Merry Christmas!

Feel free to share songs and links and stories.  Cheerfulness not required, humbug welcome.

I want to thank my readers for your kind thoughts and pithy commentary over the past year.  Here's hoping 2012 is good to all of you. 

Karen

Christmas Eve

By Jay - Ottawa

After a big, satisfying dinner exactly 100 years ago the publisher of the New York Times encountered a hungry man in the street. On that occasion the disparity between the two was recognized not just by the poor man but by the rich man as well, and thus was born the Times’ Neediest Fund. For all my irritation with the Times, I salute them for the Neediest Fund and hope that once great paper can bring such needs to the front page for another hundred years.

No philanthropist or charity can possibly meet all the needs of the poor in a nation of our size. However, the government of a big, rich country can come close to that goal -- when it makes the right choices. Today the richest people and their courtiers who run America have no intention of letting the government help its most needy. While neighbors starve in cold alleyways the elites continue to wear a warm smile and spend money, conspicuously, on their pets. (See Reuters photo, previous post.)

For Christians the Christmas story revolves – or should revolve -- around a child born in poor housing to parents barely scraping by. The growing discipleship of Ayn Rand will tell you that Mary and Joseph, like other irresponsible people of today, brought hardship down upon themselves by making poor life choices along the road to Bethlehem and Nazareth and Golgotha.

But why invest in biblical stories of dubious provenance? Moderns should trust in facts that are up-to-date and verifiable. Check reality with measures that stand up to scrutiny. Then chose to respond, somehow. Or not respond.

Thanks to a foreign newspaper I learned that the National Center for Homeless Families (NCHF) just published a report about homeless children in America. Here’s a Twitter-size executive summary: During the course of a calendar year a total of 1.6 million American children experience homelessness. That’s 1 in 45.

The NCHF has an interactive map that allows you to see the homeless child statistics for your state. Just possibly, in light of recent wheeling and dealing in Washington, the numbers will increase dramatically before next Christmas.

The number of homeless kids in my native New York is an embarrassment, despite all the efforts, public and private, to address the needs of poor children. Where does your state stand in the rankings?
http://www.homelesschildrenamerica.org/reportcard.php

There are many reasons to vote for or against certain candidates. I’m not a single-issue voter, but I, like others of you, will hold it hard against certain parties and candidates who have allowed that 1.6 million to suffer in the first place. Just about everything those same powers-that-be do lately tells us that the number of homeless children is sure to increase.

The end-of-year season puts us in mind to ask ourselves and each other, peaceably, how we are to conduct ourselves in the year ahead. By assenting once again to the lesser of two evils will we become increasingly bigger collaborators, despite what we say on the sidelines? To what measurable degree, if any, has the party of lesser evils slowed -- or hastened -- the progress of injustice, compared to the party "In opposition"? Is there a responsible Third Option?

(Ed. Note: In case you missed it, you can watch the excellent 60 Minutes report on homeless children here.)

Don't Spend It All in One Place

The only thing more annoying than media pundits shrilling about Republican intransigence over the payroll tax cut extension is media pundits shrilling about how great this kabuki disaster has been for the president's approval numbers.  It is so easy to round up the usual annoyances right around Christmas time, but this year we have a brand new one:  The White House, that most savvy of social media bastions, has rolled out its own new Twitter propaganda campaign even as it is trying to squelch the tweets of alleged Somali militants.


Since a failure to approve the can-kicking tax holiday will result in an average and immediate $40 deduction from the "typical" ($50,000/year) paycheck, the Obama people are asking "folks" just how they would spend those two missing twenties.  Actually, it is former campaign director turned G.E. millionaire lobbyist turned White House adviser David Plouffe who did the asking. The thing that ticks me off is how they are glossing over the fact that you have to be solidly middle class in the first place in order to "lose" the much-touted $1000 a year.


Thousands of folks have dutifully responded thus far, and the White House has published a few of the stories on its website.  Unfortunately, the stories they have chosen to share are from people who probably don't even come close to earning the $50,000 a year it takes to qualify to lose $40 the first pay period. The stories they have chosen to publish are from people who sound like they could easily qualify for food stamps, Medicaid, and home heating assistance. (They also sound like people who can stretch a dollar to magical proportions: a week of groceries for only $40?) People on the brink of poverty are being fooled into believing Tax Holiday Grinch Theater applies to them.  A few examples the Obama people are using to make their political points:

  
 After everything that comes out, including my mortgage my take home pay is $150.00 every two weeks. So minus forty would be $110.00. I can barely get by now, that forty bucks is my gas for my car to get to work. Taking forty away from my pay would, just about put me under.



A single mother of two, with no financial support from my children's father, 40 dollars means lunch money for my children at school. It means a tank of gas, and it means covering my weekly visit copays to the doctor.


That is almost 1 weeks of groceries for me or how much it costs to fill my gas tank for 1 1/2 weeks or medical copay at the specialist office. Which one am I to go without? This is going to hurt. Please don't let this happen.

Meanwhile, in what was meant to be a feel-good holiday photo-op, President Obama preemptively blew his own $40 on toys for Bo the Dog in PetSmart yesterday.  What a man of the common people.

(Reuters)

Also lost in the gimmickry is the fact that the payroll tax holiday would only be for one more year, and that we will go through this whole fake rigmarole again next Christmas, when the economy will still suck. Does anybody really believe we can make this thing temporary, and that the so-called holiday is not an underhanded plan to turn Social Security into a means-tested welfare program? The Beltway bubbleheads are already fond of calling it an entitlement, rather than an insurance, program -- and pretty soon they will get their wish. Bernie Sanders voted against this "holiday" in the Senate for just that reason. You don't get what you don't pay for. Garbage in, garbage out.

Conventional wisdom, however, is that one more year of tax holiday will do nothing to affect the solvency of the trust fund. And the Bush tax cuts were supposed to pay for themselves too, and they were supposed to expire, and the moon is made of green cheese.

Human Rights Watch Challenges Obama on Drone War

Nobel Peace Prize Winner #1: Mr. President, kindly justify your rationale for using an intelligence agency to wage war instead of the military. Why are you hiding behind the secrecy inherent in the CIA and not providing a full explanation for your targeted Drone strike assassinations in Pakistan and elsewhere? Where's the accountability?  What about international human rights law?  Defend yourself against the accusation that the USA is just another lawless rogue state.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner #2:  Silence.

Okay, so maybe Barack Obama hasn't had time to personally reply to the Dec. 19 letter from the Nobel-winning Human Rights Watch, demanding that he explain the legality of his targeted attack and assassination programs. He didn't reply to a similar letter he received from HRW last year, either. But his minions have repeatedly said such explanations must be kept secret because the CIA is conducting the operations.  And the CIA is a secret agency, you see, now conveniently headed by Iraq/Afghanistan War Gen. David Petraeus, and thus not publicly accountable as is the regular military.

In a statement released yesterday, the same day as the letter, Human Rights Watch said:

In the decade since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the Bush and Obama administrations have engaged in a campaign of “targeted killings” – deliberate, lethal attacks aimed at specific individuals under the color of law. Estimates of the number of deaths of alleged al Qaeda members, other armed group members, and civilians from US targeted killings range from several hundred to more than two thousand.  Most of these attacks are believed to have occurred in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, armed with missiles and laser-guided bombs.
The lawfulness of a targeted killing hinges in part on the applicable international law, which is determined by the context in which the attack takes place, Human Rights Watch said. The laws of war permit attacks during situations of armed conflict only against valid military targets. Attacks causing disproportionate loss of civilian life or property are prohibited. During law enforcement situations, international human rights law permits the use of lethal force only when absolutely necessary to save human life. Individuals cannot be targeted with lethal force merely because of past unlawful behavior, but only for imminent or other grave threats to life when arrest is not reasonably possible.

Human Rights Watch Director Kenneth Roth, a former U.S. prosecutor, wrote to the president:

The US government should clarify fully and publicly its legal rationale for conducting targeted killings and the legal limits on such strikes. Your administration has yet to explain clearly where it draws the line between lawful and unlawful targeted killings.  The government should also explain why it believes that its attacks are in conformity with international law and make public information, including video footage, on how particular attacks comply with that standard. To ensure compliance with international law, the United States should conduct investigations of targeted killings where there is credible evidence of wrongdoing, provide compensation to all victims of illegal strikes, and discipline or prosecute as appropriate those responsible for conducting or ordering unlawful attacks.
We are particularly concerned about the expanded involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the targeted killings program. International humanitarian law does not prohibit intelligence agencies from participating in combat operations during armed conflicts. However, parties to an armed conflict have obligations to investigate credible allegations of war crimes and provide redress for victims. Because the US government routinely neither confirms nor denies the CIA’s well-known participation in targeted killings in northern Pakistan and elsewhere, there is no transparency in its operations.

Now that Congress has officially declared the entire globe, including the United States, to be an international battlefield in an open-ended war on terror, the lack of transparency about what we are doing, who we are killing, is downright scary.  Concluded Roth :

The CIA, like all US government agencies, is bound by international human rights and humanitarian law.  Unlike the US armed forces, the CIA has provided little or no information regarding the training and composition of its drone teams, or the procedures and rules it follows in conducting targeted killings.  Nor has the government provided information as to whether the CIA has conducted any investigations into possible international law violations and their outcomes.  As a result there is no basis for determining whether the US government is actually meeting its international legal obligations with respect to CIA targeting operations or providing redress for victims of unlawful attacks.  Repeated assertions by senior US officials that all US agencies are operating in compliance with international law – without providing information that would corroborate such claims – is wholly inadequate.

Human Rights Watch might as well be crying in the desert.  The mainstream media and the Democrats have not only given Obama a huge pass on his apparent flouting of international law: they have cheered the assassinations and drone strikes as "foreign policy successes."  Obama himself rankles at criticism that he is soft on terror. “Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 other out of 30 top al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement, or, whoever is left out there," he bragged at a news conference earlier this month.

It takes a tough man to listen to legal advice to tell a drone operator in a Nevada trailer to joystick his way into Pakistan and take out some human flotsam and jetsam in a surgical strike.

Collateral Damage

The Why of Wyden

Ron Wyden, the allegedly progressive Joe Sixpack senator from Oregon, has yet to explain why he has seemingly gone off the deep end to give deep cover to Paul Ryan and his plan to privatize Medicare. Since we have not yet heard a reasonable explanation from Wyden, let me just throw out a few theories.

1. Wyden is a renegade in need of an attention fix.

2. He is being Obama, so Obama doesn't have to be. Max Baucus already got his shot at being the Obama henchman on health care in the Senate. Wyden is simply the latest reincarnation of the failed Catfood Commission, the latest convert to the Cult of Centrism. Wyden is being a Useful Idiot. He's not up for re-election until 2016. He recently married into East Coast money, and doesn't even spend a lot of time in Oregon any more.  

3. Wyden is just another bought politician.  His second largest contributor, after Nike, is FoxKiser, a Washington lobbying firm doing work for the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries.  Blue Cross/Blue Shield has also contributed to his campaign coffers. Wyden may be needing those Nikes to run away from his fellow Democrats, reportedly furious that he has robbed them of a campaign talking point.  Mind you, they are not furious because of the harm he may cause to older people who would be forced to choose between health care and food under his plan. He is just making them look bad in front of their constituents.

4. This is the latest act of Congressional Kabuki Theater, in which the two factions of the Uniparty pretend to battle it out while really working toward the same goal.  We saw it today with the payroll tax stopgap bandaid, in which every working family gets about a hundred whole bucks for groceries, repairs, heat, dinner out, Christmas, rent and college while the wretches pat themselves on the back and go on vacation for a month. Congress and the president dance their political tango, juxtaposing fiery machismo with abject submission, and proclaim it a work of art. We, the mere audience, are exhausted just watching their gyrations. They're counting on us to be grateful when the suspenseful torture ends.

 5. None of them actually gives a shit any more. Their approval level is down to seven percent and will probably be at two by the time they come back next year.  They are no longer even trying to pretend they work for the people who elected them.

Don't Blame Me, Folks -- I'm Only Following Orders

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