October 27, 2014

The Japanese had comfortable accomodations in the internment camps, too.

If you stretch the word "comfortable" to the breaking point.

No shower. No books. No television. No radio. No choice for Kaci Hickox.

"National security." "National emergency."

Tyranny will always find an excuse for its tyranny.

When you allow government officials to "quarantine" people in an atmosphere of fear, hysteria and political pressure, nothing good ever comes of it. George Takei can tell you all about it.

This could have and should have been handled much better, and when Kaci Hickox gets her multi-million dollar judgment after suing over her treatment, I will raise a toast to her.

And P.S., when you stomp on people who put themselves on the line to help other people in danger zones, pretty soon no one will be willing to help.

October 25, 2014

Video interview I did the othjer day on Bush, WMD, Iraq and ISIS

For your viewing pleasure.

October 25, 2014

Well, I am officially a New Hampshire voter.

On my 18th birthday, I registered to vote in Massachusetts and never missed an election. Last year, I moved my family to New Hampshire, and today, went down to town hall and registered to vote.

Not long after I moved to New Hampshire, friggin' Scott Brown followed me here so he could run for Senate against Jeanne Shaheen. I had the privilege of voting against Brown in 2010 and 2012. A week from Tuesday, I get to do it again after enduring my third Scott Brown campaign in four years, which is basically a hate crime, because God obviously hates me, because I have been afflicted with this chuckleass on a permanent basis for four straight years. I even fled the state and couldn't escape.

Well, Scotty, your ass is mine in ten days. I devoutly hope with every fiber of my being that I will never, ever hear from you again.

October 24, 2014

Upon which we ruminate on Ebola, bowling balls, and messing with The Jesus

I posted the following image:



...with the caption, "How Not to Catch Ebola," in honor of the NYC doctor who has inspired the latest media frenzy. Of course, I was scolded: "Not funny. Ebola is killing people."

Upon which I replied:

===

"Ebola is killing people." So is cancer and AIDS and Parkinson's and diabetes and cigarettes and fracking and oil...

...and, by the bye, so is the very computer you're scolding me with: when you're done with it and chuck it, it will wind up in a town in China, where it will be rendered for its parts and then burned, the toxic waste from which will kill children, but only if they're lucky enough to die without being born with horrific birth defects from the pollutants from the computer you used to scold me. Look it up if you don't believe me; dealing with discarded American computers has become a cottage industry in dozens of Chinese communities, and the process is laying waste to the populace where it's being done. Thanks to the thing you used to scold me.

Are you wearing clothes? Like as not, the tag at your neck has the name of the kid who died to make your shirt.

Ever give a beloved a diamond? Have you any idea of the bloodshed involved in dragging that rock out of the ground?

Got a cell phone? Do you have any idea how much butchery is involved in controlling the mines needed for the basic components involved in your ability to send a text?

Welcome to being an American.

All I have is gallows humor with my left hand, and my effort to change all this with my right hand.

Go scold someone else. Thanks.

===

Take it to heart.

P.S. If you haven't seen "The Big Lebowski" yet, I despair for you. Rectify that situation at speed, because this aggression will not stand, man.

Eight-year-olds, Dude.

October 24, 2014

How To Stop Ebola

Don't do this:



If you don't get it, I recommend "The Big Lebowski" the next time you go movie-shopping.

October 23, 2014

Heh

Post: Show me someone who would be turned off voting due to a negative email, and I'll show you someone who never intended to vote in the first place

Reply: Same thing with someone who would be turned off voting due to negative posts on a web site

-- DUer Doctor_J

...for the Win.

Here in NH, I am keenly looking forward to voting against Scott Brown for the third time in four years, because he followed me North a year ago, and I desperately want him to go away.

If you think the critical posts I and others have offered recently are an effort to suppress turnout, you're missing the point with genuinely comic velocity.

Or, in short, what Doctor_J said.

October 23, 2014

The True History of Blowback in One Sentence

The infamous Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii, December 7, 1941.
(Photo: Paul Walsh)

The True History of Blowback in One Sentence
By William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed

Thursday 23 October 2014

Since you're probably wondering why the Canadian Parliament was shot up and your friendly neighborhood police officer is driving a tank and your savings account is a sad joke and your road is littered with potholes and you can't find a job and three of your friends who joined the Army to pay for college died in Iraq and Afghanistan and two others have brain trauma from IED explosions and won't ever be the same and your tap water is flammable and the ocean is coming for your home, well...

...let me introduce you to the concept of "blowback," which author Chalmers Johnson explained as "another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows," which basically means that when you punch someone in the face, odds are very good that you're going to get punched back, and maybe they land that counterpunch, or maybe they don't, but that fist is going to come whistling at your face, count on it, and if it misses, there is always another fist, curled and hard and ready to fly...

...so let's talk about blowback, the story of which began seventy-three years ago at Pearl Harbor, when we were attacked by the Japanese Empire, and the United States entered the war in Europe and Asia simultaneously, and President Roosevelt endeavored to manufacture the Reich and the Empire out of existence, and placed the American economy on a wartime footing to do so, and in the fullness of time, it worked, and the war was over...

...but actually, it never ended, because the manufacture of war materiel made the manufacturers rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and they began to exert influence over American politics, and then FDR died, and Harry Truman took the big chair, and then George Kennan, the American Ambassador to the Soviet Union, wrote what has come to be known as the "Long Telegram," in which he described the bedlam of Stalin and Soviet intentions, and Truman along with a bunch of other people read it, and it scared the cheese out of them, and so the National Security Act of 1947 was passed, making America's economic wartime footing a permanent thing that endures to this day, and thus the Cold War was born...

...which was bully news for the weapons manufacturers who got rich on WWII, because now they were indispensable as a matter of policy, "national security" assets, and before long, tank after tank and warship after warship and nuclear missile after nuclear missile and bullet after bullet and rifle after rifle and bomb after bomb rolled down the production lines, each and every one paid for with tax dollars collected from an American populace which was led to believe this was all vitally necessary because the readers of Kennan's telegram decided the thing to do was to make sure everyone felt threatened because a fearful populace is easily controlled...

...and so the Cold War unfolded, and in the words of Stephen King, O my Lord how the money rolled in, because conflict for conflict's sake became the operational ethos in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia and Africa and South America and Central America and especially in the Middle East for decades, and in the process of this multi-generational permanent state of conflict the weapons manufacturers became wealthier and wealthier, and more and more powerful, and exerted that power on the body politic of the United States to such a degree that they eventually began purchasing the news media brick by brick, so the people would hear day after day how the corporations who profit from war are actually keeping them safe and stuff...

...and this went on and on, growing and expanding, even to far-flung places like Afghanistan, where big brains like Zbignew Brzezinski decided in 1978 to give the USSR its own Vietnam, and began a process that Reagan eventually took over to underwrite the Mujeheddin, who took on the Soviet Union and learned, with the help of American money and American weapons and a CIA ally named Osama bin Laden, how to take down a superpower, which they eventually did before metastasizing into the Taliban and al Qaeda...

...because Brzezinski's original plan was to arm, train and fund anti-Soviet fighters in Pakistani religious schools to destabilize Afghanistan and dare the Soviets to invade, and that plan was executed, and it worked, and the word "Taliban" when translated means "Religious student," so congratulations, Zbignew, for kicking the pebble down the hill that turned into an avalanche which came in the fullness of time to deprive the New York City skyline of two very tall buildings and the thousands of people who were in them on a perfect blue Tuesday thirteen years ago...

...which led, of course, to another decade of war after all the other decades of war that came on the heels of Pearl Harbor and the National Security Act, which has in this brave new moment led to ISIS, as well as a dementedly paranoid United States that doesn't blink at cops dressed and armed like soldiers while driving tanks down Main Street because OMG TERRORISTS YOU GUYS...

...lots more here: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/27000-the-true-history-of-blowback-in-one-sentence

October 22, 2014

When you stand for nothing, you get nothing in return.

I know the Koch brothers exist, and I am all too aware of what they are up to. I know you need to contend with the billionaire neo-oligarchs who think they deserve to run the country because they can write checks with a lot of zeroes to the left of the decimal. Near as I can tell, however, your plan to this point has been to run away from those of us trying to fight these bastards. We're useful right up to the fundraising deadline, but after that, we get the back of your hand.

You support fracking while giving lip-service to climate change? You want Keystone XL approved, despite the fact that it will run the world's dirtiest fuel through our breadbasket and over our main aquifer in a pipeline that is dead-bang guaranteed to leak? You endorse the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement? You're satisfied with the barren lack of accounting meted to the Wall Street brigands who stole our future? You're down with a third war in Iraq?

Wait, you don't support all that? But you won't stand against it, because you're afraid of losing votes or campaign money?

My heroes.

A bunch of braniacs have crunched the numbers and concluded that young people, plus minority voters, plus women, plus old white racist Fox News viewers dying off, means the long-term electoral odds are in the Democrats' favor, and gee wilikers, isn't that nifty news for the party in 30 years...except for the millions of people who will take a deep beating between then and now, and that's only if the party's institutional cowardice and greed doesn't let the oligarchs buy out the whole process from soup to nuts in the meantime.

The police are being weaponized and militarized from coast to coast, making even mild street protest a potentially lethal exercise. The Supreme Court doesn't believe women should have control of their own bodies. There are parts of the country where the tapwater is flammable. The US is spending billions of dollars to bomb the weapons it spent billions of dollars on just a few years ago.

And from the alleged "liberal" party? Silence, acquiescence, and that's only if they're not too busy cashing a check.

Come November, if the Democrats wind up flopping and flailing for an explanation as to why they got routed at the polls, let me offer a succinct reply: You stand for nothing. You are the Washington Generals to the Harlem Globetrotters. Everyone expects you to go down to defeat, because you always lay down, because you are paid to do so.

It doesn't have to be that way, but that's the way it is. When the midterms eat you alive, remember what I said. When you stand for nothing, you get nothing in return.

Write me an email about that.

An Open Letter to My Democratic Spammer
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26605-an-open-letter-to-my-democratic-spammer

October 21, 2014

"Pack up. Go home. It's done."

Jesus H. Baldheaded CHRIST.

OK. All of you people who love to deploy the OMG REPUBLICANS YOU GUYS argument to explain why the Democratic Party isn't an utterly brain-addled shitshow of an organization, answer me this:

When I get an email titled "Pack up. Go home. It's done." (which I just did)

...what, exactly, am I supposed to think? No hope. Utterly doomed. I may as well not even bother showing up to vote.

Right? Exactly how the screaming purple fuck should I or anyone else interpret "Pack up. Go home. It's done" any other way?

THIS is how they're inspiring voters?!

Not a constructive message. Like, at all.

I quote myself, from my 10/3 article:

"Here's a memo to whoever came up with this particularly obnoxious fundraising tactic: You suck. I hope you get fired with such velocity that you can't even get a job drowning puppies in a kill shelter."

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/26605-an-open-letter-to-my-democratic-spammer

October 21, 2014

Derpku

Feelings of regret
CRUSHING FAILURE
We've got nothing left

- My emails from the DCCC this morning.

Haiku Derp. Derpku.