the end of the southern strategy

That's it, over, done. Nigger-baiting in national elections has played out. For the entirety of my life until now, this has been the GOP's plank strategy. Thanks to a shift in demographics that's ongoing and will continue well into the future, America's going to be a predominantly brown nation, thanks mostly to Hispanic immigrants. Think about it: this has been going on since 1968. What Boogeyman is the Republican Party going to find next? Oh sure, terrorists, but that's not going to fit the bill.

No, I think they're basically screwed, but then, so are the rest of us thanks to them and racist American evangelicals (rural hicks, white Southerners generally). We're still heading on the wrong course in our obsession with military adventurism. We still have Citizens United. Ah, and don't think President Obama is FDR--he's not. What he's going to do is tow their line about the national debt, misrepresenting it, making the same claims that fly in the face of accepted economics theory, and we'll continue to have the same problems, albeit with a privatized or non-existent social safety net, and it will have been done by Democratic hands, not primarily Republican ones.

So, great, enjoy the parties for now, but the fact is that President Obama is going to continue to roll back our civil liberties with NDAA, a war on lawful government whistleblowers, and he's going to continue to commit heinous war crimes in the Middle East, North Africa, Africa generally, Asia, and so on, little will change. The missing-ingredient once more is the public holding him accountable, but with partisan tribalism what it is now, forget it. The American public will continue to be on the one hand an apathetic demographic blob, and a bloodthirsty rabble, the dream of authoritarians everywhere.

But at least the Southern strategy is over, done, kaput, and I can watch the assholes that ruined my nation writhe for four more years. None of this is reassuring. Expect the president to cut back on social services and to gut solid programs like Social Security. It's coming, and you're going to own it, because you're just as irrational as the Republicans, dear lockstep Democrats, you're exactly the same kind of morons.

CNN reports dumb-assed Al Qaeda salad bar/buffet plot after GOP stalls Food Safety Act for months

Is there not a better sign of the end of an Empire and a nation in serious trouble? Just don't tell the Obama-holdouts, they might get upset. Who on God's gray earth would believe this horseshit but a Republican or a Libertarian, all of them with serious emotional and intellectual issues regarding reality? "Al-Qaeda plot threatens America's salad bars and buffets." You gotta be kidding, right?

It beggars the imagination that someone without the ability to imagine would believe something a ten year old could see through or do a better job of concocting.

Just as they did under Bush II, being a venerable asset of Empire and the GOP, CNN is selling a very lame-assed scare story to boost another war criminal's sagging popularity ratings as well as providing some cover for corrupt food growers and processors who wanted the Food Modernization Act. Apparently, high school never ended and life has now become Facebook. How is this different from all the times that George W. Bush cried "WOLF!" (not CNN's Blitzer, or even Donner) with the terror alert warnings to save his own ass, for political ends? It's not at all and it's not the only example, Obama's just less obvious about it than the last clown.

Seriously: President Barack Obama is the same as George W. Bush, wake up assholes, pull your heads out of your collective-ass and stop having this.

CNN's talking-neck was barely able to read the salad bar/buffet headline it was so stupid, so nebbish, so moronic and transparently unimportant pap that was probably lifted from a surveillance log of someone simply toying with the idea of joining a terror cell...after a few bong-hits or a lift from some meth. Get real, quit insulting our intelligence with your counterintelligence, your disinformation predicated on scaring the dummies that over-populate every nation so that we hand over even more of our rights to a predatorial establishment.

Great, someone was going to "poison" salad bars and buffets across America...and somehow they weren't American food growers and producers who routinely employ illegal immigrants, who then lobby the GOP all of the time for fewer regulations on food safety. Yes, it was a smart timing to run the bogus Al-Qaeda story just hours after the GOP had stalled the Food Safety Act for months, very wise, well-timed. How long did they stall its passage? Since March of this year, nine whole months, which is roundly un-American.

Besides the GOP's tail-dragging on to poison the public, or not to poison it, these were some of the major opponents of the very reasonable bill--unless some of us prefer a little e-coli with our spinach, watermelons and potatoes (take that Dan Quayle!), and TEA:

Freedomworks

Competitive Enterprise Institute

American Mushroom Institute

National Potato Council

National Watermelon Association

Produce Marketing Association

United Fresh Produce Association

The John Birch Society

National Cattleman's Beef Association

Western Growers

American Academy of Microbiology

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
(http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-510)

Any familiar names here? It passed the Senate on November 30th of this year anyway, but there was more stalling from the GOP.

And you Democratic incumbents: You can stop with the good cop, bad cop act. We're on to you. We know this is all just political theater and we're about to call bullshit on this whole clown show. We're not having it anymore, you're done. For a moment, I thought they were saying that Jimmy Buffett was being targeted by terrorists, which makes just as much sense and is just as credible...

Movie star Mark Ruffalo is being harassed for his antiwar and progressive acts

Where's that change? I'm not seeing any with President Obama, just a continuation of the Bush II agenda, which means that of the super-rich. In May of this year, Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Last Big Thing, Shutter Island, etc.) and about 1,800 other prominent American liberals (including linguist and intellectual Noam Chomsky) singed a petition that was published as a full-page ad in a very visible New York magazine accusing the new president of war crimes.

In some respects this is worse than Bush. First, because Obama has claimed the right to assassinate American citizens whom he suspects of ‘terrorism,’ merely on the grounds of his own suspicion or that of the CIA, something Bush never claimed publicly.

They're not only factually correct in their assertion, they have a constitutionally protected right to express it without recourse. The new president--like his predecessor--doesn't appear to believe this. Odd for a constitutional scholar.

Ruffalo is generally known as an "indie" actor, but his star has been in ascendancy over the last decade, and along with that, he's been vocal in recent years about his concerns that America is rapidly moving away from its most cherished ideals, away from democracy. With endless capitulations to the corporate sector by both major political parties, endless and pointless wars, very open political corruption, and a host of misdeeds that don't need to be recalled here since we don't have all day to recount simply the ones committed under the Bush II administration, (the one that the new president's resembles more all of the time), it's definitely time to speak your peace.

Indeed, Ruffalo has been doing just that: There was the aforementioned petition, but he's been on the path of several causes, and they're valid ones. His most recent has gotten him on a terror watch list via the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security, part of the DHS, a decidedly corrupt institution for a war on a pronoun, so you know it's a joke on the public, and one they approved of initially.

With the ending of the "terror alert" color-coded system that everyone began ignoring after it was abused for openly political reasons, they have good reason to be concerned when a likable guy like Ruffalo starts going around accusing the president and corporations of corruption, of criminal behavior. People are already all ears, and after the BP catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, it's even money that they're pissed-off. Into this latter fray enters Mr. Ruffalo who has been inviting members of the public to screenings of GasLand, a documentary that covers incredibly dangerous oil-drilling practices such as "fracking" that contaminate drinking water in the areas it's done in, one of them being Pennsylvania.

This was enough for the PDHS to place Ruffalo--a movie star actor--on a terror watch list. Ruffalo thinks "[it's] pretty fuckin' funny," and to some extent it is, but it also isn't. He was brushing-up against Big Oil, maybe even firms like Halliburton. What I want to know is who made the decision here. Were his other progressive activities taken into account? Was the White House a part of any of these decisions? What recourse would an average citizen have had in this case?

Hold-outs: He's not what you think he is. Actions speak louder than words.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/dailydish/detail?entry_id=77671

Information on the May 2010 petition accusing President Obama of war crimes: http://weaselzippers.us/2010/05/15/2000-us-actors-prominent-liberals-accuse-obama-of-war-crimes-says-hes-worse-than-bush-for-authorizing-assassination-of-anwar-al-awlaki/

On Robert Gibbs's remarks regarding the "professional left"

With all of the calls for him to resign or to even be fired (the latter coming from Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson), you have to wonder if Shakespeare ever imagined political theater so hollow, so empty that it's not even entertaining anymore, just pathetic. Why bother? Indeed. Gibbs's remarks were to the Moonie-owned The Hill, a staunchly conservative paper, meaning a cargo cult-within-a-cargo-cult, and apparently the outgoing press secretary felt quite at home in making the statements that he did. Why wouldn't he? He's the same kind of cretin. Yet, why? Why make such stupid remarks?

The answer is simple. He and the administration that he represents aren't especially different from--say--the GOP itself and hate their base at least as much. What choice are we left with here in a roundly rightist political culture that doesn't reflect or even acknowledge the views of the majority of Americans on social issues? That's what's known as a political crisis since there really is no opposition party in American politics, only two branches of one pro-business one; one that represents an oligarchy but not the public. Yes, now the president is worried that his agenda will be endangered (a good thing in the end) and is engaging in some last minute social spending such as a paltry $3 billion for those who have or will lose their homes. Then, there's the diehard municipal/teacher/police vote that was paid for with much more and will likely ensure more Democratic votes--the primary motive for doing it at all. This kind of a mess is nothing new to American history, but it is a regression, back to the bad old days of the 1880s-90s when the "robber barons" (now we simply call them the "rich," "CEOs," and "Wall Street"). Once again, thanks Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon, but you couldn't have done it without those wily Democrats.

Like an atomic clock going off exactly on time, a slack-jawed denizen on Facebook hit me with: "In the real world, what better candidate that can actually be elected would you suggest?" Besides being the usual straw man argument one gets from the unfortunate few middle-class whites who bother to vote (which is why registering poor and minorities is always a good idea), this kind of a comment ignores how rigged the electoral process is and that they keep voting for people who wish to impair it over and over again once they're in office, and that's for starters. There's a point where you're just another battered wife, a dupe, a mark, a moron. There was a better candidate than Barack Obama and Gibbs worked to take him down in 2004, for the the DNC and the Kerry campaign: Howard Dean. Yes, they've beaten Dean down into submission and made him parrot their absurd talking points, but there was a time, not so long ago...

But it was the Foghorn Leghorn-like Gibbs that worked overtime putting out attack ads against Dean and his reasonably progressive agenda--too reasonable for the DNC and its biggest backers. Dean's also from Alabama and has been advising on a Southern strategy for the Obama campaign/administration for some time. These are the same people that wanted Barack Obama in office and not someone like Dean since he might actually come through for the public and not Wall Street. In addition, when Team Clinton came onboard, we got more of the same cronies from that sordid, pro-business administration, making for a curious form of non-nostalgia. Why am I one of the only people in America who knows that Hillary Clinton has served on the board of Wal-Mart and is a major shareholder, for example? Thanks to a compliant media, never mind all the high talk of the Obama administration having to confront a "combative media," most Americans don't know this. One wishes they were combative, at least for the right reasons, which would be a very real change.

Gibbs is right(ist): I'd trade the Pentagon for a Canadian-style health care system in a heartbeat. For those who think we need defense spending that's 600 times greater than the next highest spender, you're the ones who are "crazy," and if you don't live to see the tyranny you're constructing, your children certainly will. With luck, it's all going to collapse before then anway. You've been lulled into a Pavlovian call-and-response--you feel fear when the political and economic establishment rings 'dem bells. What does that make you?

Would I be satisfied with "Kucinich as president"? Damned straight I would. Fire all of them. Fire the next ones if they're the same. Fire them all, and shut them out of the political process forever, and anyone like them that doesn't serve the public interest, let alone won't listen to them. Eventually, the public will stop speaking and start acting. At that point, Mr. Gibbs will have a lot of explaining to do. Will it be too late? Who knows, but he's going to own a part of the social chaos if it does in fact unfold, and as much as any Bush II operative. That's not a stretch since the Obama administration has kept most of them onboard.

President Obama is changing his name...and color.

Barry White. Barry White of you. Fuck you Wolf Blitzer. Fuck you Andrew Breitbart.

Newsflash: We don't have a Black President, and jibes about the Sherrod debacle at the USDA.

WWW--Could the Obama administration have handled the whole affair worse by immediately capitulating to the GOP once again? Give them time, they'll find a way. It's obvious that the White House did call the Secretary of Agriculture (the decidedly Caucasian Tom Vilsack, since that's who gets hired at the USDA and stays on...) telling him to fire Shirley Sherrod from her USDA post over very carefully edited comments she made at an NAACP event that were posted on a conservative blog.

The whole media event is political theater predicated on misinforming the public and pushing a racist and classist agenda: the GOP gets to show that President Obama and his advisers will give into just about any of their demands, curious behavior for a president whose party currently holds a firm majority in both houses of Congress (for now), as well as making the first Black President look weak. He's doing a great job on his own, granted, but their agenda is a primarily racist one.

One of the worst things about all of this is that conservative propagandist Breitbart wasn't the first to discriminate against Sherrod, it was the USDA in 1985 when they refused to grant her and her husband a routine loan that white farmers almost always receive, possibly because they were Black farmers. Like many at the time, they lost their farm, but presumably not for the same reasons as white farmers. Discrimination at the USDA is well known. It wouldn't have been the first time racism hurt a Black American farmer at the USDA. The Department of Agriculture has engaged in institutionalized racism all the way back to its inception, but this mandate came from Congress, from the executive branch. I believe her story as a Black farmer is true. So, this isn't the first time that the USDA has failed Mrs. Sherrod and Black Americans, not by a long-shot.

A prediction: If the Obama administration continues down the same road, they can expect two years of a lame-duck presidency or collapse and a subsequent resignation. They will have earned it.

Will the GOP benefit from this? It doesn't appear so, but you never know, even with the phony "apologies." They could very well inch their numbers higher in Congress again. But be careful what you wish for, GOP: your last unfortunate president (George W. Bush for those with no memory), the man (with help from a GOP dominated Congress) who left us with a $10+ trillion national debt was still in office when the shit began hit with the economy and he went begging to Congress and even the president-elect for help. The first Wall Street bailout came under his last days of unprecedented Republican misrule, a well known fact. The Democrats generally let him do all of this and were his shadow enablers. Bush II left us with a wrecked economy, but without the assistance of the entire congressional GOP and many Democratic incumbents it wouldn't have been possible. Again: they let him do it. In sum, both major national parties own the current economic crisis and certainly aren't ever going to be a solution to it.

Like the manufactured ACORN scandal, conservative blogging played a major hand in all of this, and it was done with heavily and selectively edited video. Yet, there has been no accountability for any of these activities by right-wing operatives. It helps to have activist conservative judges on your side, already paid for. The corporate mainstream media has been extremely complicit in the dissemination of these memes and stories to the point that it cannot be a coincidence. Congress and the Obama administration not only "played" into their hands, they were complicit in the dismantling of a grass roots organization that registers Black and poor Americans (many of who are women and veterans, no less), people who don't tend to vote Republican. A Black President signed a bill that defunded them. This is really a story of the damage that GOP operatives are doing to our democracy and the right to vote, a desire to roll things back for Black Americans to a pre-1964 state, when a white supremacist culture could still prevent them from voting. It's also about a Democratic Party that doesn't care if they do. We seem to be going backwards in time as a nation and a culture. Not so long ago, it was a frightening proposition for Black Americans to vote, and in many parts of the continental United States, not just the South.

This began to change with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which the late Sen. Robert Byrd filibustered for 14 hours, losing) and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, two laws that have being routinely violated in several national elections, and without any real official reaction, never mind enforcement. Under the GOP, that's predictable, but the Democrats haven't shown any substantial enthusiasm to curb it. These pre-1964 practices have returned and the need for a new Civil Rights movement is clear, besides the need for serious investigations into actions committed by various GOP operatives to disenfranchise American citizens.

But the DNC doesn't appear too concerned about poor Blacks having the right to vote any more than the franchise for poor whites and prison inmates. We might ask them why some time. The events at the USDA just underscores that institutional racism is alive-and-well in our era, even being implemented by Black Americans who have benefited from the aforementioned legislation and the sacrifices of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s-70s. It's not just the GOP that wants to roll back the clock on civil rights. Both parties are taking orders from the same super rich interests that dominate this nation through the power of money, influence, and yes, criminal activity. Meanwhile, the political class looks the other way...unless the public won't have it anymore. Why do you keep having it? Really?

Personally, were I Mrs. Sherrod, I'd mount multi-million dollar civil suits against not only Andrew Breitbart and his site and organization, I'd sue him personally and much of the mainstream media, as well as USDA chief Tom Vilsack and even Rahm Emanuel and the standing president. That would be just the beginning. It should be noted here that Mrs. Sherrod was an activist for SNCC during the Civil Rights era, meaning it's very likely that at one time she helped register frightened, poor Blacks in the South to vote. This is all about white hate and institutionalized racism, make no mistake about it. She was targeted. CNN's Wolf Blitzer--after profuse "apologies"--just referred to the Sherrod story (Breitbart's take) as "too good to be true." He should be on the list of defendants too.

Shirley Sherrod, community activist and ally of small farmers, including white ones: http://www.cltnetwork.org/index.php?fuseaction=Blog.dspBlogPost&postID=1389

Whoremonger GOP Sen. David Vitter suggests bailing out BP oil while the "opposition" party offers nothing...

Louisiana--This steaming pile of excrement (both of them constituting one turd) really has no shame and supports the contention that most abortion opponents should in fact have been aborted. Don't get me wrong: Louisianans keep reelecting this piece-of-shit, so they deserve him and the mess in the Gulf of Mexico, and for many other reasons I don't even care to go into here since I'm not being paid for this shit...

The fact of the matter is, both major parties have been feeding at the trough of oil and energy company donations for decades, over a century. Today, Vitter's ostensible and also compromised political rival, Democratic House Rep. Charlie Melancon, got choked up over...his political future, but at least he's lashing-out at BP and Vitter.

Why should he worry? As profoundly stupid as voters in Louisiana are, this gusher in the Gulf could be a game changer on a fundamental level. Both candidates are incumbents. This happened on their watch too, and fool me several hundred times stops being charming in the face of an environmental catastrophe brought about by cronyism and corruption in the unseemly relationship between politics and business in America.

Like Vitter, Melancon's taken his share of contributions from Big Oil: according to Opensecrets.org, a site that tracks the campaign contributions of American politicians at the national level, Melancon received $65,000 in donations from "oil & gas" for the 2009-2010 election cycle alone, coming from "individuals" and "PACs." This makes his connections to Big Oil and the energy industries almost similar to Vitter's, but a closer look at the details makes it plain that Vitter is the largest recipient by many miles. Still, I'm not sure Melancon can be trusted either. The Republican's record speaks for itself, and it's monaural, but Louisianans are a backward lot, so he could still win, and his 78 might be a hit. Donations are currently easy to track, but there have been developments that will endanger this. Why do you think SCOTUS was dragged-in to repair the hemorrhaging of information that anyone with a pulse can obtain in just a few minutes? This is a bad political generation in crisis, a bad corporate order falling, and they're all scared.

But if you look at what Vitter and Melancon received for 2009-2010 from Big Oil and Energy, it's about the same proportionally. That's why we call it a political crisis. Other sources of money coming from Big Oil and Energy might be hidden within the individuals and PACs and with the recent Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations the same rights to privacy in political donations as a member of the public, we're going to see even more of this, albeit discovering the sources is going to be harder than ever, if not impossible in some cases. The courts might be the only way to obtain many of them in the future.

However, Vitter has raised significantly more than Melancon by at least $7 million, begging the question of whether one comes cheaper than the other; his success in raising so much begs the question of how significant Louisiana is to the GOP and corporate strategies. David says he's a populist, a wealthy man of the people who sides with giant corporations. Vitter had the poker-faced temerity to release this statement on April 30th of this year, just ten days after the Gulf gusher began, an unsurprising anti-government message he's known for, but he'll reverse himself in another context, rest assured:

U.S. Sen. David Vitter today inspected the damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and met with federal, state and local officials to discuss the ongoing cleanup efforts. Following his discussions, he urged Cabinet members and state and local officials in the meetings to streamline the cleanup efforts of BP and federal and state agencies.

“Based on the latest briefings and discussions with the federal and state parties involved, BP is spread too thin in trying to both cap the well and remediate the damage along the coastline, producing an inefficient and ineffective response,” said Vitter. “I urge all involved to allow BP to focus all of its efforts on building a dome and drilling a relief well at the source of the spill so that federal and state officials can focus their efforts on protecting and cleaning up the coast.”

Earlier today, Vitter took an aerial tour of the affected area in a U.S. Coast Guard aircraft with Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano and other officials, and he later attended a meeting in Robert with Napolitano and Interior Sec. Ken Salazar, along with other federal, state and local officials and representatives from the Coast Guard. Vitter was also set to meet with representatives of the Louisiana fishing industry to discuss ways to mitigate the damage to Louisiana fisheries.

“Our prayers continue to go out to the families and co-workers of the victims of the explosion,” said Vitter. “We’re facing a very serious situation along the Gulf Coast.”

In his meetings with Sec. Napolitano and other officials, Vitter also urged them to do whatever is necessary to help those most directly affected, including Louisiana fishermen and oystermen. Vitter intends to offer them any support they need from the federal level and will continue monitoring the efforts to protect Louisiana’s coast and the state’s valuable fishing habitats. (vitter.senate.gove, 04.30.2010)

Louisiana Democrats are calling the bill a "bailout" for BP, which isn't far off, but they share the blame. Melancon has raised over $2 million so far, not exactly making him come off as a populist candidate either, but in fairness, he's gotten a majority of his donations from "individuals." Soon, many of those "individuals" are going to be corporations, and it's going to be under the table and out of view of a pesky and meddlesome public. Candidates like Vitter and an embattled GOP will need those "back doors" to save themselves as time grinds on.

As an aside, one of Melancon's single largest donors is Comcast, not exactly a liberal or socially responsible firm by any stretch of the imagination. I leave it to the reader to dig deeper into the respective voting records of both candidates, it ain't pretty.

But Vitter's behaviors are truly offensive. Just thirteen days after the April 30th statements, he and Alabama's Republican Senator Jeff Sessions introduced this bill at the behest of the oil corporations and the GOP leadership since they're the party piss-boys (Vitter was Karl Rove's errand boy during Katrina, ensuring that little aid reached the state over partisan grounds):

The Oil Spill Response and Assistance Act, introduced today by the two conservative Republicans, would create a new liability cap equal to the last four quarters of the responsible party's profits or double the current limit of $75 million, whichever is greater. In this case, according to the senators, the liability limit for BP would be $20 billion under their statute. The liability is in addition to the responsibility to pay for the cleanup of the spill.

The measure, sponsored by two longstanding supporters of offshore drilling, would place an even greater potential burden on BP than legislation sponsored by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Frank Lautenberg, R-N.J, who are unsparing critics of offshore drilling, which would lift the cap to $10 billion. ...But Lautenberg said the floor of $150 million in the Vitter-Session bill is "too low." He said he is going to attempt to add his measure today as an amendment to the financial services bill being debated by the Senate. ("David Vitter, Jeff Sessions offer bill to raise liability cap after Gulf Oil spill," NOLA.com, 05.13.10)

Nice, but BP should pay for it all. Once again, we get a doublespeak presentation that's meant to create the appearance that they're actually raising the cap and doing something when they're clearly not. Were that the case, "cap" wouldn't be anywhere in the language. Antitrust laws exist on the books. If only Attorney General Eric Holder and the president would uphold some of them.

“Louisiana Senator David Vitter wants BP bailed out,” The Kentucky Democrat, 05.28.10: http://kydem.blogspot.com/2010/05/louisiana-senator-david-vitter-wants-bp.html

“REPRESENTATIVE (D-LA), Charlie Melancon,” Opensecrets.org, 2010 cycle: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=n00026840

“SENATOR (R-LA), David Vitter,” Opensecrets.org, 2010 cycle: http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00009659&cycle=2010

"David Vitter, Jeff Sessions offer bill to raise liability cap after Gulf Oil spill," NOLA.com, 05.13.10: http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/vitter_sessions_offer_bill_to.html

President Obama is to the right of Reagan

In case you haven't figured this one out, ostensible President Barack Obama rhetorically "slammed" BP and the contractors that caused the oil rig explosion and leak fifty miles off of the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico three weeks ago and topped it off with a not-so-cute cherry from the past: a comment made by Republican President Ronald Reagan, that other GOP executive the whose policies the current president is so in love with. The President himself almost seemed to choke on it when he uttered it, but the Mighty Oz had once again been invoked, albeit indirectly, and ambiguously. Reagan stood for...what? Big business and deregulation, little else.

At least in Lincoln's case he was fighting for the preservation of federalism, a basically settled issue most Americans appear to have missed. In Obama's case, he's just continuing more of what we've seen over the last thirty years which went into warp drive under the Republican president. Reagan was also a lot of rhetoric and bluster, and offered little in the realms of real substance or constructive social action.

Indeed, President Obama and his speech writers are going to tell us what we want to hear in decidedly Populist overtones, but we all know that it's hollow, that it has no substance. Well, at least most Black Americans appear to based on more recent polling, whatever that means. Sure, as far as anyone can tell, nobody's running prostitution and sex-for-contracts out of the offices of the Department of Interior anymore, but that's because the GOP is out of the power for the moment. They tend to get caught with their asses hanging-out, they're slow like that. The American public can be counted on to bring them back into office before long out of mindless habit and few options, and they'll continue the Republicans' own version of wrecking society that's impossible to miss since they don't care what anyone thinks. The Democratic Party's incumbents are more cunning and sell themselves as being of the people. That's a myth that's dying hard, but dying it is.

Comparing President Obama's record so far in dealing with our current economic crisis, you'd have to wonder if his other favorite Republican president was Herbert Hoover, a man who was roundly despised by the WWII generation for his inaction during the first three years of the Great Depression. As a result of Hoover's stupidity, the GOP became a minority party for fifty years, give-or-take, but they did their best to cause as much trouble as possible after WWII. Being from the same mold as them, Obama's no FDR, not even close. Lincoln? At least in Lincoln's case he was fighting for the preservation of federalism, the Union. In Obama's, he's just continuing more of what we've seen over the last thirty years and is really just another advocate of deregulation. He is most likely to be viewed as a mediocre president in the intervening years, if he's lucky. But the Democrats know hope fiends when they see them, they know where to hit people where they live.

Indeed, President Obama and his speech writers are going to tell us what we want to hear in decidedly Populist overtones, but we all know that it's hollow, that it has no substance. Sure, as far as anyone can tell, nobody's running prostitution and sex-for-contracts out of the offices of the Department of Interior anymore, but that's because the GOP is out of the power for the moment. The American public can be counted on to bring them back into office before long, and they'll continue their own version of wrecking society that's impossible to miss since they don't care what anyone thinks. The Democratic Party's incumbents are more cunning and sell themselves as being of the people. That's a myth that's dying hard, but dying it is.

In comparing the Obama administration's record so far in dealing with our current economic crisis with the 1930s, you begin to wonder if his other favorite Republican president was Herbert Hoover, a man who was roundly despised by the WWII generation for his inaction during the first three years of the Great Depression. The reality is that we've strayed even further to the right in the last generation in a way that's hard to describe, partly because of the cultural wars on language, something the economic establishment always benefits from.

From the president's comments yesterday:

...Let me also say, by the way, a word here about BP and the other companies involved in this mess. I know BP has committed to pay for the response effort, and we will hold them to their obligation. I have to say, though, I did not appreciate what I considered to be a ridiculous spectacle during the congressional hearings into this matter. You had executives of BP and Transocean and Halliburton falling over each other to point the finger of blame at somebody else. The American people could not have been impressed with that display, and I certainly wasn't.

I understand that there are legal and financial issues involved, and a full investigation will tell us exactly what happened. But it is pretty clear that the system failed, and it failed badly. And for that, there is enough responsibility to go around. And all parties should be willing to accept it.That includes, by the way, the federal government. For too long, for a decade or more, there has been a cozy relationship between the oil companies and the federal agency that permits them to drill. It seems as if permits were too often issued based on little more than assurances of safety from the oil companies. That cannot and will not happen anymore. To borrow an old phrase, we will trust, but we will verify. ...("Text of the remarks of Obama to the oil spill," Breitbart, 05.14.10)

Yes, it's also an old Russian saying, and has been used in other contexts. When politicians use it, it usually means that they're in deep shit and aren't a part of the solution (albeit, one day, we'll all be the solution!). Yes, he was also extending yet another laurel to those Republicans who so badly wants to woo. Why doesn't he get that it's never going to happen? Because he's operating under false assumptions. It's reminiscent of the Clinton administration for a reason: most of them are back in office. What should be implicitly clear is that the Obama administration isn't cleaning up the Department of Interior anymore than they're cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico.

But rest assured, the speculators are. In America, they always do. It helps to have your man in office seeding the bureaucracy with corporate executives and lobbyists (sometimes the same thing), creating that proverbial "revolving door" where the people are shut out, but the suits are always welcome. That's an bum rush, and the current administration is no exception in all of this. At this writing, they've yet to remove hundreds of Bush II appointees, an administration now going into its second year. That rarely ever occurs under the GOP. When they come into office, they sweep the place clean of past appointees with few exceptions. You might ask your president why he's so cozy with such questionable people who come fresh from the cocoons of Wall Street, most specifically from Goldman Sachs, but also coming from other "interest groups."

Only the public can reform government, and they're sitting on their hands, hoping, waiting, for someone to do it for them. That's certainly a big part of the problem with many of the attitudes surrounding President Barack Obama.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9FMOC7O0&show_article=1

Why do the Tea Baggers, militia nuts, and screechers get more coverage?

This seems to perplex a lot of people, and it's understandable: why would a truly lunatic fringe movement get this kind of airtime when the public opinion is almost completely against them on social issues like health care reform and all the others?

Why? The reasons are manifold and go back to that other period of near anarchy, the 1920s. But it took time after the Republicans handed the airwaves to business, though on a thin legal leash. There was that post-New Deal chipping away, but the big first was when we lost the Fairness Doctrine at the FCC in 1987 thanks to Republican President Ronald Reagan. The doctrine wasn't law, but it guided the broadcasting standards of the United States for decades and allowed for a more equitable access to the airwaves for differing opinions and viewpoints, and it worked. There was at least some variety, not that it was stellar or truly representative of the social/cultural landscape, but it was better.

It also worked because the structure it brought about would never have allowed for the existence of the current echo chamber of the right we now inhabit, and that's including CNN and the major networks that were already traditionally to the right thanks to ownership. This is why Republicans and enemies of free speech everywhere don't want anything approximating a return to something like the Fairness Doctrine. Never mind that the public technically owns the airwaves and has from the start, the interests of big business are more important. But day after day, we see the right-wing nuts on the idiot box. Why?

It's not that complicated, and there's another reason why all the useless flailing is all over the airwaves: it's because the Tea Baggers, the militia nuts, white hate groups, Ted Nugent, Sarah Palin, lost white girls, the "birthers," the operatives like James O'Keefe (the "ACORN pimp"), and yes, the multimedia gaggle of mumbling, anti-abortion nuts, Libertarians, babbling morons like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, both of whom have resorted in recent weeks to all but advocating acts of violence against the current President of the United States, Barack Obama, aren't a genuine threat to the status quo in America.

In reality, these mutants and wackos are badly needed by a pro-big business and finance Republican Party that has nearly lost its entire base over the administration of George W. Bush. After that, all you have remaining are the wackos, the fringe, and crumbling establishments often reach for the closest set of cranks when the curtain's about to close on them (including within the political establishment). Some say this is "all part of the plan" (which one?), but I disagree. You couldn't make this shit up, and that's why even the GOP cannot control them. These babbling jackasses, these morons, these throwbacks to the time of the Frontier hick and the lynch mobs that once ran riot in America are, in fact, in many cases, their very descendants. Yes, there is an element of "astroturf" to a lot of it, but these goobers are here, now, and they've been with us, hobbling the rest of us, from the beginning of this nation and will for the foreseeable future.

The message? There is no message coming from these people except, "More of the same." That's pretty pathetic considering many of them are now or are going to be the victims of the very policies they're advocating. Some of us simply like to shit where we eat because it's easier in the beginning. Of course, there is the underlying racism in these protests and the movement, and for many of these lost fools, the biggest fools alive on this rock called earth, it's the only reason they're at a Tea Party rally or why they were at a health care protest against reform: they're angry that a "nigger" is president. The thread connecting the economic elites of America and the white underclass is that they're all Eurotrash and can never truly be "European," no matter how much they prattle on about their respective heritages. Why wouldn't we see them on television, print, and Internet media all of the time?

These idiots are really chasing after an America that never was, but everyone likes watching a spectacle, even me. That'll learn 'ya (or not, maybe ever)!

Eric Cantor: Conflater, Liar, and yes, a Pussy

Richmond, Virginia--Is there something in the water in the former capital of the Confederacy or is it just another great example of an overall problem in the culture that goes beyond regional issues?

Someone--and nobody knows who at this point--fired a bullet into the air and it hit a window of a room that's sometimes used by Virginia GOP Representative, Eric Cantor. As most don't want to know by now, Cantor's a prominent figure in the health care debate and wasn't exactly a voice of reason during the dialog during all of that, and there was a lot of it. He was hardly alone within the ranks of the GOP's current congressional incumbency nor their press arm, found primarily in the daily bombast and obfuscation of Fox News. What exactly does the FCC do anyway? If the right had their way, nothing, and that includes inciting others to acts of political violence. What's the new president, someone who stands to get hurt, doing? Apparently, nothing.

Fox News pundit Glenn Beck, political porn star Sarah Palin, conservative media sociopath Rush Limbaugh and a gaggle of former and current GOP incumbents have been telling us more than we ever wanted to know about fictional "death panels," encouraging the carrying of firearms to speaking engagements of the president, and then some. There were also the shoving matches (often clearly planned and even staged by or for GOP operatives) at town hall meetings, the violating of the rights of others to speak at those meetings through shouting (an interesting obverse of silencing activists at Bush speaking events), various other acts of political violence including the murder of a late-term abortion doctor in Kansas, and so on, and so on. Not a pretty picture at all, and much of it coming from that political gadfly movement, the Tea Party crowd. Yet, there is and has been very open demagoguery by even the likes of "mainstream" incumbents enjoining the unhinged towards pointless and violent political action.

Some--even GOP Senator John McCain--are advocating rhetorically of taking up the gun now that the populist right appears to have lost the health care battle. The patrician McCain can hardly be called a "man of the people" either, having married into money when it was clear he wasn't good at anything beyond being propped-up like some banana dictator. Then, there has been the talk and open fanning of the flames of secession in Texas by its current, Republican Governor. But Big Phrama and the insurance and private health cartels are making out like bandits while all the flailing is going on, all the political theater. It's all bullshit, not real. But many of these demagogues have now gone too far with the recent attack-by-plane of an IRS building in Austin, numerous death threats and failed plots on the president, attacks on Democratic incumbents and their offices, verbal assaults of Democratic incumbents, some of them civil rights era heroes, and worse, including numerous attempted break-ins going back as far as the summer of 2007. Like most criminals, they fear a natural backlash for their misbehavior.

Now, we have one of the chief flame fanners (puffer) in Eric Cantor trying very desperately to play the iconography of the victim. As usual, and being a Republican, the truth isn't on his side:

The Richmond Police Department is investigating an act of vandalism at the Reagan Building, 25 E. Main St., Richmond, Virginia. A first floor window was struck by a bullet at approximately 1 a.m. on Tuesday, March 23. The building, which has several tenants including an office used by Congressman Eric Cantor, was unoccupied at the time.

A Richmond Police detective was assigned to the case. A preliminary investigation shows that a bullet was fired into the air and struck the window in a downward direction, landing on the floor about a foot from the window. The round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds. There was no other damage to the room, which is used occasionally for meetings by the congressman.

The Richmond Police Department is sharing information about the incident with appropriate law enforcement agencies.

At this time there are no suspects.

Posted by RPD at 12:21 PM (http://richmondvapolice.blogspot.com/2010/03/richmond-police-investigate-cantor.html)

With the projectile coming from a downward trajectory, it's very likely that the bullet was shot from an unrelated location and incident and reached its destination without being purposely aimed with any intent of hitting that location.

Some are already speculating that Cantor and some associates concocted the whole event, but life can be more obvious and stranger than that. Would the GOP stage an event like this? It's not beyond their capacity, surely, they've engaged in criminal acts in the very recent past and can be expected to continue doing so without any significant accountability being brought into play by the forces of law and order. It's a curious thing that while open flouting of the law by the right goes generally untouched the left gets a far different treatment. Simply ask yourself what would have happened to progressive activists had they begun brandishing weapons at Bush II speaking engagements or made the kind of noise of "taking up arms" from 2001-2009. They would have been crushed, and some who were doing a lot less were, some of them antiwar protesters and veterans. This distinctly different treatment of the progressive left and the populist right speaks volumes as to who's the real threat to a corrupt Wall Street.

The Eric Cantor "attack"doesn't appear to be one at all but his the reaction to it, that of the bought media, and the rest of the GOP, is definitely opportunist in trying to downplay their demagogic comments to take up arms that have been triggering acts of political violence within the right in recent months. It's the classic defensive game of projection: you did it, not me. It's a curious event at the end of over a year of the GOP fighting against the same bill that McCain and Mitt Romney would have passed. Why the tantrum? Because they didn't get to pass it, someone else got the spoils, and that's about it. Their pathetic attempts at victimhood would be laughable were they not harming the lives of millions across the globe, the real Insane Clown Posse, and definitely a party comprised mostly of race-baiters at this writing.

So, the president grew a pair of balls, briefly...

So what? Granted, he has more balls than the last president who couldn't deal with an "unfriendly" audience that wasn't hand-picked, but does this make him a "good guy" now when we all know he's not going to do the right thing for the common good unless we nearly break his arm off? Where's the will? None of this talk at the GOP's retreat signals a real change, just one in image. Results are what count. Without a public option with real muscle, he can forget it. Without an ending of two worthless wars, he can forget it. Without closing Guantanamo, he can forget it. Without creating an independent commission to charge the last administration with a gauntlet of crimes, forget it, he's the same as the last brew, so are his advisers, and Congress needs to be flushed.

Campaign manager David Plouffe and the Obama administration aren't inspired by genius

Washington D.C.--The Obama administration's David Plouffe has written a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post (the January 24, "November doesn't need to be a nightmare for Democrats") that should ring familiar since the public wrote it first: the Democrats need to deliver on the promises of the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama, that of genuine progressive reform, real change. Most Americans know such promises coming from either party aren't going to happen without incredible demands or from the fact that events have left the political and economic establishment with few options.

"Progress" has never been a gift, yet Plouffe's read his Machiavelli and understands that you have to throw the mob something:

...After two election cycles in which Democrats won most of the close races and almost all of the big ones, Democrats have much more fragile turf to defend this year than usual. Add to that a historic economic crisis, stubborn unemployment and the pain that both have inflicted on millions of Americans, and you have a recipe for a white-knuckled ride for many of our candidates.

But not if Democrats do what the American people sent them to Washington to do. ...

It all sounds good, but which Obama are we going to get, and which Democrats? What amount of arm-twisting is the current administration willing to do? Even LBJ, once called "the King of the Senate," understood the power of the presidency, and he flexed it. It's sad to admit it, but in some respects, the 2008 McCain campaign (and Obama's other running-mates and opponents) were correct that the president isn't experienced enough with the ins-and-outs of the legislative process and what it takes to get things done. His rather feeble and continuing outreach to the GOP incumbency is one obvious indicator of this.

The public wants leadership. The public wants someone who's really on their side.

The President's ongoing desire for bipartisanship masks what should be clear to all: he's to-the-right of Ronald Reagan and Richard M. Nixon, just not to the extremists in the House and the Senate. His recent talk of freezing social spending in the midst of an almost unprecedented economic crisis has been roundly criticized by eminent economists who have all-but-given-up on him, it being just another capitulation to the minority party, a curious stance if ever there was one. Ploufee understands this perception--an accurate one--when he writes these agenda headers:

...--Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay...

--We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them. ...

-- Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy. ...

-- Don't accept any lectures on spending. ...

-- "Change" is not just about policies. ...

-- Run great campaigns. ...

-- No bed-wetting. ...

This all sounds good, as most campaign rhetoric does, but what about the reality? Is it really a matter of perception? It is, but not the way that Plouffe paints it.

First, "Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay": Plouffe is more than a little dishonest here, which is to be expected from a mainstream campaign manager. When the truth isn't on your side, divert. The Democratic Party and the Obama administration specifically and willfully dropped the ball on socialized medicine and capitulated to big medicine, pharma, and the health insurance lobby. How they're going to reverse this past behavior is a great question, but the Senate version of the health care reform bill is slanted to reward insurance companies with billions of dollars and a captive consumer base. Presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel has been instrumental in some of these problems, but so have "blue dog" Democratic incumbents in Congress. Nonetheless, the White House shares the greatest blame here. The GOP's role goes without saying, it's not progressive or constructive.

Second, "We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them": This is where the Obama administration has--once again--not done even remotely enough. International, world class economists have chided the president and Congress for the smallness of the initial $700 Billion stimulus program, an "impetus" that isn't especially higher than the appropriations for the needless wars in the Middle East which are being fought for petroleum corporations and aren't in the interest of the public, let alone promote a safer world or our national security. Don't expect the Obama administration or Congress to be receptive to demands over this. Public works projects only go so far, and we've had a scanty investment considering the desperate need to repair our national infrastructure, including real world (meaning adequate) investments in high tech and green infrastructure and mass transportation. However, I hear the military is now hiring, but hurry, their quotas are nearly met now.

At the rate jobs are vanishing, they're not even remotely doing enough.

Third, "Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy": This is Plouffe being redundant. Yes, we probably averted another Great Depression...for now. Without real reform in the financial sectors--which the Obama administration is fighting--we're likely to have one anyway, or very likely so, according to academic economists.

Fourth, "Don't accept any lectures on spending": This is true, except that much of the self-inflicted damage has been done. This would allow the Democrats more leverage in fixing the economy and getting us out of the mess we're in, but that doesn't translate into the will to do it, or even the ability, when you've already compromised yourselves on several fronts and handed the opposition all their talking points. The public kept telling the Obama administration this again and again over the last year and they wouldn't listen. That's called a leadership vacuum.

Fifth, "'Change' is not just about policies": Well, duh, but please explain why passing reasonable health care reform (meaning having a system like Canada's, the UK's, or France's) has been so hard then? We can talk about campaign reform and ethics reforms all we want, but my experience--and it's direct--is that Democrats aren't especially interested in it anymore than Republicans are, they just talk a better talk. The Democratic record for ethics enforcement is monaural and poor.

Sixth, "Run great campaigns": Considering the number of Obama/DNC supporters and volunteers that I know and know of who are angry over the last year and who feel used, this shit's not going to cut it, not even remotely. So what? More "appearances are everything" thinking.

Seventh, "No bed-wetting": This is just more hyperbole, more rhetoric. Right, stick to the script, grow a pair. Too late? Probably...

About all I was convinced of from Plouffe's opinion piece is that he understands a groundswell is coming if Democratic incumbents don't start delivering on a bare-minimum of their promises, that they must at least appear to show leadership qualities where they have shown almost none at all, instead bending over backwards for corporate interests and Wall Street. They've known for over a year that the public has wanted more and substantial action from them to fix the mess of the last administration and beyond, but they've refused to and won't listen to the public, the majority. Now, they claim, they want to listen, but only when it appears that they're going to lose their majority. How is this going to translate into leadership? Plouffe offers no answers.

From this, it seems obvious to this writer that they've learned nothing at all and will continue down the same path regardless. Americans might consider breaking their two-party addiction, and quick. Rhetoric isn't going to cut it anymore, results will. While the vote in Massachusetts for Scott Brown to fill the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat is being called a "referendum," there's another side to it: people simply wanted change, any change, and "renegade" candidates without an obvious connection to the political establishment have a real opening. To some extent, the outcome there was more about moving on from the Kennedy dynasty and the generalizations about its significance have been overstated, first by Republicans, then by just about everyone else (except me, it seems).

Voters in Massachusetts may have been voting against their interests (though it should be remembered that Brown was only elected to finish Kennedy's term), but the message that they want new faces in office is crystal clear. Democrats got complacent and arrogant, but the backlash in Massachusetts was a longtime coming. Simply running a "good campaign" and shaping perceptions does not a leader make. What's needed is a real opposition party that's actually different from the GOP and has the common good in mind. Best of luck with that one.

"November doesn't need to be a nightmare for Democrats," The Washington Post, 01.24.2010: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204216.html

Who's in Haiti right now? From a private security source...

Haiti--I recently received some of this via my email account from an old source. Most of it is probably already online, but it's a good condensation. Also, private security are streaming into Haiti as expected (see link).

Part I:

EUROPEAN UNION (NATO):

MARINE MILITARE ITALIA AIRCRAFT CARRIER (MMI CAVOUR)[En-route]

FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP (SIROCO)
FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE BATRAL (FRANCIS GARNIER)

CANADIAN NAVY DESTROYER (HMCS ATHABASKAN)
CANADIAN NAVY FRIGATE (HMCS HALIFAX)

ROYAL NETHERLANDS NAVY SPECIAL MISSON SHIP (HNLMS PELIKAAN)

NAVAL ARMADA DE SPAIN DOCK LANDING SHIP (SNS CASTILLE)[En-route]

(NEW ITALIAN AIRCRAFT CARRIER COMMISSIONED 2008///OPERATIONAL 2009)

[http://www.marina.difesa.it/programmi/portaerei.asp]

Part II:

OPERATION UNIFIED RESPONSE

Commander, LT GEN Keen (US SOUTHERN COMMAND, MIAMI - http://www.southcom.mil)

US COAST GUARD CUTTER USCGC VALIANT
US COAST GUARD CUTTER USCGC MOHAWK
US COAST GUARD CUTTER USCGC TOMAHAW
US COAST GUARD CUTTER USCGC FORWARD

US ARMY 82ND AIRBORNE DIVISION (2ND BCT) 1ST BATTALION (Haiti) [Presidential Palace/General Hospital/Other]
US ARMY 82ND AIRBORNE DIVISION (2ND BCT) 2ND/3RD/4TH BATTALIONS (En-route to Haiti)

US MARINE CORPS 22nd MARINE EXPEDITIONARY UNIT (MEU) [Port au Prince Seaport/Other]

US AIR FORCE [Toussaint Louverture International Airport (PAP)]

US NAVY CARRIER STRIKE GROUP CSG (USS VINSON AIRCRAFT CARRIER)
US NAVY EXPEDITIONARY STRIKE GROUP ESG (USS BATAAN AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP)
US NAVY HOSPITAL SHIP (USS COMFORT)
US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE DESTROYER (USS HIGGINS)
US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE CRUISER (USS NORMANDY)
US NAVY GUIDED MISSILE FRIGATE (USS UNDERWOOD)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS FORT MCHENRY)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS CARTER HALL)
US NAVY DOCK LANDING SHIP (USS GUNSTON HALL)
US NAVY SALVAGE SHIP (USNS GRASP)

==========================

=============================

OFFICIAL MILITARY DEPLOYMENTS (unit rescue teams of various nations not listed)

UNITED NATIONS STABILIZATION MISSION IN HAITI (MINUSTAH)

FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP (SIROCO)
FRENCH MARINE NATIONALE BATRAL (FRANCIS GARNIER)

CANADIAN NAVY DESTROYER (HMCS ATHABASKAN)
CANADIAN NAVY FRIGATE (HMCS HALIFAX)

NAVAL ARMADA DE MEXICO AMPHIBIOUS ASSAULT SHIP (ARM PAPALOAPAN)
NAVAL ARMADA DE MEXICO HOSPITAL SHIP (ARM HUASTECO)

NAVAL ARMADA DE VENEZUELA (UKNOWN NAME)
NAVAL ARMADA DE VENEZUELA (UKNOWN NAME)

============================================================

82nd AIR DIV Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) (http://www.bragg.army.mil/82dv/):
1st BCT (IRAQ/AFGHAN)
2nd BCT (GLOBAL RESPONSE FORCE)(1st Battalion in Haiti. 2nd, 3rd & 4th Battalions en-route to Haiti)
3rd BCT (IRAQ/AFGHAN)
4th BCT (IRAQ/AFGHAN)

Corps
Division (4 x Brigades): 15000 soldiers
Brigade (4 x Battalions): 5000 soldiers
Battalion (4 x Companys): 1000 soldiers
Company (4 x Platoons): 200 soldiers
Platoon: 40 soldiers

After the failure of Katrina, you'd want to call it " OPERATION UNIFIED RESPONSE" too. What I'd like to know is why Doctors Without Borders' planes are being turned away at the Port Au Prince airport, not being allowed to land. At least that's the word going around now.

The jobs they promised us! http://www.haiti-security.com/Employment_-_Guards.html

A very special fundraiser: Send me--Matt Janovic--to Los Angeles to tell Arianna Huffington she's full of shit!

Any assistance in prearranging the meeting-of-minds (I only promise to utter, "You're full of shit!" the rest should be history) would be greatly appreciated! This is a non-profit deal here, and if there's a story in it, you'll be reading it right here, at this location...well, not this exact location, meaning this post, but this site! Will we discuss Marxist philosophy afterward, or will I get kneed-in-the-groin? I think she's done enough of that to the American public.

But who knows? In the spirit of Gandhi, she might just have someone else kick my ass all over a parking lot. No kisses, though, no tongue, she wears brown-lipstick to hide that ass-kissing of people richer than she is. Mmm-hmm, hanging-out with billionaires, that's really going to accomplish a lot. You know, they're just the core-problem in America, these horrible people she tends to associate with...

Look, either she's a fool or a liar.

She believed that Gingrich and the GOP "would help the poor" in America with the "contract for America," which coming from a Cambridge graduate is bizarre. Had she never read about or experienced the last 80 years of our history? That's crap, and it's back-peddling. She knew they wouldn't do anything to "help" the subproletarian classes anymore than they were going to help the eroding middle-class. Why would she believe them, ever? This is the same kind of flawed-logic that kept the original progressive era from being truly progressive, giving us the Great Depression down the road, this cow-towing. At the very least, this stupid woman owes it to all of us to help clean-up the mess she and others helped create during the 1990s and get her hands dirty. She is not a member of the working-class or the general public. She runs with the rich, the privileged, the connected. Why would she "believe" them, the GOP back in the 1990s thinking they wanted to service the common good (and this is giving her far too much credit)?

The answer is a pretty simple one: she identified with them and thought she was "part of the club." Either she was fooled, partly-fooled and really just cynical, completely cynical and with them 100% (my take), or she's just incredibly confused and probably a dumbass with an Ivy League degree. My feeling is that she's just another social climber, those people who are actually worse than the rich themselves, and trust me, I've seen it in action with relatives in Chicago on a smaller scale, it's nauseating. The worst people in the world are the ones who want to be like the powerful people, the rich people. Scum.

Very little of Arianna Huffington's life speaks well of her, and now, we're supposed to believe that she was "fooled" by the Obama campaign as well. Her biography is a good work of fiction. Considering how cozy she was letting the Brothers Emanuel write on her website, and how much she helped the Obama campaign, it doesn't really matter whether her motives have been pure, misguided, or patently evil and cynical. The results--what results?--speak for themselves. This stupid woman has royally screwed-up and screwed the rest of us and should be booted-out of the progressive constellation yesterday. While millions are starving across the globe, being disenfranchised, losing their homes here in America, being slaughtered in a multi-front war, and while our rights are being rolled-back, this dumbass is sipping champagne and eating canapes with billionaires who don't want to be bothered with paying their fair share in taxes.

She's arch-conservative, she's a fraud, and she's got to change or go, and she's hardly alone. Send me to Los Angeles for one day (won't go until I'm certain I'll find her), and I'll give her exposure to a clue.

"Arianna," my one act play on Lady MacDumbo: http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2009/01/arianna-satirical-play-by-matt-janovic_31.html

Arlen Specter surprises again: Reintroduces legislation to allow 9/11 lawsuits against Saudi ruling-class to move forward

Washington D.C.--If there's anything one can say about the senator from Pennsylvania, it's that he's unpredictable and probably really does have this nation's best interests at-heart--in his own mind at least. We'll set aside the magic-bullet theory for a moment...

This week--on December 21st--Specter called on the floor of the Senate for the passage of legislation that would allow lawsuits initiated by thousands of survivors (as well as the families of those killed and insurance companies) of the terrorists attacks on September 11, 2001 to move forward, and introduced the proposed bill with bipartisan support from no less a non-man than Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), although I'm sure it's purely a political move on his part since it's not likely to pass, at least not on his watch.

That would require will and real support, something Graham and others in both major parties aren't inclined to do since there's a lot of money at stake, never mind the destabilizing effects actual justice directed at the Saudi ruling-clans would have on the world's oil supply and the global economy. The coverage in the mainstream media--once again--has been virtually non-existent.

It's not his first time, and he began this road in late 2003 with roughly the same reaction, meaning indifference if not obstructionism. On October 25th, 2007, Specter introduced the "Saudi Arabia Accountability Act" that was designed to accomplish essentially the same aims, meaning dragging the Saudi government and various institutions and charities into the light and allowing lawsuits to proceed that are currently being barred by the State Department (the executive branch) and questionable Federal Circuit Court rulings, more recently in the 2nd Circuit:

Specter (D., Pa.) said the legislation would clarify that lawsuits by U.S. citizens could go forward without a sign-off from the State Department.

A federal appeals court in Manhattan last year dismissed claims against the Saudi government, saying such litigation can proceed only if the State Department finds that the Saudis provided financial aid and other assistance to terrorist groups.
Besides clarifying the law, the bill would reinstate those lawsuits.
The Philadelphia law firm Cozen O'Connor has sued Saudi Arabia, members of the Saudi royal family, and more than a dozen Islamic charities, alleging responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. The Cozen lawsuit, on behalf of dozens of U.S. and international insurers that lost billions of dollars at ground zero, accuses the Saudi government of financing charities that in turn laundered money into al-Qaeda. ("Specter looks to revive 9/11 suits against Saudis," Philadelphia Inquirer, 12.24.2009)

This is all very new since Americans have never been allowed to sue a foreign power without the permission of the executive branch through established channels at the State Department. In other words, this is a new right that Senator Specter is proposing, an expansion of legal recourse for the American people that should have been in-place generations ago.

Granted, this is just a new submission of essentially the same legislation he's been proposing since as early as 2003, but he's not giving up, and neither should anyone concerned at getting to the bottom of what happened. The problem for the "truther" movement is that this doesn't fit the anti-government agenda or many of their theories that go in the same direction (nowhere), so we can expect a general lack-of-enthusiasm let alone any noise over this from them. They're hardly alone in the business: there are extremely powerful players in the financial and political sectors whose ties to the Saudi regime run deep. Instead, hundreds-of-thousands are running around in denial with their science fiction theories that would never stand the legal test in a court of law.

This is why the last administration did everything it could to keep these things from going anywhere, and likewise for the new one. Rather than actually protecting the American people then, what we have is a sham in the so-called war on terror, making it blatantly reminiscent of that other failed war, the war on drugs. Who's side are they on anyway? Do we really want to get to the truth at all? If not, we need to stop talking about concern over the victims and using them as a political hot-potato, now. Frankly, it was always distasteful, but this is probably another reason that Graham signed-on with Specter as a co-sponsor, to cover his and the GOP's ass for the next elections hoping everyone's forgotten their real role in all of this.

Here are a few things remarked on by Specter when he introduced a similar bill in 2007 that "truthers" (their "truth" being highly-selective) tend to ignore:

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, evidence has emerged indicating that support for al-Qaeda, Ramas, and other organizations has come from Saudi Arabia.

Testimony presented to several Congressional committees, including the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Judiciary Committee, and Intelligence committees in both houses, has indicated that Saudi Arabia is an epicenter for terrorist financing. These committees have also found the Saudi government's cooperation in investigations into the al-Qaeda terrorist network has been lackluster.

In the 108 Congress, as a member of the Governmental Affairs Committee and as a member of the Judiciary Committee, we worked to establish a basic point that anybody who knowingly contributes to a terrorist organization is an accessory before the fact to murder; so when people contribute to al-Qaeda or Hamas, knowing that both organizations employ suicide bombers, they are accessories to murder.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, adopted in 2001, mandates that all States "refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts,'' take "the necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist acts,'' and "deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts.'' There is mounting evidence that Saudi Arabia has not been compliant with this resolution.

The 9/11 Commission interviewed numerous military officers and government officials who repeatedly listed Saudi Arabia as a prime place for terrorists to set up bases and found that "Saudi Arabia's society was a place where al-Qaeda raised money directly from individuals through charities.''

The Council on Foreign Relations concluded in a 2002 report that "for years, individuals and charities based in Saudi Arabia have been the most important source of funds for al-Qaeda, and for years, Saudi officials have turned a blind eye.''

There are indications that, since the May 12, 2003, suicide bombings in Riyadh, the Government of Saudi Arabia is making a more serious effort to combat terrorism. That said, I would like to draw attention to the following findings recanted by organizations which have studied the record of the Saudis.

In a June 2004 report entitled "Update on the Global Campaign Against Terrorist Financing,'' the Council on Foreign Relations reported that "we find it regrettable and unacceptable that since September 11, 2001, we know of not a single Saudi donor of funds to terrorist groups who have been publicly punished.''

A joint committee of the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives issued a report on July 24, 2003, that quotes various U.S. Government personnel who complained that the Saudis refused to cooperate in the investigation of Osama bin Laden and his network both before and after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It should be remembered that the Saudi regime executes their own citizens publicly in Riyadh with beheadings and amputations for violations of religious laws in what is a theocratic dictatorship. Interestingly, there's no entry for the legislation for either December 21st or the 24th (the date of the Philadelphia Inquirer coverage) on his own web page, but the story is gradually getting out there. This pretty much spells-it-out in a clear and basic form that should be understandable to anyone who can read and comprehend, and Specter is hardly a radical.

Neither is Charles Schumer (D-NY). What's radical in the current political culture, however, is for this legislation to go anywhere at all. Is this about justice or agendas? Go ask Alex Jones. Go ask the Obama administration. They're against any such moves that the senator from Pennsylvania is suggesting. But Specter appears to feel that the prospects for the bill and its main-thrust are good, stating, "I think it will pass." Let's hope so since the Saudis aren't about to stand down anytime soon without sanctions. Think what you want, but government is the only answer in all of this, surely not oil companies and trusts.

"Specter looks to revive 9/11 suits against Saudis," Philadelphia Inquirer, 12.24.2009: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/homepage/20091224_Specter_looks_to_revive_9_11_suits_against_Saudis.html

Arlen Specter's Floor Statement on the Saudi Arabia Accountability Act of 2007, introduced October 25, 2007: http://specter.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=NewsRoom.ArlenSpecterSpeaks&ContentRecord_id=f6853748-1321-0e36-baae-0e4b60c0cd96&Region_id=&Issue_id=bd50d272-7e9c-9af9-72de-559d0e9aeed9