A Bolivian Steamer

El Rude-o on stopping President Morales' plane on spec that Snowden was aboard.

Let's give some advice here to the Obama administration. If you're gonna provoke an international incident, you better have a fucking photo of Snowden toasting Morales with a mini-bottle of vodka. Otherwise, you just look like an imperialist dickhead who knew he could bully the little brown leftist. You can bet that if Snowden had been getting banged by prostitutes wearing Biden masks on Vladmir Putin's jet, the flight wouldn't have been stopped at all. This is a big fucking deal, with leaders in Argentina and Peru (not just those putas in Ecuador and Venezuela) calling for a meeting of South American nations to respond.

Gotta say: this shit's embarrassing. Is this how the greatest superpower in the history of the whole goddamn world, as we're told again and again, is gonna act to try to catch a poindexter who handed flash drives to journalists? Snowden already gave away all that he had. Catching him ain't gonna stop a single secret from coming out anymore. It ain't worth pissing off an entire continent.

This whole thing feels so degrading, like getting a sweaty, drunken blumpkin in a festival port-a-potty.

Bolivian government officials are calling this incident a "kidnapping" of its president. And it's hard to argue. What would have happened if Snowden had been on the plane with the promise of asylum? Would we have arrested Morales as an accessory? How far would we go in violating international law just to show the world that only this America gets to decide what's right and wrong?

"Steamer" is right. This smells like a great big made-in-the-USA turd.

Neoconservatism: a CIA Front?

This article first appeared in 1997. I have no trouble believing it but I have no idea how true it all is. Presented strictly FYI. Take from it what you will.

Not long after the Central Intelligence Agency was founded in 1947, the American public and the world were subjected to an unprecedented level of propaganda in the service of US foreign policy objectives in the Cold War. The propaganda offensive of the government centered around its obsession with securing the emerging US-dominated world order in the wake of the Second World War. It was a time when Europe lay in ruins and when subservience to US planners, in government and business, was the order of the day.
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The conservative movement that culminated in the elevation of Ronald Reagan to the presidency was a product of those turbulent Cold War years, and perhaps more so a product of domestic intervention by the security state than many of its participants would care to admit. The armchair warriors in the neoconservative camp and the inveterate interventionists at National Review can both trace their roots straight back to the propaganda efforts of the CIA.
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Today, the war-mongering right is self-sustaining. Money flows like milk and honey to neoconservative activists from the major conservative foundations. Irving’s son Bill Kristol has his sugar daddy in the form of media tycoon and alien Rupert Murdoch. National Review is boring, but in no danger of going under financially.
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At the height of the Cold War, opposition to interventionism was largely isolated to the anti-war Left. While marshaling an impressive analytic literature on the evils of US imperialism, particularly in the context of Viet Nam, the Left was suspect for its support of socialism and its sometimes overt sympathies for totalitarian regimes. On the right, things were different. Except for a noble band of libertarians lead by Murray Rothbard, conservatives and many libertarians were front and center in support of the security state and its nefarious activities. Now, virtually the entire right is opposed to interventionism. Traditionalists and even nationalist right-wingers are generally opposed to foreign military actions. The dominant anti-war force on the right is the growing number of explicitly isolationist libertarians, who want no truck with the warfare state on principle. The Weekly Standard acknowledged as much and identified Murray Rothbard as the guiding spirit behind today’s antistatist, antiwar movement. And the nonliberal left, lead by long-time noninterventionists like Noam Chomsky, remains opposed to US global hegemony. The neocons and their corporate liberal cronies are the only spokesman for militarism.

The grassroots are hated by the neocons for precisely that reason. The man on the street, the movement conservative, the Perot voter, the Libertarian Party man – they all want the troops brought home and the tyranny of the US empire brought to a halt. When the leaders of the empire try to talk down to normal people, they are jeered off the stage. The RRR position – no more war – is more and more the position of the American people. That’s a strike for peace and a strike for liberty.

At last, it seems as if there may be something I can agree with Libertarians (right-wing Anarchists, as opposed to Anarchists, who are left-wing Libertarians. It's confusing...) about. Scary thought.

A Message From The Terrified People Sitting Next To Pat Robertson

Goblinbooks. Several vids of an insane old christowhacko doing his thing, which is being an insane old christowhacko.

Hi. We're the folks sitting next to Pat Robertson. We'd like to make something clear to you: We're not bad people, okay? We don't agree with whatever crazy thing just came out of Pat's pie-hole. Most of the time, we are just as horrified as the rest of you. But the goddamn cameras are on us, and we need to keep this job.

Yes, we should say something. Yes, we should tell him he's a lunatic. Maybe even get up, take off our mikes, and storm out of there. But then what? Where would we go? What would we do? How would we keep our kids in school and the bank from taking our homes? Plus - and we are serious here - Pat would bide his time, and then someday he would take us down, Corleone-style. The guy's like Blackwater and the Church of Scientology had a baby and raised it in a racist tent revival. He's every villain from every 1980's action movie you've ever seen. You have no idea what he's capable of.

You know what a Communications degree from Regent University gets you? Fifty thousand dollars of debt and the ability to do TV work anywhere in Virginia Beach, VA. Which means you're fucked. This place is the media equivalent of one of those company mining towns where they pay you in scrip. When Pat sits down next to us and starts babbling about the demons... trust us, that is the least humiliating part of our day. But we're powerless. Pat owns us. He owns our souls.

There's a reason most of us are secret atheists. We know there's no hell after we die. Because we're still alive... and we're already here.

There's nothing I can add to that except maybe he'll be called home soon. Heh.

When Privacy Jumped The Shark

Daddy Frank's monthly feature article is up.

Note to Edward Snowden and his worrywarts in the press: Spying is only spying when the subject doesn’t want to be watched.

Good article as always, but I'm feeling lazy today so I'll cut to the chase:

Little short of a leak stating that the NSA is tracking gun ownership is likely to kindle public outrage.

There ya go. Yawn.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG 150TH ANNIVERSARY MARKED BY REENACTMENTS ACROSS COUNTRY
This time however, Democrats fight for the Union, Republicans the Confederacy.

A lot closer to the truth than it is ironic.

Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act
By narrow margin of Justice Thomas's three-fifths of a vote

Twinkies Returning to Shelves
If date of expiration is 2053 or later, they're fresh.

CORRECTION

We reported that Justice Antonin Scalia, in a fiery dissent in the Voting Rights Act case, slammed the majority for “invalidating this democratically adopted legislation. That is jaw-dropping. It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people's representatives in Congress and the executive.” In fact, Scalia was referring not to the Court's overturning the Voting Rights Act, but the Court's overturning the Defense of Marriage Act. We apologize for any confusion caused by our mistake.

I wonder if Fat Tony sees his own hypocrisy. It may be too deep for him.

Goin' ridin'

Off to ride the Kraut Cup Trial today. See yas.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Jun 24, 2013
Rodney Crowell & Emmylou Harris at The Hollywood Bowl June 23, 2013

Been to the Bowl many times. Most memorable was showing up with my date on my Triumph. Parking is a nightmare there, but the parking guys let me park right behind the stage. Our seats were up on Mulholland Dr. but my bike was safe. Thanks, guys!

Here's a memorable comment on this video:

What moron arranged the bill on this show? Emmylou and Rodney are music icons, and the headliner spot went to She & Him? The high-school talent show stylings of Zoeey Deschanel and wannabe guitar-wiz posturings of M.Ward were an embarrassment. Ms Harris and Mr Crowell got a standing O (which they were presumably told there was no time to acknowledge with an encore). Meanwhile, the hip and trendy Z&M rushed back to give an encore while 75% of the audience was already headed for the exits.

Thanks to halbie71.

Headline of the Day

Witness responds to suggestion that Trayvon lied before getting shot: ‘That’s real retarded, sir’

So's defending Zimmerman.

Ku Klux Kourt

Greg Palast

They might as well have burned a cross on Dr. King's grave. The Jim Crow majority on the Supreme Court just took away the vote of millions of Hispanic and African-American voters by wiping away Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
...

And that's really what's going on here: the problem is not that the court majority is racist. They're worse: they're Republicans.
...

But this crew, beginning with Bush v. Gore, is viciously partisan. They note that "minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels." And the Republican Supremes mean to put an end to that. See "Obama" and "Florida" above.
And when they say "minority," they mean "Democrat."
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In California - one of the "Old South" states that is singled out for pre-clearance - an astonishing 40 percent of voter registration forms were rejected by the Republican Secretary of State on cockamamie clerical grounds. When civil rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy and I investigated, we learned that the reject pile was overwhelmingly Chicano and Asian - and overwhelmingly Democratic.
...

Despite the racial stench of today's viciously antidemocratic ruling, the GOP majority knew they were handicapping the next presidential run by a good 6 million votes. (That's the calculation that RFK and I came up with for racially bent vote loss in 2004 - and the GOP will pick up at least that in the next run.)

And the court knew full well that their ruling today was the same as stuffing several hundred thousand GOP red votes into the ballot boxes for the 2014 Congressional races.

Much more, but that's the crux of the biscuit.

A Whole Different Class of People Here

War Is A Crime.org

I was flabbergasted when the the Congressional Research Service reported on May 17 that the Pentagon didn’t have a clue what the 108,000 contractors the Department of Defense (DOD) has in Afghanistan were actually doing--let alone how well they were doing it.

Fortunately, my Uncle Jimmy, who works at the Pentagon, was in for the weekend, and I got a chance to ask him about it.

He laughed. “Take it easy, Ace,” he said. “You know how you media guys blow things out of proportion.”

I felt better already. “Great. Could you put it in proportion for me?” I glanced at my notes. “According to the report, DOD spent $160 billion with contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq these past six years. That seems like a lot of money to go unaccounted for.”

“Not a bit,” he scoffed. “We actually save money by eliminating oversight. We have over 40,000 more contracted employees in the country than we do troops! Do you know how many people it would take to actually keep track of over a hundred thousand contract employees and monitor their work?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” I said. “A thousand?”

“Guess again,” he said. “More like ten to sixteen thousand. So we’ve saved, off the top of my head, somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 to $20 billion by eliminating supervision.”

“That’s a high-priced neighborhood,” I joked. “But I’d think you’d be worried about theft and corruption and inefficiency and work going undone and people goofing off. Things like that.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said, shocked. “Ace, these are U.S. defense contractors you’re talking about. They’re the biggest and the best. If you can’t trust KBR, DynCorp, Fluor, Washington Group International, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and corporations like that to give you an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, who can you trust?”

I was silent for a minute, and he looked at me. “I know that look, Ace. You’re actually thinking. What is it?” he asked.

“I was thinking about ‘corporate welfare,’ and just remembering those news stories back in the 70s when Ronald Reagan and Reader’s Digest hammered the welfare system and ‘welfare queens’” I told him. “Cities and states have kept an eagle eye out for welfare fraud ever since. You see governments zeroing in on welfare clients all the time. Charlottesville cracked down on more than a dozen in April for taking money they allegedly weren’t entitled to. Most of them were charged with siphoning off a thousand to four thousand dollars.”

“Defrauding the system. That’s outrageous, isn’t it?” said Jimmy. “But what’s your point? I don’t see any connection. We’re talking about a whole different class of people here.”

And that kind of "thinking" is the problem.

Antonin Scalia Viciously Opposes Your Social Progress

El Rude-o on Fat Tony's reactions to the DOMA beat-down.

The Defense of Marriage Act has long been one of the goddamnedest embarrassments of this nation. Passed in an election year, 1996, and signed into law by a president shit-scared that he would look too soft on the queers since he had tried to show them compassion in 1993 by attempting to get rid of the ban on gays in the military, an effort that was an utter failure. It passed Congress with no problems, with bipartisan support, 342-67 in the House, 85-14 in the Senate. Score a battle in the culture war for the dumbfucks.
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[...] Which means that we get another vicious, latently homophobic dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia.

The fun part is that so much of Scalia's reasoning in upholding DOMA could have been used to uphold the entire Voting Rights Act, a section of which was struck down yesterday by a 5-4 conservative decision. There, Scalia had absolutely no difficulty overturning an even more broadly bipartisan law (98-0 in the Senate).

Check out this shit and see if you just don't feel like saying to Scalia, "Wait, you're supposedly the smart conservative. You just sound like a desperate bitch boy attempting to get the conservative groups that fund your speeches and junkets to shove their cash rolls into your anxious asshole."

First, Scalia is aghast, aghast, motherfuckers, at the notion that the Supreme Court would dare to believe that it has the power to overturn the mighty Congress: The majority says that "judicial review must march on regardless, lest we 'undermine the clear dictate of the separation-of-powers principle that when an Act of Congress is alleged to conflict with the Constitution, it is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.'" Then, with the kind of hyperventilating hyperbole that'd make Morton Downey, Jr. say, "Whoa, calm down there, big fella," Scalia vents, "That is jaw-dropping. It is an assertion of judicial supremacy over the people’s Representatives in Congress and the Executive. It envisions a Supreme Court standing (or rather enthroned) at the apex of government, empowered to decide all constitutional questions, always and every-where 'primary' in its role."

Rude goes on to point out where in the Constitution it says that's SCOTUS' fucking job. Yada yada. We knew that.

Scalia's dissent is so filled with disdain for everything, angry in a King-Kong-gets-shot-by-a-biplane kind of gorilla rage, that you just wanna hate masturbate to it. "Oh, yeah, yeah, fuck you, Tony, suck on this cultural hegemony and tell us how much it makes you wanna vomit." And then, when he starts to get pissed at Justice Alito's dissent, we're into something that veers towards camp. Well, shit, he is usually wearing a gown.

Stop right there, Rude! Do NOT esplain what is or isn't under that gown! I'm pretty tough but...

Go down fighting, Justice Scalia, you hypocritical activist judge who declares you're no activist. Flail away at the waves of progress, and when the tsunami hits, you just have to hope, piece of shit that you are, that you're a floater and not a sinker.

Sink, float, mox nix. Shit's shit.

Much more.

A fine week for total insanity

Indeed it is! If it's Thursday, I think Morford held off a day before expounding on the events of the week and the week's not over. Many links.

Then come those days when progress and humanity seem to lurch and stumble around like confused animals, where, if you have any sort of progressive inclination whatsoever, you are left feeling like you’ve been both kissed and mauled, flattered and mugged, bitch-slapped and proposed to, all while riding a burning roller coaster, on a Wednesday, drunk.

So it is that this generation’s nastiest, least compassionate Supreme Court, rigged like a poison grenade with the likes of Antonin Scalia, Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, first slapped civil rights back a generation by invalidating a vital part of the Voting Rights Act this week, a hugely successful piece of legislation that protected minorities and the poor from getting screwed over at the polls by rich white southerners.

BTW, the acronym for Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia is RATS. Fits this court to a T.

This much we know: Any racially charged decision from SCOTUS that is both endorsed by all the conservative judges and “cheered by the South” is very bad news indeed for the American experiment going forward.

Yes, yes it is.

The good news: DOMA is dead, and Prop 8 was slapped aside, thus allowing gay marriage to resume in California – but alas, nowhere else, as the mealy-mouthed court completely sidestepped the larger issue of the overall unconstitutionality of state bans on gay marriage. Wimps.

Wimps indeed, but it's OK for now. The door to equality is now open a crack.

Already, Gov. Jerry Brown, who is proving to be all kinds of calmly fantastic for California all over again, has directed CA county clerks to start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples ASAP. Florists statewide are giddy. Wedding planners are all asqueal. Of course, fundamentalists and ultraconservatives are freaking out, endless hellfire surely awaits, but what fun we shall have on the way down, no?

¡O Si!

At last we arrive at the ultimate question: Do you feel any better? Are you (tentatively, awkwardly) celebrating any of this news? Or do you sort of feel like you’ve been mauled by a pack of friendly dogs in heat, like your wallet was just stolen while you were having sex in a dark room, like someone roofied your artisan whisky cocktail, but you don’t really mind?

I know just how you feel. So it goes with American politics, particularly when this coldly divided SCOTUS is involved: Always a little painful, always a little bit bloody, always with a razor blade or two in the apple pie.

Please, please read the rest. It's been an inspirational week in many ways. We can shit nails from the razor blades.

Quote of the Day

Democrats have a new strategy to use against their Republican opponents: Just let them speak.

Heh. Please proceed, wingnuts...

Will The U.S. Be Able To Extradite James Clapper From Northern Virginia?

Goblinbooks

As this NSA surveillance scandal unfolds, people are following Edward Snowden's apparent attempts to evade extradition. However, I think we're losing sight of the other fugitive from justice - James Clapper. After committing the criminal offense of lying to Congress back in March, Clapper vanished into the federally administered tribal areas around Washington, DC. He is thought to be somewhere near McLean, Virginia, and continuing his role as Director of National Intelligence. Will he be caught and brought to justice?

Now legally, it seems like it should be a more straightforward matter for American authorities to seize Clapper. Unlike Ecuador, where Snowden is seeking asylum, Northern Virginia is technically a part of the United States. The same is true of other areas in and around the "Beltway zone" where Clapper could be hiding. These areas have US administrators at the federal and state level - they even use our currency. In fact, since 9/11 American funding has absolutely flooded the local economy there in an effort to buy us influence.

But as with many other US allies, we're not always sure of their loyalties. These are intensely secretive people. Simply put, we don't trust each other. They don't share our values: They don't believe in transparency or accountable governments. It's never been part of their culture, and they resent our attempts to impose our system on them. And the fact that we give them so much money creates a strange cognitive dissonance that makes these people really hard to communicate with. Here you'll find someone whose entire lifestyle is based on getting money from the US Treasury, and he will nonetheless refers to himself, seriously, as "a small-government conservative."
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The bottom line, I think, is that Clapper broke our laws, and we need to force them to hand him over. Otherwise they'll never respect us. They want to take our money so they can continue to intervene in every conflict around the world, and then make cable news specials about it. But we must make it clear that there are limits.

We have to use each other, but never forget - they're just not like us. We don't want the same things, the same kind of society. And we must never, ever put them in the position where we're not monitoring what they do. There's a reason no US soldier wants to go out on a mission controlled by someone from the DC area. They know that's how you get killed. If you want to show our people we care, don't put them at the mercy of someone from inside the Beltway. Simple as that.

I hate to say it like this, but it's true: They just don't value human life the way we do.

Satire and irony are dead. Sigh.

Texass's new flag

A tip o' the Brain to Teabonics.

A distinction without a difference

What the Supreme Court Doesn’t Understand About the Voting Rights Act

Here's what they DO understand: The Red States no longer try to change the election laws simply because people are black and brown. They try to make it harder for black and brown people to vote these days because they're DEMOCRATS. The right-wing SCOTUS has done its duty. To the detriment of the nation.

Shopping Day

Gotta go to The Big City for supplies, so I'll leave you with this cheery and inspirational video via Americans Against The Tea Party, Veracity Stew, and The Political Garbage Chute.

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Headline of the Day

U.S. PROMISES SMOOTH TRANSFER OF QUAGMIRE FROM AFGHANISTAN TO SYRIA

Oh fucking swell. On the bright side, if it's seamless enough, nobody will notice.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

California Has Restrictions That Prevent Crazy Criminals From Backing U-Haul Up to Gun Shop, Filling it With Ammunition
You have to fill out a bunch of forms to rent a U-Haul.

North Korea Calls for Senior-Level Talks With U.S.
To discuss terms of our surrender.

High Court Rules Suspects Must Speak Up if They Wish To Remain Silent
If they wish to speak, must do so silently.

High Court: Drug Companies Can Be Sued for Paying Competition Not to Sell Generic Version of Its Brand Name Drug
Ask your lawyer if suing a drug company is right for you.

Canadians Pay Taxes for Universal Health Care, and Now They're Richer Than Us

Excellent post at Truthout. Links at site.

Many conservatives still characterize Medicaid as “welfare,” and many think of it as such. Presumably other types of health care coverage have been “earned” (think veterans and the military, highly paid executives, union members and congressional staff). We resent our tax dollars going to “freeloaders.” Until the slicing and dicing is ended, the finger pointing, blame shifting and their attendant political wars will continue.

In sharp contrast, our Canadian neighbors feel much differently. Asked if they resent their tax dollars being spent to provide health care to those who can’t afford it on their own, they say they can’t think of a better way to spend them. “Isn’t that what democracy is all about?” I’ve heard Canadian physicians say, “Our universal health care is the highest expression of Canadians caring for each other.”

In the U.S., "taking care of each other" is referred to by the Neanderthal "christian" right as "communism".

In her excellent New Yorker essay called “Tax Time,” Jill LePore points out that taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity and for prosperity. Taxes insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and take some of the edge off of extreme poverty. Taxes protect property and the environment, make business possible and pay for roads, schools, bridges, police, teachers, doctors, nursing homes and medicine.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” The wealthy pay more because they have benefited more.

Canada’s tax-financed health care system covers everybody, gets better results, costs about two-thirds of what ours does and is far more popular than ours with both their public and their politicians. There is no opposition to it in the Canadian Parliament.

What’s not to like about that?

Oh yes, and the average Canadian is now wealthier than the average American. Their far more efficient and effective tax-based health care system is part of the reason.

The time came long ago to quit seeing health care as a for-profit industry and start seeing it as a public utility, like water or electricity. It will not happen until the "christians" become Christians, or until all the Neanderthals amongst us are dead.

For those of you who may not have seen it, I refer you to my most excellent post from years ago, Single Payer Is Like A Beer Run. Please read and enjoy a motorcyclist's perspective, but here's the crux of the biscuit:

Some folks won't have much money and some folks will have plenty. Everybody wants something different from the store, but that's just too damn bad. There will be beer and soda and ice, brand names be damned, whatever the store has. And one box of diapers or Depends (I never quite understood the 'Depends' part when I was younger. I do now!) The driver will get what he can get, which will be plenty even if not too much, and everybody will get something to slake their thirst and keep the party going. Some folks will get more than they paid for and some will get less than they paid for. Some folks will contribute money and not need or expect anything, and some won't kick in anything unless they are made to, but will expect a full share or more, and they will be the ones who bitch the loudest if they don't get exactly what they want. There are also people who brought more beer than they could possibly consume and won't share with others and will still want some of the proceeds of the beer run. Such is the nature of life and people.

The point of the beer run is to do the most good for the most people. There are always going to be folks on all the fringes and we have to take care of them, but the point of the exercise is directed squarely at the middle: you pay, you get.

Bada bing! What a concept!