The tide shifts. . . . .

Wednesday October 7, 2009

. . . .Yeah, I know the same music has been there for a while, I'll change the playlist up when I get the chance to tomorrow, and can be somewhere where I have some upload/download speed.

. . . . .If you're reading this as a Facebook note, you really, really need to switch out to the external site The Desolation Angel, for the video below, which is awesome, and the music too.

. . . The fanboy in me is completely geeked. Michael Bay is doing Transformers 3 (Bumblebee, my man!) and has moved the release date up a full year to July 2011, instead of 2012. And. . . The A-Team is coming to the big screen! Yes! Liam Neeson will play Corporal Hannibal Smith, and Rampage Jackson from UFC is taking the Mr. T role as BA Baracus. Bradley Cooper, from Alias (Sydney Bristow's [Jen Garner] love interest) and this year's The Hangover. It's coming in 2010 summer.

. . . .There's a lot that's coming together right now, a lot. Pretty much everything that this column and a hundred other bloggers, columnists and investigative journalists have been writing about for some time is all coming into focus at the same time.

. . . Specifically:
- The fight over health care reform is taking a sharp turn, as more and more of America wakes up to the fact that it's not about the public option being "socialist" (horseshit!), it's not about government control; it's the recognition by reasonable people on all sides that health insurers are hurting the American people, raping them. That fight is also a microcosm of what's going on in the political arena.
- The conservative movement, the Right wing, has broken out into internecine warfare. It's a bloodbath as the actual elected officials are now fighting to get control of their party back from the wingnuts. When it's all said and done, I believe that it will be seen that John McCain has been quietly working behind the scenes to gain control of his party, to get it back from the drooling wingnuts.
- The same is happening on on the financial crisis front, as it becomes more and more apparent that the same fools who broke the world financial system aren't just still in charge, they're larger and more powerful now than ever and control even more of the world's financial heartbeat. And more and more people are figuring it out.
- I'm going to go back to something I wrote in the last week about conservative's love for power, power for power's sake, and what's happening right now is something that I want to revisit.

. . . . The piece that I put up yesterday about the Conservative Bible Project is real. It's not an Internet joke, it's real. That to me is the epitome, the true picture of conservative hubris, and a skewed worldview that has absolutely no connection to the real world. It speaks volumes to what it occurring, and how it's occurring. These fools actually believe that they can rewrite a book that is the foundational document of their religion, and see absolutely nothing wrong with doing it. Should anyone else try doing it, they'd shoot them no question, and let the "activist" courts settle it.
. . .From PZ Myers, over at Pharyngula:

The Bible is suffused with liberal bias. A lot of the Old Testament isn't bad, but the New Testament, when Jesus makes the scene, suddenly takes a turn into commie-land, with it's talk of helping the poor and camels and needles and so forth. Jesus was obviously misquoted all over the place.

So what to do? When your claim of godly authority rests on your interpretation of God's holy word, but God's holy words contradict your desired ends, you're in a bit of a pickle. There is a solution, though: rewrite the Bible and change the liberal bits! For this reason some of the deranged editors at Conservapædia have launched The Conservative Bible Project, which will purge the wimpy stuff and return it to it's authentic roots, as a book that could have been written by a dumb-as-a-stick American Republican NRA member who wants to kill communists and A-rabs.

I'm not joking. They cite as reasons for a rewrite the fact that the Bible uses the term "comrade" three times, and acknowledges the existence of laborers thirteen times. It's practically a Marxist/Leninist tract.

They conveniently give an example of the kind of thing that needs to be fixed.

The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.

As we all know, after all, Jesus really wasn't into that "forgiveness" thing.

. . . .As well, there is the incredibly common human psychological trait called projection, we all do it, it's just that some people are self-aware enough to realize when they're doing it and capable of stopping themselves. Short form - people project onto others the things, the ideas that they have, what they would do in the same situation. They project onto others what their own paradigm demands. They are only capable of seeing others as capable of doing what they themselves would do in the same situation, therefore, the accusations and cries of "Nazi" , "fascism", and the other ism's. It's what they would do, if they had the chance, and the rewrite of the Holy Bible of the Christian church speaks volumes of the position they believe themselves to be in.

. . . From Chez Pazienza, over at Deus ExMalcontent:

More than ever these days, I find myself kind of shaking my head and thinking -- even fleetingly -- that America's Great Experiment in Democracy may have failed. I do this because there are now people out there who put the good of their respective parties over the good of the country. People who want to see our president, and therefore the country that elected him overwhelmingly, fail outright. They have a singular, deafening voice that's righteous in its certitude. They carry guns. They irresponsibly call for revolution. They seem to have no shame and no appreciation for the possible consequences of the shit-storm they're stirring.

Or do they?

I certainly don't want to fear-monger from the ostensible opposite side of the fence, but a piece in Open Salon today kind of got me thinking about the possibility that everything we're seeing right now really will culminate in some sort of violent upheaval. One of the things I appreciate about the column, by writer David Brin, is that it deftly points out what I think has been the cancer festering at the core of our eroding national discourse for sometime now: the fact that the conservative movement -- once pioneered and propagated by men and women of incredible intellect and patriotism -- has been hijacked by stupid, demagogic idealogues who furiously espouse a goal of eliminationism. In other words, they don't want to negotiate with their political counterparts and adversaries; they want to see them utterly crushed underfoot.

Admittedly, a lot of the people driving this rhetoric -- the ones with the biggest populist bullhorns -- are riling up the right-wing masses mostly because doing so makes them a hell of a lot of money. That's the ironic dishonesty about this so-called revolution: Its leaders are largely using the little guy as a stage prop to make themselves rich. But selfish intentions won't change the devastating nature of the potential outcome here -- not if violence really does erupt.

From the piece:

"And so we have circled back to where we started -- the sad decline of American conservatism into cartoonish idiocy. The puppeteers may be rich. They may be talented provocateurs and con artists... but talent does not equate to brains. Not when the GOP has driven off almost everybody in America who actually knows stuff, including nearly all the scientists, the skilled innovators, and most of the U.S. Officer Corps.

Alas. This is no longer even about "conservatism" anymore. Barry Goldwater lived long enough to denounce what he saw happening to his beloved movement, and things have plummeted even farther, since that great man died.

Nowadays, bottom-to-top -- and especially at the very top -- it is all about stupidity."

Read on:

Open Salon: "A Rant About Stupidity... and the Coming Civil War" by David Brin/10.4.09

. . . .Health care reform, because, as a topic, it serves as a microscope on what's happening right now. Finally, finally, the focus is starting to be on what's important; the health insurance companies, their ownership of members of Congress, and their using two people, Frank Luntz and Betsy McCaughey to write the script of lies to maintain the status quo.

. . . .I'm really, really beginning to like Dylan Ratigan. He absolutely tore Betsy McCaughey apart this morning on Morning Meeting and exposed her lies. His other guest was Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is probably the smartest person I've heard yet on the subject. Here's a hint, again, if you're reading this on the Facebook notes page, you can't see the video, go to the external site. Second thing, if you've gone to the external site, you're hearing the podcast. Go up to the podcast, upper left hand corner of the blog, and look for the little bar with the word Podbean on it. Go to the left hand side, go to the middle button and push it, that's the pause/play button and you can control it from there. At any rate, watch the video of Ratigan taking her apart, from Cesca, and MSNBC, Betsy McCaughey making an ass of herself - again:

This was very entertaining. Anthony Weiner and Dylan Ratigan running circles around anti-reform liar Betsy McCaughey:

She makes it so easy.

Adding... Jamison Foser makes a good point: why is McCaughey on television in the first place? While it's frustrating that cable news continues to elevate wingnuts and crazies, there's actually an upside to bringing in people like McCaughey. I'll explain. In the case of this Ratigan segment, he's doing the opposite of what Fox News does all the time. Fox News claims "balance" by including occasional liberals. Weak, barely articulate, outnumbered liberals who are way out of their depth. So the debate is automatically stacked in favor of the conservatives, while Fox News can claim "balance" in a very superficial way. Ratigan, today, lined up a strong liberal against a weak wingnut, and Ratigan is clearly more sympathetic to Weiner's position on healthcare. That meant two pro-reform voices against one weak anti-reform voice. It's a start.

. . . .And from, of all places, Fox News, Shepard Smith went way beyond the network's normal bias and absolutely lit up Senator John Barasso. I'm sure he's already been called to the principal's office. Jeez, Sean and Bill are going to have a lot of "no-spinning" tomorrow!

SMITH: Over the last ten years health care costs in America have skyrocketed. Regular folks cannot afford it. So, they tax the system by not getting preventative medicine. They go to the emergency room in the last case and we all wind up paying for it. As the costs have gone up, the insurance industry's profits, on average, have gone up more than 350%. And it is the insurance companies which have paid, and who have contributed to Senators and Congressmen on both sides of the aisle to the point where now we cannot get what all concerned on Capitol Hill seem to believe and more 60% of Americans say they would support, which is a public option. This has been an enormous win for the health-care industry, that is an unquestioned fact. But I wonder, what happens to the American people when we come out with legislation now which requires everyone to have health care insurance -- or many more people -- but does not give a public option? Therefore millions more people will have to buy insurance from the very corporations that are overcharging us, and whose profits have gone up 350 percent in the last ten years. It seems like we the people are the ones getting the shaft here.

The video here:

. . . .Now from Cesca, Michael Moore and a site called Dead Peasant Insurance, I've found out something truly disgusting. Big companies like Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie and Bank of America take out life insurance policies on their employees and name themselves as beneficiaries. Now, talk about an economic incentive to shred your employees health insurance plans, and get claims denied, there's the economic incentive right there. From Dead Peasant Insurance:

Dead Peasant Insurance is sometimes used as a shorthand reference for life insurance policies that insure a company’s rank-and-file employees and name the company as the beneficiary. This means that the company receives the life insurance benefits when the covered employees die. This insurance may also be called “janitor insurance,”…

Winn Dixie Stores bought life insurance policies on approximately 36,000 of its employees, without their knowledge or consent, and named itself as the policies’ beneficiary. The insurance brokerage firm that placed the policies prepared two memos describing the deceased employees as “Dead Peasants.” These memos were part of the court’s record in a lawsuit in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that Winn-Dixie’s policies were a sham transaction for federal income tax purposes. The memos were later used by reporters such as Ellen Schultz and Theo Francis of the Wall Street Journal and L.M. Sixel of the Houston Chronicle and incorporated into articles about this type of insurance.

. . . .So yes, at least now some information is getting out there and people are getting a feel and clue for how the game has been rigged from the get-go and maybe, just maybe they've had enough and we can still make some kind of difference. For me, it's not about health care reform, for me, it's exposure of how badly the insurance companies have rigged the game. Right now, as we're talking, Wellpoint's CEO makes $436,000 a day. Everybody knows how he's making it, enough stories are being told about denial of claims, of people being dropped, of people who don't get needed and necessary tests and treatments. Do you make $436,000 a day? Just a question. Oh and, under the Baucus bill, he'll get richer. How much are you making a day again? Didn't catch that.

. . . .Now the other important thing to get after today is one that is slipping a little bit under the radar, but is probably very prescient and very scary. Al-Queada's website and forum have been quiet for about a year now, since bin Laden gave Zarkawi up when he started to act up and became a threat and was threatening to usurp the balance of power and chain of command in Al-Queada. As well, this ties into the investigation and arrest of Zazi, in New York City. This was a real threat,and would have been a horrific terrorist attack. Gotta give credit where credit is due, this Administration, 9 months on, has stopped a major terrorist attack, and is picking off Al-Queada leaders. From Howard Altman in the Daily Beast:

A new front in the so-called global war on terror has emerged inside an office building in Los Angeles—and it was launched the day before Americans commemorated the 8th anniversary of 9/11.

That’s when al-Ekhlaas, al Qaeda’s most important Web forum, suddenly came back to life—roughly a year after mysteriously going dark. Its name, which means “devotion” in Arabic, was registered at a Los Angeles domain registry company called namecheap.com.

For four years, beginning in 2004, al-Ekhlaas was a key site for jihadi command and control, recruitment, fundraising, and propaganda, according to cyber-jihad investigator Evan Kohlmann. A plot to kill the British prime minister was hatched on the site, according to British investigators—who say the plot may have been thwarted because al-Ekhlaas was shut down before the plotters had a chance to act. Thanks to online recruitment, many of the forum’s thousdans of dedicated members found their way to Iraq and Afghanistan to become suicide bombers, according to Kohlmann. Then site went offline on Sept. 10, 2008. Kohlmann says he does not know why.

No sooner had al-Ekhlaas lurched back to life this fall than questions began spreading in jihadi online communications and chat rooms about its authenticity. Some saw it as a trap, created by U.S. intelligence. Kohlmann and others who track jihadi sites say it was most likely set up by foreign intelligence or cyber-vigilantes. Some jihadis suspect the handiwork of the CIA.

.. . . . . .Now combine this with one that the ladies over at the Political Carnival laid out on the web today, and the foreign picture for the next year starts to come a little clearer.

Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?

By GottaLaff

(click to enlarge; one of 3 pages, the rest are here)

Um, yikes?

The Pentagon is always making plans, but based on a little-noticed funding request recently sent to Congress, the answer to that question [see blog title] appears to be yes.

First, some background: Back in October 2007 [...] the Pentagon cited an "urgent operational need" for the new weapon.

Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.[...]

Why now? The notification says simply, "The Department has an Urgent Operational Need (UON) for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high threat environments. The MOP is the weapon of choice to meet the requirements of the UON." It further states that the request is endorsed by Pacific Command (which has responsibility over North Korea) and Central Command (which has responsibility over Iran).

The request was quietly approved. On Friday, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to provide "Massive Penetrator Ordnance Integration" on B-2 aircraft.

This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran.

. . . .Tomorrow, we devote to the civil war that's broken out over on the Right. It's Scarborough, Sen. Lindsey Graham, David Brooks, David Frum, Mark Mackinnon vs. Beck, Limbaugh, Savage et al.

. . . .And that's the way it is:

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.
- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -
- Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.
- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.
- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.
- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction
- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.
- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.


. . . .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattoed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.


. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.

. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.

. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.

. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it now.

The Desolation Angel
from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .