Is it something in the water?

You know, when I think of Indiana, a little neon sign in my head never immediately started blinking "small-minded idiots" before now.

I mean, yeah, despite the name of your state, you fucked over the Native Americans living there, with various groups of Europeans alternately arming rival tribes so that they could pretty much wipe each other out before you pushed them off their land. But we were doing that all over the country, right?

Indiana has big chunks of the history we learned in school (well, you know, those of us who learned things in school, anyway): splitting off from the Northwest Territory, Tecumseh, the War of 1812, George Rogers Clark, William Henry Harrison - you can't avoid Indiana if you're studying the history of this country.

But it's weird. You, as a state, have this weird love of taking control of people's bodies away from them. It's like some kind of weird compulsion: "You are cattle! You will breed when and where we tell you! Und Indiana vill grow strong!!"

I mean, crap! What the hell is wrong with you people?

In 1907, Governor Frank Hanly, a good Republican, made Indiana the first state to practice eugenics when he signed the Compulsory Sterilization Law “to prevent procreation of confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.”

The next governor, who was apparently less of a fan of fascism, stopped it two years later, and the law was found unconstitutional when it finally made it to the Indiana Supreme Court 14 years later! (the wheels of "justice" don't exactly spin quickly in the Hoosier state).

This flourishing of freedom and American values apparently made the people of Indiana cranky, because six years later, they pushed through an almost identical bill, which applied to "inmates of state institutions, who are insane, idiotic, imbecile, feebleminded, and epileptic, and who by the laws of heredity are the probable potential parents of socially inadequate offspring likewise afflicted." A law which stayed in effect in Indiana until 1974.

Despite their efforts to breed die Herrenrasse clear up to the Disco Era, Dan Quayle was still born in Indianapolis. Which tells you just how effective these policies actually are.

And now they're at it again. Republicans in Indiana have introduced a bill to make abortions illegal after 20 weeks. And when state Rep. Gail Riecken (D-Of Course) introduced an amendment to exempt "women who became pregnant due to rape or incest, or women for whom pregnancy threatens their life or could cause serious and irreversible physical harm," it was voted down 42 to 54.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Your baby is going to kill you? Tough shit. Hope you got a will." Interesting definition of Right to Life.

Apparently, according to state Rep. Eric Turner (R-Fuck You), this amendment would give women a "giant loophole" and they would just lie about getting raped. Or, presumably, dying.

(So, Eric Turner is a big supporter of incestuous families - I wonder what that says about his home life?)

I mean, there's really no excuse for this. Indiana ranks as the thirteenth smartest state, which... you know... top third, right? Good solid B average. And you've got Notre Dame... OK, admittedly a bad choice, being a Catholic university and all. But there's still Purdue! You've got education in your state! Why are you trying to go back to the dark ages?

But more than that, why is it that crazy people tend to rise to the top in Indiana? I mean, Michael Jackson, who single-handedly set out to destroy pop music forever, was born and raised in Gary, Indiana.

John Dillinger, gangster, bank robber, and legendary cocksman, was born in Indianapolis. Ten years later and 50 miles southwest, Jimmy Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, and we still don't know where that fucker ended up.

There's just something about Indiana that makes crazy people end up getting into positions of power.

Like Carlos F. Lam, the Indiana prosecutor who ended up resigning after his advice to Wisconsin governor Scott Walker became public: Lam suggested Walker should fake an attack on himself to "discredit the unions." (To his credit, how was he to know that Walker had already discarded that idea because it might have backfired on him?)

And then, just because Indiana lawmakers hadn't embarrassed themselves enough, we get to find out about Ms. Bei Bei Shuai.

The facts of this case are heartbreaking. On December 23, 2010, Shuai, a 34-year-old pregnant woman who was suffering from a major depressive disorder, attempted to take her own life. Friends found her in time and persuaded her to get help. Six days later, Shuai underwent cesarean surgery and delivered a premature newborn girl who, tragically, died four days later.

On March 14, 2011, Shuai was arrested, jailed, and charged with murder and attempted feticide...

The state is misconstruing the criminal laws in this case in such a way that any pregnant woman could be prosecuted for doing (or attempting) anything that may put her health at risk, regardless of the outcome of her pregnancy.

That's right: according to the ways the laws are being applied here, the state of Indiana believes that any pregnant woman who smokes or lives with a smoker, who works long hours on her feet, who is overweight, who doesn't exercise, or who fails to get regular prenatal care, is a felon.

We need a new word for this crime. I'd like to suggest "Indianacide."

So, we're opposed to big government. Unless we're allowed to use it to monitor every action of every pregnant woman in the state? Is that how this works?

But hey, say what you want about Indiana, at least the trains run on time, right?

How to Annoy Sean Duffy (And Why You Should Annoy Him)

By Octopus

Who is Sean Duffy, you ask? He is a GOP representative from Polk County, Wisconsin, who cannot make ends meet on his meager salary of $174,000 per year. Yet, he supports cutting salaries and benefits of public service employees along the lines of what his governor, Scott Walker, has proposed (story here).



What do public service employees earn in the cheapskate state of Wisconsin? According to this source, an average teacher earns $48,743, which ranks 24th in the nation. How do teacher salaries compare in other states?

Indiana - $46,640 (national rank 25)

Michigan $52,300 (rank 12)

Missouri - $42,750 (rank 43)

New Jersey - $61,830 (rank 4)

Ohio - $51,343 (rank 14)

So Sean Duffy cannot make ends meet on $174,000; but wants to cut salaries and benefits of employees earning LESS THAN A THIRD of what he earns. Astonishing! Now you know why Sean Duffy and the GOP are trying to suppress this video:

GOP Demands Videotape Pulled From The Internet

And the Republicans are playing hardball. The GOP contacted this website hosting service, Blip.TV, claiming copyright infringement. You can see page 1 of the complaint here and page 2 here - the usual intimidation tactics. A spokesperson for Duffy called Democratic criticism of this videotape “a misleading attack.”  I call it "newsworthy" in the public interest.

More than an embarrassment, the GOP does not want you to know what hypocritical scoundrels they are, and the best way to annoy Sean Duffy is to post copies of this video on the Internet. So please feel free to steal the video along with my commentary and go viral.  It will annoy the hell out of them.  My closing thought for today:

Suppression = Oppression.

Newtie needs help

Newt Gingrich has recently received a lot of flak for the complete reversal of his position on Libya within a three-week period. But I don’t think that the problem is entirely that Newtie is a venal, lying, opportunistic load of horse manure in an expensive suit. I think that he’s sick, and he needs to find a doctor right away.

Newton Leroy McPherson Gingrich has always stood in stark repudiation of every action he has ever taken. He had been in the House of Representatives for fifteen years when he wrote the "Contract On With America that demanded twelve-year term limits on members of Congress; and in the course of his remaining five years in Congress. led impeachment proceedings against President Clinton for having an affair, while he was actively cheating on his wife.

The man who served his first wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital for cancer surgery is now trumpeting the importance of "traditional marriage"; the man who was just quoted as saying "If you don't start with values, the rest of it doesn't matter," was the first Speaker of the House ever disciplined for ethics violations (for which he was fined $300,000).

But more recently, on February 22, he went on Fox & Friends to say:

I wish the administration — the Obama administration was as enthusiastic about democracy in ... as it was in Egypt, which was our ally.

Qadhafi’s been our enemy for years. This is an opportunity to replace that dictatorship, and I think the United States ought to be firmly on the side of the Libyan people in replacing this administration.“

When asked by Greta van Susteren on March 7, “what would you do about Libya?” he said:

Exercise a no-fly zone this evening... We don’t need to have NATO, who frankly, won’t bring much to the fight. We don’t need to have the United Nations. All we have to say is that we think that slaughtering your own citizens is unacceptable and that we’re intervening. And we don’t have to send troops. All we have to do is suppress his air force, which we could do in minutes.

But when Obama did exactly that, on March 23, Newt went on the Today Show to say:

I would not have intervened. I think there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi. I think there are a lot of other allies in the region we could have worked with. I would not have used American and European forces.

So, not a complete reversal. He still wouldn’t have used the Europeans.

He’s offered several explanations for this, and they all contradict each other, too. On Twitter, for example:


So maybe he would use the Europeans, after all.

And then he went on Facebook to explain:

On March 3rd, President Obama said publicly that “it’s time for Gadaffi to go.”

Prior to this statement, there were options to be indirect and subtle to achieve this result without United States military forces. I made this point on The Today Show this morning, saying “I would not have intervened…there were a lot of other ways to affect Qaddafi…I would not have used American and European forces.”

The president, however, took those options off the table with his public statement.

So, no Europeans again, but now no Americans either. And now the president shouldn’t have opposed Qaddaffi.

At first, I thought that it was possible that there were no contradiction: Newt has always had one primary, overriding concern in all this. He is firmly opposed to whatever Obama does.

But now, it turns out that this is some kind of mental aberration in Gingrich’s brain: he has to contradict himself on every subject, and those contradictions are coming closer and closer together. On Sunday, this twice-divorced Catholic went to an evangelical Protestant church to explain that:

"I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

He didn’t bother to explain where we would find these radical atheist Islamists, but I’m sure it made sense to him at the time.

Newtie needs a doctor before it’s too late. Before he accidentally says that he's happy to be alive, and his brain simply shuts down in stolid opposition to this idea.

The Kill Team

By Capt. Fogg

One of the objections I've voiced, regarding the use of private mercenaries rather than our military is that when US soldiers commit such gruesome offenses, pictures of which Rolling Stone and Der Spiegel have just published, there are sometimes consequences. When mercenaries do, as Blackwater did in Iraq, there seldom are and we tend not to hear about them.

The photos taken in Afghanistan, where we're engaged once again in winning the "hearts and minds" of the population by slaughtering their children and playing like ghouls with their mutilated bodies, are horrifying and it's small consolation that at least some of the drug crazed bastards who did it will face serious but barely adequate punishment -- but at least it's punishment.

Perhaps you've never seen what someone looks like after being hit by a rocket fired from above. It's pretty hard to tell whether the grizzly pile of bones and guts was an innocent bystander or a "terrorist" but the sight is far more terrifying when we see American soldiers wetting their knives in the blood, cutting fingers from dead kids' hands for trophies, displaying severed heads of "savages" and planting guns on innocent bodies to justify their having been slaughtered and mutilated and displayed on the side of the road -- to win hearts and minds, of course.

The men of Bravo company, we're told, had been considering "bagging Haji's" for a while it seems and eventually the blood lust won out. Stupidly, they took photos and kept souvenirs. I've decided not to show the photos. If you choose to click on the Rolling Stone link, please be sure you aren't the sensitive type, but you can avoid projectile vomiting and read about it on Raw Story.

There's no happy ending and the occupation of Afghanistan and the constant civilian casualties continue, but as a small degree of justice, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock who is seen posing with a dead boy, deliberately murdered for sport, has been sentenced to 24 years. Calvin Gibbs, a squad leader in the same Platoon , along with five other soldiers, pleaded guilty last week to lesser crimes in exchange for their testimony.

Who will pass judgment on us? Who will forgive us?

Banzai patriotism

By Capt. Fogg

There are all kinds of patriotism, some real, some pretended. With some countries it's mostly about supporting wars. It's been that way in most of my lifetime, with a few exceptions. With some people it's all about flags and pins and ceremonies. I'm straining to think of a time when it was seen as a reason to support a government you didn't vote for and I have to look back over 65 years ago to find a time when patriotism extended to making economic sacrifices in times of crisis, for the good of the country; for the good of the people. To me, Patriotism may once have meant something more than overgrown and somewhat pugnacious pride and militaristic ritual and it may once not have smelled so much of covert self-interest, but there are outside examples.

If it had been an American nuclear power plant destroyed by a natural event or anything of that magnitude, like a war, or flood or ecological disaster for example, I'd not expect to hear the party of big business or the mega-corporations that pay virtually no taxes anyway offer to suspend another round of corporate tax cuts. Yet that's what seems to be happening in Japan. The Japan Business Federation is a powerful corporate lobby -- sort of like the GOP. Its chairman, Hiromasa Yonekura says he will not stand in the government's way if it backs away from a proposed corporate tax cut.

"I don't mind if the government skips cutting the corporate tax rate," said Yonekura, who is also chairman of Sumitomo Chemical . "Instead I want the government to move swiftly in its recovery efforts."

I don't think I have to waste much space comparing Japan to the country that stood behind tax cuts and against paying off the enormous costs of war by taxing those who made the most money from it -- and challenged the patriotism of anyone who suggested it wasn't a good idea because tax cuts never have and never will pay for themselves -- so I won't.

Earth Hour - another Sunday sermon

By Capt. Fogg

"The amount of power that's saved during that time is not really what it's about,"

I would imagine so, since it's quite an insignificant amount.

"What it is meant to be about is showing what can happen when people come together."

Is the explanation of the hour-long turning off of lights on monuments and many countries around the world given by Earth Hour co-founder and executive director Andy Ridley. In other words it's a feel-good gesture that lets people who prefer making gestures to making a difference, like the countless other "awareness raising" parties of all sorts.

Mass delusion, witch hunts, lynch mobs and riots, of course are other examples of what can happen when people come together. I think we need much more and much different solutions.

Might I suggest that working together toward a purpose is what we need and that such things require objectivity, education and a lot of money. Since most of the rapid increase in power consumption around the world is both the cause and effect of raising the standard of living of the suffering poor, it all sounds a bit smug for the haves of the world to be having a parade of Liberal virtue by perhaps not driving the Hummer for an hour or turning off some lights and partying in the dark. It's the kind of smugness that one sees in those swooning over some imaginary romantic and bucolic world where everyone farms with manure and mules and the bugs, crows and fungus don't eat two thirds of the crops. A world where people somehow find something "seasonal and local" and "organic" and not "processed" even in in the desert and tundra and the mountains instead of the often fatal malnutrition and disease our ancestors suffered until Clarence Birdseye, mechanical refrigeration and the steam locomotive saved us from goiters, pellagra, scurvy, hunger and a diet of boiled turnips every winter.

In the real world, billions would starve in short order without the technology that scares us so much, but maybe that wouldn't count because they'd be in Africa and places like that where we wouldn't have to smell it or catch Cholera and we'd have like soooo much fun raising awareness about it by having gala parties where the servants would pass around empty Hors d'œuvre trays for an hour.

It's not that I'm against making some sacrifices or investing in public transportation or supplementing fossil fuel burning with wind and geothermal and hydroelectric power -- or even the newer, smaller, cheaper and safer nuclear plants now on the drawing boards -- quite the opposite. I'm all for heavy investment in research and development -- and paying for it with public revenue because private investment for such long range goals just doesn't happen on it's own. For an example, look at how much of today's digital world is the direct result of the tax and spend space program of the 50's and 60's.

No, what irks me is the neo-Luddite loathing for technology: the very technology we need to save us from Malthusian doom. It's usually the product of some scientific outcast publishing a alarmist book and convincing a lot of simpering young and uneducated celebrities that nature isn't a Hobbesean nightmare, that everything we improve our lives with from electric light to refrigeration to cell phones is going to bring that nature crashing down -- killing the bees with mysterious "cell phone rays" for instance and filling the world with unspecified "toxins" and radioactive vapours.

It's people like Bill Maher telling us our food is killing us even as we live longer and longer -- that we wouldn't have disease to cure if only we didn't eat corn products. It's celebrity scientists like Woody Harrelson telling us telling us not to cook our food. It's charlatans with their magnetic bracelets "tuned to natural frequencies" and pieces of magic duct tape that suck the "toxins" from our feet. It's the ancient and universal practice of blaming everything, every disease, disaster and disorder on witches, made new again.

This kind of "awareness" doesn't need raising, what needs raising is technology: understanding of it, awareness of it, investment in it -- the skill and will in developing and applying it. Please consider our hirsute relatives with thumbs on their feet and remember that it's the ability to produce and utilize energy that stands between us and squalor, privation and the nasty, brutish, disease filled, parasite ridden and short lives we used to share with the animals.

The great circle of stupid

By Capt. Fogg

"An appeals court has ruled that anyone involved in an extramarital affair can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison."

Or so says the Eagle Forum run by Rod Parsley, President and Founder of World Harvest Church in Ohio. Actually it's more likely that Judge William Murphy of the Michigan Court of Appeals was indulging in a bit of reductio ad absurdem in order to mock the obvious venality of the prosecution -- and in this case, the absurdity of the Michigan law is apparent without much reduction.

It's all about one Lloyd Waltonen who gave a cocktail waitress prescription drugs in exchange for sex and was charged with criminal sexual conduct, a felony, although the sex was consensual.

Of course those charges were dismissed, but on appeal The Michigan Attorney General, Mike Cox (I'm not making that up) in an effort to ruin Waltonen's life in any way he could, dredged up some statute stating that any sexual activity committed during the same time as a felony constitutes criminal sexual conduct. Since adultery is a felony in Michigan, (I'm not making this up) he technically could get life in prison for consensual sex, although that's never happened and never likely will unless of course we allow demented parasitic vermin like Parsley to get involved with the judicial process. (More on that later)

So what was apparently a disgusted judge trying to make a fool of the hypocritical and hyperventilating Mr. Cox, (who as you would expect of a moralizing Republican, has admitted to an adulterous and hence felonious relationship himself,) might as well have a target tattooed on his forehead.

All of this staged display of irony of course, has escaped not only the resident and hairy-palmed hand of God at The Center For Moral Clarity, the World Harvest Church and the Eagle Forum, but Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell's nominee for the Alaska Judiciary Council, Don Haase of Valdez. Haase, (he pronounces it Haze, but we won't go there this time) loves the idea of arresting people for obeying his religious laws, and why, you might ask? Premarital sex should be outlawed because it could "cause violence" and "spread disease," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. To his credit, he's either not quite as crazy as Parsley or perhaps less credit worthy, he's just trying to sound sane long enough to be confirmed, because while he doesn't claim that adultery or pre-marital sex should be a felony, he thinks it should be a crime.

Haase of course is a past president of Eagle Forum Alaska, a blog that advocates for what it calls conservative principles much like those of Medieval Europe. So we've come as close to full circle as we can while talking about idiots and madmen with no regard for freedom or the US constitution. We've come full circle from a secular liberal democracy and the counsel of intelligent and reasonable men as well.

Connect the dots

So, let me see if I've got this straight. 100 years ago today, in lower Manhattan, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 people (a third of the people working in the building) who couldn't escape a ten-story factory because the owners, in an effort to prevent theft, had locked the exit doors.

Because there were no unions to protect their rights or ensure workplace safety, the employees who died were often underage, worked twelve to sixteen hour days, six days a week, and earned less than $2 a day.

Out of that two dollars, they had to pay the owners for the needles, thread and electricity they needed to do their jobs. And they could be fired for any reason, including missing a day of work or talking to the person working next to them. Or joining a union.

In fact, unions were under assault. Literally: with clubs, knives, guns and dogs - until a quarter of a century later, when the Wagner Act was passed, supporting unions and collective bargaining.

Oh, and 15 years before the fire, the National Guard was sent into the Homestead Steel Works to break up a strike by steelworkers. Just so you know.

But, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. That was 100 years ago today. Happy Birthday.

One hundred days ago today, a fire in a Bangladesh sweatshop killed dozens of people and injured over a hundred more. To prevent theft, the doors had been padlocked shut by the owners,

That was, as I said, 100 days ago today.

The workers in Bangladesh are among the lowest-paid in the world, and frequently die because of workplace safety, which isn't enforced by anyone. Like, say, a union.

This was one of two manufacturing plants run by the Hameem Group, who makes clothing for the Gap, Wrangler, JC Penney, Target, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Osh Kosh B'Gosh.

Oshkosh B'Gosh. Founded in 1895 - three years after the Homestead Steel Strike. In Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Last month in Wisconsin (85 miles southwest of Oshkosh), Governor Scott Walker was mobilizing the Wisconsin National Guard, in case unions protested his attempts to destroy collective bargaining rights. In the course of the next few weeks, that same Governor Walker, outraged because striking workers were occupying his Imperial Palace the Wisconsin State Capital Building, had doors locked and windows bolted shut to keep strikers from getting food.

Initial reports that the windows were welded shut proved to be merely rumors. There are, however, pictures of the new bolts preventing the windows from opening.

So, locking people inside a building with a sporadic record of safety inspections. Because he's trying to bust unions.

Quick test: what have we learned in the last century?
A. Jack.
B. Shit.

The Sound and the Fury

by Capt. Fogg

I'd just signed clear with 5N7M in Nigeria and my spectrum scope showed a big pileup on 20 meters in the area reserved for extra class phone operation, so I tuned in expecting some rare DX station everyone was trying to work. I wish I hadn't. I didn't hear dozens of stations shouting their call letters trying to be heard on the other side of the planet, what I heard is what passes for political discussion these days.

"Well whaddaya think of a president who thinks he's a dictator and ignores the constitution"

"you mean Bush?"

"No, I mean Oh-Bah-Ma! Thinks he can declare war all by himself. At least with Bush both times he got permission from congress -- this guy thinks he's a DICTATOR"

"Ahhhh, come on. . ."

"That's an impeachable offense! That's Treason!"

Of course I'm editing here. There were too many voices stepping on each other to include it all or even to call it a discussion, but that's American politics in all its unsound and furious ignorance.

Actually the War Powers Act requires that the president notify congress within 48 hours, which of course was exactly what happened. Whether or not that will filter down to the terminally Foxed and all those so desperate to portray Obama as everything Bush was and worse, I don't know, but where there's a will to hate, there's always a way to hate. As much as facts might contradict the idiot rage, they have as much a chance to bust the pileup as a 2 Watt QRP rig with a Buddipole.

The ‘DSM Constant' of American Politics

By Octopus

This is more afterthought than post because I had promised myself a blogging break of 6 to 8 weeks. My reason for taking a hiatus: I am moving to new quarters and need time off to pack up my clamshells and move to a new reef. Regardless, I still scan the blogosphere and respond to articles that catch my fancy. Such as this one from Swash Zone Emeritus tnlib who writes: Letter to a whiny young Democrat, based on this column by Mark Morford:

See what happens when you wallow in hollow disappointment and refuse to vote in a rather important mid-term election, all because your pet issues and nubile ego weren't immediately serviced by a mesmerizing guy named Barack Obama just after he lured you into his web of fuzzyhappy promises a mere two years ago, back when you were knee-high to a shiny liberal ideology?

Well, now you know. This is what happens: The U.S. House of Representatives, the most insufferable gaggle of political mongrels this side of, well, the rest of Congress, reverts to GOP control like a brain tumor reverts to a more aggressive form of cancer, and everything gets bleaker and sadder and, frankly, a whole lot nastier.

I am not in a position to single out “whiny young Democrats” for special derision because, after all, they did give President Obama an electoral victory in 2008 (for which I am eternally grateful). And while I do consider Fire Doggers a whiny and bratty bunch, I do not necessarily consider them young.

I do not have a handle on who stayed away from the polls. Conventional wisdom states: Mid term elections are always “off” years, and this was known in advance. I recall what David Axelrod said even before the inauguration. Axelrod expected substantial mid term losses, which he cited as good reason for pushing the most contentious legislation first – such as healthcare reform – while the President still held Congressional majorities.

Perhaps there is misplaced blame going around. Do you blame bratty young Democrats who did not go to the polls, or do you blame voters who did and enabled idiots and proto-fascists to win elections?  Let me rephrase the question: Do you blame bystanders at the crime scene or the mugger in handcuffs?

Case in point:  Paul LePage won the Maine governorship with a mere 38% of the vote. I consider 38% the DSM Constant of American politics – the anxiety-addled rabble, oppositional-defiant bagheads, and obsessive hand-wringing reactionaries whose repetition compulsions cause them to repeat the same self-defeating behaviors and elect the same psychopaths who brought everyone to ruin in the first place.

I should also point out that the USA has always been a “half savage” country where politics runs on high octane sleaze.  Nevertheless, point taken.  Perhaps next time, voters will be more motivated to counteract the DSM Constant by going to the polls.

Cry Havoc

If there's anything being shoved down our throats these days, it's the claim that health care reform is being shoved down our throats. It's all part of the game the minority party is playing by trying to make you think the Democrats won the White House by some sort of fluke and that the desire for health care reform wasn't what Obama's majority of voters were hoping for.

It's been a year now and the screaming hasn't let up for a moment, but a recent poll shows that half the country favors the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act, whether or not you call it ObamaCare and only 43% think it's "too liberal."

It would be amusing of course if the bumper sticker bumpkins did get their "end of an error" by electing Mitt Romney who like the rest of them is giving us that old soft shoe about just how terrible the new law is because as the unimpaired remember, Mitt only a few years ago was hoping his new Massachusetts health care reform would go nationwide. It's easy to call a politician like that a whore, but it's unfair to whores and I don't want to distract from his fellow streetwalker who has been spending a fortune with TV ads warning us of the holocaust, the disaster, the calamity, the apocalypse sure to wipe us from the earth if we have to have health insurance rather than hope the emergency room can cure our cancer or heart disease -- at public expense. I mean never mind the war, conquest, famine and death -- this is health care!

In GOP we trust

By Capt. Fogg

There are a few things that seem to be endless about the American Lie Machine and its quest to rephrase our founding principles, rewrite our documents and refashion us into the government by divine right the colonists left behind. The endless assault on the First Amendment is one of them.

Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA), the founder and chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, sponsored a bill to make "In God We Trust" the official motto on the United States of America, giving unlawful support to an unspecified, but intentionally Christian God and allowing and encouraging the carving of religious credos into the stone of our institutions and establishing state Theism contrary to the letter and intent of the US Constitution. He was troubled by a pattern of omitting God from the nation's heritage, said he. Could a talking snake be any more devious? Of course omitting God is not the same thing as preventing state recognition of Forbes' god and that's the forbidden and worm eaten fruit we're being offered and that some of us are deluded and befuddled enough to bite into.

"There is a small minority who believes America does not have the right to trust in God, who believes the United States should not affirm trust in God, and who actively seek to remove any recognition of that trust,"

But the writers of the constitution weren't a small minority and had no intention whatever of forbidding the free exercise of religion by citizens -- only of forbidding the government officially to recognize any religion, sect, denomination or cult as preferred. But as I said, it's devious. There is nothing in our laws and no credible movement to prevent any American from trusting in any God or gods or principles or making statements to that effect -- or from ignoring them. There is the First Amendment to prevent the government from doing so.

Although Republicans are notorious for portraying the government as an alien force, separate from the people and their interests, it's interesting to see how in this instance, they're quite willing to see the people and the government as congruent or identical because equivocation is the armature about which is built this grotesque idol. But of course not paying for you to engrave your God on the wall I paid for isn't a rejection of anything but the government's right to do so, which is the precise intent of our constitution. There is no official God or official gods in the United States, no official belief -- and this legislation furthers only the intent to create one.

Forbes claims that the resolution is meant to affirm the importance of God in the heritage of the United States, but refuses to address the question of who the "we" are. If he's talking about the people as people, perhaps he's right, at least in the sense of a majority of them, but to a good number of Americans for whom the right to be irreligious, atheistic or pagan is protected, this resolution is an exclusion act. There is no me in that we.

Small minority? I'm not so sure, what with the penalties attendant to disbelief and doubt and unsanctioned belief, but so what? A small minority of Americans are of African descent or Jewish decent or indigenous descent or Chinese descent and the triumph of our democracy is to protect their rights, their numbers notwithstanding. I might say that a large minority of Republicans are asserting that intellectual minorities don't have the same rights when it comes to private thought and this mumbling against "small minorities" is nothing but an attempt to marginalize intellectual non-conformism.

In God We Trust isn't all that historical anyway. Although some, but not all US coins have had it stamped on them since about 1864 as part of the attempt to give a boost to the unpopular war, the motto only became "official" in 1956, shortly after the Knights of Columbus and other religious lobbyists convinced Dwight Eisenhower it would help give Americans another reason to hate and fear Communism.

The first appearance of "In God is our trust" was in Francis Key's poem, later set to an old drinking song and made into an anthem which didn't become official until the 1930's, by which time there wasn't much left of Jefferson's bones to be furiously gyrating in his coffin. That he would do so is of course contested by the plethora of Church funded revisionist historians like All About History who make statements saying President Thomas Jefferson wrote,

"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time" and "Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are of God?"

which words, of course, Jefferson never spoke or wrote. Perhaps you can see why the GOP stands against public education, science and history -- and for the Christian Bible and Christian government. Perhaps somewhere, the shade of Galileo is wryly smiling and George III, Rex Dei Gratia is giggling because the long upward climb to freedom is sliding back into the reeking sump from which it emerged.

Fox News has learned. . .

By Capt. Fogg

No they haven't.

Alex Jones' Prison Planet website is the kind of place you expect to find very right wing viewpoints and so when I find agreement that Fox News lies, I feel good about it. It gives me a defense when people behind the Fox curtain accuse me of being a far-left Commie/Liberal liar, which seems to be the best they can do, considering all the evidence that Fox is indeed a lie factory and propaganda machine -- more than just simply being affiliated with and a sponsor of the GOP.

"The latest example comes from Fox News, who completely manufactured the claim that Gaddafi was using western journalists as human shields to prevent fighter jets from bombing his compound,"

writes blog editor Paul Joseph Watson today.

In a piece entitled, EXCLUSIVE: Libyans Use Journalists as Human Shields, Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin & Justin Fishel wrote, says Watson:

“An attack on the compound of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi on Sunday had to be curtailed because of journalists nearby, Fox News has learned.”

But there’s a problem, he says. One of the CNN journalists supposedly used by Gaddafi as a human shield subsequently appeared on CNN and labeled the claim,

“Outrageous and absolutely hypocritical. The idea that we were some kind of human shields is nuts,” CNN international correspondent Nic Robertson told Wolf Blitzer.

"Fox News has proven itself to be a complete tool of the US military-industrial complex. Nothing it now reports about the attack on Libya can ever be trusted."

says Prison Planet, QED -- and who can dispute it?

Penny Wise and Pound Foolish

News bombards my brain from TV, radio, emails, tweets, Facebook, and yes, even from the newspaper. Money to state colleges in Pennsylvania, money to Medicaid recipients, money to public broadcasting, money to the National Writing Project, and money to hundreds of other basic programs, all now lie under a legislative axe.

The National Writing Project is one of the many cuts that made my stomach curdle. In America we give teachers too few tools, too few opportunities for genuine professional development, too few opportunities to be part of a meaningful collegial organization. The National Writing Project (NWP) has provided all of the above and more for thousands of teachers, yet in order to appear fiscally prudent, legislators have cut funding to this most valuable organization.

An old family expression, “That was penny wise and pound foolish,” can easily be applied to such an egregious action as cutting funding to NWP. Many of the projects teachers collaborate on through the NWP are volunteer projects. For a project to be accepted by NWP, a teacher must demonstrate the capacity of the project to provide benefit to a wide range of students. Therefore, many students nationwide benefit from teacher research and project development and collaborations of NWP teacher leaders for discount rates.

For over thirty years NWP’s cost-effective, wide range, productive investment in our education system was valued. Legislators, from Congress up to the President, need to ignore the “slash-the-budget-taxes-don’t-do-any-good” fad and find the courage to raise taxes for programs, like the National Writing Project, that work.

Wisconsin is where Chicken Little crossed the road …

By Octopus

(This post started as a comment in response to three fine articles by our esteemed colleagues, Sheria, Nameless Cynic, and Shaw Kenawe. The subject is important enough to merit more commentary.)

Three decades ago, political scientist Theodore J. Lowi authored a ‘themed’ textbook titled, American Government: Incomplete Conquest. Although it received little attention at the time, its main ideas have special relevance today:

If the first problem facing our cave-dwelling forbearers was survival, the second, according to Lowi, was government.  No matter how enlightened any form of government appears in theory, all governments have a primordial mean streak, an instinct to lash out and violate their own laws and principles - especially in times of war or national emergency.  Consider the suspension of habeas corpus  during the Civil War, the internment of Japanese-Americans  during World War II, and the concept of eminent domain, as examples. Make no mistake. All governments reserve the right to violate your rights or confiscate your property.  Furthermore, no matter whom you elect, someone will control your life; and your choice at the ballot box is a choice between competing visions of governance.

This weekend, I watched an interview of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels on MSNBC - keeping these ideas of Theodore Lowi in mind.  Here is the gist of Daniels: A Chicken Little argument on deficits and spending framed as existential threats to freedom and prosperity. When the interviewer suggested a moratorium on social issues, Daniels invoked the words of Ronald Reagan: “Results, not rhetoric.”

Daniels gave a sky-is-falling, no compromise, non-negotiable performance that embodies his vision of authoritarian control.  It is the same script followed by GOP governors in Ohio, New Jersey, and Wisconsin, among others.  Between the lines, there is a master strategy at work framed long ago in the shadowy backrooms of GOP think tanks.

A Chicken Little argument is a coin with two sides. The side facing up is the fear factor warning of dire consequences and demanding urgent action. The facedown side masks the intent behind the fear: To preclude an open and honest debate and stifle dissent. In other words, when the sky is falling, there is no time to discuss the legitimacy of the claim.

On closer examination, is the sky actually falling? If the state of emergency is about the state of the budget, why are fiscal conservatives pushing a radical social agenda such as this? Which comes first: Chicken Little’s eggs or the almighty dollar?

H/T to Shaw Kenawe for this Joel Pett cartoon

In retrospect, we know the union-busting controversy in Wisconsin is not about budgets. We know Governor Walker’s predecessor forecast a $121.4 million budget surplus. We know Walker created a bogus shortfall by giving tax breaks to employers at levels far too low to spur real job growth (source). A classic Republican tactic, Walker eviscerated tax revenues as an excuse to gut a traditional Democratic power base.

In due course, Wisconsin Republicans forced union-busting provisions through the state legislature by stripping them from the budget bill, thus sidestepping a quorum requirement. This tactic exposed the deception behind the rhetoric:  Union-busting does not balance state budgets … confirmed by none other than Wisconsin GOP Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald in this astonishing admission:

If we win this battle, and the money is not there under the auspices of the unions, certainly what you’re going to find is President Obama is going to have a much difficult, much more difficult time getting elected and winning the state of Wisconsin.

As Lowi reminds us, citizens go to the polls to choose between competing visions of governance, and freedom is in the eye of the beholder.

Let us put naivety aside as we consider the rivalry between Democrats and Republicans. If the contest seems asymmetrical to us, it is because the GOP conducts politics with a primordial mean streak as if it were a sovereign entity engaged in actual war.  No longer a contest between rivals, politics has devolved into a contest to win by any and all means necessary (even in violation of democratic principles); and the weapons of partisan warfare are fear, deceit, pandering, legislative chicanery, and ruthless guerilla assaults against the assets of the opposition party.

Consider the asymmetry between union busting and the Citizens United decision. If Citizens United opened the door to unlimited corporate funding of political speech, events in Wisconsin have closed the door on union funding for Democrats. All told, union busting, Gonzo-gate, voter caging, voter ID cards, and the smear of Acorn are manifestations of a GOP master plan to eliminate traditional bases of Democratic support.

In theory, true democracy is predicated on choice, and choice connotes a policy debate between rivals. If one party, however, employs ruthless tactics to cripple the opposition beyond viability, what we have left is essentially a one party system with only token opposition. In other words: A democracy in name only. Wisconsin is where the GOP changed the dynamics of democratic engagement from contest to conquest. Wisconsin is where Chicken Little crossed the road to fascism.

Resources for political action:

1. Contribute to Act Blue
2. Join Working America, an advocacy group for non-union members who support the labor movement.
3. National Conference of State Legislatures: Recall Information Page
4. Website to Recall the Republican Eight
5. Website to Recall Scott Walker

Just say no

By Capt. Fogg

No, no, no - we just can't believe scientists when they tell us about the dangers of radiation any more than you can trust them about climate change. The only way to evaluate data is through the kind of transubstantiation wherein facts turn to Fox feces and vice versa.

Take people like Lyin' Bill O'Reilly. You can have all the data and expertise of a hundred lifetimes studying nuclear engineering, the effects of low-dose radiation on humans and global wind patterns, but you can't be sure which way the wind blows unless you ask Bill and Bill, the Holy Father of Denialism likes to say no. It's so much easier than being informed and of course Fox Folk can feel superior by just saying no to things they're too dumb or lazy or ignorant to understand - things that might cost them something or change their convenient opinions or save their country.

Tsunami, Earthquake -- what's the connection? None at all, it was God, the same guy who makes the tides go up and down. What did you think it was, the moon? Who put the moon there anyway, and gravity? That liberal hoax?

But of course Denialism, you know that cheap, imitation conservative intellect thing; Bill is hardly the only prophet. Take Beck who got his knowledge of plate tectonics from sleeping in a cheap motel and has the nerve to speak for God to John McCain who laughed out loud at the very concept of nuclear safety when his opponent stressed the need to put away the gasoline before playing with matches. "Blah, blah, blah;" perhaps the most intelligent thing he said in that whole campaign.

Just say no and let's repeal "Obamacare" says Mike Huckabee who's been clogging the arteries of my flatscreen for the last few days. "It will do irreparable damage to our country" and never mind that Massachusetts and Hawaii are still with us while countless Americans have to resort to buying their medications from Canada and Mexico while Republicans in the private health care business ship their profits to the Caymans to avoid exposing them to taxes and communism. It's "against the will of the people" and never mind that they not only supported it but wanted more of it than they got.

Just say no - it's just not a laughably stupid approach to drug use, it's an epitaph.

Bachmann to the Future

What can you say about Michelle Bachmann that hasn't already been said about Charles Manson, Emperor Norton, or that guy in the laundromat fondling himself and muttering as he watches a dryer full of Power Ranger sheets tumble around and around and around?

Understand that I have no verifiable evidence for this, but I have to assume that at some point in her childhood, Michelle Bachmann was told “you’re so pretty” by an older man as he touched her inappropriately. And that‘s why she adopted this “wide-eyed lunatic” persona, as a defense mechanism. Because a high-functioning paranoid schizophrenic would have a hard time getting reelected even in the rural parts of Minnesota, where the population is so thin on the ground that sometimes a close relative is the only sexual partner available when the snows close in.

That does not, however, mean that I think she's sane and hiding it, like some of the commenters here seem to be positing. Hers is a special kind of bugfuckery only found where the gene pool is frighteningly shallow.

Yes, she did graduate from Winona State University, but she then went on to Oral Roberts University for her graduate studies in law. (Yes, Oral Roberts University, founded by televangelist and comic book publisher Oral Roberts, widely known for casting God as a loan shark and thug.)

This is not a storied academic career.

Bachmann is more than happy to drive blindly into the Alleys of Madness, seeing conspiracy theories at every turn. She claims that Obama is promoting "gangster government" and the healthcare bill is hiding $105 billion that Congress had no way of knowing about. (That would be the funds built into the bill to allow it to operate, something Bachmann's own party has been pretending to care about.)

No way of knowing about, unless they'd actually read the bill. (Of course, this isn't the first time that Bachmann has proven that she'll willingly make shit up about healthcare, so it's difficult to see why she gets airtime to wave around her colostomy bag of lies. But there she is.)

When Michelle Obama took a completely non-controversial stand in favor of breastfeeding, Bachmann (whose shriveled mammaries could only produce battery acid and liquid fear at this stage) started emitting harpy-like shrieks accusing the Obamas of creating a "nanny state." (If nothing else, the word she was looking for was "wetnurse" - a nanny is a completely different job.)

And now she went in front of an audience in New Hampshire, to inform them that "you're the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord."

She, of course, later went on to claim that she simply "made a mistake," and "should've said Massachusetts rather than New Hampshire."

Which is complete horsecrap. Yes, she should have said Massachusetts instead of New Hampshire. And she should have said it when she wasn't talking to a crowd from New Hampshire. And she shouldn't have repeated it the next fucking day.

That hollow space behind her eyes allows concepts entirely unrelated to reality take root. When even Chris Matthews (a man who practically wet himself over Bush's flightsuit codpiece) can take her apart without even trying hard, that shows the breadth of this woman's rambling inanity.


The money shot here? "People on the right who've gotten into this anti-intellectual cant, as if not knowing anything is somehow knowing everything." A topic for a future time.

The end, again -- and again

By Capt. Fogg

A friend just drove back from Orlando and reported seeing billboards proclaiming, once again, that the "end of the world" was at hand. I'm never quite sure what these idiots mean by "the world;" whether it's human life, the habitability of the planet or perhaps the existence of existence itself which would be a problem far too complex to discuss, even amongst sane and intelligent people. Let's say I don't really suspect these apocalyptic birdbrains of either virtue.

Might I remind you, if you're one of these folks, that the recent quake and tsunami is insignificant when compared to things that happen regularly on this our only planet? But of course you may be one of those New Earth, 6 day creation idiots, but even then it's pretty small as compared with the explosion of the Santorini volcano or Krakatoa. Even in human times, the ancients weren't as populous and certainly didn't build nuclear power plants. But why discuss reality when the tantalizing lure of doom has the lemmings in thrall?

People have been predicting these things for as long as we have records; some to sell normative religion and others for what seems to be the pure thrill of it. Is there some inherited "daddy's going to whip your ass when he gets home" instinct or is it put there by our Mesopotamian religious heritage? I suspect the former since it creeps up in Norse mythology as well, but who knows? It persists because it makes money and gives power, at least temporarily -- particularly for those prophets who offer early destruction and provide dates and times. Some of those have to suggest mass suicide to avoid embarrassment as time inevitably rolls on past the deadline.

I can't wait for 2012, which I suspect won't mean the "end of an error" or the end of anything really important. 1982 came and went at the same petty pace and the end of the last millennium passed as smoothly as last Wednesday. I'm willing to bet we'll stop attributing all that cosmic wisdom to the Mayans by 1/1/13 but of course, I can't lose that bet, can I?

The Rapture idiots, followers of the lunatic of Patmos are still passionately with us, because gibbering John offers more of an "any time now" promise with clues like: "wars and rumors of wars" that obtain to every moment in history, just like earthquakes, floods, famines and outbreaks of disease. Since there's a new crop to replace the ever disappointed dimwits, perhaps nothing short of a true planetary catastrophe will rid us of them.

There are times when I wish for it, particularly if I survive long enough to watch the expression on their non-raptured faces. But I look forward to being here for a number of years, watching them reshuffling the cards, re-reading the entrails, consulting omens and shamans in their shameless way, world without end.

WATASHI NO KOKARO WA NAKU

My heart weeps. For those lost in the pounding earthquake or the monstrous tsunami that followed. For those injured and for those who came out unscathed but will forever be scarred by survivor’s guilt.

The chattering heads are already in full flight – what this will mean to Japan’s economy and the global economy. And about the nuclear plants and radioactive fallout. About buildings and roads and towns that no longer exist. And let us not forget the idiot bimbo from some college campus who obviously doesn’t do much studying on Daddy’s dime so she has plenty of time to make fun of the Japanese students frantically calling anyone they can think of trying to get news of family and friends.

My heart weeps because these people have no heart beyond the hard little nugget that keeps them living and breathing in their own insular world.

What devastation nature has wrought on this little piece of Mother Earth. It all happened so fast and so violently, most people didn’t have a chance to blink, let alone fully comprehend what was happening.

My heart weeps because the world did not stop as one great sea of humanity and mourn the loss of fellow human beings, not even for one minute. The official death toll is more than 4,300. More than 8,000 people are still missing. Some 430,000 people are in temporary shelters, too worried about daily survival to think about the future.

So right now I would like anyone who reads this to stop for one minute and mourn for the lost and those who survived but must now find a way to rebuild their shattered lives. We can give our fellow human beings one minute, can’t we?

If it flies, it dies?

By Capt. Fogg

I say Qaddafi, you say Gadhafi, but some still refuse to call him a bad guy. Chavez, Castro, a bunch of tyrants and a few other dodgy regimes trying to curry favor with Iran oppose any foreign efforts to aid rebels in Libya, while others insist we need to establish a "no fly" zone right now.

As President Eisenhower once said

" In only two efforts of endeavor do the amateurs consider themselves more competent than the professionals -- in the field of military strategy and the ancient profession of prostitution."

In the case of those now slamming Obama for not already having launched a military operation in support of Libyan rebels, those amateur Generals may well be more expert in prostitution than military operations, because if the President does decide to send in the bombers and fighters he'll surely be chastised as thoroughly as he was for hesitating -- and by the same people. For Republicans, of course, it would be a crime to make their base pay a dime for this, a sin to let NPR have a penny, but when it comes to another war, there will always be billions left to borrow and squeeze out of the serfs.

Make no mistake, establishing air superiority in Libya means attacking air bases, anti-aircraft and radar sites and that can easily involve civilian as well as military casualties -- and of course it will put our pilots in harm's way on yet another front. It will also give Qaddafi support from his friends at home and abroad who will portray it as an effort by the West to get at his oil and will feed paranoia in surrounding countries. I won't elaborate about our financial situation other than to point out once again, that it seems easier for the traditional armchair generals to borrow and spend for such a hugely expensive venture abroad than to dissuade them from swiping pensions from little old lady school teachers and shutting down birth control providers.

Of course yesterday's statement by the Arab League of support for intervention certainly does allay some fears that we'd be making things worse, but to me, that begs the question of why rich, well-armed countries like Saudi Arabia can't have a very large hand in keeping the Libyan tyrant from calling in air strikes on rebel strongholds. Certainly we and NATO allies need to show support for the end of Qaddafi's reign by the Libyan people, but do we really always need to be the Big Dog with the big guns and the bottomless pockets?