We Invent Enemies to Buy the Bombs

Common Dreams, from The Guardian/UK.

It is not democracy that keeps western nations at war, but armies and the interests now massed behind them. The greatest speech about modern defense was made in 1961 by the US president Eisenhower. He was no leftwinger, but a former general and conservative Republican. Looking back over his time in office, his farewell message to America was a simple warning against the "disastrous rise of misplaced power" of a military-industrial complex with "unwarranted influence on government". A burgeoning defense establishment, backed by large corporate interests, would one day employ so many people as to corrupt the political system. (His original draft even referred to a "military-industrial-congressional complex".) This lobby, said Eisenhower, could become so huge as to "endanger our liberties and democratic processes".

I wonder what Eisenhower would make of today's US, with a military grown from 3.5 million people to 5 million. The western nations face less of a threat to their integrity and security than ever in history, yet their defense industries cry for ever more money and ever more things to do. The cold war strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: "Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented."

It's the Bottom Line.

Goin' ridin'

Going today to ride the Hard Rock Trial put on by SactoPITS. First time out this season, may produce comical results. Saturday is always 'Vintage - Beginner' day and I qualify on both counts. See yas.

Headline of the Day

Did Bachmann "Win" the GOP Debate by Not Spewing Vomit as Her Head Twisted Around?

That guy must not have been watching. She spews colorless, odorless vomit every single time she opens her mouth.

To all my ...

Gay and lesbian friends. I expect invitations. Heh ...

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- At New York City's Stonewall Inn, the Greenwich Village pub that spawned the gay rights movement on a June night in 1969, Scott Redstone watched New York pass a historic same-sex marriage law with his partner of 29 years, and popped the question. "I said, 'Will you marry me?' And he said, 'Of course!'" Redstone said he and Steven Knittweis walked home to pop open a bottle of champagne.

...

For the first time in 235 years, the New York State Legislature did something really good. It's a great day in New York.

Update:

And nobody says it better than The Rude One:

...

And if the New York Senate passes the gay marriage bill? By implication, it must mean that God says, "Oh, suck my sacred sack" to evangelicals.

Update: And, lo, God presented his balls and said unto the fundamentalists, "Yea, place these hairy orbs into your mouths and wash 'em real good."

Indeed. And, on the Eighth Day, God said (quoting that hack Tom Friedman) "Suck. On. This."

Update II:

And, as I'm watching the local news, you know what's pissing me off? The amount of black folks out protesting against gay marriage. Religious beliefs aside, a lot of other-than-black people (including many gay people) put their ass on the line with you in the 60s and early 70s in the South when you were fighting for your civil rights at a time when they were institutionally denied. Woulda been nice of you to pay that back this time. At the very least, if gay marriage bugs you so much, stay the fuck home.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris, Born To Run, Admiralspalast, Berlin, 08.06.2011
Emmylou Harris in Berlin, ein Superereignis.

I don't know what 'Superereignis' means, but I bet it's something good!

Thanks to fanal63, Germany.

Coupla 'toons

From YubaNet.

I'll buy the gas!!

Road to Ruin

Last night on Charlie Rose

There were two very interesting segments on Charlie Rose last night. Go see, if these topics interest you. They did me.

One was on the arrest of Whitey Bulger. Some about him, but a lot about how the FBI's account of his capture doesn't pass the smell test amongst other law enforcement and Those In The Know and that a lot could be gained by having some agency other than the FBI conduct his "debrief". Interesting. We have not heard the end of this story by a long shot, and the FBI might be sweating bullets over what might come out on their complicity in his crimes. I would say that a mass exodus of retired FBI agents to countries with no extradition treaties with the U.S. is not out of the question.

The other good segment is an interview with Richard Stengel about his upcoming article in Time magazine about the Constitution. I paraphrase a memorable comment:

"The Constitution is not the yellow line in the center of the road. It's the guard rail."

I like that!

Private Prisons Love Mass Incarceration Dollars

Locking up our fellow citizens is good for the economy. We're not buying as much stuff as we should because we're being careful with such money as we've got, but fear not, we still pay our taxes and the Prison Industrial Complex prospers on them.

TPMMuckraker

Report: Private Prisons Love Mass Incarceration, And Want Politicians To Love It Too

Private prison companies have helped fuel government policies which lead to an increase in prison population and boost their profits, according to a recent report.

The private prison population has grown 353.7 percent in the past 15 years, according to a study by the Justice Policy Institute. Major private prison companies have an incentive to encourage policies which keep that number on the rise.

"Steady increases in the number of people in private prisons, especially those coming from federally contracted beds, translate into increased revenues for private prison companies," the report says.

"With most states and the federal government operating under record deficits and decreasing budgets, private prison companies have a growing desire to establish influential connections with policymakers, with two goals: pitching private prisons as a lower cost alternative to building or maintahttp://www2.blogger.com/img/blank.gifining state facilities; and fighting policies that might reduce the use of incarceration," the report states.

The report also points to the revolving door between the private prison companies and the government agencies that have a say in their spending.

Naturally we're not going to buy prison sentences for ourselves, and they make lousy gifts, but we seem to be quite happy buying them for 'other' people such as minorities and minor drug offenders. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for incarceration of real criminals and am happy to pay for locking up murderers, rapists, arsonists, and especially Wall St. and corporate executive thieves and their political enablers. We don't lock up near enough of the latter, and they're too in cahoots with private jailers to go to private prisons so they should go to government-run ones. Gitmo is very nice for that, and when it gets too overcrowded maybe we can make a deal with the Frogs or their successors and lease the Îles du Salut. Even more of a tropical paradise for our finest class of criminals!

When the GOP doubled down on crazy

Good article in Salon by Gene Lyons:

"Defending the American Dream," they call it.

Granted, it's hard to feel sorry for gullible listeners who hear Beck ranting about how Armageddon approaches, so they should hoard canned goods and buy gold. This on a program sponsored by Goldline. Somebody's going to con them out of their savings, so it may as well be Beck.

Shoot, they can always fall back on Social Security until President Michele Bachmann does away with it.

I call that last line "When right-wing delusional dogma ate us old folks' store-brand cat food".

[...] "If the grass roots found out that these guys were getting paid seven figures a year to say this stuff, it might leave a bad taste in their mouth."*

I have every confidence, however, that the grass-roots talk radio audience can rise above such niggling concerns -- and for the same reason that a failed "end of days" prophet's deluded followers patiently await his recalculations.

*Like store-brand cat food?

After the catastrophic Bush presidency, the Republican right had two choices: rethink or go crazy. A disturbing number chose to double-down on dogma. As a consequence, the estimable Fareed Zakaria argues in Time, the GOP has become as dependent upon abstract ideology as its worst enemies.

"They resemble the old Marxists, who refused to look around at actual experience," Zakaria writes. "'I know it works in practice,' the old saw goes, 'but does it work in theory?'" [...]

I heard that somewhere before. Hmmmm... Mr. Lyons must be very smart!

No more "compassionate conservatism" for them. The GOP candidates competed to describe an imaginary paradise of sweeping tax cuts, vastly reduced spending, an end to government regulation, the bolstering of state's rights, and burgeoning prosperity for all. It's as if the presidency of George W. Bush never happened.
...

Never mind President Barack Obama. The real class enemy is Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Back to the Roaring '20s!

Swell. Rigid frames, flimsy wheels, and brakes and lights that let you think you can see and stop until you actually try to. That's what the Repugs want. Thank you, but no.

Clarence Thomas Must Go

William Rivers Pitt:

For the sake of full disclosure, I will tell you that I do not like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In my opinion, he has no business sitting on the high court after the reprehensible treatment he forced Anita Hill to endure, and has been a disgrace to the bench lo these last twenty years. Anthony Weiner, one of Clarence Thomas' most ardent critics, was just run out of Washington DC on a rail for behavior far less offensive; Mr. Thomas is lucky there was no such thing as Twitter when he was sexually harassing Hill, or he'd be chasing ambulances outside of muni court like the hack he is. He sits up there like a lump, never speaking or offering questions to petitioners, and has not had an original thought since his shameful Senate approval.

But his vapid intellectual presence on the bench is only a small part of the story. Mr. Thomas has, by all appearances, turned his position on the court into a license to print money for himself, his family, and a few choice friends.

Conservative corruption is nothing new in Washington, but Mr. Thomas has taken the practice to bold new heights, and finally, people are beginning to sit up and take notice. Thomas has been playing fast and loose with judicial ethics for a long time now, and though Supreme Court Justices are not technically beholden to judicial rules of ethics, his behavior has become so egregious as to warrant deep attention, and in my opinion, removal from the high court.

Details follow. To his credit, Mr. Pitt never uses the term "affirmative action hire" with regard to Thomas. He doesn't need to. Unethical partisan behavior is independent of being hired by a gross political mistake-on-purpose. Replace Thurgood Marshall Thomas most certainly has not.

Given the simple, unavoidable fact that Mr. Thomas is bereft of both shame and a code of personal ethics, it is highly unlikely he will resign, especially if his wife is raking in the cash thanks to his decisions. In that event, the final remedy of impeachment must be deployed. The Supreme Court must not be a place for partisan political fundraising or friendly-donor back-slapping. It is the place of last recourse in our system of laws, and must be as far above reproof as can be humanly managed. Clarence Thomas is an embarrassment to the ideals of our system of government, and must go. He can choose to leave, or be removed by Constitutional remedy, but his time on the bench must be concluded.

Indeed.

Listen up, kid ...

Professor Myers writes a beautiful, open letter to a little girl:

...

Another problem is that if we can only trust what we have seen with our own two eyes in our short lives, then there's very little we can know at all. You probably know that there are penguins in Antarctica, and that the Civil War was fought in the 1860s, and that there are fish swimming deep in the ocean, and you also believe that Jesus was crucified two thousand years ago, but if I asked you "Were you there?" about each of those facts, you'd also have to answer "no" to each one. Does that mean they are all false?

Of course not. You know those things because you have other kinds of evidence. There are photographs and movies of penguins and fish, there are documents from the time of the Civil War, as well as the fact that in many places you can still find old bullets and cannon balls buried in the ground from the time of the war, and you have a book, the Bible, that tells stories about Jesus. You have evidence other than that you personally witnessed something.

...

Joke of the Day

Like Mitt Romney, Governor Goodhair of Texas only has a sense of humor if it's politically expedient. Also, like Mitt Romney, he can't tell a joke or read his audience:

Perry reportedly joked that he liked how a man named Jose Cuevas had been appointed to the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission because his name sounds like Jose Cuervo, a brand of tequila. The joke fell flat.

Dipshit. Oh please, please, please run for President. There's a couple more spots left in the Republican Clown Car. If anything, it's gonna be entertaining*.

*And not because of the jokes ... or maybe more so.

Finally ...

Somebody's growing a set:

All I can say is it's about time some of the Democrats are calling out Republicans for something that's been obvious to me for some time, their willingness to wreck the economy for short term political gain.

...

It's been obvious to most of us since 20 Jan 2009. It's about time the Dems realize that the "collegial atmosphere" in the Congress is bullshit and the Rethugs are dealing in bad faith. I once thought (before the Bush years) that the Rethugs actually had the nation's best interest at heart, with merely a different way of getting there. I realized a while back that they don't care what happens to this nation because there is always some profit in it for them, whether the economy takes off or circles the bowl. They don't give a shit about anyone or anything except their "contributors" and their own careers.

False Alarm!

Colorado To End Medicaid Coverage Of Circumcision

Tamron Hall of MSNBC just said MediCARE coverage of circumcision had been eliminated! Whew! Glad I looked it up. Don't worry, my turtlenecked Alternate Brain, I'm not planning on that! You can come out now...

I bet that long line of old grey heads at the bris clinic evaporated in a hurry, though. Heh.

Desperadoes Waiting For A Train?

Going through old family photos is a trip! I have no idea when or where this photo was taken. Coulda been when my dad was in the Indian Service amongst the Assiniboine Sioux on the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana in 1914 or twenty years later around my uncle Gordon's placer claims near Bumble Bee AZ. I tend toward the latter, but ¿quien sabe?. Thanks ta the interwebs I getsta look lotsa stuff up!

The sign in the upper left says 'Western Union - Telegraph - ?' I can't make out the 3rd line. Could these gents be waiting for a telegram to come in hopes one of them will get to ride the bicycle?

Click to make-um big

Mormons At The Door

Click to embiggen

Thanks to YubaNet.

Stems and seeds

Fixer's other garden

Raw Story

Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) will introduce legislation on Thursday to the U.S. House of Representatives that ends the federal prohibition on marijuana.

There's more, but 'Frank and Paul' is all you have to read. Nice try, gents, but that's the end of that. The two libs (-eral and -ertarian) don't have a snowball's chance in hell against the liquor, pharmaceutical, and prison lobbies.

Poof!

GOP magic trick: Making George W. Bush vanish

The way to do that is just hide him. Behind steel bars until his bones turn to dust.

Quote of the Day

Fareed Zakaria hits the nail right on the head in "How Today's Conservatism Lost Touch with Reality":

[...] We need more market mechanisms to cut medical costs, but Republicans don't bother to study existing health care systems anywhere else in the world. They resemble the old Marxists, who refused to look around at actual experience. "I know it works in practice," the old saw goes, "but does it work in theory?"

In theory, you can't get your head up your own ass, but in practice it sure works for Repugs.

Headline of the Day

Buy a half-gallon of sugar water at KFC, give a dollar to diabetes research

Say WHAT?!!