeland Security would probably love us to do that. But it’s paranoid to do so.

Besides, what reason do you have to think that Project Hamad is a terrorist group, other than the name Hamad in the title. It’s not a European name, that’s for sure, but what difference does that make? Are we now supposed to assume that all people of non-European descent are likely terrorists? That’s the mindset of people who suspect Barack Obama because his last name sounds like Osama and his middle name is Hussein. I won’t engage in that kind of ethnic hatred.

Here’s all that joining Project Hamad requires: You have to agree to the following statement:

“I believe people detained by the U.S. government have the right to:
— know the charges against them
— have access to a lawyer
— be able to have the merits of their case reviewed by a federally appointed judge”

The federal government of the United States of America has declared that people do not have these rights. Congress has assented to that declaration by passing the Military Commissions Act. Now, you have to decide whether you will be complicit.

Will you join Project Hamad, or are you too afraid to do so? Do you agree that these rights no longer exist?

As for myself, once more, I say that Adel Hamad is innocent.

Why do I insist on saying this? Because it’s the American way, that’s why.

If you’re having a faith-based campaign for President, it should be no problem to fail miserably as governor of a large state and yet continue to harbor presidential aspirations. This is the path charted by George Pataki, who leaves Albany this year as one of the most unpopular governors in New York State history. Pataki is so unpopular that he didn’t even try to run for re-election this year. What’s a Pataki to do? Run for President, of course!

Pataki is one unsavory character. In his attempts to gain right wing support for a campaign for President in 2008, Pataki took many radical steps, such as vetoing legislation that would have improved access to the morning after pill as a form of emergency contraception. Pataki claimed that if he didn’t veto the legislation, teenagers across New York State might come to harm. To harm from what? Harm from not getting pregnant while still in high school? The veto was given after pressure from right wing religious groups, whom Pataki apparently regards as part of his political base.

Now it appears that Pataki’s long political maneuvering was all for naught. The Republican base doesn’t seem interested in supporting Pataki’s campaign for President anyway. Apparently, just being from New York State is reason enough not to get Republican support.

Jeff Kramer of the Syracuse Post Standard lampoons George Pataki’s rapidly sinking presidential fortunes of the Pataki for President idea in an article entitled, Support for Pataki in Iowa up in smoke. The new Republican Party chairman in New York State, Joseph Mondello, refuses to support the Pataki for President campaign.

On the blogfront, Hoffman’s Hearsay advises Pataki, “Don’t bother man, just ride off into the sunset like a good boy.” The Rock Town Blog comments, “Rumors of New York State Governor George Pataki’s larger ambitions are nothing new and have swirled for years. The real news would be if he actually had a chance.”

From the way it’s looking so far, I’d guess that George Pataki will drop out of the presidential race before he even gets the chance to throw his hat in. However, self-delusion has always been one of Pataki’s dominant personality traints, so keep an eye out for Pataki, just in case.

There’s a reason that I’m not a politician. I’m not too fond of saying what people want to hear at the expense of saying what needs to be said.

Tonight, here’s what needs to be said: I trust the writers of the Internet more than I trust the readers of the Internet.

Technorati’s data on the blogs support this prejudice of mine. Tonight, just hours after President Bush announced that he has personally approved activities that are, in any traditional interpretation of the meaning of the law in America, illegal, what are the Internet’s readers searching for the most? They’re searching for information about Suri, Tom Cruise’s daughter that he had with Katie Holmes. They’re searching for anything having to deal with Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter who was killed by a stingray barb to the chest a few days ago.

They are NOT searching for anything having to do with the secret prisoner of war camps for torture that President Bush now admits he authorized.

What are the key terms that the Internet’s writers are writing about? According to Technorati, among the top terms are Bush, Iran and Iraq.

This isn’t just a one-day pattern. Time and time again, the people who write the content of the Internet show that, on the whole, they are willing to write about the serious issues of the day. Time and time again, the people who read what’s on the Internet show that, on the whole, they aren’t interested in the serious issues of the day. They’d rather read about celebrities, sex scandals and gossip.

Consequently, I have a lot more respect for people who write for the Internet, as a group, than I do for people who merely read online, as a group. If this makes you, as a reader, angry, so be it. I’m not writing this to make you happy. If you want happy talk, look elsewhere.

I’m writing this in order to serve notice to online readers that they ought to sit back and reflect on their priorities. Yeah, I’m getting preachy. Yes, I’m telling you what you ought to do. This is not a time when the American nation is going to be served by people sitting back and sipping pepppermint tea, using I statements and seeking consensus with the people who our driving our country into the ditch. This is the time to stand up and shout, “Damn it, this has gone too far, and I’m not going to sit back quietly and let it happen any longer!

Disagree with me? Go on. Prove me wrong. Don’t be a reader. Be a writer. Sign up on the link on this page to become a writer here on the Irregular Diaries. Don’t be a namby pamby wallflower. Speak your mind!

Today, US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that President George W. Bush violated the Constitution and broke the law when he set up and executed the program to spy on Americans’ telephone calls without a search warrant or the legally required approval of a FISA court.

I’m reading through her ruling to see exactly what she has to say on the case. It’s great reading, in spots, reminding us about what makes this case so important.

Judge Diggs Taylor chose a particular quotation from, written by Justice Earl Warren, in the case U.S. v. Robel in 1967, to conclude her ruling. In doing so, she is sending a clear message to the citizens of the United States of America. Will we listen?

“Implicit in the term ‘national defense’ is the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this Nation apart. . . . It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of . . . those liberties . . . which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.”

Yesterday, I wrote about the online virtual world of Second Life. I was interested in seeing if there is any potential at all for the development of Second Life as an arena for political activism. Could you set up a virtual environment within which political activists could meet and discuss? Would it be worth it to set up virtual billboards with political messages, or to set up a virtual shop where people could buy virtual t-shirts with virtual slogans for real life presidential candidates?

This morning, I have to say no. It’s nifty for about 30 minutes to go flying through this virtual world, looking at virtual spaceships and virtual houses with virtual statues, but after awhile, it begins to seem pointless. Real people spend real money to buy fake land in this virtual world. They pay real money rent on that land, and spend real time building houses made of nothing but pixels. They flit about from place to place, having conversations with other people they’ve never met, about where to go in that virtual world to get more virtual things. Hour after hour, it goes on.

And meanwhile, here in the real world, the most powerful person on Earth, the President of the United States, has been revealed to have used his power to block an investigation into his own criminal activity.

In any normal time, such an act would result in a political firestorm sure to end the presidency. But, these are not ordinary times. Tired of being outraged, Americans have mostly just stopped paying attention. When another Bush crime, another Bush abuse of power is revealed, Americans are now so used to having a Creep In Chief that they merely shrug their shoulders, say “I thought as much,” and move on.

Americans don’t want to be angry. They don’t want to be upset. So, they tune out. They may not all log into Second Life, but they enter their own little virtual worlds nonetheless, going about their business as if nothing is happening, shopping, watching funny TV shows, going to the movies, and above all else, not reading the newspaper. Americans are tripped out on denial. Timothy Leary, LSD has nothing on the the GOP.

I am frightened of what I will see today in reaction to this new example of President Bush’s abuse of power, the position he takes that he is above the law. I’m afraid that I won’t see much.

We’ll go on hearing about the fake billboards to get people to visit the That Girl Emily blog. We’ll discuss about how Kid Rock and Pamela Anderson are going to get married. We’ll get more news about the right wing outrage that President Bush used the word “shit”. We’ll be transfixed by the questions about whether Britney Spears and Kevin Federline are on the verge of getting a divorce or not. We’ll eagerly await Ted Danson’s new sitcom.

Faced with this new low, this new open defiance of the law by our own president, I am afraid that Americans will simply choose to go to the beach.

Republican Newt Gingrich, seeking to promote his visibility as a presidential candidate in 2008, today declared that Americans should meet the militancy of Islamic radicals in kind, with American militancy. “We need to have the militancy,” Gingrich said.

Militancy is the noun that describes the state referred to by the adjective “militant”. Militant is defined by the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language as “Fighting or warring” or “Having a combative character; aggressive”.

No, America does not need militancy. We do not need to encourage American militants to fight on our behalf.

What we need, Mr. Gingrich, is peace.

This morning, I started exploring another corner of the world of social networking online. Much as MySpace tries to get people together by encouraging them to talk about music they like, Shadows tries to help people build connections by encouraging them to talk about the web sites they like. It’s a simple format. You sign up, and then just add links, rate the links, apply relevant tage, and write comments about comments about them.

It’s an interesting way to browse the web, though there is a combination of crass self-promotion and lots of adoration of the big players. How many more links to Daily Kos do we need?

I’m finding that there’s a lot of potential space on shadows for people who are interested in forming networks to bring traffic to small and mid-sized progressive sites. So, I’ve set up a shadows account under the name Irregular Progress. I’m eager to see where the linking will lead to from there.

If you’re game, join in.

Pope Benedict XVI, known as El Papa in Spain, recently concluded a visit there, but it seems that he left more negative feelings behind than warm relations. In his first visit to this increasingly secular nation, El Papa quickly dematured into El Bambino, throwing a temper tantrum of the highest magnitude.

When Pope Benedict was informed that Spain’s Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, would not be attending his ritual of Mass, Benedict threw a fit. The Pope said that if he could get Communist leaders Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro to attend Mass, Zapatero surely must attend as well.

It was the equivalent of Kruschev pounding his shoe on the table at the United Nations.

What Pope Benedict seems most angry at is that he and his church have become marginal political players in Spain, which used to be a solidly Catholic nation. Only 18 percent of Spaniards regularly attend Mass or observe Catholic holy days. So, if most of Spain is secular, what right does the Pope have to come barging into the country making demands that the government’s leader submit himself to the Pope’s authority by participating in the Pope’s religious rituals? If the Prime Minister doesn’t want to attend, let him attend to more important business.

It’s not as if Zapatero snubbed the Pope. The Prime Minister met with Benedict XVI in a more appropriate setting.

This brouhaha is yet another indication that this new Pope doesn’t understand the world in which he lives. He seems to be trying to fight battles that the Catholic Church lost long ago. The Pope has no business behaving like an Ayatollah, trying to impose his religious power to interfere with the proper functioning of democratically elected governments.

What would you do with ten thousand dollars?

Ten thousand dollars every year is all that minimum wage workers get

I want you to indulge yourself in a fantasy for a moment. Imagine that you got ten thousand dollars. What would you do with it?

Would you buy a used car? Would you get one of those fancy new big HD flat screen plasma television sets with a DVD player and a year’s worth of digital cable television to watch? Would you take a vacation?

No, you would do none of those things. If you just got ten thousand dollars for an entire year’s worth of work, you wouldn’t have enough money to get any of that stuff.

Welcome to the life of the minimum wage worker. People who work minimum wage jobs full time get just $10,712.00 per year - and that’s only if they don’t take a single day off as a holiday or sick day.

What would you do if you got ten thousand dollars, like they do? You’d struggle just for food and shelter.

Yet, for the ninth year in a row, the United States Senate has refused to raise the minimum wage.

Why? They say it’s bad for business.

Is asking Americans to live on only $10,000 per year good for business?

Senator John Kerry came out quickly with a response last night to George W. Bush’s plan to put the American military into a non-emergency law enforcement role within the United States, along the border with Mexico:

“This is a moment when the far right is horribly wrong and leadership is required to set a course for common sense. We need a comprehensive answer to immigration that includes tightening border security, but putting another burden on the backs of the National Guard troops who are serving their second tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t the right answer. The National Guard which has borne the burden of a broken policy in Iraq shouldn’t have to bear the burden of an incomplete immigration policy. The right answer is to listen to the 9/11 Commission and put the border patrol agents we need right there on the border. It won’t satisfy the right wing, but it’s the right policy.

That’s why I’m introducing a plan to put an additional 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents on the border next year, plus more than100 helicopters and 250 more power boats to secure our borders.

We know the problem and we know the solution. Rather than try and rescue his poll numbers, President Bush can rescue good immigration policy from the right wing that’s exploited it, and he can provide presidential leadership that’s humane, realistic and responsible.”

I’m not sure what to think of John Kerry’s critique and counterproposal. Not militarizing the border is a good idea. Bush’s use of the military within the United States for law enforcement purposes looks frighteningly like a shadow of martial law. But do we really need the additional 1,000 border patrol agents when they’re already having trouble recruiting? After all, there’s not much indication that there are more illegal immigrants now than there have been in recent years. This whole issue seems like an artificial crisis developed just in time for congressional elections this year.

So, what are we to make of John Kerry’s statement?

Yesterday, just a few hours after the news broke that George W. Bush and Michael Hayden have been running a program with the goal to collect information about every single telephone call ever made within the United States, I took a flight up to Toronto, Canada.

As soon as I got through customs, I felt a huge sense of relief that surprised me. I felt that I could relax. I knew that I wasn’t going to be listened to, that my telephone calls were not going to be entered into a database.

Right after that relief came a guilty reaction, and a sadness. I shouldn’t feel relief when taking a trip out of my country. I shouldn’t feel that way about leaving the USA.

It isn’t just America’s reputation in the world that has been damaged by our government’s attacks on liberty. It’s our own sense of pride and dignity.

I feel cleaner now that I’m in Canada on this trip, and that reaction makes me feel dirty.

Irregular Times has been blogging for a few years now, but the web site goes back, way back, before that. In fact, Irregular Times really had its start as an offline zine back in 1995. In the 1990s, you see, Irregular Times had a different name and a different identity: Irregular Jonathan Speaks.

I was Irregular Jonathan, but we had a couple other writers along for the ride back then too. Jim was there, plus a few others we have parted ways from. For a bit, Irregular Jonathan Speaks was also a weekly news talk show on Free Radio Memphis.

Once upon a time, there was a wide-mouthed hippo serving as the logo of Irregular Jonathan Speaks, but before that, there was this blue gecko with a tongue ready for action.

I don’t know if any of our readers from the days of Irregular Jonathan Speaks are still around, but things have changed a lot since then. What’s remained the same is the dedication to the concept of irregularity in all its permutations.

My wife and I just got done wrangling through my family’s tax forms, and I have to say that, on the whole, I feel better for having done it - although I put it off for three months. I hate doing the paperwork, but I really enjoy the feeling of actually paying the taxes. That’s saying a lot for me, because, as a self-employed person, I haven’t gotten a return for years. I usually have to write a pretty big check.

I don’t like where all of that tax money goes to. I don’t like that a lot of my money goes war, or to right wing churches that the Bush White House gives big grants to so that they can tell drug addicts that all they need to do to get better is to accept Jesus as lord and savior.

But, the democratic process is about me at least getting a shot at affecting where my tax money goes to. Think paying taxes is rough in America? Please consider how it would feel paying taxes in a dictatorship, where the government wouldn’t tell you a thing about how it was spent, and wouldn’t give you any input into how it should be spent.

I like the idea of all us citizens coming together and chipping in what we can in order to keep our communities, our regions, and our nation in good running order. Right now, much of America is not in good running order, but we do have the opportunity to make run well - if we care enough to heed the call of the duties citizenship.

If you think that America’s going to work well just if you go to work, pay your taxes, and mind your own business, you’re missing the point. Taxes are only half the dues we citizens must pay in order for our democracy to function. The most important contributions we have to give to America come from our hearts and minds.

Don’t be a chump. Make paying your taxes worth it. You wouldn’t buy a television set and then never bother to turn it on, would you? Neither should you pay taxes and then pay no attention to what your government is really using that tax money for. Make damn sure you’re getting your money’s worth of democracy, liberty, learning and community - and if you don’t think the government’s holding up its part of the bargain in some way, then do something about it.

A democracy is one immense customer service desk, but you’ve got to step up in order to get your due.

Rounding out our Irregular Times series of satirical renditions of the power of pride bumper sticker, I have these two, added to the Irregular Goods shop just today.

Many people have thoroughly documented the many ways in which the Iraq War was justified with lies. People have demanded a more honest approach in the future.

In that spirit, I offer these as a first draft at what honest pro-war bumper stickers might look like.

Power of Torture Bumper Sticker

Power of Lies Bumper Sticker

Do you think that the pro-war bunch will be willing to put these on the backs of their cars and trucks?

Everybody sing together now: Yes, I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m… uh… secure!

This conversation between reporters covering the White House and Scott McClellan was released on October 2, 2003. It details White House spokesman Scott McClellan getting testy about people asking questions about anything other than whether someone in the White House leaked classified documents. McClellan called the accusations that anyone in the White House leaked classified information “unsubstatiated” and a “disservice”.

McClellan whined about people trying to change the subject away from whether anyone in the White House leaked classified information. He said that was “moving the goalposts”. Well, how come Scott McClellan and the White House aren’t standing by those goalposts now?

“Look, we recognize that, certainly, there are people who have made some unsubstantiated accusations of the White House leaking classified information. More recently they have been forced to back away from those unsubstantiated accusations. Now you see what happens here in Washington, D.C. Some have, all of a sudden, decided to move the goalpost and sensationalize this issue for a political — for partisan political gain. We recognize –

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, there are some people that are making unsubstantiated allegations and unsubstantiated rumors about the White House leaking classified information. And some of those people have been forced to back away from that, and then all of a sudden they move the goalpost and focus on another issue that’s not the subject of the investigation. “

Thanks to Frank Mullen for forwarding to us his copy of a letter sent to him by the staff of Barack Obama on behalf of the United States Senator. In this letter, Barack Obama tries to explain why he has defended George W. Bush, and refused to help Senator Russell Feingold advance a resolution of censure.

Obama’s letter boils down to these two points:

1. President Bush broke the law:

“No president should be allowed to knowingly and willing flout our laws, and I believe the President exceeded his authority with his domestic wiretapping program. The justifications offered – that the president possesses inherent presidential authority under Article II, or was granted that authority in the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force — seem to contradict prior precedent and our constitutional design.”

2. I’m not going to do anything about it, even though the Senate has the authority to legally try the President for his crimes, and censure him or remove him from office.

“Ultimately, this debate must be resolved by the courts.”

Senator Obama, I’m going to put this in plain words so that no one can mistake my meaning: You are being a coward.

It is not the place of the courts to decide whether President George W. Bush broke the law. The Constitution of the United States is very clear on this matter. It is the power of the Senate to put the President on trial for high crimes.

But the thing is, Senator Obama, Russ Feingold isn’t even proposing putting George W. Bush on trial. He’s only calling for a censure. A censure doesn’t require a trial, or a finding by the courts. The Senate has the power to censure the President whenver it finds that the President has behaved in a grossly inappropriate manner.

You know this, Senator Obama, but you refuse to act. Shame on you.

Stop being a coward, Senator Obama. Co-sponsor the resolution by Russ Feingold to censure George W. Bush.

Oi. It’s very personal, but when a man is challenged by his wife, what’s he supposed to do? Go put on a pair of bunny slippers and give up?

Heck no. Tonight, my wife has been reading some of what I write on Irregular Times, and she has let me know that she thinks I’m being too crabby.

She wants me to let you know that I don’t know everything, and that I’m not right all the time, and that I don’t have the answer for everything, and that I don’t always know what the truth is.

Why don’t you write that on one of your blogs, smart aleck? she said to me. I’ll bet that will get a couple of comments.

Anyone care to prove her right?

Even irregular husbands get nagged.

Oh, how very banal of me.

Just a quick note to let everyone in the Irregular Times community know… today is the birthday of Hare Trinity, a long-time regular here. Am I right in thinking that this will be your 20th birthday, Hare?

Hope it’s a happy one.

Earlier this morning, I wrote a quick update about my experience so far on MySpace, an online community especially suited to hormonal teenagers, but with some potential for more mature political networking.

I’ve also been trying another online cooperative community to see what kind of potential it might have for enhancing the presence of progressive political causes online. It’s called Squidoo, a name that evokes tentacles stretching and exploring dark corners and crevices - something that the Internet is quite useful for. As it happens, Squidoo is mostly virgin territory when it comes to politics, so I have been able to set up the first and only pages, or lenses as they call them there, on Squidoo dedicated to Russ Feingold’s budding campaign for President in 2008 as well as for the Squidoo lens to serve supporters of Hillary Clinton for President in 2008 as well, though I’m less personally enthusiastic about that prospect.

So far, my experience with Squidoo is positive. Lenses and their modules are easy to set up - though many of the news modules have no options for customization by keywords, and the RSS feed modules need to be supplemented by XML modules as well. There is but one generic module which allows one to write text and html in freeform, but that module seems to have the most potential so far. If I use that module, however, why would I choose to do so on Squidoo?

As with MySpace, my forays into Squidoo will have to be a long-term exploration. In order to fairly judge anything on the Internet, it’s important to use it over a lengthy period of time, to allow things time to develop, for links to be made, and for people to interact. I’ll be reporting back on more of my thoughts on the world of Squidooing in the weeks to come.

As of today, it’s less than one month until Earth Day. So, I’m going to begin a kind of Earth Day advent calendar of sorts, and check back in on environmental issues and campaigns.

Let’s start out with Earth Day itself, which is on April 22. That’s a Saturday, folks, and the weather will be nice in most places around the country. So why not plan now get out on that day and do some practical Earth Day activities. Plant a tree. Replace some of your lawn with an alternative, no mow, planting. Clean up some litter. Take a bike ride. Practice homeland security.

Wait a minute. Practice homeland security?!?

Yeah, that’s right, I said it, but I don’t mean what you think I mean. If the Republicans and right wing Democrats want talk homeland security, fine, let’s talk about homeland security… on our own terms.

Our homeland is the Earth, not just one particular nation. If one part of the Earth gets screwed up, we all pay the consequences these days. So, homeland security isn’t about going to war, or using illegal government programs to spy against Americans. Homeland security is environmental security.

Make the homeland secure. Stop the pollution of our air, soil and water. Make the homeland secure. Stop the destruction of Earth’s habitats. Make the homeland secure. Stop global warming.

On April 22, take your first step in all these homeland security initatives. Protect the homeland. Celebrate Earth Day.

Over the months, as the story of Ram Bomjon has developed, we’ve had a lot of discussion about the phenomenon as it has developed. First, Ram Bomjon was reported as sitting under a tree for months without moving. Then, Ram Bomjon was subjected to investigation. That investigation was thwarted. Then, with renewed scrutiny, Ram Bomjon disappeared. Now, Ram Bomjon has reappeared in the forest to his followers, who shot a video of his talk to them before he disappeared once again.

Throughout the discussion, one theme has returned again: Ram Bomjon’s supporters claim that it doesn’t really matter whether the Ram Bomjon phenomenon is real or not. What matters, they say, is that the idea that Ram Bomjon has supernatural powers is appealing to some people, so we should just accept it without skeptical questioning.

Well, here’s the test of that postion:

Ram Bomjon ate my mother.

He started with her fingers.

Don’t believe me? Well, I said he did. I say I saw him do it.

He ate my mother, using his belly button, using secret meditational techniques.

What, you want to bring investigators to my mother’s home to see if she is still alive? What, you want to examine the contents of Ram Bomjon’s stomach? Why?

Isn’t what I claim good enough for you? Shouldn’t we just abandon all that nasty skepticism, and accept people’s faith without asking rude questions?

Well, I have faith that Ram Bomjon ate my mother, and I think it’s just a shame that so many people close their minds to that possibility.

If they just would try my methods of meditation for ten weeks, they also would realize that Ram Bomjon ate my mother. So, I think it’s unfair for them to prejudge the matter without at least giving my meditational methods a fair chance.

Besides, Ram Bomjon was missing for several days, at the exact same time my mother was eaten. What more proof do you need?

Or, maybe, do you think that it might be a good idea not to accept people’s outlandish claims about supernatural events at face value?

Yesterday, I wrote about the embarassing fawning of Republican John McCain over George W. Bush last weekend, and McCain’s increasingly weird support for the scheme to hand over operations of American ports to a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates. John McCain’s recent actions, I concluded, suggest that he may not be a moderate after all.

Then I took a look at Senator McCain’s broader legislative record, and what I found astonished me. In our legislative scorecard of the US Senate, Senator McCain is shown to have supported progressive legislation only 8 percent of the time, while McCain supported right wing legislation 75 percent of the time. That’s not a moderate record. It’s a record of right wing extremism.

It turns out that we’re not the only ones catching on to the fraud behing the John McCain moderate hype. Over at the Down With Tyranny Blog, there’s a good discussion of the issue of McCain’s false moderation, which is then amended by a comment carrying an op-ed column by Paul Krugman published in the New York Times yesterday, coming to the same conclusion. Krugman calls McCain The Right’s Man.

It’s a coincidence that three separate people came to the same conclusion about John Mccain on the same day, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Just a tiny bit of digging into the substance of John McCain’s political career makes it clear that McCain is every bit as much the right winger that George W. Bush is.

For that reason, we’ve added a new section to our No Republicans for President in 2008 political shop. It’s called, simply, Not John McCain for President in 2008. We’ve just started adding to our selection there this morning, but it’s growing fast, so check back soon for more anti-McCain items.