cecilmcgrlybts

Today Glenn Greenwald again discusses the power claimed by first the Bush administration, and now also the Obama administration, to assassinate persons including U.S. citizens. This article goes into more depth, discussing how this is already extending beyond persons suspected of engaging in terrorism to U.S. citizens who aren't, but may have said things which could be used to justify anti-American violence in retribution for anti-Muslim violence. And that is with alleged "Good Guy" Barack Obama authorizing the power. Can we imagine what would happen with a (God forbid) President Palin? Would eating a scone or asking for arugula be sufficiently anti-American to raise alarms?

I kid, of course, but this really is deeply troubling. I strongly recommend that you all read the article linked above.

Glenn Greenwald today discusses the president's orders to assassinate Americans suspected of working with terrorists. No trials have been held, no proof of their guilt offered. They are not combatants on any battlefield. But military and CIA operatives have the go-ahead to assassinate them -- and probably many innocent people near them, as with predator drone strikes.

In ten years, who knows who else might be considered terrorists, given that no evidence is required?

So, the Supreme Court recently issued a ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, a ruling which says that corporate campaign activities constitute protected speech under the First Amendment, thereby allowing corporations to freely spend money to promote or attack candidates of their choice. My first reaction, catalogued in an earlier post, was to call this a huge step towards complete de facto oligarchy, and I believe we're already not too many steps away. A pair of articles on Salon had interesting things to say about this decision which have got me back to considering more carefully.

Glenn Greenwald's article on the subject makes it clear that he, like me, considers corporatization of politics to be a major contribution to the problems with America; "In sum, there's no question that the stranglehold corporations exert on our democracy is one of the most serious and pressing threats we face," for example. However, he asserts that this move is not particularly relevant, since the corporations already spend an essentially unlimited amount, thanks to their use of loopholes. He also argues that our system really can't get more influenced by corporations; I don't agree with that, but as I mentioned above, I think he isn't far off. He maintains that this may be a net benefit to anti-corporatists, actually, since it unties the hands of labor unions and leftist corporately-organized groups like the ACLU, who actually may have been affected by previous limits on campaign activities due to their smaller size and legal resources. He also makes the argument that this may well have been the legally correct decision, even if it was motivated by politics, and lays out a good case in that direction.

The other article, by Emily Holleman, mostly emphasizes the opposite anti-corporatist take on the issue, namely the one which believes this will lead to a massive influx of corporate money into politics, thereby allowing corporations a greater influence in that arena. At the end of the article, one aspect of a memo attributed to "Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg," caught my eye as a possible unintended upside to this decision: "Unless the laws change, the political party as we know it is threatened with extinction. The parties do several things for their candidates and supporters -- raise money and conduct independent expenditures, conduct voter contact programs and describe the party’s position on issues, often through issue advocacy. With the limits on the amounts and sources of funds they can accept, the parties will be bit players compared to outside groups that can now conduct those core functions with unlimited funds from any source."

So, upsides: This may actually increase the funding in campaigns of groups I like, such as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, as well as labor unions, and this spending might help offset the already massive current level of corporate spending, assuming that corporate spending does not in fact greatly increase. Also, if we're very, very lucky, maybe the endlessly corrupt and moribund organizations known the Democratic and Republican Parties will wither away.

Downsides: If a flood of new corporate money into the political system does come about, the ability of any citizen to meaningfully interact with politics goes way down hill from its already very low point. Also, the politics which do occur without paying attention to us citizens will be even less likely to have outcomes which favor our continued health, happiness, or prosperity.

Also, as a last note, the mere fact that corporations are considered people, and thereby eligible for First Amendment rights of any sort is due to corporate legerdemain back in the early 20th Century, wherein a court reporter who had strong corporate ties injected it into the record of an unrelated Supreme Court decision, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific, thereby putting it in place to be used as precedent. Coincidentally, this reporter, J.C. Bancroft Davis, also served as the president of the New York Railway Company, though not at the time of the aforementioned event. The tradition of corporate personhood which started here has had deeply problematic consequences for real humans. Also of note, our "War on Terror" detainees are not legally considered people. Nice.

The New York Times reports that the American Law Institute has renounced its support for the death penalty. That means the penalty no longer has any (ostensibly) intellectually responsible supporters, which in turn means that the penalty is likely to face serious opposition over the coming decades from the legal class. I've long argued, as have many others, that the death penalty is more expensive than life imprisonment, and that it is administered inconsistently and with a racial bias, and has been known to kill innocent people. Additionally, and not mentioned by the article, is the fact that executions require executioners, and that role must exert a psychological toll, whether those who perform it realize it or not.

Some will argue that there are criminals who deserve to die, but that argument takes a back seat to considerations of whether the state should ever be an executioner.

Also, Glenn Greenwald argues that more surveillance makes us less safe, through sheer clogging volume of data.

So it's been about three months since I last posted anything. This is in part because I've been trying to cut back on posting links to articles, yet I haven't made the time to make the substantial posts I would like to make. I'm going to try to do some soon. Still, I had a few articles I wanted to drop in here to declutter my desktop.

- The Pledge of Allegiance is unAmerican. I agree entirely with the premise, and I think there are some interesting points made here. I am very much opposed to all of the sheep-flocking-to-god symbolism that was pushed through to differentiate us from our Communist allies around World War II.

- A fiction letter from your Congressperson, titled Dear Nobodies. It tackles the subject of gerrymandering, and just how little your congressperson may represent your interests.

- Sleep is a Feminist Issue, as summarized by Kate Harding at Broadsheet. Apparently women tend to get about 6 hours of sleep each night -- an hour and a half less than humans theoretically need to thrive. One of the things it brings up is that sleep deprivation, like calorie restriction, is a technique of torture, and yet women in particular will apply both to themselves and feel proud for doing so. Calorie restriction in the form of dieting is seen as good because it's healthy, and sleep deprivation is seen as virtuous despite the fact that it is not healthy -- the real common denominator appears to be self-denial. Also through the link is some discussion of the effects of similar sleep deprivation on men in a study conducted during World War II. Here's a hint: it didn't go well for them.

- Here's a recipe for dal chawal that I intend to make, just in case anyone cares.

An excellent post in Glenn Greenwald today (yeah, I know I mention him a lot) on the subject of the misplaced conservative anger at ACORN, a relatively small organization whose primary mission is to serve the poor. The conservative narrative, as driven by corporate interests, is that the middle class and the rich are unfairly burdened by all the money being thrown to the poor and disenfranchised. Somehow the powerless are able to bully the rest of us into giving them all of our money. The truth is that the poor are worse off than ever, and the super-rich are channelling more and more of our money to themselves.

Oh, and also, the very same people who demanded that we "look forward, not backward," and otherwise ignore the vast legacy of torture, imprisonment, illegal wiretapping, politization of hiring in every branch of the government, rejection of science in favor of corporate interests, and virtual strip-mining of the country are demanding that we appoint a special prosecutor to investigate "Obama's relationship with ACORN." No, really.

Also, the Supreme Court is poised to allow corporations (which are legally people, thanks to corporate interests placing powerful people in the past and some subversion of the rules) their alleged constitutional right to protection under the First Amendment. Under this amendment, the Supreme Court has previously ruled that money qualifies as speech. Therefore, corporations would be allowed unlimited contributions to political candidates -- a right which actual human beings do not possess. If this happens, it would be no exaggeration to say that our country would be owned entirely by an elite composed of corporations and their servants, and we will never see a non-corporate-beholden candidate in a prominent position again. Of course, we're not doing so much better than that now, but this would tip us over the edge, and then push a huge rock down after us. In short, if this comes to pass, we're all completely, and perhaps irrevocably, fucked.

This article is Salon suggests that perhaps the reason we've failed to make an effective social welfare state, unlike our European and Canadian neighbors, may be due to our lingering race hostility. White America, it claims, is very reluctant to allow minorities to profit from government action (they're taking our tax dollars!). Apparently America was predominantly white during the last large expansion of welfare state policies (1932-1968), and Social Security was apparently passed by excluding blacks originally. I had never thought of this before, but it is an interesting and, of course deeply depressing, argument. If true, it would suggest that as a country we're more than happy to cripple our poor and middle class in order to spite a hypothetical Mexican immigrant or black mother.

Another excellent Greenwald piece today, discussing how correct it is to feel populist anger, and how that anger is misdirected against the poor, and against the Democrats for allegedly helping the poor at the expense of the middle class. The truth is that our government most often redirects middle-class wealth not to the poor, but to the rich, and more-so to the super-rich. The same corporate interests that may as well own our government and which effectively write our laws are (unsurprisingly) the ones who profit time and time again. These same corporate interests have plenty of shills and spokesmen playing at populism, and redirecting the rage of the have-a-littles towards the have-nots. These are the Limbaughs, the Becks, the Coulters. As I've commented before, rage is an appropriate reaction to the state of the country (and world). The Tea Partiers, the Birthers, the Death Panel believers, and the like are merely deluded into channeling that rage toward the helpless, towards the very people hurt most by the things which anger them, and away from those actually responsible.

Another excellent article from Glenn Greenwald, this time highlighting that the crazy aspect of the modern conservative movement is not new, but at the very least decades old. A quote that I particularly like: " It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years.  Recent months is  just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are:  a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement."

I think many intelligent people have a tendency to assume that if someone like me makes a strong statement against the political party whose views are most opposite to that speaker's own, that view cannot be true, or at the very least, must be bookended by statements that the political party more sympathetic to the speaker's views has identical flaws. This has come to be known as "fairness," or "balance."

I agree that when someone is badmouthing their opponents, some caution must be used before assuming said badmouthing is based on fact. However, that does not mean that it cannot be based on fact. At the moment, most of the things said against the conservative movement are true, and moreover have been true for a long time. We liberal complainers about the unnecessary and misguided wars, the illegal spying, the pro-wealth policies, the torture and murder, and so much more, were right. This is now known. And yet we are treated by almost the entirety of the mainstream media with considerably more disdain than the people who perpetrated these wrongs. We are the "unbalanced" ones because we fail to draw equivalence between those who did wrong, who bullied and scared and manipulated the country into accepting wrong time after time, and our ourselves, with our protests of those wrongs.

We are called "shrill." Apparently "shrill" is the sound of a voice raised against obvious and acknowledged wrongs.

Edit: Another article, this one from the Daily Howler, pushing back on the the idea that the conservative bile directed against Obama is somehow new and surprising.

Also, I am in no way blind to or trying to pave over the massive flaws in the Democratic Party, including their support for many of the aforementioned wrongs, their many corporatist members, their contempt for their liberal wing, etc. etc. I just want to make it clear that while they have flaws, their flaws are not identical to, nor in any sense equivalent with, the cesspool that is the modern conservative movement.

Edit (2): One further thought. If the modern conservative movement and its Republican Party suddenly magically disappeared, and instead only had the modern Democratic Party, I would still have a lot to protest. The work of this country would not be ended on the day that happened, nor would it be done in the fifty years after. But maybe, just maybe, on that day it could begin.

Edit (3): There's another nice Greenwald article from a few days ago highlighting the "balance" issue of false equivalency. He highlights an article in the reprehensible Politico which claims equivalence between crazies like Orly "Where's the certificate?" Taitz and Sarah "Death Panels" Palin, and Democratic representatives Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and Mike Thompson (D-Calif.). The latter pair claimed that Bush would "mislead the American public" to justify going to war with Iraq, and argued that we should just let the weapons inspectors look for WMDs without using unnecessarily storming buildings with armed troops and helicopters. In short, crazy conservatives who make up bullshit to get attention and stir up ugly hatred are morally equivalent to liberals who point out important and substantive things which at the time were fairly obviously true but not allowed to be said and which history has entirely vindicated. Bear in mind the Politico article was written in the last week. Now that's balance.

Also, it looks like the article was updated on 9/11 to scrub out the false equivalence.

I have a backlog of articles to address thanks to my new job keeping me busy. Here's an attempt to unload them:

- A video of Minnesota Senator Al Franken discussing health care with a crowd of Minnesotans at the Minnesota State Fair. The discussion includes people for and against health care reform, and yet the debate stays fairly calm, and reasonable things are said. I think it is an excellent moment in the country's discussion on this topic.

- What's really in your shampoo. The article makes the interesting point that the functional ingredients of your favorite shampoo are basically the same as any dish detergent. Most of the added ingredients are there to bulk up the price tag and to add qualities which are not necessary but which people psychologically expect, like thickness and bubbliness and color. The article also claims that these extra ingredients might be harmful. They might be, but since the article doesn't actually offer any data on this, I don't know that there's a good reason to claim it.

- The Republican party is turning into a cult. This is a fun read for anyone frustrated by the direction of the modern conservative party.

- This article in the Miami Herald makes an interesting argument that if the various senators and congresspeople who keep introducing and voting for legislation to introduce more and bigger guns into more places really felt that the presence of guns makes a place safer, they would allow guns in the Senate and Congress. I have very mixed feelings about gun control, and I am sympathetic to arguments on both sides of the issue. Nevertheless, I think there's a lot of hypocrisy from the NRA and those like them, who try force guns into places like bars and national parks not because they are passionate about constitutional freedoms, but instead because it gains them money and political power.

Eric Holder released the infamous report on torture conducted by the CIA yesterday. The report, though heavily redacted, still has more than enough damning things to say. The techniques used were as bad or worse than those America has condemned and prosecuted as war crimes in other countries. America has even condemned and prosecuted this as-bad-or-less-bad torture in other countries since we have been known to have engaged in it ourselves. Further, the report makes very clear that many inside the CIA tasked with carrying out this torture were well aware of the moral bankruptcy of it, and concerned that if it were ever known what they had done, it would destroy their credibility and get them convicted as war criminals.

Nevertheless, Eric Holder has announced that he's only interested in pursuing the minority of torture applicators who 'exceeded' the memos written by minor bureaucrats under pressure from the White House. It's hard to imagine how you would significantly exceed those memos, given the broad justification they pretend to give for all sorts of specifically illegal acts.

So, briefly, yet again the political elite get off the hook for obvious and widespread violations of our highest and most important laws while people obeying them are prosecuted, and simultaneously we use the same laws our officials violate to attack others around the world who deserve it, but deserve it less than we do.

Here's Glenn Greenwald's excellent article on the subject, too.

The Capitol Times has an article today on Taser use in Wisconsin, particularly in Madison. It's a long article. Issues with Taser (over-)use and anecdotes of Taser use come in the second half of the article. There's some interesting information there, and the gist of it is that Madison police defend the use, others have issues. 19 of the 222 officers account for 42% of the Taser use, which seems high -- though the department claims it's a result of the beats they are assigned.

- Digby has an excellent post on the subject of tasers and over-willingness on the part of police officers to use them. Digby reminds us that tasers have killed hundreds of people, and that there is no known condition which causes these deaths. Nevertheless, police frequently use these weapons on people posing no threat, people in restraints, incapacitated people, and people who have committed no crime and are not suspected of committing a crime. "Talking back" to a police officer is not a crime, but it is frequently punished by the always-torturous, sometimes lethal taser -- even when the person in question is elderly and not engaged in illegal behavior. Digby also reminds us that it often takes no more than 30 seconds from the start of an encounter with police before they deploy a taser.  What this adds up to is a police force which compels abject and instantaneous submission by threat of torture and lethal force, even against law-abiding citizens.

- Glenn Greenwald, first here and then here, last week looked deeper into the GE/News Corp cease-fire agreement reported by the New York Times, whereby GE would order its subsidiary NBC's star Keith Olbermann to stop attacking Bill O'Reilly's and Fox News's consistent distortions and hypocrasy in exchange for News Corp ordering its subsidiary Fox News's star Bill O'Reilly to stop reporting on GE's shady dealings in Iran -- perhaps one of the few genuine pieces of reporting by allegedly reporter O'Reilly. Whew, what a mouthful. So, this may be the first time a major news outlet was openly influenced by its corporate owners, but we all knew this sort of thing would happen when industry bought news. This is noteworthy only because the corporate owners apparentlt no longer fear public reaction enough to make this clandestine.

- In other news, I recently started reading Life, Inc. by Douglas Rushkoff. The subject of the book is the dominance of the corporation in modern life. I'm not far in, but Rushkoff is already giving voice to things that I think need attention, such as the corporation's status as "super-person," and that the world has been made into a place where corporations prosper at the expense of humans. It also has some good history of the corporation. It's about 6 centuries old, which I did not know, and was created by the aristocracies as a way to get a piece of the mercantile action which had started to displace their power. Assuming the rest of the work holds up, I would call this a must-read.

[edit: added following]
- Obama signed a deal with the pharmaceutical companies, getting their support for health care reform as long as the Gov't is barred from seeking better deals on drugs via its purchasing power. I do want universal health care, and perhaps this is the only way to get it, but I can't help but feel let down that the industry wins again -- and all the rest of us will face even higher drug prices as a result. Where will this trend end? How much of the wealth of the nation has to go to insurance and drug companies before we will fight back? Also, here's an editorial on the subject.

- Glenn Beck asks his audience not to go on a killing spree. Most "news" hosts don't have to do this.

-This Salon article argues that insurance companies are currently imposing on us the very same evils that opponents of health care reform claim will result from a government insurance option, such as rationing of care. I agree entirely.

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent piece on perennial bullshit-spewer and Washington Post columnist William Kristol's hypocrisy-redefining argument that political lies are wrong and should not be used. Greenwald links Kristol to political philosopher Leo Strauss, who argued that there are different "levels" of truth appropriate to different people, more or less explicitly endorsing lies to distract the populace so that the political class can achieve their real goals unimpeded.

There's a nice editorial over at Salon defending Obama's plan to tax the wealthy just the littlest bit to pay for health care reform. The infinitesimal tax on the wealthiest 1% of Americans comes at a time when their wealth is more outsized than at any time since 1929, and when they have the lowest taxes in decades. Essentially, everything is coming up roses for them, and they're very, very upset to have to give even the smallest bit back in order to save lives.

-A post in the the Daily Kos reminds us that many "pro-life" groups are more interested in anti-reproductive choice than actually reducing the number of abortions, and they make it clear by working to prevent education about and access to contraceptives. If you believe that abstinence only is the only method of preventing pregnancies to which anyone should have access, you are not pro-life. You are attempting to force on others your religion-based ideas of women's suitability only for bearing children, and you are willing to make people you've never met suffer in the service of your goal.

Edit: Also, this. Research showing that areas without comprehensive sexual education have significantly worse sexual outcomes in metrics ranging from contraceptive use to rate of underage pregnancy to sexually transmitted diseases have been available for some time. Of course, for the last eight years, the only science our government was interested in was found in the top drawer of a nightstand in every hotel in America.

Quote: "The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled."

-The BBC reminds us that 140 lb squid can strike any time, anywhere. Well, only off the coast of California, but still.

-This article by Maggie Mahir argues that we should tax the rich to support health care reform. I couldn't agree more. And you will probably agree too, once you realize that the wealthy in this country have a massively disproportionate share of our country's resources, especially seized in the last 30 years due to relaxation of government regulations or the failure of those regulations to keep up with shady business practices. Here's a graph from the article which illustrates the point nicely.



Edit: added following:

- RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who approves the idea that defeating health care reform could be Obama's "Waterloo," i.e. a good way to damage the popular opposition party, lacked health care for many years, and told his children "Don’t break anything, because Daddy can’t afford to fix it."

-In more Michael Steele news, he questions how anyone could break the bond between the doctor and patient, the patient and . . . the insurance company? Really? Between the insurance company and the market? This man may actually be a very clever parody, ala Stephen Colbert.

Glenn Greenwald again takes on the political media's belief that "reporting" consists of repeating what those who give them access to the White House say, and that it's not illegal if a high-level politician does it. This mentality, more than anything else, allowed the excesses and corruption of the Bush years. This mentality is one of the biggest threats facing America, in that it enables and encourages every other threat to flourish.

Also, news-themed propaganda network Fox News recently aired a segment claiming that the Birther conspiracy theorists' law suits were a serious problem for the administration, as though the theories weren't thoroughly debunked and the cases dismissed on sight by every judge.
It seems odd that the pretense of Fox News as a news organization has survived despite the consistent distortion and sometimes outright bullshit they "report."

It's been a good week for shitty reporting and depressing news, but here are a few choice pieces you may have missed.

- [edit: fixed link] Fox and Friends sidekick Brian Kilmeade complains that Americans are marrying other species, er, "ethnics". It's not often you get to see their racism and ignorance of science on such clear display together. Or at least, I wish it weren't.

- Andrew Sullivan writes a piece on Sarah Palin's ludicrous career and bizarre retirement. One nice snippet points out that no other governor in the past century has ever voluntarily quit without being involved in a terrible sex scandal. Also, the fact that her husband had to travel 300 miles to her retirement seems to indicate that it was not planned in advance. Also, the author has compiled 32 instances where she out-and-out incontrovertibly has lied (not spun or shaded, but simply said things which are demonstrably false) and never retracted. But most importantly, there's insight at the end worth sharing:

You may be sick of Sarah Palin, but I think it's worth keeping in mind what a narcissistic and useless person she is, if for no other reason because she will almost certainly be part of the Republican ideological (if not actual governing) leadership for some time to come.

- Pandagon reports on a new development in the usurious practice of payday loans, and compares it to modern slavery. Good luck, poor and lower-middle class workers.


Edit: Adding this post on the massive profits to Goldman-Sachs by the excellent Glenn Greenwald. The upshot is this: They've had more money and lobbying than anyone else for some time now, to the point where they basically own Congress, and as a result, they got favors in the bailout that allowed them not only to flourish, ignore their past mistakes, but also to effectively sink some competitors. Basically, ruining the world's economy worked out great for them, and there's no particular reason to think they'd want to avoid doing it again. Oh, and also, they have access to a giant pool of undisclosed loans from the Federal Reserve. The total loans are about $2 trillion, but we don't know how that's distributed, thanks to le secrecy. There's a bill currently in Congress which would make this list public, but Congressional leaders will not allow it to come to vote.

-Also, Dick Cheney's secret assassination project confirmed, though it looks as though it may not have been fully implemented. It was, however, completely concealed from Congress, and also cost at least $50 million.

-An article in Salon on America's scientific illiteracy.

This article describes a Turkish gameshow which allows a panel of representatives from the Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist faiths (no jews?) to compete to convert avowed athiests. They are judged successful if they can convert at least one of the week's ten  athiests, who then get a free vacation. Kinda blows your mind, doesn't it?

This piece in Salon's Broadsheet is an excellent discussion of the state of student loans.  I particularly appreciate the point they make that the Republican-embraced philosophy of pulling one's self up by one's bootstraps implies that we would be better off if every student had to work during college, and not just those who didn't happen to be born into a wealthy family.