Viva Assange! (And Bradley Manning To)

Aside from CBS's Steve Kroft's occasional bullshit...."He has conspiratorial views....." which is a just a subtle smear trying to link him with silly 9-11 truth. A decent interview, at least on Assange's end.




Part II on You Tube of course (embed disabled).

A Great Loss, Howard Zinn, Died One Year Ago Today

Howard Zinn's Peoples' History of the United States is a book that can and has revolutionized peoples consciousness about the true history of the United States of America.  How much poorer we would be without that comprehensive work of history that thread together the truth about Columbus and his treatment of the Caribbean natives, the class divisions within the 13 colonies, slave revolts, the atrocities against Native Americans by that man honored on the $20 dollar bill, President Andrew Jackson etc..  And also the history or the civil rights and labor movements, and how working people have organized and fought back to push America in the direction of social justice and living up to her highest most humanistic ideals; and his argument and example that it is common people in the street of their communities who make history.  Thank you Howard Zinn! Presente!

Don't Know Much About Smoky the Bear

More from Judson Phillips and the Tea Party Nation on applauding Rand Paul's proposals and the fantasy to deeply cut government spending, A good start - Tea Party Nation: 

"Massive cuts in the Department of Agriculture.  Here is a shocking statistic.  There is one Department of Agriculture employee for every nine farmers.   At that rate, every farmer should know half a dozen of those employees on a first name basis."

Phillips doesn't provide us with much of what he thinks is wrong or wasteful with government spending here.  Of course the U.S farm bills and subsidies to farmers for various production and non-production practices is a place we might consider reforming.  But this statistic is pretty much worthless and misleading.  Also within the domain of the USDA is the U.S. Forest Service.  Perhaps Phillips hasn't noticed, but National Forests take up a massive amount of public lands throughout the country that require managing as "lands of many uses" such as recreation (hunting and fishing!, mining, timber sales etc..  Most likely a goodly portion of USDA employees are not likely directly involved in farming related stuff.  Now I am sure he would be more than happy to argue that all these  public lands don't need to be managed and should be sold off to the highest bidder.  But the point is, its easy to say cut this or that without knowing what the hell you are cutting. 


Phillips of course sees all kinds of cuts to domestic care of this country as imperative.  But what needs to be increased predictably is......

"Defense is the one budget that needs to be increased.  For almost ten years our country has had ongoing combat operations.  George Bush increased the defense budget some, but he still tried to do the war on the cheap.  Since the Obama regime took over, defense has been gutted."

One wonders why many of these Tea Party people are so enthusiastic about foreign wars?  More on that another time. 

 

Title? Who Needs a Title?

As a Federal employee I periodically receive emails at work from the White House soliciting suggestions and ideas, and asking for votes on these ideas, as to how the U.S. Government agencies can save money by cutting this or that practice.  I have responded with both ideas, and votes to choose winning ideas.  I guess this has gotten me on a email list for the White House's propaganda I mean public communications efforts.  (I am in fact not a registered Democrat, nor did I campaign or vote for Barack Obama or the other guy).  Anywhoooo, today's email in anticipation of the State of the Union address said:

"Good morning,

Tonight at 9 p.m. EST, President Obama will deliver the State of the Union Address and outline his vision for putting aside the politics that divide us and moving forward to create jobs, up our game to out-compete in the global economy, and win the future for our children and our country."

Really?  Isn't it high time Obama pull his head out of his ass and stop thinking we should put aside the politics that divides us?  After all, that is what makes politics interesting and exciting.  The fact is, if you make more than 250 grand and don't think you ought to pony-up some more cash to pay for your wars, and your bank bail-outs, and my salary, then fuck you, we are going to be divided.  How's that for the "new civility"?


And what is this about "uping our game and out-competing in the global economy."  Lets not fool our selves fellow workers. When the ruling class talks about competition, they just might be talking about a race to the bottom for you and me, and that's your cue to be prepared to take a pay cut and drop to your knees begging for the better crumbs.  But seriously, Krugman's most recent column does a good civil job of questioning the The Competition Myth, and still manages to maintain civility.   

To Hell With the New Civility!

To hell with this new civility bullshit!  Lets face it, this is just another ploy of the mainstream corporate press and the Obama Democrats to smooth out the real conflicts of American society that should have erupted into full view yesterday.  Politics is about the life and death struggle for power and resources, and its about time people start standing up, not laying down.  Doug Henwood says it nicely (January 15th 2011 entry):

Perhaps most annoying has been the call for a return to civility. Well, no, I don’t feel like being civil. I like being rude. The problem with the rudeness in American political discourse is that it’s often so stupid, not that it’s so rude. The idea that politics can be civil is a fantasy for elite technocrats and the well-heeled. I’m reminded of something that Adolph Reed once said to me, characterizing a mutual acquaintance as the kind of person who thinks that if you could just get all the smart people together on Martha’s Vineyard, they could solve all our social problems. Obviously they couldn’t.

Margaret Atwood once wrote that politics is about “power: who’s got it, who wants it, how it operates; in a word, who’s allowed to do what to whom, who gets what from whom, who gets away with it and how.” There’s no way that could be rendered civil. The field of politics is constituted by vast differences in interests and preferences. Much of the time, we don’t talk about those things directly or explicitly. We talk about them in caricature or euphemism, or take it out on scapegoats.

I like Google!

I got to admit it. I like Google products, Gmail is great and their unobtrusive adds versus Yahoo's obtrusive annoying adds lured me away from Yahoo. And here I am using Blogger, which seems to work pretty well for me, although I have heard good things about Wordpress, I am still using Blogger. And then their is Google Earth which is one of my favorite internet toys. So color me a lemming, and I am sure there is a dark underbelly to the beast, but the fact that they are moving to employ more people against the wishes of Wall Street just puts a little bit more icing on the cake.

Searching For Work? Google's Hiring Thousands : NPR: "But Google's push to further expand a work force that grew by 23 percent last year may not be as well received on Wall Street, where the Internet search leader's spending has annoyed some investors who would prefer a more frugal approach in hopes of fatter returns."

Throwing the Birthers a Bone

In my efforts to make a sincere effort to understand where Tea Party people are coming from, I signed up for a log-in to the Tea Party Nation web site. You see, unless you sign up, then they don't want you reading about what they are thinking and saying to themselves. At least that's what I am guessing. So now I receive multiple emails daily with links to the rantings of Tea Party activists. I thought I might do some public service, or just have some grist for my mill, and post and comment on some of this stuff. The most regular author is Judson Phillips who gained recent acclaim as an admirer of the Founding Father's practice of limiting voting rights to property owners. This is what he has to say about the Obama's birth origins (you can try the link for yourself, but it probably won't work):

Obama has been itching for a fight with the conservative Supreme Court members knowing they will not fight back publicly. Perhaps they won’t, but if John Roberts had the backbone, he could make Obama’s life really interesting.
To start with, he could grant cert (permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, for the non-lawyers) on one of the Obama birth certificate cases. Preferably Orly Taitz’s case.
I, for one, believe that the evidence available, such as it is, makes it more likely than not that Obama was in fact born in Hawaii. Whether he lost his citizenship when he was adopted by a foreign national and moved to a foreign country is a different story. Obama has spent millions to keep his birth certificate private. Now, Hawaii’s governor Neil Abercrombie has stepped into it, first vowing to release the birth certificate, then saying it could not be located and finally saying Hawaii law prohibited the release of the document. 

So I guess Phillips wants to throw the Birthers a bone to keep them in the fold, but does not want to personally concede to their total nuttiness. Never mind the fact that if you are born within the United States, nothing like moving to another country or being adopted by a foreign national is going to cause you to lose your citizenship. Now I am so charitable, that I even checked into Snopes.com to look into this claim that Obama has spent millions to keep some version of his birth certificate private. Couldn't find any reference to it. All I know is I have seen a scan of his birth certificate that looks alot like the one I have used to obtain a passport, but it says "Barack Obama" and is from the state of Hawaii.

Obama could of course release the document. He has spent millions of dollars, in true liberal fashion by using other people’s money, to keep that birth certificate out of sight.
Why?
I happen to subscribe to the theory that there is something on that birth certificate that destroys the myth of Barack Obama. Myth destroyed, he simply fades away.

Gosh, I wonder what myth he could be destroyed? That he's is a secret Muslim? A Socialist? Of course for the latter, is just plain to see from his pro-corporate kiss ass policies, and these yahoos can't even break out of that delusion.

One more thing, be very careful when watching the State of the Union address. The following link was posted in the comments to the aforementioned article.

http://www.pennypresslv.com/Obama%27s_Use_of_Hidden_Hypnosis_techniques_in_His_Speeches.pdf