I know what you're thinking

By Capt. Fogg

My first thought was: I've seen this scenario in some cheesy Tom Cruise infected Sci-Fi movie. Apparently that thought occurred to the Nature.com editorial staff as well. The Department of Homeland Security it would seem, is testing a system to detect malicious thoughts. No really.

They call it Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST) because that's what government departments do with their doings, lest clear speech shed clear light. They make up acronyms that disguise the tunnels they dig under the foundations of liberty, but I digress. The technology purports to identify individuals who are planning to blow things up or have "malintent" as they say in the dialect.

Like a more traditional polygraph, FAST measures heart rates, among other things. Heart rates respiration and perspiration go up, after all when you're nervous about the bomb in your shorts or wishing you could throttle some thick-skull TSA twit as he gives you grief over an aspirin in your pants pocket that shows up on a scanner and starts groping you for explosives as you put your hands over your head in abject submission. Hell I'm sure I'd set off all kinds of alarm bells right now just thinking of how I've so often been treated as a felon on his way into the penitentiary instead of a tired traveler trying to get home.

I have no idea about what else this electro-mechanical night club bouncer measures and I'm not sure it invades any privacy that hasn't already been taken away by the cowardly traitors who passed the "Patriot" Act. I'm too lazy and too unwilling to provoke myself into another Lewis Black style tantrum to read the " Privacy Impact Assessment" our bureaucratic brethren at DHS have given us. I'll leave that to you. Besides my loathing of people who seem to exist only for the purpose of inserting that fly-blown and putrid metaphor into every sentence, it was written, most revealingly, by someone any German speaker will recognize as the Devil himself: Hugo Teufel III, Chief Privacy offer at the DHS under George W. Bush.

Does it work any better than the Polygraph does at detecting the evasions of sociopaths? It would have to, since those tend to be the people we're looking to put on no-fly lists and of course we won't have the results interpreted by a seasoned professional, but rather someone who was promoted from K-Mart security officer last week.

No, it's the stuff of B movies or sarcastic Dr. Strangelove sequels or even Orwell novels, but perhaps we've lost the ability even to see what the politics of fear has done to us in our cringing, cowardly new century.

Footloose II? Maybe not.

Over on Brilliant at Breakfast, Jill found this video. Please watch it in it's entirety (well, OK, halfway through, it just switches to alternate camera views of the same thing - I guess you've gotten the picture at that point).

Holy crap, right? This is America? No dancing allowed? Do we live in a police state? Did Reverend Shaw Moore get elected to Congress? What the hell? I thought Cheney and his jackbooted thugs had been disbanded.

That looks like a flash mob that hadn't really set up, getting shut down (and then thrown down) by Park Police. And did you catch that threat implied in the sergeant's statement, that "you might end up in jail for 48 hours"? And then the body slams, and... Oh my god!

But, you know, there's an old saying about every story having two sides. And that's a hell of an expensive camera that keeps showing up in frame: flash mobs don't tend to be using high-end professional video equipment. So I did a little research. First step: the video is branded "Adam vs the Man," and the title gives you the name "Adam Kokesh." So I looked him up.

Turns out that Kokesh is a kind of a media whore. He was a marine, and during his first tour in Iraq, brought back a war souvenir, which is a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Now, Wikipedia quotes a story from the Newhouse News Service saying that because of that, he "was demoted to corporal and soon thereafter discharged honorably with a re-enlistment code that basically said, 'you can't re-enlist.'" He then joined the Individual Ready Reserve, which isn't a full-time active duty military slot, but is still in the military. Which means that he was still under the UCMJ.

So he wore his uniform to a rally protesting the Iraq War, which is also a violation of the UCMJ (he's allowed to attend political events, he just isn't allowed to be in uniform - the military doesn't want to appear to support either side of any debate). Got in trouble for that, but they went easy on him.

He started getting publicity for high-profile protests: a squad-sized "occupation patrol" of DC, to give Americans a taste of what it's like; holding up a large sign at the Alberto Gonzalez hearing, saying that Gonzalez had said "I don't know" 74 times; getting arrested for trespassing in Fort Benning; stuff like that. He rode his internet celebrity into a local libertarian radio show here in Albuquerque, which was picked up by the Russia Today television network.

(And, you know, really? Russia Today? I can understand making a living, and I, personally, don't have a problem with RT, but you can see where the image problem kicks in there, right?)

So, that's him.

Now, in 2008, a small libertarian flash mob gathered at the Jefferson Memorial to celebrate the birthday of Jefferson. In breaking them up, one woman was arrested. Her suit was tossed out, with the judge ruling in a 26 page report that:

"The purpose of the memorial is to publicize Thomas Jefferson's legacy, so that critics and supporters alike may contemplate his place in history. The Park Service prohibits all demonstrations in the interior of the memorial, in order to maintain 'an atmosphere of calm, tranquillity, and reverence.' Prohibiting demonstrations is a reasonable means of ensuring a tranquil and contemplative mood at the Jefferson Memorial."

"Plus, an organized protest is required to get a permit," the judge did not add.

And two weeks ago, the US Court of Appeals affirmed that judgement.

(Remember that thing about permits, by the way. And the phrase "organized protests.")



And the five protesters were taken to the police station, charged with demonstrating without a permit, then released a short time later.

Is this a stupid law? I think so. Did the police overreact? Well, hell yes. They didn't need to body-slam anybody - that was over the top. But I've done crowd control: they needed to move fast and shut this down before it escalated: the longer it lasts, the more people join in. And everything can get much worse, very quickly.

And were the Park Police placed in an untenable position? Looks that way to me.

Sunday Scripture Reading For All Lizards, Great and Small

h/t Nameless Cynic

Thought I'd say hi to Bradlee Dean

Since you can only send text in Dean's contact form, he isn't getting all the supporting links. Fortunately, I've got a hotmail account that I don't use for anything else. Because not only am I unlikely to get an answer to this, I suspect I'm about to be buried in religiospam.

Pastor Dean,

You know, it's a funny thing. I read your explanation of the controversy surrounding your prayer on the Minnesota House floor, and I'm a little confused.


I'll be honest. I never heard of you before. Maybe that's because I'm not from Minnesota. So there's that. But you're a man of God and everything, right?

You start the explanation by saying "Today I gave a prayer at the opening of the MN House session. Little did I know that I was going to be giving the prayer on the same day that they were going to have a vote on the marriage amendment." But apparently you had to push through the protestors to get into the building, and they were yelling and everything, and they were even there for two weeks already, protesting an issue that seems to be important to you.

So that doesn't sound like a very good explanation, but maybe you were just trying to say that you didn't know about that vote happening that day. I guess I can accept that. I want to be fair and give you the benefit of the doubt.

But then, your explanation of why you got struck from the record and Zellers denounced you and restarted the session with a different pastor giving a prayer and everything, was "Apparently someone was angry about my prayer because I invoked the name of Jesus." But that's not what anybody said at all.

I mean, if I understand the problem, the big thing was that you went up there and pretty much said that President Obama wasn't a Christian. You know, at the end of the prayer, when you were all like:

"I know this is a non-denominational prayer in this Chamber and it's not about the Baptists... or any other denomination, but rather the head of the denomination and His name is Jesus. As every President up until 2008 has acknowledged."

I think that was probably what the problem was. You seem kind of confused about that, so I hope this helps.

I mean, when Zellers, who asked you to come, denounced you, you said that "If Speaker Zellers does not stand for the Constitution, our veterans, the Founding Forefathers, and the Christian God to whom he swears by an oath to uphold these very things, then I would say Mr. Zellers is not fit to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Minnesota."

But that isn't what he said. You even wrote it out earlier, where Zellers said "He does not represent my values or the values of this state." He didn't say anything about the Constitution, or the Founding Fathers or God. You did.

But while I was reading that, I saw where you said that after you gave the prayer, "Before I knew it, instead of the media reporting on it as me standing up for our future generations, all of the sudden I became an anti-gay divisive pastor."

I don't think that was it, really. I mean, I watched the video, and then I read the transcript, and you didn't say anything about being gay. And since that couldn't have been why they said that, I had to go to the google.

And I don't think that you "all of the sudden became the anti-gay divisive pastor." What I think happened was that people remembered when you said that gays should be arrested and jailed, or when you said that Muslims were more moral than American Christians because the Muslims say that gays ought to be killed. (I'm sorry, but that doesn't sound very moral to me, saying that somebody ought to be killed.)

And in that same show, where you said about gays "On average, they molest 117 people before they're found out." (Where'd you get that number, anyway?)

Or when your volunteers ask for donations to stop teen suicide and get them off drugs, but all your programs are anti-gay and anti-abortion: nobody seems to mention that part.

Or when you and that Bryan Fischer guy said that gays are like Nazis. Or when you said that a Congressman, who's sworn to uphold the Constitution, is trying to bring it down and put in sharia law, and he's doing this by protecting gays from hate crimes.

See, when you say things like that, maybe you should check out what the media says about you each of those times. Because I'm thinking that maybe it wasn't "all of a sudden." I'm thinking that you've been called anti-gay and divisive way before now. And probably a lot of worse names.

God's own pimp

Most non-Christians are acutely aware of the crusade although it may be invisible or at least unnoticed to others. To many Americans, this is Jesus Christ's own country and it's just natural, rather than sectarian to point this out on every possible occasion; on occasions like Memorial day.

Now, my family has been in this country for 6 generations which should be long enough to consider oneself an American, but particularly here in the South, it isn't -- at least if you're a Hindu, Muslim, Jew or none of the above. If you're one of those, you probably, like me, wish the mood of the country was less of a relentless crusade and more of the attitude: you go to your church, I'll go to mine, but the rest, like a veteran's cemetery, is neutral ground.

This weekend, as expected, I'm getting forwarded messages about "treasuring our war dead" and supporting the troops and how we'd all be shackled slaves if it weren't for the US military bombing all those third world countries and kidnapping people like Noriega and overthrowing any democracy that seemed too socialist. Of course I'm one of those emotional types who is known to get teary-eyed at war memorials, but it's more about the lost youth and the precariousness of life than the glory of war and the glory of Jesus the divine ( or Yahweh, or any of the infinite number of gods we go to war for.) We've lost enough over the glory of some myth, thank you very much. If the flag pin patriots don't mind, I'd rather reflect on history by myself rather than to conform to some ever more sectarian ritual of self congratulatory jingoism.

I don't think I'm alone or out of the mainstream to think that a cornerstone of our country was religious neutrality; a country where the government neither supported or suppressed any religion, any god and in the name of freedom -- but that mainstream seems rather silted up and narrow and unnavigable on occasions like this when people who speak for our government decide their personal gods are superior to those silly, second-rate gods of others and the courts share their smug, condescending crusade.

So when the Rev. Scott Rainey decided to give a Memorial Day invocation, as he's been doing for a couple of years at the Huston National Cemetery and which closed with

"While respecting people of every faith today, it is in the name of Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, that I pray. Amen."

The Veterans Administration said no, you don't and presumably because it's not a Christian cemetery exclusively for Christians and because doing so at least hints at the establishment of a preferred state religion. Apparently Texans are offended that some heathen would dare to sit in the front of America's bus and took it to court. It being Texas, a judge arrogated that the government cannot

"gag citizens. . . in some bureaucrat's notion of cultural homogeneity"

Not even if that bureaucrat wrote the First Amendment. In fact it's the court's notion of homogeneity, that we're all Christians here, that it's a christian universe but we'll allow you lesser folks to sit in the back if you keep quiet, that stinks up the polluted air of Texas.

Thus spake U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes, God's own pimp. Did the VA have the right? Was this an unconstitutional integration of church and state? Was this about 'homogeneity' or about respect for the feelings and rights of others including the non-Christian dead? Even if not, it's a slap in the face, whether thoughtless or intentional, to every atheist who died in a foxhole, every Navaho, every Jew, Every Muslim or Buddhist or follower of Shinto who served in our armed forces and the families who honor them and mourn them today. They are ours, not the property of Hughes or Rainey or the State of Texas and not to be used as a sales tool and if there is some special circle for such people, may they reach it soon.

If they're for it, we're against it.

By Capt. Fogg

The natural state of men, before they were joined in society, was a war, and not simply, but a war of all against all.

-Libertas, Thomas Hobbes -


Scanning the Facebook page of my congresscritter, Tom Rooney (R-FL) I find the real interest not to be the simplistic banalities and the strained attempts to generate outrage against Barack Obama. It's not the continuing effort by Rooney to portray the assistance being given NATO's actions in Syria as a constitutional violation; it's more about the truly demented calls for impeachment by the people who post there; calls that remain in view without comment by Mr. Rooney, who claims that he maintains the page to be more "in touch" with the sentiments of his constituents rather than as a tool to promote irrational rage for political purposes.

If he has some constituents other than me who disagree with the "Oh I just hate, hate him" and "Oh he just makes me sick" and the "he uses the constitution to line his bird cage" swamp dwellers, they must indeed like me, be very reluctant to post comments there under their real names. He's created a milieu quite hostile to reason and reasonable people offering constructive criticism.

Yes, of course there are many questions about the legality of George W. Bush's legacy, some of which -- too much of which -- remains in place, but the War on Obama is not really based on his alleged and often misrepresented constitutional infractions, and we know it because they weren't presented as such during the previous administration and indeed were eagerly supported by the reactionary beasts who hang out on the Rooney page to congratulate themselves and outdo each other on the size of their hate. Indeed, that place is a microcosm of our war against ourselves, a war of all against all.

It's not that I like Senator Rand Paul or his familiar pose of principled outrage, but I am indeed on his side when it comes to addressing the real constitutional outrage of the Patriot Act. I have to smile at what may be the end of his naivete because it isn't the Democrats at war with the Leahy-Paul Amendment, designed to allow greater oversight of ever increasing Government warrantless surveillance powers under that cynically named act. It's the Republicans supporting precisely the kind of power they pretend to oppose while posturing as libertarians to the frothy-mouthed and furious rabble.

“Unfortunately, what we’re finding now is that the Democrats have agreed to allow me to have amendments but my own party is refusing to allow me to debate or present my amendments.”

Said Paul. Imagine that.

But as the man said, the joining of people into a society serves to prevent the chaos of nature, and I have to ask myself whether the effort to portray anything social or designed for the common good as the unqualified evil of Socialism, did not have the promotion of that very bellum omnium contra omnes; everyone at war with everyone and every man for himself as a purpose. Perhaps when everyone is against everyone, such things as consistent viewpoints are illusory as is anything resembling principle. If you're for it, I'm against it may be as close as we can get.

The Last Hooyah

The next big, impossible debate in the budget boondoggle is defense. The president has called for reducing defense spending by $400 billion over the next twelve years. I'm all for those cuts, but, as usual, where to start? Cue the hue and cry, including mine.

"U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned on Tuesday that policymakers would face tough choices trimming military budgets, weighing cuts in pay and benefits against delays in updating aging ships and jets." (Reuters, May 24, 2011)

[QUOTATION MARKS AND SARCASM ALERT]

The Pentagon has begun a review of priorities and spending to meet the President's budget requirements. And Gates, who retires "in 2011" interviewed spoke yesterday before the conservative "think tank" American Enterprise Institute, arguing for "absolutely critical" new aerial refueling planes and F-35's for the Air Force and new ships and "eventually" new ballistic submarines for the Navy, and a "recapitalization" of the Army's infrastructure spending. And then had the nerve to offer up the following:

Part of this analysis will entail going places that have been avoided by politicians in the past.  Taking on some of these issues could entail:

• Re-examining military compensation levels in light of the fact that – apart from the U.S. Army during the worst years of Iraq – all the services have consistently exceeded their recruiting and retention goals;
•  It could mean taking a look at the rigid, one-size-fits-all approach to retirement, pay and pensions left over from the last century.   A more tiered and targeted system – one that weights compensation towards the most high demand and dangerous specialties – could bring down costs while attracting and retaining the high quality personnel we need;  and
• It will require doing something about spiraling health care costs – and in particular the health insurance benefit for working age retirees whose fees are one-tenth those of federal civil servants, and have not been raised since 1995. (DOD transcript)

As an Air Force wife (ret.) and Navy mother-in-law, I can tell you I don't want our poor pilots left fuel-less over the Atlantic nor our valiant submariners forced to find jobs on land in this economy. Nor do I want our kids in  uniform patroling IED'd roads in vehicles that offer them no protection, but that happened even when our military budget was at its highest. And, full disclosure, I sure as hell don't want the kids who have served multiple combat tours to be threatened by cuts in retiree pay, higher Tricare premiums, or reduced veteran's medical benefits just as we're bringing them home from combat zones. Therefore, I can't even write about this subject without all the marks of emphasis available on the Blogger post composition toolbar to express my sarcasm.

Because it seems to me that Gates is knowingly opening the political argument to sacrifice pay and benefits for both past and future personnel in favor of the continued development of the kinds of weapons that we once used to rattle at Russia. And he's doing it with all the timing and finesse of an Ahmadinejad. He's got his, he's preaching to the well-lobbied choir, and he knows the mood of the country has justifiably, exhaustedly, declared it ain't gonna study war no more. We've been told we won't need so many boots on the ground in wars (we won't even have to fight) in the future, because we'll have all these high-tech robotics that will sniff and snuff troublemakers for us (before they've even decided to think about attacking us) and the rest will be up to an All-Special Ops military. It's another War To End All Wars mindset.

US Navy Seals Website

I confess I couldn't bring myself to read the entire Gates speech as printed on the DOD website, so I supplemented it with the summaries of a few people who actually get paid to do this stuff. I'm afraid I only got more confused. As an example--and, by no means, the most confusing one--there's this from Bloomberg,

Gates also called for a more flexible retirement system to retain military and civilian personnel with critical skills. The current system provides full retirement benefits to those who have served for 20 years or more, giving them “every incentive to leave,” even if the military needs them.

About 70 percent of the military force doesn’t stay for retirement. 'Somebody who serves for 10 years leaves with nothing,' Gates said. 'That doesn’t make any sense. That’s not fair.'

What does that even mean? That we shouldn't let those poor, exhausted careerists go because they want to leave at the end of twenty years of sheer hell for low pay or that we should start paying benefits to anyone who re-ups past their first commitment? I would assume that, if you've survived the US military for a twenty year career, you're chock full of "critical skills," but that doesn't mean we should ask you to stay for thirty, much less that you'd agree after all the rule changes you've suffered in the first twenty. But, if we don't want to pay full benefits for a twenty year stint due to budget cuts, why discuss benefits for a ten year commitment? Gates is right; it doesn't make sense and it wouldn't be fair.

Yes, I'm just a wife and MIL, and I'm obviously missing the Big Picture. So, help me with this, Readers, because I have questions.

If we cut pay and benefits and lengthen the career commitment, who's going to volunteer for this All-Volunteer military? We'll be continuing the trend of pulling from those who, by virtue of minority status or sheer bad luck, have no other job options--only we'll be offering them less to work longer and harder. We already pay our military personnel poorly for their services at every level and rank, promising to make it up to them in future benefits and retirement pensions. If we're going to make further cuts both before and after retirement, we might as well turn the DOD over to the private sector and let them outsource this entire national security gig to developing countries. 

And make no mistake, it'll be about the pay. The last hooyah generation, the last of the kids who wanted to go out and fight for this grand country because it's just so darned grand, are within a few years of military retirement, themselves. And they've seen how this grand country values their well-being. The long, slow decline of taste for the kind of patriotism that spurs volunteers to fight some politician's wars began in the sixties and has picked up speed ever since. In an election cycle where neither party wants to go on record as being in favor of continued presence in Afghanistan, where will we find the psychological underpinnings of the gee-whizz, gung-ho attitude that helped the services meet their recruitment quotas, the attitude that still existed in some parts of the US in 1965? Which little girl's daddy is going to raise her to believe that fighting for her country is honorable work to be proud of after the exposé on the story of Private Jessica Lynch?

For today's Seal Team Six, it's about pride and country, but dick around with their families' benefits, their buddy's benefits, and pride won't be enough for them to recommend the military to their kids. The last hooyah will belong to Future Seal Team Six and the special ops personnel like them...those highly paid, highly skilled, highly educated, unimaginably well-equipped few who unquestionably have lifetime benefits that put congressional benefits to shame because there is national recognition of the Seal's comparative worth. It'll either be that down the road or the draft.

Stop listening to him! Pay attention to me!

OK, let's see if I can use one of these "internet memes" that all the cool kids are into.

Shorter Pam ("I probably am a vampire") Geller (Big Government)
AIPAC Applause-O-Meter

I don't care if you did hear cheering for Obama in the videos from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting. That wasn't cheering, it was just polite applause. And you know those crazy Jews - they'll applaud anything. Who are you going to believe? Me, or your lying ears?

Cameron and Obama, Addicts and BFF

Recent op-ed piece in the Guardian by Simon Jenkins is worth a read. Here's an except:

"Obama and Cameron have let themselves become trapped in a lethal military embrace, one that has failed to deliver peace in Iraq or security in Afghanistan. It has destabilised Pakistan and spread al-Qaida's influence. It has killed hundreds of thousands of people to no one's obvious benefit, and cost billions of dollars that would have been better deployed on peace and reconstruction. Today, London and Washington are fortress cities through which their statesmen must travel like frightened rabbits, like Obama during his London visit.

"This was the legacy of Bush and Blair and it is the most barren in recent history. Yet it holds those successors in thrall. Neither has shown a capacity to disengage from the drums and trumpets of warin favour of a more subtle and more productive diplomacy. Until they do, any hope that the west's leadership might gain traction in the Muslim world is futile."

For full story go to Addicted to War.

School Superintendent Asks Gov. Snyder to Make His School a Prison

Nathan Bootz, the Superintendent of Ithaca Public Schools in Michigan, wrote a letter to the editor asking Gov. Snyder to make his school a prison:

Dear Governor Snyder,

In these tough economic times, schools are hurting. And yes, everyone in Michigan is hurting right now financially, but why aren’t we protecting schools? Schools are the one place on Earth that people look to to “fix” what is wrong with society by educating our youth and preparing them to take on the issues that society has created.

One solution I believe we must do is take a look at our corrections system in Michigan. We rank nationally at the top in the number of people we incarcerate. We also spend the most money per prisoner annually than any other state in the union. Now, I like to be at the top of lists, but this is one ranking that I don’t believe Michigan wants to be on top of.

Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children.

This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison. The State of Michigan spends annually somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 per prisoner, yet we are struggling to provide schools with $7,000 per student. I guess we need to treat our students like they are prisoners, with equal funding. Please give my students three meals a day. Please give my children access to free health care. Please provide my school district Internet access and computers. Please put books in my library. Please give my students a weight room so we can be big and strong. We provide all of these things to prisoners because they have constitutional rights. What about the rights of youth, our future?!

Please provide for my students in my school district the same way we provide for a prisoner. It’s the least we can do to prepare our students for the future...by giving our schools the resources necessary to keep our students OUT of prison.

Respectfully submitted,

Nathan Bootz
Superintendent
Ithaca Public Schools

I did not fact-check this as to whether Supt. Bootz's assertions on prisoner treatment are correct; I know that here in California we cut most of these services from our prisons years ago. I also know that anytime you make this kind of comparison, there is a risk of public backlash that will have the result it did here, removing program after program leaving our correction system little more than an overcrowded warehouse that makes serious criminals out of even the least violent offender.

Still, it breaks my heart to see this kind of desperation in a school administrator.

H/T to Big Think