The United States of Gitmo

In the service of the never-ending and totally contrived War on Terror, the Writ of Habeas Corpus has been officially sacrificed on the altar of the New Security States of America. Congress has finally codified the defacto policy of indefinite detention of suspected terrorists without so much as a show trial.  What Bush the Younger started, Barack Obama has continued. Congress is simply carving it into stone for posterity.... for whatever right-wing presidential nutjobs come along in the not too distant future.


Here's what the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) boils down to: while ostensibly designed to fight Al Qaeda terrorists, it means the government can arrest you, accuse you of being a terrorist, and disappear you forever.  No evidence will be required, and you will not be allowed to plead your case before a judge.  


The initially-threatened presidential veto of NDA had nothing to do with Obama being a champion of civil liberties. He has never been a champion of civil liberties. He simply did not like the original language of the act, which would have stripped down his executive power as judge, jury and executioner.  Senator Carl Levin (who is being blamed by Obamapologists for this debacle) made it clear that the bill was being tweaked at the request of the White House.  Moreover, said Levin, it was Obama who insisted that American citizens not be exempted from the indefinite detainment clause. So according to the New York Times, the White House is now satisfied that the bill
"does not challenge or constrain the president’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the president’s senior advisors will not recommend a veto."


Glenn Greenwald has been saying for a long time that Obama, and Bush/Cheney before him, have always had the self-bestowed judicial powers now officially granted to presidents. He was not at all surprised that the president has suddenly dropped his veto threat. From his blog: 

Both groups pointed (ACLU and Human Rights Watch) out that this is the first time indefinite detention has been enshrined in law since the McCarthy era of the 1950s, when — as the ACLU put it — “President Truman had the courage to veto” the Internal Security Act of 1950 on the ground that it “would make a mockery of our Bill of Rights” and then watched Congress override the veto. That Act authorized the imprisonment of Communists and other “subversives” without the necessity of full trials or due process (many of the most egregious provisions of that bill were repealed by the 1971 Non-Detention Act, and are now being rejuvenated by these War on Terror policies of indefinite detention). President Obama, needless to say, is not Harry Truman. He’s not even the Candidate Obama of 2008 who repeatedly insisted that due process and security were not mutually exclusive and who condemned indefinite detention as ”black hole” injustice.

Under the new law, even your Fifth Amendment right to remain silent will be tossed out the window.  Law Professor Patricia J.Williams of Columbia University writes:

During the Congressional debate over the NDAA, proponents like Senators Saxby Chambliss and Lindsey Graham argued that when we capture someone who is deemed an enemy, we must start with the presumption that “the goal is to gather intelligence” and “prosecution is a secondary concern.” In numbingly infantile terms, they declared that “the meanest, nastiest killers in the world” should be questioned for “as long as it takes,” without them “lawyering up.” This need to make “them” talk was cited repeatedly, endlessly, as the main justification for military detention, with references to “surprise” technologies to get prisoners to speak. As though Abu Ghraib had never happened, there was exuberant embrace of methods Senator Graham promised would not be publicized by the Army Field Manual.

Look for the government getting hauled into court once Obama signs this bill into law.  It's not only blatantly unconstitutional, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. It's un-American:

 While the government has the right, under the laws of war, to detain prisoners captured on the battlefield until the end of hostilities, no president should have the power to declare the entire globe a war zone and then seize and detain civilian terrorism suspects anywhere in the world — including within the United States — and to hold them forever without charge or trial. But the Bush and Obama administrations have done just that, defining their powers too broadly, and claiming the authority to pick up and detain without charge or trial prisoners from around the globe who they deem engaged in the "war on terror."

Dec. 15, 2011: Happy 220th Anniversary to the Bill of Rights

Not that he ever heeds petitions from unmonied mortals, but here's where to sign to voice your displeasure to President Obama. I wrote in the little message box that theoretically, once Barack is out of office, the next president -- say, Newt --can declare him an enemy of the state and send him to one of those Halliburton detention camps that are rumored to exist.

Congressional Buzzwords

A revamped version of CapitolWords, a truly ingenious program for finding out what congressperson said what, and how often, has been rolled out by the Sunlight Foundation, a government transparency advocacy group. Says spokesperson Nikki Margolies:

To folks who never had a chance to play with our previous version, Capitol Words scrapes the bulk data of the Congressional Record from the Government Printing Office, does some computer magic to clean-up and organize the data, then presents an easy-to-use front-end website where you can quickly search the favorite keywords of legislators, states or dates.
The new version now allows users to search, index and graph up to five-word phrases that give greater context and meaning to the turns-of-phrase zinging across the aisle. Where we once could only track individual terms like 'health' or 'energy,' now we can break down the issue further into 'health care reform,' 'renewable energy,' 'high energy prices' or however you wish.

I have given CapitalWords a test run, and here are some results. (If you want to find out how many senators have used the "F" word, though, don't bother.  It's the first word I tried and I came up with Zero. But "shit" was uttered about three times more frequently by Democrats than Republicans, with Rep. John Conyers the most frequent practitioner.)


Here's more:


God: invoked much more by Republicans from the states of Texas, California and North Carolina. The winners are Walter Jones of North Carolina, Joe "YOU LIE" Wilson of South Carolina, and Robert (nearer his God than thee now) Byrd of West Virginia.


Satan: again, more popular with Republicans from the states of Texas, Arizona and California. Champion Satan speaker is Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas (I think he's the same shill who apologized to BP for the oil spill)*, then comes former Rep. James Tancredo, right-wing hatemonger of Colorado.  Coming in third, again, is Robert (in a worser place?) Byrd.


The phrase "job creator" was basically flatlining up until 2009, and suddenly took on new life in 2010 when Republicans changed the meaning to "millionaire who should not pay taxes."  This year, it has gone over the top of the chart as probably being the most desperately mouthed catch-phrase in Washington.


Play the game and share your results. It is good clean free fun.

* Thanks to reader Kat for the correction. I got my Texas congressmen mixed up. Gohmert is the one who claimed there was a "terror baby" plot in the works to infiltrate the USA with pregnant Al Qaeda women. The movie title might be "Rosemary's Baby Meets the Boys from Brazil."  This nonsense is probably where he vomited up the Satan. 

Louie "Terror Baby Hunter" Gohmert

TSA Abuse Whitewashers Sought

Have you been groped, strip-searched, inappropriately fondled, or otherwise abused at the airport by a TSA goon? Senator Chuck Schumer has a solution! In an effort to prevent the victims of state-sanctioned assault from running to the newspapers every time they're forced to remove their clothing to prove that their colostomy bag isn't a bomb, or their breast prosthesis isn't hiding a gram of pot, he is calling for "passenger advocate" TSA employees in every airport.

Their real purpose will be to nip the complaints in the bud, whitewash them, and above all, prevent adverse publicity for the Security State. The new staffers can be at the side of travelers at a moment's notice to assure them that they were not assaulted at all, that they are simply being terrorized to prevent terror, and that the $15-an-hour gropers are trained professionals, after all. 

Rather than have the TSA be put in the embarrassing position of claiming that all the accusers are either psychotic, drunk or pathological liars, the new hires will likely receive a crash course in psychological testing. Hysterical victims will be asked to name the president, what medications they are taking, the year, and to count backward from 100 . Once they flunk their mental competency tests, the TSA propaganda department will be able to give instant analyses and plausible denials about every new allegation the media inquire about.

And, just as soon as the holiday rush is over and the TSA has finished ripping open everybody's Christmas presents in a hunt for weapons and drugs, it will institute a toll-free complaint hotline for manhandled fliers. If you are abused, who you gonna call? Not the police! Not the ACLU! Not the Times! Not CNN!  Call the same people who assaulted you in the first place! The same way the family of any rapist deserves that first courtesy call.

According to Schumer and another New York Democrat, State Senator Michael Gianaris, the proposed in-house airport advocates would be summoned immediately by a passenger feeling he/she had been "inappropriately searched" (as opposed to the vast majority of the ovine public who are just fine with the grope).

When the horrific experiences of three Kennedy Airport passengers were publicized last week, Schumer did what he does best. He inserted his corpus in front of the TV cameras. My first reaction was: "At last! The TSA has gone too far this time and he'll announce an overhaul to the whole sadistic system!"

Well, I was wrong of course. Schumer is the same politician who thinks the NYPD should be searching subway passengers before they're allowed to board trains... in rush hour. As far as the latest TSA outrage is concerned, he had this to say: “While the safety and security of our flights must be a top priority, we need to make sure that flying does not become a fear-inducing, degrading, and potentially humiliating experience."

Schumer and all members of Congress are exempt from the TSA screening, so he has not had the pleasure of degradation and humiliation. The only thing he has to fear is fear itself of losing his own cushy seat. Because we all know that no federal lawmaker, no matter how right-wing lunatic fringe Teapublican, would ever, ever bring a weapon or bomb aboard an airliner.  They take an oath to act in the interests of the American people, you see.

Homeland Security Homeboy.... Chuckie Cheese Schumer

Us vs the Plutocracy

In case you missed it, here is where to sign Bernie Sanders' petition to support a stronger Constitutional Amendment to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision giving personhood to corporations. The Sanders measure is identical to the proposal filed by Rep.Ted Deutsch (D-FL) last month.

A different proposal introduced by Democratic Senators Tom Udall and Michael Bennett gives the federal government explicit power to regulate election-related spending by candidates, unaffiliated individuals and corporations. According to In These Times, the Sanders-Deutsch measure goes much further, declaring that the Constitution only protects the rights of “natural persons,” and not “private entities established for business purposes"--

That kind of language is likely to be supported by many liberals and the Occupy movement, whose general assemblies often feature signs calling for an end to “corporate personhood.” Yet because Sanders’ proposal could be interpreted to deny all organizations—including not-for-profit advocacy groups, religious establishments and unions—any protection under the First Amendment, or the rest of the Constitution, even in nonelectoral circumstances, it will also probably raise vigorous objections from civil libertarians on the right and the left. The ACLU, for example, officially supported the Citizens United decision because it opposed the original (and much less restrictive) limits on speech in the McCain-Feingold (campaign financing) law.

Here's Bernie on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night. He admits a constitutional amendment will be a long hard slog, but we have to start someplace.

Also, be sure to read the Gail Collins column in today's Times for a sobering account of just how seditious some of our bought-and-paid-for lawmakers are.  And then read "Pauline NYC's" comment in response. (first in reader recommendations)  With chilling brevity, she warns of the fascist internal coup taking place right before the complicit eyes of the mass media and Democrats.  Her final paragraph: 

"It is time to start calling this out for what it is and to wrench back control of the narrative from the Koch brothers and Faux News. Do the neo-conservative Democrats, led by their placater-in-chief, have the insight to see what is occurring, or the backbone any longer to face it down, or the courage for such a stand?"

Yule Gruel

It’s right before Christmas and all over the news

Politicians are vying to earn the most boo’s.

Occupy’s camped out in D.C. to dare

Anonymous donors their faces to bare.

Candidates practice their lies in their heads

While a fourth of all children go hungry to bed.

Mitt Romney wears flip-flops, Newt Gingrich a sneer,

The truth is not something they’re willing to hear.

When they go on TV, they preen and they pander --

Their purpose in life is to get up our dander.

The latest Not-Romney so hateful and brash,

In two months or less he will burn and he’ll crash.

This goon squad will soon have more places to go,

On book tours, TV shows, to keep the cash-flow

When, what to our wondering eyes will appear --

But a Forbes billionaire on a platform of fear!

It’s Mayor Mike Bloomberg, that Big Apple prick

(We know in an instant it sure ain’t St. Nick)

More rapid than most trades his insults they came

As he whined and he sniffed and he cast about blame.

“Now teachers, now firemen, each union and student

The rich can’t pay taxes, it just isn’t prudent,

For my millionaire friends, for the Street that’s named Wall

I have rid parks of campers, and smashed one and all.”

But as dry leaves that before wild hurricanes fly

When we meet with an obstacle mount to the sky

Throughout the country, our Occupy grew

With hearts full of outrage and a mic check or two

And thus in a twinkling a new hope is born

We’re just saying No to political porn

But Mike won’t give up and he’s gone on a tour!

In hopes that the Oligarchs still will endure.

He’s the face of the Third Way and fiscal restraint,

And as for his running, he insists that he ain’t.

But Shrillionaire Mike in his plea for austerity

Is making quite sure of his place in posterity.

And the Ghost of Ayn Rand, a right crabby old elf

Haunts Congressional Halls with her Cult of the Self.

Cut off their food stamps, cut off their heat!

Make the poor suffer from their heads to their feet.

With holidays coming, the Pubs get enjoyment

From refusing to fund any more unemployment

They claim that the poor are too lazy to work.

While they fill their own pockets with government perks.

But by laying their thumbkins in front of their nose

Treating voters like garbage and rich people’s foes

They’ve caused a revolt and are getting epistles.

Human rights manifestos are flying like missiles.

We shall hear them exclaim, as they flee out of sight:

We won’t run again! Adios, and Good Night!

Morning After in America

When I read the news yesterday that the Obama Administration had nixed the FDA ruling that approved over-the-counter purchase of the so-called "morning after" birth control pill for girls under the age of 17, that old Maureen McGovern song started a senselessly annoying run inside my head. You might remember it as the Oscar-winning theme from that cheesy 1972 disaster epic, "The Poseidon Adventure"....

"There's got to be a morning after
If we can hold on through the night", etc.

What I did not realize until I hit Wikipedia was that the original title/lyrics were "Why Must There be a Morning After?" This downer of a title was deemed at the time to be too realistic, cynical and depressing by the producers.  Instead of concentrating on the cast of thousands which sank to a watery grave in the movie, they thought it would be better to reflect on the lucky few who were rescued in the end -- maybe one percent of the passengers. This worldview eventually become the Reaganesque "Morning in America" canard: celebrate the good fortunes of the few and  their riches will eventually trickle down upon the rest of us.  


Whether the White House's reason for restricting Plan B for younger girls is also a canard, I don't know.* I am not a medical professional. Then again, neither is HHS Secretary Sebelius, nor is her boss. The scuttling of the FDA rule certainly does seem to be a political one, designed to soothe away the worries of the fence-sitting voters of the religion-clinging class. Its reasoning is also sickeningly close to all those "health and safety concerns" given as reasons for shutting down Occupy camps. It is also in keeping with Obama's totally gratuitous and multiple invocations of Jesus during the Christmas tree lighting ceremony last week. 


Intoned the president this morning:  "As the father of two daughters, I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine."


As the mother of one daughter who knows the lingo: "Whatev."  I am sick of talking about him and his paternalistic patter, his calls for shared sacrifice and austerity. Let's get back to that other Morning After theme I started in on before going off my tangent.


The oligarchy and the Style section of the New York Times may not realize it yet, but fully one third of Americans are now at or near poverty.  A lot of us have drastically simplified our lives more out of necessity than choice -- and have found the painful experience to be a gateway to rebellion and resistance. For some people anyway, hard times that don't include an illness or homelessness can be invigorating, a spiritual reawakening, a reassessment of what really matters. We have moved on to our own "Plan B's", our own Mornings After. The Occupy movement encompasses this new philosophy born of necessity. The many heartfelt, thoughtful and inspiring comments from the readers of this blog reflect this philosophy.


The anti-materialism movement is also reflected in a piece by Naomi Wolf posted on Al Jazeera. Wolf, too, sees the glass half-full in the surprising upside to a lousy economy:

After two wars and a half-dozen undeclared conflicts in the past decade, the US has entered a period of unprecedented cultural hibernation.
Gardening, scrapbooking, knitting and cooking have all become newly shabbily chic. In the urban neighbourhoods to which the young and hip are moving, city garden plots and heirloom tomatoes grown in window boxes have replaced Lexuses and Priuses.
Other young hipsters have moved farther out into the country in search of an idyllic new narrative fantasy. The young couple - he with a beard and she in a sundress and rubber boots - are homesteading in the Hudson River Valley with a flock of chickens, or in New Mexico in an ecofriendly straw-bale house. They have replaced the young couple of five years ago - he with the hedge fund, she with interior decorators - in a McMansion in Westchester County.

The Occupy movement is also the outright rejection of despair and a repudiation of politics as usual. As Chris Hedges writes in "Death of the Liberal Class",

As those who retained their identity during slavery, or the long night of twentieth century fascism or communism discovered, resistance will be reduced to small, almost imperceptible acts of defiance. Music, theatre, art, poetry journalism, literature, dance and the humanities, including the study of philosophy and history, will be the bulwarks that separate those who remain human from those who become savages.

Hedges was wrong about only one thing. Resistance is huge, and the defiance is global. Welcome to Morning After in America. It's the sweetest hangover.


*Update: Definitely a canard. At the time I wrote this post, I had not read that Obama claimed girls would be able to walk into a store and grab this medication off a shelf between the batteries and the bubblegum.  I read some of the Times comments and became newly enraged at this pandering politician.

Occupied Oratory



The One Emerges: All Hail!



The president emerged from his hole today, looked around, saw the shadow of the 99% looming over his re-election, and officially announced the early arrival of The American Spring. Punxsutawney Phil has been eclipsed by Osawatomie Obama. Oh say what to me?  Oh sock it to me?  Shades of Nixon seeing the writing on the wall during the Vietnam protests and going on Laugh-In to display his stiff populist cred?  Obama, unlike Tricky Dick, is a natural politician with a tongue of gold. Never one to let an opportunity for political theater go to waste, he jetted out to the Heartland of Kansas, to his mythical roots, to mount the ghostly bully pulpit of the original Bull Moose.

O-gasms echoed throughout liberal land.  Robert Reich called it the most important speech ever in Obama's career.  MSDNC is running reruns upon reruns.  The man we elected is b-a-a-ck. Fool me once, fool me twice, fool me ad infinitum, fool me ad nauseum. The man has made the earth-shaking announcement that Reaganomics is a big fat lie.  Riches do not trickle down after all. He has given Democrats permission to be Democrats.  What chutzpah, coming from the original Closet Republican!

It may have been a break-out speech, but its talking points were hardly original. It borrowed liberally from Bernie Sanders's marathon filibuster speech one year ago this month, that blasted income inequality and the president's own cave on the Bush tax cut extensions. Obama channeled the righteous indignation of cast-aside Elizabeth Warren. He echoed the existential angst of Chris Hedges.  The chameleon skin of this president has taken on the populist stripes of all things Occupy.  This man was all too aware of the protesters penned in like cattle by the NYPD outside of his cash bash last week, holding their signs calling him a corporate puppet. It was turning into a personal political crisis not seen since the Jeremiah Wright kerfuffle. It was Time. For. A. Speech.

Barack Obama is a master at pretending that he hasn't actually been in Washington these past three years. It was the "folks in Congress" who failed to rein in the Wall Street greedheads. Here is a representative snippet from the nearly one hour long speech:

We shouldn’t be weakening oversight and accountability.  We should be strengthening them.  Here’s another example.  Too often, we’ve seen Wall Street firms violating major anti-fraud laws because the penalties are too weak and there’s no price for being a repeat offender.  No more.  I’ll be calling for legislation that makes these penalties count – so that firms don’t see punishment for breaking the law as just the price of doing business.
The fact is, this crisis has left a deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street.  And major banks that were rescued by the taxpayers have an obligation to go the extra mile in helping to close that deficit.  At minimum, they should be remedying past mortgage abuses that led to the financial crisis, and working to keep responsible homeowners in their home. We’re going to keep pushing them to provide more time for unemployed homeowners to look for work without having to worry about immediately losing their house.  The big banks should increase access to refinancing opportunities to borrowers who have yet to benefit from historically low interest rates.  And they should recognize that precisely because these steps are in the interest of middle-class families and the broader economy, they will also be in the banks’ own long-term financial interest.  (Bolds mine).

Woulda coulda shoulda... but we'll be sure to beg, ask, push, cajole.  I was happy to hear him say that he will call for legislation to punish fraudulent behavior that is now, for all intents and purposes, just business as usual. But who's he gonna call? Harry Reid? Mitch McConnell? Will he run it by his Wall Street donors? I would have preferred an actual introduction of legislation, written by him and his "team", with a time stamp on it.  I actually would have preferred the acceptance with regret of the resignation of Tim Geithner. Or that the Justice Department was issuing subpoenas even as he spoke. Or that he was announcing an immediate moratorium on foreclosures.

And as Dave Dayen complained, why oh why does he always have to spoil these inspirational speeches by calling for freaking austerity at the end? You'd think that with 25 percent real unemployment, a third of all people in or close to poverty, record foreclosures, 50 million uninsured, he would have stuffed the belt-tightening and deficit crap down the crapper where it belongs.  But no. He seemingly cannot help himself:  

And it will require all of us to take some responsibility to that success. 
It will require parents to get more involved in their children’s education, students to study harder, and some workers to start studying all over again.  It will require greater responsibility from homeowners to not take out mortgages they can’t afford.... That’s why we’re cutting programs we don’t need, to pay for those we do.  That’s why we’ve made hundreds of regulatory reforms that will save businesses billions of dollars.... When times get tough, the workers agree to give up some perks and pay, and so do the owners.

He was basically calling for the One Percent and the 99 Percent to just get the hell along and re-elect him, already.  We are all in this together, America.  Share the pain. Because if Congress doesn't get things done, the wife and kids will have to take a separate jet to their 17-day Hawaii vacation ahead of him. Tighten your belts, pretend you're in the middle class, and feel guilty while you're at it. And send him $5 for a chance to win a dinner.  



Sharing the Sacrifice, Feudal States of America-Style