A quick thought on economics

Conservatives keep trying to claim that we can't increase taxes on rich people, because Obama shouldn't tax "job creators."

Can we have a moratorium on the use of the term "job creators" for rich people? Because, at the moment, they are verifiably not creating any fucking jobs. That's like calling somebody a "stamp collector" when they don't buy, sell, or keep any stamps. It's just stupid.

In fact, I'll go one step further. I'll support a tax cut for anybody who creates new jobs, in America, which are held by American citizens. Now, this has to be a net jobs increase - if you fire fifty thousand people, and then hire forty thousand, you don't get congratulated for creating forty thousand jobs - you get yelled at for losing ten thousand.

(Also, any jobs you ship overseas? Yeah, that counts as a job loss.)

And by the way, that whole idea that "lower taxes equal more jobs"? It's stupid. Reagan experienced job growth while he was in office. But only after he raised taxes. Three times.

So, can we have a little honesty up in this bitch? For once?

DAYS OF RAGE

In Chicago in Oct 1969 three days of demonstrations were planned to protest the war and the condition of the political system in this country. It was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration until the split of the Weathermen organization from the larger SDS. As some of us remember, it turned into a more violent conflict and it received extensive press coverage.

The much more peaceful and widespread Day of Rage of 2011 took place on Sept 17 with hardly a nod from the press. In fact the only coverage I’ve seen was of the Wall St protest that was blocked by police and corralled to a side street. They were there to protest corporate involvement in politics and their undue influence over our government. Hundreds of demonstrators attended.

Hundreds of people participated in related protests in Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. All of them carrying the same message: The SCOTUS ruling in favor of corporate entities as citizens has taken over our political system and corrupted our government.

Their slogan: One citizen, one dollar, one vote – calling for limits on how much any person (or any corporate citizen) can contribute to a political campaign.

Not surprisingly, all corporate owned MSM outlets pointedly ignored these protests. So thank goodness for the power of the internet where we can still find venues for accurate and pertinent newsworthy happenings in our country and around the globe.

Despite the slow start I'd say the genie is out of the bottle and I believe as more citizens remain unemployed and frustrated we will see more protests that will eventually become impossible to ignore. I just hope we can stay with the ideal of peaceful protest and nonviolent civil disobedience.

Doubt and Death in Georgia: the Troy Davis Execution

At 11:08 p.m., September 21, 2011, the state of Georgia executed a man by the name of Troy Davis via lethal injection. Davis was 42 years old. He had been on death row since his conviction in 1989 for the murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty policy officer. 

I don't know if Davis was innocent of the crime for which he was convicted but I share the concerns of thousands including the Pope, a former FBI director, and and ex-president of the United States that there were serious doubts as to his guilt.

The prosecutor in the case says that he is certain that Davis was guilty. The lack of any physical evidence linking Davis to the shooting and the recanting of key testimony by alleged witnesses to the crime did nothing to shake the prosecutor's certainty. He suggests that the witnesses lied when they recanted their identification of Davis as the shooter. I wish that I had his certainty.

Instead, I worry that the state of Georgia may have executed a man for a crime which he didn't commit. I worry that the witnesses, who say that their identification of Davis as the shooter was coerced by the police who wanted to be certain of a conviction of someone for killing one of their own, are telling the truth. I worry that the man who conveniently first pinned the shooting on Davis and who has subsequently been identified as the real shooter by an eyewitness, may have had a personal interest in misdirecting police attention to Davis. I worry that the cornerstone of criminal jurisprudence, the standard in capital cases of "beyond a reasonable doubt" has been disregarded in the state's execution of Troy Davis.

I feel for the MacPhail family, but the repeated assertions by them that Davis has had every opportunity to prove his innocence, gets it all wrong. Criminal prosecution is not about the defendant proving his innocence, it's about the state proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Beyond a reasonable doubt is the highest standard of proof that must be met in any trial. It's difficult to precisely define what the phrase means, but common law and case law have carved out the following definition: 

The standard that must be met by the prosecution's evidence in a criminal prosecution: that no other logical explanation can be derived from the facts except that the defendant committed the crime, thereby overcoming the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

The prosecution stands firm in its belief that a jury of Mr. Davis' peers convicted him based on the the evidence with a certainty that was beyond reasonable doubt. Even accepting that as valid, what does it do to that conviction when the evidence presented by seven of the nine witnesses in that jury trial has been recanted by those witnesses? 

It's difficult for many of us to imagine lying because you want to escape continued questioning by law enforcement. However, innocent people have confessed to crimes that they did not commit under the stress of police questioning. Did you know that the police are allowed to lie to you while questioning you? Their goal is to get you to admit "the truth."  

I don't know what went on when those witnesses were questioned. I don't know if their subsequent recanting of testimony was the truth. What I do know is that no person should be executed by the state if there is any doubt as to that person's guilt. 

I admit that I oppose the death penalty in principal. I don't believe that the state should be in the business of taking what it cannot give. In the words of John Donne, "...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."

Troy Davis died Wednesday night at 11:08 p.m. but we were all diminished by his death. 

Guilty Until Proven Innocent

About DADT Damned Time

Well, now he's gone and done it. Obama's just lost the vote of the Religious Right.

(Yeah, I make myself laugh sometimes...)

Starting at midnight Tuesday, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been officially repealed, and homosexuals can now serve openly in the military. We were the last industrialized nation that didn't allow gays to serve openly, until just last night.



I'd like to make a prediction. Approximately one year from today, civilization will not crumble, and the military will be just as good as it is now.

Better, even. The gays in the military (and I knew several) won't have to hide it, won't have to keep lying about what they are (here are some of their stories now). Kevin and Kim's daughter Cat can dance openly in the Officer's Club with her girlfriend. And maybe, for the first time since we went into Iraq, we'll be able to keep some Arabic translators, instead of paying civilian contracting companies millions of dollars every year.

Funny thing about DADT: it was implemented in 1993 as a compromise measure, when Congress (to prevent Clinton from doing what Obama just did) added a requirement to the National Defense Authorization Act which forced commanders to enforce homophobic regulations which stated that homosexuality was incompatible with military service.

At the time, Republicans and other homophobes hated DADT. Odd how they switched to defending it in recent years, huh?



(It's harder to find a copy of that video that you can embed than you'd think...)

I'm going to let my president have the last words here.

Today, the discriminatory law known as ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is finally and formally repealed. As of today, patriotic Americans in uniform will no longer have to lie about who they are in order to serve the country they love. As of today, our armed forces will no longer lose the extraordinary skills and combat experience of so many gay and lesbian service members. And today, as Commander in Chief, I want those who were discharged under this law to know that your country deeply values your service.

I was proud to sign the Repeal Act into law last December because I knew that it would enhance our national security, increase our military readiness, and bring us closer to the principles of equality and fairness that define us as Americans. Today’s achievement is a tribute to all the patriots who fought and marched for change; to Members of Congress, from both parties, who voted for repeal; to our civilian and military leaders who ensured a smooth transition; and to the professionalism of our men and women in uniform who showed that they were ready to move forward together, as one team, to meet the missions we ask of them.

For more than two centuries, we have worked to extend America’s promise to all our citizens. Our armed forces have been both a mirror and a catalyst of that progress, and our troops, including gays and lesbians, have given their lives to defend the freedoms and liberties that we cherish as Americans. Today, every American can be proud that we have taken another great step toward keeping our military the finest in the world and toward fulfilling our nation’s founding ideals.

A tale told by an idiot

Has Andrew Breitbart blown a fuse? He seems to be saying just that: raving strangely about shooting people and being under attack from "liberals." Perhaps that's true since like most of that rabble without a cause calling themselves conservative these days, a liberal is anyone you disagree with and if these dull witted bastards agree with anyone, it's with other ignorant, deluded and dull witted bastards.

" There are times when I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot. Bring it on.’ Because I know who’s on our side"

he said to a group of people on his side of the border of sanity, or at least those capable of listening to this without calling 911.

"We outnumber them in this country and we have the guns… I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with. "

Perhaps he's not kidding, but sorry, the"we" he's talking about really don't have the numbers and although I hesitate to tell him, they aren't the only ones with guns. The rest of us just don't wave them around and threaten other people with them so that we can get our way.

So what line are you talking about Andy? what line won't I cross to defend my country, the truth, democracy and common decency? I'm afraid I know exactly what I'm dealing with and I'm not impressed.

But still, a threat of violence is a threat of violence and I think it's worth noting that when the frustration involved in transporting the United States back to it's darkest years of poverty and exploitation gets to these people, when they find themselves confident in talking to people of like mind, the true colors come out -- and so do the guns.

Andrew Breitbart isn't a conservative. Conservatives don't dream about, talk about and apparently advocate starting violent revolutions, by definition, nor do most sane people under circumstances as we have today. Andrew Breitbart doesn't believe in Democracy, because although revolution may speak from the muzzle of a gun, Democracy does not, nor does it suppress votes, buy votes and base political power on firepower, threats or buying power.

I mean what the hell is he so desperate about? He's got money, our federal taxes are the lowest in his lifetime and it certainly wasn't witches or demons or Liberals who started a war and refused to pay for it or, as Republicans nearly always do, escalated the debt beyond all reason. What content can anyone find in his barking and hissing"? What can he explain other than to drone on and on about how Liberals are that and ConSERVatives are this like a deranged dog chasing his tail. Argument by diktat, argument by amplitude, argument by lying, shifting his terms around like some street hustler with walnut shells.

Like most of these brats and hooligans and barroom bullies, all he wants is power: the kind of power that stems from divine right, hatred and the wealth of Hades. The kind he has no qualification to hold and no following to elect him to. So sure Andy, your friends have guns and that's the only way sad, depressing losers like you and them can get noticed: hate shouting, gun waving, witch hunting and all the rest of the bellicose bullshit you try to pass of as a cause. So sure, bring it on, show everyone what kind of spoiled, petulant and democracy-hating bolshevik brat you are. I'm waiting.

Come out shooting and see how far the "liberals" let you get before you and the whole camo-clad, rebel yell shouting vermin get what you deserve.

Bush Pilot

"What the President meant to say. . ." How many times have we heard the foot extraction specialists begin to move the shells around the able with that phrase? Really, when George Dubya, the ex cheerleader with the parachute harness arranged to show off his gonads aboard the Abraham Lincoln to give his "mission accomplished" speech, he really didn't mean to say the whole mission was accomplished said Scott Sforza, former deputy assistant to President Bush for communications. Yeah right. Sure, perhaps the crew of the Abe Lincoln thought it pertained to the end of their mission, but you know it wasn't a private thank you to the crew, it was broadcast around the world via satellite and he sure as hell didn't say your mission is accomplished, even though Sforza would like to whitewash Bush's shameful and fraudulent exhibition and his own part in it.

It was, as the attack on Iraq was, an infantile attempt to portray significance; to be as he titled himself, a Warpresident, the Commander Guy, like a little boy wearing his father's old uniform and playing army.

Does anyone who has ever flown a fighter plane think Bush, who hadn't flown in years and years and had no specialized carrier training actually landed that plane as the newshorns blared and continue to blare? Ridiculous. Just ask any Navy pilot and yes, I have asked. Had Bush really meant what his apologists claim, would he have attempted to stop combat pay nearly a decade before combat ended - if indeed you can now say it has?

No, just as the assault on Clinton precisely mirrored the proceedings and charges against Nixon, the assault on Obama has it's roots in our 8 year national embarrassment and every valid criticism leveled against Bush: ignoring the constitution, creating massive debt and the largest administration in history amongst other things is being reflected onto the current administration and I think these little attempts to reconstruct a more forgivable past need to be countered and not just passed by and dismissed as the excuses of failed politicians.


Really, is there a better example of a pathetic attempt to pull something from the cesspool and pass it off as a hero -- at least since the attempted rehabilitation of Tricky Dick?

Skinny genes?

In a move sure to enrage Teabaggers everywhere, Blue Cross of California has just been ordered by an appeals court to pay for treatment of anorexia, adding yet another disease to the list of ailments that health insurers have to pay for. (It's shocking - shocking, I tell you! Why should health insurance companies be expected to spend money making people healthy?)

Anorexia is actually not given the respect it deserves, probably because fat people are already ridiculed, and anorexia is thought of as just an extreme extension of somebody trying to get thin. But, really, since studies show that 1 in 5 women (.doc file) suffer from some form of eating disorder, which have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness (the death rate associated with anorexia nervosa is 12 times higher than the death rate of ALL causes of death for girls 15-24 years old), perhaps more attention should be paid to it. (More fun facts here.)

After all, it was just last November that Isabelle Caro died, after becoming famous as the face of an Italian ad campaign for fashion label Nolita trying to combat anorexia. She died at age 28, at 5'4" and around 60 pounds.


The problem, of course, is the modern fixation on body image. A normal, healthy body is never skinny enough; more than just fat-shaming, people are constantly mocked for every point of Body Mass Index. This is not to say that we don't have an obesity issue in America; but we have a body-image issue that dwarfs it.

Nobody, for example, would accuse actress and comedienne Aisha Tyler (right) of being overweight. But try to get one of her pictures into a magazine, and a horde of airbrush-wielding Photoshop geeks go to work.


(That last image stolen from here, if you're curious)

And they're proud of it. As one editor put it, without a trace of irony:

"Yes, of course we do post-production corrections on our images," SELF editor in chief Lucy Danziger told "Entertainment Tonight." "Kelly Clarkson exudes confidence, and is a great role model for women of all sizes and stages of their life. She works out and is strong and healthy, and our picture shows her confidence and beauty. She literally glows from within..."

That same story goes on to quote one of many experts who are seeing the dangers of this practice.

"The more and more we use this editing, the higher and higher the bar goes. They're creating things that are physically impossible," said Hany Farid, a Dartmouth College professor of computer science who specializes in digital forensics and photo manipulation. "We're seeing really radical digital plastic surgery. It's moving towards the Barbie doll model of what a woman should look like -- big breasts, tiny waist, ridiculously long legs, elongated neck."

Perhaps the problem is that health and fashion magazines are in an unhealthy universe of their own. But if they're the problem, somebody needs to find a solution.

Privatizing disaster

I suspected there must be something afoot when talk at the Tea table began about killing FEMA. I'm more than suspicious now. It seems our former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who according to The Maritime Executive, is announcing a 'strategic partnership' with O’Brien’s Response Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of SEACOR Holdings Inc. Bush's company, Old Rhodes Holdings now looks forward to

"helping a broader array of organizations and communities become more resilient through preparation, response, communication and recovery”

says Bush, whom Floridians will remember was the governor through the disastrous hurricanes of 2004 and 2005. How they will remember him is hard to tell and probably depends on whose house and car and boat and livelihood was demolished and how long it was before he got any significant help. As I recall, my neighbors and I felt pretty much on our own, despite Bush's alleged leadership, although FEMA certainly was here with food, water and some generators.

I played a small part in delivering food to those who had no means of getting to a FEMA distribution center -- and there are many such people here -- and also used my amateur radio license to good effect, facilitating communications between Red Cross shelters and government agencies until commercial communications and electric power were restored. The interface between need and help was public and public spirited. It was not corporate, it was neighbor to neighbor working through non profit organizations. It was restaurants sending food to police and firefighters, carpenters and roofers and others helping those who needed it.

The only time we heard from Governor Jeb and his brother, the Commander Guy was when they showed up at Red Cross headquarters for a photo op, disrupting operations for half a day, and when they posed for the cameras handing out a bag of ice for a few minutes before escaping into an air conditioned limo and the Presidential helicopter to fly off to a party in Miami Beach while we sweltered in the dark for weeks and weeks.

"Governor Bush has unparalleled experience in crisis management, as he helped guide Florida through some of the most significant natural disasters in its history"

said Charles Fabrikant, executive chairman of SEACOR Holdings. Unparalleled, of course isn't quite the same as unequaled.

Jeb is a Bush, however and the "strategic partnership" may be about a further strategy than to provide "emergency planning, disaster response, preparedness consulting, crisis communications and regulatory compliance services to corporations and governments" which is what O’Brien’s Response Management, the SEACOR subsidiary in question does. O'Brien's has been picking up people like former Coast Guard Captain Ed Stanton, who was the Incident Commander during hurricane Katrina and the recent BP oil spill. It's funny how oil and the Bush family float to the top. O'Brien Oil Pollution Service being part of the O'Brien family.

So do we have the same people who were so heavily criticized for mishandling that Gulf oil spill soon to be handling more disasters for profit while FEMA goes the way of Social Security and Medicare and the FAA and all those agencies being overwhelmed by the tidal wave of tea?

I don't mean to say that FEMA has always been what it should be or done as well as it should have done, but FEMA sits at the end of a chain of responsibility that leads to the
American public while SEACOR is ultimately responsible to its owners -- and like the former Blackwater owners, they're quite able to ignore questions as to what they did and how much they made by doing it by saying "sorry, we're a private corporation."

I do mean to be suspicious however and I'm aware that evidence of collusion and corruption and various acts of grift, graft and flim-flam are too easily dismissed as "conspiracy theories." Our history is basically a series of conspiracies conveniently mislabeled and when I hear the words, oil, Bush, and disaster used in close conjunction, and when I hear about efforts to privatize yet another not-for-profit health and safety organization, I'm more than suspicious.

People like me, who belong to well organized volunteer groups like ARES, American Red Cross, SATERN and many, many others are used to working with government agencies, not that there isn't some friction on occasion, but the prospect of mercenaries who take orders from corporate CEO's who profit from disaster aid and are motivated to control and monopolize the process, rationing help to maximize private gain, isn't a welcome one. In fact it's infuriating to think about being told what to say and do, where we can go and where we can't go by black uniformed privateers protecting turf and profit and it would tempt me to ignore them and work around them if possible the next time a storm rages ashore and Florida goes dark.

Government injections

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

___________________

So Michelle Bachmann claims some young girl suddenly got all retarded like, after her "Government injection" of Guardasil. That's not too surprising. I know someone who got loaded on Private Reserve Brandy and voted for Bush, but one thing always follows another and that's enough proof of causation for a desperate liar speaking to the profoundly ignorant and superstitious primitives who listen to people such as she; people who see the rage of gods in every storm, lightning bolt and tectonic movement, who are terrified of mysterious rays and forces and 'toxins' and couldn't pass a 5th grade science exam.

"Government Injections" eliminated smallpox, you know, and would have done the same for Polio and other diseases if we didn't have that other pandemic in America -- ignorance. Perhaps the absence of Government fluorides in our local Republican drinking water would explain all the brown and missing teeth I see at Tea Party rallies and I don't think it has anything to do with too much Lipton's.

But hey, we're a country (and I use the term loosely) not only infested with idiots and idiocy, but one where there's a good chance someone stupider and with even less integrity than Mark Bachmann's smokescreen wife may slither into high office like one of those young snakes that wriggle under my patio doors.

Speaking of things that creep and crawl, take my Congressworm, Tom 'Looneytunes' Rooney -- please. Tom who keeps showing up on my Facebook page to remind me that Government is not only impotent but incompetent and also tyrannical -- and all without explaining how those things aren't sort of mutually exclusive and more importantly, since he's part of it, why the hell he isn't as much to blame as anyone else who's part of it. Really, I'd be pleased if he'd just follow that other anti-government, moose-eating grifter and simply fly over the cuckoo's nest and drive around the country in a bus and get rich, like some inverted and less lysergic Ken Kesey.

But no, polluted air isn't bad for you, polluted water can't hurt you, unless it has government fluoride in it and besides Florida Governor Rick Scott says we can't afford it because disease and degradation are good for business and bad for 'jobs.' But condoms don't prevent disease or pregnancy, says the gospel of Tea and vaccinations are a genocidal hoax and freedom from disease and unwanted pregnancy will promote teen promiscuity and the gay agenda and we don't need no government health insurance because when we get leukemia or Alzheimers we can go to the emergency room and the taxpayers will pick up the bill and if you can't understand that you're just a libtard elitist and part of the problem.