Virginia Hoge and Topix

I've been informed by Virginia that she's being harassed by right wing trolls on Topix. She's written some very good research and observations on the NSA's infiltration of social networks and commenting services such as a Topix, but them in particular.With the release of the Wikileaks "spyfiles" this is all but proven now, we know that the American intelligence establishment and their contractors are running an information war on commenting threads and social networks like Facebook. These sites and services are too willing to hand over private information to the national security state to the point that we need to ask who some of them really are.

From 2010: http://open.salon.com/blog/virginia888/2011/11/15/is_topix_giving_out_users_personal_data_to_the_nsa

DC Madam book update

Things are wrapping up: Work is about to commence on a cover design as well as a stand alone website or the book, separate from this blog. At this point, the book is clocking in at 504 pages+ an  index and a table of contents. The length is based primarily on the fact that it's packed with primary information related to and from the case from correspondence, the public record, court documents, and more, much more. This is a view into the case that--other than in Montgomery Blair Sibley's Why Just Her--no one has ever seen. I was in a privileged position to experience, view and analyze information that few outside of the defense have ever seen let alone heard of.

The primary data isn't so much as explosive as my own own take, my analysis of it. While these are my opinions, they're the opinions of someone intimately involved in the case, therefore, this is a historical accounting as well as opinion and analysis. There will never be a book quite like it, rest assured, and it might just stand as a clear-eyed testament to this troubled era in ways that many of the observers of the case at the time never quite grasped, hindsight being everything of course. You would never want to experience what I and others did. While he's been quite reviled in relation to the case, I can only imagine the hell that counselor Sibley experienced. I was fortunate not to get too close and still got my wings singed.

 
The prosecution of Deborah Jeane Palfrey was a nightmare case if there ever was one. It was without any legal precedent in American jurisprudence. No one can recall anything like it ever happening, and I doubt there will ever be one quite like it ever again, power nailed that lid shut as thoroughly as possible. Incredible forces were marshaled to shut her down, to prevent more exposure of influence peddling related to defense/intelligence contracting by members of Congress, the executive branch, and yes, even the judiciary who enabled them. As this book should make clear, we're in a lot of trouble as a nation with no hope of actual reform. I believe we're headed in the same direction as the Soviet Union. Perhaps after that there can be a real chance at rebuilding American democracy. That's at least my hope. As it stands, under the current order, there can be no reform and we will continue to push towards the brink of what could be major catastrophe.

Ironically, only government can fix these things. This wasn't just a story about a sex scandal, it was about institutionalized corruption by officeholders who are in fact criminals. The media lied, and lied, and lied, and fulfilled their usual role of protecting power from public scrutiny. Small wonder no one wants to pay to be lied to anymore. More than a few institutions will be put under scrutiny in this account. The picture's not a pretty one and the myth of democracy is revealed as just that. It's one thing to assume, it's another to have your worst fears and cynicism confirmed. Expect a spring release.

Postscript: All of the important DC Madam entries from this blog have been extracted and archived. There have been some alarming clusters of activity around the blog and I'd neglected to create copies of some of them. This is no longer the case, and I suspect that some of them faced potential removal in the current political climate. Future editions of the upcoming text could possibly include a DVD-r containing them as well as other primary materials not included in the text from the case.

Lulz Security and Arizona's new race laws

I love these kids, and I am certain they're sincere. Unlike most of my own generally worthless generation, enough of them give a shit not to cancel them out like us generation x-ers have done to ourselves, in our pathetic, jaded narcissism.

But enough about people I used to hang out with in college (not you, Chris!)...

Polls show that most Americans are taking the reactionary route with online activism--groups like LulzSec and Wikileaks. They don't get that--like it or not--there aren't going to be too many secrets in the future among the powerful. Scoundrels of every stripe are running scared right now and doing the predictable overreacting, going so far as to pass laws that enact police state policies. These are the dumbest reactions imaginable since it's not going to work, technology is Pandora's Box, you can't close it.

That's what bullies do. The problem they face is that people are beginning to tire of their bullshit, their lies, and their secrecy (really an excuse to hide criminal activity a good portion of the time) at everyone's expense.

Now, people are beginning to push back, and that scares the crap out of the people with the power, the people who have been abusing it since day one. This is coming to a real watershed moment where people are going to get hurt, but that's how human history works, it never ends, and eventually there will be no sidelines to park one's ass on, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no rationalizations that are going to float anymore.

LulzSec have now hacked the main computers of the Arizona State Police in order to derail that state's obviously racist and unconstitutional anti-immigrant laws that will allow racial profiling. Arizona already has a bad reputation with race going back to its earliest settlement after the Mexican-American War and the law is political pandering and strategy by the Republican Party since most Hispanics (and blacks) don't vote for them historically.

Add to that a moronic segment of the population of the state that has played into their hands and pushed their agenda.

Businesses that employ "illegales" also stand to keep benefiting from a continuation of the status quo (with some ramping-up for show) where they can continue to blackmail illegal immigrants into working for even lower wages for what can only be described as the conditions of peonage. But really, the racist cops also get to take out their bad childhoods on Mexicans, they get a blank-check to profile and target them for legal harassment, no probable cause necessary.

So, today, and I really mean it, a little "fuck you" to Arizona law enforcement who have the same fixation they do in Maricopa County with brown people:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6490796/Chinga_La_Migra

14 down, 36 to go in the push towards legalization of marijuana

But what does this all mean? What does it mean when we're rapidly heading towards a surveillance state, let alone a police state? Will we be able to smoke pot in a police state? Consider that. What does this mean? I have no idea, it just boggles the mind, but you have to realize that many states of existence and social trends can live alongside one another simultaneously. Some things can be true and false all at once.

Is this all Huxley' warning, the phantom of "soma," and a populace that could find itself under some serious illusions of personal freedom while simultaneously narcotizing themselves, and not merely by television and the Internet (the unimaginative misuse of the latter)? I don't know, but it sure looks like it. There are many illusions and conceits in the counterculture and the outlying one these days, too many myths, too little reality.

California nearly passed Proposition 19 this election cycle, which would have all but decriminalized marijuana with a mere fine for up to the personal possession of one ounce of marijuana, similar to Ontario's experiment with decriminalization beginning about (or "aboot") a decade ago thanks to the ruling of an Ontario Superior Court of Justice (like our own higher Federal District circuits). But the fun didn't last long in Ontario and later rulings have pushed back the right to personal possession of marijuana. Tell 'em that in Toronto's Kensington Market, or even parts of Los Angeles and Oakland and the neighborhoods around the University of Toronto.

Local custom often trumps the law, which in the case of marijuana, is fine since it's not someone being lynched. That's what the drug laws are for.

As a criminology professor in college told me, "We never learn in America, because we don't want to." The truth has been plain for ages: Prohibition just empowers cartels and gangs, it doesn't make society a better place to live, and in fact is one of the sources of social disintegration. But it serves narrow interests, some who are in-collusion with drug lords. Without prohibition, there would be almost no potential for bribery and similar forms of corruption, especially with a decentralized model granting private citizens the right to grow set amounts for personal use, never mind medical marijuana dispensaries.

Meanwhile, the executive branch is enjoying the ability to conduct unrestrained surveillance of everyone under the rubic of the war on terror and the war on drugs. The states are moving one way, while the federal government is moving another. There could be no greater example of counter-trends of the democratic versus anti-democratic other than the newfound freedom and ease of communication created by the Internet, but the legalization movement is surely another one when juxtaposed with the ever-widening surveillance state. This isn't simply a states' rights battle, though there is certainly a fear of opening that door. It underscores that there are natural tendencies towards the democratic and anti-democratic in all nation states.

What if we do witness the virtual legalization of marijuana for personal use in the United States? Will it be a blow against anti-democratic trends? That would be a major affirmative. American drug laws were first formulated as race laws and the statistics of who gets sentenced to the most time are implicitly clear: Minorities suffer the most for the same amounts as their Caucasian counterparts, and class is also an issue, the ability to pay adequately for one's own defense at trial. So, yes indeed, this will be a step forward for civil rights across the board for Americans if we can end prohibition of marijuana since it will lead to and end in the case of the other substances to interdiction and the punishment model.

"But who's going to sell it?" is the usual question. In the case of marijuana, it should be nobody. Again, it's a hardy and easily grown plant. Yes, there will still be a market for the "best," there always will be, but any good law decriminalizing the plant will have to include the right of private citizens to grow their own. The other substances? The government should be dispensing them for tracking and statistical purposes, just like Canada does with "The Beer Store," albeit I have no answers as to manufacture, though my preference would be by the government. The money made from these sales could just as easily go to addiction treatment programs.

Would we want corporations to manufacture heroin as a commodity? I don't think so, and believe that that would be the true road to Huxley's Brave New World. Corporations are only capable of being held-accountable through the power of government because nothing else is powerful enough to. Before we knew it, we could all truly be addicts were they to have complete control over the process. But a part of me wonders: Where is this all headed? Will legalizing marijuana make a big difference? I believe that it can, and likely will, offer a "third-path" model, but Americans are going to have a big fight on their hands with--no surprise here--corporations, and the people who service, defend, and have an abiding interest in them.

Will we be smoking pot in a police state? Stay tuned...

Misinterpreting events on purpose, so you don't have to!

The South Bend Tribune--and I'm not laying the blame entirely at their feet on this one--had an article today titled, "Teens taping fights: 'It shocks the conscience,' " a tale of teen bullying in South Bend (specifically between girls) and the recording of fights on cell phones and camcorders by other teens that are then uploaded onto the Internet for a variety of reasons that even the piece itself misses, or somehow ignores at its own peril. The reporting in the piece is generally very solid by all appearances and journalist Mary Kane Malone appears to have covered all of her bases, but as usual, the analysis and general thrust of it is all wrong, and that's the fault of a newspaper editor.

As a matter of fact, that's usually the case, but it also takes conglomerates reminding editors that they too have a mortgage to pay, so hyperbole it is.

I'm not going to name the names of the victims again and don't think that it was appropriate for the conglomerate-owned Tribune to list them but not their attackers. What is the precise hyperbole, or the hype of the article? This is incredible: the immorality of other kids standing by and recording the attacks/fights on their cell phones and posting them online, ostensibly to inflict more emotional harm and humiliation upon the victims. I'm certain most of these kids were acting in concert with the bullies, no argument there, but why is it a bad thing ultimately? The fact is that it's a good development regardless of the motives of most of the players.

Thirty years ago--and even as recent as fifteen--these acts of violence by children directed towards other children went unnoticed, they were rampant, and adults didn't want to deal with it anymore then than they do now--and that's the real heart of the article. People, especially authorities like principals, parents, police, and even juvenile professionals, don't want to deal with the issue of children inflicting violence upon each other. The trick is to change the subject or the focus:

The video of the fight had gone viral, the girl says, spreading from cell phone to cell phone. In less than a day, it seemed everyone in school had witnessed Chastity's humiliation. Teenage fights now include a new weapon: the camera phone. For parents, school administrators and law enforcement officials, the recorded fights provide a disturbing portrait of teenage violence that, until now, was only seen by those who witnessed it directly. "It shocks the conscience," said Capt. Phil Trent, spokesman for South Bend police. Parents of the victims say they are horrified at the gall of witnesses to flip out their phones and press "record" rather than intervene. But the kids? They call it entertainment. ... (The South Bend Tribune, 05.09.10)

This may or may not be true that it's "entertainment" and they're casting a blanket over the kids generally, as an entire demographic when there's no solid evidence--just a couple anecdotes--being proffered that the phenomena is widespread. Even if it were, how would they know why every kid recording an event was doing so?

But then, the article breaks down and admits that youth experts don't really know why the kids record the fights. Is that really the point? Again, from the article itself, this is the real point (my emphasis): "For parents, school administrators and law enforcement officials, the recorded fights provide a disturbing portrait of teenage violence that, until now, was only seen by those who witnessed it directly." Correct. Until very recently, the technology to record these events in a portable and easy manner was too expensive. Now, there's no running away from the problem since kids are unwisely (or very wisely) posting what is essentially incriminating evidence of children violently and criminally attacking other children. Before, this was impossible, and authorities could only rely on the hearsay of children, a morass of "he-said, she-said" recriminations that were once almost impossible to confirm, to corroborate. That's all changed now.

In short, many of these kids are doing the "right" thing, knowingly or unknowingly.

Some of these kids are alerting the rest of society that there are vicious sociopaths in our midst and showing us their actions. When it's done in the interest of society, of others, it's a very positive social act, a civic duty to report a crime. In the "wrong" hands they're also incriminating themselves and will probably be dragged into the tidal wave of civil suits that are likely to come out of these new technologies of easy dissemination, the power of the Internet writ large, as large as you can get.

"The (bullies) are basically making a recording of the evidence," providing a clear picture of who threw the first punch and how it ended, said William Bruinsma, director of the St. Joseph County Juvenile Justice Center. Police say a videotaped shoving match posted online might be handled differently than one that is not recorded. "The same shoving match, being turned into a form of entertainment by a third party on the Internet is enough to make parents, school administrators and law enforcement" take a second look, said Trent, the South Bend police spokesman. ... (ibid)

It's not about entertainment. It's about adults not wanting to deal with it, but knowing that they now have no choice in the matter. That's called fighting change. In the past it was easy because there was no way to document these behaviors. Now there is. So, yes, the kids have a "new weapon," alright: they can document acts of violence by other children, even under the guise of indirect participation. Indeed, St. Joseph County prosecutor Michael Dvorak "...said video can provide useful pieces of evidence when building a case." Yet, the Oklahoma state legislature has recently made moves that would make posting the footage online illegal and could likely pass it soon.

The article tries--vainly--to suggest through implication that there's an upswing in violence by American girls, something that it has to admit isn't the case from FBI statistics covering 1995-through-2008. You can almost hear the editor of the South Bend Tribune trying to argue their twisted logic and simply capitulating to the facts in the end since they were and are irrefutable, leaving the remnants of the their thought process (if you want to call it that) in the body of the piece. Missing the point is the entire point. Society-at-large has never wanted to deal with the fact that the genesis of bullying in many cases is child abuse, usually by adults, often by relatives. America is hardly the only nation with this problem, and denial is part-and-parcel of the behaviors surrounding the phenomena.

When the economy is already divesting adults of their rights, those of children don't figure highly either. However, children are a powerful moral symbol of the future, the canaries in the coal mine of where we're going wrong with the social contract and where we've been going wrong since time immemorial. Most importantly, the Tribune article commits the cardinal sin of blaming the victim: "But what might appear to be a clear assault on video could have an untold back story, he said: How can police be sure the victim was not the attacker a day earlier in an unrecorded fight?" They never care about that in other circumstances. The real issue is that they don't want to deal with the problem, the real heart of a very poorly-constructed article that carries a sadly commonplace logic in our culture, a culture in denial on most fronts. After all, nobody likes getting caught...

One last thought: should we embed journalists in our nation's schools? It's not necessary. Soon, very soon, the coverage of domestic violence will surpass that of the wars in the Middle East. Think about why.

http://www.southbendtribune.com/article/20100509/News01/5090310/1129/News

Beware of malware ("Softcop") from Winisoft!

WWW--And now, it's time for some hard-earned wisdom, kids! Just last night I was getting hit by these fake warnings that I had a virus infecting my hard drive with these constant pop-ups harassing me that if I didn't, I could "lose critical files and functions" on my computer. It just pops-up again, and again, and again, and again, until you want to perform a vivisection on the idiot that created the malware doing this to you, your computer, and of course, your mind and your sense of well-being.

Oh yeah, I had a virus on my drive alright, and it was Winisoft's "Softcop," a Trojan horse program that installs itself on your computer without your knowledge or required permission to get you to buy bullshit. Not-so-ironically, Softcop's exactly what it's telling you that you need to remove from your drive by buying their fake software that does nothing. Well, it does nothing except give you more problems like the one you stupidly paid to get rid of! That's when I'm certain that extreme violence is in order, but it's best to inform your credit card company immediately about this intolerable situation and to start the disputation process. Send them a refund message at Winisoft and refuse to pay.

This scam must be making the rounds since there's a bevy of articles about it that provide links to Malware's legitimate removal software that's free and actually works. Once you've downloaded it, run it, and then restarted your PC, the problem not-so-magically disappears. Fancy that. Yes, yes, we don't need any rules or regulations, said the Libertarians. This is exactly why we have to have laws and why business has to be regulated heavily. I could have used these articles yesterday, but this is a fairly sophisticated scam and didn't do my usual Google search, lesson learned. My guess right now is that it's from the Czech Republic, possibly from Brno, a hub of hacker and scammer activity like this, but who knows? All I know is that I'd like to remove their fingernails one-at-a-time, and very slowly...


"Can Softcop Save Your PC?", PC1 News, 10.21.2009: http://www.pc1news.com/news/1057/softcop.html

"Safety Keeper Removal," Free PC Security, 09.11.2009 (with legitimate Malware removal downloads): http://freepcsecurity.co.uk/2009/09/11/safety-keeper-removal/

"Remove Softcop (Uninstall guide), Bleepingcomputer.com, 10.17.2009: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-softcop

AP: "Movie theaters cut print show times as Web gains"

WWW--You think they'll take ads for unrated movies now? I mean it, really. Who's laughing now? Me, and all the indie filmmakers the newspapers have screwed over the years. Good riddance, die already, will yah?

Kansas City-based AMC helped shine a spotlight on the trend last month when it pulled its listings from The Washington Post, prompting the newspaper's ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, to deflect readers' ire in his blog.

"Most readers believe that it was the newspaper's decision," Alexander wrote, comparing it to The Post's recent move to cut back on the newspaper's television listings. "In fact, movie listings in the print product are paid advertising, and it was AMC's decision to stop paying."

The Post declined further comment, and Alexander wrote in his column that the newspaper wouldn't tell him either how much revenue the AMC ads provided.

AMC spokesman Justin Scott said daily movie listings are expensive and the theater chain believes that that money would be better spent promoting its value programs or other theater events.

"In an era when many moviegoers are using alternative resources to access show times, AMC has chosen to reallocate its show-time information methods," Scott said.

Scott wouldn't say where else AMC has cut its listings and how much it has saved. But he said "so far we've seen no impact on attendance."

Regal, based in Knoxville, Tenn., said its in-theater and online surveys found 60 percent to 80 percent of respondents saying they received their movie listings online. ("Movie theaters cut print show times as Web gains," AP, 08.22.2009)

And you, Hollywood: there's something called the Internet. You can't keep people from watching independent cinema like you used to, not anymore. People can and do watch movies on iPods, laptops, and their own home cinemas. Soon, very soon, most people will be able to download what they want to watch and bypass what they don't want to watch.

DVDs have opened-up most of the history of cinema to young people and many of them know where the movies have been and what's possible. When they look at the usual Hollywood fare, they're unimpressed, unmoved by it, because it generally sucks. The party's over, welcome to that brave new world you boors knew was always coming, a viewing public with considerably more savvy. Let's be honest: that was always the case, but you had a captive audience. That's over.

You used the newspapers to keep foreign film and indie cinema from competing at all; you got legislation passed that subsidized your bottom-line, shut-out the smaller distributors, and got you subsidized advertising in foreign markets. People are tired of most of your product, they want more. Eventually, you're going to have to deliver or go away, like the rest of the corporate monoliths that are toppling right now. With the rapid death of the newspapers, media conglomerates are going to keep taking major-hits. This can only be a good thing. Does consolidation sound so good now? All fall down.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/tec?guid=20090821/4a8e29d0_3421_13345200908211073774666

AP: "Brooks & Dunn: Out of new ideas after 20 years"

AP Universe--Who said Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn ever had any ideas musically? Them. "You know what, I think we've just exhausted it," said the duo to a CMT audience member during a taping for the unwatchable "Invitation Only" show. Get the fuck outta here. There haven't been any new ideas in country music since the early 1970s, and I love old school country, but let's be honest. Country music is dead and the corpse has been walking around for over a generation unaware of its own cultural demise, the death of its actual relevance.

There is no country music, just listen to it. Does it sound like country music? No, it does not. What it sounds like is country-rock or pop-country, but it's not country music. Brooks & Dunn were quaint-at-best. What they remind me of is that music arising organically from people--real "folk" music, meaning "music by folks"--is more alive in underground genres like hip-hop, garage rock, and yes, even techno. Just "little people" making music to express themselves and their take on life; their joys; their longings; the despair; the anger, and so on.

There was a time when these kinds of music makers could percolate up into the mainstream, getting radio play locally, regionally (how do you think Hank Williams Sr. became well known?), but decades of unregulated music industry greed and criminality have snuffed-out those routes to distribution. Word-of-mouth was crucial. Perhaps the wheel has turned a full-revolution again with the Internet and we'll see something old become new again. But people want more from their culture and they've been tired of having it sold back to them along with everything else for some time. We got an interesting example of this just nine years ago.

Around 2000, the music-buying public had had enough and wanted to hear something with soul, something that actually said something they could related to, and they unexpectedly made the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers' "O Brother Where Art Thou?" a multi-platinum hit. The dog began to wag the tail again, if only for a time. Nobody in the music industry could get it at the time--that people want sincerity in their music--because as top-down corporations, they can't and won't. Corporations aren't about serving people, and they're not about innovation, honesty, or sincerity. What they are is dumber than a box of rocks. People want to feel something when they listen to music, something that touches their hearts and their souls. After that, people began downloading the pop garbage that they were previously paying $16.99 for in-droves, and I can hardly blame them for it.

Frankly, good riddance to this recent model of cultural transmission, it sucked, like just about every business model ever devised by our moronic managerial class. Good riddance indeed, but at least Brooks & Dunn had the honesty to finally admit they had no ideas. More people need to take this responsibility upon themselves, they'll feel liberated. But enough about Washington D.C. and the corporate board rooms...

Songs from the Site Meter: They're looking for Jaenelle II...

Ed.--Could this be from white hate central? I'm hoping it's MI5, but they and the UK's intelligence community (MI6, SIS, etc.) have a sordid (and storied--that's for Alex Constantine, touche!) past of cooperation with fascist and Mosleyite groups for purposes of social control. One just never knows what they're up to at the HO and FO. Boris, we must deny Moose and Squirrel were ever liquidated...da!

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More cries of "coup," this time regarding AIG from Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone Magazine--I haven't read a copy of RS since 1992, so you probably know from this fact that they don't elicit much respect or admiration from me.

At best, the publication has been patently mainstream from its inception, a cheerleader of the consumer model, and a part of what's gotten us into the economic crisis we're now inhabiting.

Occasionally, the dinosaur ownership realizes at RS how inane and unimportant that they've become (once, the criticisms came from old school RS writers like the late Hunter S. Thompson) and pays someone to write something substantial about where things are at.

Their political articles are often belated pieces that would have had a better impact had someone commissioned them when the corruption and crimes were everywhere--occurring literally out in the open, down the street from RS's NYC offices--but advertisers don't like political coverage, especially when they're involved in the mess, and that would mean spending the money on a full time investigative team.

This doesn't fit into all the wonderful business models of recent times, so they don't have one, because since the introduction of CBS's "60 Minutes," the news is supposed to be profitable and entertaining.

Somehow, in this peculiarly adamant pro-business environment, we're being entreated to ditties from the Fourth Estate itself that "democracy will be inhibited without newspapers," yet when we had all of them they did little to protect it, making for a zero-sum loss in the age of the Internet. Yes, coverage will definitely become deeply "impaired" for a time, and there will likely be further consolidations of media, but what future will the survivors have in a generally wrecked economy? Being king is fine, but king of the garbage dump doesn't sound very grand to these ears.

One might also factor-in how hard it is to do business during widespread strikes and insurrection, but that's what defense contractors are for.

Into this bloody fray comes a Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi on AIG and--please bear with me--the notion that the Wall Street bailouts have been a "coup."I don't believe that it's that simple, that many of these critics have been dangerously naive about our system and its promises because of their own "successes" ("You're just jealous."), and that they're finally discovering how America really works. You know: the American people are usually the last to know, because there are "unknown knowns," in the thankfully inimitable words of Donald Rumsfeld.

...["]When one considers the comparatively extensive system of congressional checks and balances that goes into the spending of every dollar in the budget via the normal appropriations process, what's happening in the Fed amounts to something truly revolutionary,” a kind of shadow government with a budget many times the size of the normal federal outlay, administered dictatorially by one man, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. "We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion," says Sen. Bernie Sanders. "It is beyond comprehension." ... ("Back to the Big Takeover," Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, April 2, 2009 issue)

If it's a "shadow government," it's only because Congress delegated those powers to the executive branch and consciously did so over a period of decades. The article at least makes this point clearly enough. It should be added that Sec. of Treasury Bernanke has to answer to the President of the United States, ultimately, since he might have problems with how the money gets spent...or not. Taibbi is wrong--it really is all about money, the only thing Americans can be roused to action by. In other words, the Treasury Department isn't a separate branch of government, although Taibbi and others seem to be suggesting that it is. Were it that simple.

But this has been a real point-of-contention with me, since a "coup" means a real world transfer of power, generally to people who weren't originally "in-charge," with at least some essence of "finality" to it, however fleeting. Paradoxical--yes--and welcome to the world of power politics where language and logic break down above the atomic level. Sure, the Treasury Department and the Fed have significantly more power at the moment, that's true, and that's really an expansion of the power of the executive branch in the end. Former Vice President Cheney must be proud of his contribution to all of this.

Not since Hitler has so much confusion been sown in the halls of a modern government. It helped to have enablers and other fellow travelers along the way. So, these calls of a "coup" are more than a little belated--they actually sound weird coming at this moment. Habeas corpus has been nominally restored through the courts, but significant breaches in our Constitution are still there. There were many voices on the left who warned about the economic crisis and the war on terror's rollback of our rights from the start, and a few on the right, and so on.

But they weren't especially passionate voices, and they were ignored as they usually are.

Where were all these cries from the right and the mainstream media during the passage of the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act? Off making money at the time, they couldn't be bothered to care at the time. When I question some of the "coup counters," they tend to settle on the term "paper coup," and neglect to go into any further details. A real world analog would help, like Yeltsin's creation of the Oligarchs through the Russian State granting them mineral rights, or similar moves in South America during the last sixty years. That would have been a business luncheon for the Bush II administration.

Perhaps it just sounds good to the ears, that "c-word." It gives one the appearance of being prescient, prophetic, like Ronald Reagan (in appearance only). Granted, the term "coup" is taking over (pun intended) throughout the political spectrum.

Taibbi continues:

...The state is now being asked not just to call off its regulators or give tax breaks or funnel a few contracts to connected companies; it is intervening directly in the economy, for the sole purpose of preserving the influence of the megafirms. In essence, Paulson used the bailout to transform the government into a giant bureaucracy of entitled assholedom, one that would socialize "toxic" risks but keep both the profits and the management of the bailed-out firms in private hands. Moreover, this whole process would be done in secret, away from the prying eyes of NASCAR dads, broke-ass liberals who read translations of French novels, subprime mortgage holders and other such financial losers. ... (Ibid)

And this is new in American history, because...? Frankly, I don't get it--these are the very same people in control of the system in the end (the original ones, the ones whose names are being withheld on TARP payout papers), the same super rich "investors" and business bureaucrats inside and outside of our government who played, and lost. Welcome to the inherent ( il)logic of our economy, you missed the memo. Was there some arch-conspiracy, or some kind of a plan to this? Were you paying attention?

This makes a grand leap of logic that these people on Wall Street were and are competent.

Are you kidding? Does it really look like they're good at anything done above board, legally? They aren't good at business, they cannot rule or govern effectively or sustainably, and it will all crash no matter how much they attempt to leave the rest of us with the bill. Their time is up, it's a given, even with these machinations that induce the apathetic, cynical, and gullible, to ascribe godlike powers to a bunch of Wall Street (and truth be know, Main Street) clowns.

That they're not good at business is a given, but that most of them are criminals has yet to be proven, but will be. They're going to keep playing the same games because it's all they know, and when the rules don't favor them they change the rules. Does that sound sustainable? Let them have their fun, playing with their Monopoly money, but if they get their way, any recovery is going to be short-lived in a system whose time came at least a generation ago, the rest being mythology.

Americans have often wrongly measured their freedoms and liberties through economic indicators and their ability to purchase while neglecting the very existence of a quality of life and the social contract. There will be plenty of time to reflect on that now.

"Back to the Big Takeover," Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, April 2, 2009 issue: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/26793903/the_big_takeover

Ken Russell Extravaganza!

"I have two more breakthrough films on the stocks – Porn-Again Christian and A Chink in the Curtains. Each one lasts just one minute, including credits." --Ken Russell, December 14th, 2007.

Russellmania--That wonderful enfant terrible of cinema has been writing an often hilarious and always thoughtful column for The Times. Ken Russell also has a new film entitled 'A Kitten for Hitler,' and it's free, online for all you deadbeats: http://www.comedybox.tv/index.aspx . Ken gives a bit of a synopsis at Comedy Box when he states that:

This story concerns Lenny, a naive little Jewish boy from Brooklyn, who reasons that Hitler wouldn’t be so bad if he were treated like a human being instead of a monster. Accordingly, he risks life and limb to cross war-torn Europe to deliver to "Uncle Adolf" a placatory Christmas present in the shape of a cuddly kitten [Ed.-I think we should try this with the president, don't you?]. Moved to tears, the Führer hands him a swastika-shaped bagel from the Christmas tree, whereupon Lenny pulls up his shirt, revealing an almost identical birthmark. What happens next I leave to your imagination– likewise the moving payoff.

Here's to extremely bad taste done on-the-cheap!And this is just one of a few other films of Ken's that are available, free, and online to all you cheap bastards out there.

Ken's newest article at The Times (UK): http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/article3074343.ece