Siegelman and Scrushy - Tip of the Iceburg?

Alternet: Going to Jail for Being a Democrat: How Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman Got Roved
By Paul Craig Roberts, CounterPunch.

The frame-up of Siegelman and businessman Richard Scrushy is so crystal clear and blatant that 52 former state attorney generals from across America, both Republicans and Democrats, have urged the US Congress to investigate the Bush administration's use of the US Department of Justice to rid themselves of a Democratic governor who "they could not beat fair and square," according to Grant Woods, former Republican Attorney General of Arizona and co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee. Woods says that he has never seen a case with so "many red flags pointing to injustice."

The abuse of American justice by the Bush administration in order to ruin Siegelman is so crystal clear that even the corporate media organization CBS allowed "60 Minutes" to broadcast on February 24, 2008, a damning indictment of the railroading of Siegelman. Extremely coincidental "technical difficulties" caused WHNT, the CBS station covering the populous northern third of Alabama, to go black during the broadcast. The station initially offered a lame excuse of network difficulties that CBS in New York denied. The Republican-owned print media in Alabama seemed to have the inside track on every aspect of the prosecution's case against Siegelman. You just have to look at their editorials and articles following the 60 Minutes broadcast to get a taste of what counts for "objective journalism" in their mind.

The story itself bears so much similarity to so many other stories that it seems almost routine. It took a few of the comments to make me realize that suddenly "Dog bites Man" is genuine news.

The news is that "plausible deniablity" is off the table. We now know that when "Dog bites Man," it's almost always the same goddamn dog - just as we always suspected.

The Internet, the web and other emerging peer-to-peer connections are a staggering intelligence advantage to ordinary people, and a freakin' nightmare to those who would prefer to keep citizens "Mushroomed;" eg, "Kept in the dark and fed bullshit."

The Internet, the web, and now the various social media of "web 2.0" are a freaking godsend for people like me who justify their existence by making connections between apparently unrelated things. While the implications of it trouble civil libertarians when they contemplate how potentially troublesome data mining linkages could be, it's a fact that this particular phenomenon is at least as dangerous to those who would abuse their authority than to those they might find "dirt" on to abuse.

This case is fascinating evidence of that phenomenon. Not only do we have evidence of abuse, but clear and damning evidence pointing to a systematic cover-up.

It wasn't all that long ago that the assassinations of Robert and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and probably others were undertaken without any blow-back to those who set it up, or conclusive evidence pointing to who was responsible.

Back in the day, it only took a few judicious threats here and there, and the ominous, but truthful observation; "Who ya gonna tell?"

The answer today is "the whole goddamn world, and whatcha gonna do about it?" There are people alive today -Sibel Edmonds leaps to mind - who probably would have perished suddenly and quietly fifteen or twenty years ago.

The problem for those who start thinking in that way is this: There is no way to shut up a whistle-blower these days without significant and persuasive notice being taken. And if the implications of data-mining for connections between ordinary individuals may be troubling to ordinary individuals - imagine what the very idea does to the sphincters of people with connections to Karl Rove.

You see, this is one of those ideas that could have gotten me put in a quiet padded room somewhere very private, back in the day, just for pointing it out. But I hardly need to point it out, it's obvious, it's inevitable and it's already happening. The internet is a powerful and absolutely magnificent tool for individuals who need to evaluate the reliability of various information sources.

In "free and open societies" such as our own, a newspaper can be scrupulous about their journalistic standards and still be corrupt as all hell. There are probably three or four stories a year that are of critical importance - and if a paper sits on those stories, it's even better than publishing lies.

Well, that reality actually ended in the mid-eighties, when the Internet became a flood of information, and a way to reality-check information cheaply and reliably. What was first the tool of the hardwired geek intelligencia is now available to anyone with the cash to pick up a second-hand computer. If you are the slightest bit interested in data security, it's pretty darned easy to hide your tracks.

What this new reality amounts to is a means by which the average person can have access to the sort of information that William Casey would have sacrificed his left nut and his first-born to get his hands on - if he could have kept it to himself.

Indeed, that was J. Edgar Hoover's secret to power - files that contained dirt on everyone of significance in positions of power both public and private. Well, of course Rove has taken that tactic to heart - but the fact that he has done it is so clearly obvious to people in a position to "connect the dots" that it significantly erodes the effect.

For instance, ten years ago, even five years ago, Nancy Pelosi may well have gotten away with saying "impeachment is off the table." Anyone who disagreed and could object meaningfully would have no ability to do much of anything about it.

But by now there is some point to saying aloud that "taking impeachment off the table" made no goddamn sense politically or strategically when it's in the absolute best interest of honest Democrats to remove corrupt Republicans from power before they can fix the next election.

It makes sense to say that some combination of stupidity, incompetence and blackmail must account for the difference between implied promises in 2006 and delivered results in time for 2009 have significant and troubling implications.

The web hasn't eliminated smoke-filled back rooms where deals are made between politicians and "the people that matter." What it has done is put a live webcam in there, so we can see that the people in those smoke-filled rooms aren't any smarter, better informed or more high-minded than your average gas-station attendant or insurance agent.

We always had the right and the responsibility to oversee them. Now we have the practical capacity to do so; yes, that is bi-partisan urine trickling down their legs.

Oh - and by the by, what's true here in the US is true everywhere there is a robust Internet. So, pretty much, that means everywhere. The implications for the Taliban, for Norway, for China and Russia are all the same - there's no way of keeping "internal matters" internal, there's no way of ensuring that they don't end up on the front pages of their own media and blogs and there's no way of erasing every single trace of corrupt dealings.

Come to think of it, consider the implications of the internet in an honor society like Pakistan, where it becomes impossible to hide the private dealings of "men of the world."

It's a good way to get a private enterprise rocket grenade enema.

Nor is there any effective way of restricting access to that information without killing off their own economy. Now, some regimes don't give much of a crap about that - but that doesn't mean they can absolutely ensure that their citizenry will obey, when disobedience is so very profitable in so very many ways.

And it's also true of the United Nations, and stuffy old NGO's like the Red Cross. If it hadn't been for the web, I doubt they would have gotten so righteously hammered as they did in Canada, where the government took away their control over the blood supply after it turned out that they had willfully neglected to screen blood plasma for HIV - because it would have been "too expensive." That piece of data became widely known - along with another damning number - their overhead ate up 80 cents of every dollar donated. As I recall, - though it's only a vague recollections - it was a combination of hemophilia advocates who had been tracking this that brought it to national attention, but they did it by way of the internet, skipping the historical process of having to find someone to call who could do something and might be persuaded to do so.

Essentially, what has occurred is this: the web advantages people who deal honestly and who either have no skeletons in their closets, or who use them as festive decor while chuckling gleefully. It has made it clear that those who have invested a lot in appearing to have nothing to hide are less worrisome and more likely to screw you over than those who, say, like dressing up in rubber and don't much care about what "decent people" might think.

The average person is now capable of getting enough information to compete intellectually abd even strategically with "the people who matter," because we also have the ability to collaborate to mutual advantage at minimal cost.

Conservatives decry Wikipedia, for instance, because it's not "definitive," that it is "unreliable," and it's possible to insert innacurate information.

All of this is true - but what they don't comprehend is that the distinction between Wikipedia and, say, The World Book is that you can tell who's fingerprints are on which bit of information.

It's true that you can insert inaccuracies - but the act of doing so is information in it's own right; more compelling than the misinformation. Further, the process by which Wikipedia is self-policed tends to give extra validity to articles that have become stable and uncontested.

Compare that to the editorial policy of The Brittanica or Groliers.

Oh, wait. You can't.

So how do we know they have equal or higher standards, as is alleged by conservative sources?

They say so. Very authoritatively. And to the extent that you would have been able to check, that would be true, back in the day. The problem is, that makes you tend to rely on the accuracy of things you cannot check. And that is where the money is.

Go ahead, look up Armenian Genocide in three or four different encyclopedias.

Now go to Wikipedia. I don't actually know what it says - but I know that it will come from more perspectives than the "authoritative" sources, and the comments section will be more fun than "All My Children" and "Project Runway" put together.

History and culture is no longer defined by the victors, or by those who believe they are the "winners" in our society. Everybody gets their fifteen seconds - and it's archived by keyword on You-Tube forever.

A Worthy Heir to Westbrook Pegler

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God and tasted the eternal joy of heaven, am not tormented with ten thousand hells in being deprived of everlasting bliss?

Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus
English dramatist & poet (1564 - 1593)

AlterNet: A Liberal Goes Undercover to Brave America's Premiere Right-Wing Gathering:

"FRIDAY MORNING. George W. Bush, when you get right down to it, is a fucker. That's why I don't like him. He's a fucker who does fucked-up things. He's a privileged little shit who doesn't give a damp hell for the opinions of the people he was elected to govern. He buys into the toxic economic theories of unreconstructed capitalism, despite never having had to earn an honest living in his life, and he supports a worldview that cuts out anyone who hasn't had his good fortune -- the worldview of a murderous plutocracy stained with swaths of luck and cruelty where first is first and second is nobody. He's stupid in the truest sense of the word: willfully ignorant and determined to surround himself with people who keep him that way, not only resistant to different ideas but actively hostile towards them. He is neurologically incapable of thinking ahead, and he consigns the consequences of his actions to the status of dreams. And he forced his country into a pointless, unnecessary, unconscionably wasteful war that will poison every aspect of American life for generations.

Worst of all, though, the son of a bitch made me get up at 2 o'clock in the morning to go to his fucking speech at CPAC."

I hardly need to say anything more - but of course I will.

While this above was indeed a classic Peglerization, the moment of true sadness for me was this:

A rail-thin brunette in the row in front of me tests my cover for the first time.

"Hi! Are these seats taken?"

"Help yourself."

"Oh, thanks, sir!" Sir. So much for getting laid. "I'm (name redacted) from the University of Small Midwestern State's Conservative Student Alliance."

"Leonard Pierce, American Milk Solids Council."

"I'm sorry? What is that?"

"It's an industry group for milk solids manufacturers. We lobby Washington lawmakers to lessen regulations on the export of milk solids. The problem is that the government blames us for the incompetence of African mothers."

"That is so unfair."

"Tell me about it."

I have two reactions. First, Irony is Dead, but then we knew that; Carl Rove is still bragging about the ambush.

But second; dear Lord, Leonard; to even think of screwing around with a Midwestern muffin that stupid, and who has likely never heard of a condom in an approving (much less informative) context, one, who due to context and description is no doubt also a sorority member if not a cheerleader?

I'd rather time travel back to the 80's and skank it up at a gay bath house. It would be, I think, marginally less risky - and the conversation would for damn sure be more interesting.

'Politically Correct' is not the opposite of 'Stupid Racist...'

But some days it's hard to explain why that's not exactly true.

I found this link polluting my sidebar. "Political Correctness" caught my eye, and I have lots to say on that particular set of ideas. Unfortunately, this was the Usual Usage of Right-Thinking Sorts. That is to say, a whine that it's no longer "politically correct" to yell "nigger" in a crowded theater.

Friday, 21 December 2007 Why would someone look to someone else and ask if its OK to say what you want to say ? We are a free people. Nobody decides what is proper to say. The European socialist may control language ( can even over rule what you name your child ( Italy) ) but here we have a Constitution with the Bill of Rights that protects our freedom of speech, but we have no right not to be offended. One should not be afraid to offend someone with their speech because of what others will say, but only out of personal respect and consideration for that person. Not a group.

In America we are all individuals. All people are free and different. When someone allows someone else to speak for them they give-up their freedom and any chance of success as a person. No person can speak for others. What may offend one may compliment another. When someone says they speak for a race, a sex, or any other group , they are, in effect disrespecting those in that group as individuals and stripping them of their own personal power of opinion. When, those in that group start believing what is being represented about them their own initiative is devolved and they become slaves to the group leaders opinion. Their lack of personal power and self respect hinders them from obtaining, self respect , jobs , relationships and yes even respecting the law. Its only in the state of no self respect can one be offended.

When we find these “ Personal Power Thieves “ who claim to speak for others we should prosecute them for theft but, instead we glorify them as great leaders ( i.e. jessie jackson, ) and when we recognize them as such we commit a crime against those they claim to speak for.

I have some friends who describe themselves as Black, one who is Negro and yes some who are Colored, Dutchman, Hillbilly, Crout, White and African American but all are proud Americans only. When one considers if what he may say is politically correct, he to has fallen into someones controlled group and loses his individual respect.

Remember that only in socialism are there divisions and to " Divide and Conquer or Control ” is whats being attempted here as evident when questioning ones own speech.

And That's The National Word

Technorati Profile

I posted a comment - and then realized that expecting the comment to stay - or even appear - was silly. Not when such a disagreeable post had nothing but dittos following it. So I decided instead to respond here.

My response to this post and to the majority of the commentators is "horseshit."

The term "political correctness" is being used here in the usual sense - by stupid people who think they are "rugged individuals" just like all other "right-thinking Americans." They are trying to use arguments crafted by their betters for the protection of significant speech intended to provoke debate between citizens to justify the right to offend others.

There is, indeed, no right to not be offended. But there are words for choosing words specifically intended to offend large numbers of people with the potential of provoking violence and making debate pointless.

Stupidity. Verbal Assault. Hate Speech. And quite possibly - "Death by Misadventure."

These "rugged individualists" all seem to band together, with the same set of the same "Evil thems", like "socialists" and "liberals" and Mexicans. Such obvious and obviously unintentional irony seems to be the hallmark of the New Right - and would embarrass the HELL out of Saint Barry G.

They are crying out that people are attempting to suppress their literal right to yell "nigger" in a crowded theater. Well, yes, they are.

When you wish to disturb the peace and have the clearly insane belief that you should get away get away with it, a little suppression is in order. It may be technically illegal - perhaps even "wrong" in some sense to leave you bleeding and whimpering in a corner. It's perhaps even against the darwinian ideal to prevent that from happening, as stupidity really ought to be it's own reward. Nonetheless, there are may reasons why we prefer the rule of law to Lex Talonis - and disapprove of those who would try the patience of others with stupidities intended to provoke what they fondly believe will be futile, choked, impotent outrage.

Me, I actually DO support their putative "right" to yell "nigger" in a crowded theater in the depth of darkest Harlem, but I also support the long-neglected "fighting words doctrine."

That is to say, should you be fool enough to do that, the law should hold those so deliberately provoked harmless, and the consequence of such damnfoolishness should be listed as "death by natural causes," or possibly "aggravated pesticide."

Real Rugged Individualists assume that other people are also individuals - Equally honorable, just as touchy and probably armed.

Therefore, they are courteous!

Courtesy does not even imply agreement. It means that one refrains from stupidly and needlessly insulting ones whom one does disagree with. It means treating others with respect - and especially those with whom you disagree.

I deplore the concept of Political Correctness myself - but the author is deliberately confusing it with attempts to distinguish between disagreeable protected speech and Hate Speech. So I need not confuse matters by speaking about Political Correctness as it is generally understood by people on opposite sides who agree on the terms to be debated. This ain't that.

This is about the putative "right" to hold stupid, uninformed, racist opinions without consequence. This is an insistance on the right to form and maintain a lynch mob to attack and suppress all the ideas they don't want to hear, or which cause them to doubt the validity of their own pinheaded self-righteousness.

It's a position that should (and quite possibly does) embarrass people who sincerely believe in the superiority of the white race, and who really do try to support that view with evidence and argument they think persuasive.

I may not agree with the conclusion, or much respect the quality of the reasoning, but I do respect the willingness to play the game at long odds.

But these people - they don't have that degree of self-respect. And because of that, they do not understand that courtesy is not a concession to the "tender feelings" of others but rather evidence of one secure enough in their own selves and the validity of their own position that they need not be rude, discourteous or dismissive, even toward those those they despise. Especially so, unless they are willing to allow the situation to escalate toward virtual or even literal violence.

Oh, people who confuse "your" and "you're" should really invest in a spelling and grammar check - especially when deriding institutions of higher learning.

It's little ironies like that that suggest to intelligent folks of all political hues that everyone holding these opinions are as dangerously stupid as their communications make them seem. Should it become common enough to seem stereotypical, - well, one of my favorite ironies of the ages is a grumpy quotation from WWII:

"This Hitler fellow has made it impossible for a gentleman to be an Anti-Semite."

Let me hit that nail again: If the general perception becomes that everyone holding a particular set of views holds them for reasons as evidently disreputable, superficial and for reasons that reasonable people will assume to be at least partially racist, whatever validity the positions may have becomes quite irrelevant.

At some point it just becomes too damn embarrassing to be seen holding the views you do in public, at least. So in one generation, or two at the most - the intellectual justifications for the core idea are gone. There are only those who think it's stupid - and those stupid enough to not understand how stupid they appear.

And - here's the kicker - opportunities to breed are allocated on just such perceptions.

When the contents of a post are highly congruent with an evident absence of factual understanding of the history and economic factors involved in various important cultural and economic issues, while being nearly word-for-word the views of known and famous liars, such as Limbaugh, Malkin and O'Rielly, it's likely a waste of effort to take you seriously enough to respectfully consider your opinions.

Courtesy is a consideration that is a given between those within a certain range who are willing to live up to a certain level of civilized expectations. I certainly have no reason to respect someone likely to mislabel me as a "kraut" AND misspell the slur. I certainly do not consider them to have the same right to an opinion as do I - and if it turns out that they are agreeing with me, using the same arguments as I might, I will do well to reassess my position.

By the way, I'm an Antiathoritarian Libertarian, and for damn sure an individualist; certified by the NRA as a marksman before I was able to drink legally.

To do that, you have to put a .22 round in a target the rough size of a human eyeball five times out of five at 25 feet, using a fifteen pound rifle and NO optics, prone, braced, kneeling and offhand.

Not only can I shoot a deer, I can skin it, butcher it and probably cook it better than most. And given a forge, tools and a stack of old rebar, I can make and edge tools good enough for those tasks.

I grew up near a small resource based town, on the land, and I bet I've shoveled more literal shit than most people have ever seen. I've driven a tractor, groomed horses and knocked domestic rabbits in the head so I could eat them. That last, by the age of five. I could field-strip most any rifle without looking at the directions - but I'm not that dumb.

In other words, this arrogant bastard is exactly the sort of redneck most suburban rednecks pretend to be.

I've never gone to Harvard - OR Yale. Or any university. I have two years of community college, and I learned how to learn and think for myself pretty much in spite of my education. I'm naturally very conservative of things worth respecting and conserving, such as the Constitution, momentum, credit and capital, cause and effect, the good opinion of others and every word of The Art of War.

I've read the Good Book from front to back - and formed my own opinions. Which are, by the by, nobody's business, other than the fact that I've followed Jesus's example in that I know it well enough that I don't need someone else to tell me what it "Really" means.

But from the dull, turgid and depressingly conformist prose dropped here, like so many individually indistinguishable rabbit droppings, these fake "real Americans" still think you need some form of "permission" to be an individualist - and that requires that you all nod in the same places when the same damn-fool things are said.

Right may be Right, but only if it's factually correct. And these days, if you are able to read and write on the Internet, there is no excuse for being factually challenged, no matter what your politics.

Please note that I have not said anything whatsoever to indicate what I might actually think on anything said above. I've only stated my opinion of the "reasoning" expressed. It would be particularly stupid to assume from that, or from the fact that I write in a particularly high-falutin' way that I'm some "liberal" or "socialist."

I AM an intellectual. So was Barry Goldwater. So was Henry the K. So was Nixon. And (as much as he tries to hide it) so is Bill Clinton. As is Ron Paul and his good buddy Dennis Kucinich.

None of them would agree on much, overall. And not one would be unwilling to back up their views with facts. Nor would any of them, to the best of my knowledge, WHINE about having to be accountable for their words - indeed, all of them are or were willing to be tried in the court of public opinion based on how well their ideas worked out.

Not so with the folks at The National Word, so deep in their dittohead groupthink that they are incapable of perceiving the irony in calling those who disagree "socialists," thinking that the definition of "socialism" is putting people into groups and making them think alike. It's an hilarious case of the National Socialist calling the Christian Democrat black.

Especially if his name is Sven.

Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians"

I'm devouring this book, and the footnotes are as tasty and entertaining (in a dark, horrifying, goddamit, I TOLD you so sort of way) as the text itself. While this is obviously mandatory socio-political ammunition for democrats and leftists, it's far, far more vital for Centrists, Independents, Libertarians and traditional Conservatives to read and understand.

Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians Chapter 6 Authoritarianism and Politics chapter6.pdf

10 On September 20, 2006 an independent Congressional-watch organization called
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington released its second annual “Most
Corrupt Members of Congress Report.” Three senators and seventeen members of the
House were named, most of them hold-overs from the first annual report (although the
news release noted with some glee that two of the previous winners were already on
their way to jail).

I found it instructive to look up the ratings these 20 lawmakers' voting records
received from the Family Research Council, the successor to the Christian Coalition
as the major lobbying organization for the Religious Right. The average was 80%.
Eight of the “most corrupt” had perfect 100% endorsements from the Family Research
Council. The lowest score was a 64% posted by the Democratic Representative Alan
Mollohan from West Virginia. (Seventeen of the twenty “most corrupt” were
Republicans.)

To be sure, many other lawmakers who got high scores from the Family
Research Council did not get named as most corrupt. But I think I read somewhere
that there’s this interesting connection between being a lying, dishonest, amoral
manipulator and becoming a leader of right-wing political/religious movements.
Back to Chapter

And then there's footnote seven, which I absolutely must highlight, with a link to John Dean's book, Conservatives without Conscience, which is referenced here.

7 If anyone ought to be interested in understanding authoritarianism, it’s the
mainstream conservatives who used to form and control the Republican Party. They
have seen their political party hijacked by the most radical element in their party, and
it’s anybody’s guess whether they can get it back. The takeover has been so complete
that many people have forgotten what “conservative” meant before it became
“authoritarian.” I don’t look forward to “conservative” becoming a dirty word the way
“liberal” did. Until we find someone who’s always right, democracy needs both
traditional and progressive voices to choose from. But the principled conservative
options have been badly tarred lately by authoritarianism.
I can’t imagine Senator Barry Goldwater agreeing with, “Our country
desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the
radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.”As John Dean points out,
Goldwater was quite apprehensive about what the “cultural conservatives” would do
to the Grand Old Party. “Mark my word,” the former senator said after the 1994 midterm
election, “if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they’re sure
trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten
me.” (Conservatives Without Conscience, p. xxxiv.)

I should also direct you to a particular post about the book - because of the hilariously ironic "criticism" of Dean's book by people who are clearly RWA's who MUST argue the premise - but cannot even seriously consider it deeply enough to argue, as it would require confronting their own demons. Almost literally.

Mr. Terence J. Nugent says:

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This book'spremise is the most absurd yet. He implies tha the Bush Administration fuels terror to preserve and expand quasi-dictatorial powers. In that case, it called an aisrike in on its own position on 9/11, as the White House was targeted. Perhaps Dean is on the jihadi payroll, as this is absurd as the anti-Zionist theory that the Isaelis did it.

As if this wasn't enought o prevent anyone of siound mind from spending their hard earned money on this abomination, the intellectual bankruptcy of his argument is absolutely appalling. It is axiomatic that left wing and right wing authoritarianisms are mirror images. Left and right traverse a circle that meets at dictatorship. Dean has evidently forgotten the communist authoritarian regimes of Joseph Stalin, Mau Tse Tung et. al. For a domestic example of quasi-liberal authoritarianism exhibit A is the Deomocratic dictatoship in the city of Chicago, and the County of Cook. Of course there is othing more authoitarian than jihadis, who we are trying to fight despite internal resistance from thelikes of Dean.

John Dean was driven mad by Watergate and has since become a pawn of the left, just as he was a pawn of the right during Watergate. He was then, and is now, a dangerously misguided man who would not recognize intellectual honesty if it became incarnate before his blinded eyes.

This is exactly the sort of response, of course, that Bob Altemeyer's research would suggest to be inevitable. And it's certainly exactly the sort of mindless personal attack I've come to expect from those who wish to disagree with an ethical critique, but cannot without defending the indefensible.

And of course, that means that you lose the debate - in rational circles.

Well, there went the family values voters....

Vittter is mocked in The Hill for attempting to rebrand himself the Republican Party as "Fiscal Conservatives.

TheHill.com - Senate GOP to Vitter: We’ll handle the Republican reputation from here, thanks: "Senate GOP to Vitter: We’ll handle the Republican reputation from here, thanks
By Daphne Retter
July 26, 2007

Oh, how we would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) rose to speak during a Tuesday policy lunch.

Only seven days earlier, he had delivered a heartfelt apology at the same weekly meeting. Fellow Republicans responded with thunderous applause, and most refused to tell reporters how Vitter had addressed his forced public admission that he had committed a “serious sin” and was linked to an alleged prostitution ring.

So just imagine their confusion when Vitter scrambled to his feet a week later. Would he apologize again? Had he committed some new sin?

But no. Instead, he launched into a speech about his thoughts on “rebranding” the party by reclaiming the fiscal conservative mantle.

Yes, that’s right: Vitter, on improving the Republican image.

This time, his colleagues held the applause."

Of course they will all try to fly Vitter's lead kite themselves. Gee, the only topic where they have LESS credibility that on "traditional family values;" fiscal responsibility.

Attention, Bill O'Rielly and Melanie Morgan

tag: Media matters, Hot Talk, hate speech, KSFO, Fox News, Melanie Morgan, Bill O'Rielly

Why Don Imus? Well, why the hell not?

I was listening to Randi Rhodes yesterday, talking about Don Imus's racist gaffe. She was taking a contrarian position - why him, instead of, say, Rush, who is just as offensive without being funny, or Mike Savage who's plainly talking to fellow bigots, or Hannedy, who's plainly talking to fellow stupid bigots. Why pick on the guy who's trying to be funny?

The wit and wisdom of Don Imus. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

On blacks:

"William Cohen, the Mandingo deal." (Former Defense Secretary Cohen's wife is African-American.)

"Wasn't in a woodpile, was he?" (Responding to news that former black militant H. Rap Brown, subsequently known as Abdullah Al-Amin, was found hiding in a shed in Alabama after exchanging gunfire with police. Imus is here alluding to the expression "nigger in the woodpile.")

"Knuckle-dragging moron." (Description of basketball player Patrick Ewing.)

"We all have 12-inch penises." (After being asked what he has in common with Nat Turner, Malcolm X, Minister Louis Farrakhan, Latrell Sprewell from the New York Knicks, and Al Sharpton.)

"Chest-thumping pimps." (Description of the New York Knicks.)

"A cleaning lady." (Reference to journalist Gwen Ifill, possibly out of pique that she wouldn't appear on his show. "I certainly don't know any black journalists who will," she wrote in the April 10 New York Times. The Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page used to appear, but after he made Imus pledge not to make offensive comments in the future, he was never asked back.)

On Jews:

"I remember when I first had [the Blind Boys of Alabama] on a few years ago, how the Jewish management at whatever, whoever we work for, CBS, or whatever it is, were bitching at me about it. […] I tried to put it in terms that these money-grubbing bastards could understand."

"Boner-nosed … beanie-wearing Jewboy." (Description of Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, a frequent guest.)

On women:

"That buck-tooth witch Satan, Hillary Clinton." […] "I never admitted it when I went down there and got in all that big jam, insulting Bill Clinton and his fat ugly wife, Satan. Did I? Did I ever say I was sorry for that?"

On Native Americans:

"The guy from F-Troop, Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell." (This is a reference to the zany Indian characters on the 1960s TV sitcom F-Troop. They had names like "Roaring Chicken," "Crazy Cat," and "Chief Wild Eagle.")

On Japanese:

"Old Kabuki's in a coma and the market's going up. […] How old is the boy? The battery's running down on that boy." (Reference to Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who died the following week.)

On gays:

"I didn't know that Allan Bloom was coming in from the back end." (The homosexuality of the author of The Closing of the American Mind became widely known when Saul Bellow published Ravelstein, a novel whose protagonist was based on Bloom, who by then was deceased.)

"The enormously attractive [NBC political correspondent] Chip Reid, I can say without being accused of being some limp-wristed 'mo."

On the handicapped:

"Janet Reno's having a press conference. Ms. Reno, of course, has Parkinson's disease, has a noticeable tremor. […] I don't know how she gets that lipstick on (laughter) looking like a rodeo clown."

I fail to see the funny here. I don't listen to Imus, for the same reason I don't listen to Stern; I don't like feeling as if I need to floss my brain. And I consider this sort of mean-spirited "humor" to be inherently toxic, whatever the perspective, regardless of what "cause" is "served."

So, why Imus? Well, because the Rutger's Girls stepped in his form of "humor" and took it upon themselves to carve new shoes out of his reluctant hide.

I find that image funny.

Oh, and Randi, he's not the first. Spocko was the first (THIS year) to ram recordings of racist and hate-speech sideways up the noses of wingnut talk-jocks - and more importantly, their sponsors.

Don Imus, Randi Rhodes,

Speaking of Potty-Mouths.

Here's a rhetorical question for you: Which is worse, using the "seven words you can't use on Television" - as defined by George Carlin, or committing the "seven deadly social sins", as defined by Gandhi?"

Coulter: I Would Talk About Edwards But “You Have To Go Into Rehab If You Use The Word ‘Faggot’”

Speaking today at the Conservative Political Action Conference, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter said: “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.” Audience members said “ohhh” and then cheered. (Video on site)

Seeing this blonde turd in the soup of our great political discourse, I find it increasingly difficult to take the posturing of certain pearl-clutching hypocrites at all seriously. However, I'm willing to observe a potential compromise - they don't have to take as credible anything that contains one of the seven deadly words, and we don't have to take anyone who links to Coulter, laughs at Colter or buys Coulter's books serously. You are what you eat, folks - and in this case, politically speaking, I believe this boils down to "eat shit and die."

Not as a curse - as a matter-of-fact observation of fact; if you persist in eating shit, you will die. In this case, it's a viscerally disgusting metaphor for an even less appetizing reality.

tag: ann coulter, homophobia, seven deadly words, hate speech, potty mouths

It's better tor be obscene than absurd.

Gateway Pundit: "Seven words you can never say on television"... but which are said on the Internet. A lot.

Talk about potty-mouths.

The Net's not always a kid-friendly place; there is plenty of foul language out there. And of course, the blogosphere is no different.

But how different are the Rightosphere and Leftosphere when it comes to "dirty" language? Which side produces the most profanity-laced diatribes? Via Instapundit, I happened upon this interesting challenge from InstaPunk:

I propose an exercise to be performed by those who have the software and expertise to carry it out. The exercise is this: Search six months' worth of content, posts and comments, of the 20 most popular blogs on the right and the left. The search criteria are George Carlin's infamous '7 Dirty Words.' [Click this link for the list of expletives.]

And this is what I found, using what I deemed -- through a mix of TTLB and 2006's Weblog Award lists -- to be the 18 biggest Lefty blogs, and 22 biggest Righty blogs. (Not counting this one. :)) I couldn't account for the 6-month time period, and I even gave the Lefty blogs a 4 blog advantage. But it didn't make much of a difference.

So how much more does the Left use Carlin's "seven words" versus the Right? According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1.

Yowsers.

Ok, let me get this straight: while THIS was happening, rather than chasing the story down and doing something to really support the troops, you were constructing methodology to count naughty words?

Words fail me. And aside from that, what's your point, fuckwit?

All this very precious pearl-clutching is utterly pointless in a quest for "civil discourse" if you do not also consider the impact on civil discourse of statements such as these: (via Instaputz)

Ohhh-kay. Let's do a trial run.

Putz: What we really should be doing is killing Iranian civilians. Heh.
Malkin: Exactly. And the NY Times publishers should be locked up for treason.
Denny K: Yeah! Let's hunt them down and find out where their kids go to school.
Coulter: My only regret is that Tim McVeigh didn't blow up the NY Times.
Misha: Forget the Times, I want the Supremes. Five robes, five ropes, five trees.
Lefty Blogger: You're all fucking crazy.

InstaPunk: See? The lefty bloggers are more hateful.

…[W]hy not run a few chapters of Mein Kampf or The Turner Diaries through your little Shrill Detector, and then compare those results with a Richard Pryor set from the '70s.

Idiots.

Now, I'm not a leftie - I'm just an uppity libertarian with not much respect for foolishness and a decent regard for semantics.

Therefore, I have something in common with Shakespeare's Sister The Rude Pundit and indeed The Ace of Spades.

A man-portable un-powered entrenching tool is a fucking spade.



More Vicious Left-Wing Mockery

tag: potty mouths, Hate Speech, pearlclutching, unintentional irony, , culture, morality, ethics

How stupid do you have to be...

...to be a paid conservative columnist at Townhall.com?

THIS stupid.

Tim Hardaway (and most of his former NBA teammates) wouldn’t welcome openly gay players into the locker room any more than they’d welcome profoundly unattractive, morbidly obese women. I specify unattractive females because if a young lady is attractive (or, even better, downright “hot”) most guys, very much including the notorious love machines of the National Basketball Association, would probably welcome her joining their showers. The ill-favored, grossly overweight female is the right counterpart to a gay male because, like the homosexual, she causes discomfort due to the fact that attraction can only operate in one direction. She might well feel drawn to the straight guys with whom she’s grouped, while they feel downright repulsed at the very idea of sex with her.

There are, of course, NO "ill-favored, grossly overweight" Republican women. At least, not after the DMV opens again on Monday.

All your fat chicks belong to US, Medved!

What sort of amazing, delusional universe do you have to belong to in which this explaination of homophobia would make everyone shrug and say, "oh, well, that's ok then."

Lest I be accused of using "fair use" to distort his overall point - such as it is - I challenge you to read the whole thing without squicking on some level.

The following material is satire. It's sad that it has to be said, but we are occasionally read by those who honestly believe they ARE right because they are Right.

Medved reveals that a certain sort of "social conservatism" is more pathology than policy by, essentially, opening up his personal skull to show us the maggots infesting the necrotic tissue that used to be his brain.

He's proud of their manly tumescence, you see. And he just can't imagine what sort of irrational Scoleciphobic could object to him crooning to the few strays lounging on his pillow in the morning.

Shudder! Liberals allege that some people are born with maggots for brains, but this sort of disgusting behavior is a choice! To choose to celebrate such an unfortunate pathology as a lifestyle, to pick one's nose and hand wiggly examples proudly to horrified friends and colleagues - that is a violation of All Normal Family Behaviors. For the Sake of the Children, this cannot be permitted.

I say we worm him. Worm him NOW! And I'm not afraid to be accused of being "politically incorrect," or even "indulging in hate speech" for saying it, because I know people like Medved hate all those who tell the truth about their deviant maggoty nose-picking fetish.


Hat tip to Spocko via Echidne.

tag: Clash of Cultures, homophobia, Michael Medved, Tim Hardaway

Is It Three Strikes Yet?

I know that this may come as a shock to some who have long ago gotten used to the idea that the Administration's ideas all turn to crap uniformly, but HOW THE HELL did they screw THIS puppy? Are there NO real Conservatives left in the Executive Branch? Aren't there any people there who can get the job done in spite of Our Glorious Leader?

U.S. may have botched training of Iraqis - Yahoo! News: "'If the administration had been serious and competent about establishing a functioning democracy in Iraq, it would have seen the need for a trustworthy criminal justice system in which all Iraqis could have confidence,' Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., said in prepared remarks."

Of all the things I was in confident expectation of the Right comprehending intuitively and getting right is the need for law and order. This is such a staple of US Conservatism that it should shock the Midwest about as much as it shocks me. You cannot have a functional society of any kind without law enforcement, reliable courts and open marketplaces. On these three things hang ALL the law, and the Profits.

According to the report, co-authored by Hamilton and former Attorney General Edwin Meese, the U.S. erred by first assigning the task of shaping the judicial system in a largely lawless country to the State Department and private contractors who "did not have the expertise or the manpower to get the job done."

In 2004, the mission was assigned to the Defense Department, which devoted more money to the task. But department officials also were insufficiently trained for the job, Hamilton and Meese said.

As a result, Iraq has little if any on-the-street law enforcement personnel or a functioning judicial system free of corruption, they said.

Justice Department officials, they said, should lead the work of transforming the system. Police executives and supervisors should replace the military police personnel now assigned.

And the FBI should expand its investigative and forensic training in Iraq, Hamilton and Meese told the panel.

The recommendations about the Iraqi judicial system were included in the Iraq Study Group's report last year, but got little attention. Hamilton and Meese said Wednesday that unless the U.S. helps create a capable, trained professional police force and functioning criminal justice system, "ordinary Iraqis will not live in peace and will not have confidence in their new government."

This makes NZBear's call for mindless allegience to the President and his Praetorians particularly insulting, as the Pentagon has had three years to get this right, or get someone to get it right. I said it wass what Teddy Roosevelt referred to as being Morally Treasonable.
but I'll go a step further. This is a demand from 20% of the population to the 70% who can add, subtract and read between the lines that we cater to their stupid leader fetish, to validate their poor post-9/11 judgment at any cost.

At the time, I expected some thrashing about and I was resigned to the necessity of catering to that proportion of our population, both Left and Right, who wear ideological adult diapers of various brands. I expected there would be some time before the American people could be led back to sanity. But in my wildest nightmares, I never expected the adoption of the cold, wet diaper as the uniform of the Right.

Well, yes, I suppose it IS traumatic to have Daddy hauled off to jail after getting stoned on crack and beating up mommy for the seventeenth time. But what Baby doesn't understand is that crackheads do not make good fathers.

Meanwhile, there is no Law and Order Fairy; those of us in the Reality Based Universe know that keeping both Law and Order requires the hard work and dedication of skilled officers of the law and a reliable, effective system of justice. And as much as I, as an anti authoritarian, distrust officers of the law, it's in proportion to my concern that that particular officer of the Law is really just another street gang member with a carry permit.

But apparently we have not achieved even that degree of order.

I'm thinking that this Administration has used up all of it's three strikes about three times over, and needs to be retired. This is not tee-ball, the bats we swing are NOT plastic, and we have to get back to playing by grown-up rules.

As I wrote earlier in the week:

This "war on terror" has been prosecuted in such a way as to ensure failure from the first. What if that is the goal?

It would certainly be yet another impeachable offense. Indeed, if there is such a conspiracy, it would be a treasonable conspiracy. But as I argue, there's little point in wondering why at this point. What we, as citizens, need to realize is that we do indeed have the power to take away their toys and send them to a time-out room. Preferably a federal medium-security timeout.

What sort of people rely on Open Democracy.net?

I got this in my email today.

You may recall that you generously gave your time to fill in our openDemocracy users' survey this summer.

Nearly 3,500 of you did so, a terrific sample. You can click here for a visual tour of the results. We really appreciate your help, it taught us a lot about what you are looking for from openDemocracy.

Survey Says (pdf)...

Overwhelmingly, well educated, well-paid white SMART people, even given a 4% 3d World readership.

In other words, folks like me that the Republican Party has taken for granted for decades upon decades. While the politics of the readership seem weighted heavily to left of center, it's because readership spikes in two places; Center Left (classical liberal, I'd assume) and No Category - where I live, as a Libertarian. "No Category" is arbitrarily placed to the right of Center - which has a lower readership.

From that strong Independant spike (were I bet they did not expect it) it slopes down to bottom out at 3% at Center Right and Conservative. That means a heck of a lot of old-fashioned Center-Right folks are relying on Open Democracy as a reality check - and of course, us generally Anti-authoritarian folks what likes at least three sources before we decide who's al is being gored.

So, my fellow Libs, and fiscal conservatives, dig down and donate. I don't about you, but I always figured the smart money was on freedom. This seems like confirmation to me.

To quote their email to me:

To make the process quick, efficient and secure we are using both a UK and a US service for charitable giving. Anyone in the world can donate, just click here and you can see how it is done.

Do that thing, willya?

tag: Open Democracy, individual liberty, libertarian, 1st Amendment, antiauthoritarian

Give a Clue this Christmas!

My Latest Autism Designs and what they mean.

People who are neurotypical tend to think in boxes. One problem with being on the Autistic Spectrum is that you tend to not think in boxes. As far as I can tell, our thought process is highly relational. We tend to not even SEE the boxes and we don't think in a binary way at all.

A great number of problems come from the inability to understand that different people can have starkly different ways of understanding the world around them.

We tend to assume that people who came up with a functional solution for a problem came to it in the same way; indeed, by way of the same initial perceptions. Autistics and Aspies are as guilty of this as anyone; indeed, it's been studied within the AS population. The reason it's not been studied within the NT population is simple; in the case of NT's, the assumption that another person has a thought process that works like yours does is statistically likely to be correct.

So, when an autistic person makes this unwarranted assumption, it's called "mind blindness" and the autistic is gently handed a clue in the form of "social stories." When an NT does it, it's in the form of an organization called "Cure Autism Now."

If "autistic thought" were not valuable, there would not be such a roster of famous thinkers, such as Einstein and Newton now thought to have been probably autistic to some degree. By the same token, it should be a profound clue that there are courses to teach neurotypicals to "think outside of the box," and almost all higher education is aimed at rooting out simplistic, either-or thinking and to over-ride fear and submission responses when you have to communicate about or defend your work.

The ability to think and function outside of the box is an asset of significant value; recognising that is especially important if you are planning to "do something for autistics." Their ability to function in 'in an appropriate way' is limited, but that does not imply their ability to function, given an appropriate context is as limited as it appears. The trick is to find that context; and in that context they will not have so much difficulty "being appropriate."

There's no area where this insight is more critical than in regards to the parents of autistics themselves.

Make no mistake; autism can be a crippling condition, and it's made worse by being a condition where you absolutely must depend upon others to accommodate your needs and accept limitations that those without the condition cannot easily see or understand. But even the most obviously disabled "autist" is as severely affected by presumptions of how their disability affects them and even more by refusal of others to accept our word for the accommodations we need.

This following paragraph is emblematic of the crippling parental fears that the 800-lb gorilla of the pro-cure movement exploits for funding and validation:

You are never prepared for a child with autism. You will gradually come to believe it, but never fully accept it, get used to it, or get over it. You put away the hopes and dreams you had for that child - the high school graduation, the June wedding. Small victories are cause for celebration - a word mastered, a dry bed, a hug given freely. - FAQs about Autism: Cure Autism Now

Those of us who object to such fear, panic and the pervasive bigotry that exists with in the pro-cure movement - as well as it's seemingly obvious ethical deficits are pretty soundly attacked, with all kinds of terrible motives assigned us. (Theory of Mind, eh?)

A great deal of the work on the support groups that accept AS persons as contributors - something of a rarity - is to get non-AS people to accept that our "inability to cultivate friendships" is not a crippling condition to us. Once we have our one or two friends - friends as geeky and weird as us, generally speaking, we are done. My personal limit is two, and what NT's call "friendships," I now interpret as "Acquaintances." Yes, of course that has profound effects in terms of my ability to sustain a social network, and that has cost me many opportunities; indeed even jobs. I try and work things so that one of my two has the social skills I lack and the willingness to use them on my behalf.


Unfortunately, there is a lot of very bad advice out there and some very bizarre ideas as to what will be helpful to people such as I, who are on the spectrum and who are nonetheless potentially articulate and intelligent beings. Mostly this revolves around the idea that a bad job of conforming to the expectations of others is superior to a good job of being me. Here's Lennie Schafer on the topic of "fake autistics" like me.

(What about "high functioning autism" and how does that fit in? Simply put, it doesn't fit in anywhere. High functioning autism is not clinically defined and is not in the DSM-IV, and for good reason. High functioning autism is an oxymoron. If one meets the criteria for a diagnosis of autism, by definition one cannot be high-functioning. It would be as silly as the term sharp-eyed blindness.) (1)

So why would a handful of people, amongst a few others, who apparently are for the most part Aspergers, if anything, want to identify themselves autistic? Perhaps because autism is a profound disability and Aspergers is a disorder that is mostly not. Autism thus carries more moral weight than Aspergers and therefore has more moral clout for self-esteem building political and social agendas. "We autistics don't want to be cured" carries much more punch than "We Aspergers don't want to be cured", especially given the reality that there is no movement anywhere that seeks to "cure" those with Aspergers into being anything else.(2)

Aspergers-labeled alone, they would be ignored by the press and would be denied the juicy sense of empowerment that would come with a high-profile "oppressed minority" movement article like the one in the liberal New York Times. (3) (4)

The New York Times reporter failed to do a journalist's most basic homework. She failed to check the credentials of those doing the complaining, despite my urging. Anyone can call themselves autistic and write cranky letters to the editor. So how does someone determine if a person is truly autistic,or is an autism imposter with Aspergers? Ask to see their diagnosis. If someone claims to have autism for purposes of making some political statement, ask them to prove it. In any of the correspondence I have had with the autism "imposters", not one has ever supplied such documentation. (5) Of course, it is highly unlikely to ever see it. The irony here is that if someone has enough language skills to effectively complain about the treatment of autistics, then they themselves cannot be autistic.(6) Apparently more than one big city newspaper has failed to see through this deception, so eager are they to get an unusual victim story into print. Can we afford to allow the interests of our autistic children and everyone else "on the spectrum" to be pushed out of the public eye and displaced by a handful of imposters crying a contrived victimhood? Who speaks for autism? Not this bunch.

Note that he, and those like him don't like being quoted, even under "fair use" constraints.

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Of course, if I committed so many foolish rhetorical errors in public, I'd prefer not to be used as a hideous example either.

1. Argument from Authority. Of course, the process of determining what goes into the DSM-IV is pure and objective science .
2. Aspergers is, in fact an autistic spectrum disorder and has quite a range of effects. As a step-parent of a diagnosed Aspie, I'm very aware of the fact that there are very significant issues involved. They are not so inconvenient to US, as parents. They are going to affect HIM quite significantly unless we find some adaptive strategies that work for him.
3. As opposed to the entirely legitimate empowerment that comes from suffering the hideous, horrendous burden that is Autism.
4. Of course, it's a liberal thing to be concerned about the civil rights of children being abused and neglected for the sake of the convenience and social comfort of their conservative parents. This is the root host for "Autism, A Debilitating Disease, not a Culture," a page that links to both Free Republic and Free Dominion, while telling Canadians they a vaccilating, unpatriotic fools for not joining the "Coalition of the Willing." Snark aside, the fact that this site, is associated with Authoritarian Right Wingers explains a lot about the entire, very authoritarian "curebie" movement.
5. For myself, I want to see Lennie's MENSA results, his HIV status and full financials proving he's not unduly profiting from his activism before I deign to speak with him. I suspect he's unworthy of my attention, but if he proves otherwise, I will of course listen.
   
6. Factually untrue.

Unpuzzled is my most militant anti-curebie design, with the slogan, "help find a clue."

I know, it's rude and confrontational, but I've found that sometimes you need to swat people with a clue-by-four in order to startle them enough so they actually listen.

Those "seeking a cure" tend to ignore everything from those of us who ARE on the spectrum because it doesn't fit into to their mindsets, just as they reject "inappropriate" responses to communications from their autie and aspie children.

This is especially true of issues about communication style, reasonable accommodation and most importantly, the concept that a difference need not be AS disabling as it seems from an "NT" perspective. And, speaking as someone who's gone round and round on this at various times and under various circumstances, those who most boldly wave the "puzzle ribbon" seem at times to be making a point of their puzzlement, and their inability to understand to be the issue of auties and aspies.

See point above about how many friends and relationships an autie or aspie needs in an emotional sense. We do not absolutely require a relationship with the biological parental units. It's a nice thing to have, but we cannot and some quantity of will not be as easily coerced by family emotional ties as neurotypicals can be. This is not just because we have a "faulty" connection between emotions and reasoning. Our reasoning is not emotional, and our emotional responses seem to be quite different - across the board. Put two aspies in the same room and they will communicate quite well indeed - but their body language, topic choices and intuitive negotiations of "status" will be starkly different - and one of the greatest differences is the relative lack of huge tooth-bearing grins with full eye-contact.

To an aspie, to most sensible primates and all cats I've ever met, bare teeth and a full-on gaze is, at the very least, a statement of territorial or situational dominance, inviting a ritual contest of wills to determine who will be in charge and who will submit. Your typical aspie doesn't wish to play that game, having no need or real desire to join your pack, so if you do see them bare their teeth - it's probably in the context of a genuine, non-ritualized warning that Bad Things Will Suddenly Occur If You Do Not Go Away NOW.

What part of "Agggh! [flap flap flap] [throw object] LEAVE ME ALONE" is unclear to you people?

The "Unsmily" design honors the "aspie smile," a neutral expression that essentially means "hailing frequencies open." That look of slightly blank attention is a si