Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Recently, I was asked: What can I do today, to start to make a difference? What can the average American do to have their voice heard? I have given these questions a lot of thought, because they are questions I ask myself.  My conclusion: There are more average Americans than any other kind of American and as the dominate culture you would think we’d have some say in how our country is governed. 

 I am told: There has always been war, oppression, exploitation and there will always be.

 I have been told this behavior is human nature and we are incapable of escaping it.

 My friends, there are more than six billion people on this planet and I guarantee you more than six billion people have no desire to wage war, murder, rape, maim, oppress, or cause suffering to their fellow human beings.  Most of us want to lead lives of love and spiritual fulfillment and to watch our children grow up healthy and happy. 

 So what can the average American do?

 First, we must find our collective voice through an ongoing dialogue with each other.  We must use our eyes, ears, and minds to draw our own conclusions from the facts and not adopt the perceptions of the popular media or the political and religious pundits.  Our political views and religious beliefs should guide us from within, not be defined by others whose agendas can never truly be known.  Once we have found our voice we must make it heard.  We must continue our dialogue with ever growing numbers of people.  To make the dialogue meaningful, we must take the risk of moving beyond our comfortable social groups and find out what we have in common with others

 Second, we must plan to act within our sphere of influence.  This means not focusing our frustration and collective energies on other nations’ governments.  We need to start pressuring our own.  Our Government would like us to focus on situations such as the Congo (a very important issue) and to leave them alone to pretend to nobility by issuing a few lines of disgust at the situation—disseminated by the official propaganda machine of the US Government known as the Fourth Estate or the so-called “free press” owned by the very corporations that not only support the atrocities that are inflicted on our brothers and sisters outside our borders, but profit from them.

 Let us take a brief look at our current “elected” officials.  They are liars and traitors.  This might sound like the rank and file liberal politician-bashing, but I ask you to stop and think. 

 Our “representatives” speak with soaring rhetoric promising the next “Great Society.” They speak of American values, “enlightened self interests, and our moral ascendency in the world. 

 We believe them. 

 They say they will not be controlled by the tax-dodging, multi-national corporations and special interest groups. 

 We believe them. 

 They tell us to vote for responsible change. 

 We do.

 And then. . . they get elected.

 And we hear words like “pragmatism.”  We are told of the culture of Washington, D.C. and how they must compromise to get things done. We are asked to trust them. We are told they are trying hard to do their best. Think on this – every last one of them claims victimization to this circumstance.  If they all agree—and I mean all of them—it is the culture of D.C. that will not allow change without pandering to the corporate interests, I ask: “What is the source of this culture?”  If it is not them, from where does it issue?  Having said that, it stands to reason our government is not in the hands of our elected officials, and it has been clear for some time we are not running it, then, I ask you: “WHO IS?”

 Perhaps it is the free market ideology. We are told that market forces are the purveyor of democracy.  We are told our choices are what determine and drive the market. We are led to believe every time we make a choice it is a vote for the continuation of the free market.  The free market corporations have stolen our democracy, for it is they who determine which choices are available.  If my choices are limited to Exxon or Chevron, Coke or Pepsi, McDonald’s or Burger King, Wal-Mart or Albertson’s, Democrat or Republican, Heads or Tails (it is all the same bloody coin), what choices do I really have? It is the media working hand-in-hand with corporations and marketing firms to present us with the choice of candidates for the government of the United States and the choice of perceptions and frames of reference we may consider when expressing support or dissention.   (Read more: The FCC’s Christmas Gift to Big Media)

 This is Democracy?

 There are circumstances where we are given impossible choices or no choice at all.  For example, with insufficient or non-existent alternative transportations, for the purpose of getting to work, seeking healthcare (for those who can afford it), or even gathering our food and clothing, many of us are forced to purchase and maintain cars.  Thus, we are forced to support the most sinister corporations on the planet.  Since I own a car, is it    my desire the rivers and lakes be polluted, human beings be exploited, displaced, poisoned, and sometimes even murdered?   Does this mean I willingly support criminal wars?

 No.

 However, I, not having fought to change the structure of my society and because my continuing lifestyle aids and abets these corporate monsters, I share a measure of the guilt, as do my American brothers and sisters, which, if there be a final judgment, no measure of charity and repentance can wash clean the stain of innocent blood from our clothes, our hands, our souls, unless we stand together now to end this madness and put people before profit and our own material comforts.

 The United States is, at present, involved in two wars, one in Afghanistan and the other in Iraq.  It is threatening a third with Pakistan, has made recent aggressive overtures toward Iran and Yemen.  Our closest ally, Israel, with our financial and military support is engaged in a slow genocide of the Palestinian people. I am amazed the most passionate American national dialogue other than Dancing with the Stars and the latest fad diet is whether or not popular television personality Ellen DeGeneres should be allowed to be married to Portia De Rossi.

 If we fail to reclaim our republic, we will lose it.  Each day it slips a little further away. 

 There is hope.

 If 300,000,000+ Americans demand change, it will happen. 

 However, if we are waiting for those in power to bestow benevolent change upon us, we will wait forever.  What will compel them to change?  Are we to assume they are truly the wisest among us?  Do we mistake them for the enlightened?  These are people who actually debate the value of assuring children a lunch at school. Do you believe that? I don’t even have to go into where they think that money is worth spending.  Have you heard of Depleted Uranium Devices? Cluster Bombs? Nuclear Missiles? Wall Street Bail Out?

 Look issues up on the internet, read opinions, sort through the garbage, do your homework, find the facts and draw your own conclusions.  NBC, ABC, FOX, CBS are all owned by the very corporations that benefit from providing good people with bad information to increase corporate profits exponentially into perpetuity.  We must no longer allow the corporations and businesses to present our representatives to us, to limit us to Coke or Pepsi.  We must find our representatives from amongst ourselves and assure they are beholden to none other than their constituents.

 We must avoid and end term limits.  Why should an excellent public servant not be allowed to devote his or her life to making America a better country?  Term limits can only serve big business.  Think about it.  Good public servants are ousted arbitrarily and people who are elected are concerned about their careers afterward.  Does this not open the door to “networking” prior to leaving office? With term limits, does it not benefit the politician to consider the needs of a large company or industry that will see to his or her future livelihood?  Someone doing the people’s work for life would be less inclined to seek out such a patron.

 Open the dialogue where ever you gather with people.  Talk to those at your church, synagogue, mosque, and political gatherings.  Talk about it in the pubs, coffee houses and AA groups, on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. Start journals and newsletters.  The time to act is not far off, but we all must act together.

 We can fight for change or we can remain cowards hiding behind our own rhetoric of fear and powerlessness.  The government must be made to understand that if it continues to twist and ignore the Constitution, if it continues to stomp on the democratic rights of the People, it will be brought down!  It is the fundamental responsibility of all people living in a democracy to dissolve a government when it becomes unresponsive to the will of, or oppressive of, its people. 

 Make no mistake. We are not the government’s people – it is the People’s Government. If the Congress thinks differently, if the White House is offended, if the military, FBI and CIA don’t like it, they must be dismantled and replaced.

hoc opus, hic labor est

Erik. F. Kreis

 © 2009

A year and a half ago, the Irregular Diaries here were consumed with debate between Clinton Democrats and Obama Democrats. PUMA – Party Unity My Ass – was the rallying cry for supporters of Hillary Clinton.

I haven’t heard any of that here since Sarah Palin came on the scene as the Vice Presidential Tragic Clown candidate. So, tonight, I’m wondering – are there any Clinton PUMAs left, ready to pick up the banner again and march into the 2012 Democratic primaries in rebellion?

We sold one of these Clinton 2012 shirts here the other day, but I have yet to see the angry Clinton supporters actually speaking out. If you’re out there, drop us a line and tell us about the state of the PUMA.

In his essay, “Neither Victim nor Executioners,” Albert Camus spoke of a “conspiracy of silence” bred of fear. I would put an end to that. Camus states: “The years we have just gone through have killed something in us. And that something is simply the old confidence man had in himself, which led him to believe that he could always elicit human reactions from another man if he spoke to him in the language of a common humanity. We have seen men lie, degrade, kill, deport, torture – and each time it was not possible to persuade them not to do these things because they were sure of themselves and because one cannot appeal to an abstraction, i.e. the representative of an ideology.” I want to appeal to that abstraction, I want to appeal to the representatives of ideologies, I want to reason with those, who in their certainty, cannot be reasoned with, and I want to assure them that if they will not reason, if they will not heed the appeals of common humanity, they will be brought down.

I am not as arrogant as to believe that I can do this single-handedly or with my own tongue, pen, or cursor. I will need help. So I appeal to you, my reader, in the language of common humanity, help me to put an end to the tyranny under which we all live. Let us take the next step in human evolution and kill in ourselves that which drives us to kill the body and/or spirit of others. Let us learn, as a species, to be compassionate toward all life; for only by realizing the value of life in all its manifestations are we able to truly appreciate the beauty in one another.

We are at a cross-road. Never in human history have we faced the challenges we confront today. Our water and air are being poisoned. Our fellow species are becoming extinct. Because of our intellect and adaptability, we may last a little longer, but of this you may be certain, man cannot exist without air and water.

What of the American Dream? Three cars, two mansions, and a partridge in a pear tree. What about me? My TV sets? My endless and excessive consumption that proclaims to all, echoing from the mountain tops, through the concrete valleys of the cities “I HAVE EXCELLENT CREDIT! I AM OF VALUE!”

no.

No.

NO!

I AM NOT A CONSUMER – I AM A HUMAN BEING!!!

Recently, I was invited to a website to sign petitions. I signed over one hundred petitions, took numerous pledges, sent emails to congressmen and women who dutifully had their interns send me form letters thanking me for my concern and assuring me they were working diligently to resolve, rectify, or whatever else they do up on the hill, and that I should feel good about myself for my feeble attempt and fade back into oblivion with my absolved conscience. After which, they most likely enjoyed dinner with the CEO of GM, Wal-Mart or Exxon and planned the next “Great Society.”

There are those who say Humankind is beyond redemption, and therefore justify taking no action. Less than that, they choose not even to think about it. I’ll say that again: “they choose not even to think about it.”

Part of the problem is we are looking for a savior. We leave it to Congress, the President, or some absent deity to solve our problems. “I voted for one of the two candidates I was allowed to vote for. I did my part,” and/or “I pray about it, drop some money in the basket, and. . .”

I know this to be true and, if you look deep within, you must come to the same conclusion: “unless we change what we are doing and how we are doing it, nothing will ever change.” It is a simple business concept we can all learn from: “find what works and repeat it.” Contra wise, “if it doesn’t work, stop doing it.”

Religion is no longer the primary means of controlling the hearts and minds of everyday people in the United States. Every time someone wants a new liberty or doesn’t like the rules of a religion, they start their own. Fear is the new opiate of the masses. Fear of terrorists, fear of death, fear of pain, fear of poverty, fear of looking foolish. Guess what – the lesson of Gitmo’s illegal detentions is not lost upon the American people. Gitmo’s example is not a threat to the terrorists; it is a threat to us, everyday thinking people. If we can be arrested and detained without due process, if the government can torture with impunity under the protection of a declaration of eternal war (War on Terror), and the so-called PATRIOT Act, which citizen, in his or her right mind, will stand up and say something that might get him/her “extraordinarily rendered” (whatever that means – I speculate it is Governmentese for “Kidnapping Innocent Civilians”) to Egypt or Afghanistan to have done to them whatever went on in all those gruesome pictures of Abu Garib, and to never see their loved ones again? Meanwhile, Halliburton and Exxon reap profits the likes of which have never been seen in Human history and complain about paying—or find ways not to pay—taxes.

Corporations must no longer possess the rights and privileges of citizens. A corporation is not a human. Further, when corporations act in a manner that is destructive to the environment, when in their fevered obsession with profits they kill or harm a single human being or destroy a lake or rain forest, the people responsible for the policies that caused such misfortune must be brought to justice in a manner that reflects the gravity of their transgression and must be sentenced accordingly. My guess is we will see a quick end to the death penalty.

THIS MUST END! WE MUST END IT! I do not believe in violence and will never advocate its use. However, that being said, RESOLUTION is a pen stroke away from REVOLUTION and I am putting the government and corporations on notice: We are sick and tired of the world you are creating and we will have a say.

We will have the final say.

We will not ask for it. We will demand it.

hoc opus, hic labor est
Erik F. Kreis
©2009

During the hours leading up to Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address 2010, his aides were promising a “feisty” speech. However, what I saw was President Obama spending a lot of time practically begging Republicans not to be so mean to him.

Did these pleas gain Obama any breathing room, or were they like a wimpy kid’s cries for help – a magnet for bullies?

I remember the class asking my high school geometry teacher, “Why do we need to know about sines and cosines? How will we use this in real life?” He didn’t give us much of an answer, and at least in my life the answer was that I didn’t need trigonometry, not until now. I finally figured out what it’s good for in my life.

I’m looking at the Maine state legislature and would like my computer to put icons for each member of a legislative committee on a circle, equidistant from one another. Why? Well, later on, I intend to draw lines between the members’ icons in order to express something about the relationships between them. But for now my problem is to get a nice, neat circle of dots, each representing a legislator. For committees with size X, the dots should be placed (360/X) degrees away from one another on the circle. For a committee of 12 people, then, there should be dots placed at 0 degrees, 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees, 120 degrees … and so on, all around the circle.

That’s all well and good, but what are the x,y coordinates for a point 30 degrees along in a circle? Trig!

The center point of a circle and a point along the edge of a circle mark two points of a right triangle; the third point in the example to our left forms a right angle along the horizontal axis of the circle.

For an image of width W and height H, the center point of the circle will be (W/2),(H/2). The radius r of the circle is W/2, and it is also the hypotenuse of the right triangle. The location to place our dot on the edge of the circle will be (W/2)+b,(H/2)-a. We can set the values of the width W and height H of the image. All we need to do is figure out the values of a and b for angle A. Those values are

a = r * Sin(A)
b = r * Cos(A)

What’s A? It’s whatever we want it to be. To find a series of 12 dots for 12 legislators, we can draw a series of right triangles all the way around the circle, each anchored at the circle’s center point and at the edge of the circle, with angles in increasing increments of 30 degrees. For each triangle, we can use the sine and cosine of A to find out how where to place our dots.

Here’s the Maine state legislature’s Appropriations Committee, drawn by a computer using the GD graphics commands in the language PHP. Republicans are pinkish, Democrats are bluish.

This process can be used for any number of dots representing any number of committee members.

There’s how I’ll use trigonometry in real life, Mr. Sobieraski.

Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), after being told to stop interrupting, and to act “lady-like” by Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) on Philadelphia talk radio is now trying to take the story and spin it into much more than it was. What is ironic is that Bachmann and the right wing news media is now claiming that Specter’s comment was a sexist remark. However, the last time I checked… IT IS NOT VERY LADY-LIKE, nor gentlemanly for that matter to act like an IGNORAMOUS.

Since we’re having a discussion about what can be sexist and discriminatory against gender, Id encourage folks to look into the recent past vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, starting both with Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Minnesota’s Michelle Bachmann (R-MN). Arlen Specter stood up and voted FOR women to be given equal pay for equal work as clearly signified by his support of the Lilly Leadbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2009-14

Michelle Bachmann voted NAY… against the Lilly Leadbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. That to me, is very hypocritical of Bachmann to mislead that Senator Specter is a sexist, when in fact it was Bachmann that made a shameful vote in favor of continued sexism discriminating against women and minorities receiving a fair wage. Dont believe me? Look for yourself at Michelle Bachmann supporting the continued sexist injustice of voting to deprive women of equal pay for equal work. This vote was about a woman’s dignity:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2009-9

What would Lilly Leadbetter think about what Michelle Bachmann’s no vote meant to hardworking women who were discriminated against?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpVHMYe2oHQ

Bachmann’s strategy of interrupting her co-guests on radio and tv shows is well-documented. Simply put, she has no respect for the golden rule of “treating others how you would expect to be treated yourself.” Her strategy is basically that of the radical right wing that we saw during the healthcare debate, that is… to silence and drown out debate by not giving the Democrat the chance to speak. She consistently interrupted Senator Specter and he finally told her to shut up and wait her turn to speak as any civil person would.

In short, Bachmann tried to bully the wrong Democrat and got punched in the nose by Snarlin Arlen. Teddy would be proud! It is good we have a Democrat willing to put these extreme right wingers who have no respect for civil rules of debate in their place. As for who the sexist is…. maybe we should ask Lilly Leadbetter and all of the women that Arlen Specter stood up for and Michelle Bachmann did not?

Join me in working to get a candidate that supports the dignity of women for MN-6:

http://www.actblue.com/page/defeatbachmann

Specter is running against right winger and Club for Growth President Pat Toomey, who like Bachmann is certainly against any concept of fairness as he’s repeatedly slammed the Democrats for raising the minimum wage. Toomey is another country club right wing Republican who values workers dignity very little and favors continued prosperity for the top 5 percent. He and Michelle Bachmann would get along together, which is why we need to work to defeat the both today!

I am a proud Congress geek. The way that some guys like to talk about sports statistics, I like to cite legislative bill numbers, and cosponsorship levels. Congress is a rich world of competition that’s at a level of complexity that NFL football can’t touch.

Mainstream news coverage of Congress on the other hand, is simple and boring. The articles are written as if they’re still being read in a print newspaper, almost never with links in to the legislation or to original sources. I like reading the Irregular Times congressional niche partner, That’s My Congress, because they don’t talk down to me in that way.

When I want to interact with other Congress addicts, I also use a couple of other sources: Open Secrets, which has all sorts of information about the backroom relationships that explain the apparently crazy decisions people in Congress make. Another is Open Congress, which allows people to rate and debate bills, and follow them with widgets.

Hm. Both of those sites begin with open. I guess that says something about what I’m looking for. I’m looking for sources of information that can help me crack open the tough outer shell that Congress presents to outsiders at first glance, so that I can get to the delicious meat hiding inside.

Oooh. Metaphors make me hungry. Anyone got some walnuts?

Minnesota Republican Representative Michele Bachmann loves to appear on FOX News and complain about government spending and those awful liberals who live off the government teat. She’s gone so far as to declare that Americans should slit their wrists rather than allow the U.S. government to expand health care coverage so that fewer of us get sick.

You just knew there was another shoe, didn’t you? Yep, Michele Bachmann has been the recipient of more than a quarter of a million dollars in government subsidies over the past decade.

Whoopsie-doodle!

An extremely cynical trick by the leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee was picked up on today by That’s My Congress, our congressional research arm. It seems that Senator Leahy and Senator Feinstein thought that they could pull the wool over the eyes of America’s librarians.

America’s librarians have been ringing the alarm for years, noting that they are being served with huge numbers of National Security Letters enabling the FBI to keep records on the books being read by ordinary Americans who are not suspected of any crime. Leahy thought that he could placate them by throwing them a distraction.

Leahy put his support behind an amendment that would provide a few protections for libraries when it comes to Patriot Act Section 215 database seizures of records by the FBI. He said that ought to be enough for people who wanted restrictions of the Patriot Act. Sound good? Go read the previous paragraph over again, then, and think about it.

It’s not Section 215 seizures that are the problem when it comes to libraries. Senator Dick Durbin revealed today that the FBI has decided to use National Security Letters, not Section 215 powers, to seize private information about Americans’ reading habits from public libraries.

Guess how Senator Leahy arranged to get his bill, S. 1692, to extent the Patriot Act through committee – with no reform of National Security Letters in libraries. Leahy only put small reforms on a tool that the FBI doesn’t use anyway! The National Security Letters, the method that the FBI actually uses to run roughshod over the constitutional rights of people who use libraries, were untouched.

That he would engage in a tactic so transparently deceptive is a sign that Senator Patrick Leahy doesn’t have any respect for libraries, for the intelligence of the American people, or for our constitutional rights. Vermont voters, Patrick Leahy has embraced the dark totalitarian vision of George W. Bush. He doesn’t deserve to be re-elected to the United States Senate in 2010.

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?