During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. ~ George Orwell
Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
Time to annul Melania's non compos mentis spouse?
Piggies via goldmine1969 ~ Original tune with words @ Vimeo
None of the Above
should be a valid choice on voter ballots!
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck in the middle with WHO ?
Government, Vaping Epidemic, & Epstein Pedophilia Cult via AndyMaas
Affidavits regarding brutal rape of minor:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/316341058/Donald-Trump-Jeffrey-Epstein-Rape-Lawsuit-and-Affidavits
Review of these documents:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2016/06/23/donald-trump-rape-lawsuit/
Video of testimony:
Boptime w/Even Steven Leech
Boptime begins at 6am (EDT) Saturday morning with a batch of oldies back to back to back. Later in the same hour we’ll welcome autumn with some relevant songs for the season. At 7am (EDT) on Rockabilly Ridge with Michael Ace we travel to the southwest to hear some southwest rock n’ roll. At 8am (EDT) we bop back to this day in 1962 when modern folk music broke through to the music mainstream, and the Cousins played a gig at Wilmington’s Bali Hai Club. At 9am (EDT) on Beatlemania!!! the Fab Four were a big hit in England in 1963. They began to write a song that took them five years to finish. We’ll play some hits from England including a couple from Beatles’ hometown of Liverpool. We’ll also play a local hit from Wilmington’s Teddy & the Continentals from this time in 1963. ~ Steve
BOPTIME: Saturday, 6 AM Eastern time, 3 AM Pacific time
Go To: http://www.wvud.org/?page_id=24
Click on a listening link below the WVUD logo:
Available locally in DE on WVUD-FM 91.3, Shoutcast [Search: WVUD], and TuneIn
Notes from ~@~
Box of Rain, Grateful Dead, written by the late Robert Hunter via azsc80
S.F. Nobody for President Rally 1976, Roadhog, L/R = Rodney Albin, Robert Hunter, Larry Klein
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck in the middle with WHO ?
Why on Earth Is Nancy Pelosi
Protecting Donald Trump
"Melania's Spouse"?
The House Speaker is directly, and personally, undermining the role of Congress as the sole institution of government designed to hold to account a corrupt, inept, and destructive executive.
by Robert Freeman, Published on Tuesday, September 24, 2019 by Common Dreams, Article Source
Why is Nancy Pelosi protecting Donald Trump "Melania's Spouse"?
There’s no point burbling about whether she is. From felony campaign finance violations, to collaborating with the Russians in the 2016 election, to multiple counts of obstructing justice, to emoluments-related self-dealing, to now extorting Ukraine to help take down Joe Biden, Trump is the most manifestly corrupt, conspicuously impeachable president in the history of the country.
Nancy Pelosi’s decision to not confront Trump on his rampant destruction of American institutions is not an accident. It is intentional, and purposeful. It amounts to actively protecting Trump as he carries out his reign of terror against America.
So, again, the question is, “Why is Nancy Pelosi protecting Donald Trump "Melania's Spouse"?”
She’s doing so because she represents many of the same economic interests that Trump does, and serves the same economic masters. And beyond simply economics, Trump is dismantling the capacity of democracy to stand up to capitalism, to hold capitalism accountable for its inflictions on the body politic and the planet. That is the foremost agenda of those self-same economic masters, and they are the ones that Pelosi serves.
In protecting Trump, Pelosi is protecting Trump’s devastation of the liberal economic and Constitutional orders that are the intrinsic essence of America. Her purpose is to let Trump get as much of the wrecking done under his watch as he can, so it will be all but impossible to reconstitute it later.
Both Trump and Pelosi are stewards—caretakers—of neoliberalism. That is the ideology begun under Ronald Reagan and carried out by every administration since. Neoliberalism promotes the interests of Great Wealth, the Ruling Elite, those that own and run the country. For neoliberalism to be fully realized, it must free capitalism from the constraints of democracy, because democracy is the only institution in society with the authority to stand up to capitalism. Neoliberalism manifests as policy in very specific ways.
In the economic sphere, it includes reducing the taxes imposed on Great Wealth so it can grow, unfettered, deregulating of all facets of the economy, fostering monopolization, and privatizing what had once been public commons, such as education. In political terms, neoliberalism achieves its agenda by packing the courts with right-wing ideologues who summarily disallow challenges to property, gerrymandering to reduce the voice of liberal or progressive votes, vote suppression such as by illegally purging voting rolls or removing voting stations from poor districts, and other artifices intended to impede the will of the people in favor of the prerogatives of the rich.
Neoliberalism is an encompassing ideology intended do destroy liberal democracy in favor of authoritarian oligarchy. When it is finished, neoliberalism will leave us with neo-feudalism, a retrograde, reactionary system where very few own everything and government exists only to protect the interests of those few. It will be a return to the days of the Bourbons, the Tudors, and the Hapsburgs, that is to the time before the political and philosophical revolutions of the 1600s and 1700s that we now call The Enlightenment. We are almost there, and Nancy Pelosi has been instrumental, in fact, essential, in shepherding that new neo-feudal order into being.
She is the single most influential steward of neoliberalism in the world. That’s why she occupies the office that she does: to look over and defend the interests of Great Wealth, the exclusive club of which she is a member. As so many commentators have observed, Pelosi is one of the shrewdest and most effective Speakers in the history of the House of Representatives. But you don’t get to that position unless you have repeatedly, convincingly, effectively proven your bonafides in promoting and protecting the interests of Great Wealth. Pelosi has.
She has served 17 terms in Congress. She has led the Democratic party in the House of Representatives since 2003. Pelosi’s genius is that she adroitly masks her neoliberal agenda under the façade of traditional liberalism. This has been possible because of the fissures within the Democratic party itself.
The Democratic party is, in fact, a party of two branches that happen to share a common social ideology. The Corporate (neoliberal) and Progressive branches of the Democratic party hold common values about access to abortion, support for LGBT rights, responsible gun control, race relations, etc. This is the penumbra under which the two branches nestle in a common, albeit uncomfortable, embrace.
But on economic matters, on foreign policy, and especially on the sanctity of democracy, the Corporate wing of the Democratic party has much more in common with Republicans, including Trump, than it does with real Democrats. Those are neoliberal values: passing national wealth to the already wealthy, and debilitating democracy from being able to regulate capitalism.
It is the values of this branch of her party, the Corporate branch, the neoliberal branch, that Pelosi is honoring as she resolutely impedes the impeachment of Trump. Her track record reveals her leadership as a Corporate Democrat, as a neoliberal, and as a political consigliere to Great Wealth.
Pelosi helped Bill Clinton, the original and archetypal Corporate Democrat, push through NAFTA so corporations could profit by transferring manufacturing jobs from the Midwest to Mexico. She helped Clinton create the suffocating media monopoly we live under today, end welfare as we know it, criminalize black-only crimes, and, most importantly, deregulate banking by abolishing Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that separated commercial from investment banking. The result was the Great Recession, begun in 2008.
Pelosi was there and silent when, in 2000, the Supreme Court carried out a judicial coup d’etat to install George W. Bush as president. She voiced “unequivocal support and appreciation” to the same George W. Bush for his illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003. She promised to “stand shoulder to shoulder with the president,” on the Patriot Act, the most sweeping rescission of civil liberties in the country’s history.
She helped Barrack Obama betray his campaign promise to create a public option on health care, installing, instead, a gutless program—Obamacare—that doubled the stock prices of healthcare providers by having the government underwrite private provisioning of services while doing nothing to control the costs. She helped Obama shaft the five million families who lost their homes to foreclosure in the Great Recession, while the government shifted trillions of dollars to the same banks that caused the crash.
The economy that Pelosi, over her 32 years in Congress, helped create has failed to raise the inflation-adjusted wages of the average working American even a penny. It has dismantled more than 50,000 factories, shipping them to China so that American corporations could make greater profits by paying Chinese workers one tenth what they paid American workers. Then, when the devastated incomes of downsized workers were not enough to keep the economy afloat, Pelosi helped the government run up over $18 trillion in debts to pump things up, while keeping a restive, downwardly-mobile population pacified.
More than any person active in American politics today, it is Nancy Pelosi who midwifed the anemic economic recovery from the Great Recession that gave rise to the election of Donald Trump "Melania's Spouse". And she was central to the Democratic National Committee kneecapping Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries. Polls indicated that Sanders would have handily defeated Trump.
Today, as the country desperately needs transformational leadership and policies, Pelosi stands “shoulder to shoulder” with Trump against Medicare for All, despite the likelihood that it could reduce annual health care spending by $2 trillion, a staggering 10% of the economy. She and her Corporate Democrats take tens of millions of dollars a year from fossil fuel companies, even as she blocks the Green New Deal. It is the only policy construct in play today that would both mitigate some of the apocalyptic damage from climate change, while revitalizing the economy by rebuilding it in a matter befitting twenty-first century needs.
However, immediately on re-ascension to power in January of this year, Pelosi announced a “Pay-Go” policy that will make it impossible to enact progressive legislation that might need deficits for their funding. This, despite her having shepherded in $18 trillion dollars of cumulative deficits since joining Congress in 1987. Much of that was accomplished by her endless sluicing of funds to the grotesquely gorged military, despite the country having no meaningful security challengers, and the military being unable to win any of its even trivial self-elected “wars.”
In virtually all of these actions, Pelosi is advancing the same neoliberal agenda as is Trump: shifting income and wealth to the already-richest, binding the working and middle classes to generations of debt servitude, all while undercutting the capacity of democracy to rein in the predatory excesses of capitalism. It is at once as looting operation on the accumulated wealth of the country, and a decapitation of Constitutional government.
Bill Barr, as Trump’s Roy Cohn, has effectively decreed that there will be no prosecution, or even investigation, of presidential transgressions, no matter how egregious or destructive. That leaves only a political remedy for Trump’s depredations against the Republic. But in disallowing impeachment, Pelosi has assured that that remedy is no longer available. Pelosi is directly, and personally, undermining the role of Congress as the sole institution of government designed to hold to account a corrupt, inept, and destructive executive.
In other words, Nancy Pelosi has single-handedly decided for the country that Trump will be unaccountable, above the law, and beyond the reach of the only remedy the Framers made available in the Constitution. By protecting Trump, she has licentiously, peremptorily created an autocrat, a monster, who continues to escalate his violence against the existing order, precisely because he knows that Pelosi provides him immunity from accountability. In Nancy Pelosi’s obdurate refusal to impeach Trump for his heinous assaults on law and the Constitution, we are witnessing in real time the end of the rule of law, of checks and balances, of Constitutional government. We are witnessing the end of the very concept of America.
Robert Freeman is the author of The Best One Hour History series, which includes World War I, The French Revolution, The Vietnam War, and other titles. He is the founder of One Dollar For Life, a nonprofit that builds infrastructure projects in the developing world from donations as small as one dollar.
SnailMain ~ During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. ~ George Orwell
Imagine, John Lennon via PlayingForChangeFoundation
Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Reflections on the Spirit and Legacy of the Sixties
by Fritjof Capra, December 1, 2002
questioning of authority
The other movement was an expansion of social consciousness, triggered by a radical questioning of authority. This happened independently in several areas. While the American civil rights movement demanded that Black citizens be included in the political process, the free speech movement at Berkeley and student movements at other universities throughout the United States and Europe demanded the same for students.
In Europe, these movements culminated in the memorable revolt of French university students that is still known simply as "May '68." During that time, all research and teaching activities came to a complete halt at most French universities when the students, led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, extended their critique to society as a whole and sought the solidarity of the French labor movement to change the entire social order. For three weeks, the administrations of Paris and other French cities, public transport, and businesses of every kind were paralyzed by a general strike. In Paris, people spent most of their time discussing politics in the streets, while the students held strategic discussions at the Sorbonne and other universities. In addition, they occupied the Odéon, the spacious theater of the Comédie Française, and transformed it into a twenty-four-hour "people's parliament," where they discussed their stimulating, albeit highly idealistic, visions of a future social order.
1968 was also the year of the celebrated "Prague Spring," during which Czech citizens, led by Alexander Dubcek, questioned the authority of the Soviet regime, which alarmed the Soviet Communist party to such an extent that, a few months later, it crushed the democratization processes initiated in Prague in its brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia.
In the United States, opposition to the Vietnam war became a political rallying point for the student movement and the counterculture. It sparked a huge anti-war movement, which exerted a major influence on the American political scene and led to many memorable events, including the decision by President Johnson not to seek reelection, the turbulent 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Watergate scandal, and the resignation of President Nixon.
Green politics
In the sixties we questioned the dominant society and lived according to different values, but we did not formulate our critique in a coherent, systematic way. We did have concrete criticisms on single issues, such as the Vietnam war, but we did not develop any comprehensive alternative system of values and ideas. Our critique was based on intuitive feeling; we lived and embodied our protest rather than verbalizing and systematizing it.
The seventies brought consolidation of our views. As the magic of the sixties gradually faded, the initial excitement gave way to a period of focusing, digesting, and integrating. Two new cultural movements, the ecology movement and the feminist movement, emerged during the seventies and together provided the much-needed broad framework for our critique and alternative ideas.
The European student movement, which was largely Marxist oriented, was not able to turn its idealistic visions into realities during the sixties. But it kept its social concerns alive during the subsequent decade, while many of its members went through profound personal transformations. Influenced by the two major political themes of the seventies, feminism and ecology, these members of the "new left" broadened their horizons without losing their social consciousness. At the end of the decade, many of them became the leaders of transformed socialist parties. In Germany, these "young socialists" formed coalitions with ecologists, feminists, and peace activists, out of which emerged the Green Party - a new political party whose members confidently declared: "We are neither left nor right; we are in front."
During the 1980s and 1990s, the Green movement became a permanent feature of the European political landscape, and Greens now hold seats in numerous national and regional parliaments around the world. They are the political embodiment of the core values of the sixties.
the end of the Cold War
During the 1970s and 1980s, the American anti-war movement expanded into the anti-nuclear and peace movements, in solidarity with corresponding movements in Europe, especially those in the UK and West Germany. This, in turn, sparked a powerful peace movement in East Germany, led by the Protestant churches, which maintained regular contacts with the West German peace movement, and in particular with Petra Kelly, the charismatic leader of the German Greens.
When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985, he was well aware of the strength of the Western peace movement and accepted our argument that a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought. This realization played an important part in Gorbachev's "new thinking" and his restructuring (perestroika) of the Soviet regime, which would lead, eventually, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and the end of Soviet Communism.
All social and political systems are highly nonlinear and do not lend themselves to being analyzed in terms of linear chains of cause and effect. Nevertheless, careful study of our recent history shows that the key ingredient in creating the climate that led to the end of the Cold War was not the hard-line strategy of the Reagan administration, as the conservative mythology would have it, but the international peace movement. This movement clearly had its political and cultural roots in the student movements and counterculture of the sixties. ~ [Continue Reading]
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck in the middle with WHO ?
Want To Impeach Trump?
Call Congress.
The president’s latest scandal is impeachable by any standard. But representatives won’t act without public pressure.
By Jonathan Bernstein September 23, 2019, 3:30 AM PDT ~ Bloomberg Source
[snip] If Capitol Hill is flooded by calls demanding impeachment on Monday, it will have an effect. Not necessarily impeachment and removal! But a real effect. As a group, pro-impeachment Democrats will become far more insistent; neutral or anti-impeachment Democrats will move toward a moderate pro-impeachment position; uneasy Republicans will be more likely to condemn the president’s actions; even strongly pro-Trump Republicans will tone down their dismissals of the story if they hear outrage from their districts.
Again, this won’t necessarily lead to Trump’s impeachment, let alone conviction and removal. But there’s already some evidence that Democrats are shifting as they hear from their constituents. And there are many ways that Congress can constrain the president short of removing him. In fact, that’s already happening. For one quick example: Heavy criticism, including from Republicans, managed to get Trump to stop encouraging crowds to chant “send them back” at his rallies. [snip ~ Continue reading at Bloomberg Source]
https://www.house.gov/representatives
(202) 224-3121 ~
TTY: (202)-225-1904
https://www.speaker.gov/contact
https://www.callmycongress.com
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck in the middle with WHO ?
Will Melania's Spouse start War In Order to become the
Chancellor of Megalomania
or Dick Tater of Shit Hole Town; formally known as U.S.A.
Is probability of Prison
worth risking war?
Mental Health Guy, Moscow M, Leningrad L Say Yes
GOP Communist Ministers of Satan Say Yes
Complicit DNC Congress Says Yes
So... Bring on the Draft?
Nobody Cares !?!
Megathread: President Trump Authorizes Additional Troop Deployment to Saudi Arabia
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday approved sending American troops to bolster Saudi Arabia’s air and missile defenses after the largest-ever attack on the kingdom’s oil facilities, which Washington has squarely blamed on Iran.
The Pentagon said the deployment would involve a moderate number of troops - not numbering thousands - and would be primarily defensive in nature. It also detailed plans to expedite delivery of military equipment to both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
2 PETER 2:1 ~ But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
2 PETER 2:2 ~ And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.
2 PETER 2:3 ~ And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.
Satan's demons take on the image of God similar to that done in Eden ~ 2 Corinthians, 11:14 (How else do they take control of earth?)
Antichrist is variously understood as being a consummately evil system of government or leader.
Antichrist will be a leader who deceives many people.
Antichrist will divide the world and create war without end.
Antichrist will declare that things which are evil to be good.
Antichrist will refer to war as peace, death as a solution for justice, & serving the wealthy as a means of helping the poor.
Many nations will recognize that he is evil, but his own people will be inclined to believe his deceptions.
Somebody’s Fool, Spo-Dee-O-Dee ~ Rhythm Bomb/ Sleazy Records via Bopflix Films, Vimeo
Don't miss out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way you expect!
None of the Above should be a Valid Choice on Voter Ballots!
Nobody for President ~ NONE of the ABOVE should be a choice on voter ballots
Pastafarian pastor leads prayer
at Alaska government meeting
HOMER, Alaska (AP) — A pastor wearing a colander on his head offered the opening prayer on behalf of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to open a local government meeting in Alaska, the latest blessing from a nontraditional church since a court ruling.
Barrett Fletcher, the Pastafarian pastor, noted the duties performed by the members of the Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly in his Tuesday message, adding a few of them “seem to feel they can’t do the work without being overseen by a higher authority, ” Kenai radio station KSRM reported Wednesday.
“So, I’m called to invoke the power of the true inebriated creator of the universe, the drunken tolerator (sic) of the all lesser and more recent gods, and maintainer of gravity here on earth. May the great Flying Spaghetti Monster rouse himself from his stupor and let his noodly appendages ground each assembly member in their seats,” Fletcher said.
The only people who stood for the invocation were those without seats in the standing-room-only assembly hall in Homer, which is about 125 miles (201 kilometers) south of Anchorage. One man turned his back to face the wall during the invocation, and other men did not remove their hats.
The Pastafarian invocation followed one in June from Satanic Temple member Iris Fontana that caused about a dozen people to leave the assembly chamber in Soldotna in protest when she invoked “Hail Satan” in her opening prayer.
Fontana was among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit litigated by the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska against the borough after it approved a 2016 policy saying that people who wanted to give the invocations at the government body’s meetings had to belong to official organizations with an established presence on the Kenai Peninsula. Other plaintiffs who had been denied permission to give the invocations included an atheist and a Jewish woman.
The Alaska Supreme Court last October ruled that the borough policy was unconstitutional, and the borough government changed it in November to allow anyone to offer invocations regardless of religion.
The Flying Spaghetti Monster church, called FSM for short, was formed in 2005 as a response to the Kansas State Board of Education’s hearings on evolution in schools. Its founder sent a letter about FSM as a way to argue against teaching creationism in biology classes, the Homer News has reported.
Church followers believe an invisible and undetectable monster made of spaghetti and meatballs created the universe after drinking heavily, and that his “noodly appendages” hold great power. Many label the movement as satire, but it is recognized as an official religion in some countries, the News reported.
Barrett, who started his chapter in Homer, on the lower Kenai Peninsula, concluded his opening prayer as asking the Flying Spaghetti Monster to provide each assembly member “satisfaction in the perception of accomplishment and allow them true relaxation and an ample supply of their favorite beverage at the end of this evening’s work.”
He then ended the prayer with: “Ramen.”
None of the Above should be a Valid Choice on Voter Ballots!
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck in the middle with WHO ?
Supreme Court to democracy:
Drop dead
Manipulation Accomplished
With a single rash, partisan act, the high court has tainted the Bush presidency, besmirched its own reputation and soiled our nation's proudest legacy.
by Gary Kamiya, Salon's executive editor
Dec. 14, 2000 | Tuesday, Dec. 12, is a day that will live in American infamy long after the tainted election of George W. Bush has faded from memory. With their rash, divisive decision to dispense with the risky and inconvenient workings of democracy and simply award the presidency to their fellow Republican, five right-wing justices dragged the Supreme Court down to perhaps its most ignominious point since the Dred Scott decision.
The court was the last American civic institution to have preserved an aura of impartiality, to be regarded as above the gutter of partisanship and self-interest. The reality, of course, is that no court, no judge, no human being, is completely free of those entanglements. Yet the court has generally acted wisely in avoiding judgments that would inevitably and utterly besmirch it. With one reckless and partisan ruling, it squandered its most precious possession: its reputation. It may take years, even decades, to repair the damage done by the Scalia-Rehnquist court's decision to cancel the election and crown the winner.
It's hard not to conclude, now that this whole sorry saga is over, that the fix was in from the beginning. Not the crude, "vast right-wing conspiracy" fix of Hillary Clinton's imagination, but a de facto fix. Why shouldn't one think the game was rigged, when five Republican-appointed justices -- one of whose son works for the law firm of the lawyer representing Bush, another of whose wife is recruiting staff for the Bush admininstration and two of whom have made clear their desire to retire under a Republican administration -- trashed their entire judicial philosophy to ram through, with only the most cramped of legal justifications, a last-second victory for a Republican who lost the national popular vote and, when the votes in Florida are actually counted, is likely to have lost the Florida one as well?
Perfect justice does not exist. But this was judicial folly, politically explosive and judicially threadbare. This was the court stepping in and awarding victory to one side before the game was over. Even those of us who don't often agree with the court's conservative majority expected better.
As Justice Stevens wrote in his savage dissent, "The position by the majority of this court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land ... Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law."
As soon as the ruling was handed down, a nearly hysterical chorus of TV commentators, many of them cynical bear-baiters who wouldn't believe oaths sworn by their own mothers, suddenly pulled long faces and began urging the American people to accept the court's verdict, defer to its wisdom, venerate its grandeur, unite around Bush and generally go quietly back indoors to await further instructions. Television is never more nauseating than when it slips imperceptibly into its role as quasi-official national nanny, instructing the unruly masses in correct civic comportment. But if the dissenting justices can pour bile on the majority's opinions -- Stevens explicitly accuses his conservative brethren of impugning the integrity of their judicial colleagues -- why is it so frightening for the people to do the same thing? The American people's allegiance to democracy should be greater than our fealty to a court that has just spat in its face. In any case, we survived His Fraudulency I, the unduly elected Rutherford B. Hayes, and we will survive His Fraudulency II.
What the court ruled, when you get down to it, was that democracy shouldn't be allowed to get in the way of bureaucracy. One man, one vote? Overrated. Every vote counts? Too much trouble. None of those democratic pieties, the court in its infinite wisdom ruled, are as important as strict adherence to niggling rules and timetables -- rules and timetables that the court itself had the power to set aside.
If a court received evidence that a condemned prisoner was actually innocent, but that evidence arrived five minutes after some subclerk's filing deadline, you would not expect it to simply blithely proceed with the execution on the grounds that proper paperwork had not been done. But that, in effect, is precisely what the Supreme Court did. And what it killed was not only any possibility that this election will ever be regarded as fair or final but the principle that every vote must be counted.
Of course, the Florida recount was flawed. The justices had legitimate reason to be troubled by irregularities in the recount process. The differing standards about what constituted a legal vote, left open by the vague Florida statutory language about the "intent of the voter" and the "clear intent of the voter," opened a Pandora's box -- start recounting without a clear standard and you're in an endless wilderness of enigmatic chads.
But the court's position that those irregularities -- which are comparable to the irregularities that plague every election in every state in the country -- violated equal protection rights and therefore are a matter for federal intervention, is indefensible. It's indefensible on grounds of judicial consistency, considering the court's long history of deference to the states in establishing and interpreting local law. But the real reason it's indefensible is factual.
If the recount violated equal protection rights, then the entire Florida election -- not to mention the national one -- did, too. As Gore attorney David Boies pointed out in oral arguments before the court (although he might as well have been talking to five potted plants -- those minds were closed), the different standards used in counting punch-card ballots have considerably less impact on which votes end up counting (the heart of the equal protection claim) than the different voting machines that are used. Optical scan devices, found in richer, whiter, pro-Bush counties, generate many fewer errors than punch-card devices, which are found in poorer, blacker, pro-Gore ones. Yet the U.S. Supreme Court did not suddenly drop its long-standing aversion to meddling in state affairs and rush into Florida to rectify this grave inequality. That apparently only happens when a fellow Republican needs rescuing.
In any case, even assuming that the differing standards used to evaluate punch-card ballots constitute grounds for federal intervention, there was a clear and fair solution, as suggested by Justice Souter in his dissent: Impose a statewide standard, to be overseen by a judge, and see if the recount could be completed by Dec. 18, the date set for the meeting of electors.
What harm would there be in attempting to carry out this remedy? The court made much of Dec. 12, the "safe harbor" deadline after which the frail craft carrying Florida's precious electors would be buffeted by unknown seas -- smashed by Hurricane DeLay, drenched by Tsunami Lott. But as all the dissenters pointed out, nothing in the Constitution requires states to send electors by that date. A safe harbor means exactly that: a safe harbor. Why not expose the electoral dinghy to those seas? What was the court so worried about? Could it be that, like the man to whom they served up the election, their real fear was that Bush might not win? How else to explain their refusal to pursue the option that many observers thought they would -- an evenhanded solution that would have guaranteed victory to neither man, honored the sacred principle that every vote counts, restored the luster to the court and prevented their legacy from being tarnished forever?
Instead of starting with the principle that the sacred duty of any court intervening in an election is to get the votes counted, and doing everything in their power to make that happen in as fair a way as possible, the five GOP justices simply declared that it couldn't be done because recounts weren't perfect and -- gosh, look at my watch! -- time had expired.
This argument is the epitome of probity, if you take your judicial philosophy from Kafka. The majority said the recount couldn't be done in time -- then smashed the clock with a hammer. They had the colossal gall to write, "A desire for speed is not a general excuse for ignoring equal protection guarantees" -- when they were the ones who halted the recount and imposed artificial deadlines that made that "desire for speed" necessary. As Justice Ginsburg said in her dissent, "The court's conclusion that a constitutionally adequate recount is impractical is a prophecy the court's own judgment will not allow to be tested. Such an untested prophecy should not decide the presidency of the United States."
It is difficult to avoid the degrading conclusion -- degrading, because it implies a substantial lack of judicial competence and integrity on the part of the court's majority -- that from the start the court's right-wing majority, like the Bush camp to which it has so many ties, secretly regarded the very idea of a recount as suspect, inferior, secondary, an ignoble and unacceptable tainting of the God-given, majestic, sacrosanct first-count results (which just happened to show Bush in a razor-thin lead). The single most frightening image of the entire surreal episode may have been James Baker's icy, contemptuous rage as he denounced Gore's request for a recount -- his scowling face almost a caricature of the left's cartoon image of the authoritarian, white-haired, vengeful, win-at-all-costs, God-is-on-our-side right-winger. The Supreme Court ruling had footnotes instead of rage, but it seems to have operated on the same assumptions.
Justice Scalia confirmed this with his bizarre defense of his order to stop the recount, in which he gratuitously said, "The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does in my view threaten irreparable harm to petitioner, and to the country, by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election." It was prudent of Justice Scalia to include the words "what he claims to be," but does anyone really doubt that Scalia, like those Bush supporters who kept angrily braying that Bush had "won," believed that the Texas governor should by rights have already moved into the White House, and Gore's attempts to find out what the vote actually was were damn near treasonous?
This we-already-won mind-set explains why the court signally failed to look at the election as a whole, and craft a remedy that tacitly acknowledged the errors both sides made -- a ruling that would have been as politically wise as the one it issued was divisive and rash.
Courts are not explicitly political institutions, but when dealing with an issue as momentous as the election of a president, it would seem wise for the court to assess the entire context in which a given legal challenge takes place. The Florida election was an equal-opportunity debacle: Both sides acted wrongly and bear some responsibility for the mess. But no one objective could conceivably look at it and claim that the Democrats had overreached so badly that they deserved to be terminated by judicial fiat.
Florida's governor was George W. Bush's brother. Its secretary of state, who never ruled against him, was a high-ranking official in his campaign who hired a private voter-roll cleansing company with Republican ties that disqualified hundreds of legitimate Democratic voters. The Florida GOP illegally completed Republican ballot applications in Martin and Seminole counties while denying Gore campaign workers the same opportunity to correct Democratic ballot applications. It took every opportunity to disqualify improper ballots for Gore, while demonizing Gore for doing the same thing to military overseas ballots. Determined to ensure a Bush victory at all cost, the GOP-controlled Legislature voted to push a slate of Bush electors through -- regardless of what recounts might show. And, of course, the GOP dragged its feet at every turn, resisting recounts and trying to run out the clock.
The Democrats, for their part, lost the moral high ground by failing to call for a statewide manual recount from the beginning. They squandered more capital threatening to sue over a ballot designed by a Democrat. They ignored the obvious injustice of changing the definition of what vote should count in the middle of the process: Palm Beach's recount, in which the standard kept changing, was a travesty. And, like their Republican counterparts, they played hardball with every ballot they could get their hands on.
In light of this situation, a ruling that handed victory to one side and not the other was the last thing, from a political as well as an ethical perspective, the court should have been looking for. And fortunately for the court, a decision to remand back to the Florida Supreme Court would not by any means have ensured a Gore victory -- Bush was actually gaining votes by some accounts -- making it the right thing to do both legally and politically. Yet the court, in thrall to the idea that Bush had already won and, one suspects, secretly accepting the Rush Limbaugh crowd's canard that the hand recounts were not just subject to different standards but to malevolent Democratic manipulation and chad chomping, did not even try. It stopped the counting. It stopped the election. It stopped democracy.
Justice Ginsberg, in her dissent, summed up the case with quiet eloquence. "Ideally, perfection would be the appropriate standard for judging the recount. But we live in an imperfect world, one in which thousands of votes have not been counted. I cannot grant that the recount adopted by the Florida court, flawed as it is, would yield a result less fair or precise than the certification that preceded recount."
Thousands of votes have not been counted. Think about that, whatever your political persuasion is, from time to time during the next four years. Imagine them, gathering dust in a filing cabinet somewhere, each one of them expressing the choice of a person who, when he went to the polling place that Tuesday in November, had every expectation that the United States would do its very best to ensure that whether he was rich or poor, black or white, he would be heard.
The people have not been heard. They will not be heard. And each of those uncounted ballots is a cry of reproach against the act of judicial arrogance that has now forever silenced them. [Continue Reading]
The Wallflowers ~ Reboot The Mission via Off Camera
But wait... the story
may not be over, yet...
Boptime w/Even Steven Leech
Boptime begins at 6am (EDT) Saturday morning with an hour of oldies back to back to back. At 7am (EDT) on Rockabilly Ridge Michael Ace takes us back to school with a batch of tunes fit for class room hi-jinx. At 8am (EDT) we bop back to this day in 1947 with a couple crossover hits from Broadway, a couple hot hits on sale at Maeson’s Appliance Store in Wilmington, and one big hit straight out of a movie not in Wilmington’s movie theaters. However, we’ll tell you all the other movies playing in and around town. At 9am (EDT) we go back to this day in 1961 when Teddy & the Continentals had a national hit record and the Phillies lost 23 games in a row. ~ Steve
BOPTIME: Saturday, 6 AM Eastern time, 3 AM Pacific time
Go To: http://www.wvud.org/?page_id=24
Click on a listening link below the WVUD logo:
Available locally in DE on WVUD-FM 91.3, Shoutcast [Search: WVUD], and TuneIn
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck in the middle with WHO ?
Vietnam Veteran Dies
Covered With Ants @ VA Clinic
Your President via ausernameitis ~ Reddit Source
WE'RE GETTING NUMB
TO MELANIA'S SPOUSES'S LAWLESSNESS.
THAT'S VERY DANGEROUS!
Hey, Republicans. Your guy is a fucking stupid dipshit moron traitor asshole. via TheBigPhilbowski
No Trump in America has ever served in the military; this spans 5 generations, and every branch of the family tree. In fact, the reason his grandfather immigrated to America was to avoid military service
More Trump highlights:
✓ Makes the U.S. Navy Blue Angles violate ethics rules by having them fly at his July 4th political campaign (July 4, 2019)
✓ Demands US military chiefs stand next to him at 4th of July parade (reported July 2, 2019)
✓ Uses his D-Day interview at cemetery commemorating fallen US soldiers to attack a Vietnam veteran (June 6, 2019)
✓ Starts his D-Day commemoration speech by attacking a private citizen (Bette Midler, of all people) (reported on June 4th, 2019)
✓ Made 2nd wife, Marla Maples, sign a prenup that would have cut off all child support if Tiffany joined the military (reported on June 4th, 2019)
✓ Turns away US military from his Memorial Day speech because they were from the destroyer USS John S. McCain (May 27, 2019)
✓ Orders the USS John McCain out of sight during his visit to Japan (May 15, 2019). The ship's name was subsequently covered. (May 27, 2019)
✓ Pardons war criminals (May, 2019)
✓ Purges 200,000 veterans healthcare applications (due to known administrative errors within VA’s enrollment process and enrollment system) (reported on May 13, 2019)
✓ Deports spouse of fallen Army soldier killed in Afghanistan, leaving their daughter parentless (April 16, 2019)
✓ Complains a deceased war hero didn't thank him for his funeral (March 20, 2019)
✓ Diverts military housing funds to pay for border wall (Feb 15, 2019)
✓ refuses to sign his party's funding bill, which shuts down the government, and forces a branch of the military to go without pay (but his appointees got a $10,000 pay raise). This branch of military is forced to work without pay, otherwise they are AWOL (Dec 22, 2018 – Jan 25, 2019)
✓ doesn't pay the Coast Guard, forcing service members to rely on food pantries (Jan 23, 2019)
✓ bans service members from serving based on gender identity (Jan 22, 2019)
✓ denies female troops access to birth control to limit sexual activity (on-going. Published Jan 18, 2019)
✓ tries to deport a marine vet who is a U.S.-born citizen (Jan 16, 2019)
✓ when a man was caught swindling veterans pensions for high-interest “cash advances," Trump's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau fined him $1. As a reminder, the Trump administration's goal was to dismantle the CFPB, installing Mick Mulvaney as the director, who publicly stated the bureau should be disbanded. (Jan 26, 2019)
✓ calls a retired general a 'dog' with a 'big, dumb mouth' (Jan 1, 2019)
✓ increases privatization of the VA, leading to longer waits and higher taxpayer cost (2018)
✓ finally visited troops 2 years after taking office, but only after 154 vacation days at his properties (Dec 26, 2018)
✓ reveals covert Seal Team 5 deployment, including names and faces, on Twitter during visit to Iraq (Dec 26, 2018)
✓ lies to deployed troops that he gave them a 10% raise. He didn't give them a 10% raise (Dec 26, 2018)
✓ fires service members living with HIV just before the 2018 holidays (Dec 19, 2018-present)
✓ gets three Mar-a-Lago guests to run the VA (unknown start - present, made well-known in 2018)
✓ calls troops on Thanksgiving and tells them he's most thankful for himself (Thanksgiving, 2018)
✓ urges Florida to not count deployed military votes (Nov 12, 2018)
✓ cancels Arlington Cemetery visit on Veterans Day due to the rain (Nov 12, 2018)
✓ doesn't visit US cemetery marking the end of WWI due to the rain (but other world leaders go anyway) (Nov 10, 2018)
✓ stops using troops as a political prop immediately after the election. However, troops remain in muddy camps on the border (Nov 7, 2018)
✓ uses troops as a political prop and sends troops on a phantom mission to the border and makes them miss Thanksgiving with their families (Oct-Dec, 2018)
✓ doesn't pay veterans' VA benefits (made public Oct 2018)
✓ doubled the rejection rate for veterans requesting family deportation protections (July 5, 2018)
✓ deports active-duty spouses (11,800 military families face this problem as of April 2018)
✓ forgets a fallen soldier's name (below) during a call to his pregnant widow, then attacks her the next day (Oct 23-24, 2017)
✓ sends commandos into an ambush due to a lack of intel, and sends contractors to pick them up, resulting in a commando being left behind, tortured, and executed. (Trump approved the mission because Bannon told him Obama didn't have the guts to do it) (Oct 4, 2017)
✓ blocks a veteran group on Twitter (June 2017)
✓ discharges active-duty immigrant troops with good records (2017-present)
✓ deports veterans (2017-present)
✓ says he knows more about ISIS than American generals (Oct 2016)
✓ says vets get PTSD because they aren't strong (Oct 3, 2016) (note: yes, he said it's 'because they aren't strong.' He didn't say it's 'because they're weak.' This distinction is important because of Snopes)
✓ accepts a Purple Heart from a fan at one of his rallies and says: “I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” (Aug 2, 2016)
✓ attacks Gold Star families (2016-present. Myeshia Johnson--gold star widow, Khan family--gold star parents, etc)
✓ sends funds raised from a January 2016 veterans benefit to the Donald J Trump Foundation instead of veterans charities (the foundation has since been ordered shut because of fraud) (Jan, 2016)
✓ says he doesn't consider POWs heroes because they were caught (July 18, 2015)
✓ says having unprotected sex was like Vietnam (1998)
✓ for a decade, sought to kick veterans off of Fifth Avenue because he found them unsightly nuisances outside of Trump Tower. “While disabled veterans should be given every opportunity to earn a living, is it fair to do so to the detriment of the city as a whole or its tax paying citizens and businesses?” - 1991
✓ dodges the draft 5 times
Ministers of Satan?
Democrats Are Failing the Country
by Letting Trump Off the Hook
Democrats have essentially been shouting, "Do whatever you want, Mr. Trump! We are terrified of our own shadow and will let you get away with anything!"
by Ryan Cooper, Common Dreams Source, Published on Thursday, July 11, 2019 by The Week
The political media has been glued to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal of late. Federal officials arrested him in New Jersey Monday, and raided his New York home where they found a veritable cornucopia of incriminating evidence, allegedly including lots of child porn. Then on Wednesday another accuser came forward, saying that Epstein had raped her when she was 15 years old.
The Trump administration, naturally, is up to its elbows in the Epstein story. Trump himself was friends with the guy for years, but Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta personally arranged an outrageous sweetheart plea bargain with Epstein in 2008 when Acosta was a U.S. Attorney in Florida.
So what is the opposition party going to do about it? Nothing of substance. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi called for Acosta to resign, but also immediately ruled out impeaching him. "It's up to the president, it's his cabinet. We have a great deal of work to do here for the good of the American people and we have to focus on that," she said. (Trump, of course, will do no such thing.) Senate Democrats who voted for Acosta and are still in office didn't even call for him to step down.
This failure to use their power to confront Trump and his administration is making Democrats an accessory to his crimes. [Continue Reading]
None of the Above should be a Valid Choice on Voter Ballots!
2 PETER 2:1 ~ But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.
2 PETER 2:2 ~ And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.
2 PETER 2:3 ~ And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.
Satan's demons take on the image of God similar to that done in Eden ~ 2 Corinthians, 11:14 (How else do they take control of earth?)
Antichrist is variously understood as being a consummately evil system of government or leader.
Antichrist will be a leader who deceives many people.
Antichrist will divide the world and create war without end.
Antichrist will declare that things which are evil to be good.
Antichrist will refer to war as peace, death as a solution for justice, & serving the wealthy as a means of helping the poor.
Many nations will recognize that he is evil, but his own people will be inclined to believe his deceptions.
Somebody’s Fool, Spo-Dee-O-Dee ~ Rhythm Bomb/ Sleazy Records via Bopflix Films, Vimeo
Don't miss out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way you expect!
Notes from ~@~
Remembering
Robert Pruzan
September 12, 1946 ~ May 29, 1992
1st Annual Haight Street Fair ~ Photograph: Robert Pruzan
C Spangler & Ira Cohen ~ Photograph: Robert Pruzan
Remembering
Flying Snail Ranch
Valley Fire, 12 September 2015 ~ Pages ~ Complete
Hillbilly Deluxe, Brooks & Dunn via HQ Productions ~ https://vimeo.com/44002637
More Photos: Pages ~ Complete
Remembering the
United State Cafe
The Muppets ~ Bohemian Rhapsody via Soapbox Films
Dahbud Mensch ~ Stuck in the middle with WHO ? ~ WHEN HISTORY REPEATS... DO WE NOTICE ?
We’re Only Beginning to See the Consequences of the
Bush-Era Assault on Civil Liberties
Like a number of “War on Terror” measures, the Terrorist Screening Database’s unconstitutionality was obvious from the jump
by MATT TAIBBI, Photo & Source @ RollingStone
A judge last week ruled the federal government’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), which secretly categorized more than 1 million people as “known or suspected terrorists,” is unconstitutional.
Like a number of "War on Terror" reforms instituted in the Bush years, the TDSB’s unconstitutionality was obvious from its inception. Indeed, the very idea that we needed to “take the gloves off” in our post-9/11 “State of Exception” was an original selling point of some of these programs.
The TDSB is cousin to the No-Fly List (a different and more restrictive list ruled unconstitutional in 2014), the Distribution Matrix (the drone assassination program also known as the “Kill List”), the STELLAR WIND warrantless surveillance program, multiple expansions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the broadened use of National Security Letters to obtain private data without warrant, the “Enhanced Interrogation” program the rest of the world calls torture, and countless other War on Terror initiatives that were and are clear violations of the spirit of the constitution.
Many of these programs were sold to the public as temporary measures — Diane Feinstein way back in 2001 said five-year sunset provisions would be a “valuable check” on potential abuse of the Patriot Act — but turned out to be essentially permanent features of the state.
The TSDB is produced by the Terrorism Screening Center, a “multi-agency center” administered by the FBI. The Department of Homeland Security, the National Counterterrorism Center, the Transportation Security Administration, and the United States Customs and Border Protection also contribute. Even the FBI proudly uses the program’s creepy sobriquet, “the watchlist.”
The recent lawsuit (Anas Elhady et al v. Charles Kable, Director of the Terrorist Screening Center) was brought by 23 Muslim-Americans who complained of a “range of adverse consequences.” Plaintiffs complained of being repeatedly handcuffed at the border, searched, denied access to flights, and other issues.
The ugliest detail in the lawsuit involves the sheer reach of the list. From Judge Anthony Trenga’s memorandum:
The FBI… shares TSDB information with more than 18,000 state, local, county, city, university and college, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies and approximately 533 private entities through its National Crime Information Center (NCIC) program, which these law enforcement agencies and private entities then use to screen individuals they encounter in traffic stops, field interviews, house visits, and municipal permit processes.
After the towers fell, Americans wanted to feel safe from terror attacks, by any means necessary. The notion that some kind of profiling had to go on in order to tighten up security procedures was fairly uncontroversial eighteen years ago.
As a result, few cared about the long-term implications of giving the state power to informally tab people terrorists, before blasting out to 18,000 different entities, including schools, embassies, and potential employers.
There was no real brake on the listmaking process, which allowed “the watchlist” to balloon. The list expanded from 680,000 people in 2013 to 1.2 million in 2017. Some 4,600 of the people on the list are said to be Americans.
Inclusion on the TSDB happens according to a space-age, Homeland version of the infamous stop-and-frisk policing technique, another program that became an end run around probable cause. In the mid-2000s, hundreds of thousands of people in cities like New York, mostly young black and Hispanic males, were stopped every year based upon the “reasonable” or “articulable” suspicion that a person has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.
Similarly, a person could land on the TSDB based upon the “articulable intelligence” that a person “is engaged, has been engaged, or intends to engage” in terrorist activities.
There was no requirement that a person commit a crime before being placed on the list, and being acquitted of a terrorism-related offense didn’t prevent one from being placed on this informal dishonor roll.
The mere fact of the list gave federal authorities enormous power. One whiff of a person’s name near the “known or suspected” terror roster would be enough to end applications for FAA or transportation licenses, hazmat permits, access to military bases, and a variety of government or private sector jobs or education opportunities.
This is probably a highlight of the program for some – it’s difficult to question the wisdom of keeping a suspected terrorist away from hazardous materials – but the huge problem was that people had no real recourse for contesting their inclusion on the list.
The official complaint method for travelers who experienced difficulties was the Department of Homeland Security’s Travel Redress Inquiry Program (TRIP). However, as Trenga noted:
The submission triggers a review… which, in 98% of cases, results in a determination that the claimed travel difficulties had no connection to an individuals inclusion on the TSDB.
When the complainant is a match to someone on the watchlist, the complaint goes to the “TSC Redress Office,” which would then conduct an internal review and send the complainant a determination letter that, no matter what, would not inform the person if they were or were not on the list.
In a lot of War on Terror programs, the fact that no one can be sure if they’re even on a list becomes a major defense against challenges to the system. As an American Bar Association editorial noted back in 2011,
A second doctrinal problem arises from the deeply problematic intersection between secrecy and the doctrine of standing…
For years, the government has advocated… a restrictive theory of standing… requiring would-be challengers of government surveillance programs to demonstrate that the government has actually intercepted their communications.
It’s a Catch-22. You need standing to challenge an abuse of authority, but that very abuse of authority prevents you from gaining information to secure standing.
Want to claim the government is violating disclosure rules under the FOIA law? You might have a problem if you can’t prove what’s being rebuffed in a FOIA request. Want to contest your inclusion on the No-Fly List, or the TSDB? It’s a problem if you don’t even know for sure you’re on it.
I watched this process play out in court last year. When an American citizen named Bilal Abdul-Kareem, who claimed to have survived multiple drone attacks overseas, sued to get himself removed from the “Distribution Matrix,” he faced a serious hurdle because he could not prove he was on the list.
The government argued the suit should be thrown out because neither Kareem nor his co-plaintiff, a journalist named Ahmad Zaidan, could “plausibly” make a case they were on a list.
“The much more plausible explanation,” the government lawyer argued in a DC court last spring, “is that plaintiff Kareem experienced explosions in Syria because he was covering the Syrian civil war as a journalist.”
The Kill List, the TDSB, and all the secret surveillance programs pose the same problem: they exist more or less completely apart from meaningful public oversight. They’re bureaucratic states within states.
For instance, part of the PATRIOT Act governing the issue of National Security Letters (NSLs) – by which the FBI can demand that private companies turn over subscriber information, billing records, and other private data – allows the government to place gag orders on recipients of such letters.
Because of this, we only have a faint idea of what NSLs look like. In one rare case, a man named Nicholas Merrill balked and sued when his company was issued a National Security Letter. In that case, the government argued that even releasing the existence of the letter would compromise national security.
This is frightening given that a) no courts need to approve the issuance of such letters, and b) the quantity of such demands is massive. Over a ten-year period, the government reportedly issued over 300,000 NSLs, at one point reaching a pace of 60,000 issued per year. The Merrill case in 2015 represented the first time a gag order was lifted on one of these operations.
The recent watchlist lawsuit should remind us we’re assassinating, torturing, snooping on, and blacklisting people all over the world, by means of a continually expanding federal bureaucracy that exists outside of any specific mission, and refuses to recognize the oversight authority of courts or congress.
One of the reasons these secret bureaucracies keep expanding is that there is no powerful lobby, no civil liberties version of PhRMA or the National Rifle Association, to oppose them. The people affected by these programs aren’t drug companies or gun manufacturers, just everyone, and everyone doesn’t have much juice in Washington.
Manipulation
Accomplished
Boptime w/Even Steven Leech
Boptime begins at 6am (EDT) Saturday morning with an hour of oldies back to back to back. At 7am (EDT) on the Legends of Wilmington Jazz you’ll hear local jazz selections going back to the 1940s. At 8am (EDT), and for the remainder of the program, Larry and Kitty join us on Clifford’s Corner. We’ll start things with some Beat Generation oriented jazz pieces, then some early R&B selections from artists like the Harlem Hamfats, Frankie “Half pint” Jaxon and others. ~ Steve
BOPTIME: Saturday, 6 AM Eastern time, 3 AM Pacific time
Go To: http://www.wvud.org/?page_id=24
Click on a listening link below the WVUD logo:
Available locally in DE on WVUD-FM 91.3, Shoutcast [Search: WVUD], and TuneIn
Karl Cohen ~ Association International du Film d'Animation SF Newsletter
ASIFA-SF September 2019 Newsletter [PDF Format]
Paul Krassner ~ Investigative Satirist ~ Notes from ~@~
[Ed. Note: For those interested, Paul's 49th day of Bardo is Saturday, September 7th]
Have An Incredible Journey Paul!
Paul Krassner: Who’s To Say What’s Obscene? via Dangerous Minds
Paul Krassner (April 9, 1932 – July 21, 2019) was an American author, journalist, comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958. Krassner became a key figure in the counterculture of the 1960s as a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and a founding member of the Yippies. He died on July 21, 2019, in Desert Hot Springs, California. [Continue reading at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]
Boptime w/Even Steven Leech
Boptime begins at 6am (EDT) Saturday morning with an hour of oldies back to back to back. On Rockabilly Ridge at 7am (EDT) Michael Ace readies us for going back to school with tunes fit for the class room. At 8am (EDT) on the Morrie Sims Show we're in a Blues mood with some classic, and maybe some not so classic, Blues sides. Special guests Paulé and Uncle Richard are Maurice's guests. Also in the 8 am hour on the Delaware Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame, we play selections from the Hall's 2019 inductees including Jimmy Stayton's Rocka-Bye band, Johnny Neel, Alfie Moss & Dexter Koonce, the Tradewinds, and Rockett 88. At 9am (EDT) on the Club Baby Grand, we go live with sessions from Clifford Brown with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers including Horace Silver, then Lem Winchester with Junior Mace and others, and winding it up with Wilmington jazz pianist Gerald Price with Sonny Stitt and Milt Jackson. ~ Steve
BOPTIME: Saturday, 6 AM Eastern time, 3 AM Pacific time
Go To: http://www.wvud.org/?page_id=24
Click on a listening link below the WVUD logo:
Available locally in DE on WVUD-FM 91.3, Shoutcast [Search: WVUD], and TuneIn
Karl Cohen ~ Association International du Film d'Animation/SF
Roy Cohn Doc Shows
Trump as Devil’s Disciple
by Karl F. Cohen @ cineSOURCE
FEW PEOPLE WILL DISAGREE THAT ROY Cohn was an evil SOB. Esquire Magazine once called him “the toughest, meanest, vilest lawyer in America,” while The New Yorker identified him as “the original Donald Trump.”
He was the lawyer who helped execute the Rosenbergs in 1953 and was seen on national TV, the following year, advising Senator Joseph McCarthy as he browbeat witnesses in his search for alleged communists in the US Army. Later dubious accomplishments include defending some of the Mafia’s biggest godfathers and mentoring Donald Trump, as noted in the stellar new documentary “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” by Matt Tyrnauer
Tyrnauer is a writer/director, producer, as well as award-winning journalist, whose notable previous documentaries include "Valentino: The Last Emperor" (2008), short-listed for an Academy Award, "Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood" (2017), covering sex in tinsel town, and "Citizen Jane: Battle for the City" (2016), on Jane Jacobs heroic defense of historic New York against urban developer Robert Moses.
“Where’s My Roy Cohn?”, which opens in October, does an admiral job of moving quickly through his life and exposing in full detail who he was, starting with his privileged childhood and the “values” instilled by his parents. [Continue reading w/photos @ cineSOURCE]
Keith Lampe ~ Co-Founder of YIPPIE & Progressive Activist Groups
Is America ‘Yearning for
Fascism?’
By Chris Hedges
March 29, 2010 "TruthDig" -- The language of violence always presages violence. I watched it in war after war from Latin America to the Balkans. The impoverishment of a working class and the snuffing out of hope and opportunity always produce angry mobs ready to kill and be killed. A bankrupt, liberal elite, which proves ineffectual against the rich and the criminal, always gets swept aside, in times of economic collapse, before thugs and demagogues emerge to play to the passions of the crowd. I have seen this drama. I know each act. I know how it ends. I have heard it in other tongues in other lands. I recognize the same stock characters, the buffoons, charlatans and fools, the same confused crowds and the same impotent and despised liberal class that deserves the hatred it engenders.
"We are ruled not by two parties but one party," Cynthia McKinney, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket, told me. "It is the party of money and war. Our country has been hijacked. And we have to take the country away from those who have hijacked it. The only question now is whose revolution gets funded."
The Democrats and their liberal apologists are so oblivious to the profound personal and economic despair sweeping through this country that they think offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their nonexistent health care policies is a step forward. They think that passing a jobs bill that will give tax credits to corporations is a rational response to an unemployment rate that is, in real terms, close to 20 percent. They think that making ordinary Americans, one in eight of whom depends on food stamps to eat, fork over trillions in taxpayer dollars to pay for the crimes of Wall Street and war is acceptable. They think that the refusal to save the estimated 2.4 million people who will be forced out of their homes by foreclosure this year is justified by the bloodless language of fiscal austerity. The message is clear. Laws do not apply to the power elite. Our government does not work. And the longer we stand by and do nothing, the longer we refuse to embrace and recognize the legitimate rage of the working class, the faster we will see our anemic democracy die.
The unraveling of America mirrors the unraveling of Yugoslavia. The Balkan war was not caused by ancient ethnic hatreds. It was caused by the economic collapse of Yugoslavia. The petty criminals and goons who took power harnessed the anger and despair of the unemployed and the desperate. They singled out convenient scapegoats from ethnic Croats to Muslims to Albanians to Gypsies. They set in motion movements that unleashed a feeding frenzy leading to war and self-immolation. There is little difference between the ludicrous would-be poet Radovan Karadzic, who was a figure of ridicule in Sarajevo before the war, and the moronic Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin. There is little difference between the Oath Keepers and the Serbian militias. We can laugh at these people, but they are not the fools. We are.
The longer we appeal to the Democrats, who are servants of corporate interests, the more stupid and ineffectual we become. Sixty-one percent of Americans believe the country is in decline, according to a recent NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll, and they are right. Only 25 percent of those polled said the government can be trusted to protect the interests of the American people. If we do not embrace this outrage and distrust as our own it will be expressed through a terrifying right-wing backlash.
"It is time for us to stop talking about right and left," McKinney told me. "The old political paradigm that serves the interests of the people who put us in this predicament will not be the paradigm that gets us out of this. I am a child of the South. Janet Napolitano tells me I need to be afraid of people who are labeled white supremacists but I was raised around white supremacists. I am not afraid of white supremacists. I am concerned about my own government. The Patriot Act did not come from the white supremacists, it came from the White House and Congress. Citizens United did not come from white supremacists, it came from the Supreme Court. Our problem is a problem of governance. I am willing to reach across traditional barriers that have been skillfully constructed by people who benefit from the way the system is organized."
We are bound to a party that has betrayed every principle we claim to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our permanent war economy, to a demand for quality and affordable public education, to a concern for the jobs of the working class. And the hatred expressed within right-wing movements for the college-educated elite, who created or at least did nothing to halt the financial debacle, is not misplaced. Our educated elite, wallowing in self-righteousness, wasted its time in the boutique activism of political correctness as tens of millions of workers lost their jobs. The shouting of racist and bigoted words at black and gay members of Congress, the spitting on a black member of the House, the tossing of bricks through the windows of legislators' offices, are part of the language of rebellion. It is as much a revolt against the educated elite as it is against the government. The blame lies with us. We created the monster.
When someone like Palin posts a map with cross hairs on the districts of Democrats, when she says "Don't Retreat, Instead-RELOAD!" there are desperate people cleaning their weapons who listen. When Christian fascists stand in the pulpits of megachurches and denounce Barack Obama as the Antichrist, there are messianic believers who listen. When a Republican lawmaker shouts "baby killer" at Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak, there are violent extremists who see the mission of saving the unborn as a sacred duty. They have little left to lose. We made sure of that. And the violence they inflict is an expression of the violence they endure.
These movements are not yet full-blown fascist movements. They do not openly call for the extermination of ethnic or religious groups. They do not openly advocate violence. But, as I was told by Fritz Stern, a scholar of fascism who has written about the origins of Nazism, "In Germany there was a yearning for fascism before fascism was invented." It is the yearning that we now see, and it is dangerous. If we do not immediately reincorporate the unemployed and the poor back into the economy, giving them jobs and relief from crippling debt, then the nascent racism and violence that are leaping up around the edges of American society will become a full-blown conflagration.
Left unchecked, the hatred for radical Islam will transform itself into a hatred for Muslims. The hatred for undocumented workers will become a hatred for Mexicans and Central Americans. The hatred for those not defined by this largely white movement as American patriots will become a hatred for African-Americans. The hatred for liberals will morph into a hatred for all democratic institutions, from universities to government agencies to the press. Our continued impotence and cowardice, our refusal to articulate this anger and stand up in open defiance to the Democrats and the Republicans, will see us swept aside for an age of terror and blood. ~ [TruthDig] [Ed. Note: Written March 29, 2010]
Appeal to Youth,
It's Up to You
An Open Letter
to Chris Hedges
Dear Chris Hedges,
[Ed. Note: Written March 31, 2010]
Maybe I read your stuff so intently because almost certainly you and I are the only two former US corporate-media "foreign" correspondents who also were grad students of theology.
In any case, what I find most appealing below is your total disdain for "Democrats and their liberal apologists". Yeah! I would, however, broaden this disdain to include not just liberals but also progressives, greens and leftists.
In fact, your reference here to "the boutique activism of political correctness" should be broadened to include, say, Danny Schechter's slick anti-Wall-Street boutique activism. His definition of Wall Street's plunder is such a slender slice of its total that his effect is that of a gatekeeper (or Limited Hangout) for all the felonious financiers.
Most folks within the four-ply left / liberal / green / progressive community discern significant differences between each label and the three others--but actually all four sets of their goals are so culturebound as to be hugely inadequate to a nearly equal degree. Meanwhile, the eco-clock keeps ticking, so each year the distance widens between their sets of goals and what's minimally necessary--and at an increasing pace.
Thus we should begin somewhere else--and so I suggest we start with youth rather than with leftists or liberals or progressives or greens or libertarians or conservatives. I think this is also the best place for Cynthia McKinney to start in her effort to overcome the phony left / right distinction. Much more on this later--but now I wanna get back to your piece here rather than just trip out on it. (Meanwhile, though, I'd be pleased to email you what I've done so far in a new series called "A US Youth Resurgence?".)
Yes, it certainly appears that Americans are "yearning for fascism" and certainly some of them are. But I suspect that most of them merely appear to be while actually what's defining them is an average mood too low for them to care much whether fascism arrives or not.
So we must first enhance their average mood to the point where they start abhorring the possibility of fascism because it would bum them back down to where they'd just risen from.
For millenia controllers have been aware of the need to keep their captive populations relatively bummed out so they don't have enough confidence to rebel.
After just a few Christian centuries, the widespread belief in reincarnation was outlawed in favor of reducing confidence by inducing fear via the notion of a single all-or-nothing incarnation wherein there's always a major risk of a maximally fearful outcome: eternal damnation in fire.
But of course sexual repression is the main vehicle for controlling mood. Vatican attitudes are a good example: sex is dirty, so don't be guilty of experiencing it--except when the focus is strictly procreational.
Approximately a millenium ago a sexual yoga quite beneficial to the nervous system was practiced in parts of northern India in both Hindu and Buddhist circles. Today one finds only trace elements of these practices there, which can only mean that they were stomped out in order to secure a control system.
The contemporary control system in the US and many other places outlaws marijuana use because it isn't followed by a hangover and thus provides a net mood enhancement. Alcohol is legal because it is followed by a hangover frequently enough to prevent any sustained mood gains.
I learned of a monumentally outrageous practice of mood control when living in a rather remote Bolivian village four years ago. I was told by a quite seasoned observer there that "when you tell a story to a four-year-old in this village he or she will understand it, but when you tell the same story to a twelve-year-old he or she won't understand it". She said this was because the Vatican is not content to meddle merely on a verbal level with superstition and related propaganda in its school system (so tightly controlled that it can even get away with referring to its schools as "public")--but in fact goes deeper to sabotage the students' ability to concentrate so the resulting low level of self-esteem will prevent any rebellion against their control system there.
But today the main vehicle for mood control is television. So the best way to reduce the chances of fascism is to reduce the use of television sets to those DVDs (and videocassettes) which don't contain ads. No more live shows! This way, the playing field finally is leveled between the controllers' centralized corporate network TV fake news and the resisters' local independent truthful news.
Have you noticed that the controllers' TV feed never depicts people who are elated? That's because their market researchers tell them that people who are usually in very good moods consume much less than those in merely fair-to-middling moods who'll buy lots of stuff in their chase for the very good mood. Thus the controllers don't want you to know that sustaining a very good mood is even possible--and thus it's nearly impossible to find yoga courses on TV.
This also explains why they peddle competition so obsessively. In competitions there are at least as many bummed losers as elated winners--but in cooperative activities everybody wins.
Another way to get a significant and sustained mood improvement is to pull off at an anthropological level a "transfer of prime human attention from objects to states of mind". This notion was offered by Gary Snyder back in '69 as a field theory for dealing with climate destabilization. It would lead to a more mature planet in other ways too.
And a shift from households with only two adults to ones with at least four would greatly help average mood. In today's collapsed economic circumstances the nuclear family is usually bummed out because of all the pressures on it. And it's nonfunctional because it's so pinned down with short-term concerns like groceries and lodging that it can't represent its long-term concern of sustaining climate patterns supportive of outdoor agriculture. But with four or more adults (plus whatever dear children, of course) the household becomes viable enough to support one of them as a full-time volunteer activist on behalf of its favorite cause.
Inadequate mood levels also explain a phenomenon which might be seen as a yearning for ecocide / omnicide / biocide / oblivion / entropy. At least this is how we've behaved during these first four decades of the climate emergency.
If as activists we switch our principal efforts to mood enhancement, we increase the importance to us of musicians and yoga instructors. Fortunately, there are simple daily practices available free of charge which enhance mood in a manner more reminiscent of Occidental science than Oriental religion. Some of these involve using the vocal muscles nonverbally to massage the nervous system by concentrating sound inside the body at certain specific frequencies.
Yours for waking to the quantum ether, Keith Lampe, aka Pondo, Volunteer, March 31, 2010 [Continue Reading]
Disclaimer #4
4. Life is like photography. You use the negative to develop.
What In Tarnation?
Leningrad Cowboys, Happy Being Miserable via Leningrad Cowboys Official
Disclaimer #6
6. If we want world peace, we must let go of our attachments and truly live like nomads. That's where I no mad at you, you no mad at me. That way, there'll surely be nomadness on the planet. And peace begins with each of us. A little peace here, a little peace there, pretty soon all the peaces will fit together to make one big peace everywhere.
Nothing else matters, Metallica arr. Karianne Brouwer violin, Maaike Schoenmaker cello
Notes from ~@~
Freedom of expression and freedom of speech aren't really important unless they're heard...It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. And there's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. So I dedicated this Emmy to all the people who feel compelled to speak out and not afraid to speak to power and won't shut up and refuse to be silenced.~ Tom Smothers
Carlin Step, DJ Steve Porter & Eli Wilkie from Roland Kardeby
The Great Bell Chant (The End of Suffering) from R Smittenaar
One Day, Matisyahu via ShalomLearning
Unsung Hero from Rattakarn Srithavatchai "Garn"
The Sacred Clowns ~ Heyókȟa
The Heyókȟa symbolize and portray many aspects of the sacred, the Wakȟáŋ. Their satire presents important questions by fooling around. They ask difficult questions, and say things others are too afraid to say. By reading between the lines, the audience is able to think about things not usually thought about, or to look at things in a different way.
Principally, the Heyókȟa functions both as a mirror and a teacher, using extreme behaviors to mirror others, thereby forcing them to examine their own doubts, fears, hatreds, and weaknesses. Heyókȟas also have the power to heal emotional pain; such power comes from the experience of shame--they sing of shameful events in their lives, beg for food, and live as clowns. They provoke laughter in distressing situations of despair and provoke fear and chaos when people feel complacent and overly secure, to keep them from taking themselves too seriously or believing they are more powerful than they are.
In addition, sacred clowns serve an important role in shaping tribal codes. Heyókȟa's don't seem to care about taboos, rules, regulations, social norms, or boundaries. Paradoxically, however, it is by violating these norms and taboos that they help to define the accepted boundaries, rules, and societal guidelines for ethical and moral behavior. This is because they are the only ones who can ask "Why?" about sensitive topics and employ satire to question the specialists and carriers of sacred knowledge or those in positions of power and authority. In doing so, they demonstrate concretely the theories of balance and imbalance. Their role is to penetrate deception, turn over rocks, and create a deeper awareness.
Develop Your Mind, Not Sacred Sites
Cree Prophecy
Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.
Nobody for President ~ NONE of the ABOVE should be a choice on voter ballots
C. Spangler & Wavy Gravy, Nobody for President, 197610.12 ~ Photo: James Stark
American Dream, George Carlin via Ishtar [Not Work Safe] Nobody should have that much power
Message via Mike Pinder
Oh, I hope that I see you again I never even caught your name As you looked through my window pane ~ So I'm writing this message today I'm thinking that you'll have a way Of hearing the notes in my tune ~ Where are you going? Where have you been? I can imagine other worlds you have seen ~ Beautiful faces and music so serene ~ So I do hope I see you again My universal citizen You went as quickly as you came ~ You know the power Your love is right You have good reason To stay out of sight ~~ But break our illusions and help us Be the light ~ by Mike Pinder
Why I Think This World Should End, Prince EA via Prince EA
Without love in the dream, it will never come true. ~ Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. ~ John Lennon
The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang. But the man did not hear. So the man yelled "God, speak to me" and the thunder rolled across the sky. But the man did not listen. The man looked around and said, "God let me see you" and a star shined brightly. But the man did not notice. And the man shouted, "God show me a miracle" and a life was born. But the man did not know. So the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me know you are there" Whereupon God reached down and touched the man, But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.
Don't miss out on a blessing because
it isn't packaged the way you expect!
DuckDuckGo ~ The search engine that doesn't track you
{ ͡ʘ ͜ʖ ͡ʘ} Is Daylight Saving Time Dangerous? { ͡ʘ ͜ʖ ͡ʘ}